“Still no level 50.” Dale said, folding his arms and glancing at the stormy sky with a frown. “I really thought he’d do it for me.”

Dale took a precarious step towards the edge, leaning down and gazing into the black abyss that surrounded the opening chamber of the dungeon. He had never seen anything quite like it. It made the killing work so easy.

Every last high level Trailblazer did this. He knew because how many times he had survived being betrayed, himself. There wasn’t a single person near or beyond level 50 who didn’t level from other humans. It was the fastest and safest way.

He waited for several minutes in silence, his companion, Meat, behind him.

It was called Meat because that was the only thing it really cared about it. Which made it a great companion.

“He’s definitely dead, right?” Dale asked.

“Worthless. Not worth anything.” Meat spoke from behind him. “Killing too many. They’re going to catch on.”

Meat’s voice was definitely inhuman, though it could mimic a human one well enough; when alone with Dale, it sounded like whistling through too many teeth, a voice carrying far on the wind.

“It’ll be fine.” Dale said with a wave. “Even if I don’t hit 50 here, we can still find the core.”

“Racing the Black Fist… victory unlikely.”

Dale grimaced at the mention of Poppy Vascara. To be honest, he admired her. Her party leveled faster than any other he’d known, demonstrating strange and unusual skills only a few months after the first Titan. He was hoping he could obtain skills like theirs by reaching this Titan’s core. But he would have to simultaneously avoid them and reach the final room first.

It was a tall order. He had already wasted hours waiting for them to be far enough into the dungeon’s chambers that they wouldn’t cross paths.

“Dungeon’s still open, isn’t it?” Dale said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes stretched wide. “It’s gotta be a puzzle with one of the rooms. This chamber is obviously about the stupid bird’s first flight.” Dale turned and looked back to the entrance. An old, wiry tree had a bird nest in it full of broken eggs. “Honestly, I thought sending someone off the cliff might have been what was needed. Like a cuckoo bird. Gain a few levels right out of the nest.”

Each of the rooms were made of fragments of the Titan’s memories, pieces of their life and the events that earned them their skills and power contained in a monolith. Navigating them required understanding what made the Titan become a Titan, walking in the shadow of the dozens of chambers that reflected pieces of its life, recorded every time it gained a new skill. Every single chamber was another opportunity to get a skill.

Not that having too many was a good idea; at every thresh hold and major class up, all but five skills would be rendered down and combined, forming the core of a persons skill set.

“Missing something in the storm-chamber. Must be.” Meat said. Its voice shifted from man to feminine, copying the face of people he had seen in recent memory.

“Then lets head back there. We have to find it this time.”

FENG SAI, FOURTEEN

I panted as I waited for my body to calm. There was fire racing through me; it scorched my meridians with pain and power, destroying them just for my body to reform them, making them stronger with each pass. Dried tears made my face sticky and my eyes cling together.

I was out of tears.

Four circlets of engraved metal rested on each of my limbs, heavy and cold. Dry blood itched beneath them. I shook from pain and exhaustion. My palms were bleeding from my nails cutting into them.

“Again.” I said. I couldn’t meet my fathers gaze. I cracked my eyes open, staring at the tile on the ground. It was a bright blue, like the sky, with patterns of clouds naturally occuring in the granite. The entire room carried sky-qi. It was comfortable and familiar, like a calmer form of storm-qi.

I didn’t have to look up to know that it was the Patriarch who smiled down at me. I didn’t have to look up to know that he approved.

His approval made the pain worth it.

A scream slipped out of my mouth as soon as fresh foreign qi ripped into my meridians, warring inside of my body with aspects fundamentally incompatible with my own. Each time, it made it hurt a little less. It allowed me to hold more qi. More powerful qi. To push farther, faster. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

I was behind schedule.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The pain cut off abruptly. I collapsed to my knees, panting.

“Why did it stop? I’m not done!” I shouted. “I can take it!”

“Pardon, Patriach.” Feng Wen said. He stood near the low realm cultivators who had been powering the formation, a hand on one of their shoulders. The man was pale as a ghost.

My father’s smile disappeared.

“No! I can take it!” I shouted.

“That’s enough for today.” Feng Wen said.

“You are not my father! You are not the Patriarch!” I shouted at him.

Feng Wen looked down on me with an expression of pity. I bit my lip until I tasted the iron tang of blood.

“Neither are you, boy.” Dad looked even angrier. I screwed my mouth closed. “We can start again tomorrow.”

Feng Wen opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He screwed his eyes shut and sighed.

“I can take it.” I said. My voice broke.

The Patriarch turned and walked away.

FENG SAI, TODAY

[HP: 70%]

I grunted as I popped my arm back into place.

[New Skill: Pain Resistance 1(Willpower +1)]

I laughed at the absurdity of it. I had been on my best guard from Dale from the start. To think that the threat would come from behind. I was angry at how stupid I was.

I had been distracted by the immense pressure that built up in my head as I entered the dungeon. I would need to figure out what this new skill was later. For all the power it gave me, this system was weird and inconvenient at times. Betrayal while plundering a legacy was exactly what should have been expected.

“Fucking bastard!” I shouted up the massive rift I stood at the bottom of.

From here, I couldn’t even see over the edge. But the world seemed real and solid, not like the false mud walls of the cliff during my descent. I grunted and took a look around.

There was ambient light seemingly coming from no where. The trickle of a creek sounded in my ear like it was next to me, but everything was dry.

The green crack remained in the sky above me. I found my eyes drifting to it naturally. It seemed to spread ever so slightly; every time I looked away and looked back it seemed bigger. I shook my head and looked away. I needed to find a way out — there had to be another door.

I could probably scale the walls if they didn’t turn into non-real mud so far above me.

“Why do they turn into unreal mud above me…” I said, staring up.

Flynt had said that the dungeon’s rooms were made of memories. So the edges were easily explained as things the Titan hadn’t remembered. As were the sections of the cliff between the top and bottom. But that meant that the Titan had been here, at the bottom of the valley between the two plateaus. It seemed even more real than the plateau across from the entrance had been.

With a grunt, I started walking forward, poking and prodding the stone wall of the valley. It didn’t turn to mud again. Instead, it circled far around the plateau. I spent almost an hour marching through the dark, wondering why the bird had seen all of this.

Then I found my answer.

The world turned into paste again at the end of a long ravine, fading away into black. Green spots crept in my vision until I blinked them away one at a time.

In the center of the empty space was a tiny bird. It didn’t look like the Roc. It looked like a child wounded and alone, abandoned by the family that raised it. It let out a soft cry. A tiny creek trickled behind it.

I leaned down on reflex.

“Poor thing… are you alright?” I asked, reaching out. Then I stopped. Was this the Titan itself? A memory of itself? The last bird I walked up to snapped at me. I had no idea if this tiny thing was dangerous.

I inspected it closely. Its wing was broken. It hadn’t made it to the plateau across the sky. This was the Titan’s memory — of trying to push itself too early and falling down into the abyss. I reached down, cupping the bird in my hands and lifting it up before setting it down gently near the water.

“You were all alone here, weren’t you? You fell when you tried to fly. Pushed out of the nest too early?” I smiled cynically at it. Then I frowned. “But you’re just a memory.”

The bird softly lapped up the water. I thought about stomping it. It was a monster, after all. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it — not yet. The little bird was already going to die. Instead, I sat down beside the bird and waited.

The world was far too quiet. There was no wind — just the burbling of the creek. And that sound repeated itself every so many seconds.

“I pushed myself too far when I was young too.”

The bird didn’t say anything, obviously. That would’ve been stupid. I waited again in the silence, growing increasingly uncomfortable as the thought neared that I might have to stomp the bird after all.

“I guess Wen is the one that took me to the creek. Metaphorically, I mean. I’ve never been much of a cultivator… poet. Well, I wasn’t much of a cultivator for a long time either. My dad, though, he was big on the poetry. He said it helped with his breakthrough. He made some — ”

The bird exploded into light, a beam of pure power shooting upwards and then outwards. A door in reality opened.

“Oh.” I said. “I… didn’t want to talk about dad’s poetry anyway.”

My body was sore, but I pushed myself to my feet anyway. This gateway was wholly unlike any of the previous I had seen; it was an archway of golden light. I couldn’t see what the other side held in store for me.

“Really laying into the whole taking a leap of faith thing here, aren’t we?” I said.

Then I stepped through the gate.

[Felling Progress has increased to 1%]

There was a noise like a hundred panes of glass shattering behind me, along with the roar of wind and storms. Before me stretched an entire city of brutalist stone, rising from a sandy desert. The sun burned in the sky above me.

“What?” I asked. My breath hitched in my throat. The Titan soared above me before dropping down and landing next to me. It was bigger now; too large to cup in my hands, but it could easily fit between them comfortably.

I relaxed as I realized I wasn’t looking at Sandgrave. I was still in the dungeon, now in the memory of a desert. This must have been years later.

I looked to the Titan; it was still a tiny bird, now a juvenile. It looked back up at me before quirking its head to the side. Then it flew up and away toward the city. My heart beat calmed as I took in the age of the massive precursor ruin sprawling before me; it was ancient. Craters displaced huge chunks of the city. Buildings sat half sunk into the desert sand; glossy stone edifices crumbled away.

My hand rested on my sword.

“What is this?” I asked. “Is this even on the Savage Expanse?”

The juvenile form of the Titan dove toward me again. I tensed, ready to swing, but it flew back, circling around me before hovering in front of me. It flapped up and down with effort, staring at me, then dove to the ruins.

It stopped again a few feet away and looked back at me.

“You want me to follow you?”

The bird zipped away over the sand.