Mask of Humanity

After getting far enough away that he'd left all disturbances behind, he checked out the Symbiote he'd seized from the Gorothune. It was a stumpy, translucent little bug that seemed like a cross between a beetle and a worm, with a cluster of wriggling feelers encircling its head. It crawled blindly around on his palm, looking for a dark spot to hide in.

Wormtooth Wriggler Symbiote

Type: Earth

Tier: 1

Node: Leg/Foot

This Symbiote grants the ability to burrow through earth with fluid ease, shifting soil to either side and sliding the Cultivator into the depths below. While incapable of tunnelling through stone, in soft or moderate soil it excels, allowing stealthy traversal, hidden approaches, or sudden retreats into the ground. It can be used in very hard soil and even gravel, but only to a limited and ineffective degree.

The Symbiote works simply. It moves soil from in front of the user to behind them. Thus it does not leave a tunnel behind, though the user could be tracked by the disturbed, loosened soil they leave in their wake. The larger the user's body the slower their traversal, and it will also take longer to sink into the ground.

Nicolai nodded absently as he read through the text. It looked like this would serve him even better than it had the Gorothune. As he was smaller and slimmer, he would be able to sink into the ground even faster than it. He looked forward to being able to so easily hide from trouble, and then there were the tactical benefits.

People and animals, in his experience, shared some common foibles. They tended to look for threats straight ahead, to the sides, behind. Looking above came last, if at all, and the ground was considered safe. A trait the Gorothune had utilised to ambush its prey. He would do the same.

After making his way, slowly and cautiously, out of the busy, Aura-rich area, he proceeded into the more typical jungle. He noticed the difference immediately. Here the jungle was quieter, the trees smaller, the creatures fewer and less dangerous, the foliage less intensely large and vibrant.

For his purposes that was an improvement. He found a tree and sheltered in its upper branches. There he worked to break the Wriggler Symbiote in. It took him slightly longer than it should have, at a bit over forty minutes. This was because he had to limit himself, doing his best to produce as few ripples as possible while he worked on it. Once done, he sent it to the major Node in his right foot.

Landing on the ground, he tested it out. The earth erupted around his feet. It softened and flowed, and he rapidly sank into it. The Symbiote created a sort of pocket around him, only a few inches away from the surface of his skin, around which the earth moved. In only moments he was entirely underground, an experience he would have expected to find disconcerting.

But with his Soul Sense and the skinsuit, he found it surprisingly easy. His Soul Sense gave him 360-degree awareness of what was around him, and the skinsuit meant he didn't fear a sudden encounter with sharp rocks, his body comfortable shelled within it. The skinsuit also possessed its own suit of sensors, including some minor vibration-sensors, a fairly comprehensive sonar array, and a ground-penetrating radar scanner. The GPR was capable of scanning through soil, working out what was earth, what was rock, and what was something else, ideal for use with this Symbiote.

He kept going, sinking further and further. Already he could see many uses for this Symbiote. After burrowing about thirty metres into the earth, at which point he began to find his speed slowing as the soil became denser and harder packed, he made use of his Mark's TreasureFinder function. This was something he'd avoided using inside of his base, but now that he was outside he was safe to use it.

The Aura around him began to shift and pulse, as the TreasureFinder sent out wave-like ripples through it. There was less Aura down here under the ground, but still enough for it to work. Based on his understanding, it should be difficult for anything on the surface to work out where the disturbance was coming from. The TreasureFinder worked by sending waves and ripples through the Aura, and by the time those waves emerged from the ground above, they would have spread quite widely. As a result, someone or something with a sense for these things would be able to tell they were coming from underground, in this area, but not precisely where the ripples began.

He'd given the TreasureFinder simple instructions. If he'd asked for something specific, then he'd have had to hope that the specific thing was within its range. He currently had nothing specific in mind so had simply told it to locate "Something valuable." Going forward he intended to do this often. The TreasureFinder gave him one charge per day, and letting those charges sit around unused itched at him.

Time passed. As he waited, Nicolai reflected that the burrowing Symbiote was not complete and perfect. It had a significant weakness. For most people or creatures, if they were to stay still they would find that they ran out of air. If you were able to disturb the earth enough—as the burrow Symbiote did—there was actually some oxygen beneath the earth, so long as it wasn't too tightly packed. So long as someone kept moving they would gain access to it. Keeping moving would also solve the problem of their breathed-out CO₂ building up in the spaces around them, eventually causing CO₂ poisoning. This was typically what killed people who were buried in avalanches of snow.

Nicolai didn't have to worry about any of this. The various technologies and capabilities built into his Skin Suit solved the issue, as it had with his anti-ripple cubby. The Skin Suit had canisters of compressed oxygen, and it could either vent or collect his breathed out CO₂.

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After about ten minutes, the search completed. Nicolai accessed his Mark's UI, using one of its more hidden functions, discovered by Cyberwarfare, to do so. As he was surrounded by earth he couldn't exactly raise his hand before his face and check, but if he closed his eyes and focused he was able to access the UI in a purely mental fashion.

As with the last time he'd used the TreasureFinder, a new icon had been added to his map. It read: Golden Shardache. He smiled a slow smile at the sight. He knew Golden Shardache. It had been possibly the most important resource in the Cultivation game, and it was important for attaining Tier 2. A highly desirable item.

Activating the burrower Symbiote, he rose through the earth. Upon nearing the surface, he raised his arm. From his bionic arm's wrist emerged his eye-wire, a small, flexible tendril ending in a camera. It wormed the last few inches through the earth to poke out the ground, along with his Soul Sense.

With both the detailed camera, which gave much better light-based vision than his Soul Sense, and his Soul Sense which was capable of noticing spiritual effects, he peered around. All clear.

The earth bulged as he rose up and out of it, immediately pulling out his poncho and wrapping himself in it, then activating the Pegasi ring and rising into the air. After travelling a short distance, he looked down from where he lurked in the lower branches of a tree, at a patch of jungle that looked no different than anywhere else.

There was nothing here. And yet, the icon blinked insistently on his map. Golden Shardahe. Shrugging, he opted to make use of the PathFinder. It only took a few seconds to activate and complete the process, as on his map a line roved away from his current location. It went some distance away then dove into the ground, twisted and turned back towards him before finally ending at the Golden Shardache. However, now there were two more icons.

The first was where the line dove into the ground, and read: Cave Entrance. The second was larger, and hovered over the underground area. It read: Scale Viper Nest.

The treasure had guardians. He supposed that was only fitting. Nicolai floated to the ground and activated the burrowing Symbiote, digging into the earth. He sank slowly. He anticipated that he would soon come out in an underground cave full of dangerous creatures, and he didn't want to pop out the roof without warning.

His Soul Sense ranged ahead of him, pushing through the earth. Instead of a cave roof, he found solid rock. Bedrock. He moved around it, seeing if there was any way through, and after some time was rewarded with a tunnel of earth through the rock. He dug through it and found the roof proper.

After flipping upside down, he once more sent out his eye-wire.

It was dark, down below, but there was a sense of movement in that dark. Slow and sibilant shifting. He switched the camera to thermal and saw them, white shapes overlaying the cool grey and black of the cave. Large and long, four-legged snake-like lizards lying around in a cavern, filling the spaces between large stalagmite-like spikes emerging from the ground.

The eye-wire switched to low-light, and he saw the spikes were great, curving crystals, shimmering silver up their length until the top where they were capped by gold.

His Soul Sense bulged around the eyewire, and he saw them spiritually, too. The things down there had Soul Senses of their own, a thick mass of it down below. His Mark buzzed, notifying him of something, but he pushed it away until later. Watching carefully, he began to make out the gaps. Some Soul Senses were larger, some smaller. The size seemed to match up with the sizes of the creatures themselves. Some very much larger than others.

One, toward the centre of the cavern where the thickest clumps of crystals were, was monstrous in size. Bigger than a bus. Based on its Soul Sense, it was Tier 3.

From the ripples washing against his own Soul Sense, Threat Analysis confirmed there were a lot of Symbiotes down there. Ones focused on concepts such as hardness, and speed.

Using the various different visual scans he'd taken, the Modules compared the crystals to other known items, and concluded that those were the Golden Shardache. It seemed that the natural form of Shardache must be these large protrusions. The silver parts—most of each stalagmite—were likely Silver Shardache. The golden caps were the Golden Shardache.

His vision panned greedily across the cave. There were a lot of the things down there. His face split in a grin. This was a treasure trove, a horde.

And like any proper hoard, it was guarded by a dragon. Many dragons. Although, one could also consider this an interesting underground world full of giant snakes that would want to eat him.

He opened his Mark's notification, using one of its functions to simply view the incessantly pinging message mentally.

Collect Job Alert!

Detected: Tier 1 Scale Viper Scale – 100 pts per scale (heavy demand)

Scale Vipers are in your area. Hunt them, harvest their scales, and be rewarded.

Scale Vipers are a snake-type breed of Spirit Beast, known for their blinding speed, their unusually sharp and powerful claws, and their scales. As Scale Vipers rise in Tiers, their scales and claws become stronger and denser. They also tend to search out Symbiotes that further reinforce their strengths—stronger claws and faster movement.

Tending to form large, communal nests, Scale Vipers are amongst the most dangerous Spirit Beasts a Slayer can hunt. Killing just one will rouse the anger of all.

Hunting the Tier 1s would certainly be worthwhile, if he could work out a way to do so. Once again, he already had more information on them than just that given in the alert, via the Memory Discs and Memory Tome he'd absorbed. Now he'd confirmed their name, the Modules quickly found the relevant entries.

At Tier 3, Scale Viper scales became so strong that any mundane weapon was all but incapable of penetrating. He wasn't sure if the M99 would be up to the task. The Angelic Blade would be—if it was used at its full power, by a Tier 3 Cultivator. Since he was far from that, it was best he avoid any encounters with Tier 3 Scale Vipers. He'd focus on hunting the Tier 1s, which shouldn't pose much of a challenge.

After some consideration, Nicolai once more rose and tunnelled through the earth. He burrowed out from the earth into the dim light and pressing greenery of the jungle, then headed off. He was going to the proper entrance of the cave.

Right now, Tier 2 and 3 Symbiotes weren't usable by him, and getting to the Shardache would be a difficult, fraught task. In the longer run he would seek to deal with the cave's inhabitants, but right now he was far too weak to do so. His only option in the short term would be enact some kind of heist, see if he could retrieve one of those stalagmites—which would be all the Shardache he'd need for Tier 2. He'd need to come up with a plan for that. But right now, the Tier 1 Scale Vipers were worth hunting, and he should be capable of doing so. If he could kill some which possessed speed-boosting Symbiotes and claim them, it would be well worth it.

Now that he had a full set of Nodes, he wanted to start filling them out with a full set of Symbiotes.