154 (III)

Weapon

As the Deathless searched the land for more launch sites, another flash made him look to his left. A single corrosion screen projector remained there. Shiv detonated his sheathe and spiked himself in a new direction. But before he got there, a tide of arrows tore back into reality and utterly annihilated the launch site.

"And I believe we have found Adam again," Valor commented. "Nicely done so far, Shiv. You have a knack for chaos and creativity."

"Thanks. Got put down once. Any suggestions?"

"Stay on the offensive. Always. Keep moving. Never stick to the same pattern."

"Be more chaotic. Got it. Just need to find Adam first and—"

A dimensional rift opened beside Shiv, and Adam blasted out into the Creeping Void, firing arrow after arrow. A small army of clones followed thereafter, unleashing their own barrages. The Gate Lord's arrows impacted threats Shiv could see, and even more that he couldn't. And when his arrows hit, they became two, before multiplying further as they sought out new targets. Soon, a swarm of arrows was pouring all across the city.

Adam was turning into a downright menace for enemy armies, Shiv realized.

He cast his Psychomancy into Adam's mind and called out to him. "Fancy running into you here."

"Not really," Adam said. His eyes were aglow with Divination mana, and he continued firing even through Shiv's dense mess of miasmic darkness. "I waited for you to inflict mass destruction on the city and found you by sound thereafter. Your Gravitic Wrestler thunders through the air every time you use it. Makes your Creeping Void ineffective against Pathbearers who possess echo location or similar abilities."

"Huh. Good to know. I was hunting some Necrotechs earlier by smell. I think I got all the launch sites nearby here."

"Good. Because they only need to fill two more circles before the weapon fires."

Shiv's stomach plunged. "Alright. Let's go find some more projectors, then."

Then, Shiv's Chronomancy shuddered, and he triggered his temporal shell on instinct. It manifested over his body, and just then, a wing of time dragons plunged down from high above. They were already firing their Necromantic projectors into the Creeping Void. With time frozen, none of Adam's clones had faded yet, and several of the beams were on track to hit some of them.

Shiv's mind went blank. Killing a single time dragon in around ten seconds was a considerable feat, and there was no way he could cut down an entire wing while trying to keep Adam alive—Wait, I don't need to kill the dragons, I just needed to move Adam and the clones out of—

And then all of Adam's clones fired at the dragons before fading. Shiv's eyes widened, and he noticed how each of the clones vibrated with faint traces of gold in the air. Right, they have Chronomancy too. The rapier had my kukri integrated.

That made things simpler for Shiv. He grabbed the original Adam and spiked both of them through the nearest dimensional pathway he could get to. At the same time, he swung a mana hydra high up into the air and materialized his cancer flail once again. A mana explosion ballooned out as the head dragon was struck twice. Shiv felt its Magical Resistance crack—along with a section of its ribs—as he whipped the end of his flail into the monster even harder.

Before the other dragons could respond, Shiv assimilated his flail again and pulled his Biomancy back around himself. Twelve hydras coiled around him and Adam as they shot through a dimensional pathway.

He had been too passive with his Biomancy before. He treated spellcasting as if it were separate from his physical attacks—but his Aegis of Assimilation was capable of more than just a few tricks. Like letting me aim and strike with my flail kilometers away. "Knife-fighting range" for me isn't quite the same anymore.

Shiv dismissed his Chronomancy to preserve his temporal armor, and he heard Adam gasp and turn. "What just—where are we going?"

"The way you came. We got jumped by some time dragons. Decided not to stay in place and fight with the projectors gone in the area anyway."

"What?" Adam choked out. "No, no, go back the other way!"

"Other way is time dragons, Adam."

"Well, the way I came from has a group of Invisible Vanguards I can't seem to damage at all."

A feral grin spread across Shiv's face. "Invisible Vanguards, huh? Yeah, sounds fun."

"You're stark-raving mad, you bastard," Adam breathed.

Shiv used his Biomancy to channel a dose of basilisk venom into his flesh. His body expanded. His bones grew longer, his muscles became denser. Shiv's Voidmantid armor grew along with him—a benefit of being an actual piece of bonded equipment rather than just mundane armor, he suspected.

As they traveled across the pathway, Shiv began shaping a Vitae Golem. He wasn't going to have enough time to give it four Animated Skill Infusions, so it was going to have to do without Vitality Drain.

"Shiv, listen," Valor said. "The sun will be up soon. You can move in the open. The Necrotechs can't, at least not for long. Destroy the architecture. You do not need to kill every last Necromancer or artillerist. Let the light work for you."

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"Got it, Valor," Shiv replied. He cast the same details at Adam as he equipped his golem with the infusions.

Multi-Tasking 19 > 20

"Destroy all the architecture," Adam muttered. "That's not bad. It makes things easier. I'll focus on that." The exit drew closer. The Gate Lord started summoning more clones and lifted his wand high. A thick wall of ocean-blue condensed from the air before them.

Shiv's golem hovered by his side, and they both stared at Adam. "The hells are you doing now?"

"Just watch," Adam said. And then, just as they exited the pathway, he unleashed the water building up around them. It exploded outward like a tsunami packed in too tight, and, a moment later, it impacted ten invisible Pathbearers surrounding them.

As he found himself once again glad to have Adam's ridiculous Awareness on his side, Shiv commanded his golem to accelerate, spike itself, discharge, then revert time and repeat until it had no vitality left.

It immediately shot past him, following the sphere of crushing water expanding out from them. And it was a good thing too, as the tidal wave Adam cast out was suddenly stopped dead by a titanic field of Hydromancy.

Through the water, a new Pathbearer emerged. They wore an armored dress that obscured their face and had tentacles in place of arms and legs. In each of their limbs was a whip, and the sheer amount of Hydromancy mana radiating out of them was staggering, rippling out like the waves of a crushing tsunami. Shiv was facing a Heroic-Tier Hydromancer.

Unfortunately for the Heroic-Tier Hydromancer, they were about to be intercepted by a golem. The construct impacted and detonated itself several times in quick succession. The Hydromancer was blasted back—and they tried to stop themselves from being launched back some more by shaping walls of water to slow their movements. That was interrupted as a few hundred Veilpiercers crashed into them right after.

The Vitae Golem tackled the Hydromancer again, and it drove the enemy through Adam's oceanic barricade. Once more, the stilled tidal wave started moving, and it cast their other attackers far away.

Suddenly, the way was open. Shiv shot forward first, and Adam followed right after, with his clones trailing just behind. The world was alight with fire, and the scent of burning flesh and melting concrete made Shiv gag. More of Roland's arrows descended. They impacted places kilometers away, but towers of fire rose high into the air—towers that unleashed shockwaves that battered Shiv and Adam, even from so far away.

Yet the flames spilling out of the infernal towers did not spread naturally. The expanding blasts curved unnaturally to avoid Adam and Shiv. The Deathless scoffed in abject disbelief; the sheer amount of control Roland Arrow had was as staggering as his power.

Adam began firing his arrows again, and his clones followed suit. Shiv didn't know what he was shooting at, but a second later, two figures appeared right next to them in a shower of sparks. Adam's Veilpiercers bounced off their adamantine armor, and they came for the Gate Lord. One bore a gravity-infused axe, while the other had a hammer shaped from crackling lightning.

Shiv intercepted the axe-bearer with a dozen spikes of his gravitic field. He seized them by the throat and thrust his blade into their gut. A shockwave burst between them, but aside from making his enemy grunt once, Shiv inflicted little harm, even with Deepest Edge. At the same time, he directed his Biomancy to strike at the hammer-user. His mana hydra coiled through the air, and Shiv's cancer flail manifested once more.

The enemy wasn't prepared for the Aegis of Assimilation. They were even less ready for the massive ball of teratoma and festering flesh that impacted them in mid-air as they got within two meters of Adam. The hammer-user's Magical Resistance cracked slightly under the first blow, and then it shattered entirely as Adam channeled a stream of crushing Hydromancy from the tip of his wand into their skull.

Shiv didn't even give them a chance to fight back. They died with a fading scream on their lips as they were assimilated into his aegis, melting into his flail.

Their armor fell a moment after, hollow within.

Aegis of Assimilation 106 > 107

The axe-bearer headbutted Shiv. His helmet cracked. The Deathless headbutted them back. Their helmet cracked. Shiv tried to stab them with his Skysplitter again, but the enemy dropped their axe to seize Shiv by the wrist.

They were equal in terms of Toughness, but Shiv gritted his teeth as he realized his adversary had the edge in Physicality—even with Plagueled boosting him. The axe-bearing Necrotech twisted Shiv's right arm back slightly. This annoyed Shiv enough that he immediately started fighting dirty. He wrapped his Biomancy around the Pathbearer he was wrestling and tightened his flail around their body. He felt his Biomancy bounce off their Magical Resistance, but that didn't stop him from coating them in a thick ball of cancerous tissue—tissue harvested in part from their friend.

The axe-bearer cried out in alarm as fetid bursts of flesh were ejected from Shiv's flail. It coated their body, and they tried to shrug it off. This stunned them long enough for Shiv to knee them in the groin.

The axe-bearer gagged. Shiv gripped their waist and spiked them downward with a pile-driver. They blasted through the air for a good hundred meters as Shiv discharged against them over and over. At the same time, he battered them with his flail and Biomancy. They were coated in a thick layer of flesh—and partially fused with his flail at that. Shiv shot back up into the air and started swinging his enemy about. He used the axe-bearer as a club to smash through the tops of buildings, extending them further using his Biomancy as he ripped the roofs off of skyscrapers and toppled bridges. They wouldn't be able to put up with this for—

Sunlight spilled over the horizon.

Sullain's weapon cast an ominous shadow across the land. Acting quickly, Shiv cast out tendrils of Vitae to drain from the axe-bearer as he continued using them as a club to remodel his surroundings.

Whip Proficiency 12 > 13

Multi-Tasking 20 > 21

Just then, Shiv noticed someone coming up from behind Adam. He cheated the inertia of his flail by assimilating it as he cast his Biomancy in a new direction. The mana hydra impacted the bastard trying to slit Adam's throat—and Shiv materialized his flail once more. A mana explosion sent the Gate Lord stumbling forward—but he blinked away in a flash of gold, jumping briefly to where one of his clones was.

A second later, the Pathbearer caked against Shiv's flail was degloved from behind by a rain of dimensional arrows.

Skill Gained: Physics 1 (Common)

Adam blinked back in place—and something hit him in the shoulder. The Gate Lord roared in pain as his left arm was dislocated. Shiv directed his hydra through Adam and consumed his wound. A crystallized injury filled Shiv's Biomancy field as he swung his flail in the direction of the projectile that had just hit Adam. A group of unseen foes was clipped along the way, ripped out from seeming non-existence, clothlined by Shiv's extended Biomancy.

Adam gestured with his wand again, and a spell exploded out from its tip. It parted around Shiv and pushed a small army of enemy Pathbearers and projectiles away. However, after it expanded to two hundred meters, it stopped and continued no further. Spells, arrows, and more plunged in from all sides, but most were held at bay by the dense wall of water, protecting Shiv and Adam. At the core, Shiv found himself with a moment to breathe.

"These assholes are coming from godsdamn everywhere," Shiv said, assimilating his flail.

"I told you I didn't want to go this way," Adam snapped. He fired two more arrows, but then tackled Shiv out of the way as unseen enemies immediately began firing back through his rift.

Whips of Necromancy missed them by the barest of inches.

Inertial Overdrive 121 > 122

Adam responded by activating his Vambrace. A ball of swirling Dimensionality danced atop his hand, and it was immediately consumed by corrosion thereafter. He projected the Necromancy into his dimensional pathways, and they lit up with that eerie green glow. From within the pathways came a series of ear-piercing screams.

The Necrotechs on the other side were receiving a taste of their own preferred magic, but Shiv and Adam were still getting boxed in.

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