III-66 Orichalcum

World quests are insidious things. When they spawn, it usually means an entire planet or dimension is at stake. This could be the result of

World quests are insidious things. When they spawn, it usually means an entire planet or dimension is at stake. This could be the result of

World quests are insidious things. When they spawn, it usually means an entire planet or dimension is at stake. This could be the result of an incursion, an impending ecological collapse, a cascading mana storm that is getting out of hand, that has gotten out of hand, another planetary body set to impact said threatened world, or, if you are extremely unfortunate, a Tarrasque that has gotten loose and seeks to butcher and destroy everything in its path.

When the World Quest triggers, every living inhabitant upon the world or dimension will receive a notification. The quest details and rewards will be dispatched immediately, but World Quests do not come usually with varied failure conditions, for the failure condition is self-evident. You lose the place you live. It is destroyed.

Yet this does not mean that the factions living within a world will band together, for the world quest is also another means of the system to further its agenda of strife. For there are a limited number of recipients that can receive the boons offered by the system, and thus the struggle becomes twofold.

First, against the threat itself, and then against those who are trying to slay or solve the danger first. For should you survive, you will still have to face your local adversaries thereafter, and World Quests offer very bountiful rewards. One way or another, even if your world is saved, perhaps your own survival may be in question…

-The Insidious Apocalypse: A Guide to Facing and Surviving World Quests

III-66

Orichalcum

World Quest Gained: Slay the Undying Tarrasque.

Rewards: Evolve 3 [Existing Skills] to Master-Tier; Evolve 2 [Existing Skills] to Heroic-Tier (Only 100 Pathbearers may receive this reward); Gain 15 Levels for a Selected Skill; Gain a Legendary-Tier [Equipment]

Failure: Integrated Earth is destroyed and the Undying Tarrasque evolves after absorbing the vitality of the planet.

The notification flashed across Shiv’s vision as chaos erupted around him. The orcs’ assault was brutal, sudden, and spontaneously coordinated. They came from all sides, tearing through the Necrotechs in a blitz of violence. 

Concurrently, a dark shape rose up into the air behind the Tarrasque, and it held a greataxe high into the air. A ball of radiant flame combusted into existence at the edge of the weapon, and it was like the swelling of a brand-new dawn. Hovering in the sky was the Legend Sir Marikos, the dragon-knight, the Fortress that Soars. Where flames spill free from his right arm, a colossal shield made from dense obsidian manifested over his left. And it was he that the Tarrasque turned to greet before anyone else.

He, and the gargantuan Hawgrave parting the clouds behind him with her greatsword that spanned the length of cities.

“Enough of this folly! Enough of this madness and travesty!” Marikos thrust his axe out at the Tarrasque and a rippling wave of brightness across the body of the Tarrasque and ignited a few hundred Necrotechs and orcs like they were nothing more than candles. “Surrender. Give yourself unto my custody and I will see you granted a proper trial before the council. Stay your path, and face your destiny! Face my wrath!”

Several orcs blasted through the Necrotech lines. They landed atop the Tarrasque before planting several objects on the massive monster’s body and teleporting away. Shiv tore himself free from his stupor and spiked himself at the Tarrasque. A Necrotech Deathstalker moved to intercept him—but vanished from existence as large gray hands pulled them into a dimensional sphere. Necromancy spells slashed through the air to claim Shiv, but wards of corrosive energy manifested around him—just as he slipped out of context once more.

As he splashed back into his Vitae, he halted time and shot up into the air. Valor and Georges were still dangling by their necks, held by the Tarrasque’s tentacles. Uva was clenched inside the great beast’s left fist as well. Shiv knew he couldn’t do any damage to the Tarrasque, but he could absolutely protect the ones he cared for.

He discharged before he got to Georges, and he immediately started prying at the Tarrasque’s grip, trying to free his mentor. Shiv knew Georges was a Heroic-Tier Pathbearer, but the man was also a non-martial, so he proceeded with caution. The Deathless shouted as he used his field to pull open the Tarrasque’s tentacle, loosening Georges just enough for him to slip free. But the act came at a cost. The sheer effort that came with the action paired forced Shiv to surface back into reality. Vitae detonated out from him. He caught Georges in his hand and tossed the chef into his cape without an apology.

As he tried to go for Valor, the very tentacle he pried loose snaked out and ripped an entire rib free from his body. Shiv snarled and spiked himself forward. Next was Valor, then Uva and—

He was too late.

The Tarrasque shifted its body. The air around it combusted. But it was Adam who got to Valor and Uva first. Two Veilpiercers struck the Umbral Psychomancer and the shattered Legend in their shoulders. Pockets of Dimensionality swallowed them a second later, and Vicar Sullain let out a frustrated cry. “DAMNATION! ARROW! I WILL HAVE YOUR SOUL FLAYED FOR THIS!”

The Tarrasque moved. Only for a chain of Dynamancy bombs to explode along the top of its body. A hammer of gravitational force yanked the Vicar downward. It didn’t slow the Tarrasque much. But it did slow the beast enough to save Blackedge.

The air was liquid plasma as the Undying Tarrasque accelerated toward Shiv—and the rest of Blackedge behind him. Fire, force, and utter devastation billowed over his body, but the Deathless just scowled in the face of another ugly death.

But it was a death that never came.

Something blurred into shape just before Shiv. Something monstrous. Yet, cast against the enormous backdrop that was the charging Tarrasque, even a dragon seemed an insect. However, the thing about Legendary insects was that they were more than a match for any man, and Sir Marikos Valdemar of the Descenders Union was no insect at all. And he made that known by stopping the Tarrasque dead.

Shiv’s heart skipped a beat. Every bit of force, of plasma, of fire, and impending destruction jerked to a brutal halt in midair. A rush of force flowed into Marikos’s shield, while the plasma and flame was inhaled into his open jaws. The Tarrasque, capable of shattering cities on a whim, capable of obliterating Shiv with the lightest of strikes, found itself struggling to push forward.

A loud roar of effort came from Marikos as well, but the sheer feat of strength the dragon achieved brought another lull to combat. The Tarrasque was five kilometers across and twice again as long. Marikos was practically a newborn comparatively. But he stopped the juggernaut dead. He stood his ground, sliding back by mere meters at most. It was like watching a man stand before a storm and win. It was the summit of what a Pathbearer was meant to be: to hold their ground against a cataclysmic nightmare—and prevail.

Prevail not moralistically, philosophically, or intellectually. Prevail literally. To tell the impossible to go fuck itself and stand above the world’s will.

I must become a Legend. The urge blossomed in Shiv’s chest and turned into a roaring inferno. It was more than a want, it was a need. I must.

“Sullain,” Marikos said with a brutal growl, “I have given you more than clemency enough. Twice I have stayed my hand from violence out of understanding and clemency from what we have lost, twice—”

“YOU KNOW NOTHING OF LOSS” Sullain screamed with primal fury. The Tarrasque reached out with a hand and pulled. The force of a singularity manifested between its fingers. Shiv cried out as he felt himself get ripped toward the collapsing pocket of darkness. His muscles ripped free from his bones, his skin tore. Then, something smashed into him from behind, and Shiv realized he was pressed against Blackedge.

The Deathless blinked in disbelief and forced his neck up. The Tarrasque was tugging all of Blackedge toward itself, trying to use the town as a blunt weapon against Marikos. The crushed bodies of Necrotechs shot past the singularity’s event horizon. A good hundred orcs followed thereafter, roaring with glee all the while even as they met their ends. Shiv spiked himself away from the gravitational waves over and over, but found himself with nowhere to go. People were being ripped free from Blackedge, their dot-like forms screaming through the air as helpless rage exploded inside Shiv.

“YOU WILL ALL PAY FOR—”

“Enough.” Marikos growled as he struck the back of his shield with the butt of his hundred-meter long greataxe. A pulse of force rippled out from his obsidian shield. Time itself stuttered as a column of force smashed into the Tarrasque’s face. The singularity it was manifesting died in an instant. For the first time, the Tarrasque was driven back as the Legendary Dragon-Knight returned every bit of force absorbed earlier directly into the great world-ending scourge.

But the Tarrasque’s body exploded with the power of a collapsing star, and it started pushing back against Marikos. The force Marikos unleashed left him in a cone. It spared everyone behind him—everything he was turned away from. The clouds in the skies above were shorn clean, and the true sun revealed itself for the first time. Marikos’s body was set ablaze with an ethereal fire. Shiv saw surviving Necrotechs disintegrate outright in the corner of his vision. 

The Tarrasque, comparatively, was unburdened. 

What was a stalemate turned in the great beast’s favor as it ground across the sky toward the curse-inflicted Marikos. “Why do you stand against me now, knight? What right do you have? What worth are your vows if you cannot defend our home?”

“Everything!” Marikos shouted back as his body trembled. “My vows are worth everything, for I will spare the Abyss another war against the surface!”

Shiv activated his Creeping Void, hoping it would blunt some of the sun’s effects. Marikos glanced at him only briefly, but Shiv saw a glint of gratitude in the dragon’s eyes—even when the skill failed to do what the Deathless hoped. At the same time, Shiv pressed against the still-moving Blackedge, roaring with effort as he tried to slow its ascent, trying to stop it from smashing into the back of the struggling dragon-knight.

Gravitic Wrestler 164 > 165

The Creeping Void 114 > 115

The Tarrasque pressed harder. It shot closer by a hundred meters. “THEY ARE COMING FOR OUR LIVES! THEY CAME FOR MY HOME! AND NOW—”

A loud metallic impact sounded as something truly huge struck the Tarrasque from below. A shockwave spread out from the Tarrasque, splashing over Marikos, Shiv, and Blackedge as what looked to be a tower of metal rose into view. Shiv’s eyes widened as the Tarrasque was blasted skyward, shooting through the clouds like a ball struck by a bat. All the while, a metal mountain continued to rise, its flat-sides lined with Dimensionality.

Shiv’s guts plunged. I know that blade.

“Well, he’s a real talker, wasn’t he,” Legend Jessica Hawgrave stomped across the ruins of Lost Angeles. Shiv could hear her feet crushing entire blocks and punting through what few skyscrapers remained with each step. She had magnified her own size and height. Her full-plated Inertium helmet was near the lower limits of the stratosphere. Her hand shot out—her reflexes beyond terrifying for a twenty kilometer tall titan of a woman—and she caught the entire town of Blackedge in her hand like it was a bowl.

People fell from the town. She adjusted the size of her blade in an instant, making it broad rather than long and swiping it through the people. All of them splashed into the dimensional mana lighting its length.

And suddenly, the Tarrasque didn’t seem so big anymore.

As Hawgrave righted the town, Shiv bounced against the brought pavement and pawed at his wounds. Most of his stomach had been prolapsed out from his abdomen, but he couldn’t feel much pain anymore. That usually indicated that death would be coming soon. “Marikos!” he cried. The dragon-knight turned his sinuous neck to regard Shiv. “Stop her! She’s part of the Inquisition! She’s here to start a new war, not end it.”

The dragon-knight glared up at the enormous surfacer Pathbearer. Ghostly fires rose from his burning soul as he spoke: “I know. I know who she is. I suspect I know why she is here as well. Hawgrave. Still an enforcer for your Inquisition? A Legend that acts as a dog on a leash?”

“Hi, Fortress,” Hawgrave said coldly. Her hand was still as a statue, Shiv could feel the vibrations passing from her Inertium armor into Blackedge. It manifested as a constant and small-scale earthquake. “And be nice when you’re talking to me: Call me by my preferred title—the shortest bitch with the biggest sword. Been a while, huh?”

“Since the war.” Marikos flapped his wings as he shifted into a stance. He moved his shield in front of him, and he held his greataxe high in a ready posture. The ball of fire at its tip splashed over the weapon itself, engulfing it in white-hot Pyromancy mana.

Silence followed between them, but the sounds of battle and slaughter became the ambiance. High up in the air, Shiv noticed a burning missile pushing through the clouds in the horizon. The Tarrasque was coming back, and there was no Roland Arrow to stop it this time—No wards to spare Blackedge for certain destruction.

“Perfect,” Shiv groaned. He pushed against the ground, trying to get up—only to be helped to his feet by a large-gray hand that wrapped around his torso. At the same time, a rush of Biomancy began to fuse his broken flesh together as well. He looked be him, and he saw Helix, Whisper, Mortar, and Tequila there with a dozen other orcs packed in tight.

“Insul, do you have any idea about your odds of success a Low Hero has against a Tarrasque or a Legend?” Helix asked, frowning at Shiv’s vanishing wounds.

“Pretty shit?” Shiv guessed.

“Nonexistence aside from extreme statistical anomalies,” Helix confirmed. “As such, I suggest that we depart.”

“You depart, four-eyes,” Mortar said, licking his lips as he eyed the approaching Tarrasque-meteor. It still looked a bit a like a dot, but there was a lot of fire trailing behind the monster in its wake. Shiv guessed they might have a minute or so. Maybe. “Some of us got a World Quest to complete.”

“That’s not for you to finish, you idiot,” Helix said. He sneered at Mortar’s cannon. “What do you have that can even hurt that thing?”

“Mana bombs,” Mortar said. “And who says I’d be fighting it? I’m waiting for one of the Legends to pop its body open and expose its heart. Then, I’m going to bomb its nucleus once.”

“Not gonna be enough,” Shiv said. “It resurrects. A bit like me. Until we make it spend all its vitality, it’s not going down.”

“Everything’s always a bit more exciting when you’re involved, isn’t it?” Whisper commented with a chuckle.

“Yeah. I guess so.” Shiv rolled his shoulder as he regarded Marikos and Hawgrave staring each other down. They didn’t even seem aware of the Tarrrasque anymore.

“Oi! What bloody fuck is felling fucking happening out there?” Georges’s voice echoed out from Shiv’s cape. The orcs turned to regard him, and Shiv grunted in response.

“I’ll explain everything in a minute, Georges,” Shiv coughed. “If we’re still alive by then.”

A pause followed. “Shiv? Is that you, boy?”

Shiv recalled Georges walking down the avenue with blade in hand. He had no hope of stopping the Tarrasque or saving Shiv. But he came regardless. He always came through for Shiv. The Deathless swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, it's me.”

“Broken Felling Moon. I saw—I saw you die. Saw it with my own eyes this time.”

“Yeah,” Shiv replied. “It’s kind of my thing now.” He looked up at the approaching Tarrasque and felt his insides tighten. Valor and Uva were with Adam, and Shiv had no idea how they were doing. But the Tarrasque knew about Shiv’s cape. If he had to guess, it would target that enchantment by some point. He couldn’t keep Georges there when he got back into the fight.

So. Time to make an ugly choice. But also, maybe a fun one, too…

Shiv shifted the contents inside his cape and pulled Georges out. As the chef stumbled into the light, he blinked. Vomit stains ran down the front of his chef’s ensemble, and Shiv winced. Georges shook his head—and froze as he found himself getting stared down by orcs.

“Ah. The great Georges,” Mortar breathed. He was eyeing the chef like a piece of livestock waiting to be butchered. “Band spoke highly of you. Sadly, I don’t think you’ll ever be talking with him again. Tragic, how life can turn out.” The large orc grinned at Shiv.

“Shiv, what the fuc—”

Shiv interrupted Georges before a flurry of questions could follow. “Helix. Take Georges and get out of here. Yeah, I care about him. Yes, I will follow through on my threats and then some if anything happens to him. The rest of you—” Shiv sighed as he realized it was hopeless to ask the orcs to try and evacuate the resident of Blackedge. They were here to fight, and they weren’t made for emergency extractions. At the same time, Shiv didn’t know how much of Blackedge was even still left alive. Part of him didn’t want to know, but he was pretty sure the town was effectively done after this.

Georges looked between Shiv and Helix. “What? You’re trusting my life to a felling orc?”

“Yeah,” Shiv grunted wearily. “Because I’m going after the Tarrasque, and so I’m going with the shit choice instead of the hopeless one.”

“You’re—you’re bloody what?” Georgres sputtered. His swept the town of Blackedge with his eyes, and desperate cries of agony and despair came from everywhere. A dark look passed over his features. “No. This… This place is done, Shiv. We need to go.”

“Can’t,” Shiv replied. “Not when there are people still alive here. Not with the Perch still at risk.”

Helix squinted at Shiv. “Am I but a joke to you, Insul? Did you not hear my words? Your presence in this fight is irrelevant.”

“Well, someone has to drain its vitality,” Shiv. “And someone has to get a Toughness Evolution soon too.” He regarded the two Legends on the verge of violence. “And maybe I can get the actual heavyweights to focus on the apocalyptic problem right now, too…”

“Oh, this will be good,” Tequila giggled.

He stepped out from Whisper’s Dimensional shroud and let out a breath. “Alright. Here goes. Hey! Guys. Not to interrupt your blood-feud, but the Tarrasque is coming back.”

Neither Hawgrave nor Marikos looked away from each other. They glared each other down, waiting for the other to make the first move. Even with the dragon-knight’s soul burning, there was a sense of apprehension to Hawgrave’s posture, like she was reluctant to deliver the first blow. 

There was history between them. Shiv had a feeling it didn’t go so well for Hawgrave last time.

Awareness 43 > 44

“And when it hits us,” Shiv continued, casting a brief look at the Tarrasque and winced, “there’s not going to be a Blackedge left. Or a Starhawk’s Perch. That’ll make things pretty pointless, won’t it?”

It was like an entire section of the sky itself was falling behind the Tarrasque. A massive plate of flame crossed over the sun’s face once more, and Marikos stopped burning as well.

“Well, Fortress,” Hawgrave said, cocking her head at the approaching Tarrasque. “Looks like your friend is back. Go stop ‘em.”

“Put this town down first,” Marikos replied, not budging. “And join me in the defense. One Legend is not enough to slay a Tarrasque with ruthless efficiency.”

Hawgrave laughed humorlessly. “Well. Good thing I’m not just one Legend.” Over her shoulder, something else pushed down through the clouds a few kilometers away. It resembled a massive sailing cathedral. Plumes of fire erupted from its back, and magical sails jutted out from its sides, but at its front was the vagueness of a face: Two bright blue orbs for eyes and a closed gate that resembled a mouth. Also sticking out from it were a few hundred cannons. “I came with an army. Isn’t that right, Hero-Inquisitor Talsand?”

The cathedral ship droned in the distance, and more shapes emerged behind it. Automata evolved into forms suited for flight. Riders atop massive griffons. Hundreds of magi formations packed tight around the huge cathedral-shaped automaton. The Inquisitorial army had arrived.

Shiv blinked. “Wait. I was inside that?”

His sudden admission made Hawgrave guffaw. “Oh, hells, kid, you didn’t know? Man, you just bumbled aboard and had us fooled for a while, too. Without the orc in my sword, you might just’ve held out for a while longer. Eh. A few hours. You weren’t a very good spy, to be honest.”

The Deathless’s eye twitched at the approaching Inquisitorial army. “I just… Didn’t realize automata could get that big. Or people for that matter.”

“Ah,” Hawgrave sighed. “Blissful small-town ignorance is the best. I was there too. And—”

And just then, a bolt blasted high up into the air, cleaving past Blackedge. It struck the sky and detonated into a massive storm cloud that began to pour down across the world with lightning and rain. Everything grew dark—but the clouds were lined with more than just stormstuff, they were also coated with a veil of Dimensionality. And then more than rain and lightning spilled out of the clouds. Dragons joined them. Dragons clad in resplendent armor and bearing weapons of awesome power.

“Oh,” Hawgrave muttered. “Shit. I guess you have an army as well.” Just then, the broken corpse of a Necrotech sailed passed her, and she looked afar to see a small army of orcs rampaging across the sky, rising from Blackedge. And over the horizon, Shiv could hear more cheering, more roars proclaiming one word. One title.

“INSUL!”

“INSUL!”

“INSUL!”

“That is… a great many orcs,” Hawgrave’s sword, Rusty, said, sounding slightly worried.

“And where the hells did they come from?” Hawgrave breathed.

“They’re with me,” Shiv said.

The world around them came aglow with light as the Tarrasque drew close. The world trembled with thundering blasts of force, but even through the cacophony, Sullain’s telepathic screams could be heard in the far distance. A breath of disbelief escaped her. “You’re kidding? You—you invoked the Ritual of the Vaketh-Insul?”

“Yeah,” Shiv replied. “Didn’t really have a good choice there. I was kind of hoping to have you and the Inquisition deal with Sullain for me while me and mine evacuated Blackedge.”

“Oh, that’s just a nasty strategy,” Hawgrave breathed.

“But quite good,” her sword grunted. “I like it. If it were not being used against us.”

The enormous Legend hesitated. “Tell you what, I’ll help you, Marikos. I could use a quest reward. It’s been a while. But as for Blackedge. Well… Also, didn’t you piss the Vicar off earlier?” She stared at Shiv.

Shiv tensed. “Hawgrave, do not felling—”

She released the town and flicked him faster than he could perceive. Shiv felt his body fold in half as a finger large enough to crush a tenth of Blackedge whipped him toward the distant skies. He tumbled against the ground and blasted through several walls and structural supports before he found himself spinning through the open air. Blackedge, meanwhile, vanished into Hawgrave’s blade as she slashed through it. A splash of Dimensionality later, there was no more Blackedge, only a sword twice as large as the town itself.

Adamantine Adaption 200 > 201 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Skill Evolution: Adamantine Adaption (Master) > Pillar of Orichalcum (Heroic)

“Oh, you godsdamned—” Before Shiv could finish his cursing, Marikos shot through the air. The backblast from his acceleration alone flung the Deathless off course. Then, what felt like a mana bomb went off against him as the Legends clashed against each other. Shiv caught only flickering shadows and flashes of the two Legends fighting as he was launched further away. Hawgrave’s huge blade flicked and hewed—seemingly from multiple directions at the same time. It turned partially dimensional as it passed through the earth, avoiding any drag. 

Every blow that landed on Marikos made the chasm to the Abyss below fracture a little wider.

Yet, not a single strike drove Marikos back. Hawgrave was a tidal wave, but Marikos was a tower that wouldn’t fall, and with every hit she inflicted, a brutal counter was unleashed right back. Lances of force punched holes through the atmosphere. The city below was split time and again. Explosions of radiant fire licked out and recoiled from Hawgrave’s armor.

The other arriving dragons were blasted but pushed forward. Shiv saw a gray dots leap into the fray as well. Meanwhile, he was accelerating toward what could best be described as a rolling apocalypse crashing down from the sky. And it was then that Shiv added Jessica Hawgrave as the second member of his “bullshit powerful Pathbearers I will eventually punch in the face” list.

She couldn’t even put this shit aside for a World Quest.

At the same time, Shiv felt something spread through his broken body. An immense weight flowed through his veins, danced across his sinews, flooded his bones, and started ripping through his flesh. Shiv snarled as his current body began to fracture and break. It was like a new version of him was about to hatch out from the inside. His current adamantine-hard flesh felt like a brittle shell for the evolution churning within.

But this metamorphosis felt more extreme than all the others he experienced. Even moreso than Inertial Overdrive. This didn’t feel like a human skill at all. It felt like more power than his body could sustain was bursting out from inside, making him denser because he just wasn’t large enough.

Shiv gritted his teeth as he tried to get his bearings. His attempt at focus failed immediately as a ripple of gravitation force tore him across the world, accelerating him toward the Tarrasque approaching. His limbs shattered into pieces. His flesh came aglow with a gold-bronze glow and burst apart. Every fiber of his being felt like hell, but Shiv was more frustrated than angry by this point. Great. Perfect. He has me again. And I have no idea what the hells this Skill Evolution is supposed to do.

“You will know suffering like no other, Deathless!” Sullain screamed. Shiv burst through the clouds and found himself staring at the approaching Tarrasque. Folds of incandescence peeled from its body as it accelerated toward him at a terrifying speed. Death was coming in less than a second. “It was your words that delayed my justice! My vengeance.”

Despite the sheer rage radiating from the Tarrasque, the Deathless just sighed. He considered using Outside Context Problem to avoid this death, but decided he wanted to keep the Tarrasque’s attention for as long as he could. “Just shut the hells up and hit me,” he muttered.

His wish came true. The Tarrasque struck him so hard he dissolved into particles. It then continued to drive against the Vitae that burst free from his body after his corpse dissolved.

Pillar of Orichalcum 201 > 211 

Gravitic Wrestler 165 > 169

Vitality Drain 61 > 70

Vitaemancy 76 > 80

Shiv's Vitae peeled away from his body in fraying strings. He felt true death creep closer to him with every passing instant. Yet, despite this, his evolution continued even in his post-death state. Once more, a flash of reddish gold pulsed out from him. Yet, it did not fade thereafter. It lined the exterior of his Vitae, coating it in shimmering power unlike anything Shiv had felt before. He felt a weight there, a density, a pressure that defied existence itself.

As the cold finger of oblivion dipped deep into Shiv's core, as the Tarrasque drove a blade against his sprawling mass of red, Shiv willed himself to harden, willed himself to be breakable, and as he focused, the red gold sheen lining his being grew ever brighter. The massive crystalline dagger the Tarrasque wielded crashed into him. 

Shiv prepared for nothingness to take him, or whatever followed after death. Yet, unlike every time before, the Deathless did not shatter. He did not come asunder, even though the world around him turned into a turbulent sea of plasma, even though there were several collapsing mountains of force, worth of force, hammering down upon his head.

Parts of his Vitae broke away. He lost more of himself, going from a mass, to a series of cords, to a single rope, and finally a sinew. But that sinew grew brighter and brighter with the new Toughness Skill Evolution Shiv achieved. And as it grew brighter, so too did its weight reach impossible heights. 

Yet, it wasn't just a tangible mass, but also a metaphysical one. It stopped moving in midair. The Tarrasque's immense bulk, the Tarrasque's incredible bulk crashed hard against him, and Shiv felt an overwhelming pressure grind against his very being. As he commanded himself to endure, to harden evermore, his Pillar of Orichalcum skill obeyed. It just kept getting brighter, and he simply got more durable.

The Tarrasque struck him twice more, swinging its massive blades, slashing at him using its tentacles. Cataclysmic blast waves spread out over Shiv. Some more of him fractured, and Shiv knew if he broke right now, there would be nothing left of him to reconstitute. But he didn't break. The cracks stopped. His brightness outpaced the amount of damage the Tarrasque was inflicting upon him. And through the spreading inferno, his colors of reddish of crimson bronze of crimson gold pierced through like a mystical sunrise cleaving across the sky of a broken world. More than that, with every impact the Tarrasque inflicted, a pulse burst out from Shiv at the place of impact. The pulse shared a color with the mystical sheen currently lining his body, and explosions of force were displaced against the Tarrasque, the very force it inflicted upon him.

For the first time, the Tarrasque's body suffered damage as well. True damage. For the first time, the Tarrasque suffered damage while attacking Shiv because it attacked Shiv. Sullain compelled the huge beast to lash at him devoid of technique, fueled by nothing but fury. 

But its physical attacks were little more than heavy thuds now. Shiv was consumed by an ocean of destruction. He was barely more than a string of Vitae, coated by the composition of what he assumed the Orichalcum—Orichalcum that proved more than capable of withstanding the Tarrasque’s sloppy blows.

"Break!" Sullain raged. "I command you! Break! Break! Break!"

But Shiv did not break. In fact, he didn't even budge. The radiating shroud of Orichalcum spread out from Shiv. It was like a slightly expanding barrier pulsing out from him in oscillations of brilliance. And to the Deathless's disbelief, the Tarrasque was slight pushed back, even with it constantly accelerating, grinding against him in midair. A struggle was occurring between his Heroic-Tier Toughness skill and its overwhelming physical power. It inflicted damage on him earlier, but now, now he was enduring. 

Now it was cracking its own shell as more than it was affecting him. With some of its harder blows, he still budged slightly through the air, but that's all it was, a slight movement, and then should have shot past that threshold of damage as well. The same blow didn't have the same effect thereafter.

A building sense of awe filled the Deathless. What the hell kind of Heroic Skill was this? It felt Legendary. But he didn't read the notification wrong. It was a Heroic-Tier Skill, and he immediately learned its drawback despite its awesome benefits. 

The first issue was movement. Shiv tried to move himself and couldn't. He was frozen stiff as if a statue. Shiv paused and considered that the skill did have Pillar in its name, after all. Pillar. That's fitting. 

In that moment, as he studied the world around himself, he realized that the shroud of Orichalcum radiance was pillar-shaped as well. It was a long column that extended high up into the sky and deep down into the ground, with Shiv at its center. And with every passing second Shiv devoted his focus. And with every passing second that Shiv focused on enhancing his own Toughness, the tower only grew brighter, only grew larger, only grew denser.

"Break!" Sullain cried again. The Tarrasque slammed another strike. The Tarrasque swung another slash against Shiv, but this time the force rebounded entirely. A deep cut split left a crack in the Tarrasque's crystalline shell, and that finally broke the large beast from its stupor.

"What? What is this? How? How have you… You…" The Tarrasque's eyes widened, and through it, Sullain regarded Shiv, studied his new skill, the glow. "How? How are you manifesting the colors of Orichalcum? This is a Tarrasque skill as well. You shouldn't be able to..." And then the vicar trailed off. "You... you shouldn't. Udaral. Udraal, what have you done? How have you infused within this misshapen parody of a child?”

Shiv continued trying to move in the meantime. Every bit force he spent was in vain. He spiked himself over and over using his gravitic field, yet despite making his inertial sheath more turbulent than ever before, he didn't move at all. He couldn't move. 

His Gravitic Wrestler was simply a Master-Tier skill. He didn't have the strength to push through and move. Ever a hardening Orichalcum pillar. But Shiv's mind turned away from thoughts of escape as he noticed another thing. His inertial sheath was growing more turbulent. He immediately began spiking himself faster, quicker. 

Violent ripples of force spread up and along the final string that comprised his existence. Shiv counted how many times he pulled on his field. He broke fifty first, then a hundred next. And soon he came up to two hundred. His Reflexes hit new heights, and for the first time he felt the slightest hint of discomfort spread through his body. But then the discomfort faded entirely as Shiv focused more on his toughness rather than spiking his gravitic field.

There was an internal arms race happening in inside him as well. A balancing act between his ever-climbing hardness and his ever-accelerating speed. At that moment, Shiv realized what the true meaning of being a hero was. Growth. Constant growth. Every single Heroic-Tier skill he had was about amassing more of itself. Inertial Overdrive was more speed until he couldn't sustain it anymore. Pillar of Orichalcum was more Toughness, but beyond his strength to move or affect. 

Then Aegis of Assimilation must have been far more powerful than he had been using it thus far as well. He could draw more biomass into himself than ever before, shape them, and he realized something. When he released the biomass, his mana strain faded, short of his field being destroyed. He hadn't felt so much strain at all.

A crashing avalanche of force and fire swept through Shiv. It plunged down past him and it impacted the land. An entire section of the landscape was scoured clean, and the devastation continued on, blasting through mountains, ruins, and carving a deep groove into the earth itself. Furthermore, it rolled in lapping tides as it crested the horizon and continued onward. 

And through it all Shiv remained unharmed. At the end, his Inertial Overdrive resembled a small storm building around himself. A storm that he stopped feeding for a moment to let his Toughness outpace his Reflexes.

The Tarrasque clenched its teeth. It held out a hand. A singularity formed between its fingers. And for the first time Shiv felt a force he couldn't fully resist. Yet, just because he couldn't fully resist it, it didn't mean it affected him immediately. He was dragged centimeter by centimeter through the air. And as his Toughness grew still, the centimeters became halved. Even as bands of light were drawn into that swirling mass around the Tarrasque’s open hand.

"It is truly Orichalcum," Sullain breathed with utter disbelief. "The alloy of unbreaking will…”

Shiv didn't give him a proper reply. Instead, he spiked himself quickly. He hit 300, then 350 before he felt the first shudders breach through his oracle come glow. And then he let his Toughness climb a bit higher before he finally discharged. 

The world turned white. An enormous shockwave was birthed from Shiv. It impacted the Tarrasque, and though it didn't launch the great beast back, it forced it to respond. It held out a hand and redirected the cascading waves of gravity, holding it high in the air. Shiv's blast parted before the Tarrasque, yet he still noticed how parts of its shell were breaking away. 

The Tarrasque regenerated instantly, but Shiv was doing damage. Small chips of damage, barely enough to count his scratches. But the Tarrasque was harmed, and if he could crack it, then maybe, just maybe, he could eventually kill it. Maybe he could beat it in a fight of pure attrition.

As the blast swept free from him, Shiv watched as the ground beneath him turned to glass, then expanded as a bowl that, as a depression that stretched out for kilometers and kilometers still. It was by far the largest discharge he ever released, and a good portion of Lost Angeles was rendered into something less than rubble, merely dust to the forsaken winds. And while the Tarrasque was dealing with his discharge, Shiv realized something else. 

Even if he couldn't move, that didn't mean he couldn't drain life force from reality.

He began to sup from that thin sheen of vitality, stretching across everything. He drained it fast, and his sliver of existence turned into a coiling rope and became an expanding net, and finally grew into a sprawling mass once more. At the same time, a new series of anomalies burst free from the spreading rupture Shiv made. 

A mana storm crashed over the Tarrasque's body. Lightning cleaved down against its form. Fire detonated in a brutal downpour, hammering the Tarrasque's face and coating it in a clinging inferno. Then came a wave of water laced with Dimensionality, and as it crashed against the Tarrasque, it was briefly displaced, but it discharged its Magical Resistance once more. But as it did, the rupture before Shiv only grew, and the other anomalies only got more chaotic rather than being dispelled. 

The mana storm ballooned into a burst of dinomancy. It rebounded from place to place, becoming as if a conical structure, and it finally crashed against the Tarrasque, pinning it to the ground and dragging it along the glass crater.

Shiv's eyes widened. The rupture before him unzipped more of reality, rising higher and higher and higher still, until it was stretching past the atmosphere. Oh shit, he thought to himself. I don't know if what I just did was a good idea or not. 

And just then he resurrected. His body came back into existence, knitted together by sinews of vitae. Still, the Pillar of Orichalcum was manifested around him. He spiked himself. His inertial overdrive growled excitedly, thundering with building inertia. 

But he himself couldn't move. He was still rooted in place. And he learned the other aspect of being a hero. To constantly grow, yet to suffer the limitations of growth. He could get forever faster, but it came at a cost to his body and the world around him. He could get ever tougher, but as he compelled himself to be unmovable, impenetrable by any force, that meant his own as well. That and the world's.

A force splashed over him from behind, and he heard Sullain crying out with displeasure, throwing what amounted to a tantrum as that strange cone of Dynamancy was now coiled around the Tarrasque's body. Meanwhile, more glowing storm stuff was leaking out from the grand rupture. 

“I should probably get the fuck out of here,” Shiv muttered, but he wasn't going to be able to move until he dispelled his tower.

So Shiv did the opposite of what he had been doing so far. He focused on becoming more brittle, more pliable, and all of a sudden, the Orichalcum glow began to fade as well. Its shine diminished rapidly, but it still took time for the manifestation of the tower to vanish entirely. As it did, Shiv found himself shaking in midair. He was finally moving, but barely, yet his Toughness began to drop precipitously. 

It felt like it shot past a certain point of no return. He gritted his teeth and commanded himself to stay just as tough as he was, but something about the skill didn't work that way. He continued getting more and more brittle, more and more brittle still, until he could freely move, yet every movement caused some damage to him. 

His muscles tore, his skin, now reddish gold, cracked and bled. A feeling of overwhelming weakness swelled through Shiv, and he went from being nigh invincible, ever more invincible, to being made of glass.

He focused on getting tougher again, begging his own skill to grow tougher, and slowly the brightness of his Orichalcum was rekindled. The brittleness left him. He stopped suffering wounds with every single movement. But even so, it cost time, and it cost time he didn't have. A jet stream of water impacted him. Shiv cried out as it took a chunk out of his back, but didn't pierce all the way through. Broken bits of biomass were peeled away, both from his flesh and also from the remaining chunks of his new armor. Shiv hardened himself, but the coiling sinew of Hydromancy stung him once more.

Pillar of Orichalcum 211 > 212

And just then, the Tarrasque came back into view. It hovered before him, and the hundreds of tentacles it had all came aglow, their eyes glaring at him. The magic infused within glowing bright, burning bright. Oh, fuck. 

And then the Tarrasque ripped every droplet of water out of Shiv's body. He shriveled and died immediately, unable to do anything to save himself.

Hydromancy 6 > 12

Inertial Overdrive 122 > 125

Vitaemancy 76 > 84

Outside Context Problem 66 > 71

And so, a second lesson was taught to the Deathless about his new skill. He could become a bulwark of ever-ascending physical durability. But it came at a brutal cost. And that cost him any magical defense he could muster whatsoever. And I can't move my arms when I turn to Orichalcum, either. Shit. Not nearly as invincible as I thought I was.

And the Vicar echoed his sentiments. The Tarrasque chuckled, carrying Shiv and Sullain’s voices as one. "Not nearly so invincible you as you imagined, are you, Hero?" 

He drew closer to Shiv and extended a single tendril toward him. A tendril infused with Psychomancy. "I must confess, you are proving to be more of a curiosity and a splendid specimen than a hateful wretch. For that, I think I will spare you. I wanted to finish you before, to punish you for all that you have done." A sigh escaped from the Tarrasque. “And I see now that you are simply a blind child. I forgive you, but I must change you first."

And Shiv's mind went blank with dread. Oh no. Oh shit. 

The Tarrasque grinned, and it projected a wave of psychomancy out from the tentacle.

***

Atop the battlements of Fortress-City Houston, beside an ever-roaring series of artillery emplacements, Hero-Ranger Morgan Munny watched as hundreds of thousands of orcs burst out from the underground as they fled back another of their great gates.

This had been a weird summer, a summer that left him unnerved. For months leading up to this point, ranger scouts and military intelligence warned of a grand invasion, one like never before. Rationing began nearly a year in advance. Munition productions were accelerated. Children as young as eight were drafted into the city guard. 

But when the time came, what Morgan faced wasn't an overwhelming horde of greyskins, but rather a paltry trickle. It seemed like a few million of them were elsewhere, and the others, well, they were only doing things half-heartedly anyway. They seemed, they were distracted, and the ones that were captured, or allowed themselves to be captured, spoke of something that burdened the Ranger. 

They spoke of a Vaketh-Insul, a Nemesis-Commander. Someone had accepted the Challenger's favor, and Morgan knew what that entailed. He had rejected the Challenger when the orc god offered him a similar ritual.

"What the hell is happening?" Morgan’s second said. The two-meter tall automaton lowered their ballistae repeater as their single red eye winked at the orcs. "Why are they running away? They never run away. Not like that."

"No," Morgan agreed. "Not like that."

And just then, a notification appeared before their eyes, and they suddenly had an answer. All around them, the artillery emplacements stopped firing as well. The artillerists within, likely equally stunned at what they were seeing.

World Quest Gained: Slay the Undying Tarrasque. (At Blackedge, Lost Angeles, The Yellowstone Republic)

Rewards: Evolve 3 [Existing Skills] to Master-Tier; Evolve 2 [Existing Skills] to Heroic-Tier (Only 100 Pathbearers may receive this reward); Gain 15 Levels for a Selected Skill; Gain a Legendary-Tier [Equipment]

Failure: Integrated Earth is destroyed and the Undying Tarrasque evolves after absorbing the vitality of the planet.

"Tarrasque," Morgan whispered. "There's a fucking Tarrasque in the Yellowstone Republic."

***

In the far north of frigid Torontus, where the Jotun chiefs sit atop their frozen thrones, sneering down at a kingdom built by an endless army of slaves. The greatest among them frowned as a notification appeared before their eyes. The high Jotun was king, queen, and child, all at the same time, three heads stacked atop each other.

"A grave threat has come to this world," the mother, the crone, said.

"Oh, Tarrasque," the father, the warrior, snarled. "And in the ascendance lands, no less."

And the child, the prophet, laughed. "Then we should wait. Wait until the accursed ascendance bleed themselves. Wait until the Republic's armies are battered."

And then the high Jotun held out a fist, and a frozen raven tore down from the sky, landing on their wrist. "Soon, we march once more. It is time to spread the winter eternal."

***

The Wolf of No Suns looked down from atop his ziggurat. Ley lines fueled by blood and sacrifice formed a grand shape around his throne of power. Yet its mana was paltry compared to that possessed by its brothers, its sisters, by its parents and descendants. The wolf of no moons was weak now, lost, of power, of sacrifice, of flavor, as it tried to overthrow its father. 

The blood glided up the steps, rushing toward the wolf's many wounds. Its moonlit fur shook as its flesh began to knit back together, and a small army of slaves was offered into its open maw, each of them giving themselves unto the wolf willingly. It bit down, but it did not chew, it did not swallow the slaves, rather it invited them into its being. 

For the wolf was not a ravenous creature, but a lonely one, and each slave walked into the maze hidden inside the wolf's throat, seeking the riddle at its heart. They would nourish its feeling of loneliness for a time, but someday, someday someone would truly solve the riddle, and it would free the suns trapped within the wolf, and finally its life would end, and the life of its many unborn children will begin, and then the reign of the feathered serpent will see its conclusion.

Yet before that point came, there would be more tribulations. A notification appeared before the wolf's eyes, and it let out a breath. "Tarrasque!"

The blood, rivers of blood surrounding its ziggurats began to quiver. A massive shape of fire and radiant wings swept overhead. The wolf's siblings had caught this scent as well. They were bound for the Republic. It wasn't just the wolf that was bleeding and wounded, trying to recover. 

Soon a nation might find itself consumed as well.

Gods made for good sacrifices. Even if they were false ones.

***

Upon a throne in a faraway land where people surrendered their true faces and adopted masks as their truth, a false-child whose face resembled that of a reflection giggled atop her throne. It was far too large for her, too large and too unnatural. 

The throne was comprised of shifting gears, of broken fractals, and within came the faintest symphony of a scream. A unified scream of the trapped, of those who came before the girl, the nobility she overthrew to take the forsaken throne, to take hold of New Albion.

"Oh," the girl said, clapping her hands together, "A beast in the Yellowstone Republic. The game is afoot then, Udraal. When will you return? I hope it will be soon. I have been waiting for your promised incursion for so very long.”

***

And all across Integrated Earth Pathless and Legends, rulers, slaves, and more received notification of the World Quest. And as they laid eyes on what was at stake on the rewards, few acted, most waited. A Tarrasque was a grave enemy, but legends were nothing if not sure of themselves. 

And ultimately, the prize would be far higher if a certain Republic broke itself, slaying a great beast. For everyone knew the Yellowstone Republic guarded one of the major entrances to the realm within a realm, the realm below, the realm where a god beyond gods lay dead and dreaming.

***

Shiv felt an overwhelming wave of force tear at his mind. He cried out, and then his voice veered off into a desperate howl. He could feel his sense of self being fried free, could feel his memories crack and bend. The Tarrasque didn’t seem as powerful magically as it was physically, but it was still far stronger than he in terms of Psychomancy. 

And with Vicar Sullain guiding its power, not even Uva would have been able to spare Shiv if she was here.

But it wasn't her who spared him of madness and mental slavery.

A loud roar shook the world. A resounding impact blasted through the air. The Tarrasque turned and received a strike across its face for its action. Sullain snarled. The Tarrasque swept out a hand. The small gray dot pressed against it vanished in a burst of Dimensionality, then reappeared atop of the Tarrasque.

"Sullain!" the orc roared out once more. It slammed its club down, and the club shattered. It didn't matter. The orc teleported again.

At the same time, a massive missile of transparent mana crashed against the Tarrasque. Its body flashed with magical resistance, and it blasted outward, sweeping the land clean. Yet it did nothing to dissuade the orcs. Another series of spells hammered against it. They were bombing it from afar. Shiv’s vision cleared as he saw trails of magic curving over the horizon, from all horizons around him. 

The orcs were beginning to use artillery tactics on the Tarrasque. And the mana infused in the falling spells weren't of a single variety as well. Missiles of Dynmancy slammed into the Tarrasque's hindquarters, with bear-traps of gravity clinging to its legs. Beams of fire containing jagged outlines of Psychomancy splashed across its body, and Shiv could see the shuddering imprint of the Tarrasque's Magical Resistance emerge.

Once more, Bonk roared with laughter. He reappeared under the Tarrasque and hit it a third time. Now the Tarrasque shook. It sustained no damage, but Shiv knew how Bonk's skill worked. And with the new insight gained regarding heroic tier skills, hope swelled inside Shiv. Bonk's skill was about ever-escalating damage. The Tarrasque was trembling. Part of that was from Bonk's resonant strikes, the other from Sullain’s outrage.

"Damnable orc, away from me. How many times must I kill you? How many!”

It shot beams of magic from all its tentacles. It swept its body left and right. The air turned to plasma. Blasts swept across the land, crashing through the landscape. Entire chunks of earth were flung high into the clouds. But through the mess, Shiv still caught sight of a small figure, a single dot defying the devastation, diving through the flames.

Awareness 44 > 46

"Sullain!" Bonk cried out again. He struck the Tarrasque twice this time, just as a flood of lightning speared into the grand beasts, glowing eyes. A tentacle swept up. It slashed against Bonk's leg as he stood atop the Tarrasque’s head. Blood splurged through the air, but the orc vanished without ever losing the limb. 

At the same time, as the blood landed upon the Tarrasque, a massive detonation followed. The backside of the behemoth ignited as if a firestorm had been summoned into existence. And then Bonk appeared at the base of the Tarrasque's leg. He struck again. More spells landed.

Then a clench of pressure appeared beside Shiv as he felt a flood of vitality enter him. An orc hovered there, his eyes bright red, the color of life force. He smiled at Shiv. And a shard of violet matter jutted free from his forehead, making him seem like an orcish unicorn. "Looking out for you, Insul."

A second later, the orc teleported away, just as Shiv resurrected. The Deathless left context and stopped time. He glared at the Tarrasque, watching it scour the land using its tentacles, pumping out so much magic that it was deforming existence itself. But then he noticed something else. Its mouth was open. Its mouth that was wide enough to swallow a good part of a town. Good portion of a town. 

And a terrible idea took shape inside Shiv.

Well humping inside a large monster and ripping them apart from within practically tradition for me by this point. Let’s give this shit another go.

And he spiked himself forward. He launched himself past the building-sized teeth of the monster and gagged as he inhaled the Tarrasque’s breath. As he progressed further, he found himself gliding down the creature’s throat before he found what looked to be a soft pad of tissue he could land on. Shiv slammed hard down the beast's inner flesh and found it just as durable within as it was outside. “Kind of figure,”  Shiv muttered to himself. But he wasn't expecting the Tarrasque to be an easy kill anyway. 

Nor was he potentially expecting the Tarrasque to be his kill directly.

No. This was something one did with an army.

How many Heroes does it take to kill a Legendary monster? Let’s find out.

Shiv activated Pillar of Orichalcum once more. He planted his hands against the Tarrasque and a glowing column of red and gold shot out from him. His skin brightened and a radiance swelled. He focused everything on toughness and nothing else. He heard the Tarrasque gag. He heard Sullain cry out: "What, what are you doing? What are you doing you vile, insolent feckless insect of a bastard-vermin.”

And Bonk interrupted him once more. "Sullain! Eyes on me, Bakal!”

The orc struck the Tarrasque once more and a massive shaking impact rattled the creature. Shiv heard Sullain cry out with genuine alarm. What followed thereafter was a series of heavy impacts that shook against the beast's hide. Despite the Tarrasque twitching, shaking, it couldn't move far at all, for a pillar had been formed within its skull. 

A pillar of Orichalcum. 

A pillar that sprouted free from Shiv.

"Sullain!" Bonk roared with laughter and as he hit the Tarrasque once more. 

This time, Shiv heard something break. A splash of light entered the insides of the Tarrasque's mouth and a massive chasm-sized tooth impacted him, broke against him, and he could feel the Tarrasque shaking now. He could feel the resonance building, becoming more and more intense. 

Sullain sounded like he was on the verge of tears once more, even as the Tarrasque healed in an instant. As it was barely harmed, the Vicar himself was losing control, and Shiv decided to continue his strategy from earlier.

"Hey, Sullain," Shiv called out, not sure if the Vicar could even hear him. "You ever wonder what your people might feel? I mean the people of Submission and all the Necrotechs who died fighting for you. You think they’re shaking their heads at you from within the Great One’s embrace?”

Psychology 45 > 48

Another impact shook the Tarrasque. It slammed against him. Shiv felt himself move, but he only shifted about a meter. More Toughness, come on.

"Silent, be silent," Sullain cried. And that brought a massive grin to Shiv’s face.

But then the Deathless felt a crushing pressure grip him. The Tarrasque came aglow with swelling mana. An ocean of static blackness spilled in from all sides. Shiv realized that the Tarrasque was trying to teleport.

For the first time, Shiv behind Dimensionality mana, but he realized it didn’t move quite like other fields. Parts of it filtered away, like debris passing through a strainer. Shiv watched as the Tarrasque started projecting its own body afar—and then it tried moving him as well.

The Deathless snarled as he tried to hold in place—only for agony to rip through him as his Portomancy mana was shredded apart in an instant.

Portomancy 1 > 5

But then the blackness broke as something struck it. A spell that dispelled Dimensionality, perhaps.

Challenger, I love your orcs, Shiv thought, delirious from pain.

The Challenger wants you to kill this thing and make the Vicar cry.

“STOP! YOU—SURRENDER TO ME NOW!” Sullain shrieked

“Sullain," Bonk shouted with a yawn. He hit the Tarrasque once more, and Shiv felt the massive beast bounce off the ground with this hit. The Heroic orc’s blows were adding up.

Bonk, I fucking love you, Shiv thought. It was something he would never tell the orc, but right then he did feel true romantic love, and he knew that there was no other army mad enough to come aid him against the threat so severe.

"Enough! Enough!" Sullain screamed.

Shiv continued where he left off. "Because if, and if there is an afterlife, if I was from your city, if I was one of your Necrotechs, I would hope for non-existence from how badly you're failing right now." Shiv forced out laughter. "You thought you were going to kill Roland Arrow. You couldn't even kill me with a Tarrasque. I was barely a Hero. All you did was make me stronger. All you did was feed me. And now you're gonna lose. You're gonna lose because you couldn't handle someone with a Heroic-Tier Toughness Evolution and a couple of orcs.”

And as Shiv's psychology hit a critical threshold, he heard a genuine sob come from Sullain. “You… You are right.”

The admission took Shiv by surprise. "What?"

"You are right," Sullain repeated, sniffling. "But I… I do not have the heart for this. I am no warrior. I know this. I am but a scholar. And I should not have stayed. I just wanted to feel his death. I wanted to feel all your deaths. I wanted to feel satisfaction. But you are right. I cannot stop you. For I have no taste for violence." A pause followed, and Shiv felt a terrible foreboding. "Thus, I unchained the beast from my mind entirely. I let it free. Tarrasque, run wild. Break this world if you must. Just kill him. Kill Roland Arrow. Destroy his town…”

And then something went missing. Shiv felt a presence go absent in the world, and the Tarrasque stopped thrashing around as much. It stopped reacting as a person might, and from the depths of its throat came an utterly bestial growl. 

“Ah shit,” Shiv muttered.

As more spells landed against it, as another blow from Bonk shook its body, the Tarrasque didn't respond. Instead, it let out a deep snarl and suddenly tore its own flesh open with an explosion of Biomancy. It pulled itself in half and ripped away from Shiv’s Pillar of Orichalcum. The Deathless blinked.

The now mindless Tarrasque eyed him with predatory interest before it vanished from sight. A world-shaking detonation of plasma, fire, and force washed over Shiv, and when the chaos cleared, he saw it shooting through the air with a belt of shifting debris around its body—headed for a flying cathedral and two warring armies.

“No,” Shiv breathed. “Fuck.” He began reducing his Toughness. His pillar started to dissolve. But just as he did, something flashed above him. For a moment, Shiv thought it was the sun. But then, a greenish glow splashed over the world, and the Deathless’s eyes widened as a Necromantic dawn descended through the clouds, followed by a coiling serpent. “...AND I WILL FINISH THE VERMIN HERE.”