III-48 Regenerate

It is known that the Descenders are an insular group; a conservative faith that holds high barriers in place to ensure that only those vested and a part of their elite order may be properly regarded as a knight.

Yet, the Descenders are also warriors of honor, and for all their stubbornness and cultural conservatism, they have accepted some of the most unusual of monsters and individuals as knights of their order.

Among the most well known is perhaps Tall Ben the Hydra-Knight, who, though once a vicious beast of ravenous appetites and merciless brutality, evolved into a healer and guardian of pilgrim villages in the Deep Abyss. Where once Tall Ben was a scourge to civilization, their evolution into sapience paired with a life-debt to an elderly Biomancer changed their nature toward justice and nobility.

In the years after their ascendance to sapience, Tall Ben performed the duties of a roaming hedge knight and healer without the title. They fought off other monsters that sought to devour the weak. They found lost children and vanquished plagues. Their chronicles and crusades against the First Blood are now things of folklore and legend.

And thus was how Tall Ben earned their greatest Skill Evolution and Knight Title. For at the battle of Low Aidenhold where the First Blood sought to seize a gate from weakened Descender forces, the Hydra-Knight intervened. He entered the fray with blades of melded bone, cartilage, and venom and faced a Court Leviathan of his lonesome might. For three days, the noble hydra raged within the colossal beast, slaughtering the court sheathed within. When the leviathan was finally struck from the sky, Tall Ben emerged changed and glorious, clad in an armor composed of magical biomass that resisted and consumed the foul flesh-shaping magics unleashed by the vampire vermin.

And in the aftermath, as Tall Ben slew Third Elder Zeneth of the Utorodi Bloodline, the Sir Kenneth the Corpulent gazed upon the noble monsters, and proclaimed: “Hark, brothers and sisters. Behold and see—for the measure of a knight is a noble spirit, not bound to boy, girl, or even beast…”

-The Ballad of Tall Ben the Hydra-Knight

III-48

Regenerate

Aegis of Assimilation 104 (Heroic)

Feats [⅔]

The hells is an Aegis of Assimilation? Such was Shiv’s first thought as his mana field began to evolve. These thoughts collapsed at the same time his mana field did, crashing back toward him in an instant. 

Compression. That was what Shiv felt next. Every last bit of Biomancy magic he once could cast outward was pressed tight against his body. As the mana tightened against him, it twisted and changed, shifting from a faint, spherical projection to dense limbs of crimson magic that resembled enlarged Woundeaters. Twelve enormous serpents shaped from Biomancy coiled around Shiv, and each of them remained interconnected to one another as well. Only a small membrane of faint mana separated Shiv from being directly bound to the mana serpents.

He felt like he was the core of some kind of magical beast—a Biomantic hydra, if he was to describe it exactly. And as the evolution continued, he felt his mana grow denser but also strangely fainter around him, cocooning him in a protective cage shielded by winding serpents.

The flesh of the Court Leviathan shifted. The biomass transformed once more. Yet, as it drew Shiv up, its flesh made contact with his Biomancy field. The moment it touched his altered field, his mana came aglow—and it glowed with the very same micro-spells and mana patterns that characterized the Court Leviathan’s Biomancy. The bits of the Court Leviathan’s flesh that passed into his mana were superimposed with a magical rendition of its existing structures. The microspells representing skin, fat, bone, and more were all different. And within those microspells were even smaller crystallizations of mana. Shiv could feel them, but he couldn’t see them.

No wonder Helix was so annoyed with me lacking a good Practical Metabiology and Awareness Skill Fusion. This Skill Evolution’s capabilities are incomplete without other stuff supporting it. Kind of like having extreme Physicality but no Toughness or something. Maybe a little less extreme than that, but still, skills don’t stand on their own. They need other things to support it.

Other things like Multi-Tasking, Memorization, Practical Metabiology, and more.

Even so, his mana was far more sophisticated than it was before. If the Woundeaters were just transplants capable of shifting injuries from one body to another, this allowed for him to affect entire biological architectures. Architectures like the Court Leviathan’s biomass. It had layers of mana embedded in its flesh as well. That pressed against Shiv’s coiling mana, but even so, he pulled on the mana rendered parts of the biomass. The microspells there shivered, but remained pinned in place thanks to their mana.

A pocket opened above Shiv. The ground elevated him back onto the bridge. Helix and the orc Biomancers beheld him with rapt attentions and bated breaths. The bespectacled orc frowned for a beat as he regarded Shiv’s Biomancy Skill Evolution. At the same time, Shiv began sapping vitality from orcs around him, bringing his resurrection underway.

“This is most certainly not Chimeric Assimilator,” Helix muttered. “But I have seen this somewhere. I just can’t quite recall…”

Shiv tried moving his new “field,” and found that the serpents could extend free from his own body. It wasn’t the cloud-like particulates that the Court Leviathan was composed of, and it was far too thick and obvious to be compared to Uva’s mana strands. Instead, it was like a massive limb he could move, that lit up with it pressed against someone else’s biomass and immediately rendered their organic structure with magical symbology.

The serpent stretched across the entirety of the bridge in an instant. It washed through hundreds of orcs and kept going thereafter. Shiv continued pushing his field out as far as he could, but soon found himself unable to see where it was going as it rushed further into the horizon. He guessed his reach now went well beyond a kilometer, though. At the same time, the other hydras shrank as their mana melted into the extending limb. So, my reach isn’t infinite. But still pretty far. Seems to be more for close-quarters though. They’re naturally coiled around my body.

Streams of Vitae parted around Shiv as he returned to life. He drew his mana back, and the mana serpent slammed against him, splashing against the thin mana membrane just as the other serpents expanded once with mana once more. He stopped trying to move his “hydra field,” and it immediately coiled tight around himself once more.

“Well, I got something to do with assimilation, just not Chimeric Assimilator,” Shiv breathed. “Says its Aegis of Assimilation.”

All the orc Biomancers responded with astonishment and surprise. A flash of recognition passed across Helix’s face, and he let out a bark of laughter. “Aegis of Assimilation? Is that what you managed to get?”

“Is Tall Ben still alive?” one of the orc Biomancers asked. He looked around. “Where’s Lungthief? He’s the last one that fought the Hydra-Knight.”

“Still missing,” another orc called from the corner of the bridge. The speaking orc sailed across the ceiling on an enamel seat as he raced other orcs in an upside down tooth-throne race circuit. “Probably in some kind of nightmarish dimension fighting for some stupidly hopeless cause. He’s always doing that.”

“Hm. Shame. He would hate to miss this.”

“Who is Tall Ben?” Shiv asked.

“A Hydra-Knight that serves the Descenders Union,” Helix said as his expression contorted into one of maniacal glee. “And you share his Biomancy Skill Evolution. A Biomancy Skill Evolution meant specifically for someone that walks the cleft between monster and individual. How useful. And fascinating. Your nature is quite the enigma, Insul, for I am certain you are no beast by flesh.”

“Yeah,” Shiv replied. “Me too. I think it might have happened because I saw how the microspells came together. The patterns and all that. The Court Leviathan’s mana is like a cloud, and I saw how it was coloring me with its mana. Like it was priming its dormant magic using my biology rather than just consuming me. It converted me to magic first.”

“Ah, good,” Helix replied. “This both pleases and amuses me. Mainly because the skill you have is quite novel. I have only faced it in battle once before, against a dragon-knight Biomancer. Their power wasn’t intrusion or influence, but resilience. With the way it reacts with organic materials, I do believe it remains a sibling skill to Chimeric Assimilation, however. Still close enough to serve our interests and needs.”

“That’s all fun and nice,” Bonk said, yawning as he stomped closer. He was nearly two heads taller than every last orc Biomancer, and he regarded Shiv with faint interest. “But what’s it do? I heard him say Aegis. Does it let him take a hit better?”

“I can take a hit pretty good on my own,” Shiv said, eyeing Bonk’s club.

“Sure. But how many whacks you think you can eat from my club before—”

“Bonk,” Helix sighed. “Away with you. We are not—-” Then, the orc Biomancer stopped talking. He let out a loud hum of consideration as he regarded Shiv once more. “No. No, this will be good for all of us. We should begin field tests, soon. You like field tests, don’t you, Insul?”

“Sure,” Shiv said without hesitation. “If by field test you mean trying to figure out what I can do with the Biomancy while Bonk tries to bash me to death.”

Bonk almost teared up at Shiv’s casual willingness to indulge in violence. “The Challenger truly loves us. If all the humans were a bit more like you—” Bonk blinked and chuckled. “Well, we’d probably try to kill you little pink-skins even more. As it stands, most of you put a good fight, but the whining afterward is such a bore.”

“Yeah, but that’s probably because most humans don’t come back,” Shiv said.

“Oh. And that’s my issue.”

“No, you asshole. It’s their problem. You’re complaining about them being traumatized by what you do? Maybe fix the fact that they die first. If all the humans reincarnated like orcs, they’d be more willing to fight you for fun. They would be more like me.” The orcs grinned at Shiv with naked doubt in their eyes. The Deathless wilted slightly. “Okay. Maybe not entirely like me. But more willing to do risky shit.”

“Perhaps,” Bonk said slowly. “But for a lot of humans, it’s the pain that breaks them. The loss. Some of them are more than just brave. They’re willing to die with a smile on their face. But war takes things from them. Struggle costs them more than it gives. And I find that to be disgusting.”

“You’re really doing your best to make sure I never forget that you’re an orc, huh,” Shiv scowled.

“Yes,” Bonk replied. “Don’t see why not. See, some of my kind might play with you a bit more socially, but I don’t really care about fucking with you that way. I don’t think it’s necessary. Frankly, you’re kind of a raw, undeveloped lump in terms of Social Skills. Not real battle there. Not struggle. But Physically? And personally? Well, I just want to take a few swings at you soon. See how you react, and what fun I might get out of it. I’m gonna be straight about that, and you can be straight with me. We can get bloody over and over this way. Honest enemies and that shit.”

“Honest enemies,” Shiv responded with a slight snort. “Alright. Helix. What do you got in mind? I think I might be able to pull some biomass into my mana field. It rendered the Court Leviathan’s flesh in magic. Your flesh too.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Helix said, squinting at Shiv’s hydra-like field. Though the mana-hydras were coiled tight around Shiv’s form, they still towered over most of the orcs, forming a compacted field of around four meters. “Hm. The representation of your mana also seems to indicate that it was a Hydra Skill to begin with. Makes sense, but I’m quite sure that some dragon-knights managed to achieve it as well. Still. Rare. And rare is good.”

“So, how should we start this field test off?” Shiv asked.

“By seeing how your mana interacts with unprotected organic materials, of course,” Helix said.

And before the orc could continue, Shiv was already reacting. He directed his mana into his cape, and one of his mana hydras reached in. He sought a set of his bone armor, but as his new mana field drew out the bones, Shiv blinked as a full set of bone armor emerged, layered in gleaming patterns. He could still grasp the biological matter that composed his bones, but it felt like his reach went deeper now too. There was the physical organic matter he could move with his field, but there was also the spell patterns themselves.

“Ah. The ability to assimilate still remains. How lovely.” Helix grinned. “Pull the patterns into your field. Let us see if the process mirrors Chimeric Assimilation’s or not.”

The Deathless did just that. He pulled at the constellations of microspells rather than the physical matter itself. At once, the bone armor burst apart in a flash of crimson mana. Its physical matter vanished, and Shiv’s Biomancy field glowed brighter than ever. And there he saw it—the patterns constituting his bone armor trapped within his mana in a crystallized chain of spell patterns. When he cast a laceration spell, that was a single injury trapped inside a cage of glowing mana, contained by his intent and reshaped into a spell.

The conversion of his bone armor wasn’t just a spell. It was a spell made up of spells connected to other spells. There were small spells making up larger spells. There were patterns connected to other patterns to create an overpattern. He was looking a system of spells working together, something multiple complexity magnitudes higher than anything he dealt with before.

Shiv’s mind went blank, and he realized just how undereducated he was for the first time in his life. He thought he would be able to figure out how to recreate all wounds and shape a few viruses, but this was like bearing the blueprint to an entire biological object in his mana, and he hadn’t the simplest clue as to how to properly wield it.

“Quite overwhelming, isn’t it?” Helix asked.

“That’s a lot of spells,” Shiv said, nodding. “This is going to take a while.”

“Centuries,” Helix said. “Even if you pursue this magical discipline, it will take centuries upon centuries. More time than you can possibly imagine. But it will give you more power and influence than you ever imagined as well. And insight. Not only into yourself, but the foundational nature and aspects of existence. Such is the great gift of magic. Comprehension.”

A breath escaped Shiv. There were so many moving parts. And there was a weight pressing on him, grinding against his mana. “It feels a little heavy too.”

“Heavy?” Helix asked. “Elaborate. Don’t just spit out the first word to describe your feeling. What kind of heavy? Specifically, what you feel?”

“It’s like the very beginnings of mana strain,” Shiv said, narrowing his eyes at the spell patterns containing his bone armor. He moved the spell patterns around, and he watched it glide through his mana field. “I can move it without difficulty. The strain’s just there. It’s not really building that much more. Not changing at all. But it’s not going away either.”

“Interesting,” Helix said. “Then, it must be a bit like Chimeric Assimilation. But your mana doesn’t need to be primed. It’s already activated. It just assimilated the material without—ah, I understand now. Insul. Try pushing a section of the spell patterns out from your field. Don’t try to move it. Try squeezing it out of its current crystallized configuration.”

Shiv focused his intent and squeezed the spell chain representing his bone armor. It burst and from it emerged his leg armor, bone white and perfectly preserved. However, length of spells were now missing within his field, and his mana was dimmer than before.

“Very good,” Helix said. “And your field… It’s not directly anchored to your body, is it?”

“No,” Shiv replied, studying the thin layer of separation. That was the only part that resembled his old mana field. Just a faint membrane of redness. “There’s a gap here connected by an inner field. It’s like my old field.”

“Yes. That’s a partitioning layer more commonly used by individuals. I have it. Most orcs have it. But most monsters do not. In fact, most Biomancy-inclined monsters are deeply infused with their own Biomancy mana. As such, a monster’s flesh shifts when they use their magic as their way of wielding it is instinctive. Individuals comparatively are more manipulative. We interface and use the field to move things. Monsters use their bodies and fields in tandem. Most times, they fail to separate the two entirely. As such, they often also fuse Physicality and their favored Magical Skill more often than not.”

Helix’s explanation made a lot of sense. But he wasn’t done yet.

“The skill you just evolved, however, is somewhere in between. Not quite individual. Not fully monster. A bit of separation from both. There is a great deal more instinct guiding it. I wanted you to have Chimeric Assimilation for that reason—so you can actively study and interact with the spell chains in your field. This works too and perhaps even better in some ways, though I suspect its mana ceiling is quite a bit lower than Chimeric Assimilation?”

That took Shiv by surprise. “Why?”

“Because your current mana is constantly activated. I suspect you will be able to create entire biological constructs within its expanse if only you knew the specific spells and patterns. Which you don’t, but that can be corrected in time. Comparatively, the Chimeric Assimilation Skill requires you to assimilate a certain amount of biomass before you can even begin casting or altering spell chains. Of course, it’s main benefit is a lack of mana strain. When you overdraw on mana, the organic structures stored within break, and you can simply replace it, thus accelerating your education without leaving you vulnerable to constant mana exhaustion.”

“Wait,” Shiv said, he blinked rapidly as he connected Chimeric Assimilations capabilities with his Strider of the Unbending Path. “My Master-Tier Chronomancy works a bit like that. I don’t get stressed. It doesn’t last long and the field breaks fast, but I don’t get tired at all.”

“Yes. Another difference between monsters and individuals. Monsters usually suffer mana destabilization rather than strain for a reason. That is because they are not thinking beings at baseline—complex thinking, anyway. They are instinct-driven and unleash their power subconsciously. There is little mental exhaustion to their magical lore.”

The Deathless just stared. “You know something I don’t much get, Helix?”

“What?”

“How are the monsters getting this whole magical lore thing if they can’t think.”

Whistles sounded from all around him. Shiv looked around and he saw every orc mage in the room bouncing a bit on their feet. “What?”

“You asked the question,” Bonk said.

“The question,” Mortar echoed.

“The great theory,” Helix said, holding a finger, “is that the lore is shaped by gestalt.”

“What is that?” Shiv asked.  He didn’t remember ever hearing that word before.

“It means by collective consciousness, to some extent,” Helix explained. “Effectively, it is the biggest reason why most mages suspect that the system is something of a hive mind. Or a unified subconscious that takes from our knowledge and shapes our skills based on collective experience.”

“Huh,” Shiv said. “Are there other theories about the system? If its shaped from everyone—”

“Yes. It would be influenced by you, as well. Everything you do. Everything you believe. But magic is a field because there are a unified system beliefs and an ordered structure to their patterns. Consider Cryomancy or Pyromancy. They technically fall under a unified theroy called thermodynamics, yet they seemed so different they forked in opposite directions and became parted lores. Thus, beyond the natural state of the world, belief also reorders these natural patterns. Psychomancy as well, for the mind is chaotic and varied. Even moreso than the body. But yet, it has a magical lore of its own as well. Biomancy, comparatively, simply had to be a Magical Skill. It could not be anything else. It was impossible for it to be anything else, because biology is a complex lattice of patterns. Of patterns within patterns. Of patterns upon patterns.”

The entire topic was still a bit esoteric for Shiv, but he felt like he understood things a bit better than before. Magic was always a bit weird for him, but that’s why he wanted it so bad when he was young. That’s why he wanted to get into it. Because it was the ability to affect the world, to change things beyond himself.

Philosophy 10 > 11

“Well,” Bonk said, poking at the bone adamantine leg drifting in Shiv’s field. “You wanna—”

Shiv assimilated the front section of the orc’s club into his field. The strain grew heavier, but there was still a lot more Shiv could hold within his mana before it finally became unbearable. 

Bonk frowned. “Hey. Spit that back out. I was going to hit you with that.”

“You still have most of it left,” Shiv said. He licked his lips as instinct provoked him to try something. He pulled the spell patterns rendering the wooden club and pulled it into the patterns that made up his bone armor. As Shiv brought the chains of spells together, there was a brief clash as parts of both architectures lit up while other microspells remained dim. All the orc Biomancers leaned in.

“Oh, look at him,” one of the orcs breathed. “It’s watching a one figure out how to slit his first throat. He’s figuring it out using instinct alone.”

“Quiet,” Helix said. Shiv looked at the orc, but he just got a nod in return. He wasn’t sure what Helix wanted him to do, but the Deathless continued following his urges. He carefully pulled the glowing chains and tired to move them closer. As spell patterns from the bone armor were drawn into the vicinity of spell patterns that made up the wooden club’s tip, they suddenly magnetized together, as the glowing chains snapped tight to one another.

“Broken Moon,” Shiv grunted, taken aback by how sudden and violent the joining was. But when it was done, he found himself looking at a bounded pattern. For a few seconds, he just studied the once separated spell chains. Then, he pushed them out from himself and watched as a club that seemed to be made from both the texture of wood, bone, and adamantine emerged. “Oh, shit. Didn’t know I could do that.”

Helix laughed as he gestured at the new weapon Shiv just created. “And now you behold the great gift of assimilation. Certain biological architectures can be easily combined. And even unlikely biological patterns can fuse together if enough effort is applied. And if one can handle the cancers that follow. But you… the field is projected out from you. So, strain will be your issue so long as you don’t use your mana on yourself.”

Bonk pushed the rest of his club into Shiv’s field. “Fuse the rest of it to your bone stuff.”

“So you can hit me with it?” Shiv asked.

“Yeah. Of course. Adamantine’s better than just ironwood.”

The Deathless considered that and nodded. That made sense. If he was going to increase his Toughness, he might as well give the orc the best weapon possible for the job. He assimilated the rest of the orc’s club into his mana, but did something different this time. Instead of just fusing the brightest chains together, he compressed everything into a unified shape. Some of the spells deformed and rather than breaking apart, they shattered and folded over each other. Then, they began to mutate before Shiv’s very eyes. They filled with glowing dots of Biomancy, and the gaps left in them came aglow.

As Shiv cast the new creation out from his field, his eyes widened as a dense lump of adamantine cancer with small patches of wood and bone emerged into his field.

“What the hell did I just make,” Shiv muttered to himself.

“Cancer, Insul,” Helix said, folding his arms. “Everything is cancer if you push it hard enough. Utter cellular instability and chaos. Such for the body, so too for Biomancy. Except you managed to avoid the worst of this yourself. How fortunate.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said. He directed two of his mana hydras to straighten out the club as best he could, and he offered it back to Bonk. The orc took it without complaint and tested it on his own head a few times.

“Damn,” Bonk said as the club bounced off his face. “Adamantine Adaption. Real useful skill. Good thing you had that instead of some worthless pussy-shit individual Toughness Skill to make their armor better. Good club. Gonna thank you by whacking you with it.”

“Sure, but wait, is this why the Court Leviathan doesn’t develop cancer?” Shiv’s head snapped to Helix. “Because it didn’t have any Biomancers, and it regenerated fine. Is it because it integrated regeneration capable biology into itself? Like… from a basilisk?”

Slowly, Helix’s face spread into a wide smile. “Maybe. Do you have an idea, perchance.”

Shiv’s heartbeat picked up. “Yeah. Yeah. For a moment there, I was thinking about cancer bone armor but now? I wanna see if assimilated biomass from a basilisk lights up with everything.”

***

Practical Metabiology 42 > 43

“It motherfucking does!” Shiv cheered.

The orcs around him cheered too. The only thing that didn’t cheer was the basilisk he assimilated a whole chunk of flesh from. Already, its body was regenerating. The missing tissue was fusing back together, and Shiv noticed strings of mana pulse between the spell patterns from the basilisk’s flesh.

“Regeneration comes in a few forms,” Helix said with a proud smirk on his face. “The first is the rawest, crudest, and stupidest way: imprinting. You have someone constantly cast their stable-state body architecture onto yours so your body always knows how to rebuild itself. This is what the vampires do with their Lineage Cores. Each of their bodies references an elder that came before them, and so they just rebuild that way.”

“Is bioelectric signaling another?” Shiv asked.

“Correct,” Helix said with a nod. “Complex bioelectric signaling. Hydras have this. Basilisks have this. Certain demons and lizardfolks have this. For whatever reason, their body has developed a natural capability to communicate and signal complicated commands for its cells. This allows them to regrow limbs and regenerate parts of their body outright. Even if they are not consciously aware how.”

The other four basilisks had been delivered in the interim, and to Shiv’s surprise, the orcs had started taking care of them. Some orcs were actively scrubbing the large monsters down, others were cleaning their teeth, a few others bringing them food in the form of corpses. The orcs didn’t torture the basilisks at all. This caught Shiv’s attention as much as the wonders of basilisk biology did. But he didn’t mention it to the orcs. While he studied the new spell organism he assimilated, he also studied the orcs.

They were fine with killing and hurting people, but monsters didn’t seem to provoke their urge to torture as much.

Maybe it’s the misery and fear that feeds them. Maybe it’s just the fact that someone has to lose an emotional struggle against them as well. Shiv frowned slightly, but his expression brightened again as he watched the spell patterns rendering the basilisk biomass come alight—and his new set of bone armor lit up slightly as well.

“I think I can make a set of regenerating armor,” Shiv declared.

Bonk chuckled as he tested a few swings. “Well, this will be fun. Insul. Let’s do this on top of Courtney later. I want to see how far I can send you flying.”

“Yeah, sure,” Shiv said. He wasn’t even really listening to Bonk right now. They could do all the goofy stuff later. Now, he wanted to see what might result from this fusion. As he pulled the spells free from his mana, what emerged was a set of armor that held multiple qualities at once. First, the armor was now gridded with gleaming basilisk scales, but instead of gems, they had wedges of jutting bone adamantine. Shiv pulled out his Skysplitter and slashed at the armor once. The cut passed through and left a series of chip-wounds across the armor. Chip wounds that fused together a moment later. 

“Yes!” Shiv cheered. “It worked! It felling worked!”

“And here was another reason why I wanted you to get Chimeric Assimilation. So you can—” Before Helix could finish, Shiv sent out another mana hydra. It dissolved chunk from another chunk from another basilisk’s body, but with how assimilation worked, the large serpent just shuddered slightly.

Right after, Shiv drove the hydra back into himself—but this time, he used it to breach his inner membrane protecting him from the hydra. The membrane tore. Shiv snarled in pain. But he pushed on, watching as his own body ignited into spell patterns for the first time.

Helix blinked. Practically every orc near the gateway gawked.

Shiv let out a rasping chuckle as he watched the hydra biomass light up with his own bio-mana architecture, and he pushed the basilisk’s flesh into himself. As soon as he did, he felt his body shift and twist from the inside. Something slithered under his skin and through his cells. A static undercurrent ran through his person, and a faint outline of scales appeared across his body.

Aegis of Assimilation 104 > 105

“Yes,” Shiv cackled. “Now I have—” And then his insides ignited in agony and he felt his stomach twist violently. Shiv clutched his chest and groaned.

Helix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well. You’re likely going to die from severe metabolic dysfunction, so I might as well explain this to you now: regeneration isn’t the only thing you need to consider, Insul. It’s only part of the complexity of your biology. You can likely heal from a great deal of things now, but your mitochondria and energy production is not quite congruous with that of a basilisk. Or most creatures for that matter. Again: No easy power. Stop trying to emulate the vampires—you’re losing out on Practical Metabiology.

“Yeah,” Shiv wheezed. He tried to pull out the basilisk’s spell chain, only to realize he couldn’t separate it from himself. “Shit. Helix—”

“No. I will not help you. Perish. It will be a good lesson.”

Shiv winced but agreed. “Yeah. Teach me to be impatient again.” He paused. Then turned to Bonk. “Hey. What’s say you see if you can kill me before my body does.”

Bonk drew in a long breath and closed his eyes. “Finally.”

“Have all the other Heroes join in, too,” Shiv added. “I’m gonna put on my regenerating armor. Let’s get my Toughness a few levels if we can.”

An orc gave a sarcastic sob. “He’s the best humie ever.”