III-47 Assimilation (II)

Hydras are curious creatures in the way they evolve. When they finally hit the threshold for sapience, their centermost head will be the first one that becomes truly self aware and intelligence on an individual level. This usually causes some level of insanity for the hydra as the centermost head will then be held back by the others due to their bestial nature.

This phase of the hydra’s existence is typically called “The Tearing” as it characterizes just how severely they are torn between the monstrous and the individual. And so large is a hydra’s brain that it can often conceptualize a great many ideas at rapid pace—but this is often followed by its predatory instincts overwhelming it. There have been instances of hydra’s suffering a mental breakdown after they tear through a village, only to discover the people it is feeding upon are self-aware—like it. Subsequently, the hydra usually suffers an existential crisis, with the centermost head going catatonic while the others fight to control its body.

Another interesting occurrence is with their souls. As the hydra transitions between the boundaries of the monstrous and the individual, their clashing, tearing nature grants them access to a few Skill Evolutions that few other beings in Integration have access to. These Skill Evolutions have close cousins to certain Monster Skills. Separated only by slight deviations that veer ever so closer to something an Individual Pathbearer might get.

As such, it is not surprising to see a hydra develop an Adamantine Reinforcement Skill Evolution and learn to wear armor rather than a pure Adamantine Scale or Adamantine Adaption Skill…

-Monsters and Individuals (Essential Reading for ZOO-101 for Phoenix Academy)

III-47

Assimilation (II)

Woundeater 97 > 99

Practical Metabiology 40 > 41

Memorization 11 > 13

Multi-Tasking 9 > 12

Awareness 24 > 26

Plaguefueled 72 > 74

It took two more deaths for Shiv to finally notice what the Court Leviathan was actually doing to him. More accurately, what its field was doing to his. The Court Leviathan's Biomancy was powerful, but it was also subtle. Every time it crashed against his magic, it left a trace of itself and slowly bled into his field. And there it stayed, like a piece of foreign magic lodged in place. Yet the imprint was so subtle, Shiv didn't realize it until a mere second ago.

Every time the orcs struck at his mana field, they hurt him. They split his field open, but they weren't doing that just to torture him, just to strain him. No, they were pushing the foreign mana deeper inside his body.

And that was the most fascinating thing of all about the Court Leviathan. Its mana field seemed capable of independent movement, or at least some level of separation from itself. It glided through his field as if a spiritual pathogen of some kind. 

And the subversion began there, before it assimilated his flesh, made his bones and meat come to life of their own accord, so that they could part free from his body and join the Leviathan's biomass. There was a subtle sickness, a virus that took hold. And it was this very capability that allowed the Court Leviathan to also store diseases, toxins, and other pathogens. It wasn't just an assimilator of flesh; it was an assimilator of biology.

Helix described it as an organic hacker, so to speak. When Shiv asked what a hacker was, the orc went into detail about how automatons could sometimes hijack each other's minds by transmitting specific codes. This led into another diatribe on the part of the orc, where he proclaimed the supremacy of the flesh once more. While he did that, Shiv finally caught sight of Mortar through the crowd, and he noticed how the large orc was constantly shaking his head and letting out billowing sighs.

As Shiv resurrected again, he stared at the orcs and demanded they restart the assimilation process anew without any delay.

"See what you're doing now," Shiv said, speaking directly to Helix.

The orc Biomancer simply smirked. "Oh, do you? Or do you only glean a small facet? I think we'll find out soon enough."

"Have the leviathan swallow me again. I'm gonna see if I can stop what it’s doing this time."

It drew him under in an instant, the bone at his feet parting, tendrils of flesh wrapping around his body, pulling him down. Once more, a layer of bone fused over him. It was like being inside someone's ribs, and the flesh here hardened. The air grew hot and humid. Crystallized Biomancy mana crashed against his, but rather than continuing to grind, it drifted over him, splashing back and forth. He would liken it to stomach acid in that moment, slowly trying to dissolve its way through his field.

And he focused. He paid attention to the Court Leviathan's mana as best he could. He let the orcs tear into him, even sacrificing some of his attention, as they opened patches in his field. Despite the pain, the orcs were merely a distraction. He was here to get a specific kind of skill evolution, and that would only come if he learned. And that would only be less lengthy if he learned exactly how the Court Leviathan's skill worked.

As ruptures and trailing tears lined Shiv's mana field, the Court Leviathan's mana began to intrude, pouring inside, pressing against the gaps and clefts it discovered. And just then he felt the tingle, the first hints of hostile foreign mana pushing into him. They were so small, mere glints of slightly denser red within his own field, but he saw them this time. His Awareness rose, as did his Multi-Tasking.

Multi-Tasking 12 > 13

Awareness 26 > 27

"I got you now," Shiv thought to himself. He seized those particulates and he pressed against them. Using his Biomancy, they shot free from his field in an instant, emerging like shrapnel squeezed out from a wound. But before they could go back, Shiv clutched them, held them in place. He struck at them using his Biomancy and tried to break them. 

However, his field was far too soft comparatively. As Woundeaters flared bright around his body, he found himself squeezing at the Court Leviathan's mana, but he was wind trying to erode a stone. Perhaps he could do it given enough time, and if the orcs weren't actively hammering him from a few meters above, but under present circumstances, he lacked the force to break them outright.

Even so, he didn't surrender the fragments back to the Court Leviathan. He held the pieces there for as long as he could, even as more gaping holes were left in his field. The pain he suffered was barely noted, and he managed to hold on for a full five minutes before the orcs finally burst his mana field apart again. It felt like someone was ripping an internal limb free from his body. 

Shiv frowned. It took the near-total destruction of his Biomancy before the Court Leviathan finally flooded his body with assimilating particulates, unlatching his skin from his bones, infusing his bones with an animal instinct of its own, stealing his organs by granting them life to finally end him.

He perished once more, but as his Biomancy was allowed to ascend back to the bridge, he found Helix looking upon him with a hint of pride. Shiv wasted no time in threading his Vitae out among the orcs and draining them of vitality.

Woundeater 99 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Memorization 13 > 14

Multi-Tasking 13 > 15

Awareness 27 > 29

"Well done, Insul. That took four deaths, but you finally saw it. Or did you?" The orc narrowed his eyes. He adjusted his spectacles before taking them off. Shiv stabbed him in the gut slightly, and the orc Biomancer let out a grunt. He held back a grimace as Shiv began to drain from him, but otherwise, Helix surrendered no true expression of pain—mainly because he applied his Biomancy to himself. A flowing set of spell patterns swam through the orc’s flesh and mended the damage Shiv inflicted in an instant, while the Deathless resurrected.

"Tell me what you saw," Helix demanded.

"Fragments," Shiv answered, "particulates, small pieces of mana that burrowed their way into my field, eventually got into my body."

"Good, good," Helix said, nodding. He looked back at the other orc Biomancers, and Shiv noted how they too seemed gleeful about his progress. They were genuinely pleased with his growth, pleased with him as well. And there was the damnable thing about the orcs again. Every now and again, between moments where they let their psychopathy be known, they were plenty encouraging, and they genuinely wanted you to succeed, if only to dominate you later.

"There is a reason why I wish for you to have Chimeric Assimilation," Helix said. "It is useful for you. It allows you to settle pieces of your body in someone else, to transplant your biology upon them, or potentially to draw their biology over. Greater still, it allows you a means of intrusion against a rival Biomancer, or a subtle way of infesting certain populations."

"It doesn't work so well against someone with Magical Resistance though," Shiv replied. "Not without a concentrated strike."

"Ah, but you're thinking too bluntly again, Insul. You should consider this. Rather than slamming your Biomancy against someone's mystical protections, you grind at it, over and over from afar. You launch out your mana and drag it against them, make it so powder-fine that it constantly stresses their field, yet escapes their notice."

Shiv nodded slightly as he tried to picture how that might work. If he did get this skill evolution, he might become the biomantic equivalent of Uva. But then again, that wasn't exactly so. "What else does chimeric assimilation allow for the mana field?" he clarified. "I understand that physically it allows me to absorb traits from things I assimilate."

"No, no," the orc said. "It's more like a biological archive. It is the reason why you still need to study practical metabiology, why you need to have a proper model of what you are doing. When you assimilate something into your field, your field will grow stronger."

Shiv blinked. "That's how it works?"

"Correct. It is a monstrous evolution. Quite different from the standard static field or dynamic mana waves used by most Pathbearers."

"So if I just assimilate a bunch of organic tissue—"

"Biomass," Helix corrected. "And yes, that would be your next question. If you assimilate a bunch of organic tissue..." Helix wriggled his nose. "...a bunch. Once again, not being very specific. But still, if you assimilate a great deal of organic tissue, it will technically increase your mana. In a sense… It—you will understand it better when you evolve. You will learn to distribute your mana as you wish once that happens. But just know that gathering more biomass within you makes your mana stronger, as becoming a Chimeric Assimilator makes the mana at your disposal one-to-one with how much biomass you can wield." The orc paused. “It is more like having a functional mana ceiling."

"Mana ceiling?" Shiv repeated, not fully understanding.

"Yes, mana ceiling. As in, there is only so much mana that your skill can accommodate. You cannot go beyond that. It increases every time you level, every time you evolve. But still, there is a limit. And that limit is drastically amplified because of this Skill Evolution. So you will need to assimilate a great deal of biomass, perhaps as much as the Court Leviathan itself, to fully hit capacity. Yet, the more mass you absorb, the more you must suffer."

Shiv blinked. "Okay, so I was wondering about the catch. Is that it? Are there other problems.”

Helix just barked a laugh. "A great many. When you assimilate something into your mana field, it is stored within you as well. It will strain your field constantly, and because of how chimeric assimilation works, your field will be rooted directly against your body, and any instability inflicted upon you may result in a series of," Helix considered his words, "mutations, or more likely cancers."

Shiv let out a sigh. "Great. So, if I don't absorb a lot of biomass, not a lot of mana."

"Not a lot of usable mana. Think of it as activating the total mana you do have. It works different from most fields. Magic is a thing of… symbology sometimes. It must be signalled by the physical world.”

Alright? But I don't have that much mana if I don't absorb biomass?”

"You have some, Insul. You are made of biomass, after all.”

“But not as much as I could.”

“Correct.”

"And if I absorb too much, and I can't control it well, or I don't understand how to remove the cancers and fix the mutations..."

"Exactly," Helix said, snapping his fingers. "So, now you understand why it matters so much for you to learn Practical Metabiology. For though you might be able to chimerically manifest, say, an orcish arm using your mana field, more likely than not you will give your body cancer during the process because you don't know what you're doing. And that is unavoidable for us due to the lack of Lineage Core and means of avoiding true effort.”

At the mention of the Lineage Core, Helix looked aside and spat on the ground. "The vampires, pathetic creatures. Everything they do is to avoid responsibility, avoid actual effort and labor, which is why so many of them lack proper supplementary skills, such as awareness, or memorization, or multitasking. They don't need to worry about their bodies; it will just be regenerated, restored to its original state, or the state imprinted upon them by their initial progenitor. I can barely consider them Pathbearers at all in that regard. No proper Pathbearer avoids struggle, avoids learning the nuances of their magic in and out."

"You take Biomancy pretty damn seriously, don't you?" Shiv asked.

"I take all magics extremely seriously," Helix said. "In this life, I have dedicated myself to Biomancy. In the next, perhaps there will be something else."

"You always say that shit," Bonk cried out. He waved his massive club through the air. "And every single time you go back to Biomancy."

"Because it's useful," Helix snarled. He pointed a finger at Bonk. "Because my Biomancy allows me—"

"Yes, yes," Bonk interrupted him. "Look, I get it. You don't need to give me the speech again. Now, can you finish torturing the living shit out of the Insul using the Court Leviathan, so the rest of us can get a chance to fuck with him?"

"I am not fucking with him!" Helix's voice rose an octave. "I am instructing him on the fundamental nuances and the finer bits of a proper mage!"

Bonk's nod was as slow as it was sarcastic. He looked to Shiv. "Hey, listen, Insul. Later, when we're hitting you, that's just because we want to hit you. You can fight back. In fact, we prefer it if you fight back. But, uh, I'm not going to give you this woo-woo bullshit about us training you to be a better warrior. I use this club because I like hitting people with it. And, considering that you don't die, well shit, I think I want to get some Physicality levels out of this."

And despite his best efforts, Shiv knew he was going to get along a little too well with Bonk. "You may get a few Toughness levels out of it as well," Shiv said. The orc grinned savagely at that. "And all the more reason for me to get a new Skill Evolution. For Biomancy, it'll help me fix up your wounds afterward, or so I hope."

"Don't worry," Helix said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It won't remove your absurd little Woundeaters. That capability will still be there."

"But I don't think I'm going to be needing that," Bonk said, as he winked at Shiv. "I heal pretty quick."

"How quick?" Shiv asked. His curiosity was piqued, and his hands were clenching and unclenching in anticipation of a now certain brawl.

"I think you should find out later for yourself," Bonk said, a taunt in his voice.

"Bonk," another orc cut in. "Before someone distracts him again, I think that us Heroes and the Insul here should have a proper meeting and go over what we expect of each other—and other potential topics.”

Shiv turned and saw a large orc standing on what looked to be an origami bird. The orc wore black scholarly robes, and he had one of those graduate hats on him. Weirdest of all, he was holding what looked like a large, golden egg under his arm.

"We're always going to have time for that, Bookworm," Bonk called out. "Besides, the Insul told us earlier about how the gate lord intends to give us a briefing. How about we wait for that and do everything all at once?"

"That seems terribly inefficient," Bookworm said. "Besides, the Insul is but one person, and certain orcs," Bookworm lifted his nose at Helix, who barely regarded him with a faint harrumph in return, "are colonizing all his attention. While some of us are going to be more useful for the Insul, others will simply waste his time with meandering things and pointless trivialities. Besides, the Insul barely understands his own greatest Magical Skill. What do you think you're going to get from him in terms of theory or strategy?"

"Hey," Shiv said, slightly offended.

Helix narrowed his eyes. "Oh? You have something to say? But please, Insul, do tell him. What can you offer in terms of theory and strategy? What scholarly topics are you truly versed with? For me, what formations will be most conducive to our efforts in battle when we finally take the field? I understand we'll be fighting on the surface, yet where? What's the terrain? What do you know about the airspace? What does the meteorology imply about the weather? Who are the critical enemy commanders our shadows, assassins, and thieves are to dispatch?"

With every sentence, Shiv's mouth closed tighter and tighter. “I… I can figure some of that out.”

Helix let out a sigh. "Do you see, Bookworm? We face one problem after another. We must resolve one limitation after another. He is untrained, ignorant. His attention is broken and stuttering. His focus is questionable and easily parted."

"And your Toughness needs work, too," Shiv reminded. “Not the only one with flaws.”

Helix coughed as the fear-chain between him and Shiv thickened. "But he has no bad habits, and he is perfectly moldable, like clay. And mentally—”

"I'd prefer a sculpture," Shiv corrected again, "because clay indicates that you're going to shape me however you want. You can kill that thought if you think you're going to change me into an orc."

"You're already kind of like an orc," Bonk commented from the side. "That's the reason the challenger decided to do this with you. You must be blinder than Helix thinks if you're missing that."

"I’m not," Shiv said, slightly annoyed.

"Regardless," Helix continued, "this is the perfect opportunity for us to build him up, and for him to be as optimally built and evolved as possible when he leads us into the next pit of chaos that finds him. That way we can all benefit."

Shiv narrowed his eyes at Helix, and finally, he realized something else. The orcs weren't just training him because he amused them, because they were so interested in seeing him grow. No, there was an ulterior motive as well. They were all trying to become system-favored.

All the orcs around him let out laughs, and glowing chunks of mithril exchanged hands once more. And he finally noticed as Mortar threw up his hands. "By the Challenger's infinite wisdom, he's not blind or stupid, he's just incredibly slow."

Shiv looked between Helix, Bonk, and Bookworm, and finally he understood why they were all trying to occupy his attention. He then noticed all the other orcs as well. Their interested stares, their unwavering smiles. Yeah, the heroes and the masters aboard the Court Leviathan weren't just here to join in a fun war. No, they knew he was system-favored beyond favored, and they wanted some of that favor as well.

"Think about the bright side," Whisper said as he suddenly appeared beside Shiv. He placed a warm arm around the deathless' shoulder. "If we are all powerful, if we are all advancing at least at half the pace you are, consider what an effective army we'll be."

Shiv thought about that. He thought about a few hundred hyper-powerful orcs, and then he thought about them being right next to the Gate. 

"Ah shit," Shiv thought. "This is..." He wanted to say it wasn't good, but they were going to need to siege Blackedge soon. And Vicar Sullain was a terrifyingly powerful adversary. A few hundred of him? Yeah, that might be enough to do some serious damage to the Vicar's army. More importantly, with what they had now, maybe it was already enough to utterly overwhelm and destroy the Inquisition. "Adam said they only had a hundred thousand troops," Shiv recalled, "and right now he had just under three million orcs." And that number could probably grow if he just killed some more people.

"Now," Helix said, snapping his fingers in front of Shiv's face. The Deathless blinked. "Are you ready to try one more time?"

Shiv regarded his Woundeater level, and he clenched his teeth. "Yeah, let's see if I can get over that limit."

And that brought a wide smile to the orc Biomancer's face. "Good human."

Once more, the Court Leviathan swallowed him. This time, Shiv felt its mana splash against his own immediately. His field still felt tender, barely recovered from the last time. That was the point, though. He was one of the few people in existence that could be strained repeatedly, have his field broken time and time again, and continue. It was a mixture of his constantly regenerating cognition and the benefits provided by his deathless path.

Shiv rolled his neck as he pressed his Biomantic field out. This time, instead of waiting, he intercepted. As particulates of red mana splashed against his, he briefly let his outer field soften before he clenched it tight again. The mana shrapnel got stuck within him. The Court Leviathan's particulates were in his grasp once more. 

The orcs began to bombard him with spells then. He held against them but used only a fraction of his focus. He ignored the pain as they ripped his field open once more, tearing it where his previous wounds had barely come back together.

While they did that though, Shiv decided to prepare a surprise of his own. As the orcs lashed at him, he pieced the Court Leviathan's mana together, assembling its particulates into something the size of a pebble. He couldn't crush them, they were too solid for that, but he could move them, and he moved them together. 

And as one of the orcs launched their field against his, he pushed the pebble of mana out beyond the exterior of his field in the direction which the orc's spell came. It crashed against his field, and the orc's spell did Shiv's desired work for him. It shattered the pebble into motes of mana, and the leviathan let out a shriek. Its body trembled, it twisted from side to side, and the deathless laughed as the orcs were briefly stunned.

Deception 18 > 20

From above, he heard a muffled cry. "Oh! Trickery! Deception! Well done, Shiv!" For the first time Shiv could recall, Helix was genuinely and truly proud. The other Biomancers laughed as well. Of course, a moment after, they began striking at him again, and they tore at him with a renewed vigor.

He heard Helix command the other orcs to redouble their efforts. "Rip at his being! Rip his field apart! Pull it asunder! Let the Court Leviathan flow all the way and settle deep. We want him to be changed this time. We need another monster of Biomancy in our midst! We need him ripe and strong for what is to come!”

And the orcs began to strike at him in ways they never did before. Their Biomancy did not come from multiple directions. Instead, they pulled together, becoming enormous constructs of deepest red. These constructs were unleashed upon him like falling bombs. They washed over him in a confluence of mana, a confluence that sheared through his like a wilting wind. His external layer was swept clean by brutally dense concentrations of mana. Then came the subtle. They splashed against his damaged field as salt would affect an open wound.

Shiv let out a hiss. The pain he felt here was unique and novel. It was a pain he was unfamiliar with, but even so he welcomed it. He relished in it. He learned from it. Shiv felt his Woundeater level just then as he fought back. He tried to push the orcs away, but their overwhelming barrage crashed through him utterly. Devastated him. And that was when he understood why Helix held back his power until now.

And speaking of Helix, the orc's mana speared into him. Helix's mana was unlike all the other orcs'. It was subtler, yet it hardened at the final moment. It formed into a solid shape once it had already pierced deep into Shiv. It struck so suddenly he barely reacted, and it spread all the way through. It, too, like his bloodied wings earlier, resembled that of his namesake, the Helix. But rather than being a concentration of crimson energy, it expanded through Shiv, twisting in multiple directions, weaving itself and cleaving his very magic in twain. Helix unzipped Shiv's magic utterly.

His field came apart in spewing motes of brilliant red. The Court Leviathan sank into him thereafter, infesting him like an infection. And then all the other orcs hammered him as well. They fed diseases into his bones. They accelerated his metabolism. They unleashed chaos upon every organ, every function sustained by his biology. 

His age accelerated forward. He grew old, and his Plaguefueled, already exposed to such an ailment, swallowed it immediately. His body grew larger, so big that his cage of bone and flesh couldn't encompass him anymore. But he pushed out, and the Court Leviathan accommodated, expanding so that it wouldn't suffer his sudden increase in size.

At the same time, Helix did something to Shiv, something so subtle that the Deathless didn't feel it at first. But he kept his focus on his body, for he knew his mana had already been compromised. Death was coming. The question was, what aspect of biology would kill him first? And the answer, once more, was the blood code, his genes. They betrayed him from within, as a rapid onset of tumors and a cascade of other diseases swept through him. His Plaguefueld ate the diseases, and it leveled as well.

Plaguefueled 74 > 75

But his genes collapsed, his bloody body began to melt, his bones, his skin peeled away, falling like a carpet. A carpet that came to life a moment thereafter, as it was promptly assimilated into the Court Leviathan itself.

And it was in that chaos, as Shiv was dying, that he felt a hit of inspiration wash through him. He felt connected to the Court Leviathan on a whole other level. And just then, he froze time. He held this instant so he could better understand what was happening to himself, to his utterly shredded mana field. 

As he saw a chain of mana motes fusing together, he noticed how fine the grains between them were. It was almost as if a stream of dust pouring into his body. But the stream was twisting through him, solidifying within him in ways he saw, he perceived. He turned his gaze away from physical reality and studied the magic, felt the magic, only the magic.

The sediment wasn't sediment at all. No, it was countless small spell patterns. They were so fine, yet he noticed the shapes at their center. They resembled his crystallized wounds somewhat, but they were minute, barely a little more than dots. Each one was a spell or a micro-spell, and each one was connected to another along some glowing mana-grains. 

The particulates he held in himself earlier were also made up of these small spells, and he realized he was looking at it wrong. It was not just particulates, not just something he could move around. Helix hadn't been fully transparent when describing the Court Leviathan's magic.

No, the Court Leviathan's Biomancy was like a body unto itself. It was a simulated biosystem shaped from magic. Every spell might have been a representation or signal of blood, sinews, and more, and it was connecting to Shiv, spreading through him.

Awareness 27 > 29

Practical Metabiology 41 > 42

And there, at the point where it was bleeding into his body, he noticed there were other micro-spells. Spells that were only halfway lit, with the color of Biomancy. And that was when Shiv realized what he was looking at again. This was what Helix described as the potential mana, the mana that hadn't been used yet. 

Yet, it was always there, but it needed to be colored, colored by him. He was joining the network, joining the great cloud, and so it was shaping him using its spells. He was becoming a spell unto himself, and that was how it wielded him. That was how it changed him. That was how it intruded into his mana field in the first place.

Cracks spread across his temporal shell, but Shiv just laughed. It was beautiful.

Magic is felling awesome, Shiv thought to himself. And just then, he let everything go. He let time resume, and he let the Court Leviathan swallow him. Death came, and with it, notifications. More than anything, Shiv received an epiphany, not just about Biomancy, but magic itself. Magic was symbology. 

Magic was lore. 

It was the representation of existence reinterpreted.

And now, he was—

Woundeater 99 > 104 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Awareness 29 > 33

Multi-Tasking 15 > 18

Plaguefueled 75 > 76

Skill Evolution: Woundeater (Master) > Aegis of Assimilation (Heroic)