III-45 Helix

—Confidential—

[Ambient Mana Recognized — Incoming Message from Master-Advisor Oldsmith]

"Dearest Inquisitor Sijik, I must, fortunately, inform you that I will not be coming down to Fortress-City Diego. Additionally, I want you to heed these following words and understand that they represent the bottom-most desire of my inner machinery. My core turns with anticipation as I pen this script. So read this text, and read it well.

When you were born, I suspect that your mother passed you out from her ass, rather than the ruined rotting folds she called a vagina, and in doing so misplaced the actual child she was meant to birth with a piece of shit that somehow got confused enough to attain sapience. 

This piece of shit I speak of is you, Inquisitor Sijik. Just so you’re unclear. Because I suspect some of that shit is still lodged in the brown matter in your head.

I loathe you from my copper wires to the gleaming metal that composes my outer alloy. I would tell you to suck my waist coagulant, except I fear that is too good for you. Except I fear that may cleanse you and make you a better piece of shit.

Furthermore, I would request that you resolve yourself posthaste, using the nearest means possible. Be that the pen in your hand, or a quick spell you might be able to shape. Yet, I fear that your death will bring you to a paradise you most definitely do not deserve. As such, I would ask that you simply atrophy eternally and never perish, so as to avoid offending any gods with your presence.

And should there be no gods? Should the afterworld resemble the vast expanse of black and gray as described by the Tarantian skeptics? I would ask that you sink deeper into that bleakness and never trouble us again.

To encourage you, I have decided to betray the Republic and offer my services and certain Animancy core directly to the esteemed Vicar Sullain. In fact, I will be moving to aid Vicar Sullain in conquering Blackedge and destroying Starhawk's Perch as fast and thoroughly as I can. Afterward, I intend to form a demonic ritual to give every nobleman and Inquisitor a fast-acting venereal disease.

Enjoy your cock rot, Inquisitor Sijik.

Yours truly, Master-Advisor Oldsmith."

-Spell-Sealed Sync-Letter Between “Master-Advisor Oldsmith” and Inquisitor Sijik

III-45

Helix

It was less than a minute after Adam, Uva, and the others left to reinforce the gate against the orcs and help Shiv move his Court Leviathan over that an orc Hero greeted him in person. 

The Hero rose from among the other orcs on glistening red wings, wings made from chains of flowing blood. Yet the chains were shaped in a peculiar way. They spun around each other, bending like two coiling strings, and between them, horizontal supports connected each string to another.

The wings were too consistently shaped for the design to be random, and as Shiv gazed upon the orc, he let out a gasp as he noticed just how powerful the orc's Biomancy was. The field projected from the orc stretched further than almost any other Biomancer Shiv had faced. Devon Fall's flesh might have rivaled this orc, as might have the composer's. Yet the orc's field was dense. It was the coloring of a membrane rather than the faintness of a clear pond.

More importantly was how the orc's body glistened with dense mana. Every part of him was infused with Biomancy, and the coat he wore, long and flowing, was no exception. However, Shiv also noticed strange creatures crawling along his coat. They resembled worms, centipedes, and spiders all at the same time, and they wove new strands across the orc's body. Strands that also resembled the shape of the orc's bloodied wings.

What was that shape? Shiv thought to himself. And then it came to him. He remembered seeing it in a geometry textbook from years prior. A helix.

Skill Gained: Memorization 1 (Common)

As the orc descended, Shiv looked upon the gray-skinned brute and noted that this orc was devoid of any scars. In fact, his skin was smooth. His eyes were also a bright green rather than the typical yellow. 

His teeth were aberrant for an orc as well. Several fangs resembled the wedge shape of a herbivore, only slightly tipped at the middle. And then there were the spectacles that the orc wore. Shiv guessed that the spectacles were likely a purely aesthetic choice, since path-bearers could overcome issues such as nearsightedness by visiting a Biomancer or elevating their awareness skill.

As the orc touched down before Shiv, their wings reeled back into their body and vanished entirely. Their inner Biomancy field glowed brighter, and Shiv felt the sheer power emanating free from the orc. 

Even with all the fear flowing into his flesh and spirit, Shiv knew his Biomancy could not match this orc's. Not even close. At once, a shudder of excitement passed through the deathless. He called for Heroes to approach him, for Biomancers to sort themselves out, and now a Heroic-tier Biomancer came seeking him immediately.

"I have a complaint to lodge," the orc proclaimed.

Nearby, Mortar shook his head and let out a quiet guffaw. "Oh, Helix, of course you're here. Can't miss an opportunity to start a new experiment, can you?"

The spectacle-wearing orc Biomancer didn't even regard Mortar.

"What kind of complaint?" Shiv said, interested in where this conversation was about to go.

"The complaint has to do with clarity, or the lack thereof." Helix eyed Shiv with slight disdain. "You asked the Heroes to sort themselves from the masses, and then you demanded the Biomancers place themselves somewhere else. Did you think about what a Heroic-Tier Biomancer would do?"

"I'd assume that your title would mean more than your skill."

The orc simply chuckled, but there was no genuine joy in it. It was the laugh one gave when they were speaking to a particularly simple child. "You assume? By the Challenger's whims, Insul. If you assume, I can only shudder to imagine the state of yourPractical Metabiology."

"You don't need to imagine," Shiv said. A thin smirk spread across his face. "It's thirty eight."

The bespectacled orc let out a groan of genuine pain. "Thirty eight? But your Biomancy is..." The orc narrowed his eyes. "So they weren't lying about you being Deathless. Let me theorize. You were incredibly reckless, killed yourself and other people multiple times, ruptured and ruined your flesh. And now you what? Use your bones as armor because they have adopted your Toughness. Is that adamantine, I see? Hmm… variable structure, dynamic as well. That's Adamantine Adaption." The orc did a double take. "Why do you have Adamantine Adaption?"

And that never got old for Shiv. "Well, you can thank 811 for that."

"You're going to have to be more specific," Helix said. "There are a great many 811s." But then the orc frowned. "However, I suspect I know which one. Joyful fellow, always watching. Aeromancy and a form of Geomancy turns his flesh into crystalline rock to enhance his physical blows."

Shiv was surprised. "You know him?"

"I know a great many other orcs. I'm almost a thousand reincarnations. Quite a few cycles, I suppose."

"One thousand reincarnations, but a few centuries of life in every one," Tequila said. He suddenly blinked into existence beside Helix, wrapping an arm around the orc Biomancer. Helix regarded Tequila with disdain, but did nothing to push the other orc away. "This one here," Tequila continued, "is well over a hundred thousand years old."

Shiv blinked. “What.”

"He exaggerates," Helix sniffled. "Perhaps not by much, but he exaggerates. Yes, I let my lives last, but it's purely for the accumulation of knowledge and to deepen my learning. I do not fear death. I merely think that it gets in the way of the proper work, of the true path, the highest path of dominance."

"Oh, here he goes again," Mortar let out a grumble.

"And here I go always," Helix said, his head snapping toward Mortar. "You are a fool if you think that we can only win by raw brute force alone." Helix closed his fist, and suddenly his flesh rippled. Blood danced past skin and settled again, but Shiv watched as Helix's skin, muscles, bones, and more shifted. It went from an orc's hand to something lighter, something slight, something soft of flesh, like that of a newborn human. And then it became insectoid, chitinous, and layered in a pitch-black exoskeleton. At the end, a river of hair broke over, and his hand became a hoof.

Finally, it settled back into being merely an orcish hand, but Shiv used that moment to glimpse inside Helix's biology, and he felt himself tense. There were no organs inside the orc. Well, none that he could feel. There was no heart, no lungs. Shiv paused. He noticed a cloud of substance dancing inside the orc, guided by his Biomancy. And just then it occurred to Shiv that the orc lacked any Magical Resistance whatsoever.

This orc was the purest mage he had ever faced.

And as he gawked at Helix's strange interior, the orc Biomancer began a lengthy diatribe, aimed at Mortar. "You think we're going to bomb everyone into submission? Is that it? You think that we're going to prevail by hammering people, attacking them over and over again in the most brutal, senseless, stupidly direct fashion?"

"It's worked," Mortar said. "And I'm not direct. I'm distant and I—”

"Yes, yes, you use the right ammunition for the job. You prepare adequately. You load, set ammunition into your mortar, and then you fire it over and over again. You use your pyromancy and your mathematics skills to triangulate your bombardments," the Orc Biomancer listed what Mortar might say, one after another. "But this is only a limited form of dominance. You imagine destroying existence. Well, I don't want that."

"You don't?" Mortar replied with a sardonic growl. "Why don't you? Why, I despise you, Exos."

"You, and—" Helix cut him off with a wave. Mortar's mouth vanished, and Whisper let out a chuckle.

"Oh, poor foolish Mortar," Whisper said, shaking his head, "always picking fights with a dangerous threat. Your fearlessness is why you don't reach Hero so often, Mortar." And now the large artillerist orc was glaring at his stealthy robed companion.

"What the hell's an Exo?" Shiv asked.

"An Exo-Assimilant," Helix proclaimed. "I am of such a Clique."

"Yeah, I heard about that," Shiv said. "I know you orcs have your own internal factions and stuff, but still, what the hell does that mean?"

"It means," Helix continued, "that I yearn for eternal domination, that I wish to subjugate, elevate, and dominate our enemies time and time again. And I wish to do so in ways more than merely the physical, merely the brutal." As if that was ever enough, he aimed another glare at Mortar, and then he looked back to Shiv. "Death," he began, "is merely a great unconsciousness for many. It ends. It allows them to escape from knowledge, escape from responsibility, and I despise that. They must be taught the fullness of their weakness.”

Shiv was taken aback by the orc's vehemence.

"I despise the fact that our enemies are allowed to die, that they're allowed to escape this cycle, this struggle, while we return. My great foes have been robbed from me, perishing from other battles. And one even had the audacity to pass from old age." Helix laughed bitterly. "Old age! Senescence of all things, as if she didn't have a choice to elevate her Physicality or to seek out a Biomancer. By the Challenger's whims she could have sought me out. I would have preserved her, if only to show them her rightful place in existence."

"And where's that?" Shiv asked.

Helix answered by grinding his heel against the face of a human corpse.

Shiv snorted. "You're kind of a prick, aren't you, Helix?"

"I," Helix said, leaning closer, "am properly cultured, unlike certain other orcs from inferior cliques. No, they just want to bomb you or kill you or torture you. It is not enough. You must know where you stand in the order of things. That you are not true strugglers, not of war, not of skill, and not of magical discovery."

"And that's you, huh?" Shiv looked Helix up and down, surprised by everything the orc said. But after he had a few seconds to digest it, it wasn't that shocking. Orcs wanted to dominate, to hurt. And there were many ways to dominate and hurt. They might need to kill a few people for them to heal faster, for them to feed and reduce the feeling of the itch. But that didn't mean they only had to do that physically, that it would only be expressed through raw, unchecked brutality. 

No. Helix was a brute of intellect, a brute of magic. And now he sought to proclaim himself before Shiv.

The Deathless offered the orc a slight nod. And he noted how there was a thread leading between him and Helix. Despite everything, the orc was on some level afraid of him. But the thread was just that. A thread. It wasn't a chain as thick as that which ran between Shiv and Adam. It wasn't a tether like what allowed Shiv to yank upon most orcs. No. Helix was joined to the Deathless by a thread. And that thread was, fitting the orc's namesake, also a helix.

"Alright," Shiv said. "I get it now. So, aside from complaining about my lack of clarity and telling me about how great your philosophy is, you got any other reason why you were in such a hurry to meet me?"

"Several. I wish to see your Court Leviathan," Helix declared. "It has been some time since I had access to such a creature, and it would serve my studies well."

"Yeah, hold on there for a second," Shiv said. He placed a single finger against Helix's chest. The orc's eyes cut downward and narrowed. "That's my Court Leviathan. Her name's Courtney. You don’t do anything with her unless I give you the say so.”

Helix's expression dropped to one of utter disbelief. "You named the Court Leviathan?”

"Yeah," Shiv said. "And we're also going to be eating it."

"We're what?" Helix sputtered. He looked at the other orcs. 

Whisper simply laughed. "He's going to show you a few interesting things in a moment, oh Helix."

The orc Biomancer frowned, but he raised no further protest. "Aside from the Court Leviathan, I wanted to get your measure properly. I felt that you were a Biomancer, but there was something odd with your mana. Something off with your magical field. And now I understand why. You have no practical meta-biology to support you. Not even Adept-Tier Evolution. Such a thing is shameful." Shiv just rolled his eyes. "And you are indignant to your incompetence. Your Deathless capability has rendered you—"

"Yeah, no," Shiv cut him off, annoyance finally winning. "That's not what happened. What happened with me was that I never got the chance to learn anything. Because the people I grew up around thought I was going to be a monster. And so they did everything they could to stop me from becoming a path bearer."

Helix took a moment and thought about what Shiv just said. And for the first time, the orc Biomancer let out a laugh. "They thought you were a monster. That you were going to turn into something terrible. And they tried to slow your growth. Is that it?"

"They stopped it for a good long while entirely," Shiv replied. "Look, I'm going to state it plainly. Aside from cooking and a few other skills, I'm very blunt force trauma, not that technical."

The orc narrowed his eyes at Shiv. And a sense of unease entered Helix's posture. The chain of fear between them thickened, and Shiv laughed as both his Psychology and Shape of Monstrosity leveled.

Shape of Monstrosity 102 > 103

Psychology 13 > 14

"It is a dangerous thing to admit that to an orc," Helix said.

Shiv simply shook his head. "You gotta ask yourself why I'm willing to admit that. Why I'm not that scared at all. And that's because of the Deathless part. And it's also because you're going to figure it out soon anyway. So I got no taste in wasting any fucking time. I called all the Biomancers out because I wanted to start learning properly. I had another instructor, you see. But they're a little bit far away, and I almost never get any time to read or practice the technical aspects of my Biomancy."

"Ah, so you are recruiting instructors." The orc nodded vigorously. His expression shifted from disdain to begrudging acceptance. "This is good. This is good. I would have despised answering to a pure brute." The orc Biomancer's eyes flicked over at Mortar for a moment. "The fact that you are willing and actively seeking means to make up for your atrophied education is proper.”

"What, you were planning to personally tutor me?" Shiv folded his arms and looked Helix up and down. "I mean, you're pretty powerful, but—"

"But nothing," Helix said, cutting Shiv off. He looked over his shoulder, staring at the other orcs. A small group was marching toward the mountain, while others began to shift and rearrange themselves. 

Shiv's jaw dropped slightly. He expected some kind of chaotic clamor to break out among the gray-skinned brutes. Some kind of delay or chaos he needed to handle. No. After he dispatched his orders, the orcs responded in an orderly and hyper-disciplined fashion. None of them fell upon each other in a frenzy of violence. None of them complained or tried to incite a rebellion. None of them attempted an assassination. In fact, they were even chattering in a borderline polite manner, their voices more sussurrations than loud murmurs of noise.

"There are no orcs capable of matching my knowledge, my experience, and my insight into Biomancy. And I will not be led by an Insul ignorant to the true promise of his strongest Magical Skill."

"You know what? I can accept that. Saves me the time of wrangling a group of Biomancers and trying to figure out if they're planning to assassinate me or not."

"Yes, about that," Helix adjusted his spectacles. "How does your deathlessness work? Because I know it does work. But are there limitations or issues?"

Shiv pressed his lips together. "Yeah, nice try."

The orc rolled his eyes. "Oh, come now, boy. We're going to find out sooner or later. One or the both of us will die at some point. And the other will eventually learn. You especially are fighting alongside all these orcs. You think we don't speak?"

Shiv considered that and he decided to offer Helix a partial truth. A little bit of detail and not the whole picture. "Vitality."

Helix blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Vitality. If I die, I'll drain it and then I'll come back."

"Oh, is that all? And specifically your killer's vitality or..."

"No, any vitality will do."

"Then be specific," Helix spat. "Why are you so vague, so general? We need to cure that in you."

"Cure what?"

"If you're going to be a good Biomancer and eventually a good blood coder for that matter. You're going to need to be specific. The demons are in the details. The small, little details. Smaller than the cells themselves. Indeed, if you were meticulous, you would have noticed that you are dying right now."

Shiv stared at Helix. "What the hell do you mean?"

"I gave you cancer."

"What?" Shiv said.

"I have given you cancer," Helix repeated slightly louder. "There's nothing wrong with your hearing, is there?"

"No," Shiv replied. "When did you..." Then as he turned his Biomancy inward, he felt a spreading patch of tissue inside of him. Inside his...

"Yes, it's inside your blood," Helix said, frowning. "How low is your Awareness? It must be below Adept as well." Helix sighed. "This will not do. This will not do at all. We're going to need to coordinate your skill developments. Both your practical metabiology and your awareness need to evolve at the same time. Hopefully that will give you the Mystical Cell Skill Evolution."

Shiv felt more of the cancer spread through him. And the first hints of weakness traveled through his body as well. His jaw fell open. He considered punching Helix in the face, but the orc simply carried on.

"Now, the first thing about cancer is that practically everything should develop cancer. So you need to learn how to get good at treating cancer. Now, do you know how to clear this out of your blood?"

"If I did, I would have already ripped it out of myself and thrown it at you," Shiv said, barely keeping his agitation in check. His Woundeater flared around his arm, and Helix placed the back of his hand against his forehead as he nearly fell back.

"Is that a Woundeater? Is that your Master-Tier Skill Evolution? By the Challenger's whim! He's broken. He's broken beyond belief."

Shiv looked down at his wound-eater and frowned. "What's wrong with my Woundeater?"

"The question is how you managed to get the wound-eater in the first place. You clearly didn't evolve your Biomancy through any rational or well-studied means."

"So I was trying to heal two people, all right?" Shiv said, a little heat entering his voice. "I tried to close their wounds or pull their injuries out of them."

Once again, Helix nearly collapsed dramatically and Tequila held him up. "Pull... pull the wounds. He's treating it. He's treating the body like an arts and crafts project."

Elsewhere, Shiv could hear orcs laughing. He glared down from the mountaintop, and he saw Biomancy fields spreading out from them as well. The deathless gritted his teeth. This goddamn orc was embarrassing him in front of the other Biomancers.

"Listen—" Shiv growled.

"No, you listen first," Helix said. "I need to evolve you. I need to save you from the folly of your own actions and woeful experiences.”

And just then, another orc arrived. He stomped up the mountainside and Shiv noticed how large he was. Even after being made over three meters tall by a plague field, this orc was still twice Shiv's height and weight. His body was uncovered aside from a loincloth, and he held what looked to be a colossal tree branch as a club.

"Insul," the orc said with a dull mutter, "I am Bonk, reincarnation 1001. I… I no think good.”

"Bonk," Helix turned around and let out an exasperated sigh, "I'm in the middle of something right now."

"He needs to be saved." Bonk blinked. "Hey, Helix, what do you need to be saved from?"

"And knock it off. He's not stupid." Helix gave Shiv a desperate look. "He's just undereducated. You can play your games with someone else."

Bonk sulked. "Damn it, Helix. I saw his face. He almost bought into it. I could have convinced him that I was mentally challenged."

"And what would that do, Bonk? What would that do? What is the point of such a thing.”

"It would have been funny when I solved an incredibly complicated problem or said something incredibly intellectually astute, but then went back to pretending to be mentally challenged," Bonk chuckled.

“Classic Bonk,” Tequila sighed.

Shiv let out a breath as he processed everything the orc just said. "Man, Adam is going to hate you people."

Speaking of which, immediately Shiv pulled on the cord between him and Helix. The orc Biomancer gasped as Shiv clutched his head. He drew Helix in close, froze time, took Helix's glasses off, and put them on his own face. When he finished that, he stood behind Helix and let time resume. The orc Biomancer nearly fell over, but Shiv reached out and caught him again.

"So," Shiv said, his voice loud and authoritative. "You're not that fast, Helix. Not really good reflexes. You felt kind of soft, so I don't think you had much toughness. I'm guessing you're not a frontliner orc."

Helix slowly turned, and Shiv pulled the spectacles off and handed them back to the orc. Helix blinked and put the spectacles back on.

"I'm going to state this very plainly," Shiv said. "If you give Adam cancer, or if you give Uva cancer, or if you hurt anyone on the gate... If you hurt anyone in the gate," he pointed through the gateway, "I'm going to do things to you that will make you wish you were Band. I'm going to find your Biomancy skill, and I'm going to crack it. I'm going to break it for good, and then I'm not going to kill you at all. And then I'm going to go for your Practical Metabiology, and I will break that too. And that's it. That's all I'll do. Now, if you commit suicide and reincarnate with a fresh soul, or however that works, I will find you again, and I will break your two most valuable skills. Do you understand? You will always be a partially crippled orc. Intellectually crippled. Magically crippled. Crippled in every way you care about. You will never be able to exert your desired dominance on fucking anyone. Do you understand me?"

With each exchange, and with each sentence spat, Shiv leaned against Helix harder and harder, while the fear cord between them grew thicker and thicker. And finally, by the end, the orc Biomancer just nodded. "That is most understandable. And I am not interested in the whoever you just mentioned either. It's you. You are the Insul. They are trivial. Are either of them Biomancers?"

"No," Shiv growled. "And so long as you're here, they won't be."

Just then, a pulse of dimensionality swelled out from the gateway. It rose into the air, and with a clap of pressure, the Court Leviathan emerged. It spread its massive tentacles out, swishing them through the sky. Its kilometers-long body was shrouded by a backdrop of raw, red, rash-stained clouds. And the massive creature held a cave-biter in its hand, waving it around.

Adam briefly popped his head through the gateway. 

"Adam, get the fuck back inside!" Shiv snapped.

Adam eyed the orcs, looked at Shiv, and retreated. The chains between him and Shiv grew even thicker.

“Godsdamnit,” Shiv sighed. “I was too rough.”

Helix turned, but before he could get a good look at Adam, Shiv caught the orc by his head. "I want you to understand something, Helix," Shiv continued. "If you think that he's going to be my weakness, I want you to look at this another way. If you hurt him, or if you hurt Uva, or if you hurt anyone I decide I care about, I am going to devote my time to rendering you a mentally challenged orc. Like the kind of orc Bonk here was pretending to be. Literally. Is that understood between us? They are not people you can threaten. They are people that, if you so much as approach, I will torture you endlessly. I will go beyond what your notions montrousness. I will have the other orcs begging me to stop"

And as Shiv finished his violent, angry rant, both Mortar and Whisper began to clap. The absurdity of the moment nearly made Shiv let out a chuckle.

"Well," Helix said, taking a step away from Shiv. He adjusted his coat, and one of the small creatures that constantly stitched new lines of silk poked its head out and stared at the Deathless before retreating under a few of the strands. "That was... yes. You wish to be as thorough and as specific as that," Helix said, nodding vigorously.

Shiv noticed that the cord between him and the Heroic-Tier orc Biomancer was now as thick as a rope. "Not quite a strand anymore," Shiv thought. "Fine. Now let's get back to the part where you were talking about my Woundeater. What's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong with it is that it's a limited skill, used to transplant injuries, organ deformations, and whatnot. It's potent, I suppose, for someone who's using it as a brute force instrument, but you can do better. In fact," the orc pointed up at the Court Leviathan, "we have direct means of progression for you."

Shiv stared at the Court Leviathan. "What, you mean the regeneration?"

The orc Biomancer let out a scoff of disappointment. "That's not what it’s doing. What it's doing is assimilation. The regeneration is merely one of many capabilities it has inhabiting its body. It can also shift its flesh and grow new organisms. And it can assume the qualities of those organisms. Don't tell me you didn't examine its mana core."

Shiv frowned at the orc. "I didn't really have time."

"Well, now you bloody do. Wait, how far are you away from your next evolutionary threshold?"

Shiv looked at his status. "I'm 90 with my Woundeater, so... ten levels."

"Ten levels," the orc said. "And no Practical Metabiology advancement." He let out a hiss of displeasure. "We might need to force your Biomancy first. You're capable of having monster skills, so why not give you a better one? Instead of just taking wounds, we let you learn how to integrate flesh. It will save you the misery of more cancer, and it will save me the misery of watching you constantly drop dead from cancer. You can just draw that into yourself… Yes… It will require significant strain.”

And just then, Shiv felt the first surges of weakness wash through his body. "Yeah, about that," Shiv groaned. "Can you take the cancer out of me?"

"No! We're going to have you try removing it from yourself. It should be good for your Practical Metabiology, even if you fail."

"You know if I die," Shiv said, "I'm going to be draining your vitality, right?"

"Yes, yes. Just remember not to kill me, for I am the only one who can—"

"Yeah, listen, you already sold yourself. I needed a Biomantic tutor, and here you are. Just tell me what you expect and what you want me to do for my next Skill Evolution."

"It's quite simple. The first thing we're doing," Helix turned as he stared at the horde of orc Biomancers, "is that we're boarding the Court Leviathan. We're going to get this thing working again, and we're going to be using it to its maximum potential. Second thing is we're going to have it digest you while the rest of us tear you apart over and over.”

Shiv stared. "What?"

"Yes, it will assimilate you. You should resist that.”

"Wait," Shiv said. "I've been assimilated a few times before, but how's that supposed to help?"

"By resisting!" Helix cried out. "You're going to resist the assimilation. You're going to die over and over until finally your wound-eater is going to hit a proper threshold. Now, while this is happening, I and the other orcs will constantly be attacking your mana field. It will be extremely painful, but your deaths should help you focus.”

Shiv simply shrugged. “Yeah.”

"Oh," Helix said. "You're not bothered by that.”

“Death makes me better.”

Once more, the orc gave him a rare nod of appreciation. "Fine, then this should be easier than I expected. We're going to try to get you past level 100, and then when we do, we're going to try to get you a proper evolution, rather than progressing entirely. It can be done with enough strain, with enough struggle."

"Good," Shiv breathed. He was looking forward to this. "But does it have to be done now? I need to talk to the other—"

"You're not talking to any other Heroes!" Helix let out a loud declaration as he pointed up at the Court Leviathan. A group of orcs paused behind him. "They will all eventually board the Leviathan anyway. You might as well use that as your central command center. We can carry battle groups around in that thing. The Heroes and Masters will come. They will board. They will wait for you to undergo your new Biomantic metamorphosis, and when you emerge, only then will you talk to them as a proper Biomancer.”

"So what kind of skill do you expect me to get from this anyway?" Shiv said.

Helix narrowed his eyes. "The very same skill that empowers the Court Leviathan, of course. Chimeric Assimilation."