III-21 Surface (III)

Get up, Adam. Get up. You're not done. You're not done until you beat me. And look at me. You can do it. With your team. With the people by

Get up, Adam. Get up. You're not done. You're not done until you beat me.

And look at me. You can do it. With your team. With the people by your side, you can do it. It doesn't matter that I'm a master tier. You're an adept. Look at me. Don't look away. Never look away from your enemy.

Don’t look away. I am proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of everyone in this class, but pride doesn't mean fucking shit. 

This… this is the final exam. This is your final test. I'm not going to fail you if you lose, but I think you understand this isn't about passing or failing. Because when it comes to an actual fight, dying is failing.

But maybe not. Maybe you'll sell your life dearly. Maybe you'll delay your enemy long enough for someone on your own side to arrive. Someone who's also a Master-Tier. But you won't be there to see it. You won't be the one that gets to go home. They might sing your name in a story, but that's just all you'll be. A story for someone else. A lyric in someone else's song. Something to pad the purses of bards. And be slapped on a poster for more young boys and girls like you to get recruited and killed.

Get up. Get up. And be more than a story. Make your own legend. Live to experience it.

You've got one last attempt left. One last one. Make it count. Make a plan. Make it good.

I've seen it before, you know. Ten Adepts bringing down one Master. It can be done. It can be. So show me how. Show me one Adept and Nine Initiates finding a way to do the same.

-Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy

III-21
Surface (III)

A crimson serpent emerged from within Shiv, drinking away his final wounds. It was practically half the size of his body now, and its interior glistened with crystallized injuries. Ruptured organs, flayed skin, burst vessels, and too many lacerations to count. Such were the contents stored within the Woundeater, and it would be unleashed against the next viable target, Shiv could find. 

And he had a strong feeling he would be running some viable targets very soon.

The air combusted around him, crowning him in a veil of force and fire. He sailed just a few meters above the ground, keeping his profile low, keeping his person concealed, using minor illusion, chameleon, and creeping void. He might have destroyed one observation post, but he was sure there were more, many more. And with how much noise he just made, Shiv was expecting trouble very, very soon. He looked over a series of distant rolling mountains, but he also noticed something. 

When he flew over the ground, the kinetic energy he displaced cleaved deep into the earth, revealing the bones of things that were. Sometimes there were very literal bones, a sea of bones, human from the looks of it. And then there were the husks of old machines, automatons. Shiv had just a glimpse, but this place must have been something more than a wilderness a long time ago.

As he looked over a series of rolling mountains, a mounting feeling that Shiv was heading into a storm built inside of him. And that feeling only grew as the last light of the sun faded, vanishing behind the towering shape of the distant tide wall. Night fell immediately, but before the dark came, there was a glint of color from high above. 

A glint of color that pierced through weary gray clouds. There were ten shapes approaching Shiv. They were golden, and they were moving fast. Perhaps not as fast as he, but they were closing fast enough that he could see the curving trail of force peeling around their forms. 

More importantly, he thought he could feel them through his Chronomancy.

Great. Didn’t take long for me to run into the enemy Chronomancers. No easy fights for long, huh system?

He saw four wings to each of the shapes. Two arms, two legs, long, sinuous necks, and a tail that ended in a spear-like tip. These were dragons. And for a moment, Shiv thought he was about to face ten dragon-knights. But despite the adamantium barding they wore, there was something undisciplined in their movements, animalistic. And somehow, he could instinctively tell he was facing monsters, that he was looking at beasts rather than true warriors. 

Still, ten golden dragons didn't emerge from nowhere. If he had to guess, they were deployed for him, and specifically for him. And why not? Dragons probably didn't have an issue with the Light Curse. Maybe Sullain had them captured, or struck a pact with them somehow, or twisted their minds, or—

Before he could theorize further, each dragon pulsed with brilliant, gleaming mana.

Each of the dragons pulsed. A shudder of power ran through them, and Shiv's Chronomancy trembled in return. His eyes widened. Their mana felt like it was operating on the exact same frequency as his. Then each of their bodies flared a radiant gold and were promptly coated by a shell forged from the magic of time itself.

Shiv felt an aching pull in their direction as his Chronomancy rattled inside him, begging to be unleashed.

He reflexively activated Strider of the Unbending Path. Time stopped. The world ceased its movements; the wave of destruction following him went still. But the dragons were still moving, and the dragons were coming right at him. Shiv clenched his fists and clutched his knife tighter. Not just dragons. Time dragons. The type the Recollector spoke about earlier.

Do they already know? How do they know I'm a Chronomancer? Shiv wondered. Do they already know? Or is this just—

A flash of color blinked atop one of the dragons. A jet of searing green curved from the approaching beast and came for the Deathless. It was pure instinct that saved Shiv again. He spiked himself downward, and the stream of corrosive energy lashed across the land and cleaved clean through the ground behind him. It left a gap in the world, a gap that promptly detonated upward, projecting a blade of necromantic energy high into the air. Soon the blade expanded into a sizzling screen of acid that chewed at the very fabric of the world.

Necromancy. Godsdamn it, why does everything they do involve Necro— oh right, I am fighting a rogue Necrotech outfit. Shiv grimaced, and he immediately plunged downward, drilling deep into the soil as he continued underground. 

Not only did they have a counter to his Chronomancy, they also apparently could see through his stealth skill. That shot was exactly where he was. How did they see through The Creeping Void? How did they tell? And how could they also perceive him with both his Minor Illusion and Chameleon enchantments active? What the hell?

***

"Gold-03, remain in position!" Gold-01 declared, as he recalibrated his Necro-Thrower. It would take a few seconds for the crystal to stabilize, but that shot was dead on. The Divination Matrix enchanted into his rider capsule painted the most likely path of his adversary. At the last moment, they dodged. He missed. They were damn fast. In a scant second, they went from sailing forward to drilling through the ground itself, cracking the earth asunder and vanishing beneath the soil.

Who the hell is this guy? How in the deepest hells does he have Strider of the Unbending Path too? Are you guys seeing this?

"Stay focused, Gold-03," Gold-01 declared. "Gold-02, Gold-10. Geomancy. Peel him out of the ground. Ten-kilometer de-solidification."

"Received, Gold-01," Gold-10 said. Gold-02 simply gave a grunt. They descended, plunging down toward the earth like falling spears. While the dragons glowed bright with chronomancy, the rider capsules along their back burst into animated fractals of twisting spells. Colors of rich soil came into shape as spell patterns were birthed from within the capsules. And then they rippled out, crashing over the land and alchemizing everything for approximately two kilometers.

What used to be earth turned into a rapidly evaporating slurry. It wasn't even mud. It was just liquefied dust and ash. Again and again, Gold-02 and Gold-10 channeled the spell, removing more sections from the earth and dissolving more substance. In seconds, vegetation, earth, soil, and stone faded. They continued concentrating on the spell, sweeping across the land as solid turned to gas.

And just then, Gold-01 caught sight of him. The gleam of his armor painted was shape by the rider’s Divination Matrix. Immediately, it pinpointed where he was based on the echolocation imprint they got from SC-Central earlier. Now, they had a trail—they just needed to solidify it. 

Gold-01 issued another mental command, and Gold-08, their squadron scout, sent out a pulse of her own echolocation. Once more, they pinged the target, and the Divination imprint solidified.

Gold-01 had hunted Krakens before. Krakens were creatures that took away their adversary's sight and muffled their adversary's hearing. Creeping Void was a treacherous skill to face, but ultimately it didn't stop tactile movements and sounds could still travel through it. Echoes worked. 

Absolute stealth was impossible. There were limitations to every skill and understanding how they worked was the first way, was the first part of overcoming them.

"Eyes on target," Gold-10 declared. But before Gold-10 and Gold-02 could pursue the enemy on their own, Gold-01 sent out another telepathic command. "Gold-10, Gold-02, rejoin squadron. Pursue in Kingfisher formation. Gold-04, descend. Gold-08, Gold-07, trail."

A few more acknowledgements came and Gold-01 continued watching their adversary. The enemy was painted a bright violet now. Their form glowing so bright that Gold-01 could see them even with his eyes closed. They imprinted him with divination signature. So why couldn't he shake the feeling? Why couldn't Gold-01 shake the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong? He watched as members of his squadron shot down across the land. 

Spells formed over their capsules, and their dragons let out primal roars. The first cracks spread across their temporal shells. Gold-01 prepared himself. Six seconds of halted time left. Let’s see how long you can keep time still, Pathbearer. 

***

"What kind of Geomancy bullshit is this?" Shiv growled to himself. For a few moments, he was drilling through the earth. Then the next, it practically dissolved around him, turning fluid one second and then, like a veil of dust, the next. His temporal shell was cracking. If he had to guess, he only had maybe three seconds of halted time left. 

He cast a quick glance upward and saw the dragons gliding down through the air. They were still slower than him—made even moreso by his ever-building speed. Furthermore, he moved through halted time far easier than they did. They were grinding against the temporal friction caused by their dense-shells of Chronomancy, and so he confirmed they were a tier below him in terms of Reflexes

However, their temporal shells weren't as damaged as his. That made them slightly superior Chronomancers.

Not a good matchup, Shiv realized. Even if he was so much faster than them, once his Chronomancy shattered he would basically be frozen in place, giving them however long they had to attack him. Considering how fast and far their Necromancy could hit, Shiv needed to keep moving. 

He clutched his knife tight as he came up with a desperate plan. With a loud shout, he threw his blade as far as it could go. It exploded across the distance, spearing through the base of a nearby mountain and punching clean through the stone. A puff of dust burst free but froze in the air. A crack formed but didn't develop any further. 

The damage wouldn't fully progress until time resumed.

In the same second, Shiv cast himself four seconds back in time. He jolted out of place. His armor broke apart. Only a few pieces clung to his body. But just then, he triggered his spatial anchor. And for the second time, he blinked across the world. The first was done by reverting his position back to a temporal anchor. Now, he projected himself using his knife’s spatial enchantment and materialized in a cramped space filled with jagged stone, falling soil, and creeping vines. 

He found himself holding the blade again as he finished his spatial teleportation. But to his surprise, he found his Skysplitter embedded in something, halted by a wall of metal. The blade had pierced through, but the mountain had sapped enough kinetic energy from it that it didn't tear into the reinforced hook of metal entirely. And he quickly understood why.

Shiv couldn't help but laugh as the final fragments of his temporal armor broke off of him. Time resumed. Three seconds passed as Shiv tore at what he believed to be an observation bunker.

He didn't do anything clever to find this place. He just got lucky. And judging from the muffled sounds thundering outside, the dragons might have lost track of him as well. With a final flex of force, Shiv tore into the observation post just in time to see eight skeletal armored figures turning, trying to get their crossbows, longbows, and blades up to protect themselves.

"Found you," Shiv growled. And then he spiked his Inertial Overdrive twenty times in quick succession before detonating his sheath.

Their armor crumpled first. Their flesh sprayed between the cracks. The bunker deformed and swelled like a steel balloon. As the observation post fell silent, Shiv observed the crushed bodies of the ones he just killed. They, too, wore the visages of death, but the metal of the armor seemed darker. They were definitely still organic, though, judging from the gore seeping out from them. Facing him was a firing port as well, overlooking a stretch of tumbling hills. 

There were more mountains in the distance, but Shiv wasn’t exactly sure where he was anymore. He needed to figure out his position. But more importantly, he needed to shake these dragons—or kill them.

Then, a thought came to him. I am dressed like some of these guys. Maybe… Maybe there’s something I can do with that. Maybe I can get the dragons to come to me…

***

"This is Gold-03 to Gold-01. I... we lost him. We lost him. The matrix can't find him. We're trying to recalibrate."

But Gold-01 didn't say anything. They were... Gold-01 was focusing, trying to figure out what just happened. The violet imprint of the target pulsed in and out of existence at several points, but they weren't there. And the Divination Matrix wasn't sure where he was either. Just then their temporal shell came close to shattering and Gold-01 gave his command. "Gold Primary, drop shells."

Time resumed. The wing regrouped at Gold-01's command. They rose higher into the air, trying to cover more ground, to take in more of the horizon. And Gold-07 spotted something there. Gold-07 pinged the rest of the group. They saw a massive series of cracks spreading along the sides of one of a nearby mountain just as a wave of displaced force slammed into it. 

“One of the... oh shit, I think that's where observation post 109 is,” Gold-07 called out.

Just as he finished speaking, the mountain exploded from within. In the same instant, they received a telepathic message from SC-Central. "Gold Primary, I just lost contact with 109."

Gold-01 replied to her. A bitter feeling filled his gut. Was this Heroic adversary toying with them? How did he break contact? And how did he know exactly where 109 was? Through an eruption of stone, dust, and other debris, the mangled remains of 109's observation post sailed high through the air. It looked deformed. Swollen like a bomb had gone off inside. The metal was ballooned outward and part of it was torn wide open. It 

"Great One’s missing cock!" Gold-04 cried out. "What the fuck? Target has at least Master-Tier Physicality or Geomancy."

"Physicality," Gold-01 replied. He narrowed his eyes. "If he had Geomancy, he would have tried countering our strategy earlier. Gold-03, approach and conduct divination pulse. Everyone else remain at an active distance. 500 meters! L formation. Let's pick up this bastard's trail."

Gold-03 acknowledged and flew close to keep pace, the now falling observation post. A Divination spell formed over 03’s capsule, and a pulse of violet light splashed through the deformed bunker. Nine badly crushed bodies were highlighted through the walls of the destroyed observation—

Wait… One of them is still resonating with the Divination spell. And that body isn’t crushed, it’s—

Gold-01 felt his stomach drop. "Gold-03, Gold-03, pull back! Gold, pull back! Ambush! He’s still inside!”

But it was too late. Gold-03 tried to turn and fly away. But she was too slow. 

A blur rammed into her, and her dragon went tumbling in circles through the air.

***

As Shiv impacted the Time Dragon from the side, his Biomancy sensed something interesting. He wasn't just facing a dragon. There was also a rider attached to it on its back. And the rider had Adept-Tier Pyromancy as well. He could sense their mana field washing over him. 

But more importantly, he could feel both the rider and the dragon’s Magical Resistances. To Shiv's surprise, he found the rider to be the one with the higher resistance. And so he brought his fist down against the dragon, slamming a Woundeater-empowered punch into the beast's skull.

A crimson explosion enveloped the 200-meter-large beast. Scales broke free from its exposed head, and Shiv seized it by the neck and suddenly spiked himself forty times downward. He gave himself a hernia at the sudden increase in speed and strain. 

Parts of his bone armor snapped free, his arms nearly dislocated, but the dragon fared worse. He accelerated so fast, he denuded most of its neck. Its scales came undone, latching in strips. The creature screamed. He felt it try to trigger its Chronomancy, and he saw a cracked temporal shell starting to form. Shiv slammed a knee into its head, stunning it. Its temporal shell vanished.

Then, Shiv drove the dragon head-first down into the earth—and he kept going. He drilled deeper using the dragon’s face as an excavator. At the same time, he formed another Woundeater, fed it, and slammed it once more into the dragon's body. He felt a crack in its Magical Resistance, and spiked his gravity field another twenty times as he spun in place.

Previously, he thought it was a struggle to break a dragon's neck due to how far it could bend backward, how it was far more flexible than a human's neck. But he thought about that for a while, and realized there was a different method he could use.

If one twisted the dragon’s neck more like a handle at extreme speeds, the outcome would be immediately grisly and quite fatal. It couldn’t rotate its head in place three hundred or sixty degrees, after all.

The dragon's ligaments tore free from the base of its neck, and even its impossibly strong muscles couldn't keep up with Inertial Overdrive. Though Shiv's body was coming apart, the dragon’s head was getting torn clean off.

He spiked his field five more times as he felt the dragon’s bone shatter and muscles tear. As all resistance vanished, he pulled back hard and ripped the dragon's head off at its base before detonating his inertial sheath.

Just then, he felt the rider die as well—splattering apart inside the capsule from the sheer concussive impact unleashed by Shiv’s detonation.

Shit! I wanted to take them alive. To figure out how they operated. Ah. Nothing for it.

Gravitic Wrestler 141 > 142

Shiv cried out as something in his spine fractured, but the dragon was launched aside. Its body resembled a rat that had been struck by a hammer. Parts of it flattened. Its adamantine barding bent but didn't break, and inside the capsule, its rider became as if a puddle of jam inside a tight, collapsing can. 

Just then, the soil around him became fluid and dissolved thereafter. Shiv scoffed, and he triggered his spatial anchor. He teleported back inside the mountain, back to where he left his knife, and continued along his way underground now that he got a good look at where the Tidewall was.

I’ll keep moving for now. The rest of the bastards didn’t close in. But let’s see if I can lose them for good…

***

"Gold-03! Come in! Gold-03! Respond! Respond!" Gold-01 cried telepathically, but in his heart, he knew Gold-03 was dead. Dead or mentally comatose. Even someone unconscious had a mind. You didn't just drop off from the world unless you went out of range, or you stopped being accessible. 

Gold-02 and 10 cast their Geomancy spells again. As the ground turned to dust, Gold-01 saw the mangled remains of Gold-03's dragon. It looked crushed, pulped. Its head had been torn clean off, but the enemy, the enemy was nowhere to be seen. A growl of absolute fury escaped Gold-01's throat. That monster was going to pay for this. They were— 

Gold-01 received another telepathic missive from SC Central. A chain of images splashed into his head. An observation post noted a series of cracks spreading along the ground, traveling fast in the general direction of the Tidewall. The adversary was underground again and moving fast.

"Received, SC-Central." He shared the memory with the rest of his squadron, and they immediately moved. They soared through the air with hurt spreading between them, with things unsaid and anger building. 

Gold-03 had been in the squadron for five years. Five years and 600 combat flights. And now, in an instant, she was dead. 

You didn't get to make mistakes with a Heroic-Tier adversary. Especially not a cunning and vicious path-bearer like the one they were hunting.

***

Broken Moon, I'm a fucking idiot, Shiv thought to himself. I think I’m already lost. I can’t remember which way I’m supposed to be going…

Right now, he was traveling in a certain direction, a direction toward the Tidewall. The thing was, he couldn't really see where the Tidewall was anymore because he was underground. As he continued tearing through the foundations of the earth, causing minor earthquakes and cracking the surface wherever he went. He lost his sense of direction in seconds, and now he was considering what to do. 

Shiv knew he needed to surface at some point to get his bearings, but if he surfaced, those dragons were likely going to be on him. Especially because those dragons had someone else. There must have been observation posts everywhere in this place. There was no avoiding that, and even now they were probably tracking him somehow. They managed to figure out how to get past his Creeping Void, didn’t they?

God damn it, if I had some kind of subtler skill, Shiv thought to himself. And that was another benefit of having more adept-tier skills as well. If he had Adept-Tier Geomancy, maybe he could have navigated all underground. If he had Adept-Tier Hydromancy, maybe he could have turned himself to water or something. 

Being a powerful, overwhelming brute felt good, but it also made his actions very, very obvious. Shit, nothing for it. Once more, he pinned his blade in the parting soil, and he shot upward. If anything went wrong, he would jump back down to his knife and find a different direction to hit in. It worked the last two times, might work a third as well, but Shiv didn't expect it to be a trick he could use over and over indefinitely.

He exploded out from the ground, casting stones everywhere. His Creeping Void was still active, and he kept it that way just because no one had fired any arrows at him in a while. The dragons might be able to see him, but maybe the observation posts didn't have the same skills. Better to have additional layers of protection anyway.

He found himself sailing over a rocky meadow that became a series of rolling hills. Dense patches of vegetation became a series of bushes below. There were fewer mountains around him now, but there were more in the distance. He thought he caught a glimpse of something atop the Tidewall. Shiv spiked himself in its direction. He kept low to the ground as he did before and—

Nine beams of necromantic energy pierced the surrounding soil.

The Creeping Void 110 > 111

SHIT! Shiv screamed internally. 

He teleported back to his knife and immediately started moving in a random direction. They missed! They weren't as accurate this time. But they still had his general position, and so he had to keep moving. He had to do as Adam suggested. How did he get a level? Did his Creeping Void fool them this time? Why didn’t it work before?

Wait… Do they have some kind of Divination like Adam does? That… That might make sense.

Shiv tried to remember which way he was heading, but bit back and gasped as lacerations began to open across his body. He was going to need to detonate again soon, and once he did, they would definitely notice his position. Judging from where the shots came from, they were right above, high up in the air. Practically vertical 

I wouldn't be surprised if they just stayed far away and just kept shooting at me from... Wait a minute. What if… what if I can get closer. Can Hu… Can Hu was supposed to be my armor against Necromancy. What I need now is armor… Is something that might let me take a few hits and get closer. Those dragons are pretty big. What if I can get inside one? Use it as a literal meat-puppet while keeping it alive.

A terrible thought formed in Shiv’s mind. He considered doing something just a bit reckless. He clutched one of his decoy bodies inside his cape using his Biomancy. If Minor Illusion and his other Stealth enchantments weren't working on their own, maybe he just needed to give them something solid to shoot at. 

And maybe I need to give them more than one thing to worry about. Shiv continued barreling through the underground. He reached out, and his gravity field expanded around a massive chunk of earth. 

"Alright then," Shiv said to himself, "let's give them a distraction.”

***

Gold-01 watched as the spreading cracks marking the path of their target suddenly stopped. A spider web expanded outward, and a fissure began to form in place, but the enemy wasn’t moving anymore. 

The enemy was still, holding in position.

Gold-01 did the same. They weren't going anywhere near that monster. Whoever could tear the head off a dragon in little more than a second wasn't someone he intended to fight in close-quarters combat. They would grind him down using range, strategy, and Necromancy. That was why there was 500 meters of distance between each of the riders now, and why they remained two kilometers above the ground.

Every dragon was to cover their own sector, and every dragon was close enough to render the other aid should they come under attack.

"What is he doing?" Gold-10 asked. "It's like he's just..."

And then there came a massive shudder. The earth trembled. The fissures grew and became chasms. Gold-01 primed his Necro-Thrower for another cycle when he realized what the adversary was about to do. An entire parcel of uprooted landmass rose into the air—three hundred meters of stone and dirt shaped into a dense ball. 

It accelerated fast, the soil peeling off, the stone staying together longer. It soared high like a missile the size of a small mountain, but it was still far too slow to hit any of the dragons, and it wouldn't reach the altitude they were at either.

“What is he trying to do?” Gold-06 asked. But just then, they saw the bone armored figure shoot out from below the earthen sphere. 

01’s Divination Matrix painted the target into shape. A shroud of violet enveloped them. "It's him! Fire! Fire!" Gold-01 roared.

Nine streams of necromantic energy immediately speared through the target's body. Nine streams intermingled, and a concentration of necromantic corrosion built and detonated outward, catching the large mound of soil and stone as well. In seconds, it vanished.

In the aftermath, all Gold-01 could hear was the fast pumping of his heart as the world fell silent.

"Did we get him?" Gold-02 asked. "Gold-01, do we have confirmation?"

"I think we hit him," Gold-10 said. "Wait, something just passed by..."

Gold-10’s mind promptly trailed off into a scream.

***

The hardest part of lifting an entire section of the earth was keeping it together rather than bearing its weight. Shiv was more than strong enough for the latter, but soil… soil didn't stick together. Stone broke apart after you accelerated it at a certain speed. It took all his gravitic control to keep it from unraveling right on top of him, As He rose higher and higher into the air, he kept his Chameleon enchantment active as he prepared to launch his decoy body.

Five seconds passed as Shiv's insides tightened. He watched the skies, waited for one of the dragons to fire. Then, his patience broke as he threw his decoy body out.

All the dragons promptly fired their Necromantic beams. Nine different streams came from nine different directions, and Shiv almost let out a miserable sigh. They're spread out. Why the hell did they have to be spread out? The worst thing about not fighting an idiot was that you had to use more strategy and planning every time you engaged them. These dragon riders learned from him, and he adapted to them as well.

But his plan wasn’t over. He needed to get to Part-Two: Dragon Meat Armor as soon as possible.

Rearing his arm back, he threw his Skysplitter across the horizon at where one of corrosive streams came from. In an instant, the sound barrier broke. His Skysplitter shrank vanished. He doubted the dragon could spot something that small. Shiv hoped. As the blade traveled, a blast of corrosive energy swept down. Shiv's eyes widened. A muscle in his shoulder came apart as Inertial Overdrive wounded him once more. A wave of Necromancy crashed down on Shiv’s cover. His dirt mound disintegrated. 

He teleported to his blade at the last second. A squeeze of pressure washed over him, and he found himself a mere four hundred-something meters away below a dragon. 

Luck smiles on me again, Shiv thought. He detonated his inertial sheath, and a blast wave swept out from him. It broke both of his legs, but he didn't need legs to control his gravity field. Shiv stopped time—and the dragon, unaware of his presence, failed to trigger its own temporal shell in time. It stopped moving. Shiv fed his injuries to a Woundeater and crashed into its chest. A detonation followed as he crawled along its body, but as he came into contact with it, the  flared gold and flickered in place as its temporal shell came alive. Shiv was almost taken by surprise, but he was still faster—especially with his Inertial Overdrive running hot. 

Didn’t know it could—wait, we have the same skill. I didn’t know it could just jump back in time and activate its temporal shell. Wait, that means I can do it too if someone tries to ambush me using Chronomancy…

The primal dragon bit at him. It moved like it was pushing its head through mud. Shiv caught it by the jaw and twisted it to the side. However, instead of killing it immediately, he drove a blade into its right eye and used that to launch himself along its neck to get at the capsule on its back. 

A flash of green flared before Shiv. Sticking out behind the capsule was a strange weapon. It had a long barrel that was wide open, and a corrosive crystal was lodged in its backmost section. That must have been how they were firing the necromantic streams at him. 

Shiv extended his Skysplitter’s size and cut without thinking. His blade extended thirty meters in a single second. He split the necromantic weapon off the back of the capsule. Then, with the greatest threat eliminated, he studied where the rider resided for the first time.

The capsule was pod-shaped with a series of faint glowing windows on all sides. Shiv laid eyes on the rider, and they laid eyes on him. They wore a helmet that had gleaming purple visors, and their armor consisted of something that was only leather. Shiv snorted and sliced through the glass. The rider tried to get up—but then they froze still. With the capsule compromised, the rider was no longer spared of Chronomancy, and now they were at Shiv’s tender mercies.

Just then, the dragon twisted its head around to bite him. Shiv caught the monster’s jaw with his left hand and growled as he pitted his strength against its. With a snarl of effort, he shrugged its head off and Frictionless Vector activated. It slid off against him violently, and Shiv found a new opening as he cut at the capsule several more times.

Most of its frame was adamantine, which meant Shiv couldn’t just brute-force his way in. Thus, he chanced to cutting at the bolts and seals around the capsule. Here, Deepest Edge proved its worth. It popped open just as the dragon came back around for another bite. Shiv’s temporal shell cracked. Three seconds of Chronomancy left. He ripped the rider out of their seat and prepared to face the dragon once more.

But then, a thought occurred to him.

I want to be inside this thing, right? I want to use it as a shield against Necromancy. To pilot its body with Biomancy. Well. It’s not easy to overpower this thing without Overdrive and I can’t exactly just tear my way through the adamantine barding and its scales… The dragon’s jaw opened wide, and Shiv looked at the time-frozen rider before he shrugged. Well. Nothing ventured. No dragon meat shields gained.

And with his mind made up, Shiv spiked himself and the rider straight down the dragon’s throat.