III-9 Plaguefueled

So, here's the thing about killing Heroes. It's hard, they're very destructive, but it can be done. It can be done if you get about a hundred masters together on average. A hundred masters with a hundred varied skills, and that's usually the metric.

And it's the "varied skills" part that matters the most, for you see, if you're gonna be fighting a Hero, you don't want to be slamming into them where they're already powerful. If a Hero is fast, you're gonna want to ambush them using a variety of methods, and you want to bury them under different layers of attacks, all crossing over each other at once. Different kinds of magic, different kinds of physical attacks, different ranges, everything. And then you want to be having jump mages move your people around. Or, potentially, you want to have someone skirmish with him.

Whatever the case, every Hero is a different puzzle. You solve and kill them all in different ways.

But that also has separations. Some Heroes are True Heroes; those hard bastards are rare. You don't run into a True Hero very often because of how hard it is to obtain one Hero Skill, let alone two; let alone three, don't get me started with four. True Heroes are monsters, but they can still be brought down. You just need to bring your army to bear, and you just need to drown them. You just need to find one angle and lever it hard.

The first Hero I helped kill had insane Reflexes. Couldn’t even see them. Killed three thousand people in under five minutes. Collapsed part of our vanguard. Then, he ended up running into a patch of quicksand I set up and suffocating after I turned sand into cement. Heroes are monsters—powerful, nightmarish—but they can be killed. With a lot of blood, understanding, and planning, they can be brought down.

Especially if they’re operating alone.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

III-9
Plaguefueled

Shiv resurrected, resumed time, and all the diseases, viruses, and infections he suffered just a few seconds before seeped into his flesh once more. It hit him in a wave of boils. His eyes began to dim, burn, and sear inside his sockets. His skin turned against his very muscles, sinews and bones, and every part of him filled with a raw and gnawing ache.

"This," Shiv grunted, biting back a growl of discomfort, "is going to be annoying." Annoying, but ultimately rather beneficial. His Disease Resistance had languished for quite some time. Between that and Practical Metabiology, he might get some useful gains here, but it was going to take a few deaths.

At least I got rid of the Psychomancers, he thought. The First Blood mind mages were little more than smears now. He made sure to destroy their bodies after taking their cores from them. And when he turned, he saw something peculiar. He stared at a mass of glistening, furrowed meat that served as “wall” for the crystalline chamber, and using his magic, Shiv recognized the flesh to be part of the creature's brain. Using his Biomancy, he mapped out two hundred meters of biological architecture and let out a breath of astonishment. This room had no entrances or exits. It was something embedded into the brain—and was currently being shuttled around by the shifting flesh cupping it from the outside.

The internal layout of the Court Leviathan can change, Shiv understood. The entire thing is a big damn shapeshifter. That’s pretty felling neat. Right then, the Psychomancy center was rapidly being moved down toward the leviathan’s lower abdomen. There, Shiv sensed the first hints of bubbling acid awaiting him. I can see why this thing might be a nightmare for even a group of Master-Tiers to board and take. Probably need to use automata against them. But even that might not stand up against this acid…

Shiv coughed. A spray of flaking lung-tissue sprayed out with his phlegm. Dying again. No time to waste. He fused his armor back around himself and cast a laceration into the leviathan’s brain. The wrinkled surface split open. Searing juices erupted out like a geyser, flinging bits of brain matter at him in clumps. Shiv shot through the wound made, but it immediately sealed behind him the moment he was through. As he continued ripping and pushing his way further, trying to cripple this thing’s mind or find a command center of some kind, the entire brain kept regenerating around him. 

Its healing was simply absurd. But that might be a good thing… He wasn't sure if the people back at the gate could eat this, but considering how quickly it regenerated and how his The Chef Unwavering Skill might interact, it could be a major boon to the people of Gate Theborn. There were many wounded and there were many sick. With bonuses to healing and disease resistance, the Court Leviathan might just be the solution to their problems.

Again, he didn’t know if he could cook this, but he was looking forward to finding out. 

Another pulse of dense Chronomancy swept through him. It washed over his person, but did little as he didn’t have his temporal shell active. His Chronomancy was a major ace in his hands. He wasn't going to risk it being unavailable if he had to face a sufficiently powerful opponent or a treacherous situation. The temporal warding the leviathan had seemed to only radiate every other second, so he could trigger his Chronomancy on and off between each wave without suffering undue damage to his time armor.

As he reached out and tried to tear his way through another dense layer of leviathan brain-stuff, Shiv felt his nervous system collapse. A spasm went through him. A flash of color passed behind his eyes as he emptied his bowels violently, and died again.

Not a very dignified death that time, Shiv thought. Then he chuckled silently. Still, how many people get to shit themselves to death in a giant monster’s skull?

Disease Resistance 14 > 18

This time, he didn’t get anything for his Practical Metabiology or Woundeater. Shiv frowned as he drained vitality again. Sometimes, what skills leveled upon his death confused him. Maybe he needed to more actively resist the plagues the leviathan kept hitting him with for his Biomancy and Metabiology to grow. He also wasn’t any more knowledgeable with his last level gained in Practical Metabiology so he had more questions there too.

But those questions would have to wait, as the Court Leviathan came aglow with crimson mana. Even with him digging through its brain like a little dagger, it didn’t seem all that affected. Its resilience was fine, but it was its ability to recover that made it a hard target. The monster just wouldn’t stay hurt. Now, new sprays of minute bio-matter were being ejected from within its flesh. New viruses and other blood motes carrying new diseases for Shiv to sample.

And sample them he did as soon as he resurrected.

Instantly, his throat tickled and then felt like it was going to unlatch from his body. One of his kidneys pulsed with stabbing pain while the rest of his organs immediately started shutting down. Yellowish mucus burst out from pores and orifices as Shiv felt his heart stop working almost immediately.

“Godsdamned bullshit—” he slurred. He tried tearing open another section of the Court Leviathan’s brain, but his muscles disobeyed him and his skull filled with a feverish haze that—

Shiv found himself as a Revenant again. He looked down at another one of his Shiv bodies, and winced in disgust as fat, winged maggots burst out from his eyes and ears mere seconds after he perished. A moment later, the brain mater healed over his two dead bodies and began to assimilate them into its structure. In seconds, both of his bodies melted into the leviathan’s brain. Shiv gawked in astonishment. Did I just get absorbed by the brain?

Disease Resistance 18 > 22

Once more, he drained vitality from the entity, and it let out a deep, bellowing groan. It satisfied Shiv to know that he had some means of hurting the creature by striking its life force directly, but he wondered how it was healing so fast. Its regeneration was so fast and perfect that his Biomancy could barely keep up.

Vitality Drain 46 > 47

As he resurrected for a third time, he waited for the latest time ward to pass as he activated his Strider of the Unbending Path and placed a temporal anchor. One of his ten temporal echoes was  imprinted on the leviathan’s mind, and Shiv let the present resume just as another golden wave came for him. Again, the diseases smashed into him. This time, Shiv resisted the sicknesses that ate through his body for around five seconds before he lost control over his muscles and nervous system. Death came for him again as his metabolism went haywire and caused a cascading series of organ failures thereafter.

Disease Resistance 22 > 29

Big jump in Disease Resistance this time. Maybe because of the frequency of my deaths. That, and the number of diseases I keep getting increases every time. I tried to follow what they were doing this time but… shit, I really need to review the immunology chapter in odes and the other books. I think some of these diseases are also changing inside me. Like, they go from doing one thing and they mutate. Or maybe they’re constantly mutating faster than I can notice.

If that was the case, Shiv had no idea how Cradle handled any of the First Blood’s plagues at all. He hated the vampires, but their mastery over flesh and biology was quite impressive. For now.

Shiv intended to pay this lesson back and then some when he became a real Legend in Biomancy and Practical Metabiology. For now, though, he likely needed to offer the Court Leviathan a few more deaths.

Yeah, Adam or Uva would have probably had an easier time with this thing. And to think he faced down the overwhelming power of the Recollector just hours ago. But that was a problem of force and time. This was all about the nature of his body. And he didn’t have the skill to fight it. So, Heroic-Tier Pathbearer in Reflexes or not, Shiv died. 

But that wasn’t a bad thing. A little humbling was a good appetizer before the main dish of triumph. These deaths tempered his focus and drew him back from being too enamored with his own power.

It was good to be powerful. It wasn’t good to assume that brute force was the only kind of power. Just like how different chefs could approach the same dish in different ways, for the different tastes, with different accompaniments and libations.

Something clicked for Shiv, then. When he cooked, he was focused, discipled, enduring, and flexible. He could do anything. He could support anyone. He was the pillar. But so far, the way he fought was overwhelmingly brutal with a bit of surprise and cunning mixed in. He could do better. There was no reason why he should be a lesser warrior when he aspired to be an artful chef.

Philosophy 2 > 4

Huh. Nice. Wait. I think I heard something about fire and high temperature killing diseases… I could heat myself up with my Pyromancy and Inertial Overdrive… Nah. A few more deaths would be good for me. Let’s see if I can get this thing to stack even more diseases next time and send my Disease Resistance to Adept… Well, considering how many things I keep getting hit with, I think Master is more likely.

As Shiv resurrected once more, he thought about all the skills he had and the options he had available. Immediately, he felt the urge to shake himself. So far, all he had been doing was slamming himself into things. He was treating every fight like a brawl, and that mode of thinking always had a cost.

If he bothered slowing down and thinking, he probably would have remembered how effective Deepest Edge was against massive entities or people in thick armor. He probably could have cut most of the brain. Also, the Psychomancers were dead, and so, Shiv froze time and pulled off his Mask of False Paths. He cast his feeble Psychomancy into the mind of the Court Leviathan—

And immediately broke the connection as the chaotic vortex of its mental state overwhelmed him. The Court Leviathan was a mess of impulses, pain, confusion, and clashing instincts. It wasn’t just a large monster—it was an insane monster. Shiv wheezed as the sickness got to him again, but he pulled a bone dagger out from his cloak and pushed back against its crushing Biomancy as it tried to absorb him.

It took him shattering his own ego to render the Jealousy mind-dead, but this thing was already messed up. Moreover, he didn’t know where to begin and what memory or thought he needed to affect. Uva flicked through minds like she was a psionic whirlwind and made it look easy. Probably because she had more than a lifetime of experience and study in adjacent fields.

Yeah, I get it, system. More studying. Now, if you could only give me a few days of peace and quiet, I would—well, I would spend at least some of it studying. The rest will go to friends and cooking.

His immune system lasted longer this time. His throat filled with thick lumps of pain. Inside, a patch of nodules bulged out from his organs, and they hatched a larger, more carapaced version of the winged maggots he suffered earlier. They promptly exploded in his body but failed to do anything as everything inside him was adamantine as well. They did manage to crawl out from his flesh, but that was more from them fusing and commanding the biomatter to part. Shiv grabbed one of the maggots as it screamed at him. He crushed it nonchalantly, and then died again as more of the maggots filled the valves of his heart.

Huh. Even these things are little Biomancers. Damn vampires are really all in on the twisting of biology.

Disease Resistance 29 > 40

As Shiv returned as a Revenant, a loud rumble shook the insides of the great beast’s insides. Mouths formed along the glistening furrows of the Court Leviathan’s inner brain matter, and for once, Shiv was truly weirded out.

Yeah, tongues and teeth don’t belong with brain matter…

"This is Master Malteek Sulmanthrap-Ophereus, Tenth Generation Elder of the Ophereus Bloodline." The voice was rough, raspy, and ultimately it echoed forth from every part of the Court Leviathan’s interior. "All Biomancers, we are facing a Heroic-Tier intruder at the very least. A Heroic-Tier Chronomancer and Biomancer with advanced Stealth abilities. Remove the subversive organic matter they left behind. They are not dead. They are hidden right above the Prefrontal Cortex—They are just over the bridge. We cannot risk the leviathan being poisoned. Remove the matter and prepare to induce evolving viral strains and nerve agents. Dump the reserve prions and fungal spores as well. Flood the leviathan immediately. Counter-Boarding teams on standby!”

Ah, shit, Shiv thought to himself. This is going to be good. Already, asshole. Show me what you got. Feed me another Skill Evolution.

Once more, Shiv respawned. Just in time to receive a flood of infectious bacteria, viruses, strange gases, and strange fungal feeling things pulsing through the interior of the Court Leviathan’s brain. Shiv paused time briefly as he tried examining the various biological weapons that were going to kill him. He regarded them briefly and winced. His Practical Metabiology was nowhere near up to snuff for this. He felt like he was that feral alley kid again, barely able to pronounce some dishes on a set list, while Georges muttered stuff about spitting on the matrons at the orphanage when he saw them for giving him an idiot.

Shit. I have no idea what I’m looking at. Some of these things are so complicated that I—the hells with it, I’ll try to fix some of them anyway. Maybe that’s how I can get more Practical Metabiology and Woundeater levels.

Shiv let time resume just as another temporal wave rushed toward him. It cut through him without issue, and the collective swarm of biological micro-weapons turned Shiv’s body into a deformed lump of oozing meat that sprayed pus and foul flesh-soups everywhere as he shuddered.

Disease Resistance 40 > 42

His Disease Resistance leveled immediately, even before he died, but Shiv lost all coherent thought as something assimilated his brain for its own use.

After a few moments spent in a chaotic haze, Shiv died again. As he respawned this time, he noticed that his body was untouched. The Court Leviathan didn’t consume him this time—just like that Malteek guy commanded. They also made a few mistakes about which of Shiv’s skills were Heroic-Tier, but that was understandable: It made more sense than assuming he could come back from the dead.

Practical Metabiology 35 > 36

Disease Resistance 42 > 58 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Shiv did a double-take at the notification. That was an absolutely enormous jump for his Disease Resistance. It might be the largest concentration of level he gained outside the system, directly raising his Stealth to 50 and Chronomancy to 100 as rewards.

Skill Evolution: Disease Resistance (Initiate) > Plaguefueled (Master)

Plaguefueled? Sounds like fun. Does that mean I just eat plagues now or something?

The answer to how his Skill Evolution functioned was revealed in the next second as all the viruses, bacteria, and other bioweapons hovering in the air came alight with a pristine white glow. The same glow that Shiv perceived to layer a kitchen and cooking ingredient while The Chef Unwavering was active.

Can I eat viruses? Or absorb them? Now, Shiv was getting a bit giddy. This was going to be awesome. Alright, Plaguefueled. Show me what I can do.

As Shiv drained from the Court Leviathan once more, he felt the beast shuddering violently. It was growing weaker—its flame was growing dimmer. That’s when it fully struck him how much vitality it took to bring him back to life now. The shrimp in the rivers weren’t going to do it anymore.

Might be because of all the skills in me and how much stronger I’ve gotten. Or maybe it’s mainly Physicality and Toughness. Things that keep me alive? Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Disease Resistance is doing more to keep me alive now than both of those skills.

Shiv’s resurrective cocoon burst apart and released his new body. An ocean of sicknesses drowned Shiv immediately. He let out a groan of misery and torment as most of his flesh began to burst and seeping foul-smelling fluid. A fever swelled inside him at the same time, and he felt the urge to rip his dick off from how nightmarishly bad it was itching. His nervous system collapsed again and his organs nearly followed. But before Shiv gave into the urge to castrate himself and curse the system for giving him the worst Master-Tier Skill of all time, something happened.

He started feeling energized.

One after another, the symptoms consuming him began to fade as his body fed off of them. Shiv felt himself grow stronger, felt his senses grow sharper, felt his body get harder than ever before as he assimilated nerve agents, mutated viruses, flesh-eating bacteria. More than that, he felt a strange instinctive awareness regarding the shapes of these sicknesses. He wouldn’t be able to replicate them off the top of his head, but he could sort of sort their biological architectures from each other now. That might be the one Metabiology level he gained coming into effect.

Seconds passed. The first wave of afflictions washed through Shiv and ended up feeding him again. He felt better than he did in ages. Adrenaline exploded through his body. Power swelled within his muscles—hell, his muscles were growing thicker from this anyway. The damn plagues were hitting him like a steroid.

Shiv laughed at the absurdity of it all. Then he coughed and gagged violently as new infections attacked his lungs. For a few seconds he hacked mouthfuls of blood, then his Plaguefueled Skill assimilated that too, and he felt better than ever.

Plaguefueled 58 > 59

“Feed me more viruses!” Shiv cheered, his pupils dilating, his heart pumping. Gods, but the plagues hit the spot. Shiv was alive, and the world was beautiful. There were still a few diseases hitting his body. One that actively shifted between decaying his heart and breaking his metabolism. It was absorbed too, but slowly. Much more slowly. Shiv realized then that it was because it was mutating and changing faster than all the others. Still some limits to the skill. 

He wasn’t immune. It was probably still possible to kill him with enough viruses. But if they failed to kill him, they would end up fueling him with a rush of power instead.

“I love plagues!” Shiv cheered, intoxicated with the constant explosions of energy cashing through his body. He felt drunk and drugged out of his mind at the same time. A weird thing to get from all the sicknesses afflicting him, but godsdamned did it feel good. He managed to get his hands on a new bone knife and he cut. He slashed so hard that a massive chasm tore open beneath him. Brain matter parted first. Then split hardened muscular tissue and eight meters of bone. A gap opened below, revealing a large throne room of some kind.

Shiv froze time before the leviathan could heal and spiked his gravitic field over fifty times in quick succession. His flesh was boiling. His bones were breaking one after another, but that didn’t matter. He loved this. He was drunk on plagues and brimming with power. 

His bones shattered, his skin seared and ripped apart. The left side of his body was screaming in pain, but Shiv couldn’t help but chuckle. It all felt too good. The brain matter of the Court Leviathan disintegrated outright into ashes. It didn’t even burn. Most of the flesh surrounding Shiv simply ceased to be. Then came a tide of force, and the chasm-sized wound lining the Court Leviathan expanded into a whole field. Shiv smashed into the chamber just below, bringing fire and ruin in his wake.

He barely noticed the few hundred high vampires partially fused in bone-pods lining the surrounding walls. He barely realized how large the chamber was, and how many vampires and Blood Horrors were in here. His senses were a mess. His thoughts skipped, and during fleeting moments of coherence, he realized he was functionally drunk, and getting drunker with every new disease his body consumed.

As he crashed to the ground, an avalanche of fire and destruction crashed down thereafter. The stone floor at Shiv’s feet exploded into a hurricane of piercing shrapnel. The Court Leviathan shook. Shiv burst his inertial sheath. The entire 500-meter-long throne room was reduced to nothing but dust and rubble. Hundreds of vampires inside died without knowing what killed them, as flames reduced them to ash. The stronger ones burned but were splattered against the walls. A few endured with only minor injuries.

It was not enough for Shiv.

He felt his own body crack and split in painful ways, but rather than fling a Woundeater at the nearest vampire he saw, he reverted time back a second. His temporal shell cracked slightly—then nearly broke off his body when a pulsing wave from the temporal wardings hit him. It didn’t matter. Shiv found himself back mid-acceleration again. Another tide of flame and force followed behind him as he fed his Inertial Overdrive, another dozen gravitic pulls. His spine broke along the middle. His flesh melted off his bones. Shiv just kept laughing as he slammed against the shattered floor of the throne room once more.

Another waterfall of annihilation followed. Another swelling riptide of fire and destruction. Another bursting of his inertial sheath. A fourth of the multi-kilometer Court Leviathan ruptured apart as most of its front-back and sloping head peeled apart. The creature’s insides were exposed to the Umbral Wilderness. Through it all, Shiv never stopped pumping out darkness using his Creeping Void, and so a most unnerving blackness oozed free from the roaring leviathan’s open wounds.

But only for a moment. A second later the Court Leviathan began to regenerate.

“Godsdamned,” Shiv breathed, now more impressed with the flying monster than his new Master-Tier Skill. “The First Blood didn’t felling half-ass growing something like you, did they?”

“We… do not… half ass.” Shiv blinked and looked down. Then, as he pushed through his drunken stupor, he sensed the presence of a vampire before him. A shimmering barrier of fire and blood circled around the ash-shrouded figure. A half-melted throne made from iron and teeth turned to pooling slag behind him.

Shiv blinked as the high vampire’s form came into shape.

For the first time, Shiv saw the Court Leviathan’s captain for the first time. Master Malteek. He was a tall, thin vampire. His eyes burned in the haze, two pits of flame in sunken sockets. Over his shoulder, a curled set of bones rose out from his spine, constituting what looked like a collapsed set of wings that gleamed with white-hot heat. His Biomancy was oddly only Adept-Tier, but his Pyromancy was immensely powerful. It was immense, but not particularly wide. It, much like Shiv's Strider, was completely compacted around his body, not something he projected outward. 

Shiv wondered what kind of Skill Evolution the vampire had.

“Shit,” Shiv chuckled. Now there was a third thing he was impressed by. “One of you managed to survive.”

“A Tenth Elder is not easy prey,” the vampire wheezed. As the dust washed over them, Shiv noted they were unburned, but Malteek’s body was badly broken in several places. For a beat, Shiv studied the vampire while the latter looked off into the impenetrable darkness, trying to hide how fractured his courage was. “I have tasted your power. I understand I face a Hero. I understand this is not a fight I can easily win. But you have made a mistake. The First Blood will not forgive the murder of a Tenth Elder either. But all can be forgiven between great Pathbearers. Mistakes are understandable throughout life, after all. Let us talk about things. Let us talk so that we might make this ruinous affair a fruitful one by the end.

Shiv paused. The vampire was strangely polite and decent, even after everything Shiv did. Maybe he could have this conversation. It wouldn’t hurt. It—

He uses his Silver Tongue on us, Rose rasped. Do not listen to him, fool boy!

The Deathless blinked and shook his head. As Malteek continued speaking, Shiv slammed his fists together, silencing the vampire. Shiv exploded forward with a pull on his gravitic field. Woundeater flared. His injuries faded. He drove a mana-charged flying knee into the Master-Tier vampire’s chest. He struck Malteek’s strange armor made from layered teeth and blasted through the vampire’s torso. A mana explosion followed as Shiv’s spell met Magical Resistance, but Malteek's body disintegrated before the physical strength of the Deathless. Even so, Shiv didn’t feel the vampire’s Lineage Core pop.

He tried to turn, and go for what remained of the vampire’s body—but he felt all the friction get ripped away from him as he slid forward across space unnaturally. A rush of thermal energy shifted from Shiv into the mutilated remains of Malteek. The world became slippery. Shiv pulled on his field several times, but each time he glided awkwardly through the air, until he ended up shooting through the massive wound he left on the Court Leviathan.

A moment later, Shiv found himself twisting through the air, battling to steady his movements. Hitting Malteek seemed to have inflicted Shiv with a lingering version of the Frictionless Vector Skill. As he sailed, turning over and over in the air, Shiv watched as the massive body of the Court Leviathan regenerated. It glared in his general direction with a cluster of eyes and let out a furious wail.

It lashed out blindly into the darkness with its tentacles—some swinging wide and digging deep furrows along the ground below. As Shiv turned again, he caught a glimpse of the town beneath him and saw a group of vampires rising into the air. One of them was a particularly potent Biomancer—their mana field stretching what felt like five kilometers. As Shiv felt a violent surge of flesh-magic clench at his tissues, the Court Leviathan also unleashed a salvo of what looked to be parasite missiles.

Enormous acid-filled wing-maggots burst out from the Court Leviathan’s flesh. They flew fast and exploded in the air, filling the sky with corrosive, paralytic fluids.

They struck nothing at all. The vampire Biomancer also lost track of Shiv an instant later.

Shiv didn’t bother holding his position to find out if he could beat the incoming vampire reinforcements or resist the paralyzing fluids unleashed by the big ugly bugs. No, he projected himself across time before the leviathan’s temporal wardings pulsed again—back to the temporal anchor he imprinted on the leviathan’s brain.

Once more, Shiv found himself meshed in the leviathan’s tissues, and once more he found himself bathed in new and tasty sicknesses. He suffered for a moment before his body consumed the diseases as active nourishment. After that, he repeated what he did earlier and used his Inertial Overdrive to make an even larger hole in the Court Leviathan.

With a final detonation of his sheath, Shiv obliterated most of the leviathan’s upper body. And it still kept flying. It still kept regenerating. By this point, a good percentage of the rooms and vampires within the leviathan were just gone. If Malteek managed to survive the final blast, Shiv couldn’t find him. There was no throne room or ship bridge anymore. It was a deep gorge of regenerating flesh and Shiv standing at its pit.

He focused his Biomancy and detected a few more vampires and Blood Horrors still inside. He was probably also going to need to deal with the group of vampires flying up from the town, but he wasn’t too worried. Mostly because he still felt drunk, but also because he was now marveling at the Court Leviathan.

This big godsdamned bastard is felling incredible. You’re going to feed so many people… Wait, you’re going to show me so much fun shit. Viruses… Regeneration… I can test so many things on you…

Shiv barked a joyous laugh as he realized he might have come across the solution to the food shortage problem—along with a whole host of other problems faced by Gate Theborn. “Alright. You win, Court Leviathan. You get to live. Hells. I’m keeping you. You’re mine now.”