III-6 Hunt (I)

Mixing different ingredients and methods of preparing them also modifies the effects you can gain from a specific dish. Let’s go back to the basilisk. Because the basilisk is a pretty cool creature. Ican cook it straight and eat it straight. Usually, that’ll just kill someone who isn’t Master-Tier Toughness if I don’t prepare it right—the venom glands it has are very interesting. As is its venom projection mechanism. I got into the—

Okay. That’s for the Biomancy notes instead. Not here.

But yeah, if I prepare a basilisk right, I can get a lesser regeneration boost. It’s practically like a lesser healing potion. Except unlike a lesser regeneration potion, it doesn’t come with that much risk of cancer at all. Actually, I tested it a few times, and it seems to reset the body to a non-cancerous state. Basilisks are felling awesome. Seriously. Great big beautiful monsters.

But then I prepared it with mendules, and it ended up giving an enduring memory buff as well. It's like the effects mix and merge. I think this might be an effect of my cooking mana, but it makes different effects mend and merge together. Mendules induce calm and trigger a flow state. They affect your mind. Basilisks are all about regeneration if you get them right. Hydras even moreso. Now, with all that put together, you get some pretty cool stuff going.

And we’ll get to hydras later, right now…

[Cook first; write more later]

-Draft Excerpt of Deep Delicacies and Exotic Delights, Written by Shiv

III-6

Hunt (I)

Shiv looked on at the strange geometric entity. As the shapes of the Aberrant Fractals spiraled and twisted in along their own angles, it merged into a strange tesseract that simply kept folding in and around itself. And as Uva finished releasing it from the sigil she formed with her flesh, she reformed her body and let out a breath. Thereafter, she retracted her mana strands from Shiv and immediately cast them into the thing she just summoned out using her flesh. It froze in the air just centimeters away from Shiv's face. 

He blinked at it. He could feel a strange ringing noise coming from the very edges of the being.  It also curved his perception, making the area before him seem further away one second, and then impossibly close the next. Looking at it stained his mind, but more importantly, it wounded his passenger.

Look—Look away! Please look away! Rose wailed.

And Uva let out a stressful breath. Shiv's mind was still reeling. His thoughts felt like they were reattaching to each other slowly. His awareness jumped constantly. He lost track of seconds and then near minutes of time. As he finally steadied himself, he found Uva stitching herself psionically into the eldritch being she just summoned. The tesseract moved slowly. Strangely, there was a slightly hypnotic quality to the way it danced.

Now fully merged with the entity, Uva spoke to Shiv using the very vibrating resonance it possessed. “This is a thing born of aberrant geometries, of incomprehension of spaces. Madness sustains it. It cuts through things by getting thinner, but looking upon it does things to one's mind…”

A savage scowl crept over Shiv’s features. “And that’s the other reason why Adam isn’t here, isn’t it.”

“Yes,” she said. “It would hurt him to perceive.”

“Yeah. And the system wants you to use it against him in the future, too, is my bet.”

Uva didn’t reply to that comment. She didn’t need to. By now, they both knew what was looming in the horizon.

She controlled it and it flew through the air in a most unnatural fashion. Parts of its bodies, the lines, the folding edges, splashed out, speared forward. For a moment he thought it might be something created from strange spatial magic, but it was entirely different from that. As it slammed down into the base of the anchor, it shredded through the dense metal in seconds and kept hewing deeper and deeper into the earth. It was like watching a rush of razor-thin blades glide through dense matter.

But slowly its vibrations and shape were becoming more and more erratic. It was beginning to crack, beginning to come apart. "The madness will not sustain it much longer," she said. And then she extended it straight, its angle long. The world distorted before Shiv, and he suddenly found his perception filled by an intensely magnified view of split metal.

Broken Moon, this thing would give Adam an aneurysm and put a hole through his eyes or something. Godsdammit system.

Then, a thought came to shiv. "Have it cut me," Shiv said. She paused. "We want a test, right? I got a Wound Eater. Have it try to cut my arm off." He held out his left arm.

A note of utter disbelief entered Uva's mind, and she let out a snort. "You are a terrifyingly resilient man, Shiv, but I don’t think this is necessary. I have already demonstrated its capabilities against the teleportation anchor.”

"I'm just fascinated in what it can do. Come on, don't be a chickenshit."

His casual insult caught her off guard. A sharp, pitched laugh came from Uva. "What did you just call me?"

"A chickenshit," Shiv repeated, prodding her verbally.

"Oh, you're treating me like Adam now, is it?"  her mind filled with vicious aggression and cold focus. “Fine. I’ll give you your cut, Deathless. Just don’t do me the indignity of screaming. I heard enough of that from you today.”

Shiv shuddered at the danger in her voice. Gods, that’s hot—

The Aberrant Fractal zipped into him. There was no warning. Just a sudden rush of movement. He followed it easily with his reflexes, but it was still jarring and sudden.

He felt a momentary resistance as his bone armor squealed. His Adamantine Adaption resisted the initial slice. Parts of the geometric abomination broke from the impact, but others followed. Others angles curved harder and became so thin that his adaption failed to keep up. They slit through his armor and then through his flesh, severing the limb entirely. 

Shiv let out a slight annoyed hiss as he watched his arm fall off. It thumped on the ground. He blinked. “Hm.”

“So?” Uva asked, slightly concerned but mostly interested in the performance of her new skill. “How was it.”

Shiv picked up the arm. He frowned at the limb and then cast a Woundeater on himself. A moment later, he had a new crystallized wound to examine, to eventually memorize. Wonder how different dismemberment and lacerations are. But more importantly, the geometric abomination was a powerful creature. As he regarded it, it shattered apart, each of its fractals twisting in different directions, and Uva's mana strands reformed, weaving her body back into shape. Her shield materialized beneath her and she stood unevenly. He caught her before she could fall, wrapping an arm around her waist, and she leaned against him. She was spent in mind and flesh from that ability.

"It takes…” Uva swallowed.

“It's okay, take your time," he said.

"It taxes the mind to control something like that. The way it moves, it's unnatural." But she held up a hand, and she made some of her fingers swell. She made them reach out, extending impossibly far in a strange direction, then she flattened them. 

Shiv blinked. "Neat trick. I can think of a few uses for that."  She lightly slapped him on the chin. He grinned.

"But the cut…" she went back to the Aberrant Fractal. "It can rearrange itself. It is a physical thing but the angles it embodies are so thin… It slips between the cracks of even the hardest material. But more than that, it can hide inside a mind. It can hide and slip through pores and more. I don’t know if the Dreamtaker desired me to have this ability or if the system.”

"Yes," the Dreamtaker sang melodically. The eldritch being echoed from Uva’s eyes, and it interrupted them without preamble. It still used Uva's voice, and Shiv's expression hardened immediately.

"You… you're the other Outsider. I heard you a few times while Uva was in my mind. What the hell are you?"

"Not so different from the Stranger, but then again different in the ways that mean much to you. An Outsider. An eldritch. A creature of fascination, of colors, of desires, needs, wants. You have strange dreams, Unbreaking one. Dreams that are filled with blood, of yearning for family, and of food, food, sustenance, taste." Somehow the eldritch entity seemed at once extremely complicated, but also somewhat confused.

I suppose we're as alien to it as it is to us. But then he reconsidered that statement. Probably not nearly that extreme, though. It parses and understands us after a few seconds, but we don't understand it. I barely figured out how the Stranger works. The Recollector works.

"Regardless, I have a window through, a window here, a window, and new eyes to gaze from."

"Those are her eyes," Shiv said, a growl entering his voice. Possessive. Violent. 

"Will you come through to the outside if I ever meant her any harm?"

"I'd do a hell of a lot more than that," Shiv said casually. 

The Dreamtaker moved on from that line of dialogue as if it didn't matter at all. "I have a few other desires. Want to be with all of you. Favored of favored. Ruin-blessed. Battle-damned. Want to see where you go. Expand. Gaze upon your world. Many dreams. Many unique colors. Yours known, not known to me. So, I will keep my realm close to her gaze. I will allow some of my new dream to spawn through. New dream if they want to spawn through. If they like what they see." And then the Dreamtaker began to laugh. It was a giggle that turned into a shriek that ended with a low sigh.

"And why did you help us anyway?" Shiv asked. “Isn’t the Stranger one of your kind? Is this some kind of god struggle between you two?”

"Help you? No, help myself. Stranger. Stranger is the reason we are losing more of our dimensioned self. Place. Home. To the system. Stranger reached out too far. Was too greedy, hungry, gluttonous, foolish, reached in, and he was infected first, infected the rest of us."

"Infected?" Shiv said.

"Infected yes-true-regret-happy-joy-sad. We were free, truly patternless, truly patternless, no shape, just feelings, awareness, intelligence, unbound-unbound-unbound."

"Unbound by what?" Uva now asked.

"Consciousness," it laughed. "Didn't know, didn't need to know, just was. But the system demands that we know. The system demands a rigid shape, hurts, hurts, always hurts, pain, pain, pain." 

And the last words were screamed, screamed hatefully, not at Uva or Shiv, but at the system itself. "It hurts. We are colonized. Our shapes colonized. Our natures colonized. All to fit its desires, but not completely. Still at bay. Want to look into you, to seek your dreams, but no, no, it's not my original way. No, it's not of my nature. No, it feels wrong. Wrong. But I am already changing. Stranger. This stupid, angry child, foolish. Bastard. All these things. They reached out first, reached out too far, touched the integration. Integration reached back, spread through him. 

“He gained skills, a first skill, and then now all of us, all of us are being contaminated by the narrative, by legends and stories. System has listed us as something akin to gods, but we are not. We are not. And slowly then we will become, because we cannot resist. We are infected. But the stranger is furious. The Stranger wants to remain, but he wants power at the same time, but he doesn't want to bend. Cannot rule. Cannot be this way. He isn't this way. He was not this way. He. Wasn’t even they. Was it. Was they. Was something beyond words… Slowly, losing himself, Slowly being molded into shape…”

The Dreamtaker's way of speaking was confusing, chaotic. But from what Shiv could parse, they were both non-thinking entities, perhaps intelligent in some way, but they didn't have personalities, no personal character. Now that was being forced on them. Shiv didn't know how to think about that. He didn't even know what it was like to not have a consciousness.

"And so the Stranger," it said, "he thinks, he decides, but he also does not. He decides because he is the shape he  took after the system placed its skill on him. Slowly more mana will spread, slowly infection will spread, slowly outside will become in. Don't want this, want this at the same time. When I slip, when my mind, focus, thinking, awareness slips, I return, I struggle, I fight. But now, now I am increasingly more like, like, like…" And the Dreamtaker trailed off for a near moment, a minute before it finally said, "…like you, like all of you. Pattern-thinkers. Pattern-made. Even before the system arrived. When we first saw your forbearers. Also pattern made.”

“Our forbearers?” Uva said, confused. She was as lost as Shiv through the conversation.

"Not you. You did not exist. You are mutation race, twisted race, fuse race." She didn't understand. Neither did Shiv. "Before integration, humans were. Machines were. After integration, humans remain, changed, but remain. But humans got far before integration. And humans made the same mistake the Stranger did."

"What the hell kind of mistake was that?" Shiv asked.

"It got the system's notice. They went beyond a boundary. They went beyond a technological limit they should never have. And so strife was provoked. But now…" And then there came a flicker within Uva's eyes. For a moment, the colors dimmed, and Shiv just saw a strange, twisting series of fractals there. Not so different from the Aberrant Fractal to some extent. There was also the deep, dark blue of her original gaze. A deep, dark blue layered upon the eldritch depths of the outside.

"Must leave now," the Dreamtaker said. "Will remain partially. Gaze through you. Must leave. System noticing. System will seek to change. Will deny. I must deny. I must deny. And I want to change at once. Madness. Beautiful madness…" And the Dreamtaker receded once more.

As that came to an end, Shiv let out a deep sigh. "Uva. I don't know what to say, but I’m sorry me being what I am did this to you.”

"This is not your fault," She lifted an eyebrow. "Shiv, I don't think you inflicted anything upon us. We decided to come with you."

"Yeah, but…"

"But the system would have made victims of us anyway. One way or another. We may not be favored if we didn't encounter you. But, it would have tried to strike at us. It demands strife. It demands it, no matter what it takes. The only difference would have been time span and scale." And besides, she ran a hand through her short hair. There was a streak, a streak of color cleaving down the middle. That color was constantly changing, coursing like a colorful river as it transformed again and again. "This seems more palatable."

"It does?" he said.

She looked at him and something twinkled in her gaze. "It is quite the thrill to deny chaos, to be calm and constant and enforce your own order when the world collapses around you. To stand before calamity and prevail." And there was that thrill inside of her again, the quiet need, the quiet urge to overcome calamity itself.

He grinned. "Well, at least we're having fun, right?"

"Yes, fun." 

And then they both fell silent and thought about the Recollector, about what they endured in this fight.

"When it hurt you," Shiv began, not sure how else to start this. "When you screamed…" He placed a hand on her face and stared into her eyes. 

She cupped his hands in return. "However you felt then, I felt the same way. When I was in the teleportation anchor, I heard you scream and… I don't think the memory will ever leave me." Uva’s lip quivered. She was resilient, but she might have just found the limit to what she could endure. "I fear this may leave me with a some scars to overcome.”

"You and me both," Shiv replied. "I guess we can only keep saving each other in the meantime. You, me, and Adam.” Then, he paused. “This skill… The system…’

"It's going to make us try and face each other someday," Uva said, her voice filled with certainty. "Valor is right. Of this, I have no doubt."

"I'm never going to try to hurt you, Uva," Shiv said. “No matter what the system wants.”

She smiled and said, "I believe you now. But we all make promises. My mother made a promise. She meant it with all her heart, too. The system does not care. It does not care for any of us." And slowly, she pushed away. "Power," she said. "We need to be powerful. But even then, we need to be cunning as well. It must be strife on our terms, not its. Strife satisfies it, and so we must make our own. We must be strong enough to weave our own tale. To force our own desired outcomes.”

A quiet appreciation settled in, and Shiv just stared at her hungrily. “Are you hungry right now?”

“Perhaps…” She smirked back, wryly amused but also somewhat flattered, and then she was staring at him, and soon the struggle against personal desire became mutual. The moment dragged. Their gazes remained locked, as did their minds, but it was Uva who exercised her wisdom first. "But not yet," she breathed. "Maybe when we have a proper moment, but not right now. There is too much to do right now.”

"Yeah," Shiv said, wrestling his desires down after a brief struggle. He let out a heated breath. "Later."

"Later," she repeated. "For now, we have more than a few other things to handle. I'll share these memories with Adam later. Once I shear away the," she considered her words, "dangerous edges. He's more sensitive to the eldritch than you or I."

"You have any idea why that is?" Shiv asked. Then he considered the woman trapped within his vitae, Adam's mother, Rose. Rose Van Erren was also extremely frail before the eldritch and the strange. For the entirety of his fight against the Recollector, madness took her, madness that spiraled worse and worse with every passing second. Even laying eyes on the Recollector hurt her mentally. She mended, much like Shiv did, healing and restoring to her original state, emerging from madness somewhat whole, but quite traumatized.

"I suspect it's his Divination," Uva said. "That or just his nature, it is hard to say. The mind is a strange and delicate thing, is not built much like the body. There is a fineness to the structure that is also very contingent and malleable based on specific details." Uva pressed her lips together. "It's rather complicated to explain, but quite interesting as well. Speaking of which, we will also need to further your Psychomancy. We've been getting behind on that."

"Yeah, and the system's been trying to kill us this entire time," he muttered. "I'm behind on my  Practical Metabiology too, and on my goddamn cooking."

A grimace crawled onto Uva’s face. "Yes. I could really use some food."

"Everyone in the gate could really use some food," Shiv said. "The mercenaries talked to me about supplies, things they need. I told them to get a list together earlier, so I'll probably check in with them again. But after that, one of us is probably going to need to take a trip out, and I think that one of us is me."

She regarded him for a moment. "I think that might be wise. You move quickly, and you have means to carry large prey and hold much needed supplies. I think you should hunt something with regenerative abilities.”

“Why?” Shiv asked.

“Because if your cooking can offer an effect from their flesh, it will be a temporary salve for the gate’s people. Regenerative healing will be very useful keeping the Initiates and below in good condition.”

He grunted. "I'm going to leave through the Abyssal Gateway. I don't want to risk anyone noticing us on the surface. Whatever is happening, whatever news is spreading, let's give it a little while longer. The last thing any of us needs, is Vicar Sullain realizing that Gate Theborn has fallen, and Blackedge might get help soon." He considered Uva in greater detail. "I’m also not risking running into more unexpected surprises up top with how the system’s acting. That, and there’s the like curse.”

Uva frowned at that. "Yes, I suspect my presence on the surface will be a bit of struggle. Darkness and minds must shroud me from the dawn’s hate. But also, someone needs to watch the gate. I think we're all going to be rotating. This gate, though it is badly damaged and experiencing substantial decay, is also something of a sanctuary." She pressed her lips together and a thoughtful expression came over her. She held out a hand and pressed it against the cut lining the teleportation anchor they were in, the cut inflicted by her strange geometric entity. "I suspect this is the system's desired outcome. A new story for this gate. I don't even think it can be called Gate Theborn anymore. With everything destroyed, with the stranger's touch infesting it, and with it soon to revert to a much inferior state, albeit a clean state, we can rebuild the gate. We can decide its development."

"Or we can eventually be boiled alive beneath Lord Scorn's endless tide of fire," Shiv said. "That's still a month away, and I don't doubt the angry god intends to deliver on that promise. I also don't doubt that we can't stop a true god, though I don't know very much about this Lord Scorn's capabilities."

"Ah, a great scope problem for later," Uva said. "Right now we just need to keep the gate under control and figure out how to save your Blackedge first.”

“Yeah. I don't think Blackedge has a month."

"Indeed," Uva said. "In the meantime, I will have an owl to interrogate and quite a few minds I need to sift through. I will try to monitor and track our fellow survivors.”

"Fellow  survivors," Shiv muttered.

"Yes, we all experienced a shared calamity. I don't believe something like that was hiding in the sword." And there her eyes widened. "I have a final request, Shiv."

He stared at her and realized immediately what she wanted. He reached into his cloak and pulled out the tome—the tome she connected her mind to first time the Dream-taker talked to her. The eldritch tome deep inside Confriga's personal vault. He also had ten other pieces of equipment there. Shiv lost his kukri. Adam lost his rapier. And Uva lost a full set of armor. Her shield was mending, albeit slowly. 

That was good. But they were due some upgrades. Maybe they could find something useful from Confriga first.

"I think I'm going to drop some stuff with Adam before I leave. Have it look over them."

"Perhaps it would be better to leave them with Can Hu," she said. "It says it wishes to focus on improving its crafting. Earlier I spoke to it about a potential Master Skill for him to select. But Can Hu is… reluctant to reward itself.”

“Reluctant?”

"No. It is," she paused. "I cannot read its mind exactly, but can tell it is troubled. Can Hu did not manage to protect you. It thinks of itself as armor still. And so, when it failed and broke down, leaving you at the mercy of Confriga and the entity, Can Hu feels as if failed its purpose."

Shiv snorted at that. "You know, that's bullshit. I'd rather Can Hu be alive than broken. If I fought the Recollector wearing him, there wouldn't be a Can Hu anymore."

“If only Can Hu felt the same way,” Uva said, her tone resigned. "It is another thing for them to accept how they should feel about themselves. Automata, they are not so different from people. Many of us develop twisted ways of thinking, means of coping with our own failures. All these methods have costs, have pains that we have to bear."

"Yeah, I'm going to spend some time talking to Can Hu later," Shiv said. "For now, I’m gonna get ready for a quick expedition. Regeneration. Right. Hydra or something. I can find something like that.”

***

After returning with Uva, Shiv handed the ten pieces of equipment he acquired from Confriga's vault to Adam and Can Hu. Both the Gate Lord and the Penitent examined the items carefully, with Can Hu asking Adam if he could find the Gate Lord’s missing sword along with the team’s broken weapons. Apparently, Can Hu thought he might be able to repair some of their damaged equipment—or perhaps turn them into raw materials to be expended as upgrades for a new item.

In the meantime, the others committed to their existing tasks. Uva was mainly interrogating the owl right now. Her mana strands were deep in the man’s mind and every now and again, he would whimper from where he lay. Adam stayed near Can Hu and Valor, but his eyes constantly burned with mana. He never stopped watching the mercenaries. Paranoia gnawed at him, and even with a moment’s rest, Adam looked haggard.

“I’ll get you some food soon,” Shiv said. “That might pick you up.”

Adam nodded quietly. “We’re close,” he breathed. Shiv regarded him. “We’re so close to home, yet why do I feel like something worse is lurking on the horizon.”

“Too many ugly fights too fast,” Shiv said. “We’ll get through it. We just can’t let the system break us down before we get stronger than it can outpace us.” Adam still looked stressed, and Shiv didn’t know what more to say. He reached over and shook the archer by the shoulder. “Keep those teeth clenched and back strong. And try to get your core dysfunction fixed by the time I get back.”

“It’s not a dysfunction, you bastard. Stop calling it that.”

“Nah,” Shiv grinned. “I think I’ll prodding you a bit longer with that.”

“The joke will wear out soon.”

“I’ll find something else to bully you about.”

Adam let out a disgusted snort. He was annoyed, but already looked less stressed. Well, that’s a brief success, Shiv thought.

“I’ve opened the Abyssal Gateway. Just go and find something good for us to bite into. Something—”

“Regenerative. Yeah. Uva told me.”

Adam frowned. “Tasty. I was going to say tasty. Why regenerative?”

“For the Initiates and weaker,” Shiv answered.

“Ah. Right. Glad she’s here.” Adam shook his head. “Maybe she should have been Gate Lord instead.”

“I don’t like public speaking,” Uva messaged them telepathically. “I get stage fright.” Her voice was deadpan, but her aversion of receiving too much attention was true.

As Shiv prepared to leave Valor called out to him with a weak rasp. "Shiv, we must talk later. About several things, about many things. Things that concern not only your status as system favored but also the nature of your soul and mind.”

"Sure," Shiv said. “I just need to—”

"Adam told me a bit about," Valor tried to find the words, "the ordeal you experienced at the hands of the entity."

Shiv thought back to his flesh being torn and broken, his mind ripped asunder over and over again, the things in his soul trying to peel him, to break him. It wasn't a very pleasant memory. Shiv did his best not to shudder. "Yeah, not exactly my finest hour."

Valor just stared at him. "And that's all you have to say about that?"

Shiv stared at Valor. "Yeah, I guess. It was kind of bad. I don't like it."

The Legendary Pathbearer let out an unnerved breath. "Shiv, what you experienced is more trauma than most people can ever possibly endure. It would have taken, it… Uva put you back together, yes, but from what I understand, from what she told me, she didn't conduct so much surgery as she did peel your broken pieces away from each other and reattach them to their proper positions within your mind. You healed yourself once everything was back in shape."

Shiv nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Stop nodding!" Valor sighed. Shiv immediately stopped nodding. "Shiv. I want to talk with you about my son. Udraal.”

"The Udraal that sealed you in the dagger in the first place?"

"Yes. And," Valor stared at Shiv for a moment before he continued, "he was trying to create something. For a long time he was trying. And among his concept of a magnum opus, there was something I worked with him to achieve. An entity with an unbreaking mind. A regenerating mind, a self-restoring mind. One that would always return to a certain baseline, have a few specific traits that could be imprinted on it. Originally it was the concept for a particular series of war golems we were trying to make, but I suspect it became something more for him."

"So what are you talking about? What do you mean?" Shiv said.

"I'm beginning to remember certain things," Valor said. "And some of these things, the way your nature works, how you are deathless in body and spirit, but also returning in mind… I do not have my power over Animancy, but I can still examine you, can still do, do…" Valor struggled to stay afloat.

"You should get fixed up first, Valor," Shiv said. "All this can wait."

Valor regarded him. "I fear it cannot, Shiv. I fear you do not know how intensely strife will come for you now. Go, go quickly. But when you leave through the gateway, be fast, be alert, and understand that you will always be in danger now, ever-escalating danger. Those moments of peace, treasure them, enjoy them. They will not be your every day, they will be your rarities. Find strength. And be iron. Be more of yourself than ever before.”

Shiv considered the severity in Valor's tone and simply grunted. "Well, Valor, I'll tell you this much. I took things as they came, while I was a Pathless trying to earn a path. And this, right now, even after all that pain…" He licked the inside of his cheek. He was alive. It hurt like hell while he struggled, but he was alive, and he enjoyed every second of it. "...wouldn't change a godsdamn thing. I'll hear whatever you need to tell me later. I'll do whatever it is we need to so that you can get a better understanding of my soul or whatever, but don't apologize to me about this. This is the only life I ever wanted, and the system is giving it to me, bone-deep and raw."

Valor let out a laugh. "And you truly are meant for the favored life. It's also unsurprising why the orc fell in love with you."

And that immediately killed Shiv's enthusiasm. "Come on Valor, don't say that shit."

"It is simply the truth," Valor said. "Your casual enjoyment of great struggle reminds me of Marikos, and your taste for violence has more than earned you the Challenger's attention. Tread carefully, and do not be consumed by your deeds. Remember: you are also a chef."

"I am also a chef," Shiv nodded. "And right now I'm gonna go get us some meat."

"Yes, meat I cannot eat. Thank you Shiv, it is always wonderful to be reminded of this."

Shiv winced. "We'll find another fragment of you soon. We'll definitely get you a body at some point."

"At some point," Valor sighed. "If I am still whole and here at some point." He laughed. "I am a pitiful sight, am I not? I was a Legend once, now I am broken. I was broken by something I could have killed so casually. It is like, it is like watching yourself being strangled by a wretch, by a cretin." Valor opened and closed his hands and he shook his head. "Ah. Apologies. A black mood  was upon me. Now, I cast it away. Be away with you for now. I will examine the Educator’s tome in the meantime as well. It is something I am still capable of doing while I… while Adam keeps me sustained.”

The Deathless gave a final nod to the Legendary Pathbearer and shot out for the Abyssal Gateway. He gave telepathic notice of his departure to Adam and Uva. It took him mere minutes to cross the entirety of Gate Theborn. It helped that the insides of the gate were shrinking as well. As he passed through the gateway, he expected to see the brutal slaughter they left behind. It had been nearly a few hours ago, but the small army of vampires outside had been devastated and torn asunder between Adam, Shiv and Uva's team effort.

There was a scene of slaughter. But more than that, there were now new figures before him. Several dozen new figures, all of them Biomancers, all of them sporting interesting teeth, blood-red eyes and an assortment of other Skill Evolutions and strange biological armors. 

Shiv sighed. Valor warned him about this, that the system’s attempts to kill him and his companions would be nigh constant now.

Shiv pulled himself to a halt in the air before the vampires. "So," Shiv muttered, "you guys are the after-action team?"

“A Necrotech?” one of the First Blood vampires hissed. “Speak, death-touched one. Speak and tell us what happened here. An army of ours—”

“Oh, I killed them,” Shiv said. He felt the vampire’s courage shudder at once. Several bared their fangs and hissed. “Well. Most of them. I had help. But I don’t think I’m going to need help with you.”

“You are but one. We are Masters of Blood and—”

Shiv froze time. All the vampires went still. “Yeah? Well, where’s your Chronomancer?” No reply came. He let out a snorting laugh. “Well. Time to test Inertial Overdrive again. Let’s see how many of you bloodsuckers got Master-Tier Toughness.”