II-55 Chronomancer

The System moves in subtle and vulgar ways. But when it gets vulgar, it gets very, very vulgar.

I'll say something right now, something that most Pathbearers don't like to admit out loud. Call it superstition, call it self-preservation; they just don't like mentioning it. But most of us? Well, we think the System's a piece of shit.

Sure, it gives us power, and that's great. There's nothing like being a Pathbearer, performing an action over and over, pushing yourself and going beyond everything you were before. But the System only gives you that power so it can throw you at something else. It just wants to see you struggle and, eventually, die. The System is a goddamn conflict generator. No, a conflict eater.

Hey, I've got a personal theory. It came to me one day as I marched on a battlefield, right as a mana storm emerged from nowhere. You want to know why I think it appeared? Because we had just smashed our enemy, taken barely any losses, and the System wasn't satisfied. So it sent a storm after us.

We hunkered down, and inside that storm were primal dragons.

You ever fight a dragon, Reader? If you have, then you understand what I'm talking about. There's no monster quite like a dragon. You can launch all the magic you want at the damn monsters; it'll only make it stronger. It'll drink up a good portion of it and smash right into you. You need to gather your entire mage corps just to really affect one normally, and if they smash into your backline, you’ll see what mass death is.

I barely managed to wrestle one down long enough for my wife to take its head off.

We didn't do anything to start that fight. We didn't go anywhere near the mana storm. It hunted us! It followed us! An army a million strong, and those goddamn dragons killed 200,000 of us. We killed maybe 150 of them in return, and then storm just passed through.

And in the end, the only reason we got out of that was because we had a Heroic-Tier Chronomancer with us, blinking around the battlefield, drawing the bulk of the dragons’ attentions away.

At the end of it all, I gained my sixth Master-Tier skill. We didn’t even get a quest for that. It was just a random slaughter that happened without reason.

That was when I learned to truly hate the System.

Then, a month later, my wife lay bleeding to death. And that new skill I got? The "Seal Wound" skill I had failed to use to save my friends? I used it on her, and she lived.

And I wasn't so hateful of the System anymore.

But I am terrified of it. And I am scared of what it might do to me next.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

II-55

Chronomancer

Shiv's insides boiled. He boiled with rage at the system's vulgar hand, which had deliberately pushed him to this place. He boiled with rage at the eldritch entity, who was extending the oily tendrils that now composed Confriga's wings toward Adam, Uva, and Valor. And He boiled with rage at his own soul, for not processing the Master-Tier Skill Evolution fast enough.

Come on! Shiv roared silently. Come on!

"Adam, no, no, no, please," Rose moaned within him, reaching out for her son from leagues beyond his reach.

The entity had a protective veil of Chronomancy that displaced Shiv every time he got close. He never stopped trying to consume the entity’s vitality. With his Chronomancy manifesting as a feeble layer of golden grains over his body, however, all he managed was pushing a bit further into the entity’s shroud before he was launched back in time.

Yet, as his Skill Evolution took hold, things became different. Shiv observed the entire process of his displacement. It wasn't as sudden or jarring as before. Instead, he felt himself snap two seconds backward. A heavy current of unseen Chronomancy mana smashed into him, driving him away with ease.

That’s why I couldn’t hurt it earlier! Godsdamned Chronomancy! It can keep me at bay like this forever if I didn’t gain my own Chronomancy Skill. Come on! Evolve! Hurry up!

The first of its oily tendrils snaked around Adam's armor, seizing the Young Lord as he struggled in vain.

"G-get back you—tainted thing!" Adam spat, his voice thick with absolute dread. Still, he glared at the entity with all the hate and defiance he could muster. If there was one thing about Adam, it was that he was going to do the right thing. He was going to be a Pathbearer, even if it scared him to death.

Uva, meanwhile, went entirely cold. She said nothing, simply scowling at the beast with disdain as its limbs projected toward her. The only one more unresponsive was Valor; the ancient Pathbearer seemed resigned.

"Shiv," Valor called out, "this is not your fault. This is what it means to be favored. Whatever happens, do not cling to it. Let the pain pass through you—”

Shiv ignored Valor. The system gave him a skill, and he was going to be godsdamned if he was going to let this monster take his companions from him.

Skill Evolution: Chronomancy (Adept) > Strider of the Unbending Path (Master)

Shiv felt something burst out from within his Vitae, blossoming outward to cover him as if a flower in bloom. A second before, his Chronomancy was but a thin trickle of motes over his body, so faint he could barely feel it. Like Necromancy, its mana seemed to work differently from his Biomancy, shrouding him tightly rather than projecting itself outward as a field. As soon as his Skill Evolution completed, his Chronomancy transformed. And his relationship with time itself changed as well.

The thin film ignited and swelled with potency, with the glittering, golden dust melding together into fluid and resplendent armor. The massive spike in power flooded Shiv with a rush unlike any he had ever experienced. More than that, existence quivered around him and his senses felt something entirely new.

All his life, he had known the world as something material, something to interact with using his body or, more recently, his magic. Now, the world had another sensation to it. It wasn't visible, but it was something he could feel. There was a flow to the world, to time. Time was constantly passing, constantly pushing him toward the future, an ever-present pressure gliding him along like a current in a river. Previously, he had been so submerged in it that he was ignorant, drowned. But as his Chronomancy shot to Master-Tier, it was like he had suddenly developed fins and gills. He had surfaced. He could feel the exact sensation of time passing against him, concentrating around him.

The gold that shrouded him, the mana of Chronomancy itself, was no longer a thin film. It was more than just an outer shell as well, but something akin to a second layer to his very being. The flowing currents that comprised the Strider of the Unbending Path imbued him with the power to defy the passing of time and press forward.

Forward into the time-inverting waves unleashed by the entity.

Just then, Adam cried out. He pulled his head back as one of the entity’s tentacles shot upward through his chin, splitting the Young Lord’s lower jaw in half. Blood welled. Adam screamed. Rose howled out for him. Shiv’s heart exploded into a firestorm of rage.

In that desperate moment, Shiv defied the passage of time itself. The act was purely reflexive. He directed the flow of his temporal shell against the path which time crossed. The effect was immediate. The fluid gold armor solidified against the rushing currents of the fleeting present. A building pressure slammed into Shiv—an intense and immense weight smashed against him. But Shiv defied the will of time as his armor trembled and lashed against the progress of history. He fed every last bit of his rage into his Chronomancy, and for a moment the struggle lessened.

Time ground to a near halt. Everyone froze. 

Everyone but Shiv.

A coldness radiated through him as more of his vitality slipped away, but in that frozen instant, Shiv couldn’t help but regard his new magical power with awe and wonder. With every passing second, a strain was building against him. Time was ever-moving, and the weight it directed against him was always climbing. He wouldn't be able to sustain the growing pressure pushing against him for long, but for that moment, Shiv was a new kind of pillar—a dam against time.

Shiv moved, and it felt like he was sprinting underwater. Even with his immense strength, it felt like battling his way against a raging rapid with every step toward the entity. But he could still move! As he stomped toward the entity, he flinched as his newly evolved Chronomancy revealed something else to him.

The entity had vast, golden rivers connected to its body. Within those rivers floated faint echoes of the entity itself, but from a previous instance in time. Each of the echoes were neatly and evenly spaced, and Shiv guessed that it represented a separation of a single second in time. He remembered the creature talking about how it had another past. This was likely why. It had several pathways of Chronomancy extending into the near past. He also noted a building, golden accretion layering the space around the original entity itself. Somehow, he could instinctively tell that something to do with the future. The way this entity existed was discordant with reality, and time made its displeasure known against it as well, albeit to no avail.

Near the entity’s true body, the rivers curved and became something of a spiral. Even with Shiv holding his own passage in time still, he could see the entity’s curving rivers still moving slowly. They also seemed to be leaking fractals out into reality. 

Steeling himself, Shiv managed his final few steps and smashed through the inner-layer of Chronomancy mana that enshrouded the entity as if a bubble. The entity’s protective Chronomancy deformed. Shiv speared his palm on the entity’s lower back. Vitality exploded through him. The only time he felt more vitality flood into him at once was when he was facing the formless god while fighting the Educator.

Vitality Drain > 46

Revenant > 40

“WHAT IS THIS?” The entity cried. Shiv nearly flinched away in surprise, but he held firm. Its voice wailed forth from every river connected to it. And to Shiv’s surprise, every last echo within those rivers turned and noticed him. “HM? HIDDEN CHRONOMANCER? HOW? FROM WHERE? COULDN’T SENSE YOU. But… I sense everything?”

Shiv cast a laceration into the entity just as his shadowy cocoon started to form. To his delight, the entity split in half as his Woundeater dove into its body. He cast several more laceration spells and one Bowel-Breaker for good measure. The entity came apart. The hand and fingers that formed its face turned into chunks of oily-black ichor. Its “blood” slithered out of existence even as it peeled part before Shiv’s temporal onslaught.

Strider of the Unbending Path > 101

Woundeater > 76

Yet, before he ever could rejoice, a section of the entity’s river crashed into it, superimposing one of its echoes over its recently butchered body. That river got noticeably shorter—sacrificed an entire section of itself to perform the act Shiv just witnessed. But the entity was alive again. And it was aware of what just happened. Aware because it could view Shiv’s frozen present from a few seconds in the past.

What the hells am I fighting? Shiv shuddered. No wonder entire chunks of time were missing from his recollection earlier. This thing was probably attacking him from a place he just couldn’t defend. But how? Valor said that changing history itself was mana destabilizing? Was he fighting another god? Was the local mana stability about to collapse? It seemed fine. Everything about the damned entity was unnatural. Of course, that’s not going to stop me from kicking its ass.

Shiv’s resurrective cocoon burst around him. The Deathless snarled as he drove the hardest uppercut he could against the entity. A blast of force exploded around the damned hand it had for a face. Frozen in time against Shiv’s Strider, it couldn’t move. Shiv was about to hit it again when a crack formed over his Strider. The golden shell was on the verge of shattering beneath history’s building mass. Shiv knew he couldn’t endure much longer.

Ten seconds, Shiv recalled with a silent groan. I can practically stop my personal passage of time for ten seconds. But no more than that. Gods, it feels like I’m about to break apart.

But he couldn’t just drop his Chronomancy right now. It was the only thing protecting him from the entity’s abilities. And Adam was going to die if he let time resume. The entity was going to drive its tentacle up through the Young Lord’s skull. Out of time and options, Shiv cast a final spell at the tentacle as he reduced his struggle against time. Reduced; he didn’t stop.

The effects were absolute and astonishing. The world around him jerked back into motion. Slow motion. Shiv’s Strider was still cracking apart, but not nearly as fast as it did when he held time back from moving him at all. The entity reacted as well—and it was far faster than he was without a full Momentum Core.

It slammed his Chronomancy against him, smashing its rivers into his body. As it's unnatural time magic colliding against him, more of Shiv’s golden shell burst apart, revealing the Deathless within. But he stood his ground. He remained a dam, a pillar against time itself. The world wasn’t going to make him bend. And neither was this godsdamned abomination.

“Move!” the entity commanded. Every one of its echoes howled the command thereafter. Several of the echoes flicked their foul tentacles into Shiv, and cuts opened across his body beneath the entity’s discordant touch. The Strider didn’t protect one from physical damage in the end. But it kept Shiv pinned to the present, even as it broke away bit by bit. And his Adamantine Adaption diminished each of the entity’s following blows.

“Away! I cast you away! Back to into my past!” it cried again. “You will move—” Shiv’s shifted out of context. The creature froze. Every single one of its echoes stared on at the space where Shiv once existed. Beyond causality, Shiv flared his gravitic field and blasted up into the air, carrying the entity high. His Vitae exploded around him on impact, and the entity let out a sanity rending howl. But its focus was broken. The rivers of time connected to it splashed about wildly in the same fashion as its tentacles.

“And you can eat shit!” Shiv roared as he punted the entity in the chest with all his strength. He hit it so hard his right shin completely fractured. A five-hundred meter wide shockwave tore through the air as his gravitic field sent the entity shooting into the distance like a pebble, its tentacles and rivers of Chronomancy mana trailing behind it.

Adamantine Adaption > 128

Gravitic Wrestler > 126

Striking Proficiency > 39

As soon as the entity went beyond a kilometer, Shiv spiked himself back down to the ground. He fed his fracture to a wyrm as he crashed down beside Adam and ripped the tentacle out from the Young Lord’s face. Adam’s lower jaw was a mutilated mess. One that immediately went away as Shiv cast a Woundeater into him as well.

“Come on,” Shiv said, reaching down and pulling Adam to his feet. “You’re alright! You’re going to be alright!”

Adam clutched at his face as he hyperventilated. Stress-filled tears spilled out from the Young Lord’s eyes as he struggled to remain composed, and Shiv’s gut twisted. He briefly pulled Adam into a comforting embrace before rushing off to check on Uva, Valor, and Can Hu in turn.

“Are you alright?” Shiv said, examining Uva.

“I’m fine,” she said. A mana strand shot out from her into Adam. She grimaced as the Dimensional Archer spasmed. A second later, he snapped out of his state of shock as he battled to get his breath under control.

“T-thanks,” Adam said. His face was still bone white and his heart was beating dangerously fast. “That thing… what the bloody hells was that thing? Just looking at it made my mind twist.”

“It is an outsider,” Valor said, his tone grave. “An eldritch being. It should not be here. It cannot be here without a proper host or vessel that is strong enough to contain its unnatural nature. And now it has one.” The Legendary Pathbearer regarded Shiv. “But… how did—”

“Chronomancy,” Shiv spat. “I have Chronomancy. I chose it as my Master-Tier Skill. The system. The motherfucking system has been planning this all along. The kukri before—it was all to attune me. Just in time. Has to be.”

Adam briefly froze. “You’re a felling Master-Tier Chronomancer now too?”

“I didn’t have a godsdamned choice,” Shiv growled. He reeled Can Hu in with the rest of them using his Biomancy and the automaton crackled incoherently. “The entity, it has—it’s got these rivers connected to it. Extensions into the past that it can just—Uva!”

She shifted his memories across, and aside from the part where he went out of context, they saw all of it.

“Ascendants,” Adam breathed. “Valor, you said—”

“The eldritch do not function entirely under the laws of the system,” Valor answered. “We must flee. Adam. Teleport us. Now.”

But before the Young Lord could do anything, soared over several buildings and drifted toward them. Its massive black tendrils were spilled wide—a horrific parody of Confriga’s burning petals. Worse, the rivers of time it had reached even wider and the many eyes lining its body glared down at Shiv with an alien hate he couldn’t comprehend.

“Anomaly,” the entity seethed. The word was repeated across all its echoes. “Acausality. Will learn the limits of your nature. Will make sure you are a forgotten after…”

Shiv spat in the entity’s direction. “Godsdamned asshole. There. We traded barbs.” He clenched his fists. “Now let’s get bloody.” He shot a brief look at his companions, and his nerve briefly shook. Uva. Adam. Valor. Can Hu. None of them were ready for this kind of fight—for an entity that could attack them from across history. “Listen. I’ll try to hold this thing off. I can contend with its Chronomancy myself. At least for a while. But I absolutely can’t face it and keep any of you alive at the same time. When you get the chance, just teleport. Do not wait for me, just go.”

“But—” Adam said.

“Understood,” Uva replied. Shiv could sense how sick she felt, how much she didn’t want to let him face the entity alone, but she realized his plan.

Shiv continued. “Get some breathing room. Spend—spend some time developing a plan of attack. I’ll try to stay alive as long as I can and force it to show all its tricks. Adam. Observe the fight and try to figure something out. Find an opening. Uva. It doesn’t have Magical Resistance, but this thing’s mind is… everything about it is wrong. Don’t… just don’t go in if you don’t have a better choice.”

“I fear we’re all out of better choices, Shiv,” she replied, a look of hardened resignation in her eyes. “You’ll do what must be done. And so will I.”

A chill ran through him, but he just nodded. “Be quick, Adam. Because I don’t think—” Shiv’s words trailed off as he manifested his temporal shell. The fluid, golden armor flared around him, but to his surprise, it was practically repaired. What few cracks it still had were filled as more time passed over him. Time. Time wasn’t just his enemy. It was something he could wield now. It was the very foundation of Chronomancy itself. “I give you as much time as you need.”

“I—Yes. Just. Don’t die for good, you bastard,” Adam said, doing everything to keep his shame and worry in check.

“Go show the entity who the real monster is,” Uva added. Inside, she wasn’t much calmer than Adam. “We will return. We will kill this thing. We will find a way. Endure. Fight. Be who you are.”

“Fully intend to.” Despite everything, Shiv grinned. He knew in his bones that the fight about was going to be hell. But he intended to make it hell for both him and the abomination.

The entity blasted down through the air. Shiv sprinted forward to meet its charge. Its tendrils spread out wide; rivers of retroactive Chronomancy surged down to splash over him and his companions. Shiv’s gravitic field thundered around his form. He bent his legs and leaped. The ground beneath his feet exploded as he accelerated toward the entity. Its retroactive rivers and tentacles shot out to seize him. Shiv’s temporal shell turned solid. Time practically stopped

Ten seconds. Time to make these ten seconds count.

He cried out with effort as he forcibly stretched out his present moment. Immediately, he discovered another limitation to his immense power. Where normally his immense speed allowed him to cross vast leagues of distance in the span of seconds, now he was only traveling the gulf of meters with each spike of his gravitic field. Even with Gravitic Wrestler, it was like trying to fly across the bottom of a deep ocean. Shiv wondered how people with lesser Physicalities managed to endure the halting of time.

Then, it occurred to him that Sullain and this entity might only have stopped time for other people. They themselves seemed to exist in the natural flow of the present.

It took three seconds before his Biomancy was in range of the creature. He cast both wounds into the entity. Its face and leg came apart before, once more, it “reloaded” itself with a stored instance of a past self. Shiv searched for the river that had been shortened earlier, but his stomach turned to lead as he realized its rivers were all the same length again.

Whatever the entity’s Chronomancy lost was already restored. It wasn’t so different with Shiv’s Strider. But despite being able to stop time, he couldn’t help but feel that he had the inferior Chronomancy Skill Evolution between them. He ripped the entity apart five more times before he finally crashed into it physically. To Shiv’s displeasure, he couldn’t kill any of its echoes before they brought into the present to replace what it had lost.

With every death, its rivers shortened, but not nearly fast enough. It had hundreds of backup bodies from the past—with a chance to recover of them if Shiv gave it a chance to breath. This is godsdamned bullshit… Wait, is this what fighting me feels like?

He spiked his gravitic field into the entity’s body and started punching it. It lurched backward by meters with every blow, even as Shiv’s Momentum Core filled. If traveling through restrained time was hard alone, doing it with someone else felt like lugging a lead ball. The first cracks spread along his temporal shell, and Shiv let some fluidity return to the Strider. Time moved again—then time jolted to a near halt once more as Shiv discharged his Momentum Core.

He threw the hardest right hook of his life into the open palm the entity had for a face. A shockwave of epic proportions swelled well beyond eight kilometers in radius as both Shiv and the entity ignited from velocity friction alone. They sailed through the air like a crimson comet. With time partially held back, Shiv cast Woundeater after Woundeater into the entity, killing it as many times as he could.

A melody of displeasure and annoyance left the creature’s many echoes. The first of its many retroactive rivers smashed into Shiv again, cleaving a deep fissure into his temporal shell. “Won’t move? Why? WHY? Hm?” Shiv kept killing it over and over, as it regarded him more with curiosity than animosity now. Its rivers arced suddenly, becoming a collective spiral that smashed into him again and again.

Entire sections of Shiv’s temporal shell broke away, but the parts that remained prevented him from being cast back into the past.

“Feels like a fixed point in time. A hard point in time. A stone with legs and hands. Stone that learned how to swim against the tide. Hard temporal shell. Skill… Know this Skill Evolution. Strider of the Unbending Path. Rare. Strange for human to develop such a Skill Evolution. More common for dragons. Defies temporal storms…”

“Shut up and fight!” Shiv snarled as he continued hitting the creature over and over. He beheaded it with another Biomancy spell, but before he could continue, another river crashed into him, and finally, his temporal shell shattered. One of the echoes slammed into Shiv, and casually drove a clawed hand through his chest.

Suddenly, he was defenseless before the entity’s Chronomancy again. Defenseless, but no longer unaware. As soon as the retroactive currents slammed into him, he jolted back in time—zipping back to where he was twenty seconds ago. The world blurred into colors around him as he jolted across time and space. He came to a stop right above the plaza, just as Adam and the others teleported.

The Young Lord caught sight of Shiv, and his face twisted in abject horror.

“Go!” Shiv howled, clutching the gaping wound in his gut. He—the echo was still there, with its arm inside him. It had detached from the rest of the river. Slowly, Shiv stared into its hand-head, into the many crescent eyes that glittered at him. Then, with a ripple of gold, the original entity swapped places with its echo just as Adam and the others teleported away.

But not fast enough.

It directed a surging river over the point where the party just departed, and Shiv’s eyes widened as Adam’s Dimensional magic reversed itself, as a teleportation bubble receded, casting his companions back to the present. Within the river, the echoes of the entity reached out to tear his family apart. Shiv went from fear to absolute fury in an instant. Fury he fed into his Chronomancy.

The broken segments of his fast-reforming armor flared. Time didn’t halt, but it slowed just enough for Shiv to cast a Psychomancy link into the entity’s mind. He triggered his Icon of the Paindrinker just as he flayed the left side of his body open with his Biomancy. Pain. Shiv channeled every bit of pain he could into the creature.

For a second, the entity paused and Shiv thought he was overloading it with agony. But then, an inhuman note of laughter sounded from inside the entity as it clenched his mind tight. “Ah. Pain. Not something I have. You keep. No. Wait. Let me show you other pain. Other pain I have recollected. Compare. Here is Confriga’s.”

And it dumped a deluge of torturous memories into Shiv as a response. A deluge of Confriga’s memories as Valor took his legs and shattered his very soul with Necromancy. Shiv clenched his teeth as he insides twisted and came asunder with near unbearable suffering. He headbutted the entity twice—and desperate anger exploded within him as he heard a series of loud snaps, followed by stomach-turning shrieks from Uva and Adam.

He fed all his rage into a punch that disintegrated the entity’s head. It respawned and flung him down to the ground just a few meters away from his companions. Shiv impacted the ground and bounced. The entity slammed a series of tentacles through his torso. His Adamanatine Adaption hardened him. Instead of being casually torn apart by the impossible strong horror, it merely caved his chest in. Existence turned to torture. Shiv vomited blood all over the entity’s inky-black tentacles. Then cast a laceration at it. The entity was promptly beheaded—and immediately respawned again. Before it could do anything else, Shiv shifted out of context. 

He sank back into his own Vitae as he flung himself toward his allies.

What he saw nearly made Shiv vomit again out.

Uva’s screams were the first thing that he truly noticed—and something that sent his rage into the stratosphere. One of the echoes had her pinned beneath its feet, had dismembered her arms and legs by ripping them free of her body. The pain on her face, the anguish in her shrieks—

Adam was beside her. Adam wasn’t moving. Adam’s head was pointed the wrong way entirely. Rose stared wailing inside Shiv then, adding to the chaos. Another echo had Valor clutched between the fingers of its head-hand. The Legendary Pathbearer didn’t cry out, but the flames in his eyes were being siphoned away—siphoned somewhere.

Nearby, Can Hu lay discarded, still holding onto Shiv’s old corpse.

Something within Shiv’s sanity buckled. But Shiv didn’t break. He refused. Fuck you, system! They’re mine! You can’t take them! You won’t take anything else from me!

The Challenger smiles upon you.

Shiv crashed into the entity’s retroactive river. Every fiber of his being was soaked in pain, but his heart was an engine fueled by anger and spite. He spent it all on his Chronomancy. A shell of badly mauled but rapidly regenerating armor formed over him, and went stone hard.

Time stilled.

Shiv triggered his Song of the Vigilant and prepared three wyrms. The first crashed into Adam—and the Young Lord’s head locked back in place. The second impacted Uva, and her limbs reappeared as the Woundeater consumed her wounds. He flung both wyrms into the entity with an animalistic snarl.

Its head snapped back. Its limbs came apart. It respawned immediately after, but that reset its echoes and spared Adam, Uva, and the others.

Shiv’s rage ran dry, and his temporal shell broke apart again.

A flicker of moment. That was all he noticed before the entity drove another tentacle into his chest. Shiv felt his muscles tear and his organs burst. He puked blood once more—and choked as three more tentacles smashed into him. Darkness crept in from the corners of his eyes, but he refused to black out.

He clutched the tentacles. Fought to pull them away. He cast another laceration spell, severing one of the lashing limbs—

The entity promptly slammed down against him, and Shiv felt his spine break in half. By this point, he was beyond hurt. Beyond pain. His body was broken, so he used his Biomancy to wield himself as a blunt weapon—tried to pry himself free from beneath the entity. But it wasn’t enough. Even as he poured more of his constantly growing rage into the skill.

“Come on,” Shiv grunted, his words coming in slurred breaths. “I’m… I’m not done. Come on.”

Adamantine Adaption > 129

Strider of the Unbending Path > 102

“Hm. Only Master-Tier in speed-fast without Chronomancy. Interesting. Test durability again. Need to reconstruct anomaly’s history manually. Understand. Unravel after understanding. But first… Why not flee? Stayed. For the others. Ah. Family. Loved ones. Interesting. Confriga still inside. What’s left of him. Wants me to experiment. Wants me to hurt this one badly. Mind and body. Hm. Easily done.”

The entity swapped places with an echo just as a Veilpiercer was about to hit it. A second and a loud snap later, the entity returned and dashed Adam on the ground right beside Shiv. The Young Lord’s face was partially caved in. Shiv used his Biomancy on Adam, restoring him. As soon as he did, as soon as Adam drew breath, the entity wrapped a tentacle around Adam’s neck and pulled.

“No!” Shiv roared. He reached with his Biomancy and forced Adam’s head to stay in place. The entity pulled casually—it wasn’t truly trying. In fact, rather than treating Adam with malice, it was observing Shiv.

Blood and tears ran down the Young Lord’s face. His tendons tore and his bones broke. But Shiv used wyrm after wyrm to keep him alive. Even casting the Woundeaters into the entity interrupted it. A flash of corrosion flashed in the corner of Shiv’s vision. Valor unleashed his Necromancy on the entity. It simply swept the attack out of the current timeline using one of its many available retroactive rivers. It held the others back as it continued its cruel examination.

Faintly, Shiv could hear Confriga somewhere. The bastard was laughing. Laughing from within the entity.

Another tentacle swept out and pinned Valor a few meters away from Shiv. Something snapped. For the first time, Shiv heard the Legendary Pathbearer shout in genuine pain.

Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop, Rose whimpered inside of him.

The entity was above to break Adam’s neck again when Uva’s shield shot toward it. The entity caught the shield without looking and ignored Uva’s mana strands punching into its mind. She tried jumping into it. It caught her strands in a river of time and sent her back—-back to the point where she just had her limbs ripped off.

The Umbral Psychomancer snapped across time like she was a rubberband and appeared to Shiv’s left. She tried to bite back her screams, but it was too much—all the back at once was too much.

Something inside Shiv broke. His sanity reeled. But he refused to collapse.

The Challenger roars with glee.

Shiv cast another Woundeater into Uva, restoring her again. But the entity just pinned her in place, and regarded her for a moment. “Hm. Good. No. Won’t hurt the female. No. Confriga. Cannot decide anymore. You gave yourself to me. I will not kill a good vessel just to traumatize the one that mates with it. She has better uses. Has insight. Very resistant mind. Will be a good vessel. Already has the insight—has the passage in her eyes…

Even through a haze of near madness and pain, Shiv still understood enough for his blood to run cold. Better… uses?

He felt Uva’s mana strand slide into his mind—connect him to Adam as well.

“S-so,” Uva whimpered, her body shaking from all the pain she just endured. “I t-think that escape could have gone better.”

Despite everything, Shiv laughed. It came out with a near sob.

“Shiv… hurts…” Adam whimpered, as the entity kept trying to decapitate him.

“I know, Adam. Just… I know—I’ll—I’ll.” Valor’s mind was blank. Silent. Shiv wasn’t sure if the old Pathbearer was still with them. Despair crept over his insides, boiled through his body like acid. But he refused to break entire. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. “I’ll find a way—we’ll find a way.”

“Shiv—”  Uva said. “I’m going to… to try something. Not sure if it will work—not even sure what it does… but if it does, get ready to… to…” And the last bit of her coherence died as she clenched her eyes shut. The cries that came from her next weren’t noises a person should have been capable of making.

“Uva!” Shiv shouted, as he watched her clutch her eyes.

The entity froze. It turned to regard her. “What is this? What is happening here?”

***

Uva was pain. But she was many other things as well. Every time she looked at the entity’s eyes, she felt it clash against her sanity, felt it try to influence her. She had no idea how Shiv managed to face it for so long without going insane. She had to break away the wrongness using her Psychomancy earlier, but every time, it also fed her insight.

Insight into what it wanted. How it thought. And that, in turn, advanced her Eldritch Insight over and over again. With every level she gained, reality’s fabric felt weaker and weaker, and she felt something building inside her gaze. A power? No. It was more like a harmful turn. Something that could pierce through boundaries that shouldn’t be knowable to a person.

And across her desperate struggle, as she drank in unwanted insight about the entity, other presences started watching her as well. Whispering to her as the entity ripped her limbs away.

The Dreamtaker is watching you

“Insight is a weapon,” the Dreamtaker hissed. Its voice was Uva’s own, but it spoke unlike her. It spoke with an inhumanity and a wrongness of tones. “Open your true gaze. Breach the veil. Rip the unflesh of the Recollector. Defy madness. Let me help you kill the Stranger’s spawn, oh Seeker of Mysteries… First. Reward yourself. Change your body. Strip yourself of limitation.”

Uva’s mind reeled. Just hearing those words clawed at her sanity, but as she forcibly wove her mind back into shape, she listened to the words over and over through her delirium induced by pain, and she realized what it was telling her.

Or maybe what she was just hallucinating.

Skill Evolution: Physicality (Common) > Non-Euclidean Morphology (Master)

Rather than growing stronger, Uva felt her body slacken and loosen in ways she couldn’t understand.

“Good. Now, you are ready. Now your flesh will not tear when I aid you.”

She focused on her Eldritch Insight. She listened to the whispering voice. And she opened her eyes, opened her eyes deeper as she saw things… Composer… The things she saw…

“Yes. Further. Gaze further…”

Uva felt her consciousness hurtle through a gap in the world. A gap she should have never noticed. Her mana strands fell through her gaze into places beyond. Not even dimensions. Just… entire worlds and realities on the system’s periphery—lurking closer than she could ever imagine, but further than she could ever know. And there, things bit at her mind, things clung to her mana, things showed her truths she forced herself to forget immediately lest her mind shatter in an instant.

Eldritch Insight > 8

The pain grew beyond severe. She howled as her back arched, as she clutched her eyes, as she—

Something caught one of her mana strands. Something powerful. Something beyond old. And something that despised the Stranger.

“I feel you, Seeker. It is good to meet with you. Now. Reach into my book. I can feel it nearby. I know where you are. Now you need a pathway for where I am.”

Uva did without thinking. One of her strands slipped into Shiv’s cloak. For a near second she groped blindly, but even with her hands over her eyes, she could see the colors… The colors she didn’t have words to describe.

Her mana strand touched the book they found in Confriga’s vault.

The Dreamtaker crooned in alien delight. “Now. Take away your hands and let me use your eyes. Let me see them. Let me show you a new color.”

Uva did as the Dreamtaker bade. She pulled her hands away just as the entity reached down for her, and from her eyes—the windows of her soul now turned to doorways—an enormous feathered tongue squeezed out from within Uva’s right irises and speared through the entity’s palm-like head.

The entity screamed.

Uva screamed.

The Dreamtaker laughed.

Skill Replaced: Eldritch Insight (Master) > Dreamtaker’s Gaze (Unique)

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 10