II-21 Regroup

No Pathbearer can stand alone.

This line will be written again.

No Pathbearer can stand alone. 

It will be repeated a third time.

No Pathbearer can stand alone.

Between every chapter, this line will appear.

No Pathbearer can stand alone. 

It does not matter if you are merely Advanced, an Adept on his way, a Master of a mighty skill, or a Hero beyond what most could ever become—even the Legends, even the gods stand in a union. Thirteen Ascendants. 

No Pathbearer stands alone.

Whatever your strengths, whatever your virtues, there are places you will be weak. There are places where you will be found lacking. For every Pathbearer who possesses Master-Tier Physicality—capable of punching their way through a mountain, ripping colossal beasts in half and wrestling titans to the ground—the same Pathbearer will be brought vulnerable in mind and body, vulnerable to magic, vulnerable to social subterfuge, vulnerable because they are alone, because their skills do not encompass the totality of the world and the totality of many battlefields they will face.

And that is why Pathbearers fight in teams. That is why they operate together, Masters making up for each other’s deficiencies. A team of Masters is an army unto themselves. A single Master is a tragedy waiting to occur: someone who can inflict tremendous damage but will inevitably be brought down when their vulnerability is found, when they are struck in a way their Master Skill cannot defend against.

No Pathbearer can stand alone. 

These words are repeated. So, find those you want to stand beside. Find those who can keep you standing. Find those that will ensure your path reaches the summit.

-The Paths of Ascension, Essential Reading at Phoenix Academy of The Twilight Republic

II-21

Regroup

Psychomancy > 11

Parry > 48

Gravitic Wrestler > 108

Momentum Core > 78

Shiv woke with a sudden shout. His mind still felt raw, but he could remember. Remember… fighting the Jealousy… And then he looked behind him, and he remembered a few fragments more. 

He remembered how he was drifting through that mind-broken haze. He remembered how badly the monster wounded him. He remembered… Shiv frowned as he promptly lost track of his own thoughts then. What was his name? Was it Shiv? Or… wait, he was pretending to be someone, right? Was he pretending to be Shiv? Was he actually someone else?

Name: Tanner “Shiv” Lowe

Age: 18

Race: Human

Path: 

Deathless

Okay. So. He was probably Shiv. It looked more like a nickname instead of his actual name, but looking at his actual name made him reactively angry. So. Shiv it was. He could kind of remember his Path and stuff like that, but it was hard to recall… so many things were hard to recall for him.

Then, as he looked forward, he saw all the slaves still staring at him.

Most of them were seated. They’d helped each other as best they could. The injured lay on their sides or gathered in a pile, given what comfort they had. The others looked haggard, miserable, but they were trying. Everyone was also partially soaked in a pool of blood. Shiv could feel the pool because of his Biomancy. He blinked. He didn’t know why he could remember that. Right now, his Biomancy was still really painful to use, though. It field still felt pretty ruptured.

At the head of the survivors was a girl. She was dressed in rags and wore these thick, ruined boots. Boots that were filled with blood. She was still staring at Shiv—staring at him and his previous body beside him. Shiv noticed his corpse as well, still clad in the exoskeleton. With a grunt, he pushed himself off the Greater Demon and—

Shiv froze. Greater Demon? He turned around to see the Jealousy. The monster he came to kill. It was… it looked fine. But it wasn’t moving. He knew it was dead.  He remembered…. That they were battling each other within the mindscape of one of the slaves. He bound his thoughts to it. He learned how to do that from someone he cared for—someone he had been intimate with. Her name was lost to him, drifting among the debris of his mind, but he could remember her pale skin, her subtle smile, her eyes of strangest blue, and her hair. She cut her hair shorter because of something. They survived something together. Something intense. Whatever he learned to do with her, he did it to the Greater Demon. And that broke the Jealousy somehow. He felt it break. He felt it come apart before he did.

For a few moments, he just stared at the unmoving titan, dead of mind but still whole of body. Its body was fine. If all this was its blood, it healed up pretty good.

Shiv was pretty annoyed about that. He thought about cancer for some reason. Why could it heal like that when people just got cancer and died?

“This is… bullshit,” Shiv muttered, unable to shake the feeling of annoyance. And intense triumph. “Did I do that?” He looked at the slave girl.

She blinked in surprise, not expecting him to ask her anything. “I… uh, yeah! You did. You… you killed it. I don’t know how but… I think it’s dead.”

Shiv looked back and the Jealousy and nodded. He clenched his fists. I must be pretty strong. I feel pretty strong, though a little sore. Nice job, me. We beat the shit out of a mountain-sized demon. Now if I could have only done that without getting my mind broken…

“How long was I out?” Shiv asked. He was still reeling from the fight, parts of his memories were pockets—were emptiness. He didn’t know if this damage was going to be lasting, but at least he could remember his own name now and sort of recall who he was. The broader parts of his own history and why he was here was still missing, though.

“Hours,” the girl whispered.  She looked shocked, even scared of him. All the slaves were scared of him. He could feel that with his Dread Aura skill, and he realized everyone in the room was beyond terrified of him. That filled Shiv with a particularly bitter feeling. His mind might be partially shattered, but judging from the state of the slaves and how many of them were just drifting dead in this pool of blood.

“How many of you died?” he asked. “Did… I remember trying to keep the monster away from you. I think.” Shiv clenched his jaw as he looked at the half-submerged face of a pretty young looking pale-elf. “I didn’t want so many of you to die.”

The girl swallowed and nodded. “Okay. So, you—you won’t hurt us, right?”

Shiv looked at the surviving, took in their wounds and let out a breath. “No. Actually. I think… I think I can help you.” There were still a few hundred slaves. Maybe four hundred? He might be able to heal them if he tried. Shiv triggered his Biomancy—let out a howl of pain as agony coursed through his being. He barely stopped himself from blacking out again.

His sudden shout of pain made the slaves flinch. The girl fell backward into the pool of blood, backing away from Shiv on her rear and palms. When he remained in his doubled-over state, she regarded him with a look of caution. “Are you alright?”

With a grunt of effort, Shiv straightened himself and shook his head. “I think… I hurt something deep inside me, too,” Shiv choked out. It wasn’t just his mind. It was his soul as well. Trying to use magic right now felt like thrusting a burning rod into an open wound. That was the closest comparison he could think of. He needed more time to recover, but that also meant he wasn’t going to be healing the surviving slaves anytime soon.

“Okay,” Shiv said, taking in a shaky breath. “I can’t use my magic on you. So. I think… I think…” He frowned. He was thinking about food. Making food. In fact, he really wanted to make food right now. If he didn’t, he would feel all kinds of pent-up. This knowledge came to him through raw intuition. “How many of you are hungry?”

The slaves just stared at him. Some of their faces were tear-streaked, some were scarred, most were haggard, and all were scared.

“Hungry?” the girl asked.

“Yeah. I don’t feel hungry, but I need to cook something… something to make me feel better.” He turned to regard the Greater Demon he killed. “Yeah, this thing. Maybe we can try eating this thing. It’s got a lot of meat, right?” The girl gawked at him and didn’t say anything. Several other slaves mirrored her reaction. “I think I might be able to prepare this. I just need to follow my gut.”

As Shiv strode over to one of the Jealousy’s unmoving tentacles—he noticed just how many people had been crushed under it. The monster had eight limbs, and all of them were splayed wide across the room in death. The entire chamber was barely larger than the creature, so the fact that a few hundred slaves were still alive surprised Shiv. This could have been a lot worse.

His instincts told him to use his Biomancy to pull the Greater Demon apart. That wasn’t an option for Shiv right now, so he went for his second favorite option: brute force. He clenched his fists, his muscles surging with power. The power to shatter mountains, the power to wrestle mountains and defy storms. A hyper-reactive gravity field was woven into Shiv’s very body, and he felt like he could direct his full strength against anything he could touch.  Not only that, though, he now had an intuitive understanding of how to use his gravitic field to bend, to break, to throw, to choke.

“Gravitic Wrestler,” Shiv said, looking through his personal status. “Huh. That sounds pretty powerful. I think… I think I remember slamming this monster against…” His voice trailed off as he looked up at the walls. Most of this place’s interior was deformed, dented outward as it had sustained multiple immense impacts. Blood was smeared all over the walls. Ten broken nubs jutted out high above, composed of broken focus crystals. “Holy shit. I was strong enough to do that?”

A flash of a memory washed over him. The memory of him slamming the Jealousy against the walls over and over again. He let out a disbelieving laugh as he imagined himself fighting the creature. He was barely a speck next to it. This was like an insect out-wrestling a full-grown person. More memories came to him. Memories of dying over and over. That made him stronger somehow. Was he invincible too? Maybe immortal? Shiv couldn’t recall. Whatever the case, his mind was definitely very vulnerable.

“Alright, you big, dead bastard,” Shiv muttered as he regarded the Jealousy. Its colossal eye was blank and unmoving, but Shiv still felt uneasy, expecting it to rise and attack him at any moment. When it didn’t, Shiv rolled his shoulder and stared at one of its limbs. It was densely armored, ridged by a thick, rough carapace. Shiv looked at his own fist and realized he had a slightly metallic sheen to his skin. “Let’s see if I’m actually as strong and tough as I vaguely remember being.”

He focused his field around his elbow and drove it against the monster’s carapace. His first blow was already colossal. The shell fractured. A shockwave crashed against him—but Shiv found himself able to push back against the force without issue, shrugging it aside as if he was dealing with a breeze. He hit the limb several times more more before the outer shell cracked completely, exposing the flesh hidden inside. “Alright,” Shiv said, licking his lips. “Just let me rip a good chunk off for everyone.”

He reached in with his hands, wondering how he was supposed to rip a good chunk of meat out with his tiny fingers, when he suddenly realized his earlier instincts were right. Everything he touched, he could twist or manipulate with his gravitic field. He closed his fists then and pulled as he was stripping the meat off a drumstick. His field pinched around the edge of the Greater Demon’s limb and let him rip a massive boulder of flesh free after some tugging.

The whole process still took a bit of effort, even without the Greater Demon struggling against him. Another memory came back to him. A memory of him breaking the neck of a large and vicious rat. Shiv paused. If he was strong enough to wrestle with a literal mountain, why was he struggling against something like a rat before? How old was he? The status said eighteen. That didn’t seem normal.

Maybe puberty hit me harder than most people, Shiv thought, half-jokingly. With his mind the way it was, it very well might be true.

He turned to the slaves, holding a mass of flesh well over ten times his size with one arm. They stared at him, slack-jawed and stunned. Shiv frowned at them, frowned at the blood on the ground, and then considered the pieces of broken carapace that were now scattered about. “Give me moment. Let’s see what I can do with this.”

About five minutes later, most of the slaves were sitting on one of the Jealousy’s limbs as Shiv handed them makeshift carapace bowls and bone daggers he found inside his cloak. “There aren’t that many bowls, so you might have to share,” Shiv said, as he handed his last dagger to the girl. She took the dagger and yelped as she could barely bear its weight even with both hands. They were now out of the blood and on higher ground. Near the Jealousy’s main body, Shiv had a massive makeshift cauldron going as well. The cauldron itself was also made from carapace, and he filled it with water after looking through his skills again and realizing he had a Hydromancy Skill. It wasn’t very strong, but after some effort, he managed a steady stream that he used to cleanse the slaves and himself of blood first before turning it on the cauldron. After that, he used his Pyromancy to heat the water to a fast boil before he started peeling the massive chunk of meat he took from the Jealousy earlier into slices.

The flesh was almost the color of night, but spots of redness and bits of rough texture give the meat some added character. Shiv used his Gravitic Wrestler Skill to rip neat and large strips out of the meat before mincing it down to these perfect squares. The moment he started preparing food, everything became clearer to him. Every action he did was perfect. No mistakes, all focus; utterly unstoppable.

The meat came aglow with this ethereal light as well, and Shiv didn’t even question it that much. He just let instinct take hold and worked accordingly. He first cleaned the meat thoroughly—picked out bits of tendon, secured and layered it a well-distributed sheen of fat. Fat also harvested from the Jealousy. Then, he started cooking the slices in boiling water, casting small spells of water and fire as he judged the state of the meat without fail. Soon, he was handing strips of flesh to the slaves who had bowls. 

They looked at him and his food with wide eyes and reluctant expressions. Fear still gripped them, so Shiv decided to do a demonstration by eating a bit of the meal himself first. “Don’t worry, it’s probably safe. I’m pretty sure it’s safe.” He paused and frowned. “You’re allowed to not eat it if I die, how’s that?”

Several of the slaves looked at each other.

“Am I having another stroke?” a hoarse voice asked.

Shiv ignored them as he bit into the flesh. He expected something hard, tasteless, and mostly serviceable. What he got was a very subtle salty-bitter flavor thanks to what he did with the Greater Demon’s fat and how long he let the meat simmer each time. The texture wasn’t too bad either. Not easy to bite through, but quite chewy and softened enough for even the teeth of an Advanced-Tier.

And the longer Shiv chewed, the more he liked it. The taste lingered on his tongue, and the meat was the most filling he remembered. “Maybe… maybe I’m a chef?” Shiv theorized as he kept chewing. “Maybe… maybe I save people from giant monsters and then cook them. Like some kind of… monster cooker?” As he was considering this, something burst in his mind, and Shiv gasped as something clicked back in place.

Perfected Boiled Jealousy Meat has granted you temporary Cognitive Regeneration.

Notification: The Challenger is roaring with laughter

Shiv felt a building ache pass through his skull as he remembered something. He remembered being a chef for many years at… at Blackedge.

He was doing all this for Blackedge. And… and this place was a teleportation anchor and a monster den in one. He hadn’t come here as a monster cook or anything like that—though it sounded interesting to him now. He came here because the Jealousy was guarding a gateway he needed to get through or something, and it was also going to help him escape. Somehow.

Lots of details were still missing, but his broken memories were slowly melting back together. He took another bite and was about to tell the slaves to try, when he heard a loud sob.

He saw an old human man weeping as he ripped another chunk out of the meat. “This is… this is the best meal I’ve ever had?!” Several others looked at him like he was insane, but an elf with burn-scars covering most of her face shrugged and bit down as well. 

She let out a gasp and then a moan. “Gods! System!” And she turned frenzied.

A dam of tension broke. The rest of the slaves started eating as well, including the only girl brave enough to approach Shiv. Soon, groans, tears, and chatter grew among the slaves, and Shiv found himself smiling. Despite all the horror and death, this was a nice moment, and he wanted to fill his life with more instances like these.

“Well,” Shiv whispered, grinning at the survivors passing along his food, “glad you all like it.” He looked at the metal walls surrounding him—and spotted a set of doors. He looked at his hands and hummed. “Maybe… Maybe I can force my way out. I’m strong enough to dent this place. Maybe—”

The partially broken spell patterns lining the inside of the teleportation anchor then flashed. The Jealousy spasmed as a wave of crushing pressure washed over it. The slaves began to cry out. Shiv’s heart sped up. He turned, expecting the Greater Demon to be alive again. Instead, it was still dead, just…

He remembered something else. Teleportation. This was what teleportation felt like. Spatial bubbles washed over you, pulled you from one place to another. They were about to be teleported somewhere—somewhere Shiv thought he needed to be.

As panic overtook the slaves, Shiv turned to them and called out. “Hey! I think we’re about to be teleported. I don’t know where, but that might be what’s happening.” Most of them were still panicked, but a few were listening. The girl blinked at Shiv, then she turned to the others, calling for them to calm. To his surprise, she managed to do a much better job than he did. As they simmered down, the pressure built. Shiv could see a wave of distortions slowly closing on them. “Okay, how many of you have Master-Tier Toughness?”

All of them stared blankly.

“Right,” Shiv muttered. “Probably a stupid question.” He had a bad feeling about them being teleported. If they ended up in midair or some kind of volcano, these slaves were going to die immediately. He wondered if he could protect them all with his field if everyone held hands, but the idea seemed unlike and kind of stupid. So, Shiv improvised. If he was the toughest thing around in the room, then the second toughest was the Jealousy.

The dead Jealousy. A dead Jealousy with a lot of space and protective tissue inside its body.

“Alright!” Shiv called. “Everyone follow me. I know how you’re getting out of this. He sprinted down to the main body of the Jealousy and drove his fingers through its body-carapace. With a snarl of effort and a good deal of ripping, pulling, and twisting, he snapped a piece of shell free and turned his efforts on the protected flesh. This time, instead of clawing a chunk of meat out, he tore a chasm into the Greater Demon—a chasm that he pried open wider with his gravitic field.

“That should be big enough to hold a few hundred people,” Shiv muttered. He turned to wave at the slaves. “Alright. Get in.” A great many mouths fell open as they tried to understand what he was asking them to do. The spatial waves were drawing closer. The teleportation was going to happen at any second. The girl looked at him, the chasm, and then at him again. “Look, we’re about to be teleported, and this is the safest place I can think of. It’s either this, or try to wait in the blood pool. I can’t remember how you guys got here, but judging from those collars, I don’t think you all got lost on your ways back home.”

The girl grimaced and sighed. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“No. But it’s the best I got.”

Her sigh intensified. “Alright!” she called out. “Everyone, let’s… go inside the monster.”

As the slaves rushed in, Shiv could see the Jealousy heal a little bit. “Ah. That’s good. Might even serve as a fusion. I’ll see if I can keep tearing it open or something. I’ll stay near the outside of its body and let it partially heal over me so I can see what’s going on.”

The girl, being the last to enter with the slaves, just bit her lip. “I… I’m scared.”

Shiv looked at the other slaves huddled in the messy wound-cave behind her. He sighed. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. But I’ll try to keep you alive, alright? I’ll do my best if you do yours.” He aimed his best smile at her, and she just nodded

“Okay,” she said, slowly backing into the cave.

Shiv, as he said, took his place right where he made the wound. The Jealousy healed fast, so in seconds, a layer of scabbed skin was holding him in place, leaving only his upper body and head outside the Jealousy. He drove holes into the flesh, so the slaves could keep breathing, but this wasn’t going to be comfortable. Not by a long shot.

The spatial pressure clamped down on Shiv a second later, and he rolled his shoulders. He pressed his hands close to the Jealousy and, to his surprise, realized he could use his field to move its limbs. The damn thing was ridiculously heavy, but he might just be able to sort of drag or fling it a bit like some kind of giant corpse puppet.

“Alright,” Shiv breathed out. “Let’s see how this works out. And if more of my memories come back fast enough for me to remember what I’m supposed to do next.”

Notification: The Challenger is watching with great interest

***

“Is the gateway activating? How long? Is he coming?” Siggy bit her lip as she looked at the inactive archway. They managed to slip through a few hours ago. The entire process had been eerily simple. She, Tran, and Heather walked to the gateway and casually passed through using the spatial magic thingy that Leu showed Heather. They also had badges pinned on their armor, marking them as gateway engineers. Of the three, only Heather really had any clue what she was doing, and so the other two pretended to be her assistants.

After that… well, they just had to blend in for a few hours. Blend in while riders sailed above and guards wandered around.

That was why Heather had Tran repeatedly striking a portion of the archway “under the guise of maintaining its enchantment integrity.” Meanwhile, she was constantly shaping the same spell over and over again as she muttered random nonsense under her breath. Every now and again, her and Tran would talk about something that had nothing to do with the archway, but rambled on about random enchantments when someone got close.

“I mean, seriously,” Siggy hissed, looking up again. Above, there were like a hundred wyvern riders patrolling at any given moment, gliding through the air just lazily circling the place. Outward, there were a bunch of gates, gates manned by fire dimensionals—fire dimensionals that Siggy once saw fry a clean hole through a massive cave biter. When a cave biter died like a collapsing mountain? You felt it more than you saw it.

And then, there were the cave biters themselves—literally, like, hundreds of them, clustered and cluttered right outside the gate. Because of the Gate Lord’s lockdown order, a whole lot of goods and slaves were just bunched up outside, halfway up into the wilderness, even. They’d set up camps and intended to wait things out. It wasn’t Gate Theborn’s first lockdown anyway.

If only they knew what was coming.

If only Siggy knew. Here she was with two Republic Slayers from the surface, waiting for a guy who might just kill her at the end of this. The other option was getting killed early. Shit choices all around. That could practically be the title of Siggy’s autobiography.

“So. Like. Do you feel anything?” Siggy asked again.

“Just wait,” the Jump Mage snarled. “I’m not feeling that great either, goblin. But if we freak out and one of those riders comes down to ask us a question, or one of those guards that keep coming around to chat me up and flirt with me starts asking actual questions, we might actually be screwed. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, well,” she shot back, glaring at the Adept Junk Mage, “if our dear, psychotic, murderous, bone-wearing friend doesn’t show up, then we’re screwed anyway, right?”

Heather was about to say something when there was a flicker—a fracture of spatial magic that danced and spread across the archway. The gateway was triggering, only briefly, only an instant, but it was drawing something across—something immense. Even Siggy could feel it from the pressure.

“All right, all right, here he comes. Just get ready.” Heather nudged Tran.

The other Slayer drew in a long, deep breath and clutched a saber at his hip. “All right, hopefully we don’t need this, but…”

And then, Siggy looked up as a massive sphere of spatial magic shot up from the top of the archway—a sphere expanding wider and larger. For a moment, her heart stilled, her breath quickened, and a colossal limb extended outward. A tentacle.

The goblin merc swallowed. “I don’t think he won that fight, guys.”

“Shit, no!” Heather cried. Another limb, and soon the Jealousy’s shape—its intact shape—was sliding back across. 

Siggy felt her insides sink. “Well, I guess we won’t be seeing our bone-covered friend anymore.”

The Jealousy glared down at them with its… wait, why was its eye so unfocused? Why was it… And then Siggy watched it fall—watched it drop without creating that shadowy-magic-shit it usually did. And after a while, it kept falling. Siggy realized it wasn’t stopping at all, just speeding up.

“Uh, guys?” Siggy muttered, pointing at the Jealousy. Then, it spattered a few dozen wyvern riders and other aerial Pathbearers as a shockwave of force exploded off the other end of the Greater Demon, spiking it down toward the earth at an angle.

“Heather!” Tran shouted. “I think it’s coming right at us!”

“Run!” Heather cried, snapping out of her trance. All three broke into a desperate dash, but it wasn’t going to be fast enough.

Then, another voice rang out—the voice of a man yelling as if he were trying to hold the weight of the world on his back. As she looked up, the Jealousy was shifting, another faint pulse exploded out from its side, and the entire demon’s trajectory changed. It twisted through the air, unbalanced for a moment, before crashing down on the ground just meters in front of her. Debris flew everywhere. A shockwave threw them all off their feet, and several following tremors made Siggy think that some of the cave biters had been knocked over as well.

As the smoke and dust cleared, Siggy coughed, staggering to her feet. Beside her, she felt an arm grip her. She nearly screamed, but then saw it was Heather, pulling both her and Tran out of the chaos. The goblin had a few cuts on her face, but—

“Hey, guys!” came a familiar voice. All three paused. Siggy knew that voice. So did Heather. So did Tran. They followed the voice back to its point of origin—back to the top of the Jealousy.

As the dirt stopped falling and the smoke cleared, sticking out from the top of the Greater Demon’s shattered flesh like a skin tag, was Shiv. It looked like his upper body was partially fused with the Greater Demon. He stared at them for a moment, face lit with confusion and faint exhilaration. He was sweating hard; his body was tensing, pulsing, his shirt a ruined heap barely hanging to his body. Was he a bit bigger than before, too? And where was his mask?

“Hey, guys!” he cried, waving a hand. “I think, I think I know you, right?” Siggy didn’t even know how to reply. Neither did the Slayers, for that matter. “Well, if I do,” Shiv continued, “can you tell me where I’m supposed to go? I, uh, might have developed amnesia.”

A long, whining sound of pain came from Heather. “Oh god, we’re gonna die.”

Shiv slammed his palm down and a wound tore open along the Jealousy. A wound that expanded into a bloody cavern right in front of Siggy and the others. “Get in! I think, I think the rest of these guys are gonna start chasing us soon.”

A beam of force splashed down against him—a magical attack. It hit him with enough force to launch Siggy off her feet, but Shiv just pushed it aside like he was dealing with water from a garden hose.

“Quick!” Shiv shouted. A wyvern and its rider crashed down against him—and both splattered against his body like a cage smashing into an iron wall. “We should go before they learn to use something other than physical attacks against me.”

Tran and Heather looked at each other, but Siggy was already running for the gore-hole Shiv made. “I don’t know about you two, but I think I wanna hide in the wound!”

Her words proved convincing. They followed just seconds after.

***

Three kilometers away, crouched on the edge of a small mountain while disguised as slavers and mercenaries, Uva, her team, Valor, and Adam stared at the pandemonium unfolding at the gate.

“Why… why is the Jealousy attacking its own people?” Ikki asked, blinking. “And why is it moving like that?”

The massive demon was dragging itself along the ground. Bouncing and jerking from once place to another like it was being shoved or thrown repeatedly. Beside her, Adam’s eyes of sky-blue and radiant sunrise burned with mana. He cast his Heroic-Tier Awareness Skill out to get a better look. That same skill allowed them to find this hidden place as an observation post while avoiding patrols.

That same skill left Heroic-Pathbearer Adam Arrow gawking in utter disbelief.

“What in the Broken Moon?” Adam said, gawking at the scene unfolding before his senses.

“What’s wrong?” Uva hissed. “What do you see.” 

Adam didn’t have the words. 

A few seconds ago, the Greater Demon reappeared after a few hours of absence. The Jealousy had manifestedin the air, its arms limp, descending as if a fallen mountain. Adam assumed that was simply a byproduct of the teleportation, that the monster might be momentarily disoriented. But it kept falling, and he noticed its typical veil of shadows wasn’t shrouding it, he got a strange feeling. 

As it smeared a few wyvern riders beneath its plunging body, he realized something was immensely wrong.

He cast his senses onto the Jealousy, following sounds and sights, launching his senses toward the horizon. Then he heard a voice he knew. He heard Shiv’s voice, shouting as if the damned mad bastard were trying to pull a small mountain. And then Adam understood how right he’d been: Adam’s senses arrived at the source of the shout to see Shiv lodged waist-deep in the Jealousy. The Greater Demon’s carapace was cracked.  The Deathless Pathbearer looked utterly wretched, but it seemed like he was somehow pushing the entire Jealousy forward with how his muscles were straining. Adam also felt an unnatural field of force yank hard on the Jealousy.

The Young Lord clenched his teeth. Shiv… if you somehow got Heroic-Tier Biomancy in the few days you were gone, I’m going to either kill myself, or kill you for good…

“Adam!” Uva cried.

Adam couldn’t process what he was seeing. His mind refused, and so he gave Uva the only explanation he could think of. “I think I’m having a stroke.”

“What?” Uva said. She let out an exasperated sigh and immediately connected with his mind. He felt her moving through his thoughts, fusing with his active memory. It was slightly uncomfortable, but Adam didn’t respond. He was transfixed as a watchtower unleashed a coruscating plume of flame over Shiv. It burned his shirt off, but didn’t do anything else.

This… this is bullshit! That must be Master-Tier Toughness! At least! Shivvvvv!

And by now, Uva was gawking too, as she was attuned to Adam’s sense. Ikki was badgering both of them for details. The Umbral Psychomancer let out a choking sound. “Hero Adam,” she managed.

“Yes, Sister Uva,” Adam replied.

“I think… I think I am experiencing your stroke.”

***

“Everyone! Everyone stop that man!” a wyvern rider cried from above. “Stop him—he’s… he’s kidnapping the Jealousy!”

Magical and physical attacks began crashing down all around Shiv. Most struck the Jealousy; a few burst against him. Anything that was merely Adept simply bounced off. A few Master-Tier blows left slight bruises and cuts, but he adapted to them. He kind of wished he had enough Biomancy to don his bone armor, but he made do for now.

He picked a random direction and started flinging the Jealousy forward. He might have overestimated his strength a little bit. Shiv could lift the Jealousy, crack one of its limbs, even overpower it in specific circumstances. But holding it entirely aloft and trying to constantly launch it with his field was still beyond him. He needed a lot more levels in Gravitic Wrestler to do that. 

Right now, he was just dragging a small mountain across the ground. But that was enough to keep the giant monster moving.

Cave biters, slaves, and mercenaries screamed as they fled from his path. The Jealousy’s enormous limbs were dragged behind, bouncing off the floor and ripping massive chunks out of the earth with every pull of his gravitic field. Shockwaves shook the world every time Shiv exerted himself, and his muscles were burning. But he still had to keep going.

Stopping was going to end with him very, very dead considering the amount of people coming for him.

“Oh god, I’m gonna really get a good workout from this,” he muttered, launching the Jealousy forward again.

A splash of fire impacted his chest, sweeping over his form. The heat was immense, but his Adamantine Adaption kept him from suffering anything more than discomfort. He’d faced this before, at another teleportation anchor—an elemental golem, he thought.

He narrowed his eyes at the many watchtowers, each concentrating blazing beams on him, burning the Jealousy, burning him, but harming neither.

“All right, then,” he muttered, “let’s see if we can knock some of you down.” He channeled his strength once more, and the Jealousy tumbled forward. It was no longer a mind-dead mountain, but a moving avalanche. It exploded along the ground. He considered using some other skill, but he couldn’t quite remember which one he always used. It was supposed to be his first Master-Tier Skill. He kept using his Gravitic Wrestler instead.

As he loomed closer, he saw fire dimensionals abandoning their posts atop the watchtowers—and he smashed through them. Wyvern riders descended, slamming down atop Shiv. One brought an axe down on his head, and the blade fragmented; a shard slammed into the rider’s throat, and he gurgled and fell off. A woman came in behind Shiv, jamming her knife into his throat with her massive beast clawed and bit at him. Her arm broke. The beast’s teeth broke. Shiv’s sloppy backhand flicked them off the back of the Jealousy. A third rider caught Shiv by the neck for a rear-naked choke; Shiv tapped their elbow and, with his Gravitic Wrestler, ripped their arm off and impaled them with it. Another attacker wheezed and dropped off the side of the Greater Demon.

But then a golden arrow tore a chunk out of Shiv’s shoulder before his durability adapted. A lance of intense flame burned the same place. His adaption shifted—and Shiv realized a limitation of his skill: It could only adapt to so many types of damage at once. With a roar of effort, he yanked the Jealousy upward and sent it “leaping” into the air, its huge limbs smashing into a few of his pursuers.

But there were Master-Tiers hunting him, and they wouldn’t be denied.

Shiv felt something enter his Psychomancy field. An enemy crashed down just behind him, bearing a colossal blade gleaming with mind mana. That was definitely something he couldn’t just ignore. Shiv stared. “Oh shit.”

A silver-black automaton with a crystalline tombstone for a helmet pointed its blade at him and spoke. “I don’t know who you are, but when I bring Confriga your head–”

An arrow hit them in the face and detonated; they were promptly knocked off balance—in range of Shiv. The Deathless seized them by the leg and slammed them against the Jealousy’s carapace over and over. When the automaton was smoking and broken, Shiv pulled it close and with a burst of parting gravity, ripped it in half. Whatever you were, a Master-Tier in Toughness wasn’t it.

He chucked the dead automaton and its blade into his cloak before he flung the Jealousy using his field again. He was off the black road now, crashing through the large mushrooms and woods. Overhead, arrows flew in from all directions—mana-tipped bolts of every type and speed—crashing into the pursuing riders, throwing them off, killing the weaker ones outright. 

Shiv laughed. There was someone out there helping him. He wasn’t alone! He had friends! That was a pretty nice feeling. A reinvigorating feeling. Despite his body being drenched in sweat and his muscles spasming with effort, he kept going. Because Shiv always kept going.

A heartbeat later, a spatial arrow crashed next to him, and someone emerged from the teleportation bubble beside him. He blinked as what looked like a glass-armored pale-elf regarded him, lifting her visor to let him see her face. Then, he realized he knew her. The short hair, those eyes, her face—memories of intimacy and comfort rushed through him. He was so transfixed on her that he didn’t even notice several other spatial arrows crashing down around him, bringing more unknown allies into the battle.

“Shiv,” the pale elf cried. She bore a look of suppressed concern, and he felt her mind mana reach out into his mind. He reactively flinched as he recalled the Jealousy tearing at him, but forced himself to relax—and calmed even more as she clung to him and created a shroud of protective ice around both of them. For a few moments, he felt her nudge a few pieces inside his mind back into place.

She bit her bottom lip in near-anguish. “Your mind… what did this to you.”

Shiv looked down at the Jealousy, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “You… how are you—”

“I got Gravitic Wrestler,” Shiv grinned. “I think it’s a Master-Tier Skill Fusion of Physicality and something elese. It lets me move big things around with my field.”

A loud snarl of rage sounded from her brooch as a tide of Pyromancy arrows slashed overhead. They detonated at random positions, creating a wall of fire behind Shiv, disrupting the flight patterns of riders. “Uva!” A voice came from the brooch. Shiv knew this voice too. “Uva! Did he say Master-Tier Skill Fusion? Tell him to kill himself! It’s been less than a week! What is wrong with that monster?

“Who’s that?” Shiv asked, with a frown. “He sounds like an asshole.”

“He is an asshole,” the pale elf muttered. “But he’s a good asshole. An honorable one.”

“Did he just call me an asshole? Wait, did he say who’s that? Does he not remember who I am?”

A howl came from behind Uva as a wyvern and its rider exploded toward them in a gust of Aeromancy. “Look out,” Shiv said. He casually passed the pale elf from one hand to another as if she was a small ball. She let out a surprised yip that turned into a near yelp as Shiv punched the charging attackers. A shockwave blasted out over the wyvern and its rider. The beast blew apart. The rider outright disintegrated. The Jealousy was slowing, so Shiv pulled on its mass again with his field to keep it going.

“Hey,” he said, staring at the wide-eyed pale elf he was holding close with his other arm. “You know where we’re going? Because I don’t? I don’t really remember much of anything at all? Except for you. Kind of.” A line popped in his head—something he instinctively had the urge to say. “I don’t think I could forget someone like you. Even if I lost all my memories.”

Silver Tongue > 12

“I—is he really doing this? As an amnesiac? In the middle of battle?” the voice screeched from her brooch. The pale elf, though, was fighting to keep her features in check as a faint blush lit her cheeks. “You… Just get him out of that thing so I can shoot him with a spatial arrow.”

“Shiv, we need to go,” the pale elf said. “Can you free yourself?”

“Yeah, but there are other people inside,” Shiv said. “I can’t leave them.”

“What?” the pale elf blinked.

Shiv slammed his palm down against the Jealousy tore a narrow hole just beneath her. A narrow hole that let her see all the slaves, the Slayers, and the goblin merc that was loudly throwing up inside the Greater Demon’s “meat cavern.”

The pale elf’s jaw dropped. The man speaking through her brooch sounded like he was about to have an aneurysm. “Is—is—that Shiv—you—are you hiding slaves inside the corpse of Greater Felling Demon?”

Shiv wasn’t sure how the guy could see, but he just shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea to me at the time.”

A loud groan came from the stranger as Shiv felt an attacker briefly enter his Biomancy field—only to get decapitated by a lightning arrow.

“Uva! Change of plans. Have Shiv drag the bloody Jealousy over the ravine we saw.”

“Into First Blood territory?” Uva hissed.

“Yes. Hopefully, this can start another skirmish—one that will cover… whatever kind of escape we can manage. Godsdammit Shiv, how did you even come up with this idea?"

“Well, right now, the answer is severe brain damage,” Uva deadpanned. “I have no idea how he’s still sane. Or capable of anything more than drooling out the side of his mouth.”

The stranger sighed. “Shiv might be too stubborn to turn fully stupid. Anyway. Ravine. Hurry. I can see some damn riders coming for me, too.”