25 Master

I didn’t expect to become a Master. I didn’t expect to skip over Adept altogether for my Geomancy and become Warden of Stone. It was just a thing of desperation for me. But I suppose the way my comrades tell it sounds different.

We were being assaulted from all sides, taking heavy losses. We were fighting some group of invaders that day, towering gray skinned monsters, who were, for all purposes, heavily magically resistant. Direct magical attacks didn’t work against them, they shrugged off bombardment from our conventional artillery corps, and, to our horror and surprise, they were, to the last monster, terrifyingly strong, and brutally resilient, even against concentrated fire.

The battle was going poorly, But command refused to order a retreat. We were told to hunker in place until reinforcements came, and to create a fortification to establish a foothold within the primal gate.

There was simply one issue, however. I was the last Geomancer alive. When the Greyskins launched an attack, they did so cunningly, dropping their own forces using a crude catapult from high above, surviving the impact, and slaughtering countless rear support and logistical Pathbearers.

The fighting was brutal, and in the combat, my Geomancy skill reached 50 A breath away from that final threshold, the system indicated to me that my Skill Evolution was imminent. But so too was the enemy, massing their hordes and coming at us at all directions. They had these primitive, sharp-tailed winged raptors they rode on, and they lobbed explosive eggs the size of small boulders, crashing into us at alarming speeds. 

Right then, I found myself exhausted. My Geomancy was stretched to the very limit. I knew that there was a good chance the magical strain could kill me if I tried overmuch. However, if I didn’t, all my brothers and sisters in arms would die. And that idea, the concept of failing them, proved to be a darker nightmare than my own demise.

I don’t know where I found the strength, drawing from reservoirs I didn’t think possible. But I knew then, as my eyes bled, as I coughed blood out of my mouth, as all my senses faded, I reached deeper and deeper into the earth, feeling like I was burning my very soul to come to a pact with the stone. 

I was supposed to be an architect. 

My brother ruined that. But I told the stone I could still shape it, that I can still make art even in this ruined place, in these damned gates, and that I would always be its slave if it would only be my sculpture. And to my astonishment, the stone listened, and the system blessed me with a master-tier skill evolution.

And that’s just the thing. The system, godlike as it is, is always watching. It always studies your experiences, judges you based on your feats, your achievements. And when you finally push yourself beyond all your previous limits, and have done so over and over again, Your soul will be broken, and then reforged into something magnificent.

Now, as for how I managed to fuse my Master-Tier Warden of Stone with my once-lacking Physicality, that is a story for another day. Skill Fusion… that requires a bit more…proactivity from a Pathbearer.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

25

Master

Vitality Drain > 7

As it turned out, even a woman with multiple Master-Tier Skills could be surprised. And who could blame her? It wasn’t often that one was attacked by a set of skeletal armor—a set of skeletal armor made from the literal bones of the man it once held. A man who, in an apparent moment of fatal madness, unleashed all the blood and viscera in his body all over his Master-Tier opponent as if a final act of spite.

He wielded his armor like a puppet, using its arms to strike at Harkness. When his attacks were launched off course by whatever strange skill she had protecting her, he attacked her from several more angles, and via different means. The bone drill slammed into her back—and shot off at an angle. A kitchen knife descended on the back of her neck but was thrown off course, cleaving only open air. Only Shiv’s Vitality Drain did any true damage. 

That was something even a Master-Tier opponent couldn’t resist.

But as her inner flame flowed into him, Shiv tasted just how much power her soul had. Her vitality was monstrous. It might have been the greatest amount of vitality he felt in a person so far. If the first raven Shiv fought was a raging inferno, then Lady Harkness might as well be the sun in the damned sky. And to his astonishment, rather than writhing in pain while crying out in confusion like most of his adversaries before, she noticed him immediately.

“Ah,” she said, her voice like thunder gracing his mind. With a single off-hand parry, she swatted his armor off course, split the top of his kitchen knife, and launched the rounded edge of Shiv’s bone drill into the ribs of an unprepared Umbral. Shiv held his position and drained as much as he could, but he felt her squeeze his mind.

His consciousness rattled and cracked in places. Shiv thought he knew pain when he experienced purification in the teleportation anchor. He was wrong. For the brief moment she crushed his mind, Shiv was agony. It was only because of Uva’s shrouding that he didn’t shatter immediately, and even then, it was like pieces of steel gliding through the soft tissue of his brain.

“Oh? You haven’t cracked yet? Impressive. Whoever made your protections is truly talented.” Harkness’s blade flashed. Two more clones of her suddenly appeared, swatting aside a wave of azure arrows and even knocking the spells off course. Fire and lightning curved around the owl’s body, as if terrified of striking her. Through it all, she continued staring at Shiv, studying him with interest. “Well. Do continue. I want to see the depths of your capability.”

Pushing through the sea of torment, Shiv planted both of his ghostly hands on her again and drained. He drew in more. But while he did, he turned his focus to where his armor lie. He remembered how she slew him last time, stabbing at his exposed flesh and not the exoskeleton. Shiv extended his Biomancy field and fused the bones of his previous corpse with the armor. New ribs filled the gaps in the exoskeleton’s torso. He sculpted most of the remaining bone to create a dense layer of plate—and even inserted his newest skull into the chest. The excess matter he used to repair whatever nicks and fractures lined his armor. He also added bladed edges to his shoulders and elbows—so he could better slice and cut during a grapple.

Of course, Harkness noticed this too. She followed his Biomancy as she allowed him to drain from her, nodding her head as if impressed. “Well. It seems you’re still a boy indeed. How very… loud and outrageous. But I do like it. I have always had a taste for people who wear their nature openly. Like a moth has a taste for a flame.”

Valor called out to her from his armor, but whatever the dagger said was lost over the chaos of battle.

Though the remaining agents of Aviary were being slaughtered and Yunni’s mana bomb was badly damaged, the quest remained incomplete. Furthermore, with each gleam of Harkness’s rapier, another instance of her world emerge somewhere, strolling off as if she was talking a leisurely walk while twirling her blade in a mock salute. Umbrals rushed her. Adam launched tide of arrows at every clone of the owl he could see.

But Harkness was too arrogant—or lazy—to even respond with proper blocks anymore. She let spells and blades and arrows and halberds hit her over and over. And every last strike twisted violently out of her way, choosing to crash into the ground or tumble off in another direction altogether. It was like her body was maintained by a directing field.

Shiv found himself awed—and excited. If this was what it meant to be Master-Tier, then he couldn’t wait to find out what Momentum Core would let him do—because he was now Master-Tier too, thanks to Harkness.

And so he might just have one more surprise for her when he resurrected from this death.

She watched as the shadows condensed around his body, sinking a gloved finger through the darkness as if curious about the composition. “How very interesting. You’re not dead at all, it seems. You’re just a continuation of the same vitality signature even after the destruction of your material vessel.”

How did she tell all that at a glance? Shiv thought. Harkness’s eyes flashed with a surge of mana, and her green irises became as if emeralds beneath starlight.

“Deathless. How apt. And you have skills that I cannot perceive? At least two Legendary Skills, then. Oh, poor boy, you tease my curiosity so. Fine. If the system won’t let me see, I’ll just find out from your mind—wait, where did that Master-Skill come from. Your Reflexes… weren’t they just Common.”

Shiv didn’t answer his question as he resurrected. Instead, he called his newly improved exoskeleton to him, the armor unfurling into petals of bone before closing around his fracturing shadow. He returned to life, already encased in a protective shell, but Harkness just hummed and thrust her blade at his neck where the armor was thinnest.

Despite the strike being a nonchalant jab on Harkness’s part, it was still impossibly fast. Shiv blinked, stunned that he could almost track the incoming hit—even if he was still drastically slower. Yet Harkness was a Master among Masters, and her blade split a clean gap in his armor. A clean gap that required more effort on her part to completely punch through to where his flesh awaited. Only then did Shiv manage to react. His Reflexes felt faster by a magnitude right then, but he was still nothing compared to the owl’s speed—even the elemental golem he fought earlier was faster.

For the briefest of moment, Shiv wondered if the system notification was wrong. If he hallucinated that Master-Tier Skill Evolution. But as he moved, he felt like part of reality moved with him. Then the first distortions appeared. They manifested as faint ripples around his body, translucent tides of energy crashing against him as if his being was a shore. A few other things became apparent to him as well.

The world around him was slowing—and fast. Spells and attacks previous too fast and hard for him to track were becoming observable, but the few projectiles that passed by him stalled drastically as rippling currents of energy were ripped out of them before splashing into Shiv. But it wasn’t just the projectiles that were affected. But of all things in motion, Harkness slowed the most. The progress of her rapier stalled while Shiv felt his own Reflexes accelerate. Just enough to save his life.

Shiv felt the tip barely kiss his neck before he launched himself off-course. 

As he stabilized himself using his Biomancy, he closed the hole she made in his armor and called his bone drill back. Inside, it felt like his body was caging a growing thunderstorm. Something was building: A force that was only partially fed from his recent evasion.

Harkness staggered, her balance lost. She slowly turned to gaze at him a moment later, and Shiv realized all her clones were doing the same. They weren’t even focused on the other combatants anymore, choosing all to focus on him.

“You had my curiosity before,” she began, rubbing at the tip of her rapier. “Now, you have my keen interest.”

Shiv didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Shit,” he muttered.

And then she and five other clones practically teleported from where they stood, driving their blades into his armor. Once more, he felt her chip through his exoskeleton—but he delayed her points of penetration by actively concentrating and reshaping the bones using his Biomancy. At the same time, he sensed the flowing paths of her momentum as her blades drew close to his body—something he failed to notice earlier.

Whatever absorption he performed during her first strike was purely instinctive. Now, his Reflexes amping up and a raging power rattling at his very core, Shiv focused on the waves pulsing out from her blades and reached out to touch them. A shudder of energy rushed through his form as he grasped and then tore the very momentum out of her strikes.

Momentum Core > 55

Parry > 24

Biomancy > 36

Three of Harkness’s clones staggered to an abrupt halt. All the motion in their bodies vanished—was sucked out of them into the building maelstrom of momentum that was Shiv. However, her final two clones were merely slowed. Slowed because the raging cataclysm within Shiv reached an unbearable peak.

For a moment, it felt like the world stood still. With all the momentum surging through him, Shiv found that his Reflexes were supercharged as well. He could practically count each of Adam’s arrows passing through the air, see the surviving force of Umbrals and Weaveresses trying to push through the owl’s clones to assist him, and read the astonishment in Harkness’s wide, green eyes.

Then, she surprised him in turn by blinking. “Well. It seems your Reflexes just evolved—and skipped two entire Tiers in between. I suppose congratulations are in order. Here, boy, let me finish giving you my metal.”

And the remaining two Harkness’s clones thrust harder.

Shiv felt these blades slice through the dense knots of bone he composed and press against flesh. He tried to absorb more of her momentum, but his insides flared with explosive pain. That was the limit of energy that his Momentum Core could store for now—and he wouldn’t be able to endure all this energy for long. He needed to unleash it. Before it boiled him alive from the inside.

And so he did the only thing he thought was logical. He picked one of Harkness’s clones that he stole all momentum from, aimed his bone drill at her face, and released the storm inside.

An enormous blast of force exploded out from Shiv like a tidal wave—pushing the blades still sunken into his armor back out. Though the initial detonation of kinetic energy simply folded around Harkness’s many bodies, something very different happened as Shiv drove the tip of his drill into her mask.

As his weapon struck her body, he felt a bubble of energy press against him, trying to wrestle his blow off course. Yet, it functions as a bubble as well, and Shiv was going so fast that a veil of sound burst around his body and the air briefly combusted into flames. Her bubble didn’t pop, but it folded far in, and the tip of his drill cracked hard against her forehead before the bubble snapped back into form and flung him drastically off-trajectory.

A string of incoherence left Shiv’s mouth as he blasted across the cavern. As he expended all his stored momentum, his Reflexes returned to what it was at baseline—still far greater than what it used to be, but practically frozen compared to the speed he was capable when his Momentum Core was full.

The world turned into a rolling blur around him as he slammed hard against a webbed wall. There was so much leftover energy in him that he just keep pressing for a while—and to his astonishment, a few of the webs snapped outright trying to bear his weight before he remembered his Might of Mass.

Shiv drew on his strength and, with a brief struggle, blunted what remained of his kinetic charge as he landed on a knee. “Ow,” he surmised. Half of his body felt like it was bruised even with Diamond Shell. He guessed that was the consequence of using a Master-Tier Reflex Skill in tandem with an Adept-Tier Toughness Skill.

Spear Proficiency > 8

Before him was a scene of stunned carnage. Several Umbrals and Weaveresses had been thrown off their feet by his momentum discharge. The Young Lord was gawking at him while lying on the ground—but to his credit, his other two arms continued firing at Harkness. Shiv also caught sight of Uva on the second floor above. She and the mages had taken that position from their slain enemies and had been constantly lobbing spells down at the woman in white. Right now, she stared at Shiv. The spell was broken he briefly offered her a thumbs up—and she went right back to trying to break the owl’s mind.

As for Harkness, something about her had changed. For a few moments, Shiv thought he severely wounded her and that this fight was soon to end. To his satisfaction, each of her clones were also clutching at their faces, and they faded like mirages in the light, just as before. In an instant, only a single version of her remained, and a literal deluge of destructive spells splashed down other. Yet, as the elements bathed her body, as dozens of magi tried to crack her immense Magical Resistance, as Adam launched larger and larger arrows at her, she simply pulled her ripped mask of white off her face, and smiled.

“Remarkable,” she said to Shiv mentally as she laughed. Chaos furled around her, painting her in a backdrop of fire and devastation. As the room came alight, Shiv saw her face for the first time. Her hair was midnight black with a streak of white, and it rested where her neck met her body. Her features were thin and elegant, with a slim nose, wide eyes, and lips painted dark red. There was a distance in her gaze, like she was lost in a moment of nostalgia—-but Shiv saw in those eyes something that made him clench his drill tighter.

He was facing someone that fed from misery, from cruelty. He saw the same look in the lesser vampires when they attacked, when they smelled blood. She might be a human, but this one was more predator than even most monsters.

Too bad for her, Shiv had a hobby of killing predators.

He advanced on her, sharpening the deformed tip of his drill. He swung his weapon and reshaped his armor for battle. She mirrored his bold gesture, bringing her rapier in front of her eyes and swiping down. As Shiv moved, he discovered that he could drink in the momentum from the passing wind currents and friction—anything that moved in relation to him, really. And so he began to fill his core, and her blade flashed once, twice, and many times more. In seconds, her clones were back, walking out to slay the Arachnae Order. Only for their path to be interrupted by brilliant blue arrows that splashed over them as walls of water.

Then, the Young Lord was behind Shiv again, firing over his shoulder while using him as a shield.

“How’d the floor feel?” Shiv asked.

Adam’s hands were a ceaseless blur—but Shiv slowly found himself able to perceive each individual shot as his core filled. “Get tainted. What the hells was that?”

“Reflex evolution,” Shiv grunted.

The Young Lord turned to glare at him. “What?”

“Yeah. I got something called Momentum Core.”

“What?” Adam practically shrieked.

“It’s pretty useful—especially since I would be a sitting duck against a Master-Tier opponent without it.”

“M-m-master,” Adam sputtered before composing himself. “This is bullshit.”

Shiv was about to say something before he heard Valor mumbling inside his armor. The Deathless winced. The dagger was pinned against his hip right now. “Sorry, Valor. I’ll get you out if she doesn’t kill us all. For good.” 

Then, Shiv caught something moving in his periphery. It was so sudden and brief that he should have missed it—would have missed it without building Momentum Core. But he turned on instinct and swung his drill high. A resounding clash echoed through the room as diamond-layered bone turned away a gleam rapier. The Young Lord’s eyes widened as Harkness’s blade sparked against the side of his helmet rather than punching through his open mouth.

Parry > 25

New Skill: Awareness 1 (Advanced)

And then both he and Shiv were attacked at the same time. A stream of arrows exploded in Harkness’s face as Adam exploded them prematurely. He adapted to the fact of Harkness’s protective bubble by trying to hammer her with flat, concussive force. This didn’t phase the owl of New Albion at all, but it did allow Shiv to siphon some momentum out of the blasts. 

The world around Shiv got slower as his momentum climbed. He swung his bone drill at Harkness like a club. Her arm blurred five times before he was even mid-swing. Every one of her cuts landed perfectly in the same place, turning a nick into a gap into a split. Shiv felt his drill part in half—and then she was rising just below him. Shiv inhaled and drained what he could from the oncoming blow with his Momentum Core. Her hand slowed substantially; time itself seemed to drag. But Shiv reacted too late. Her open palm cracked his helmet and sent his head snapping back. The secondary effects of her strike became a shockwave—one that launched Adam off his feet and into the air.

Between Diamond Shell, Mass of Might, and a considerable sip from his Momentum Core, Shiv managed to stay in consciousness—if only barely. His thoughts bounced around like broken teeth inside a can, and Shiv felt himself slide meter after meter backward despite his increased mass. The damned golem was hit like an insect compared to her—and this was after he drank a huge amount of her momentum away. Her Physicality had to be Master-Tier as well—at least.

And she’s still just playing with us, Shiv realized. But he was going to make that her mistake.

Shiv stomped down with his rear leg and stopped his slide. He absorbed the final drip of momentum needed to fill his core. Once more, his chest felt like it was gripping an expanding bomb. The world around Shiv all but halted. He and Harkness were the only people that still seemed capable of moving—and despite this, she was still faster, driving her blade toward his head.

But once again, she wasn’t prepared for his counterattack. Shiv discharged every last bit of momentum store in his core. His head snapped back forward, and he practically rematerialized with his skull smashing against the owl’s nose. He felt her protective field curve around him—try to throw him off, but he was going too fast, and this time, he remembered to use his Might of Mass and his Biomancy in tandem with his Momentum Core to achieve the mother of all headbutts.

Her rapier skipped off the side of his helmet. Her protective field flattened. An explosion of force and fire from air friction swallowed both of them as Shiv felt his helmet shatter—and his forehead beneath fracture. He transferred every bit of force he had into her—and this time, instead of sliding off her person, Shiv launched the owl across the entire cavern with a deafening crack.

All her clones went flying too before vanishing in smears of light. Shiv managed to stop himself from falling over, but only barely. That hit left most of his skull in float pieces. There was also the spiking headache that made his eyes fill with flashing colors. It felt like he was standing on a boat. Shiv tried taking a step forward, only to lurch over. The webbed ground came at him fast, but someone caught him—stopped him from falling all the way.

“Broken Moon, you’re bloody heavy,” Adam complained. 

Shiv grunted. “You’re… always complaining.”

With a heave, the Young Lord got Shiv back on his feet and allowed the Deathless to lean on him. Only after pushing Shiv’s head the other way, though. “Point your head away from me. You’re bleeding all over my armor.”

Shiv laughed, despite all the pain he was in. He tried to stand properly, but the world kept spinning, and a groan escaped from him. Adam was leading him somewhere, and Valor was still speaking—the dagger’s voice sounding like a muffled mess from inside Shiv’s armor. “Maybe… I should have punched her instead,” Shiv muttered.

“Yes, you idiot,” Adam snapped. “But if it’s any consolation, I don’t think you had much brain to lose.”

“Just jealous… of my Master-Tier… Reflexes.”

When Adam didn’t reply in offense and stopped walking, Shiv knew something was wrong. As he blinked a few more times, his vision cleared, and he saw members of the Arachnae Order pulling their wounded and… unmoving back through the tunnels. A mage called out in alarm from above, and Shiv soon noticed why.

As the dust and chaos settled, as the leftover friction-flame caused by Shiv’s mother of all heatbutts died, Lady Harkness strolling back through the haze with a most peculiar look on her face. As she stepped through the smog, Shiv saw that she wasn’t entirely uninjured. No. There was a slight patch lining the bridge of her nose, and a trickle of blood flowed beneath. She dabbed at her nostrils with her white glove, staining the tip red, and she held it out for Shiv to see.

“Well done,” she whispered. She looked at Shiv and offered a genuine smile. “Where is Valor? I wish to declare to the old legend my intent to steal you for my own.”

“Steal?” Shiv asked. The first spells came down on the enemy Master Pathbearer again, but she ignored them as usual.

“Oh, yes. You owe me an entire cell of good killers. Well. Good in a relative sense. You did manage to slaughter them, after all. Still. To give one’s life in service of the throne is not such a bad end. And besides, I have traded copper in them to discover gold in you.”

She switched to speaking telepathically when the spells got too loud. Shiv swallowed but pushed off Adam. He glared at Harkness and ripped away the broken pieces of his ruined helmet.

“Ah. There you are as well. And what a vicious expression you have. I suspect that the instructors at Aviary will find it difficult to properly recondition you. But I hope they fail. I appreciate pugnacity and aggression in a warrior.”

“I think I’m going to say no,” Shiv muttered under his breath. He looked at the Young Lord—and then at the mana bomb. It just occurred to Shiv that the quest still wasn’t over. The interweaving magical fields inside the bomb were spilling out through the cracks and several of its cords had been ripped out of the surrounding webs… but its bulbous body still seemed operational to some extent. “Adam. The mana bomb is still active. The spells not done. I need you to destroy it completely. Break it wide open.”

Adam blinked and leaned closer to Shiv as Harkness stretched out her right arm. “If I do that, might just fry us all. I know you’re not afraid of dying, but with all those spells running at the same time—”

“Then, I’ll do it,” Shiv said. “I’m going to distract her. You get everyone out.” The Young Lord opened his mouth. “Take them by force if you have to. There’s nothing they can do against her.”

“There’s nothing you can do against her. I know you technically have a Master-Tier skill, but she is fully in the Master-Threshold! And not only for that one skill. That means she has at least fifty more levels on you in terms of Reflexes—and far more than that everywhere else.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “But I can die. Over and over and over.”

“But can your mind be unbroken?” Harkness asked. Shiv looked at her again, and scowled. She smiled sweetly back at him, as if she knew everything he was thinking. “I told you. I am a Master in far more skills than one. But I do want to keep you as whole as I ca—”

And then another force pushed Harkness out of Shiv’s mind. A psychic scream sounded from Uva as Shiv felt a denseness form within his mind. “Shiv,” she said, her breath tremoring with strain. “I am with you. Let’s finish her.”

Shiv’s gut clenched. He wanted her to run—to get out from this place, but he asserted himself over his emotions. If she left, Harkness would have ground his mind down to nothing in an instant. Uva was probably the only reason why he wasn’t drooling at the owl’s feet right now. But he could feel the strain she was under. Neither of them were going to last long.

He needed to make this fast.

“Shoot the damn bomb anyway,” Shiv said. He staggered toward Harkness and this time, she didn’t stroll, but sprinted at him. “If it looks like we’re going to lose—”

He guessed her coming as a current of wind shivered next to his right ear.

Awareness > 2

It didn’t help.

She slipped under his guard and her blade ignited like it was the sun itself. She slashed and suddenly, Shiv felt couldn’t feel either of his arms. Not with his physical body, anyway. He launched his severed limbs at her using his Biomancy—and tried to hit her with the drill from behind. Instead of manifesting any clones, she seemingly parried them all at once—even as he drained her momentum; even as that single sequence of cuts, blocks, and stances flooded his Momentum Core to the max.

Even as the world ground to a halt again, he was a tortoise plodding through existence, but she was the wind, slicing her blade across the bridge of his nose as he barely flinched back in time. He discharged his momentum again as he launched himself shoulder-first at his foe.

But this time, she learned—or was finally taking him seriously. Her protective field caught him before he could get close, and she curled his momentum back in on himself. Waves of web-shredding force tore through the world around them. Shiv was like a bomb unto himself, his kinetic energy launching everyone but him and Harkness of their feet. His organs burst. Ligaments tore. Bones snapped and dislocated. Shiv sank through her protective veil and got within a hair's distance. But that’s when all his momentum died.

And then he closed his diamond hard teeth around her neck.

He bit at her, finding her actual skin nigh-impenetrable as well. And rather than counterattacking, she gave a shrill laugh. Before jabbing him in the gut. Shiv endured the hit with his Might of Mass, but the cost he paid was colossal. His armor shattered. Parts of his spine folded out of alignment. Shiv gnashed his teeth harder—he would have kneed her too, but he couldn’t feel anything beneath his chest anymore.

As spells crashed down on both of them, Shiv could hear Uva calling for the others to cease their fire, that he was at risk. The other members of her order didn’t hear her in time. Fire, lightning, ice, force, water, stone, acid, and so many more variations of magical skill buried both him and Harkness. His flesh burned and froze and bleed and melted and suffered. The owl’s outfit was barely even smudged.

But Shiv kept biting her, and finally, he felt her react.

“I’m actually feeling a bit of a pinch here,” she whispered to him. “Ah. You remind me of Toro. He was my mastiff as a girl, you see—a real fearless warrior. Quite like you. Your teeth even somewhat feel the same.”

Then she hit him again. He drained most of the blow with his Momentum Core.

It still wasn’t enough.

Pain. Dark. Then white. Then noise. And peace.

This time, Shiv did pass out. For a moment, everything was blissfully white and peaceful. Then, Uva wrenched his consciousness back and he surged back into action. He was flying through the air. So he used Might of Mass and Biomancy and Momentum Core to still himself. He slammed down on the ground and promptly collapsed. The pain broke his focus, and with it, his spell. Without Biomancy, he was too broken to stand. There was little in him that wasn’t broken or torn. Blood and water was filling his lungs. But still, this was mostly a nine out of ten. 

He handled the teleportation anchor. He could handle this. Wrenching himself off the ground, he turned an agonized howl into something more of a growl and spat blood at the owl’s direction. A gust of wind passed over him, and Shiv drank in a final drop of momentum for his core. She mockingly clapped for him—only for him to launch himself at her, discharging his core and launching his ruined body once more.

Momentum Core > 60

This time as a distraction.

She brought her radiant rapier up, waiting for him to impale himself. Shiv didn’t stop. He just angled his body and accepted that he was going to die again. The blade passed between his ribs—but missed his heart, thanks to a last minute tug with his Biomancy. He crashed against her hilt—and then her protective bubble collapsed around him, stalling out his remaining momentum.

Shiv took this moment to attempt something. On the very edge of his of mana field, some twenty meters away, he felt a fragment of bone that came free from his armor. A bone he shaped into a spike and launched into Harkness’s back. To his pleasure, it struck home—and failed to pierce her actual flesh. But he learned something: Her bubble was something that she actively had to wield, rather than a passive barrier.

Adam saw this too—apparently, as a tide of arrows blasted into her a half-second after.

That’s when Shiv learned another thing about the owl—she might be a Master-Tier, but her skills were far different from his. Harkness—split between Shiv’s charge and the sudden opening behind her, was flung off her feet for the first time. She almost caught herself before Shiv finished the rest of his discharge, bladed-shoulder first in her chest.

Her white suit tore, and his blood painted her in smears of crimson. And then she looked down at Shiv, and nodded. “Fine. You earned this.”

She then drove her head against his, and his skull caved in completely.

Diamond Shell > 75

Might of Mass > 65

Momentum Core > 60

Parry > 29

Biomancy > 40

Awareness > 5

Spear Proficiency > 10

Shiv tried to keep on fighting after he died, but without a physical body to gather momentum, his Reflexes were slow. Far too slow to reach his enemy before the full might of her Psychomancy struck at his mind. His consciousness spun as if it was being shaken inside of a cage, and in the depths of his awareness, he heard Uva let out a scream of effort, trying to keep him whole.

“Well, you’re quite good, Psychomancer,” Harkness complimented. She looked upward and spotted Uva immediately. The Umbral was bleeding from all her orifices, and Shiv reached out, drain the owl—to get back into the fight.

I won’t let any more of them die. I won’t let her die. He couldn’t. He made it an impossibility in his thoughts. Yet, even as an ocean of attacks crashed down around her, Harkness gave a huff. “Would you believe that Psychomancy is my true talent? I know I haven’t truly shown you yet—I was so focused on indulging in a spot of quaint savagery against you with my blade and fists. But I can show you now. I can show you the distance between a Master and an Adept.”

No! Shiv willed himself to drain Harkness faster. And she let him. Like all the times before. But instead of attacking him, she lifted a hand up and cast her first true Psychomancy Skill. “Let me assure you, dear boy, that nothing quite breaks like a mind.”