157 (II)

Weakness

A pulse of crimson mana washed over Shiv. A crack sounded in the air as the Vicar completed his motion, and then the construct shattered in his hands as a detonation of Biomancy—enough to drown the world—slammed hard against Shiv and the other orcs.

He tried to block it with his Magebreaker, but his gauntlet screamed for a moment before it cracked in half. Yet, the gauntlet served its purpose. It twisted a good portion of Sullain's Biomancy magic aside…

Frictionless Vector 76 > 80

…but the rest still hammered into Shiv. He clenched his still-wounded Biomancy field around himself, and pain flooded his spirit. Yet his field held. Even as its outer sections were pulled away and ripped asunder, it held. And Shiv realized something. The Biomancy flowing into him materialized his spells as well. Spells that weighed down on his focus, that filled him with strain. But he could move spells in and out of his field. He could project them back into existence—offset the strain.

He began to cycle Sullain's magic out from his Aegis of Assimilation. Shiv worked as fast as he could, but he was nowhere near the spellcaster that Sullain was. A trickle of microspells became a contagion, and Shiv groaned, even as he pushed more and more out from himself.

Aegis of Assimilation 109 > 111

Multi-Tasking 21 > 24

This was a losing battle, but the Deathless snarled as he realized he could still win the war. He strained his Multi-Tasking to the limit as he materialized his Chronomancy once more. He left an echo of himself right there, and his temporal shell destabilized, reaching the precipice of destruction. And then he dismissed it.

He held against the Biomantic onslaught as long as he could. In the meantime, he materialized his Pillar of Orichalcum again, and just in time. The first of the Vicar's spells hit him. It was a mix of Pyromancy and Necromancy; a beam of searing heat that licked a piece of his flesh away and tore a gap in his Necromantic wards.

If Shiv hadn't started increasing his Toughness, it would have likely cleaved clean through him. Bolts of lightning infused with Psychomancy crashed into Shiv's mind. Pockets were blown into his consciousness. His memories came asunder. His sense of self fractured, but pure instinct made him hold to a simple fact, a simple desire to be stronger, to be more durable, to survive the worst the Vicar could give him.

But where he held on to his Toughness, he lost concentration in regard to his magic altogether. A spread of tumors exploded through his body and began to eat through him, flooding his very cells, compromising him from bone to sinew to skin. His flesh began to attack itself. Jagged teeth erupted from the biomass lining his ribs, and they bit down, chewing on his inner organs.

Shiv groaned at the betrayal inflicted upon him by his body, but the creatures hatching free from his flesh failed to inflict harm, for they couldn't pierce his flesh. As soon as they separated, they lost the radiance of Orichalcum and found themselves mere creatures of bone and enamel trying to besiege something that even a Tarrasque couldn't break. Worse, every blow they inflicted was reflected back at them.

Pillar of Orichalcum 212 > 213

They came asunder, splitting apart in puffs of red—

Then, something much larger hit Shiv. Sullain teleported next to him. A clawed hand channeling a full blast of corrosive mana splashed over his body. This was something his pillar couldn't resist, but the Necromantic shroud the orcs encased him within endured for a second longer before its spellwork began to break apart, snapping like fraying ropes. At the same time, Sullain tore Shiv's vitality out of him. The Vicar made a ripping motion, and Shiv watched as streams of vitality burst free from him. The Deathless let out a shuddering cry of weakness as he desperately matched his Vitality Drain Skill against Sullain's.

How the hells is he doing that? Why is my Vitality Drain so felling weak in comparison? Is it just the level? No. It can't be…

"There is no hope of you prevailing against me," Sullain seethed. "Your damnation is sealed. I have foreseen it."

Shiv shivered from the coldness of encroaching oblivion, but he laughed through chittering teeth. "S—sure. S—sounds like your D—divination is great. So why didn't you use that to save Submission? D—didn't feel like it?"

Psychology 48 > 50 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Sullain stopped draining him out of sheer outrage, flinching as if struck. Shiv's grin grew wider. The orcs had tested his patience, had left him anxious and weary with paranoia—but they did teach him one thing: how to piss people off.

Sometimes, pissing people off is enough to spare your life.

"DAMN YOU!" Sullain shook and twitched like he was experiencing a seizure. More spells crashed against his body as he threw his tantrum. Only after a second of suffering his meltdown did Sullain finally compose himself and respond. He forged a colossal blade of gleaming Dynamancy, and it clashed against Shiv, but the blade shattered instead of him, and a blast enveloped the world, a blast that collapsed inward on itself, becoming a singularity. Orcs were drawn in. Cycling streams of rubble spun around the blade. A body impacted Shiv's pillar and splattered apart into a smear of fetid gore.

But the Deathless held. He shifted a centimeter toward this new singularity, but no more.

Sullain was a Legendary Pathbearer, a master of all magical skills known to Integrated Earth, but he was no Tarrasque in terms of might.

Not nearly.

"Break! DIE!" Sullain cried out. He channeled another spell of Psychomancy toward Shiv. But an orc got in the way, and his body came alight with flashing Magical Resistance. The same orc projected something from his mind: a translucent shape that snapped free from his being, crashing against Sullain like a missile. But the Vicar simply waved the spell aside like it was a gust of air.

The Vicar pointed a finger at the orc, and the gray-skinned warrior burst apart into a cloud of blood.

Anger washed through Shiv. He knew what these orcs were. He knew their cruelty, their psychopathy. But despite this, he couldn't help but care for them at that moment, because they were his psychopaths. They were his orcs. And if someone was going to kill them, break them, butcher them, and mutilate their souls, it was going to be him. He was the Insul, not Sullain.

Shiv drained vitality from everything around him. But even as he fed anger into the skill, he found it barely empowered.

The hells am I doing wrong?

Then, Sullain wrenched back the vitality Shiv had just siphoned away from him while forming a hundred-layered ward of prismatic brightness. Each section parried and shattered a spell the orcs threw at him. Sullain ignored the rest of the army for now, focusing solely on Shiv. The Deathless groaned as he felt himself veer toward nonexistence. Thinking itself became a struggle as weakness and Psychomantic damage left their toll on his body.

"You—" Sullain's words died as Bonk smashed him in the back of the head. Part of his metallic skull was dented inward, and one of his arms snapped free, crashing against the ground. Bonk laughed, hitting Sullain twice more. He drove the Vicar against Shiv, and the colossal serpent bent around the Orichalcum pillar.

Though Sullain had magical solutions aplenty, it was clear he lacked answers for both the deeply emotional and extremely physical.

The Deathless growled as he fought past his malaise. He spiked his gravitic field faster and faster. His Toughness and his Reflexes warred against each other. Cracks formed along his flesh, and then the damage slowed as his Toughness exceeded his inertial sheath once more. He kept going until he hit the point of minor injury before he shifted his attention to his Toughness instead.

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He was at well over six hundred spikes now. When he unleashed his discharge, the world would pay for it.

And so would Sullain.

"Keep him pinned!" Shiv shouted. He didn't know if the orcs could hear him, but he suspected that it didn't matter. Orcs were warriors of experience and instinct. They knew what he could do, and they adapted faster than even he could. They would exploit his skills any way they could, and Shiv would deliver upon Sullain suffering like the Legendary Pathbearer could never comprehend.

He was going to reach into Sullain with his Vitae, and he would break his Omnimancy.

At the same time, Shiv drained from existence. A new rupture formed, clashing against Sullain instead of the Tarrasque. And as part of existence unzipped, it tore away a few of the colossal serpent's fingers. Whirls of mana rained down, splashing against the land. Dust and debris filled the air. Flames swirled. A mana storm spilled out and smashed into the Vicar.

Over a kilometer of metallic serpent was torn away from Shiv like a rag doll. Thunder sounded, and a blast of Psychomancy made the Deathless flinch as he felt something inside his mind fracture.

Sullain cried out as Bonk hit him over and over. Shiv couldn't tell if this was the fifth or sixth time the orc had landed on the Legendary Pathbearer. But the serpent's body was rattling. More pieces were breaking off. And maybe, just maybe, Bonk would have gotten his wish. He would have been able to break Sullain.

But suddenly, as Bonk prepared to hit Sullain again, something struck him. Something Shiv couldn't see. A blast of shadowy static consumed the orc, and he vanished before his broken club could fall once more. And Shiv realized that Sullain's spiritual manifestation was likely in play once more.

Shiv grimaced. No more time to wait. He discharged. But as he did, he went outside context and froze time. Sullain swiped up his hands as if praying to the sky. Along his limbs emerged a chain of Dimensionality spells, each flashing with static and coated in a pitch-black membrane. But he never quite managed to finish that spell. Not with his physical body, at least. His spiritual manifestation tried, but Shiv's concluding discharge caught it by surprise.

A chasm of destruction expanded out of the Deathless. It was like an entire stretch of existence was ripped asunder. And Sullain fared no better. The Vicar's body shuddered, and then it deformed, pieces cracking away. Metal screamed as his form ripped in half.

Sullain was a Legendary spellcaster, peerless on Integrated Earth when it came to magical versatility, but he was no warrior, and it showed.

It showed in his inexperience, in his determination to engage Shiv up close, in his pointless desire to punish him for the emotional slights Shiv had inflicted on his feelings. And now the Vicar paid for it as parts of his body crumpled inward as he was cleaved in twain.

"No!" Sullain's spiritual manifestation cried. He held out a hand, pouring Chronomancy mana into his physical vessel, trying to keep it together. But despite time shifting backward, Sullain's physical shell remained as damaged as before, even after the golden mana faded. "H-how?"

Shiv chuckled. "A little Unique Feat called Causal Scargiver, asshole."

In that instant, the battle went silent. The Vicar's hands stilled as he looked toward the Deathless encased, in a tower of Orichalcum. No orc Chronomancers remained. The spiritual manifestation must have torn through them—through so many.

But Sullain was wounded. "How…" He whimpered. Both his spiritual manifestation and his physical vessel were scarred beyond restoration by time or acausality.

"Because I got tired of dealing with eldritch bullshit," Shiv said with a glare. Then, he sneered. He wanted Sullain to be more unbalanced—and more than that, he had a feeling another Skill Evolution was waiting. "You should have kept the Tarrasque around. It was much tougher than you were. Much better than you were in general. Frankly, if that Tarrasque had been the ruler of Submission, maybe your people would still be there. You know the funniest thing? First time I saw you, I wanted to be you. I was jealous of your magic. But now? I'd kill myself for good if I ever became you. Because you're a child, Sullain. I didn't realize that you could reach Legendary-Tier and still be nothing more than a bitch."

This spiritual manifestation's hands began to shake. Its Chronomancy mana faded. It came at Shiv with claws outstretched, with its entire being aglow with Necromancy. There was no coherence left to the Vicar. A tormented screech of anguish and hate was all he unleashed as he flung himself against Shiv's Orichalcum pillar.

In the same instant, Shiv felt his Psychology hit its first Skill Evolution.

Silver Tongue 29 > 31

Skill Evolution: Psychology (Initiate) > Psycho-Cartography (Master)

Psycho-Cartography 50 > 51

He didn't wait to read the notification, however. He cast himself back to his temporal anchor and went out of context once more. Sullain's claws gripped nothing. Shiv felt his temporal shell fracture, but he didn't mind. He lashed out after coating himself in Vitae once more, and he impacted the midsection of Sullain's spiritual body. It shattered like crystalline glass.

The Vicar howled.

He clutched at himself, and the magics he wielded immediately got weaker. Shiv tore and ripped and broke more things in Sullain's spiritual manifestation, and before he could get to its head, it vanished in motes of glittering mana.

It returned to its physical body, and Shiv just sneered. He cast himself ten seconds back in time, just as he began spiking himself with more and more momentum. His temporal shell shattered. Sullain let out a brutal gasp. He held up a hand, and golden mana swept across his body. Pieces that were damaged remained damaged even in Sullain's desperation. "WHY… GREAT ONE! HELP ME! AID YOUR CHILD!"

What few orcs were left began to besiege the Legendary Pathbearer from all directions. Massive hands of Dimensionality pinned him in place as he tried to teleport. Fists formed from Dynamancy crashed down, crushing more of Sullain's crumbling form. Winds of Psychomancy splashed against the Vicar's mind as he tried to fight off the orcs with a single hand. Spells from all directions bombarded the Legend, and even now, even in this pathetic state, Shiv found something in Sullain to admire.

The Vicar wasn't fighting one Hero or even a few. He was fighting Shiv along with an army of a few thousand Masters at the least. And the Deathless had no doubt that if Sullain wasn't a fool, if he'd applied any true strategy, he would have won despite it all. But his heart was too broken, and though his magic was strong, his spirit was frail. And he was too short-sighted to realize that Shiv had thought ahead.

Here was a Legend who betrayed their skill because of a lingering weakness in their will.

The Deathless discharged his built-up Inertial Overdrive once more, and the blast, even stronger than before, tore through Sullain's physical body. A second chasm followed the first, and this time, Sullain's physical body began to crumple and dissolve into particles. Shiv could hear Sullain screaming even over the immense detonation.

He watched as the Vicar's kilometer-long form of alloy began to shrink. It faded, as if a shadow cast beneath a lantern. He tried to cast a spell, but it sparked and fizzled out—something was broken about his magic. Shiv's eyes narrowed. Was the spiritual manifestation an externalized projection of his Omnimancy?

In a weird way, it made sense. It was unburdened by time, and it could cast spells and affect Shiv's soul. It was effectively a second Sullain hidden within the first—only invisible and intangible when time flowed normally.

An ocean of ionized plasma chewed at Sullain, and Shiv watched as a new color burst into existence. It was the broken, fractured form of Sullain's spiritual manifestation. It only had ten arms left. Most of its body had been broken away. Only a jagged tail remained of it. Its head was fractured as well.

Most of its jaw was missing, and Sullain's spirit trembled as it tried to pour its flagging magic into its physical self, trying to maintain its existence, trying to preserve its actual body from full annihilation.

And though this moment was urgent, Shiv took a second to study Sullain. And then he noticed it: a thin strand of vitality connecting Sullain to the physical body.

Perhaps the spiritual and physical bodies were both halves of Sullain instead of being an embodied skill. But despite this Shiv would bet everything he had, would bet everything he would ever have, that Sullain had another vessel somewhere.

Shiv didn't know overmuch about the ritual of the dichotomous soul, but he knew it was called that for a reason. Some split parts of themselves into different bodies at the same time. For one as skilled in magic as Sullain, not doing so would be a strange oversight.

So why was he fighting so hard to preserve this body? Why was he fighting at all?

And that's how Shiv found something else. A strand. Just a single, thin line of Psychomancy extending far across the battlefield, through the dense plasma choking the air. And it went in the direction of the Tarrasque.

Awareness 47 > 50 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Shiv laughed. It's not for him, at least not now. It's for his pet. Vicar Sullain was full of shit. He might have released most of his grasp on the Tarasque, but part of him held it still. He had to give the creature commands, after all.

"Hey, Sullain," Shiv called out. He projected his words using his Psychomancy, and the Vicar's spiritual manifestation froze.

It looked at Shiv, and despite its posture radiating with anger, something else extended from Sullain and anchored itself within Shiv. It was a chain made out of that same crystalline mana that comprised the spiritual manifestation's being. It was a chain of fear, and that chain fed into Shiv's social skills as well. Sullain's great weakness wasn't his Physicality or his Toughness. His great weakness was quite simply that he was too easy to abuse. He had no self-control, and Shiv exploited that to the utmost of his capacity.

Shape of Monstrosity 108 > 112

"I think you should run," Shiv began. As soon as he started speaking, he gained a piercing insight into how the subject of his focus was going to react.

Psycho-Cartography: Mock failure; insinuate he was the one that failed Submission and that Roland Arrow could have protected his city—high chance of spiking rage to new heights.

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