132 (II)
Ritual [II]
“Okay,” Shiv said, composing a new Vitae Golem. “How far can you fire that arrow?”
“A hundred meters in a half-second,” Adam replied. He was navigating the depths through Shiv’s eyes and his Divination. Pairing that with Adam’s Heroic-Tier Awareness, he navigated the depths with borderline prescience. “That’s how long I get before the spatial wards start hitting me.”
“Same thing with my Chronomancy,” Shiv explained. “Managed to parry one of the ripples, but another one nearly ripped my shell right off my body.”
A column of flame splashed down at them from above. Shiv widened his Skysplitter into a shield and parried the blast. Adam loosed a Hydromantically-charged Veilpiercer in the same moment. More spells came. More projectiles slashed through the depths. Most of the others missed.
The Creeping Void 112 > 113
“We’re going down. Let’s get close to the gate before I fire this bloody thing.” Adam’s wings flared brighter. They shot past a dozen of falling troop-towers—and came to a rough stop as Shiv saw a few thousand Vultegs blocking off the gateway. They were pouring through the other side like a swarm of insects performing a raid on a rival hive.
To Shiv and Adam’s benefit, the Vultegs' rear was left wide open. They weren’t expecting Shiv or Adam to be coming back.
Shiv finished his last infusion and commanded his golem to move fifty meters away. “Adam. This shit’s gonna be tight. The moment you fire that shot—”
A blur of movement passed across the corner of his eye. Shiv shoved Adam aside as a glaive passed through the space between them. An obsidian glaive Shiv remembered seeing in the chest of his last Vitae Golem.
And just as he thought of his previous golem, its severed head tumbled past him. It dissolved in the molten depths, coming apart as motes of red and white. Shiv and Adam regarded the fading golem, and slowly they looked up. Hovering above them was that glass-armored Vulteg again, and behind them descended ten towers and four more Jealousies. More shadows emerged even higher up in the ocean, and that made Shiv all the more certain that this wasn’t a fight he was supposed to win directly.
“We’re being forced into using my Vitae as a bomb. But something’s missing here. The sudden breach, this sloppy attack… There’s something behind this. It feels more coherent and planned than the system’s bullshit.”
Adam formed another arrow as his Necromantic vambrace crackled with energy. “We can figure that out if we survive. Right now, we make this count and finish this. I’m going to fire my arrow twenty meters away from that glass-armored bastard. The moment I do, you stop time, move your golem in position, and get us out.”
Shiv looked back and frowned as he noticed the obsidian glaive shooting through the gateway. But he didn’t have time to warn Adam that the glass-armored Vulteg could teleport to his glaive. The Gate Lord fired his dimensional arrow. It ripped across reality. Shiv stopped time at the same instant and ordered his golem to move. “Get in front of that arrow!”
Waves of Chronomancy crashed down—and they were more layered than ever before. There was scarcely a gap between them now, and Shiv understood why Adam was in such a hurry. When enough of those towers landed, they wouldn’t be able to use their Chronomancy or Dimensionality at all.
The Vitae Golem spiked itself into position, but the descending wardings immediately shredded its temporal shell. Shiv grabbed Adam by his waist and spiked both of them as fast as he could. This would injure Adam, but staying meant death. Shiv held the Gate Lord close to his body and kept Adam protected from all surrounding harm. Such a feat was easy to accomplish when he was three times Adam’s size. He crashed into the Vultegs rushing through the gateway just as the first of the wards brushed against his back.
Part of his temporal shell peeled away. The Vultegs choking the gateway before Shiv burst apart were knocked aside as he accelerated himself once more. He ripped through them just as a chain of other wards smashed into him. His temporal shell burst apart. Time resumed. A searing heat kissed Shiv’s back as the world behind him vanished into an expanse of all-consuming soul-fire. Vultegs around him ignited and screamed. Shiv gritted his teeth and pressed on as he heard Adam cry out. The Gate Lord’s limbs were folded the wrong way from the brutality of inertia.
Adam’s Heroic-Tier Reflexes were gentle. Shiv’s was anything but. The difference between them made itself known time and time again in the most brutal of ways.
A squeezing pressure clamped down around Shiv as he crossed through the gateway. He shot back up into the air, ripping a bloody path through the tightly packed Vultegs trying to pass through. At the same time, a rush of flame splashed against Shiv’s back, melting through his bone armor and burning soul-wounds into his flesh.
Shiv let out a hiss as he pulled his gravitic field at an angle. He and Adam crashed against a building and then through a dense layer of stone. As the battlements collapsed behind them, Shiv felt a series of spells sting and break against his body in quick succession until he called for someone to cease fire.
Pain consumed him. But Shiv was used to the hurt by now—didn’t let it distract him. He triggered his Song of the Vigilant as he cast a Woundeater into Adam. The Gate Lord’s arms snapped back in place as he gave a groan of relief. Shiv pulled him back to his feet and turned to face the scattered and broken Vultegs.
Spells rained down on the invaders from all directions. Mortar’s shots splashed down, consuming parts of the gateway in molten slag. But a beam of blinding fire continued climbing higher into the air. It burned bright and hot, and it just kept going. As Shiv cast his Vitae into downed Vultegs and began transferring his soul-wounds onto them, his breath caught as a notification appeared before his eyes.
Ritual Conditions: Slay [2,871,446/50,000 Vultegs] to align the Dimensional frequency of the Vulketh Gateway to the Tutorial.
“Holy felling shit,” Shiv exhaled. His mind went blank. He expected Adam setting off his soul to do something. Some damage. Some harm. But this was something else entirely. This was another level of destruction and death. Shiv knew what it was like to kill an army of enemies. Everything below High-Adept felt like an insect to him now. They died when he moved—though some with esoteric skills still posed strange threats, especially if they engaged him together. Masters and Heroes were harder to kill, but almost three million people dead in an instant. Shiv gawked at the beam of soul-flame erupting from the gate, cleaving a brilliant wound high up through the sky. His mind was numb. His body was still partially charred. Shiv couldn’t fathom any more than a few thousand dead. Millions were ridiculous.
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He crossed some threshold today. Something was going to come from this. Something severe.
I… I don’t know if I can cook this feeling out of me, Shiv thought.
Vitaemancy 62 > 67
Vitality Drain 55 > 59
Ritual Commenced!
Lord Scorn has sworn his eternal, undying hatred for Adam Arrow and the Corpse Shedder.
Lord Scorn is going to torture Adam Arrow and the Corpse Shedder for eternity once he captures them.
Lord Scorn has promised aid and divine blessings to anyone that stands against Adam Arrow.
Adam staggered beside Shiv. Both stared into the rising pillar of soul-fire. The Deathless looked at the Gate Lord. Adam’s expression was blank. “How many people did we just kill?”
“Around three million,” Shiv breathed. A chuckle of disbelief escaped him. “Sullain wasn’t shitting about me potentially lighting up the continent.” And that just made the idea of facing the Vicar even more daunting. “He managed to capture and reshape my soul-detonation, too. So. I have no idea how we’re going to kill him, Adam.”
The Gate Lord nodded. “Is… is it wrong that I don’t feel anything but exhaustion?”
“I think it might be normal,” Shiv replied. “Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel from this.”
Both of them kept staring into the column of white and red fire rising from the Vulketh Gateway for a beat. Stretches of corrosion danced along its length. Uva landed beside them a moment later, joining them as they watched the afterglow of their destructive act.
“What did you two…” Uva swallowed. “I assume that is what it looks like?”
“Only a bit,” Shiv replied. “A blunted bit. I don’t know what’s happening on the other side. I don’t want to know.”
And slowly, the pillar of soul-fire began to shrink. It thinned with each passing second. As it did, Shiv could see the Dimensionality mana spreading out from the gateway clearer than ever before. Something landed beside them from above. It sank into the ground and split in half. It looked like the haft of a spear. A very melted obsidian spear. A moment thereafter, Uva pulled Adam out of the way as a smoking carcass crashed down where he stood.
All three looked at the body as smoke rose off it. To Shiv’s surprise, the Vulteg groaned. Then, the Deathless noticed their glass armor and shook his head. “You poor bastard. You teleported straight to your glaive, didn’t you?”
The limbless, eyeless Vulteg twitched at his words, then let out a final noise and went still.
There were other Vulteg around them. Most of them were burning too. What few survivors remained threw down their arms in surrender as they gazed at Shiv. Several were on their knees, their gazes revealing naked terror. A few others even killed themselves outright, driving their blades through their bodies.
Dread Aura 96 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)
Shiv started at pockets of surrendering Vultegs and sighed. “More prisoners.”
Adam shook his head. “We’re not keeping them here. We’re—”
His words were interrupted as the final thread of soul-fire vanished and a sky-shaking scream shook the gate.
“FUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKK! FUCKKKKK! CUNNNNNNNNNTT! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKS! DO YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY TO BOMB MY DIMENSION! DO YOU FUCKING THINK ANIMANCY BOMBS ARE EASY TO FIX! YOU RAT FUCKING—OH, YOU’RE GOING TO FIND A WAY TO GIVE ME A DIVINE ANEURYSM. I’M GONNA SHIT MYSELF AGAIN! I’M GONNA DO IT! I GONNA SHIT MYSELF AND NAME THE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT AN ADAM! I’M GOING TO MAKE IT COME TO LIFE AND HAVE IT TORTURED EVERY DAY OF ITS ETERNAL LIFEEEEE!”
Lord Scorn sounded more like a wheezing accountant than a terrible god. In fact, he was on the verge of degenerating into angry sobs at any moment.
“Why is he just blaming me?” Adam whispered, his expression offended. “You were part of this, too.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know who I am. He just called me the Corpse Shedder.”
“Why the felling shit does he know who I am, then?” Adam snarled.
“Good question,” Shiv said. “Other good questions are: How did the gateway get breached? And who breached it?”
“Who?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” Shiv nodded. The last lingering remnants of his mental numbness faded, and his mind began to churn. “Had to be. There was a breach in the metal as well. An opening. If the Vultegs could make that from the other side—the hells with that, if the Vultegs were the ones who did this, they would be more prepared.”
“What do you mean?” Uva asked.
“The attack was spontaneous. Rushed, even.” Adam shook his head at her as he looked down, trying to process all that had just happened. “They didn’t even have proper formations set up on the other side. That’s why their forces entered so haphazardly.”
And just then, Shiv shuddered. A feeling of suspicion hardened inside him.
“Well. You’re quite the firecracker, aren’t you, Insul?”
Whisper materialized just behind Shiv. The orc stared past the partially collapsed battlements into the glassed crater surrounding the gateway. The orc chuckled as he held out a hand. A rain of ash fell. The moans and cries of badly wounded Vultegs assailed the gate with a symphony of unceasing suffering. And slowly, Shiv could see the Dimensionality of the gate shifting and changing, like a boiling cauldron of black bile on the verge of overflowing.
Lord Scorn’s screams were replaced by Challenger's booming laughter midway through. As the orc god bellowed his glee, anger exploded inside the Deathless—but he held it in check.
If only for a moment.
“Hey, Whisper,” Shiv said, turning to stare at the orc. Whisper greeted him with a smile. The other orcs stood atop a second set of distant walls set up just before the obsidian tower. “Got a question for you.”
“Yes, Insul?”
“Did the Challenger ask you to do it, or did you breach the gateway because you thought it would be funny? Because it would get me to do the ritual faster?”
Awareness 15 > 20
Deception 14 > 18
Psychology 15 > 24
The orc’s eyes widened in surprise, but Shiv read something from Whisper’s expression.
And the anger inside the Deathless exploded. But rather than let it consume him, Shiv spent the anger on a skill. He spent it on Awareness as he read every muscle on the orc’s face, as he watched Whisper’s surprise turn to respect and astonishment.
“I know it’s you,” Shiv said. “Because who else could it be? We thought we watched you well. But—”
“No,” Whisper said, shaking his head. “Not me. But close.”
Shiv pressed his lips together, and suddenly, he considered the only other orc that could have done this without him noticing. Band waved at him from atop the walls, his face wild with glee. He clapped for Shiv, and the Deathless let out a breath.
“Did the Challenger tell you to do it?”
“Yes,” the Challenger’s voice rumbled from the shifting gateway. “Now, Insul—”
Shiv very calmly punched Whisper in the face before the orc god could say anything else.