63 (II)
Endure
Sir Tarlow nodded. “I was curious about that too. That is why I brought you here, after all. You have my interest piqued. I think… I will think back on this moment long, long after this day.”
“I don’t know if I will,” Shiv replied. “You’re a nasty fight now, but I have a feeling I got a lot worse to come.”
She laughed. “I will miss the arrogance.”
“No,” Shiv replied. “Not if you’re dead.”
And then he charged towards her, tearing open a chasm across the ground. No more strategy. No more technique. Just a man trying to beat a monster to death with his bare godsdamn hands.
The dragon blinked, but even without Can Hu, Shiv knew what to expect. He knew what to expect when she dodged through him. He knew what to expect when she teleported twice. And he knew what to expect when she finally drove her blade against his chest. He knew he wouldn’t be fast enough to catch her. And he knew he didn’t have long to inflict harm before she teleported or simply blinked again.
So, he let her wound him, and he traded with her, launching his Woundeater into her chest as she cut a deep slice on his chest. He was blasted into the earth, but the dragon staggered back, stunned. He created another Woundeater from the injury he just got, and he launched it at her too. She almost managed to dodge that one. Almost, but spells moved pretty quickly, especially when you were in someone else’s field. Another problem was that she couldn’t sense his Biomancy field, so she was stuck trying to predict his Woundeater—and that wasn’t reliable at all.
As a second crimson explosion expanded around her, he felt her Magical Resistance crack—approach the verge of breaking.
And this time, Shiv tore himself completely apart, practically flaying his own flesh off his body as he launched himself towards her.
The dragon stumbled back, trying to recover. She teleported, and Shiv waited—waited for her to strike him. For a moment, he thought she was gone, that she had done the wise thing and fled back to return with her companions and finish him off together.
But then her blade came crashing into his back again, and he couldn’t help but laugh, even as pain tore through his body.
“Just can’t resist!” Shiv cried, and he launched the Woundeater past his shoulder into her. Her Magical Resistance detonated like a bomb. Shiv could feel the pressure washing off her body as what remained of her mystical armor came asunder. Wounds erupted all over Sir Tarlow. Her scales came free in several places, hanging from her body like tatters. He flayed himself entirely. She suffered only a partial effect, but it was enough. She looked partially degloved, and she howled with immense pain.
Sir Tarlow staggered away from him, holding the bouncing strips of her body in place as blood spewed out from her. She cried out, almost delirious from the pain. “How do you deal with it? You flay yourself to wound me… How?”
“I’ve kind of always lived this way,” he replied with a shrug as he staggered after her. “That’s just a simple thing of arithmetic. It might hurt me, but it will sure as shit kill you.”
She nodded and tried to compose herself. “Admirable. I’ll keep that in mind. It is a good lesson.”
And then she shot towards him, her wings unleashing a rain of massive icicles that crashed down on the surrounding area. He swatted them aside, barreling through them like a bear would charge through a snow castle. But before they crashed into each other again, before he could unleash his Biomancy on her again, she teleported away just as he ruptured two of his organs.
A second later, she teleported back—with another dragon in tow.
Shiv felt the newly arrived Dragon-Knight’s Biomancy field crash against his own. He immediately dropped his spell and shifted his focus to trying to fight off the dragon Biomancer’s attempts to stop his heart.
“Damn it!” Shiv cried. His organs ruptured again, but the Song of the Vigilant kept him focused. He wrestled against the other Biomancer, both of them pitting spells of raw intent against each other, their mana swirling, magical shapes dancing around their bodies.
The battlegrounded changed once more. It seemed that Sir Tarlow wasn’t nearly as prideful as he assumed. Annoying. Tragic.
“So, you forced Sir Tarlow to finally seek some help,” the Biomancer dragon declared with a slight lisp. The big bastard was more than just a Biomancer, frankly. It held a tower shield almost as big as it were, and perhaps half the length of the Jealousy. In its other hand, it clutched what seemed to be something between a scepter and a banner, and a field of oppressive aura came pressing against Shiv, grinding at his mind, at his focus. He guessed it was some kind of Psychomancy-powered weapon, something to disrupt someone’s thoughts.
Shiv was glad he had the Song of the Vigilant. There was no way he could be casting without it.
Then Tarlow struck Shiv from behind again, and he went crashing head over foot. His back was flayed open, but he kept his focus and stopped the Biomancer from killing him. But even as he held the Dragon-Knight Biomancer at bay, he had to fight Tarlow with half his focus.
That didn’t work out too good.
She carved him up, splitting him back and front. Her blade was an item of artistry in her hands—flowing between angles, her grip switching from reverse to standard, stabbing then slicing. It was only through Shiv’s incredible durability—aided by Momentum Core and his gravitic field—that he lasted as long as he did. But by the end, his skin was barely clinging to him, and his muscles were in tatters, held close to his body more by his Biomancy and gravity fields than by connective tissues.
Momentum Core > 84
Adamantine Adaption > 112
Gravitic Wrestler > 112
Woundeater > 61
And to make matters worse, the other dragons were on approach in the distance—just moments away.
Shiv sighed. “Didn’t quite manage to kill you, did I, Sir Tarlow?” He looked at the dragon as they staggered back from each other, both exhausted.
She shrugged and seemed dissatisfied as well. “I had to call for help,” she admitted. “We are both losers this day.”
That got a laugh out of Shiv. “I wish you weren’t a traitor. I think we would have liked each other.”
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“I wish you weren’t a fool mercenary who tried to steal from us. I wish you had surrendered.” She drew her blade back and assumed a crouching stance. The dragon Biomancer retracted its field from Shiv to heal her. “You would have made a fine Dragon-Knight.”
And Shiv decided to make his last moments count. He charged Tarlow. At least, he tried to. The Biomancer suddenly commanded Shiv’s vessels to rupture, and he was forced to resist to survive.
Then the Dynamancer unleashed a spell from afar, and a massive blow descended on Shiv from above. Dynamancy, from what Can Hu briefly described, could control magnetism, could control gravity, could control force itself. One didn’t reach Dynamancy without gaining and fusing all the main elemental “Mancy” Skills, like Cryomancy, Pyromancy, Aeromancy, and Hydromancy, first.
The attack the Dynamancer struck Shiv with was one of the hardest blows he'd ever suffered. Something even harder than Tarlow’s Momentum Core discharges. Shiv tried to bear its weight, but both his knees folded backwards. He felt his legs break, and Shiv cried out in agony as more of his body fractured. Adamanatine Adaption stopped him from coming apart entirely, but his tendons were still plucked from his bones. Shiv’s focus finally shattered, and his soul was too worn from the Composer’s song to keep it up much longer. He dropped that as well, and then the banner’s full oppressive power smashed into his mind, flooding his thoughts with noise.
Shiv tried to rise, and the Biomancer’s shield crashed down on his body. He pushed against it, pushed against the dragon and the enormous weight of the shield with his gravitic field, only for the dragon that had called its companion a pussy earlier to casually lay its weapon on top of the shield as well. “Feisty little fucker, isn’t he?” The axe wielder laughed.
Shiv spat blood on the shield. “Come find out, asshole. We’re not done.”
“Indeed,” Sir Tarlow said with a sigh. “We will not likely see his like again for a while.”
Shiv gave a ragged cry and tried to push himself free. “Shut up and just finish the job.”
The axe wielder looked at Shiv and then nodded. “Aye, we won’t see his like again. See you in the afterworld, stranger. Great One take you into their memory.”
And the dragon raised his axe back up and dropped it on top of the shield. What was an instrument of defense became a guillotine. Shiv felt his spine fracture—and then harden. It still took the bastard almost a dozen swings to split Shiv down the middle. And only partially at that. As he felt the shield dig into his intestines, Shiv hissed and tried to push through the chaos and pain—tried to shape a final Woundeater to fight just a while longer.
But the Biomancer, taking advantage of Shiv’s stunned and delirious state, reached into him and burst every blood vessel in his brain.
The last thoughts that passed through Shiv’s mind that time were, Ah, so that’s what that feels like.
Then Shiv was a Revenant, and he immediately moved towards the Psychomancer Dragon-Knight who just touched down behind the others.
Momentum Core > 89
Adamantine Adaption > 117
Gravitic Wrestler > 115
Frictionless Vector > 55
Woundeater > 66
Dodge > 10
Striking Proficiency > 34
Knife Proficiency > 43
“Well, that was a bloody hard affair,” the axe-wielder huffed, planting its greataxe into the earth. “Wouldn’t you say, Tarlow? How did a little insect like that give us so much trouble?”
Tarlow looked at Shiv, but she seemed troubled. She stared at his body, and then at her kukri. The edge still glimmered with gold. “Impossible. He’s dead. Why does the blade still remember cutting him…”
And the Biomancer noticed something else. “There’s still someone else here,” he cried. “There’s another field still active inside mine. The bloody Weaveresses are among us! Enemy Biomancer! Master-Tier!”
But while they were trying to figure things out, Shiv reached the pearl-scaled Psychomancer and dug into her with his Biomancy at the same time as he drained her monstrous vitality. In that moment, he tried something—doing what Dven had talked about; reconstructing a wound from Mana alone. He focused, trying to recall his most recent injuries, but that didn’t work, so he went for something very simple: a series of lacerations and cuts, the type he suffered most often.
As he focused, mana condensed in the air. A Woundeater manifested before him, shimmering with crystallized, crimson mana. He still wasn’t fully ready—he hadn’t grasped every fine detail—so he drove what he had into the pearl-bright dragon, washing over her in a gout of raw power. Then he tore into her Magical Resistance as best he could.
She lashed out with a blind spell meant to repel attackers, but his Magebreaker, as well as his tattered clothing—the ones Uva bought for him—were bound to him. They materialized slowly as he did, leaving him more than capable of dealing with a magical attack.
“Equipped to one’s soul indeed,” Shiv murmured in his own head.
As her Psychomancy spell exploded outward, he parried it with the Magebreaker and, using Frictionless Vector, launched it at several of the other dragons. It stunned the Biomancer just long enough for Shiv to shape another spell and crash it into the Psychomancer again. She cried out—and he felt part of her magical barrier give. She had little to begin with, likely a flaw with her current armor.
He landed a third spell just as the Dynamancer, uncertain what was happening, summoned a massive influx of lightning. Whips of electricity spliced through the air, forking into the other dragons as they sought Shiv—but they found nothing, even as Shiv drained the Psychomancer’s vitality and pulled forth a new set of armor out of his cloak in anticipation of his resurrection.
They weren’t ready for his return—especially the pearlescent dragon. He shattered her Magical Resistance with one final blast of exhausted Biomancy, then switched tactics. With a final act, he flayed open his own back and dove under her flesh, diving into her wounds and ripping deeper into the parting flesh.
“A Weaveress is inside me!” the dragon cried. He felt her courage fracture. “She is crawling inside me!”
Shiv recalled every wound they’d inflicted on him, every hurt they’d caused, every injury they’d dealt—and he fed that rage into his Gravitic Wrestler. He began pulling in two directions. Outside, the Psychomancer lurched and shrieked with pain. The axe-bearer called out to her, screaming for the Biomancer to help her. Inside, Shiv felt the dragon’s bones fracture, her organs rupture, her flesh tear down the middle. With an animalistic roar, Shiv pulled again—and his field flared hard with his rage. Suddenly, her scales ruptured open, and light from the outside flooded inward. He pulled again—tendons snapped and tissue split, breaking along their very strings. The dragon gurgled, and he saw the axe-bearer’s desperate face as it charged to aid the pearlescent dragon.
“Hold on—” the axe-bearer cried.
And then Shiv pulled one final time.
The Psychomancer came apart from within in an ocean of blood and gore, but Shiv was already drenched—blood-red and soaked to his very skin—and he felt invigorated with her death.
Six dragons remained. And when Uva gets back, there's gonna be even fewer.
A ragged roar of absolute anguish sounded from the axe-bearing dragon. It rushed towards the place where the Psychomancer used to be and splashed down into the gore, pawing at the pieces of the other dragon, crying out for the Biomancer. Intuitively, Shiv realized that there was something deep and intimate between the two dragons—and he had just killed the Psychomancer.
That’s going to be a problem. One I’ll deal with later.
Shiv blasted forward, blood peeling from his body. He went for the Biomancer next, but the spell the Dynamancer had cast earlier found him.
A bolt of electricity crashed into his form, and the Dynamancer pointed. “There—I have him!” The dragon clenched a fist. It was like the world itself was tightening around Shiv. He fought with all his might, breaking free from the lightning, breaking free from the closing clutches of unseen force with a blow from his Magebreaker. Then, he twisted off to the side and shot toward the Biomancer.
As he accelerated toward his rival mage, he was spent magically. If the enemy launched a magical spell at him now, it would crack his field like an egg—and Shiv remembered how long he was out of commission after his fight with the Jealousy. He accelerated faster. Several other dragons moved to intercept him. The Biomancer shaped a glowing pillar of crimson in its hands—
Then a tide of arrows crashed down on the Biomancer, and countless more struck the other dragons. A downpour of magical projectiles followed—a colossal tide that speared down from the sky.
Above, hundreds of Adams fired and vanished, replaced by others as the original Adam cloned more of himself, his Heroic-Tier rapier giving off flashes of light.
Good thing Harkness was just playing with us, Shiv thought, shuddering. That rapier is powerful.
Whatever happened to the two dragons that chased after Adam and Uva, Shiv didn’t know. All he knew was that he was glad to see the Young Lord and that it was good to have friends.