35 (II)
Infiltrate
Shiv looked over his shoulder when he heard a few of the mercenaries laughing. Someone said something about an itch, and the shrouded vampire was still shaking their head.
Something felt wrong in Shiv’s stomach. Very wrong. But so far, the orc was behaving very kindly—too kindly. If they just told Shiv to piss off, that would have been a failed infiltration, and they would need to do something else, but now he was being led ahead of the group—practically made to jog to keep up with 811’s every step.
“Do you know why they call me 811?” the orc asked.
Shiv looked up and tried to keep more fear than curiosity in his voice. “I’m afraid I don’t know too much about orcs.”
“Ah. That is because our races rarely have conducive discussions. Well. Conducive to understanding, that is. When it comes to killing each other, our kind does that rather well. That is why I am 811. I am the 811th clone of my spiritual line. The memories of my predecessors still echo in my mind. They have been to many places, killed many people, but most of them died here. On this planet. Against you. Humans. So small. So fragile. Yet so vicious and cruel.”
811 looked up into the sky and smiled. “We appreciate that in you. My kind was made for bloodshed. Yours was born to it. Ah. If only yours could have committed more. System. You are so broken it makes me happy.”
Okay, what the hells is this conversation? Shiv wondered, doing his best to not sweat profusely. He heard stories about orcs being monsters, but he had no idea if this thing was about to cry in sympathy or eat him. Shiv’s disturbed confusion played on his face as the orc just smirked.
“Ah. Ignore me. I am of the sentimental kind. Even for my race. Now. I have spoken much, and I have been kind. This is a social behavior that should be rewarded, yes?”
Shiv blinked. “I guess?”
“Will you tell me your name, then?”
“I—” Shiv nearly told the damn orc his actual name because of how weird this conversation was. “I’m Mark. Mark Speeirson. I’m… I’m no one. Just a slaver… Oh, go–uh, Great One, they’re all dead.”
“Hm. Right. The survivor's guilt. Your minds are so odd. Why are you punished for surviving? For proving your effectiveness? Such a poorly designed organ. Such a wonderful organ.”
“You don’t get bothered when your kind dies?” Shiv asked, genuinely curious.
The orc shook his head and sighed like a parent about to correct a child. “You truly do not know much about my race. It is so sweet. The ignorance. I could pull you apart right now.”
Shiv’s basic instincts screamed for him to attack the orc first. His desire to see if the orc actually could rip him in half made him keep this act going. The rest of the group was getting further and further behind. Then, Shiv realized the shrouded vampire was actually following them. And they were only two meters behind Shiv.
Yep. Something is absolutely about to go wrong. Not great for the infiltration effort, but the orc might just be able to put me down…
Whatever the case, Shiv was going to be getting something out of this.
“Who were you contracted to?” 811 asked. “Is it Scorn? Belalu? Liu?”
Shiv didn’t know any of these names other than Scorn. That was supposed to be some kind of demon lord from another dimension or something. He continued playing the ignorant. “I’m not much of a reader, man. I just… I owed some stuff and I had skills. That’s how I got into this work.”
“What? You were not curious at all? About your own life? About who owns you?” For the first time, 811 seemed mad.
“I… I…” Shiv grimaced. “I’ll need to find out. Just give me a break. I’m stressed, I’m tired, everyone I was with got butchered and flayed by some kind of… Skintaker—”
“Skintaker?” 811 blinked. He leaned down. “Tell me. What is that?”
“There was a… creature that attacked us. That slaughtered us. He—uh, it was powerful. And large. And… he tore us apart. We couldn’t do anything to stop him.” Internally, Shiv was cringing. It wasn’t his intent to lead the conversation down this way, but he ended up trying to tap into more of the traumatized fool character, and now he was basically praising himself for the violence he committed. He kept going on for a bit, trying to make himself babble and even tried to whimper. Shiv regretted that. He didn’t have the voice for whimpering. Though maybe it sounded different to others with his stolen body?
“Truly,” the orc breathed. 811 shouldered his mace and looked joyously into the woods. “I think I will take a walk here after having a brief set of libations at Little Gomorrah. I hope you are not lying to me, Mark. Because you should not lie to your friends. You really were attacked by a Skintaker, yes? You are sure?”
“Yeah, I am sure!” Shiv said, trying to act offended. He was going to keep up the act when the orc suddenly led him off the road and into the woods. Shit. He’s about to do something soon. Shiv’s mind tremored with anticipation and excitement. They had been going long enough that the rest of the group was beyond their sight—the rest of the group aside from the vampire.
“W-where are we going?” Shiv said, doing his best to sound scared.
“Taking a look,” 811 said, staring off into the darkness with his beady, yellow eyes. “Perhaps we might even get lucky right now. I could break two things out here, and you can die knowing that your people have been avenged.”
“Die?” Shiv asked, blinking.
811 stared at him with so much pity that Shiv realized it was genuine. “Ah. You truly know nothing about me or my kind. I will miss you, little victim. But… despite my fascination with your culture and my determination to understand you better, I am still an orc. A war-born, war-bred, war-fed. I am… feeling the itch. The Black-Hunger. And I have not maimed, broken, or killed anything in two days and two nights. This is not your fault. I am merely starved, and the others with me I cannot afford to kill per the conditions of my contract.”
The orc came to a stop, and so did Shiv. This was a hell of a way to find out that orcs literally had to hurt and kill someone to keep themselves fed. By this point, Shiv didn’t have the urge to keep on playing the scared victim. It was time to drop the pretenses and have some actual fun.
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811 rolled his tree-trunk arms and gripped his mace tighter. The vampire leaned against a nearby tree and sighed. “Come on, 811,” the vampire said, his voice a deep rasp. “Get on with it. You feed first. Then I do. And make it quick. We don’t want that bitch, Uveda, writing us up for indulging on the job again.”
And that explained why the vampire was here. Great. Instead of them taking him into their group and letting him infiltrate their number, he got led off to be butchered and devoured in the woods. What charming people Vicar Sullain hired to transport his weapon.
“Ah, there it is,” 811 said, looking down into Shiv’s eyes. “The coward has died. You have accepted your fate. Now is the moment the ape ascends to die screaming! Die clawing against the soil of its grave! Beautiful. So beautiful.”
“Of all the bloody orcs I get stuck with, this one’s a romantic,” the high vampire muttered. “Get on with it! Hurry!”
“No,” 811 said, grinning. “He must fight. I want to see him fight. One last time. Perhaps for the first time in his life.” 811 held out his arms and gestured for Shiv to come. “Make this memorable, Mark. It is the last moment of your life. Scar me, and I will carry you in my mind. And those who come after me will remember you as well. That is an immortality. That is the only consolation—”
Shiv decided this was a good moment to test his stolen Blade Whirlwind skill. He flicked a bone dagger into his hand and slashed out at the orc’s exposed skin. He didn’t use his Biomancy because he needed to conserve his mana field for when the vampire tried to turn his body against him. That, and 811 had such a strong Magical Resistance that an easy kill through heart failure was impossible. Besides, he might be able to surprise them once more when he returned in his Revenant form.
So, for now, Shiv kept his Perfect Semblance as another line of defense—the orc expected to be fighting a weak, desperate slaver, not another Master-Tier in disguise.
As a result, 811 bled. The orc grunted in surprise and flinched back. The vampire shot off the tree. Every one of Shiv’s attacks turned into a blur of cuts by the end—his arms becoming afterimages going in different directions, delivering several cuts at once. Blade Whirlwind wasn’t a bad skill for fighting groups of foes, but on its own, it wasn’t that impressive either. It just let someone cut in more directions at once. Without strength, speed, and a decent cutting tool, it wouldn’t do much.
But Shiv was strong, fast, and—
He jerked in surprise as a massive pressure clamped hard around Shiv’s legs. Beneath his Perfect Semblance, he felt his bone armor crack slightly. A brief glance down revealed a maw of stone had clamped down around his legs. Geomancy, Shiv realized. Then, 811’s mace came for him.
Compared to Harkness, the orc might as well have been moving in slow motion. But that didn’t matter when Shiv was pinned in place and couldn’t move. So, Shiv took a direct approach to solving the problem: He parried the orc’s massive weapon down into the stone fangs holding him in place. It was a near thing. Even with Might of Mass, Diamond Shell, and Momentum Core, he drained just enough of the blow’s momentum to let him redirect the mace downward.
Parry > 34
The orc let out a surprised gasp as his weapon broke through the stone holding Shiv. That gasp became a grunt of astonishment as Shiv shot off the ground and dragged his bone dagger along 811’s neck. Yet, despite splitting skin and drawing blood, Shiv watched as the inner flesh of the orc turned to stone. He reached out to catch Shiv before he landed. Shiv launched himself over the orc’s back by kicking off the grabbing hand.
But the moment Shiv landed, the earth beneath him gave way. He sank down into the suddenly softening soil up to his waist, and a second later, everything around him solidified, fusing back to stone. A crushing pressure rattled and clenched his armor. Shiv let out a wheeze of pain and growled. Godsdamned Geomancy. Evolved Geomancy at that. What is this? Did he fuse his Geomancy with his Toughness too?
811 turned. The vampire was approaching to support when the orc held out a hand, halting the bloodspawn. He regarded Shiv with a new expression, the yellow dots that were his eyes flashing briefly with mana. A moment of silence followed. The orc just sighed. “Well, now that doesn’t make much sense. Only one Adept Skill… No Feat. No Blessing. Just… nothing. How did you do that?”
Shiv offered the orc a mocking grin. “You told me to make this memorable, didn’t you?”
The orc paused. The orc thought. And the orc laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. By the end, he wiped yellowish tears off his face. “You… You are truly a gem. I will miss you. And I will remember you. Well done. But alas, one must still feed.”
The Deathless spat. “Well. You gonna make this memorable for me too?”
“Ah, your true nature, discovered too late?” 811 sniffled. “I will weep for you in private.”
And then he brought his fanged mace down on Shiv. The Deathless parried again, and snarled as something in his hip fractured from the transferred torque. The ground was holding him in place at the waist, and he didn’t use Momentum Core this time. Mainly because he had another goal right now. A selfish goal.
Alright, you big felling bastard. Come and earn my death. Let’s see how many levels you can get my Diamond Shell to advance in the meantime.”
Shiv parried. And parried. And felt his dagger shatter apart by the third. The biggest problem wasn’t Toughness, but strength. The orc was monstrously strong, and Shiv could feel something from the land surging up into 811 every time he swung. Whatever weird mix of Geomancy and Physicality or Toughness, it made 811 hit like a godsdamned avalanche.
When Shiv blocked the fourth blow with his arms, both shattered immediately. The fifth saw them rendered mangled stumps. The sixth blasted apart most of Shiv’s chest armor. The seventh speared his broken armor deep into the flesh it was meant to protect. As Shiv gagged and coughed blood, he managed a laugh. Might of Mass, Parry, and Diamond Shell were going to be shooting up today.
The orc let out a slight huff and Analyzed Shiv again. “How are you not dead?”
Shiv spat blood all over the orc’s dense obsidian boots. “Hit me like you mean it!”
811 blinked. Chuckled. And did as Shiv asked.
“No, wait!” the high vampire said—but they were too slow. 811’s mace trembled with so much power Shiv felt it crack the land before it even landed. When the weapon struck Shiv’s chest, most of his body ceased to be. But the blow kept going. Shiv figuratively gaped as it tore deeper and deeper into the earth, until a literal earthquake shook the forest and tore an expanding fissure that went on and on for kilometers. Huge chunks of stone, entire trees and thousands of tons of soil were launched into the sky and began to fall from above.
It was a small miracle Shiv managed to pop his corpse’s head off and get his mask into his cloak. It was another miracle that he respawned as a Revenant in the right direction, because if he ended up behind his corpse, he would be plunging into a deep and black pit. Judging by how the high vampire was screaming at the orc, the bloodspawn was too distracted to notice Shiv’s subtle Biomancy. That, and all the smoke shrouded his cloak.
Despite how off-course the infiltration went, this death was pretty good.
Diamond Shell > 84
Might of Mass > 75
Parry > 38
Knife Proficiency > 33
“What were you thinking?” the high vampire hissed. “Are you trying to get everyone to notice us? Are you trying to betray our position?”
Thunderous impacts sounded in the distance as massive chunks of earth achieved touchdown. Slowly, the parted land rumbled and closed at a casual gesture from 811. Shiv noticed how the orc’s body lit with spell shapes, like he was part of the spell. Yeah. Definitely a Skill Fusion. Carefully, Shiv maneuvered closer to his two enemies. They were both powerful, but with a bit of strategy and maybe—
“Back!” the vampire hissed. “You go back, now! And explain what you did to Uveda before she blames me for your mongrel behavior. I will not be penalized for this. Not again! Tell her this is your doing! Yours alone!”
The orc laughed. It was the sound of grinding rocks. “Ah, Isaiah. You really should relax more. What is the point of being a creature of the higher blood if you are so—”
“Go!” the vampire cried.
“Very well,” 811 said. Then, with a grunt and flex of his legs, he launched himself from the ground—and Shiv felt the earth itself give the orc a helpful boost. With a casual hop, the orc shot far over the land and returned to the rest of the mercenaries. Alone, the high vampire looked down into the quickly-closing mess of ruined earth where Shiv once was.
Suddenly, the Deathless realized his little infiltration attempt might not be over after all. Inching closer to the vampire from behind, Shiv prepared to show the bloodspawn just what it meant to be properly drained.