(II) Wounded

50 (II) Wounded

As it tried to recover, Shiv yanked hard, his gravitic field enveloping its eye. Blood vessels tore as the corner of the massive organ gave way and the eyeball came free, dislodging from the socket. With a primal cry of extreme effort, Shiv burned the last of his rage and used every ounce of strength to fling the Jealousy against the wall. His gravitic field crashed over it in a tsunami of overwhelming force.

The beast wailed as it was hurled backwards. Its body struck one place, and its eyeball hit another, barely connected via the optical cord. Shiv then smashed into it again, overstraining his body before his Toughness could adapt.

The effort came with its own cost. He felt every muscle tear from the bone; he felt his bones creak and start to break. But his Adamantine Adaption kept them from shattering outright, and his ligaments held. Still, the damage to his musculature was severe—severe enough to feed another Woundeater wyrm.

Thus came his second attack. As soon as the Jealousy slammed into the wall again, caving in another section of the anchor, Shiv dropped a fist brimming with crimson mana onto the monster, infused with the power of his wounds.

Twin explosions swept over the Jealousy, swallowing it in crushing waves. The first was the gravitic field channeled outward by Shiv, burying the demon even deeper into the folding titanium. The second was his Woundeater. It snaked out and detonated his wounds against the Greater Demon. The inside of the Jealousy cracked, and its eye snapped free entirely. Shiv could feel its Magical Resistance was about to give.

As it tried to swat him off again, Shiv pulled it off the wall and broke its balance. His muscle damage entirely healed thanks to his Woundeater. He slammed it against the wall again and immediately began pummeling it, launching countless blows. Each of his fists, elbows, and knees hit like falling artillery, a cascade of devastation. Massive blast waves of force tore across the Jealousy, as its blood-filled socket spewed an ocean of red down upon the slaves below, sweeping many off their feet.

Striking Proficiency > 30

Shiv concentrated his gravitic field into thin points of pressure. The Jealousy struck at him, but Shiv yanked the Jealousy along the wall, throwing it off balance every time it tried to stabilize and get a good hit on him. He was relentless. What sloppy hits it did land fed his Momentum Core, and he found himself on the verge of another discharge. With an ascending elbow, he sent the Jealousy up the wall, away from the slaves, and then he discharged, plunging into the beast’s socket with a surge of momentum.

Shiv opened new wounds in himself and fed another wyrm. Another crimson explosion washed over the Jealousy. Its Magical Resistance was crumbling; his Biomancy felt like it was being flayed from his soul. Shiv retracted his gravitic field, focusing entirely on himself. He speared into its flesh, punching deep like a harpoon. Once more, he swam through the creature’s insides, gouging and ripping inner flesh. He was stronger this time, and could move everything that he touched. He pulled out bone daggers, carving and slashing, launching bone drills out at every angle. Shiv hunted for vulnerable organs, and when he could find none due to the demon’s bizarre biology, he kept sawing, gouging, and slashing, each attack enhanced by his field.

Knife Proficiency > 39

Spear Proficiency > 11

Every punch struck the Jealousy as if delivered by a rival colossus; every slash fell like a titanic blade cleaving deep through the monster’s flesh. Shiv felt his soul ache, and the strain of the Composer’s song wore on him. His focus wouldn’t last much longer, but he still had this—he was going to finish this fight. His Woundeaters devoured new injuries he inflicted on himself, and a series of crimson detonations erupted out from the Jealousy’s eye socket.

The Greater Demon howled in pain, healing as fast as it could, but it couldn’t dislodge him—not when Shiv was this strong, not when he could anchor himself in place, becoming his own leverage. He grabbed the Jealousy from inside itself and twisted every bone he could feel until they snapped or dislocated, until the demon screamed in higher and higher pitches of agony as Shiv ignored his own muscles ripping free from his bones once more.

He slammed it against the wall again, and as his Momentum Core hit capacity, he discharged and dragged the Jealousy’s shattered form socket-first along the surface. Its massive eye, barely regenerated, was once again little more than a blood-filled pond lined with viscera.

And finally, its Magical Resistance shattered. Shiv promptly caved in his own eye sockets and transferred the wounds into it. The pond erupted as if a volcano of gore, flesh spraying outward as his wounds became its wound.

Biomancy was beautiful: once you broke your enemy’s Magical Resistance, you simply told their flesh what to do, and their flesh obeyed. The Jealousy tumbled across the insides of the anchor in a whirlwind of torture.

the Greater Demon cried with horror. Its body was still healing, but Shiv slammed it into the wall again and again, breaking its focus each time, keeping the Jealousy from focusing on a spell.

Shiv was tired—beyond exhausted. His soul felt raw as he tried to crystallize another series of wounds for a spell, but he snarled in focus-breaking pain as the Song of the Vigilant became too much for his soul to bear. His mana field gave immediately after—his Biomancy practically as torn as his muscles were.

Shiv didn’t stop. He didn’t care. He would burn himself down to cinders to kill this thing.

The Deathless gathered what remained of his strength and began punching the Jealousy from the inside. Every blow was a sledgehammer against a caving wall; every hit like a small mana bomb. The Greater Demon was flagging. He was going to break it—tear it in half.

Shiv gripped it along its middle, and he roared, pulling in two directions. His field penetrated the center of the Jealousy, curving along opposite angles. As if a colossus of unimaginable might, he ripped the demon down the middle from above: its inner cartilage popped, massive ligaments and dense tissue strands snapped.

Shiv’s muscles teetered on complete exhaustion—he didn’t know how much more he had. But the Jealousy was going to be torn apart first. That was the only outcome Shiv could accept. A splash of light came from above as he ripped open the upper half of the demon. Shiv hissed and groaned; he could barely think—he was so . But he refused to stop. The Jealousy screamed and cursed, begging to be released, but he didn’t relent. He would rip it apart, even if it killed him— if it killed him.

But the Jealousy lashed out unexpectedly. Its remaining limbs smashed into the slaves below. Shiv felt them, his wounded Woundeater field picking up crushed bodies in his periphery. He used the rage born of the Greater Demon’s final atrocity to feed his Gravitic Wrestler Skill. The demon was torn even more; most of its insides were exposed to the light, with just a bit more effort—

Gravitic Wrestler > 107

Shiv felt that sudden tug, that rip, the water leaving his body—and once more, he perished within the Jealousy. Without a body, he had no gravity to wrestle with; all he had was his mangled Biomancy, his gauntlet, and his other magical skills.

he thought as his mind reeled. He had overextended, consumed by bloodlust and rage, and suddenly he noticed a focus crystal plunging into the Jealousy's inner flesh. The demon had impaled itself on the broken fragments it once clutched as handholds.

the Jealousy cried, its mind ragged with pain but now held together by sheer concentration. It mustered its fury, and called in an implosion of Psychomancy—Shiv parried the attack even as he felt his gauntlet crack. Then, the Jealousy launched a salvo of others into itself—hasty spells that bombarded and ripped through its own mind. But it did the work. It cracked Shiv’s gauntlet more, and the blows he couldn’t block mauled his mind.

His consciousness reeled. Shiv screamed voicelessly. He drained the Jealousy’s vitality as fast as he could, adding to its hurt. But it had focus crystals embedded deep in its flesh, binding shards of the material as implants—and that was enough. The Jealousy unleashed another psionic attack, a concentrated slicing blade that mutilated its own mind just to strike him.

It hit him; his gauntlet fractured in half. Four hours—that’s how long Leu said it would take for a still-intact gauntlet to repair itself. And Shiv couldn’t put his mask back on before he resurrected.

He fell through the final stages of his cocoon, but it wasn’t quick enough. The Jealousy, launching another sloppy, hastier attack, and Shiv’s sense of self nearly broke apart.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

As soon as he resurrected, he attempted something truly desperate. He drew on the Song of the Vigilant and his Biomancy again. Unspeakable pain tore through him—he fought not to black out and maintained his focus. He burst open his inner organs out from his chest and cast a final Woundeater into the Jealousy. A colossal detonation of crimson mana followed, but he felt his soul practically tearing in half.

The song ended; his mana field partially ripped itself free from his soul. He exploded back out into the world in a wave of disemboweled tissue and mana. But the pain was too much. Something inside him broke. He blacked out, soul-deep pain overwhelming even his subconsciousness. Darkness and silence reigned.

He didn’t even feel it when he crashed into the ground.

When he suddenly woke, he groaned and retched, laying in a deep pool of blood among whimpering slaves. As he looked to his left, the Jealousy lay slumped against the wall, groaning weakly. It was brutally injured: its eye gone, its body ripped nearly in half, its insides spilling out in a mudslide of viscera.

Both of them had broken the other. Both of them were ruined.

It was still trying to strike out blindly with its Psychomancy; he saw the spells, but the demon lacked focus and strength, the blows trailing off before they could properly connect to anything. The Jealousy tried to move a limb, but it flopped and wept in telepathetic misery. Shiv tried to rise, but a surge of pain coursed through him, and he blacked out again. When he came to, everything still throbbed with agony. Mana strain was one thing—this was another level. Both his soul and mana fields built on each other’s torment. Shiv almost started praying for true death to take him.

He tried focusing on Pyromancy, flinging a flicker of flame at the nearest limb. It sparked uselessly against the cracked carapace—but it roused the demon. It shifted—over two hundred meters of slumped carapace and blood.

Shiv gritted his teeth, barely forcing out the words. “Because you’re eating people. Because I need to get past the gateway. Because I’m not done...” He started crawling toward the Jealousy. “I’m not done until I tear you in half.”

The Jealousy let out a human sob of sorrow and absolute exhaustion.

“No,” Shiv growled. “You’re not dead, so I’m not done.”

He staggered halfway over to the demon, splashing through an ocean of blood before pain overwhelmed him. He blacked out once more while reaching for the Jealousy.

When he awoke again, he saw a ragged boot nudging him—belonging to the slave girl who had noticed him earlier. Her eyes were wide with worry and terror. “Are you… are you alive?’

“Pull me… closer to the Jealousy. I need to… finish it,” Shiv rasped.

After a beat of hesitation, she tried to drag him, but she couldn’t budge his weight. Shiv glared at the demon, helpless as it recovered. If it healed fully before he could kill it for good, he was done.

“Help!” the girl cried. “Someone help! Move him—he needs to get near it!”

The other slaves cowered in fear. Shiv’s frustration boiled over into anger—and with the anger came strength for his Feat. He fed it into his gravity field and exploded off the ground. The girl stumbled back in surprise. Shiv, still wracked with agony, flung himself into the Jealousy as hard as he could and plunged into the slick, hot warmth of its inner flesh. The act was too much. He almost blacked out again.

The Jealous screamed—but it was roused. Roused and desperate. Shiv could barely focus as it gathered another spell—and this one started dragging at his mind like claws across skin.

Shiv tried pushing against the Jealousy, but he .

The spell was cast; a twisting, winding rush of Psychomancy that collapsed his mind and the Jealousy’s together. Through his agonized thoughts, Shiv realized they were traveling, that they were in the psionic needle the creature could create. Then, they struck something, and he found himself tumbling in a hellscape of fractured memories and kaleidoscopic thoughts.

As he tried to get his bearings, the Jealousy cried out, sensing him, reaching out to seize him.

Both of them were broken, mutilated, and fused within the same psionic needle. In the Greater Demon’s haste to escape, it failed to notice him—and brought him along.

Shiv thought. He tried to grab the monster, but this was a place of memories and thoughts. And he was no Hero here. He wasn’t even an Adept. The Jealousy struck his mind with its last flagging force, and Shiv howled in agony as his psyche shattered like jagged shrapnel.

He could barely speak or remember who he was. All he knew was pain—then he felt the Jealousy burrowing deeper, tearing him in half mentally as he had done to it physically.

it taunted.

Shiv tried to fight back—but his Psychomancy was a raindrop hitting a mountain. A broken mountain, but a mountain all the same.

He wasn’t anything at all.

Despair almost consumed him—almost.

But Shiv was a pillar that would not crumble or break without a fight. He reached out, entwining his mind with the demon’s, pouring his final fury into his Psychomancy, and then he bridged his agony with the Jealousy’s as it ripped his mind open down the middle. Absolute, nightmarish misery consumed them both.

They screamed—their egos superimposing over each other in shared wails of torment. The suffering seemed to go on for an eternity, but in the end, he felt the Jealousy disintegrate around him, its sense of self breaking apart under the nightmarish pain first. A burst of Psychomancy washed over him. Then there was physical sensation again. Light. And .

He came tumbling out of the mind-realm, skidding across the cold, hard ground until he came to a stop in a puddle of blood. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t—

Darkness. Blissful peace. Nothingness. Beloved ignorance.

This lasted a long while, a much longer while than all the times before. But finally… finally Shiv roused, roused with a whimper of pain as he felt someone touching him, something brushing his face. And then broken fragments came back to him. His mind was in pieces. He had been fighting—he was—he was fighting something—and he was…

He suddenly shot up to his feet, and he gasped, snarling and thrashing at the shapes around him, his fists clenched in instinctive, animalistic violence.

Most of the people were far away from him, huddled along the edges of the room. The ones that were alive that was. The ones that were... He couldn’t count them anymore. The Chef Unwavering’s effect was gone, and even if it was still there, he didn’t think he had the focus to…

The girl was in front of him. She had been touching him. She was… was covered in blood. Everyone was covered in blood. And there were so many bodies. The ground was practically a pool… up to his calves.

Everything was spinning.

He clutched his head and groaned. He took a step forward. He felt blood leaking out from his eyes, from every one of his orifices. He struggled not to vomit, but there was nothing in him to throw up anyway. “Where… where is…”

He turned. His insides plummeted. The Jealousy was entirely healed.

He staggered forward, but froze after half a step. It wasn’t moving. It lay embedded within a deeply dented portion of the wall. Some of the teleportation anchor’s spells were ruined as well, the patterns looking wrong, some sparking.

Their fight had been nightmarish. Of all the slaves that had been led into the chamber, he guessed maybe only half were still alive.

But while the Jealousy was whole, while it had healed completely and even regrown its limbs, it wasn’t moving. It didn’t react. He blinked. “Hey? Come on. Let’s… Still need to…”

He realized it was dead. Its Psychomancy was more broken than even his Biomancy. It was mind-dead.

It broke before he did.

“You weren’t moving for a while,” the girl said. Her face was wan, and her hands shook. “You screamed so loud for so long that we didn’t want to go near you, but then you stopped moving. We thought you died. I came to check on you. See if you were actually dead for good.”

It took him a second to even process what she was saying. He clutched his head again. Everything hurt, everything… hurt so . His body was battered, strained, exhausted, to say nothing of his mind. He didn’t even want to carry his own weight. He just wanted to pass back out, lay back down, and sleep for a hundred years.

His hand was covered in… He stared at the gauntlet on his left hand. It was cracked, but pieces were shaking, slowly coming back together. He looked at the slaves, and he looked at the creature, and then he stared down at the blood pool, and he looked at himself. The remnants of his inner clothes were in tatters. He looked wretched, absolutely miserable. Even the silhouette spoke of pain and exhaustion.

He stumbled closer to his enemy, the… Greater Demon. He stumbled closer, expecting it to attack him at any time, to finish this. Eventually, he reached it. He reached it. He placed his hand on it, and now he was operating entirely by instinct. Entirely. He was searching for something. He was searching for… He saw a corpse on the ground beside him. A body clad in an armored skeleton. A body that still had its helmet on. He walked over. He peeled off the helmet and took the mask underneath in his hands. It was still intact. Nearly broken. But still intact.

“That’s…” His eyes rolled. He nearly dropped right then and there. He collapsed with his back against one of the massive beast’s tentacles, and he just sighed. For a while, he lay there with his eyes closed, just drowning in his own suffering. After a few minutes, he asked the girl a question. A question that had been bothering him in the backdrop of his consciousness.

“Hey, you… girl,” he croaked, eyes still closed.

“Yes?” she said, her voice high and nervous.

“You… Did I tell you my name?” he asked.

It took a moment for her to respond. “No, I don’t think you did.”

He chuckled. “That’s not good. Because I can’t seem to remember it either…”

And then, once more, darkness took him.