(I) Heartstopper
Chapter 161 of "Path of the Deathless" starts with dramatic events: -Conversation between “The Educator” and an owl of Aviary80 (I)HeartstopperThe Momentum Core discharge probably hurt... Discover what happens!
-Conversation between “The Educator” and an owl of Aviary80 (I)
Heartstopper
The Momentum Core discharge probably hurt Shiv more than his knife did the high vampire.
The massive Bloodspawn was screaming, and the screams only grew louder as Shiv channeled his Conduit of Dawn inside the man's eye socket. As they sailed through the air, it felt like the left side of Shiv's body was being flayed off, and that someone was pouring acid on the exposed tissue underneath before setting it ablaze.
Darkness crept along the corners of Shiv's vision as he gritted his teeth against the pain.
For a moment, delirium took him, and he thought he was back in the Passage teleportation anchor with Uva and her team, enduring the flames of purification once more. Can Hu's call pulled him out from his stupor. "Shiv, to your right."
The Deathless reacted instinctively. He pulled himself back using his gravitic field, and he blasted off from the high vampire with a stomp. Still, he kept his beam focused on the Bloodspawn's face. Smoke and bubbling tissue swelled free from the high vampire's mangled eye. But its expression was one of pure outrage and surprise rather than fear.
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Shiv realized he was faster than it, but he was about even with the owl present in the room. And that's where the first attack came from. A thread sliced through the space where Shiv once was. It was a fine thread, so thin that he almost mistook it for one of Uva's mana strands. But it only glistened rather than glowed, and it cleaved across the air at such speeds that Shiv saw a whip-crack shudder right in front of him before a shockwave followed. His gravity field let him muscle through the shockwave, but it still slammed against him slightly, and even that light jostle was enough to make him bite back a whimper.
Fighting with a soul wound was pure hell. But Shiv wasn't going to let pure hell hold him back from being in a fight.
He immediately went for the owl next, only for them to disappear before his very eyes. The last thing he saw of the bird was of them reeling a thin, glistening wire under their sleeve. Then, a gust of wind swept over the owl, and they were gone, with only a quiet gale hinting at their possible location.
Shiv reactivated his Silhouette in response. Just in time, a tendril of blood shot through the air, but it misjudged his exact position. Shiv turned, sweeping his kukri across the room, his Conduit of Dawn constantly flaring. A beam slashed through several groups of high vampires. The weaker ones were split in half, and he guided the stream of light through their chests. A few detonated their lineage cores, the things they had for hearts, exploding in small oceans of gore.
Most of the others, though, survived.
Even split in half, Shiv could see them rapidly healing, rebuilding their bodies, and once again, he was offended by the very fact that vampires could do this. His Woundeater allowed him immediate reconstitution, but the vampires could ignore cancer, could shape their own bodies like clay, just because of the unique nature of their hearts. Shiv was going to rip out their hearts out of spite, if nothing else.
Warning indicators and icons lit up as he scanned the room through Can Hu's sensors. "There are still at least sixty-five vampires. I counted twenty Aviary agents and six unknown dimensional entities."
Shiv blasted upward into the air as a series of spells smashed into the ground where he used to be. Massive pustules of blood erupted. Sections of the floor turned from solid matter into jagged clumps of teeth that rose up to bite at nothing but air, and from a withering wind thick with sickness and decay came a swarm of horrific, winged maggots. Comparatively, Shiv's Biomancy was practically plain—very effective, but , focused on transferring or removing damage.
Shiv thought, and once more his evolved stealth skill proved its worth.
It took a few moments for the first vampire to trace his exact position, but even then, they had to move their mana field until they finally sensed him.
“There! He’s up—” The vampire didn't manage to finish his words as a bone drill punched through his chest, pinning his heart to the ground below. Three other high vampires were staked the exact same way, and Shiv tested a new technique. Ignoring the searing pain that burst across the left side of his body, he chucked out pieces of skull and shattered them with his Biomancy, using them as fragmentation grenades.
Immediately, he started dividing the enemies in the room into separate groups. The ones that endured and remained unharmed were Master-Tier for Toughness or well armored. The ones that took minor wounds were High Adepts at least. The ones that fell apart and died in pieces were .
Before he could chuck a few more bone grenades out, however, another warning came from Can Hu. Shiv spotted the problem a half-second before Can Hu even said anything. The Penitent had kept up a thin shroud of hovering debris to use as a proximity field against unseen or hidden threats for Shiv. That field was pierced. A small gap formed in the orbiting pebbles.
Shiv twisted right with a redirection of his gravitic field. Something scraped across his armor. His bones adapted, but not before it left a particularly deep cut along his chest. Then a shockwave spread out, and it impacted him. This time the blast was close and heavy enough that it broke Shiv's focus. His next spell shattered. Pain erupted across the left side of his body, and he clenched his arm with a scream.
"Shiv!" Can Hu said, but the Deathless didn't need to be warned; he reacted. He pulled himself backward, just not nearly fast enough. Something caught his leg, and he felt an immense impact smash into his body, but also his Biomancy at the same time. He was taken off his feet and slammed into the ground. The room shook from the sheer force of the impact. The floor cracked as many of the lesser vampires and Aviary agents were flung into the air.
Clutching Shiv by the chest was the high vampire he stabbed in the eye just before. The damned Bloodspawn was leaning over him, drooling with malice. The high vampire’s expression was a mask of absolute rage, his mouth lined in rows of twisting, gleaming teeth.
Through the haze of immense pain, Shiv briefly observed his adversary, feeling them reach into his armor, cracking the front of his adamantine chest plate with contemptuous ease. But the high vampire didn’t do it with just strength. No, it was like his Physicality was fused with his Biomancy. Everything he did twisted and warped biology. His very body ground against Shiv’s mana field, and the high vampire itself felt like an enduring
Shiv triggered the Song of the Vigilant as his focus immediately reasserted itself. At the same time, he clutched his adversary's arm and pushed back. He pushed back with his Biomancy as well, ignoring the pain flaring across his entire left hemisphere. A brutal struggle ensued. His adversary was strong and far larger than any other high vampire he'd seen before. More than that, the high vampire was covered by dense, armored scabs, scar tissue forming something akin to disgusting organic plating.
"You will pay for my eye," the Bloodspawn growled. By this point, he had already regrown the organ. There wasn't even a hint that Shiv had boiled the socket from the inside. Damn vampires and their regeneration. Most other enemies would have died from Deepest Edge, Momentum Core, and Gravitic Wrestler working together.
Can Hu cried another warning. Shiv felt the Penitent cast a Geomancy spell. It condensed a layer of stone that intercepted the whistling whip used by the owl. The string punched through Can Hu's stones with contemptuous ease. An Adept had no chance against a Master or above. However, it was just long enough for Shiv to sense what was coming.
Shiv used his field to drag the high vampire into the place where he used to be. The whip struck the beast in the temple. The high vampire let out a furious cry. And while he was distracted, Shiv activated his Chrono-Anchored Strike. Immediately, he rematerialized within the high vampire's eye socket, driving his blade deep, triggering Conduit of Dawn again. Blood exploded out from the back of the high vampire’s skull as he roared in agony once more.
His blade dimmed and flickered. He would need to feed it more light before he could use that again. But for a final burst of brightness, it did its work. It set the insides of the high vampire's skull on fire. It cried out in genuine pain this time, and Shiv promptly kneed him in the throat. As his enemy gagged, Shiv seized him by the head and flung him like a missile at his nearby allies. He was strong, but really not that fast. Yet there was a sense of tension building inside Shiv.
Something told him the high vampire hadn't truly begun to fight yet—was holding something back.
"Focus on the weaker enemies," Can Hu said. "Remove them from the equation, then concentrate on bringing down the elites."
"Got it." Shiv pointed his field at another portion of the room. He crashed down against the ground. A shockwave exploded around him, pain flashed through his left side, but his Composer-blessed song kept his focus, kept him centered even as he nearly blacked out.
Spells went wide as the vampires lost track of him again. Shiv's kukri flared out, its glinting edge flickering through flesh, slicing and cutting at arteries, tendons, eyes, and wrists. Blood sprayed out, splashing against Shiv, but his silhouette remained active, leaving only his outline stained red. Adam was right, a skill that focused on concealment rather than outright evasion was perfect for him.
Silhouette > 74
Deepest Edge > 61
As he advanced on the group, he drew out three bone drills and fused them together. He turned them into a curved length and sent them spinning through the room as if an adamantine boomerang. It crashed into several groups of enemies, and Shiv pushed it hard with his Biomancy, its spin dismembering, decapitating, ripping open armor, and lifting even hardier foes off their feet.
And then he decided to add to the confusion. He launched another set of his bone armor, flinging it to the other side of the room. Suddenly, a series of spells crashed against it, and immediately the bone armor disintegrated into maggots, into spraying mist, into tumorous pustules that burst and popped.
And that was the annoying thing about fighting other Biomancers. They could manipulate his armor as easily as he could, sometimes more.
Shiv smashed through a group of unprepared, distracted vampires, and when he got to his first Aviary agent, he drove his elbow into the crow's face. Its helmet shattered, and its skull burst apart on the inside. Yet, as he drank in momentum, something shot through the space mere centimeters to his left. It whisked by his head, and Shiv thought he dodged another strike from the owl.
But this time, instead of the string simply sailing forward and detonating in a shockwave, it twisted unnaturally, zigzagging in his general vicinity until it ended up crashing under his left rib.
Shiv grunted. The blow barely affected him. It didn't even fracture his armor at all. The shockwave, he shrugged off with his gravity field. But the Necromantic corrosion on his badly burned flesh, that made him scream. It hurt so bad that Shiv folded over to clutch at his side.
The interruption lasted just long enough for the scar-armored high vampire to smash into him again.