(II) Heartstopper

80 (II) Heartstopper

This time, however, the high vampire didn't just strike Shiv's flesh. The Bloodspawn shifted his own. His clawed hand exploded forward, lengthening strips of uncoiling tissue. The high vampire's skin tore, and from below hatched new scabs, new layers to his organic armor. Shiv felt himself crash against the opposite wall, and a howl of absolute agony escaped him as his soul-wound was exacerbated.

He managed to shape a spell of his own, pushing back against the high vampire's intent, stopping it from flaying his body apart. But he could feel his bone armor shuddering and cracking. They were a stronger Biomancer than he was. The high vampire’s Skill Fusion was pressing him hard, and before he could react, the owl was back, the zipping, hissing string striking him over and over again on the left side of his body. And then came a sea of other spells. Every vampire in the room pitted their Biomancy against his, and he felt his mana field crack and bend inwards. He was Master-Tier, but he needed a lot more levels—perhaps even another Evolution if he wanted to sustain this type of combat for long.

Can Hu responded by shattering all the stones around Shiv, spreading dust into the air and forming a protective cloud. Just then, a gale pushed through the dust, flinging it aside as the owl emerged. They swiped at Shiv, not with their string this time, but a blade, a blade covered in dimensional mana. The blade phased through his armor and then rematerialized halfway against Shiv’s ribs.

But to the owl's surprise, the blade shattered after only inflicting the slightest of nicks against Shiv's torso.

Raw Instinct took hold of the Deathless. He pulled himself in the direction of the owl. He slammed into their chest just as they turned to air. The impact was brief, but Shiv definitely felt something crack. But the high vampire was still clinging to him, and it pulled him back. It twisted his Biomancy mana, and Shiv cried out more spiritually than physically. Some of his armor shattered apart, the bones fracturing before the high vampire's will. Mana strain was setting in faster than ever before for Shiv, and then he activated his Chrono-Anchored Strike again, and once more buried his knife into the vampire's eye.

"I'm getting real sick of you," Shiv said, driving the knife in. He picked the high vampire up, tearing him off the ground using his gravitic field. Surprised, the vampire didn't respond in time. Not for when he lifted him with a twist of his knife, not for when he spiked the vampire headfirst against the ground, slamming the bloodsucker over and over again in a series of violent choke slams.

Every blow sent pain blasting through Shiv's body. "To hell with this," he growled. With so many vampires trying to rip him apart using their own Biomancy, he wasn't going to be able to focus on complex spellcasting at all.

And so Shiv stopped his Song of the Vigilant, and he triggered his second Blessing for the first time. pain exploded through Shiv as the Icon of the Paindrinker ignited on his chest, a brand of an orc's claw reaching into an open flame. But instead of being a static image, it flickered, it moved, and the claw clenched into a fist. Shiv stopped being capable of coherent thought then. Pain drowned out his deeper thoughts, so he let his instincts take hold. He slashed the scab-armored vampire twice across the face and practically beheaded the blood-drinker. The high vampire screamed and choked as his skull came apart in pieces—but he still didn’t die, even as Shiv took his head off completely.

Before the headless high vampire could respond, Shiv tore the bastard from the ground and began using him as a club. He splattered one of the high vampire's soldiers with the scabbed bloodsucker's body.

And even through the incoherence of his all-consuming pain, Shiv realized something. The high vampire couldn't easily pit its strength against his without proper leverage. And that was another major benefit offered by his Gravitic Wrestler Skill. Shiv was his own leverage. And with the gravitic field, he could effectively pit his strength against anything, no matter what size, so long as he had contact.

The vampire could shapeshift, perhaps, but he still needed something to push off of to resist Shiv. And that was why it was so easy for him to fling the high vampire into a horde of his minions. Most of them were knocked over. The high vampire let out a growl of frustration as his arms shapeshifted again. Instead of simply extending, his fingers twisted into hooks that allowed him to grind himself to a halt.

But Shiv didn't get to focus on the high vampire for long, for the first of the golems unleashed a spell on him. A blast of blood erupted out toward Shiv. He tried to dodge it, but he was too focused on the high vampire, and it struck him dead-on. He pushed back using his Biomancy, but for a moment he felt every bit of fluid within his veins quiver and twist.

The blood-made golem was vaguely humanoid, and as it reached out using its mana to connect with Shiv, he briefly saw it morph into his form—a distorted, disgusting parody of him that twitched and writhed. Shiv briefly reacted the same way as the spell almost set in, but he pushed past it, and he slammed into the blood-golem. It staggered back, but it was composed mostly of fluid, and thus his blow was merely stunning rather than wounding.

Without warning, the blood golem splashed apart, only for a beast composed of nothing but jagged teeth to clamp itself down on him, driving thick, heavy fangs against his body. Thick heavy fangs that promptly burst and broke against Shiv's adamantine armor.

He had adapted from multiple impacts. He wasn't going to be bitten in half by some high-tier golem. He reached inside and ripped the damn thing in half. A small pulsating heart, disfigured and lined with enamel, crashed down at Shiv's feet. He stomped on it, and off by his sides, the rising remnants of the fanged golem went still and died.

He felt the blood golem reach out for him again, but he shot high up into the air. He only made it approximately a meter before something pulled at the left side of his body. Shiv almost shrieked in anguish as what looked to be a very brutalized, battered mass of flesh reached out to him, extending a mutilated hand. As he was halted in midair, he saw the wounds dancing across the golem's body. It vaguely resembled a bunch of corpses stitched together, arms, legs, all sticking out at odd angles, but on its chest were a collection of faces, faces trapped in eternal torment, a voiceless scream etched on their visages, their tongues all missing.

And it was then that Shiv decided he was going to kill every vampire he saw, until they persuaded him otherwise. The pointless cruelty, the levels of sadism, the endless blood, gore, carnage, and the .

He was fed up with it all, and he was fed up with them.

Shiv fed his gravitic wrestler with rage as he exploded through the air. His gravitic field was thundering around him, shaking his very outline, as if he were framed by a set of vibrating strings. The wound golem tried to take a step back, but it was too late, for Shiv didn't care about pain anymore. He would hurt as much as he could endure before passing out, if it meant killing every single vampire in this room.

When he struck the ground, he hit it with such force that the wound golem disintegrated outright. But not just the wound Golem. Two nearby high vampires turned to mist from the shockwave alone, and Shiv speared both of their hearts using his kukri. They still beat along the length of the blade, but he turned to address the rest of the room as he growled. "All right, I'm kind of tired of this. Stake yourselves. Or I'll do worse to you." His Dread Aura crashed against them, and he felt all of them shudder, all of them, including someone he couldn't see.

Dread Aura > 74

Deepest Edge > 61

And that's how he tracked the owl. A drifting section in the air came sailing above him, curling and twisting as if an invisible snake.

"Shiv," Can Hu said, marking the strangely moving air current.

"I see him," Shiv said. His Momentum Core was almost entirely full again, but he was going to keep this. Keep this until he absolutely had to use it. He shot upward without warning, but as he did, he launched another one of his expendable bodies out from his cloak. The diversion worked.

A string twisted out from the strange gale that hid the owl, just as the scabbed high vampire crashed down on Shiv's decoy corpse, ripping it in half. But the owl was unprepared for Shiv to blast by exactly where they were.

The Deathless slammed his fists together, creating a massive shockwave. The winds were disrupted. The owl was flung out, launched back into the air, but he didn't make it far. Shiv caught him by the ankle, and he drove an elbow into the owl’s knee. The Aviary agent screamed. The entire limb folded inward, and then Shiv twisted it sideways, breaking the bones and mangling the tissue so bad it was little more than a bloodied, dripping clump of flesh.

"You should work more on your Toughness," Shiv growled.

And he took the owl by the throat and ripped off their mask. He saw a man, a man perhaps not much older than he was. His eyes were wide, and inside, his courage shattered. Shiv wanted to crush the owl’s neck or rip them in half. But even through the rage, Shiv knew this one was valuable alive. Uva could get plenty of information from the owl’s mind.

And so Shiv decided to be a monster. He hit the owl, not hard enough to break the man’s neck or cave in their skull, but just enough to give them a concussion and temporarily knock them out. Then, he folded three skin decoys over the owl as they lurched through the air, avoiding attacks and spells. Shiv bundled the owl tight, leaving only room around his mouth so that the man wouldn't suffocate.

Then, Shiv promptly tossed the owl down into his cloak.

This wouldn’t typically work. The way Shiv's cloak functioned made it easy for someone inside to escape. It was more spatially than it was truly deep, and it didn't stop people from wiggling out from the spatial distortion. He found out when he'd put a few living crickets inside for storage later while exploring the umbral wilderness. For now, though, he just had to hope that the owl didn't hop out.

Just then, a few more Biomancy spells crashed against Shiv. He grunted as he felt his mana field begin to tear.

Shiv realized.

But he had an opening now, without the owl constantly striking him. He could rip through the rest of the room while avoiding the scabbed high vampire for now. That one he had to save for last. And so Shiv worked through a priority chain of vulnerable targets. The first people he struck were the surviving agents of Aviary. They weren't like the vampires, they died when their bodies broke. He didn't need to rip out their hearts.

He crashed into them in a frenzy of pain and violence. And as he tore, ripping bodies asunder, constantly moving, using his pain to fuel his primal violence, he could actually the Challenger chuckling. And that just annoyed Shiv even more. He poured a little bit of rage into his Momentum Core, and even the fastest of the Aviary agents began to slow before his eyes. His knife flashed out, and he cut them. He cut them with no more skill, no more dexterity. He hewed and cleaved at them like a butcher. Even the ones with durable armor perished as his Deepest Edge caused his slashes to pass through their bodies. As such, many were mutilated within their armored shells, blood welling out from behind their helmets and masks.

His focus on attacking the Aviary agents also paid off in another way. The vampires didn't much care for their Aviary allies, and began indiscriminately unleashing Biomancy spells in their direction. A good few of the agents burst apart, turning into viscous pustules or died howling as winged maggots crawled out from inside their flesh.

Silhouette > 76

Shiv's Silhouette jumped multiple levels in that moment. It was the main reason why most of the spells didn't strike into him. The other was from just how fast he was moving, and for a single moment, during a brief lull in the pain, something occurred to Shiv. Something about the sublime beauty of having multiple Master-Tier skills working in tandem.

Adamantine Adaption made him hard to kill directly. The Magebreaker allowed him to parry spells, but his Biomancy allowed that lore to be outright resisted. His Gravitic Wrestler granted him unsurpassed control, and pairing that with Deepest Edge, even a titanic monster could be cleaved in half as his gravity-amplified blows passed through them. And then there was Silhouette; a mere Adept-Tier skill, perhaps, but when granted to someone with multiple Master-Tier skills, Shiv wasn't just fast, he wasn't just strong, he wasn't just resistant, he was also .

And it was this combination that collapsed the collective morale of every lesser fighter in that chamber.