(II) Hunt

97 (II) Hunt

On a whim, he dove into the coursing waters, splashing and immersing himself in the refreshing flow. All the blood and viscera clinging to his body peeled off in an instant, and Shiv's Biomancy was powerful enough that he could feel the organic particles in the water. The particles massaged his flesh, seeping into his body. This water was mana-affected in some way. He could feel it; he just couldn't exactly determine how. After he soaked for a while, he rose back into the air, his mind refreshed, his body feeling electric with motion.

Shiv let out a laugh, and he splashed back down. He held his breath for a while, but after a few minutes, he decided that he wanted to resurface again. Having Master-Tier Physicality changed things. It changed things a lot. It made every one of your biological processes more robust by a magnitude. And pairing that with his Toughness, Shiv wasn't sure how long he could hold his breath—go without food, drink, or sleep. But aside from exhaustion, injury, or desire, he thought he could last as he was for or even .

But he didn't want to restrain himself right now. He wanted to live. He wanted to sink into the moment, into this moment of true and absolute freedom. A flow state took him. He indulged and acted as he wanted for the first time in a long while. Blackedge had been a cage, and when he first fell from the surface, the Umbral Wilderness was far too deadly for him to just adventure around.

Now? The world was truly open to him. Open on a level few other Pathbearers could enjoy.

He held on to every passing instant. He took in the world around him, listening, hearing the insects chirp, watching how the river flowed, studying it with his Biomancy, reaching out, using his magic, and feeling all the bio-matter around him. Shiv halted time at several points as inspiration struck him, as he tried to hold onto an instant or a scene. And during those moments, as his temporal shell slowly cracked, he wished that he was an artist or a writer so that he could keep those moments with him.

It was then that a thought struck him.

He continued along, letting himself drift down the river, but he made sure to keep track of Gate Theborn. It wasn't hard to spot exactly, and he always had the ruins to follow if he got too lost. But he kept his awareness open, and he let his spirit loosen. Adam needed deep rest, Uva needed her quiet, and this was part of what Shiv needed: to feast on the world before cooking.

Being in the moment felt right.

Skill Gained: Philosophy 1 (Common)

“Huh?” Shiv blinked. The skill notification caught him off guard, but then he smiled and accepted it. “Dunno what you’ll bring, but I look forward to seeing what you get me at Adept.”

As the river he followed ended at a deep pond, he found strange plants extending out from the base of the body of water. Plants that lined the ground in neat, parallel grids, and along those grids were jagged petals of gleaming blue. Some had blossomed, and at their core were ripe nodules that smelled almost heavenly. It wasn't exactly a sweet flavor they gave off, but rather an earthy, fragrant taste that was hard for Shiv to describe. He'd never encountered such a thing before. The best thing he could compare it to was the smell of nature after it rained mingling with the taste of watermelon.

He began to harvest those as well, but soon found that things were piling within his cloak, and that he was running out of room. He stared at his Cloak of Midnight's Kindred and gave it a nod of admiration. It, perhaps more than any of his other Enchanted items, served him well. "I'm going to see if I can get you an upgrade," he said, patting his cloak. "Thanks to you, I can see in the dark, okay? Also, thanks to you, I don't need to go around carrying everything in a giant bag."

The System forced him into conflict, but sometimes it also provided. Maybe that was by design. Following that thought, Shiv regarded the world. He felt himself as a part of it. He was immersed in his tasks, thinking about his past, his present, the coming future, and cooking. But he just then noticed something. There was no conflict right then. He was not killing anyone, not fighting anything, not ripping anyone to pieces. The System might force him into ever-escalating battles, but right now, this moment was his. More importantly, the world was larger than he. He might have been favored among favored, but even so, there were other players on the stage, other dancers, other Pathbearers. A head chef ruled the kitchen, but he was just one chef, and the dishes would not be made by him alone.

Philosophy 1 > 2

Shiv laughed. “I should maybe do more deep thinking.” He paused. “I don’t think I’ve ever really done anything like this…” Most of his life was survival, toil, and battle. The streets and the ruins were his battlegrounds. They tempered him. Then the kitchen was his sanctuary—a place where he felt accepted and wanted, even if Georges loved to scream. But through it all, he always lived in the moment. He didn’t cling so hard to the past or fear for the future. He always fought for the present.

And maybe that was partially why he got the Chronomancy Skill Evolution he did too.

Shiv let out a sigh, and a weight escaped him. There was a growing feeling of acceptance. He didn't rush so much anymore. He would get the food they needed—cook something that would be able to provide regeneration for all the survivors within Gate Theborn. But along the way, he would soak himself in the world, just like he soaked himself in the river earlier. And also soak himself in his thoughts.

"I wasn't lying," he said to himself as he wandered in the wilderness. "It is the Pathbearer's life for me. Nothing else will do." He let out a breath of wondrous awe as he looked up. Massive, trailing, bioluminescent plants crept along distant mountains, and the faraway ceiling glittered with color and clashing beauty. The world was brutal, and the world was beautiful; often both at the same time.

And along his wanderings, as he slipped past a dense section of pointed trees that seemed to have a layer of calcified stuff on their outside, he found himself staring at a colossal, bulbous plant that gleamed an amber-red in the darkness. His Biomancy had detected the plant a few moments ago, and it pulled him toward it. It seemed so full of vitality, so full of some kind of flavor. It was practically pumping with energy.

As Shiv breathed in, he started gagging. The sweetness that radiated from the plant was incredible. The entire plant was approximately 100 meters wide, and it was half again as tall. As he walked up, he swiped a fingertip through it and took a bite. Immediately, his Biomancy detected changes to his body. It was so sweet that even hisarteries began to fill with fast-hardening plaque.

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"Broken godsdamned Moon," Shiv breathed. His eyes rolled from the flavor, however. "This thing," he let out a gasping laugh, "this thing's a killer. But damn, if we could just sprinkle a little smear of this on something, that would be… That would kill a guy with a sweet tooth." And he pulled a chunk away from the plant, placing it within his skin decoy-turned-handbag for now. He wouldn't use that on anyone else.

He would test the plant on himself and likely suffer a few heart attacks before he died. But Shiv was fine with that. He would simply resurrect and learn from his demise. And probably enjoy this demise, actually.

But while he indulged and admired the great plant, his peace was, unfortunately, not to last. The stay of violence Shiv had lasted approximately an hour. A scream announced its end. A shriek of pure terror echoed from afar. The shriek of a man desperate to escape, pinned and on the verge of absolute despair. Shiv felt the hairs on his body rise, felt his senses sharpen. Someone was under attack and not that far away at all. He turned, following the sound, and he rose into the air. He made a note where the large plant was so he could return later, but for now, he had something to investigate.

"I see what you're doing," Shiv said. "Thanks for the moment of peace, though." He wasn't overly happy that the System was dragging him away, but by this point, he'd learned to take what he could get.

After a lifetime of being denied, gratefulness was an easy thing for Shiv to internalize.

It took him little time to locate the source of the screams. He found himself soaring up along the flat face of a ravine. He had his Creeping Void active, and so a swelling, dark mass followed him as he went, curving along the edge of the cliff as he shot higher into the air. A second later, Shiv was hovering a few meters away from the edge and taking in a most peculiar scene.

A group of ten heavily armed vampires, coated in dense scar-tissue armor, stood around a shrieking man with his silken shirt torn open. Three of them were holding him down, while a fourth shaped a Biomancy spell around him. Spell patterns swirled around the victim in a strange, layered circle. And then there was the vampiress saddling him, carving into his bare chest using a ritual dagger. Shiv’s Biomancy told him that the dagger was hollow at the hilt, and it was rapidly filling with the victim’s blood. As the vampiress traced another stroke across the victim’s flesh, she whispered something to the man about “ruining his Lineage Core so he could sire no more mongrels” and “reducing him back to cattle.”

This was when Shiv noticed the victim was a vampire as well. He, too, had a lineage core. His biology matched theirs.

By then, the first of their number noticed the impenetrable darkness gushing over them. “Darkness? Why is—”

A laceration spell smashed into the vampire’s face. The upper half of his head fell off. The other vampires didn’t see Shiv’s spells coming either. The Creeping Void was a skill to have.

The Creeping Void 108 > 109

In seconds, four of the scar-armored vampires came apart in pieces. He accidentally cut a Lineage Core in half. Three other vampires let out ragged cries of absolute agony as their Lineage Cores began to .

“Attack!” The vampiress with the ritual dagger screamed. “We are under—”

Two lacerations hit her. They detonated against her Magical Resistance. Shiv responded by beheading her the way—with the edge of his hand. Then, he used her rapidly regenerating body as a club to beat all the other vampires into submission. A few struck out blindly using Biomancy spells. Blindly wasn’t good enough. Glowing shapes slashed out into the darkness, and they came apart, screaming as Shiv casually walked up to each one of them and broke them using his field.

Aside from the one vampire he accidentally killed, the rest were still functionally alive. Already, they were regenerating, and Shiv used this opportunity to study how their biology worked. He still couldn’t heal anything aside from a laceration very well without using a Woundeater, and so their unnatural regeneration was going to be useful for him to study.

The Challenger is watching.

As he let his Creeping Void die down, he turned to look upon the victimized vampire. His chest was badly cut, but was quickly healing. As Shiv regarded the man's face, he did a double-take. The vampire had the finest black mane of hair he had ever seen. It was like a curtain of midnight silk. His sharp features and the thinness of his nose also caught Shiv off-guard as well.

He shook his head and looked away. Some of the effect faded immediately.

A whimper came from the bare-chested vampire, and he looked up at Shiv. The vampire’s courage was shaken, but there was still iron inside him yet. The wounds were beginning to fade on his body, and he swallowed.

“Having a bad day?” Shiv asked.

The vampire shivered. The trails on his cheeks showed Shiv he had been crying. “Perhaps… Perhaps the worst of my life.” The vampire’s voice was soft and thick with sorrow.

Shiv nodded. He cast another few lacerations at the scar-armored vampires he just obliterated to keep them from recovering. “So. Why were they trying to butcher you? Don’t think I've ever seen a vampire getting attacked by their own kind before.”

The vampire looked up at Shiv. Shiv averted his gaze as soon as he felt himself drawn to the vampire’s features once more.

“They were… I left… I told them I was done.”

“What?” Shiv asked.

“I didn’t want to be of the First Blood anymore,” the vampire breathed. “I left. I wanted another life for myself. But they wouldn’t let me go, and… and…” The vampire let out a sob as his features contorted into one of pain. Just hearing the vampire weep made Shiv want to break down as well, but the Deathless resisted. “And they came to my home… Oh, Hawthark, what have I done to you?”

“Hawthark?” Shiv asked.

“The town I tried to start,” the vampire whispered. “The town I tried to start with my wife. It is…” He slumped down and started sobbing.

“Hey? Hey!” Shiv spoke twice more to the vampire, but the latter didn’t respond. He wanted to keep the dialogue going, but he realized the heartbroken vamp was in no condition to talk. So, Shiv continued his conversation with another vampire instead.

Shiv let the vampiress with the ritual dagger regrow her head. He studied the process in detail as he waited, standing over her.

Practical Metabiology 32 > 33

As a layer of skin finally fused over Octorie’s skull and her eyes blinked, her gaze cleared and—terror exploded inside her.

Looming over her was a huge figure. The bones he wore gleamed with a metallic sheen, and his irises were pale—paler than white-hot flame. In his hand was something—

It splashed down beside Octorie, and she flinched. There, just a few inches from her head, was a massive lump of bone, cancer, and flesh fused into something like a whip-flail. It was connected to the skeletal brute’s left arm by a cord of tissue and spine.

“Hey, you're finally alive again,” the skeletal brute said, his voice low and guttural. Just a few meters behind him, the knelt, sobbing in the dirt. “Got a few questions I want to ask you…”