(II) Surface

111 (II) Surface

As Shiv impacted the time dragon from the side, his Biomancy sensed something interesting. He wasn't just facing a dragon. There was also a rider attached to its back. And the rider had Adept-Tier Pyromancy as well. He could sense their mana field washing over him.

But more importantly, he could feel both the rider and the dragon’s Magical Resistances. To Shiv's surprise, he found the rider to be the one with the higher resistance. And so he brought his fist down against the dragon, slamming a Woundeater-empowered punch into the beast's skull.

A crimson explosion enveloped the 200-meter-long beast. Scales broke free from its exposed head, and Shiv seized it by the neck and suddenly spiked himself downward forty times. He gave himself a hernia at the sudden increase in speed and strain.

Parts of his bone armor snapped free, his arms nearly dislocated, but the dragon fared worse. He accelerated so fast that he denuded most of its neck. Its scales tore off in strips. The creature screamed. He felt it try to trigger its Chronomancy, and he saw a cracked temporal shell starting to form. Shiv slammed a knee into its head, stunning it. Its temporal shell vanished.

Then, Shiv drove the dragon head-first down into the earth—and he kept going. He drilled deeper using the dragon’s face as an excavator. At the same time, he formed another Woundeater, fed it, and slammed it into the dragon's body once more. He felt a crack in its Magical Resistance and spiked his gravity field another twenty times as he spun in place.

Previously, he thought it was a struggle to break a dragon's neck due to how far it could bend backward, how it was far more flexible than a human's neck. But he thought about that for a while and realized there was a different method he could use.

If one twisted the dragon’s neck more like a handle at extreme speeds, the outcome would be immediately grisly and quite fatal. It couldn’t rotate its head in place three hundred and sixty degrees, after all.

The dragon's ligaments tore free from the base of its neck, and even its impossibly strong muscles couldn't keep up with Inertial Overdrive. Though Shiv's body was coming apart, the dragon’s head was getting torn clean off.

He spiked his field five more times as he felt the dragon’s bones shatter and muscles tear. As all resistance vanished, he pulled back hard and ripped the dragon's head off at its base before detonating his inertial sheath.

Just then, he felt the rider die as well—splattering apart inside the capsule from the sheer concussive impact unleashed by Shiv’s detonation.

Gravitic Wrestler 141 > 142

Shiv cried out as something in his spine fractured, but the dragon was launched aside. Its body resembled a rat that had been struck by a hammer. Parts of it were flattened. Its adamantine barding had bent but didn't break, and inside the capsule, its rider became as if a puddle of jam inside a tight, collapsing can.

Just then, the soil around him became fluid and dissolved thereafter. Shiv scoffed, and he triggered his spatial anchor. He teleported back inside the mountain, back to where he left his knife, and continued along his way underground now that he got a good look at where the Tidewall was.

Gold-01 shouted telepathically, but in his heart, he knew Gold-03 was dead. Dead or mentally comatose. Even someone unconscious had a mind. You didn't just drop off from the world unless you went out of range, or you stopped being accessible.

Gold-02 and 10 cast their Geomancy spells again. As the ground turned to dust, Gold-01 saw the mangled remains of Gold-03's dragon. It looked crushed. Its head had been torn clean off, but the enemy was nowhere to be seen. A growl of absolute fury escaped Gold-01's throat. That monster was going to pay for this. They were—

Gold-01 received another telepathic missive from SC Central. A chain of images splashed into his head. An observation post noted a series of cracks spreading along the ground, traveling fast in the general direction of the Tidewall. The adversary was underground again and moving fast.

"Received, SC-Central." He shared the memory with the rest of his squadron, and they immediately moved. They soared through the air with hurt spreading between them, with things unsaid and anger building.

Gold-03 had been in the squadron for five years. Five years and 600 combat flights. And now, in an instant, she was dead.

You didn't get to make mistakes with a Heroic-Tier adversary. Especially not a cunning and vicious Pathbearer like the one they were hunting.

Shiv thought to himself.

Right now, he was traveling vaguely in the direction of the Tidewall. The thing was, he couldn't really see where the Tidewall was anymore because he was underground. As he continued tearing through the foundations of the earth, causing minor earthquakes and cracking the surface wherever he went, he lost his sense of direction in seconds, and now he was considering what to do.

Shiv knew he needed to surface at some point to get his bearings, but if he surfaced, those dragons were likely going to be on him. There had to be observation posts everywhere in this place. There was no avoiding that, and even now, they were probably tracking him somehow. They managed to figure out how to get past his Creeping Void, didn’t they?

Shiv thought to himself. And that was another benefit of having more Adept-Tier skills as well. If he had Adept-Tier Geomancy, maybe he could have navigated underground. If he had Adept-Tier Hydromancy, maybe he could have turned himself into water or something.

Being a powerful, overwhelming brute felt good, but it also made his actions very, very obvious. Once more, he pinned his blade in the parting soil, and he shot upward. If anything went wrong, he would jump back down to his knife and find a different direction to hit. It worked the last two times, so it might work a third as well. But Shiv didn't expect it to be a trick he could use over and over indefinitely.

He exploded out of the ground, casting stones everywhere. His Creeping Void was still active; he didn't deactivate just because no one had fired any arrows at him in a while. The dragons might be able to see him, but maybe the observation posts didn't have the same skills. Better to have additional layers of protection anyway.

He found himself sailing over a rocky meadow that became a series of rolling hills. Dense patches of vegetation became a series of bushes below. There were fewer mountains around him now, but there were more in the distance. He thought he caught a glimpse of something atop the Tidewall. Shiv spiked himself in its direction. He kept low to the ground as he did before and—

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Nine beams of necromantic energy pierced the surrounding soil.

The Creeping Void 110 > 111

Shiv screamed internally.

He teleported back to his knife and immediately started moving in a random direction. They missed! They weren't as accurate this time. But they still had his general position, and so he had to keep moving. He had to do as Adam suggested. How did he get a level? Did his Creeping Void fool them this time? Why didn’t it work before?

Shiv tried to remember which way he was heading, but he bit back a gasp as lacerations began to open across his body. He was going to need to detonate again soon, and once he did, they would definitely notice his position. Judging from where the shots came from, they were right above, high up in the air.

A terrible thought formed in Shiv’s mind. He considered doing something just a bit reckless. He clutched one of his decoy bodies inside his cape using his Biomancy. If Minor Illusion and his other Stealth Enchantments weren't working on their own, maybe he just needed to give them something solid to shoot at.

Shiv continued barreling through the underground. He reached out, and his gravity field expanded around a massive chunk of earth.

"Alright then," Shiv said to himself, "let's give them a distraction.”

Gold-01 watched as the spreading cracks marking the path of their target suddenly stopped. A spider web expanded outward, and a fissure began to form in place, but the enemy wasn’t moving anymore.

Gold-01 did the same. He wasn't going anywhere near that monster. Whoever could tear the head off a dragon in little more than a second wasn't someone he intended to fight in close-quarters combat. They would grind him down using range, strategy, and Necromancy. That was why there was 500 meters of distance between each of the riders now, and why they remained two kilometers above the ground.

Every dragon was to cover their own sector, and every dragon was close enough to render the other aid should they come under attack.

Gold-10 asked.

And then there came a massive shudder. The earth trembled. The fissures grew and became chasms. Gold-01 primed his Necro-Thrower for another cycle when he realized what the adversary was about to do. An entire parcel of uprooted landmass rose into the air—three hundred meters of stone and dirt shaped into a dense ball.

It accelerated fast, the soil peeling off, the stone staying together longer. It soared high like a missile the size of a small mountain, but it was still far too slow to hit any of the dragons, and it wouldn't reach the altitude they were at either.

Gold-06 asked. But just then, they saw the bone armored figure shoot out from below the earthen sphere.

01’s Divination Matrix painted the target into shape. A shroud of violet enveloped them.Gold-01 roared.

Nine streams of Necromantic energy immediately speared through the target's body. Nine streams intermingled, and a concentration of necromantic corrosion built and detonated outward, catching the large mound of soil and stone as well. In seconds, it vanished.

In the aftermath, all Gold-01 could hear was the fast pumping of his heart as the world fell silent.

Gold-02 asked.

Gold-10 said. "Wait, something just passed by..."

Gold-10’s thoughts promptly trailed off into a scream.

The hardest part of lifting an entire section of the earth was keeping it together rather than bearing its weight. Shiv was more than strong enough for the latter, but soil… Soil didn't stick together. Even stone broke apart after you accelerated it at a certain speed. It took all his gravitic control to keep it from unraveling right on top of him. As he rose higher and higher into the air, he kept his Chameleon Enchantment active as he prepared to launch his decoy body.

Five seconds passed as Shiv's insides tightened. He watched the skies, waiting for one of the dragons to fire. Then, his patience broke as he threw his decoy body out.

All the dragons promptly fired their Necromantic beams. Nine different streams came from nine different directions, and Shiv almost let out a miserable sigh. The worst thing about not fighting an idiot was that you had to use more strategy and planning every time you engaged them. These dragon riders learned from him just as he adapted to them as well.

But his plan wasn’t over. He needed to get to as soon as possible.

Rearing his arm back, he threw his Skysplitter across the horizon at where one of the corrosive streams came from. In an instant, the sound barrier broke. His Skysplitter shrank and vanished. He doubted the dragon could spot something that small. Shiv hoped so, at least. As the blade traveled, a blast of corrosive energy swept down. Shiv's eyes widened. A muscle in his shoulder came apart as Inertial Overdrive wounded him once more. A wave of Necromancy crashed down on Shiv’s cover. His dirt mound disintegrated.

He teleported to his blade at the last second. A squeeze of pressure washed over him, and he found himself a mere four hundred-something meters away below a dragon.

Shiv thought. He detonated his inertial sheath, and a blast wave swept out from him. It broke both of his legs, but he didn't need legs to control his gravity field. Shiv stopped time—and the dragon, unaware of his presence, failed to trigger its own temporal shell in time. It stopped moving. Shiv fed his injuries to a Woundeater and crashed into its chest. A detonation followed as he crawled along its body, but as he came into contact with it, a flare of gold flickered in place as its temporal shell came alive. Shiv was almost taken by surprise, but he was still faster—especially with his Inertial Overdrive running hot.

The primal dragon bit at him. It moved like it was pushing its head through mud. Shiv caught it by the jaw and twisted it to the side. However, instead of killing it immediately, he drove a blade into its right eye and used that to launch himself along its neck to get at the capsule on its back.

A flash of green flared before Shiv. Sticking out behind the capsule was a strange weapon. It had a long barrel that was wide open, and a corrosive crystal was lodged in its backmost section. That must have been how they were firing the Necromantic beams at him.

Shiv extended his Skysplitter’s size and cut without thinking. His blade extended thirty meters in a single second. He split the Necromantic weapon on the back of the capsule into two pieces. Then, with the greatest threat eliminated, he studied where the rider resided for the first time.

The capsule was pod-shaped, with a series of faint glowing windows on all sides. Shiv laid eyes on the rider, and they laid eyes on him. They wore a helmet that had gleaming, purple visors, and their armor consisted of something that was only leather. Shiv snorted and sliced through the glass. The rider tried to get up—but then they froze still. With the capsule compromised, the rider was no longer spared from Chronomancy, and now they were at Shiv’s tender mercies.

Just then, the dragon twisted its head around to bite him once again. Shiv caught the monster’s jaw with his left hand and growled as he pitted his strength against its. With a snarl of effort, he shrugged its head off, and Frictionless Vector activated. It slid off against him violently, and Shiv found a new opening as he cut at the capsule several more times.

Most of its frame was adamantine, which meant Shiv couldn’t just brute-force his way in quickly. Thus, he changed his tactic to cutting at the bolts and seals around the capsule. Here, Deepest Edge proved its worth. It popped open just as the dragon came back around for another bite. Shiv’s temporal shell cracked. Three seconds of Chronomancy left. He ripped the rider out of their seat and prepared to face the dragon once more.

But then, a thought occurred to him.

The dragon’s jaw opened wide, and Shiv looked at the time-frozen rider before he shrugged.

And with his mind made up, Shiv spiked himself and the rider straight down the dragon’s throat.