(II) Adamantine

115 (II) Adamantine"Performed?" Shiv repeated, the word leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He wasn't here to be some orc's entertainment.

"Indeed," the orc continued on. "The way you blinked from place to place, exploiting both Chronomancy and Portomancy, was quite acceptable. And there's also how you kept leaving your bodies behind. Why, the Necrotechs are so very confused. And your speed... But it's a little too much for your body to endure, isn't it? Adamantine does have a breaking point. I know that better than most."

Shiv glared silently at the orc. "Alright, I let you flap your lips. You’re clearly oh so very smart and perceptive. Any chance you're just gonna piss off and let me out now?"

The orc chuckled. "Why in such a hurry to leave? You need to impress me, after all."

"Impress you?"

"Yes," the orc said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm here for more reasons than one. One is for my own pleasure. The other... Well, if the Challenger is to grant you an audience and to loan my brethren to your cause..."

"Shit," Shiv muttered under his breath. “Seriously?”

"Of course. The Challenger wants this. Nothing comes for free, you know this, oh . The Challenger is more than willing to loan you some of my brothers to see this made into a proper war. But nothing comes easy in life, and so you will have to kill me first. Think you can do it?”

"And what makes you think I'm going to accept the Challenger’s offer? What makes you think I even want it?" Shiv asked.

The orc shook his head and sighed. "Now, you're smarter than that. Don't be petulant. I can hear the bitterness, the scorn in your voice. It’s even in the way you fight. You try to dominate and break things, because the world tries to dominate and break you. A poor habit. Do your best to lose it." The orc leaned in slightly. "You are a Pathbearer. You have the potential to be a proper killer. So let go of the child inside. Sink your teeth into the present, and do things for a purpose. For effect. Not spite. What use is spite?”

Once more, Shiv was reminded why the orcs unnerved him so much. It wasn't even the brutality, it wasn't the casual cruelty, it wasn't their power. No. They were like a race of perfect serial killers. But despite everything, the orc was right; Shiv did betray too much in his words.

"I know you're going to accept the offer, because what other choice do you have? Mercenaries?" The orc barked a laugh. "We both know it will take time for someone to agree to a contract. And indeed, the amount of money you will need to hire an entire army capable of contending against the Vicar... Well." The orc's voice took on an amused tone. "Tell me, how much treasure do you possess? I was given over a hundred tons of mithril by the Vicar. A hundred tons! Do you have a hundred tons? Do you even have enough money to retain my services, the services of even a single Master?”

Shiv was pretty sure they didn't have a hundred tons, and that was an ugly thought. Shiv didn't know how the vicar had that much money when Confriga had jack shit in comparison.

"Ah, the deafening silence. It reveals to me all I need to know. You do not wish this. You are reluctant. But you know this is for the best. You're going to need my kind, because there is no better option." And then the orc held out a hand, and one weapon among the arsenal hovering behind him slid into his palm. It wasn't the weapon Shiv would have expected the orc to wield, either. A long, thin rapier, gleaming with the light of the sun, settled into the orc’s grasp with a grace one would expect from a musician wielding an instrument.

"Stellarite," Shiv muttered.

"I suppose that girl of yours could potentially accept a bargain with the eldritch. But that's not a real army. That's not something she can control. It's like unleashing a hurricane onto a battlefield and expecting it to fight your enemy, and only your enemy. So understand now, this moment is no distraction. It is a necessity. Perform well. Take my life from me if you can. My gods’s offering is dependent on this."

Something inside Shiv hardened. The last thoughts of just breaking the orc's horn and attempting an escape died. He was going to kill this thing. Not because he wanted to impress the Challenger. Just because he was annoyed by all the talking this orc was doing.

"So, then," the orc said, flourishing his dainty blade. “Have at thee!” And then he blasted forward atop his platform.

But Shiv had learned a few things from his fight with 811. The first being to mind your enemy’s skills. He ejected his own bone armor and cast away the orc’s adamantine clumps with it. Shiv shot upward while he cast a corpse down from his cape. It struck the ground. The orc chased after Shiv's broken armor, and his rapier flashed with light. The orc vanished.

He blinked across space with every thrust, and he speared through Shiv's armor, stabbing every point that had a clump of adamantine molded onto it. When he was done, he plunged his blade into the corpse Shiv cast out as well. The body jerked and shuddered. Shiv hovered above the orc, studying the beast’s capabilities. The rapier left small holes in both the corpse and the armor, and it took three stabs on average to pierce through.

The bigger problem was how the orc vanished between stabs—reappeared inside the target. That, and the orc seemed skilled, much better with a blade than Shiv was. He could tell that in the fluidity of their movements.

Shiv extended his Skysplitter. The blade grew to a hundred meters. It speared out towards the orc and impacted his armor. The orc let out a surprised cry, but then the armor splashed into a puddle of mercury, and he was gone again.

The Deathless sighed.

Shiv swung around, trying to find where the orc was, only for a ripple to pass through the surrounding dome. Shiv's eyes widened as the orc's voice filled the area. "Well, well. You're smart enough to use your stealth instead. My compliments on controlling your ego. Alas, there is a part of the battle you ceded to be already: Behold, a lesson in zone control!"

As soon as the orc said that, a hailstorm of hyper-accelerated adamantine began to shoot out from the dome. The surface of the curving walls flung out blade after blade, and they leaped down like raindrops bursting free from the surface of a pond. There were too many to dodge, and they came too fast.

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Shiv triggered his Chronomancy in lieu of his Outside Context Problem. The hailstorm halted in place. But then came a rippling tide of Chronomantic energy from directly above.

"There," Shiv muttered as he spotted a patch of the dome that glowed with gold and dimensional black. That was probably where the orc was hidden—either within the metal or behind it. “How the hells am I going to get to him?”

As the golden tide came close, Shiv prepared to drop his temporal shell to spike his Inertial Overdrive to try and displace the incoming hits with a discharge. Something made Shiv hesitate. He considered something. All wardings were a bit like a specific type of Magical Resistance. And they were magical fields. The Magebreaker worked against anything with a Magical Field.

Shiv let his intuition guide him. He slammed his left fist into the oncoming tide of gold, and a shuddering impact followed. His Magebreaker vibrated violently, but Shiv palmed the wave of Chronomancy and pawed it off to his side. His Frictionless Vector triggered, and it slid off at an angle and missed him entirely. "Yes!" Shiv gasped as he launched himself upward.

Frictionless Vector 62 > 63

He blasted up into the air, charging toward where the orc was. But then the second part of his problem followed. What was he supposed to do now? The orc was meshed in the metal.

Shiv spiked his Inertial Overdrive to the limit. His body came apart. He detonated his sheath and saw a rupture form in the metal. He cast himself back in time, blocked another wave of Chronomancy, and detonated himself again. He repeated the sequence once more. By now, his temporal armor was nearly broken, but through the gap in the dome, Shiv saw—another dome stacked over this dome.

Shiv hissed internally. This orc was going to be an absolute nightmare to pin and kill.

The orc’s wards glowed at the top of the next dome, and maybe the dome after that, and the one after that…

Just as Shiv was about to force his way out of the first dome and slam into the next layer of the adamantine onion he was trapped in, Shiv paused and . All that dragon-fighting had him introspective.

Shiv's Psychology Skill triggered as he considered another set of solutions.

Orcs were cruel. Orcs enjoyed hurting a person. Shiv was overcomplicating this fight. In fact, ever since becoming a Pathbearer, he'd been a little too direct, too brutal.

When he hunted lesser vampires, he learned their ways. He stalked them through the ruined buildings. He knew they were addicted to blood, and he knew they feared light and flame. There were things he could provoke them to do, reliable aspects of their behavior.

The orcs were clever, but they were addicted to cruelty. And Shiv could exploit that.

Immediately, he descended into the hailstorm of adamantine arrows. He let time resume and took the hits dead on as he let his Creeping Void cease. His flesh was torn open. He exacerbated the cuts with his Biomancy. He snarled, trying to sell his pain. More adamantine shards punched into him, drilling through him.

Shiv twisted and writhed, over-exaggerating his wounds and pain as he lacerated himself with his Biomancy as well. He fell dramatically from the air, crashing and cracking the pavement.

Acting 12 > 13

Deception 8 > 9

"How disappointing," the orc called out. "I expected more. You flail, Bruiser. You twist and you writhe like a creature caught in a cage. Are you nothing more than a bear in a trap?"

At that statement, the innermost dome suddenly blasted inward and clamped down around Shiv. Its weight was massive, and it held him in place tightly. The breath was driven from his lungs. Then, he hissed as needles extended from the adamantine cave-in that held him. He was getting ripped apart for good this way. Maybe it wasn’t wise to—

Shiv hid a smirk behind a grimace as the orc descended from the second dome above him, hovering on that platform created from adamantine and focus crystals. He lifted his faceplate again, and he sighed at the sight of Shiv. "This is pathetic," the orc said. "I didn't realize that you were such a simple animal, so straightforward in all your dealings. How you managed to kill another like me, I do not know." The orc held his rapier high. "I suppose the Challenger will be spared from any unworthy arrangements. But I am disappointed.”

Shiv spat a mouthful of blood and finally grinned. “Yeah? So am I. But I guess even all that intellect can’t stop you from being a slave to cruelty.”

The orc paused. “Will you elaborate?”

“I mean, you can’t help it, can you? You have to come close and kill me yourself. To do it slowly with your blade.”

The orc’s eyes snapped to his blade, and he realized something was wrong. “You—”

Shiv froze time again. He spiked his Inertial Overdrive 40 times in quick succession and discharged. Everything below Shiv’s stomach turned into ropes of gore. The adamantine around him . Then came a Chronomantic ripple from the orc’s wards. A ripple Shiv barely managed to parry with a backhand from his Magebreaker. The Deathless nearly blacked out, but the Song of the Vigilant was still running, and it let him cast a Woundeater on himself.

He shot out the deformed adamantine cage and left a corpse behind via his cape. Shiv deflected another ripple of Chronomancy, and then he turned his Biomancy on the body. He struck it with laceration after laceration, ripping it asunder, before finally triggering Outside Context Problem and letting time resume.

He twisted through the air and got behind the orc.

The orc blinked forward, stabbing through the open mouth of Shiv’s newly placed corpse. But then, as the orc stared at the body, he frowned. "Who is this?" the orc muttered.

The answer came in the form of a falling blade of epic size. Shiv made the Skysplitter grow to 300 meters, and he brought it down on the orc with all his might. Just as he slammed it against the orc, he paused time again. The fractured temporal shell cracked around him. Once more, he parried the temporal warding. His Magebreaker cracked.

Shiv wasn’t done.

He spiked himself 50 times over. His body dissolved into paste. He created another Woundeater and fed it well before unleashing both into the orc. Twin mana explosions joined the inertial discharge, and then Shiv reverted time to a second ago, to the moment he struck the orc with his sword, and repeated the actions one more time. A third mana blast spread out, a bright blossom of red joining the others, and a new inertial discharge exploded beside the orc.

Woundeater 86 > 87

Strider of the Unbending Path 129 > 130

Inertial Overdrive 111 > 112

Gravitic Wrestler 142 > 143

Shiv's temporal shell finally broke, and he was blasted back by his own discharge, flung through the air until he crashed against the second layer of the adamantine dome. Flame and pressure pinned him in place, and despite how much he struggled with his gravitic field, he couldn't overcome the tides of destruction.

Shiv felt his body burn, his skin boil, and his eardrums burst. As the blast waves finally swept across him and dissipated, he shaped a Woundeater again and removed his injuries. He got his blade up, prepared to face the orc in case the brute was still alive.

As the burning oxygen in the air faded to embers, he saw the towering shape of the beast just standing over the corpse decoy Shiv had left behind. The rapier was still lodged in his corpse's head. The orc was unmoving.

Shiv's heart skipped a beat. Shiv drew in a long, shuddering breath as he clenched his fists.

The orc unceremoniously toppled over. Shiv stared. As the orc's body rolled across the devastated crater, Shiv saw a pool of liquefied red viscera spill out from his open visor. Parts of his adamantine armor had also been ripped asunder. Gore poured free from it in ropey sinews of red.

The Challenger is amused.

Slowly, a chuckle escaped Shiv. He looked down at the body. "Hey, asshole," he mocked the orc post-mortem. "You think you know my nature? Well, I knew yours better. Guess that makes me the only proper killer between us."

Then he spat on the orc and promptly speared down into the ground, blasting through the earth to escape the dome. He had a scouting run to finish.