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129 (II) Animated

Shiv remanifested before everyone in a burst of Vitae and shook his head. “Can’t find the skills. Are Unique Skills hidden from Animancy too?”

Valor flinched back in surprise before remembering who Shiv was and answering the question. “No. In fact, Animancy is the most common way people gain Unique-Tier Skills. You cannot find yours?”

“Nope. Other skills give off a ripple. My Unique Skills can’t be felt at all.”

“Strange. But also exciting. The fact that you can form a golem from your very soul is already a wonder. Golems usually take a great amount of time to build. The composition of their mana cores is not the hard part. Shaping their attuned mana and mental template, however, is immensely time-consuming. Natural golems are more common than artificial ones for that reason. But what you can do is something else entirely.”

“I fought elemental golems before. Crushed their cores. They had bodies of stone, fire, water, lightning… All that was connected to the core, huh?”

“Indeed,” Valor said, trying to understand what Shiv was trying to figure out.

“Well, my Vitae golem feels different. I can’t tell if the skill is the core of the attuned mana. Because it’s wrapped in my Vitae. It's sustained by vitality. But something about it feels like it's built differently. Like the skills are more like recordings of stuff that happened in the past rather than a direct copy of the skill.”

That got Valor thinking as well. “Yes. The Poetry Skill had the ground and your soul reciting lines. Lines from the past.”

“Lines spoken by my pilot,” Can Hu said.

Valor nodded. “It is a resurrection of a past event. A repetition. Then, the Woundeater infused within the drill could not perform the same actions as that which was empowered by Gravitic Wrestler.”

“Because I never really used Woundeater to move around before. Only did it a bit with Biomancy when I just got it,” Shiv muttered to himself. “Okay. Yeah. Maybe. Wait, let’s do something else.”

"Shiv," Uva said, sounding slightly nervous, "why do you have that look on your face?"

"Don't worry about it," Shiv replied as he used his Vitae to dip down into his Inertial Overdrive Skill. "I'm just going to find out if I can outsource some of the suicide bombings I do."

“Composer, this cannot end well.”

Can Hu stared at Shiv. "I regret mentioning that term to you earlier."

"Don't," Shiv replied. "You were an inspiration to me, Can Hu."

"Your praise fills me with shame," Can Hu responded. "What do you mean by outsource?"

The Penitent got his answer as Shiv created a new Vitae Golem. This one vibrated constantly, its body shaking, as if it were about to rupture from an overload of kinetic energy. Its insides quivered, the inertial overdrive skill resembling a sphere of compressed force. A sphere that constantly pulsed in and out, as if it were trying to burst free and detonate.

the golem asked.

"You are a suicide bomber," Shiv told it gleefully.

the golem agreed with mutual enthusiasm.

“Composer," Uva said as she pinched her nose. "This is not good."

Shiv began to laugh—then Valor started chuckling as well. "Now, this is wonderful. The number of things we can do. The experimentation we can run."

Can Hu studied Shiv's vibrating golem for a moment longer before it shuffled behind Uva. Immediately, she brought her shield in front of her as protection, and Shiv gave her a thumbs up. She just frowned in response. "Shiv, please don't blow us up."

"Oh, it's not us I intend to blow up," he replied. A feral grin spread across his face. "Hey, suicide bomber."

The golem stared at him.

"Charge the Abyssal Gateway, and spike yourself as many times as you can before discharging your Inertial Overdrive."

The golem charged off without hesitation. However, it didn't spike itself. It simply ran, even though it was coated in Vitae. Even though the Vitae shrouding its body possessed Shiv's gravitic field, the golem didn’t launch itself through the air. Instead, it just started sprinting. Never once did it use its gravitic field to travel. Still, Inertial Overdrive made it faster with every step. Just before it dissolved, the golem discharged all the built-up kinetic energy it amassed.

The golem vanished in a small explosion of force, casting fragments of dissolving Vitae everywhere.

Shiv frowned slightly. "Okay. So. It did half of what I wanted it to do. I think it’s because of my skill.”

“Explain.” Valor didn’t sound confused. From his tone, it was more like he wanted to hear Shiv's conclusion.

“It knows how to move based on my Inertial Overdrive Skill. It moving faster. But even if it had a gravitic field, it doesn’t know how because it doesn’t have the skill.”

“I suspect the same thing,” Valor said. “I think it is time we progress with our experiment.”

“See if we can stack two skills in the same golem?”

“Indeed.”

“Got it,” Shiv breathed. He cast out his Vitae and started draining some vitality from another basilisk. As he refilled the warmth combusting within his soul, he started shaping a new golem.

He planted the Inertial Overdrive Skill Infusion within the golem at first. And as soon as he separated from it, he reached into his Gravitic Wrestler Skill for a new infusion and then dipped a strand of Vitae into the golem. Shiv released his Gravitic Wrestler Skill Infusion within the golem, and, to his satisfaction, it coexisted with the Inertial Overdrive Skill. There was a cost to the additional infusion, however: The Vitae sustaining his golem was consumed even faster than before.

"Shit," Shiv breathed, "it looks like infusing more skills increases the amount of Vitae it takes to sustain you, huh?"

The golem just stared at him. it asked.

“Maybe I need to get an Intelligence Skill for you to do anything more than ask questions. Wait, Poetry had you talking.”

“Social Skills probably make a difference on the conversational front,” Valor theorized. “But the fact that you can mix infusions indicates that you can create mixed-skill golems.”

“Yeah. It just spends a bit more Vitae,” Shiv grunted. Then, a vicious smile crawled over his face as he pointed toward the Abyssal Gateway. “Alright, bomber. Spike yourself ten times and then blast yourself towards the gateway.”

And this time, the golem did surge off toward the horizon. It blasted across the air, spiking itself over and over, going faster and faster. The sound barrier broke against the golem by the ninth spike of acceleration, and an emission of Vitae painted its trajectory. The Golem drew one last time on its gravitic field before it finally discharged its Inertial Overdrive. A second explosion occurred before the Abyssal Gateway, and this one was not a small pop. A three-hundred-meter-wide blast swept across the front of the arch. Chunks of rock and more began to rain down from above.

Shiv threw up a fist. “I can make my soul do suicide bombings for me!”

“Incredible!” Valor cried with equal glee.

Can Hu and Uva stared, wordless.

And that wasn’t all.

Vitaemancy 59 > 60

Golemancy 4 > 5

Inertial Overdrive 112 > 113

Gravitic Wrestler 143 > 144

Shiv’s eyes widened at the notification. “Valor. The skills I infused leveled as well.”

“Have they?” Valor asked. “Inertial Overdrive and Gravitic Wrestler?”

“Yeah.”

“That is odd. But then again, so are you—and your golems. That might indicate a more direct connection. It could be that your infusion caused this. But considering the time you gained these levels, I suspect that the deeds performed by your golem have been attributed to you.”

“And that’s not normal?”

“No. Golems are usually their own entities. But now there seems to be a crossover between—” Valor paused. The flames within his eye sockets flickered. “Oh. Oh, no.”

Shiv noticed the drop in Valor’s tone and frowned. “What? What’s wrong?”

Valor hesitated for a moment before he started talking again. "These golems… They're strange. Your core is not the composition of its being, as you theorized earlier. Your Vitae is their main driver, it seems. The Skill Infusions, however, guide everything they can do. It's almost like they are replicators or repetitive reenactors of events that happened before."

"Resurrections of past moments related to the skill," Shiv surmised.

“Past moments bound to a skill,” Valor muttered. “So. Vicar Sullain has your Vitae. And he is an Omnimancer. And he only gained that Skill after he fused his Animancy to all the other magical Skills he had. And if your Vitaemancy golems work by resurrecting feats recorded in the history of a skill… He might be able to recreate an Animancy Core himself.”

Shiv blinked. His mood went from excitement to a plunging . “Oh, shi—”

"Shit!" Adam roared. He slammed his fist down on the table. He did it several more times until the table shattered into splinters, casting wood across the room. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

"Yeah," Shiv replied. "I kind of reacted the same way.”

Nearby, the orcs watched Adam’s breakdown with wry amusement writ upon their faces. They were on the ground level of the obsidian tower where they had the briefing a few days ago. New boards had been dragged in, with battle maps of Lost Angeles partially drawn upon them. There was also a mess of books and other files scattered across the floor. Scattered, because the desk they were just on was reduced to something less than rubble beneath Adam’s fist.

"Why?" Adam cried. "Why must you always do this?"

"Really, you're blaming me?" Shiv replied, partially offended.

"Yes, I'm blaming you. It's because of your . You are bullshit. And it is because you’re bullshit that this bullshit happens to us!” Adam's tone was more exasperated than genuinely angry. "You keep evolving stranger and stranger skills. What was the point of everything we did with that Animancy Core?"

“We managed to kill the Recollector,” Shiv noted.

Adam opened his mouth, then he closed it again and shrugged. “Yes. That was useful. But now Sullain has a replacement.”

“Potentially,” Valor said. “This is just a theory. And one that he will have to uncover on his own without a renewable source of Vitae. Or someone that can naturally wield it.”

“Right. Potentially.” Adam let out a breath. “But he can still control it. He managed to capture Shiv’s exploding Vitae with his Omnimancy. What’s to stop him from shaping it himself?”

“A great many factors. I suspect his ability to manipulate Shiv’s Vitae comes from his power over Animancy and a Vitality Manipulation Skill. But his understanding will not be natural, and he will need to perform a very specific series of actions to discover what we have. Shiv only learned of this while repairing Can Hu.”

“So. Ideally, he might not discover this at all?” Adam asked.

“It is important never to be overly optimistic,” Valor replied. The Gate Lord groaned. “He had contact with my son. And so he must have some suspicion about how Vitae functions. But it is also very possible that the Vitae he clutched is too damaged by Necromancy to function the same way. Or that it has dissipated entirely by this point. Shiv’s golems constantly expend vitality to exist, after all. But it is best to be sure. And best that we strike at the vicar first, before he learns to make use of the gift he possesses.”

Adam sighed. “Right.” He gestured at Oldsmith’s notebook, which was splayed open on the floor. “Well. He isn’t our only problem. The Inquisition is dispatching a force to our gate. They’re looking for the Animancy core too. I’ve tried to delay them with excuses and partial truths, but Sijik has run out of patience. Pretending to be Oldsmith isn’t going to be helpful for much longer, as the Inquisitor has named the Master-Advisor a traitor to the Republic and demands that the automaton meet with him at Fortress-City Diego within the next three days.”

“And I don’t have Oldsmith as a Perfect Semblance anymore,” Shiv said.

Adam nodded. “It wouldn’t be that useful anyway. Oldsmith was spent. We’re going to have to deal with a small army of Republic soldiers ourselves first before the main Inquisitorial force arrives.”

Uva cocked her head. “This sounds less like a problem to me and more like an opportunity.” Everyone turned to look at her, and Adam, in particular, looked curious about what she had to say. “The expeditionary force will not be large, I suspect. We should scout them out first. Learn about their composition and intentions. And then it might be useful for Shiv and me to a role in their force. He with his mask. Me with my Psychomancy.”

The Psychomancer walked over to the board, picked up a marker, and drew a line between the Inquisition and Vicar Sullain items. “Additionally, I think it would be best if we could trigger an engagement between the dispatched expeditionary force and the Necrotechs.”

“I concur,” Whisper said, offering Uva a nod. “This might also give you an opening. If the Inquisition and the Necrotechs find themselves in active conflict, they will have to divert forces to face each other—and we might have a window to access Blackedge, then.”

Adam narrowed his eyes as he contemplated the suggestions. “Yes. That might work. But we’ll need to hit the Inquisition’s forward deployment first. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to stop them in a direct engagement, either. A small dispatch separated from an army one hundred thousand strong could be a few hundred Master-Tier Pathbearers.”

“Afraid of a little fight?” Mortar taunted with a laugh.

The Gate Lord glared at the orc. “Of the fight? No. But I would prefer not to kill any loyal soldiers of the Republic who are here just because of—”

The ground beneath them shook. The vibration felt familiar to Shiv. He felt it many times.

“Something just exploded,” he said. “Something close by.”

Adam’s eyes flashed with light as he activated his skill, but even before he learned why the gate was shaking, a notification appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Quest Gained: Hey, fuckers! Why aren’t the assholes who stole my gate and bombed my realm dead? THE FUCK’S TAKING SO LONG YOU RAT-CUNT-FUCKS? HUH? KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW! I’M LAUNCHING A RAID ON THEIR ASSES! SOMEONE KILL THE FUCKERS WHO BOMBED MY WORLD FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

Rewards: +25 Levels for a Selected Skill; +10 Levels for a Selected Skill; Three Master-Tier items; two obsidian dildos for use on and until they get pregnant with my corpse-babies; Adept-Tier Skill Evolution—happy now???

Failure: I WILL NOT ACCEPT FUCKING FAILURE! WE’RE RAIDING THE GATE NOW! THE FIRE IS COMING! KILL HIM OR I BURN EVERYTHING!

A loud screech of straining metal filled the air. The temperature began to climb.

Adam let out a breath of utter exhaustion. “Shiv. I think you’re going to need to do that orc army ritual to change our gateway. Let’s solve the Lord Scorn problem first.”

As if to mock him, the sound of a metallic seal being broken followed, and sounds of combat arose soon thereafter.