(I) Monstrosity

Shape of Monstrosity

-Encyclopedia Apocalyptia

134 (I)

Monstrosity

Shiv didn’t notice his Dread Aura’s Skill Evolution; he was too busy dissecting Band at a spiritual level. Even as the Deathless peeled the orc’s outer flesh apart, he never lost his bloody grin, as if taunting Shiv to do worse, to try and make it hurt. But Shiv was done playing this game. He had been led on by the orcs long enough. If he tried to beat them on their own grounds, tried to overpower them through ordinary domination and cruelty, he would lose.

For as much as he enjoyed battle and killing bastards, the orcs lived for bloodshed. They didn’t break like people did, and they would never give him any satisfaction—for it was a final display of triumph on their part. That he couldn’t break them. That he could never get more from them than they took.

So Shiv stopped seeking satisfaction and started going for pure effect. The first point was to teach the orcs consequences. But that wasn’t going to come with Band dying. No. Band would live. But there would be left of him. The Deathless was going to make him a wretched, broken thing.

A screaming mass of flesh and ruined soulstuff.

A burst of white and red mana washed over Shiv as Band’s Magical Resistance shattered completely. The Deathless ignored the magical shrapnel and continued. His Vitae dug deep into Band’s soul, and Shiv moved without any gentleness. His streams were like blade-covered serpents burrowing their way through the supple inner organs of a person. Band writhed, and for the first time, the smile on his face twisted into a grimace.

Orcs had good pain resistance, but it wasn’t infinite.

Band’s sudden reaction had Whisper and Mortar chuckling. Tequila simply let out a disappointed sigh. “That ego was always going to get you broken some day, dear friend,” Tequila proclaimed solemnly. He shook his head at Band, but took no action to stop Shiv. And there was that orcish psychopathy again. They did care for people and things, but it was a cold, brutal caring. The kind of caring where they enjoyed you, were amused by you, but ultimately, weren’t that empathic for you.

For humans, this was unnatural. Shallow. For orcs, all things were transient. Aside from memory. Aside from life.

“I will miss you, though,” Tequila continued. “I am not sure if I will ever know your like again, Band.”

“Oh, you’ll be able to visit him later,” Shiv whispered under his breath. He found the first of Band’s Skills, and he speared into it. He lashed at the strange pathway, expanding his Vitae once he delved its depths. Shiv wasn’t looking for an Animated Skill Infusion; he wanted to break Band foundationally. Utterly. The insides of the skill resisted for a moment. Just a moment. Then it shattered like a glass cage trying to contain a bomb. Band’s midsection burst apart into a flood of rope-like viscera, and the orc’s eyes rolled up into his skull. Shiv strained—ripped at Band’s vitality. It tore like a piece of fabric. But the Deathless continued. Pieces fell away Band’s body. Limbs were severed one after another. Eyes were burst. Ears were caved in. The orc’s throat was crushed completely.

Through it all, Band never resisted. Never tried to fight back. The quiet wrath inside Shiv commanded him to continue, but all the recent levels empowering his Psychology made him think. Just as he prepared to inflict another eternal wound on Band, he studied the orcs and suddenly did a double-take.

They were silent, watching him with glistening eyes of admiration. More than their rapt attention, he also noticed something else. There were strange, bladed tendrils growing out from his body, connecting him to thousands of orcs. The tendrils were the texture of his adamantine bone with patches of gray flesh. . Shiv’s mind went blank at the sight of them, confused as to where they came from and why they were growing out of his flesh. He turned away from Band and gripped one of the tendrils. To his surprise, he could feel it, touch it, and pull on it.

And that was when he realized his own body looked different than before. Shiv blinked. He had sunken so deep into a state of hatred and bloodthirst toward Band that he didn’t even notice the physiological changes happening across his body. The surface of his bone armor had changed. The faces of screaming orcs were carved into the bones, and from the deep depressions that formed their eyes came blood and tears. Shiv then noticed how the world was bending around him, his very presence manifesting an eerie distortion that twisted light itself. Adam’s azure sun folded around Shiv’s being, but it never settled upon his body fully. It was as if the brightness was too afraid to touch his flesh.

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The tendrils were also pulsating with a substance. Shiv could feel it. Taste it. He knew the feeling well, had wielded and sensed it using Dread Aura. And now it was completely transformed. Instead of it simply existing as a in the world that he could feel, it was something he amplified, absorbed, and could move. And absorbed was the keyword here. Shiv felt another boost enter his body. Plaguefueled had already exaggerated his physical features. Fear only made his muscles stronger, his body harder, his reflexes sharper. But his magical fields were dramatically expanded as well.

His Biomancy field alone expanded to become a sphere of nearly a full Kilometer in diameter. Shiv blinked as he felt the sheer amount of mana at his disposal. And he knew it knew this wasn’t his power alone. No. It was something fed to him by all the orcs, empowering him to an extreme level. He also looked toward Adam and realized the Gate Lord was bleeding fear as well.

“Shiv,” Adam said, his voice controlled, but his heart pounding fast. “You seem to have developed a sense of… Uva-envy.”

Shiv regarded the fear-forged connection binding him to Adam. Unlike with the orcs, what existed between him and Adam was a chain of sky-blue metal and bone, and it glistened with blood and gristle.

Uva frowned at the skill and reached out tentatively to touch the chain. But her hands went right through. Comparatively, Shiv took hold of the chain just fine and tugged on it lightly. He ended up pulling Adam a few steps toward him.

“What kind of nightmarish bloody skill did you develop now?” Adam asked. He shuffled back a few steps, but every time he looked at Shiv, he winced and averted his eyes. Shiv was about to ask why, but then he noticed how his bone armor changed when he was facing Adam. Instead of it being ritually decorated with screaming orc faces, it was now a layer of flayed flesh, and at the center of his chest, severed skull was lodged in place.

“Shit,” Shiv breathed, looking down. “The notification wasn’t kidding. Shape of Monstrosity indeed.”

Shape of Monstrosity 101 > 102

“Shape of—” Adam gawked. “Why have I heard of that before?”

Valor, who had been watching Shiv up to now, finally opened his mouth—

But was cut off by the Challenger’s booming laughter.

Shiv looked at Valor for confirmation, and the Legendary Pathbearer just grunted. “Yes. He speaks true. And you engineered this moment, didn’t you, Challenger? You sacrificed one of your orcs to shape this experience—to push him to gain this Skill Evolution?”

The sky above thundered as the Challenger just sighed.

“Your army,” Shiv said, pointing his Skysplitter up at the clouds. “Not ours.”

the Challenger replied.

“I would have taken your felling offer,” Shiv snarled. Flashes passed through his mind. Dead Umbrals. Dead Weaveresses. Fires rising in the surface district. Dead civilians. “You—” Shiv clenched his jaw as he cut himself off. “You wanted this. You wanted me this way. You wanted me to break Band.” He looked at the mutilated orc. Stripped of limb and senses, Band was smiling. Still smiling. Always smiling. He was like an infant amidst a dream of hopping bunnies. “Is that it? You’re using him as a sacrifice? Something to figure me out some more? Sell me your orcs?”

He looked at the nearly three million orcs around him and studied their expressions, their postures. The Challenger wasn’t lying. They were all excited. They wanted this. They wanted to be here. And with the act of mass murder he just committed—and Band’s spiritual ruination on top of that—he just got made into an orcish .

Shiv just glared up at the raw, red clouds, split by thick patches of smog. “And you know that I’m going to hold onto the shit you and your orcs did when I reach Legendary and beyond. You know that I’m going to keep that close to me when I eventually come for you.”

Some of the tendrils connecting him to the orcs hardened. His Biomancy field grew past a kilometer. Even more fear flooded his body and soul.

the Challenger said.

“Before you go,” Shiv said, “I want you to know that any orc that does this shit again will be broken.” He clenched a fist, and another part of Band’s soul burst apart. He was gasping for life as a small ocean of blood poured from his many open wounds. “Like Band here. And if you do more than that, I’m going to set myself off in the Tutorial.”

The Challenger didn’t sound scared at all.

“Acceptable?” Adam gawked.

Adam blinked. Shiv just snorted. “Yeah. Feedback taken. But you wait, Challenger. Someday, I will burn and break you. If there’s any wisdom in you at all, you best strike us down now. Because I’m coming for you.”