(I) Rubix

-Report on the Rubix Wells: Yellowstone Republic Maximum Security Containment Facilities170 (I)

Rubix

"You know my favorite thing about this new Legendary skill," Shiv said, ignoring the knife the struggling warden was trying to put through his eye. "It just has so much control. Previously, if I was using Gravitic Wrestler, or maybe even the Heroic-Tier skill I got, if I squeezed a little too hard, . That'd be it. Frankly, not even crack. Your head would be bloody paste, whether I wanted it to be or not." The Deathless paused as he looked off to the side. "Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. I had pretty good control with Gravitic Wrestler, but the Heroic-Tier skill with all that pressure around me? Forget about it."

The final wheeze came from the warden as their eyes rolled, their limbs went slack, and their legs kicked out a final time. Shiv let them slide down against the Orichalcum wall, but caught their head before they bashed against the ground.

Shiv wasn't sure what race the warden was. Considering their green skin, but generally human-like dimensions, he had to guess it was either an extremely evolved goblin or a human with a race-shift Blessing. There wasn't really such a thing as human-goblin crossbreeding. Not like there was human-elf crossbreeding or goblin-elf crossbreeding or, well, frankly, elf-anything crossbreeding. But looking at the ears, this Pathbearer definitely didn't have elf heritage.

One good thing about the Republic was that it didn't much care what race you were. It only cared that you served the Republic. And right now, this unfortunate bastard would be serving the Republic by taking a well-earned nap.

Nearby, six other Pathbearers lay splayed across the ground. Broken spell patterns flickered around them as leaking mana bled into the atmosphere. Shiv found himself in another valley, very similar to the one outside of the wolf-man’s cage. But things were a little bit different now. He wasn't quite the same person anymore. Not in terms of power, and not even in terms of mindset.

He spent a bit of time thinking before he acted. And right now, he was trying to apply a bit of method to his madness. Because if he didn't, the odds of him breaking out of this prison were pretty low.

Especially considering he had no way of knowing where to go.

The Deathless rubbed his right thigh where one of the wardens had punctured him earlier. Their blade flashed a bright white, and they managed to drive it through him before he was prepared. It was a good reminder that he wasn't invincible and that there were other Heroic-Tier Pathbearers present, aside from the Ascendant itself. But still, the gap between Heroic and Legendary was remarkable.

After the enemy Pathbearer stabbed him, Shiv gripped the blade and unleashed a slight amount of force. Pointed vectors of overflowing kinetic energy slammed against the edge of the blade, and the adamantine weapon snapped as if it were a wooden toothpick. It took him considerably less effort to choke out the offending warden thereafter.

Shiv's Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides also allowed him another wonderful option: He attacked the spell patterns running down the valley walls like waterfalls directly. He shredded all the surrounding magic, breaking whatever spells were active and rendering this place a spot of darkness along a long stretch of light.

Ahead and behind, more spell patterns rained down to the base of the valley, bathing the narrow pathway with light. Along the pathway were many other cells, but whatever Bonk had done to free everyone, the prisoners took advantage of it. The insides of the cells were empty, and chains and bonds lay shattered on the ground.

Shiv realized, blinking.

Shiv activated and then deactivated his Outside Context Problem Skill briefly, just to confuse the Ascendant again. He didn't know where Cripple was, but every time he triggered the skill, Cripple couldn't think about him. That bought Shiv extra time. When he finished, he started draining from the world, and then he knelt down to see if this group of wardens had anything useful for him to pilfer.

"Hopefully you have something, unlike the last group," Shiv muttered to himself. "Damned Ascendant always on my ass. At least one of you has to be my size. Tired of running around bare ass naked. Felling asshole just to steal my clothes."

As Shiv ran his hands across the warden he'd just choked out, he noticed their armor was smoking. The magic infused within it was spewing free, ruptured by Shiv's power. The Magical Resistance imbued within it was smashed to pieces, and the magical fields extending from it were also lacerated to the foundations. That had been the first thing Shiv attacked: their armor.

The moment he put his hands on the enchanted metal, he pushed his shapeless tides in, and he shredded the Psychomantic connection extending between the guards and the surrounding walls. The waterfalls of spells were connected to the guards in some fashion. That's why Shiv ripped through them using his tides, and judging how the guard knew exactly where he was after he attacked the first group, he suspected that there were monitoring spells or some kind of telepathic link that kept all the guards connected to one another.

Shiv didn't stick around after he disabled the earlier group, especially after another twelve guards teleported in, all of them seeming Heroic-Tier. He activated his Outside Context Problem and simply fled. As much as he wanted to fight, he didn't know what his enemies were capable of. And it wasn't dying he risked here; it was being disabled and put back in the cage. A Legend though he might be, he knew better than to underestimate Heroes. After all, Sullain had died to an army of Heroes and less, and there was still Cripple to be wary of.

Shiv could briefly contend with the Ascendant’s might now, but that didn't mean he had the upper hand. Not even close.

Now, with this third group of wardens disabled, Shiv acted quickly. He found the tall goblin too thin of physique to offer any useful clothing, so he ripped their helmet off and projected his Psychomancy into their mind. Shiv wasn't an accomplished Psychomancer. Frankly, he wasn't a good Psychomancer at all. With everything that kept happening, he never had time to get more in-depth lessons with Uva, but digging through his own memories had given him some instruction when it came to delving through a mind.

It was still chaotic, and he was sifting through an overwhelming flood of details. Flashes from the goblin's life hit him. Sparring matches, the deaths of loved ones, foes bested, humiliating defeats, monsters they still had nightmares about. All that hit Shiv at the same time, and he struggled to process all of it. But, among the chaos, he got a glimpse of a few memories.

He recalled the guard teleporting from another place. Another ? Shiv was confused. He wasn't sure why the guard was thinking about cubes. The tall goblin and their team had been dispatched by the Ascendant itself through a telepathic broadcast. They used the mana rushing down the valley walls to rapidly move from place to place. Shiv stared at the Orichalcum walls as he realized through the guard that there were mithril supports hidden within as well.

Psychomancy 26 > 28

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Briefly, he considered ripping the walls open and cracking the supports. Maybe that would disable most of the spells active. But he didn't want to give away his position, and Orichalcum was durable enough that he wouldn't be able to damage the structure so easily. It'd be a prolonged effort, and if he stayed in one place for too long, he would be dealing with Cripple itself.

"Not yet," Shiv told himself. "Not until we’re out of ideas.”

He moved on to the other wardens and finally found someone who was around his size. Shiv stripped the humanoid automaton as fast as he could. Their armor wasn't anything to note. It had self-repair enchantments, was made of adamantine, could emit light, and had Magical Resistance. Magical Resistance that Shiv found laughable at this point. However, it also had a Psychomancy enchantment. A very specific kind of Psychomancy enchantment. It was called Chain of Thought, and as soon as Shiv put the helmet over his head, he began hearing chatter.

Whispers brushed against his mind, and the helmet crackled. He tried to make out what it was saying, but then he realized the enchantment was likely damaged or disrupted by his Legendary Skill. "Right," Shiv said to himself, "I did have to tear through the armor's Magical Resistance and mana fields to do this. Well, at least I'm not naked anymore."

As he stole the black and white armor from the automaton, he noted that they weren't wearing any supportive clothing underneath, so the cold jagged bits of metal still prodded Shiv. It was awkward, but not uncomfortable. His body was Orichalcum by this point, so chafing wasn't likely. "Still, what would I give for some underclothes?" Shiv muttered. He went through the items possessed by the remaining guards and stole a utility rig from one of them.

A leather vest filled with tools and potions now hung off his chest, and Shiv expected it to get broken the first moment he got into a hard fight. That made him endeavor not to get into hard fights. He was trying to escape, not turn this into a bloodbath. Before he left, he noticed one of the Pathbearers had interesting boots, non-prison issue boots.

Where everyone else had prismatic sabotons, this little elf was wearing pitch black leather shoes. Shiv looked down at his feet, and then he looked at the elf's shoes. Might be a snug fit, but Shiv shrugged. He had a feeling this would benefit him. He took the shoes off the elf and barely managed to force his feet inside. Once he did, a smile crept across his face as he took in the enchantments.

Equipment Obtained:

Tier: Master

Condition: Stable

Composition: Shadeleather; Spatial Magic

Enchantments > Nightswim; Last Step of Midnight; Self-Mending

Immediately, he began to feel an affinity with the surrounding shadows. More than that, the shadows were lined with dimensional static. Being in the dark fed the shoes with power, and Shiv triggered the Nightswim enchantment for the first time. He splashed down into a puddle of blackness, and true to the enchantment's name, it did feel like he was in a pool.

He pointed his Shapeless Tides forward and glided across the ground. The moment he hit light, however, his Nightswim enchantment began to burn. Brightness affected the skill. Darkness recharged it. Then he activated the Last Step of Midnight enchantment and found himself standing back on the edge of darkness. In that patch of black, he made by shredding all those spell patterns. "Alright." Shiv chuckled. "I think I can make some use of you."

Just then, he felt a shudder of pressure in the air. The flickering spell patterns to his left and right broke. Shiv reacted intuitively. He cast himself back in time and went out of context. As he did, a burst of incandescence exploded into being over the six Pathbearers he'd just downed. Shiv jolted 600 meters away, and as his temporal shell settled, he found himself not far from his Orichalcum cell, but pointed in the opposite direction of his initial escape. His Nightswim enchantment was completely spent. It seemed that brightness damaged it even when he wasn't using the enchantment.

"I see," Shiv muttered. "Not quite as good as I thought, but it'll do in a pinch. Just won’t last long. Another layer to my Stealth kit. Shit, I miss my Magebreaker.”

He pointed his Shapeless Tides forward and blurred across the world without making a hint of noise. A chill was seeping past his skin and settling into his flesh. Despite this, he found himself more resistant to vitality loss with every level he gained in Outside Context Problem. He kept going forward as long as he could, and only when the chill reached his bones did he surface. As soon as he did, he slammed himself against the valley walls. The overflow vectors of force he had been gathering were unleashed as slashing tides.

Spell patterns became like strings severed by a sweeping blade. The magic here was strong, but it had little hope of resisting a Legendary skill. One after another, the spell patterns snapped. Soon, the mana began to flicker, and Shiv started draining from the sheen layered over the world once more. He did so without fear now.

Even as billowing clouds of chaotic stormstuff slammed into him, he forced it aside with a slight snarl of effort. He stood before the rupture without fleeing, indifferent to the storm thanks to his Legendary ascension. And when he was restored enough, he went out of context once more.

He continued on like this for what felt like a near-hour.

As Shiv went forward, a building sense of unease grew stronger. Every other cell lining this place was vacant, and he hadn't seen any guards for a good long while. He had no idea how big this place was, but judging from all the cells he counted, it was colossal. He also knew that he wasn't going in a circle because he left a partially drunk flask behind him.

Shiv never saw that flask again.

"Just how many people are you bastards keeping down here?" Shiv muttered as he counted cell after cell brushing by below. He looked up and frowned. He had flown up along the valley walls earlier in the opposite direction from the magical waterfalls. It took him around 10 seconds to reach a ceiling capped by Orichalcum. And that was all it was, a ceiling. Maybe there was some other trick to it, but Shiv hadn't figured it out yet.

Right now, his mental map of the prison was a disc. The entire thing felt circular to him, and there was only forward and back in terms of direction. Up led nowhere. Left and right led nowhere. And the prison cells themselves? Shiv paused. He hadn't checked all the cells. Maybe there was a way out there? No, that didn't make any sense. If he were going to design a prison, why would he build an exit through one of the cells? It's most likely the only way out was through teleportation. That's how all the wardens got in. But Shiv couldn't quite leave through such means.

But then his frown deepened as he looked up at the ceiling once more. He regarded the Orichalcum ceiling once more and launched himself upward. As he came to a halt before the ceiling, Shiv placed a temporal anchor there.

His Chronomancy field cracked, and he gave it a few seconds to recover. He looked down and around, but he didn't catch sight of any new wardens, or Cripple for that matter. Things were quiet here. A little too quiet for his liking. If there were other prisoners, were they gone? They couldn't have all escaped at once, right? He doubted that was a possibility. So the only other likelihood was that they were resolved by the Ascendant.

Cripple was barely gone for more than a few seconds before it returned to Shiv's cell. Shiv tried to imagine containing a prison of this size in just a few seconds and couldn't. He was missing something here, a larger picture, but he wasn't going to get it if he kept doing the same thing as before. He focused on cultivating as much strength as he could, and every few seconds, he would trigger Outside Context Problem and quickly dismiss the skill right after. When he was ready, he shot the Orichalcum wall a glare and began circulating his vectors, both overflow and innate, into his hands.

"Alright," Shiv growled, "let's see if I can crack you faster than my cage.”

He drove his digits against the Orichalcum and channeled his overwhelming strength against the mystical metal. He tore at the Orichalcum, ripping it with his vectors in a way he couldn't with gravity, with a control he hadn't had until just an hour ago. Shiv strained, every muscle in his body tightened, and with each heartbeat, he birthed new force against the red gold metal.

One second passed, two, then three. The Orichalcum grew brighter, its durability feeding off Shiv's will. But with the seventh ripple that left him, the Orichalcum gave a loud scream as a deep gash was opened in its structure. Shiv finally let out a shuddering breath as his heart leaped in triumph. He saw a rent opening before him, and he poured more strength in.

He pulled in two directions. His rippling vectors slashed into the Orichalcum, and the red-gold began to dent. Shiv whipped his head around for any sign of the Ascendant in the meantime. When Cripple didn't appear and punch a hole through Shiv, he continued on, tension warring with hope inside. With every subsequent tide of force, the gap he made in the metal grew larger and larger. What was a thin rent turned into a massive rupture, and soon Shiv pushed his way through.

As soon as he did, he went out of context again as he whipped his head behind. He expected to see Cripple there, just glaring at him, maybe even just a centimeter away, preparing to drive a fist through his chest. But there was no Cripple, there was no incandescent mana, there was nothing, just an open rupture lining the red-gold metal.

"That was way too loud," Shiv commented to himself. Cripple was there earlier. It must have heard him—unless it got distracted by something else. And that thought unnerved Shiv more than it pleased him. The way Cripple spoke to him made it clear that the Ascendant regarded him as an extremely dangerous threat. But there were other prisoners here. . He knew he was referred to as Priority Zenith from some of the guards' memories. But what about the others?

A piercing shriek crashed against Shiv's mind. He pushed back using his Shapeless Tides and barely managed to fling off the psionic attack. His vision was doubled, and his skull was still ringing. Shiv recovered after a moment but found his muscles shaking. The Deathless blinked and shook his head.

Once more, the shriek washed over him. This time, Shiv was ready to meet it. He unleashed his ripples outward and held the magic back before it could clamp down on his consciousness. But it remained a battle. He was pushing against layered tidal waves of translucent mana, and the scream just went on and on and on. Shiv tried to rip through the mana like he did with the Orichalcum but to his astonishment, he found the mana even denser, even stronger.

"Alright," Shiv spat through gritted teeth. "Maybe I've done a little bit of underestimating. Maybe my neighbors are Legendary too." And that made Shiv grit his teeth. A bunch of Legendary Pathbearers and monsters imprisoned in the same place. Now it made perfect sense why Cripple was missing all the time. The Ascendant was trying to keep this breakout controlled. Shiv let out a growl of pure strain as he pushed his arms forward. Against all odds, he began driving the Psychomancy back, and then his fingers dug into it.

He tore at both sides. His vectors exploded in opposite directions, and a gash formed in the Psychomancy. The scream was cut off, and what followed thereafter was a pained cry. The Psychomancy receded. It slammed backward more like a bubble rather than a destabilized spell. Shiv guessed that whoever was projecting all that Psychomancy had just collapsed their field back in on themselves. But still, all that force, all that strength. "Hey, I don't know if you can hear me," Shiv grunted through his labored breaths, "but I'll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine."

The unseen Legend didn't respond immediately, and Shiv licked his lips, anticipating another attack. But what he didn't expect was a faint whisper that trailed over his mind.

It was a deep, rumbling voice, like a bag of marbles being scattered down a stone staircase. The Deathless swallowed as he felt an uncanny rush of fear glide over him. The sudden fear came and passed with the psionic whisper, and Shiv decided to continue on.