(I) Decisions

-Roland Arrow to Adam Arrow176 (I)

Decisions

As the situation within the valley-shaped prison broke down into a series of skirmishes, Adam focused his Awareness to find the next recruit for his team. The burning Pathbearer was already a reliable Vanguard of a sort, but Adam still needed a scout and a dedicated mage to complete a team ensemble. However, he wasn’t looking for just any Pathbearer to round out his team. He wanted to find someone who was desperate, who likely couldn’t prevail against the wardens on their own.

The reason for that was simple. It gave Adam the best chance of controlling or escaping from them if they proved to be dangerous, and the less powerful were usually more willing to band together. Such was the calculus going through the Gate Lord’s mind.

His Seer of Horizons accelerated down the valley as he searched for proper candidates. He saw a massive automaton that blinked from place to place, hatching into existence with knife-like petals. Wardens peeled apart in its presence, and the automaton let out a droning laugh of cruel triumph. As it tried to teleport once more, the spells lining the Orichalcum walls flashed, and the automaton rebounded, crashing back-first against the ground.

Adam considered going for that one, but a mage-warden immediately unleashed a bolt of bright-yellow lightning into the fallen automaton and fried the bot’s internal circuitry. Adam had heard enough automaton death rattles to know that the prisoner was lost.

His senses jumped again—this time going upward. The soaring prisoner from earlier returned. He resembled a sort of bird-human hybrid with flaming wings and blazing plumage detailing his body. Yet, blood was spraying free from a deep wound in his neck, and Adam noted a steel bolt in the man's throat.

Adam winced. The flying Pathbearer fell from the air and struck the ground with a resounding crash. A spatial pocket burst open nearly, and a small ground of wardens emerged with blades descending. The prisoner tried to rise one final time, but his limbs were taken, and his wings thereafter.

A sound of a body crashing against a shield drew Adam’s attention, and he immediately projected his Awareness toward the source of the disturbance. The moment he arrived, he found himself gazing upon a fascinating scene. Twelve heavily armored wardens were surrounding a single prisoner using tower shields that projected vertical and horizontal barriers made from mana. The mana connected the shields to each other, effectively doming one of the prisoners in.

Through the magical sheen, Adam observed the prisoner and noted their capabilities. They were little more than a golden-green blur slamming against the shields over and over again, hundreds upon hundreds of times per second. Adam guessed they were Legendary in terms of Reflexes, far beyond his capacity to follow when time flowed normally. However, their strength wasn't very high, seeing how they couldn’t just break out.

“Friend. Hold. I found some fools you can hug.”

The burning man stared at Adam, and then let out a raspy laugh. “But there are plenty of poor fuckers to cook nearby, little guy? Why not them?”

Adam noted a group of badly wounded wardens just fifty meters away. They emerged from a dense veil of smoke, and were dragging other survivors away from the scene of a battle. Just then, a colossal impact shook the Orichalcum valley, and a rush of kinetic force came flooding toward the wounded wardens. Adam flinched as he saw a wall of flame surging over, but then one of the wardens let out a cry and parried the oncoming blast aside. The explosion curled up the leftmost wall as it rebounded from the warden’s shield.

“Bloody hells,” Adam muttered to himself. “They’re all Heroic-Tier too. At least.”

“Told you,” the burning man said, his skeletal fingers twitching under his flaming aura. “Deal with them first—”

“No. We avoid them.” Adam prepared an arrow and continued his explanation so that it didn’t sound like he was bossing the burning man around. Most Pathbearers hated being commanded by someone weaker. “I suggest that we avoid them so that we can build up our little ground anda guard station. I hate the bastards too, but I want to get out. Don’t you?”

The burning man froze mid-step and slowly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Alright. Wait, guard station? You know how to get to a guard station?”

“Not alone,” Adam said. “I know where they are, though. I can see through the gaps in these walls. I just need to find a way to get through the Orichalcum.”

The burning man studied the red-gold walls nearby and cracked his neck. His flames flared outward. “Give me a bit, and I can melt my way out.”

“Right. But we’re not doing that without someone fast. Someone that can intercept enemies before they get to you. I’m not going to be enough. But I know someone who just might be. And if we help them—”

“They’ll scratch our asses too,” the burning man finished, following Adam’s train of thought. “I get you. I get you good. Alright. Show me the next member of our club and make it fast. I can’t hold back the burn for too much longer. I gotta spend it on something soon before I end up popping.”

Adam frowned. He did notice the surrounding temperature was climbing fast. The burning man’s dot-like eyes turned into half moons. Adam got the explicit feeling that The Legendary Pyromancer was smiling at him. It was oddly unnerving. There was something deeply unpalatable about needing to rely on criminals and prisoners to preserve one’s own life against their own government. It made Adam feel like a criminal himself.

Pushing all thoughts aside, Adam primed a Veilpiercer and prepared to release his shot. But as he flexed his muscles and drew back on his hydrokinetic bow, something changed inside of him. Something completely burst and shattered. For a moment, Adam thought he was more injured than he realized. He'd sustained several brutal blows earlier, impacts that should have concussed or shattered his body, yet Werte reduced down to mere bruises and contusions by his Phoenix Riposte skill. Yet, there was also another detail: he felt no pain, instead Adam felt stronger than he ever did before, and heavier too.

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It was then that he saw some transparent particulates in the air flowing into him. As they splashed against Adam’s body, he saw how his flesh rippled, felt his very nature go softer, as if he was becoming fluid.

Skybearer’s Strength 100 > 102 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Hydromancy 50 > 52 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Skill Evolution: Skybearer’s Strength (Adept) - Hydromancy (Initiate) > Herald of the Deepest Fathoms (Heroic)

Particulates of moisture were drawn into his body, and his very flesh became akin to the surface of a turbulent ocean. Waves crashed around Adam as his Hydrokinetic bow became less like a stable water construct and more like a raging tsunami compressed into a curving shape. More uncannily, Adam could feel the tsunami as if it were part of his flesh. And that was because it .

Adam thought as he observed the skill. He had heard of the Skill Evolution before, and the fact that he'd obtained it left him utterly perplexed. It wasn't a common skill evolution for a human, instead it was more often found in Elder Merfolk who specialized in ranged combat, or certain krakens that survived long to gain sapience and commit themselves to archery.

Thanks to Adam's knowledge, he knew the general way this skill worked, and a smile appeared on his face just as he turned entirely into liquid. Despite the misery pressing down on his mind because of the fact that he was in this prison and how his own Republic had betrayed him, a faint note of triumph played in the depths of Gate Lord Arrow’s heart.

The world could be cruel and savage, the System might be out for his blood, but with every battle Adam survived, he became a bit more than who he used to be. The Ascendants were going to discover the folly of not killing him when they had the chance.

"You alright there, little guy?" the burning man asked, regarding Adam with body language that spoke of worry. “You feel a lot wetter than you did a moment ago.”

“I feel—” Adam paused. It was then that he realized that the burning man apparently couldn’t really see.

"Don't mind me," Adam replied, “I’m just building up a bit of strength for my skill.”

As he gathered more and more moisture from the air, a dryness consumed the surrounding space, and his physical form vanished entirely. He was now a goliath shaped from crashing waves, a behemoth forged in the ocean's depths that barely retained the dimensions of a human. With every bit of water he absorbed, so too climbed his strength; so too grew the pressure that gripped his very core. But it wasn't painful pressure, instead, it was a power that Adam enjoyed. Rather than relying on his muscles, Adam felt like an incarnation of the ocean itself.

He drew back on his new bow like never before.

A dense cord shaped from surging rivers was drawn past Adam's water-forged ear. A tension built along its length as Adam channeled even more Hydrokinetic power into the bow itself. By this point he was well over four meters tall. Nearby wardens with compromised armors gagged and died as their innate Magical Resistance shattered and the water in their bodies was ripped free, fueling Adam's ever-growing strength.

"When the dimensional pathway opens, go straight across," Adam said. His words were deep, and they came out not as if a human spoke them, but as if the crashing waters of the ocean spat out a cataclysmic roar. “Kill the wardens, but try not to burn who will hopefully be our new associate.”

By this point, other wardens had noticed him and the burning man. One of them pointed in his direction. Adam didn't care. A Veilpiercer formed along the length of his new great bow, and when he could draw it back no further, he let the bowstring free. The air before him detonated like a deafening thunderclap. A dimensional rift was torn open, its width three times the previous norm. The burning man flinched at Adam's awesome display of archery, and in a fraction of a fraction of a second, the dimensional arrow impacted one of the wardens doing their best to contain the blurring prisoner within their shield cage.

There were eight hundred meters between Adam and the warden he shot. They weren’t ready for him; he was stronger than ever before; the Veilpiercer had time to travel. The results were fatal. It didn't matter that the warden was clad in adamantine armor. It didn't matter that he was a Vanguard with considerable levels in Toughness to boot. It didn't matter, for when Adam's arrow struck the warden in the back of the neck, it was as if a hammer falling upon a beetle.

The adamantine plating guarding the man's supple flesh gave a sickening scream as it was promptly compressed inward. Adam caught a brief spray of blood as everything inside the man was pulped, his innards spilling free from the rinse lining his broken armor.

Veilpiercer 165 > 166

This provoked an immediate reaction from the other Vanguards. Two stepped out and swung their shields in the direction of Adam’s projectile. At the same time, Adam heard some of the wardens near him fast approaching. He used his Commander’s Foresight Skill and halted the moment.

As soon as he stopped using his evolved tactical skill, a faint ache passed through his skull. “Across! Across now!” he called out to the burning man. The momentarily stunned prisoner responded as if awakened from a stupor, blasting into motion. A flash of heat struck Adam, but rather than suffering any burns, the Gate Lord endured a rush of weakness as some of his water-mass was dissolved by the spike in temperature. “Well, that’s useful,” Adam muttered.

Just then, he felt a spike of magical pressure in the air and noticed a Hydromancy spell lashing out to cage him. As it struck his body, he winced as he prepared to feel his Hydromancy tear, yet found only a crushing sensation instead. He remembered that his Hydromancy had evolved alongside his Physicality and pushed through the spell with a shout. A crack sounded. An arrow arched over his dimensional rift and struck his body—and passed through without inflicting any actual harm.

Adam thought to himself.

He rushed after the burning man, accelerating into the dimensional pathway. To his pleasure, Vectors of the Eternal Ascent allowed him to glide from place to place with ease. His new body tumbled through the dimensional channel like a raging flood—no, not like. He was a literal raging flood now. If Adam had to guess, he was well over three tons right now, and if he gathered more moisture he could keep building on his Physicality. He wondered if there was a limit to his new strength—he would test that by draining as much fluid as he could from the environment.

As soon as he burst out from the exit, he found himself slamming into two wardens from behind as he doused some of the burning man’s lingering flames. The wardens Adam struck cried out, surprised and laid low by his sudden emergence. He tore free from his own rift in jetstreams of water. Bones broke against him. Armor endured. But Adam lashed at more than just bodies now—he could strike Magical Resistances as well. More importantly, he funneled his down the orifices of the two enemies he just hit and felt them gag.

Rather than letting them fly free, he drew them deeper into his embrace and compressed his might inward. He held them there as he flooded their lungs, as he choked them while trying to follow in the burning man’s wake.

To the Vanguard Wardens’ credit, they hadn’t collapsed before Adam’s ambush and were holding the Pyromancer back. One of their number was channeling more mana into their shield, creating what seemed to be a pulsating dome of mana infused with hints of Pyromancy. The others stabbed at the blazing figure using a lightning infused halberd. Adam's fiery recruit was fast and strong, but he fought like a thug, without any technique. He let his enemies cut him, and where they nicked his bones, jets of flame spewed forth, splashing toward his foes.

Even through the clamor of chaos and battle, Adam could hear the burning man laugh. It was the sound of a building crackle. It was the growl of a forest fire yet to reach its apex. And it was drowned as two dimensional wounds opened up behind the two unsuspecting Vanguards holding the burning man back.

Adam unleashed a chain of Veilpiercers as they struck his enemies. The Vanguards folded as they failed to anticipate this asymmetric attack. It left them merely injured—yet that was bad enough. As they crumbled, more arrows exploded out from them due to Adam’s Propagating Salvo Skill. These new arrows zipped out and impacted the other Vanguards still battling to contain their fast-moving prisoner.

The Gate Lord readied another shot—but paused as the world went white in front of him.

A pure beam of Pyromancy erupted forth from the burning man, consuming everything in front of him in a cylindrical shape.

There were only a few meters between the Pyromancer and Adam, and the Gate Lord expected to feel an incense rise in heat, but instead, only the space in front of the burning man came ablaze. And what a blaze it was. At first, Adam saw the wardens as faint shadows. About three seconds later, there wasn’t even that.

And that was a good thing, as Adam was still building up more moisture. But he was having a hard time containing all the fluid that made up his body now. Every time he moved or took a shot, parts of him were left behind as he failed to hold on to them. The Gate Lord winced internally and understood what he had to do.

Just then, an alloyed spike tore through his chest. Adam felt something inside him part, but then meld back together. He realized the two Pathbearers he was drowning were making a last-ditch effort to get free. At the same time, Adam could hear at least fifteen sets of heartbeat nearby. More wardens were on the way, and he needed to deal with them. The first thing the Gate Lord did was spit the wardens he was drowning inside himself out at the burning man. The moment they tumbled past the Pyromancer, they were vaporized entirely, along with their adamantine plate.

Adam thought with a shudder.

Adam fired shot after shot at the enemies coming from behind. Between his vector wings and his fluid morphology, physical attacks either missed and passed through Adam without inflicting true harm, and magical spells were avoided entirely. Veilpiercers crashed into his enemies in an unceasing stream. Every arrow spawned more, and where he didn’t slaughter his foes immediately, he launched them against walls, sent them sprawling across the ground, broke knees, and shattered ankles.

A few wardens had strange skills of their own. One turned into a rush of wind when they dashed—but they were combusted by the burning man as he waved a hand, reduced to cinders in an instant.

“Oh, ” The burning man let out a near lustful shout. “I’ve been holding that one back for a good long while! Yeah! YEAH! Burning's good! Love to burn! Burn is love!”

With every word the burning man spoke, Adam felt his discomfort grow. The Pyromancer was a psychotic pyromaniac at the very least, and probably had a pretty good reason for being in this prison. But prisoners couldn’t be choosers, so Adam was going to keep using him and figure out the moral dilemmas later.