(I) Morsel

-Emergency Notification Dispatched by Auroral Council196 (I)

Morsel

As all was bathed in light, Shiv felt himself get carried across by waves of pressure. To where he was cast, he didn't know. He tried to fight it using his Shapeless Tides, but though his skill was Legendary, the power arrayed against him was overwhelming. He might have been a leviathan, but a leviathan was still smaller than the sea itself. Shiv struggled on, however, because he was Shiv, and struggling was what he did. He didn’t know how to be any other way.

Inertial Overdrive 167 > 170

Vitaemancy 114 > 116

Pillar of Orichalcum 249 > 255

Sticks and Stones 52 > 56

Plaguefueled 76 > 79

A few seconds drew on, and suddenly the pressure began to fade. A thud followed, and a sudden impact greeted Shiv's body. His splaying Vitae spread out, and he found himself lying upon a cold, hard surface. Yet the ground beneath him felt uneven, cracked, fractured, disjointed. The air was hot, and growing hotter with every second. For a moment, he wondered if the mana core hadn't been completely destroyed, but when his soul remained unseared, he knew he was somewhere else entirely.

Just then, the last of the brightness vanished, and he took in his surroundings. True to his tactile senses, the ground was fractured. Fissures ran across a large and mangled room. It was partially collapsed along the left side, seeming as if a landslide of orichalcum had plowed its way into the inside of another orichalcum chamber.

Shiv remembered how Dimensionality and spatial magic shouldn’t be able to hurt someone directly. But this looked pretty harmful, and there was no telling what that divine mana did to the Rubix Well either.

The slope melded into the ceiling, and the left side of the room was partially subsumed by another structure—one that resembled some kind of large statue or turret of some kind. It was too engulfed by red-gold metal for Shiv to be sure. To his right was a set of halls designed by a schizophrenic. Shiv could only describe it that way because he saw how the hallways were interconnected. There were walkways leading straight, and then they bent diagonally. Then there were other walkways pointing down from the ceiling at an angle, lodged into the former pathways Shiv saw. It looked like someone ripped and drove a mess of different hallways together, creating a sort of tangled mess.

And within one such passage came flickers of light. Usually, it remained dark, but now and again, something would flash. As Shiv focused his Farsight, he realized it was the yellow eyes of an orc. And not just any orc.

The big automata-clad brute was fused into the wall, and the Deathless could hear a pitched whine escape him. “Is someone bloody out there? I’m stuck! I’m stuck and I can’t get out! If you’re there, can you come out and kill me? Or set me free? Either’s fine.”

The orc’s voice was so choked and weak that a breeze would have masked it. Shiv crawled closer, and it was then that he remembered he had been slain at the end of that last engagement. There were notifications before him that he hadn't regarded, and one in particular caught his attention over all his new Skill levels.

Equipment Obtained:

Tier: Legendary

Condition: Perfect

Composition: Narrativium; Orichalcum

Enchantments >Mince the Unminceable; Cook the Uncookable; Bash the Unbashable; Indestructible; Binding

Shiv muttered to himself. But as he looked down, clutched within a tangle of Vitae was a new weapon, a new weapon that had consumed his stolen dagger. He was utterly surprised by its design, mainly because it looked completely ridiculous. The Last Morsel was a merger between a knife and a frying pan. At its center was a round rim, yet a ring of bladed edges jutted free from the pan itself, extending a few centimeters to serve as a slashing instrument.

A contrast between the blade and the pan itself followed. The body of the pan curved inward, and it was the kind of black that drank light itself from the air. That was no exaggeration. It was a darkness that radiated, a darkness that consumed, a darkness that desired to be fed. And where the room grew hotter by the second, coldness radiated from the pan, as if it led to a bitter expanse out in the void.

The blades framing the pan were orichalcum-edged, with… narrativium lining their cores. Veins of darkness crept into the red-gold, and at the very head of the pan was a jutting spear tip. The entire thing was the size of Shiv's head, and though it seemed unwieldy and looked garish, it was practically a feather in his grasp.

As he held onto it, everything around him came aglow with pristine light. The Chef Unwavering triggered and never stopped triggering. As Shiv clutched the pan tighter, the skill only grew, and it seemed to regard everything as a cooking ingredient. The walls, the air, the darkness, the light, himself. Everything.

Yet, whatever he focused on for long came alight with a black grid. The grid called out to Shiv, and the pan rattled—its bladed edges flared bright.

A rush of anxiety pulsed through him thereafter as he realized Adam and all the others were missing.

The core's detonation must have caused some kind of dimensional collapse. Mix that in with the divine mana, and Shiv had a guess as to why the cube he was in was so messed up.

He had no idea how to find Adam or anyone else, but if Mortar was here, maybe they hadn't been displaced too far either. And ultimately, if he couldn't find them, perhaps he could make enough noise that they could find him. That carried a risk, however. The Ascendants would also come looking, but right now, he wasn't going to leave Adam in this place.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Deathless moved, and as he did, he absorbed vitality from the world itself. The fabric of reality tore, and through it came tumbling distortions and anomalies that spewed all manner of unstable mana into the already destroyed chamber. Without anywhere else to go, and unwilling to rip open the walls before he explored, his most obvious exit was to continue down the hall and make his way toward the trapped orc.

By the time he reached him, he had resurrected, and there was a magical rupture in the room behind him. Lashing bolts of flame-infused lightning lit the Orichalcum behind him on fire. In seconds, the walls and floors were burning as if they were wood, rather than a nigh-impenetrable alloy.

The temperature climbed even faster after that, but it was a heat Shiv could bear. It was a natural heat, not a magical one. As he felt the weight of his new weapon in his hand, the orc wheezed at him once more. "Insul? That you?” Mortar squinted. “Get me out of this bloody place. Or… Just stab me with that…” The orc blinked. “Is that a pan?”

Shiv looked down at the trapped orc. "Is your body melted into the wall, or are you just trapped there?" Shiv asked.

"Don't know," the orc said. "Just get me out! Get me out! Please?”

Shiv began harnessing overflow tides. Orichalcum was a hard metal to breach, so this might take a bit of struggle. But there was a risk that when he tore the walls open, he might utterly crush the orc as well. As much as Shiv wanted to boast about his control, guiding his many overflow tides and applying enough force was still something of a delicate operation, and he wouldn't describe himself as delicate at all.

Just then, however, the walls before him flickered again, glowing ever brighter with The Chef Unwavering guiding his instincts. Something told him that he needed to cut the walls. Something told him that they would part before him if only he followed the black grid. Shiv thought to himself.

Shiv looked down at his new Legendary weapon and also at the corresponding grid forming in front of him. It seemed to want him to cut a tight square around the automaton. After a moment's hesitation, he followed along with it. As he cut, he felt the Mince the Unminceable enchantment activate.

For the first time, he tested his new weapon on orichalcum, and it parted before his touch butter. There was no exaggeration; it was genuinely like butter. The red-gold metal offered no resistance as it simply slipped apart. The darkness at the center of his pan grew ever more intense, and the edges of the blades flared bright, as if they had been left over a naked flame for hours.

As Shiv finished cutting the square out of the wall, his Deepest Edge caused his strokes to go all the way through, and a second later, pooling sludge erupted free from the gaps. It struck Shiv's body in a spray of brilliant color, and as it hissed against his badly wounded Voidmantid armor, he realized it was magma gnawing at him.

"Magma," Shiv muttered, and his mind caught up to why a second later. "Ah, hells, the volcano's flooding in."

"Hurts," the orc moaned. “Feels like my arsehole’s being cooked from the inside out.”

"It probably is. Alright. Let's see what I can do." Shiv pulled the carved chunk of orichalcum out of the wall. As soon as it slipped free, he saw a rush of molten rock come barreling toward him. Shiv put his overflow tides to good use. He seized the walls and began to twist with his vectors. The orichalcum groaned under the pressure, and Shiv hissed with strain as a wave of magma slammed into his chest. He triggered his Pillar of Orichalcum to resist the climbing heat, and the struggle continued for about five seconds.

With a final exertion of force, Shiv managed to twist the remaining orichalcum into a nub that stymied the flow from the outside.

The ground was bubbling with orange-hot liquid, and from the room Shiv entered crawled a creeping flame unleashed by the rupture. It wouldn't be long until everything was consumed by fire. But before then, Shiv had someone to free. As he carved more of the Orichalcum block holding the orc in place, the center of the pan groaned as it began to inhale, genuinely inhale. It was like there was a monster on the other end trying to suck something across. Shiv's heart did a backflip when the loud whistle of air filled the hall, and a rush of wind began plunging inward to the epicenter of his new weapon.

He stopped what he was doing and studied it for a moment, and after a beat of apprehension, he reached down and picked up a slice of orichalcum he had carved free.

"You want this?" Shiv asked. The pan wasn't exactly intelligent, not like Uva’s shield was. However, it intermittently breathed in and calmed, and that was as much of a signal as anything, Shiv guessed. He awkwardly fed a piece of Orichalcum into its depths, and to his surprise, the entire thing vanished into the black. Though the krichalcum was a large sheet, it began to curve and bend, as if falling somewhere distant, down a long well, before vanishing. Just then, the pan began to growl.

Shiv's second enchantment activated, and the room around him pulsed with new color. Gone were the black etchings marring the walls. Instead, now the darkness was focused on the magma at his feet, or rather, the fires growing closer behind him.

The Deathless blinked. The edges of the pan came alight. They grew even brighter.

Shiv followed his instincts, and absurd though it seemed, he sliced a piece of magma apart. It broke free, turning into a gelatinous, thick, cube-like substance. The change was so sudden and jarring that the Deathless took a step back.

"What are you doing, Insul? What’s happening!" the orc groaned. “I’m facing the wrong way—I can’t bloody see you. Also, there’s a fire coming for us, so maybe hurry.”

Shiv ignored Mortar for now, observing what he had just done with his knife. As he picked up the gelatinous cube of magma, it was still hot but was easy to hold. Furthermore, it was perfectly sliced. "Mince the Unminceable indeed," Shiv said. He picked it up and dropped it into the center of his pan, and once more it rumbled with delight.

Suddenly, a black lid slammed hard down upon the rim of the frying pan out of nowhere. Shiv nearly jumped out of his skin when it happened. A notification appeared before his eyes, and a countdown followed.

Cooking in Progress: 5 Seconds

He got his answer about four seconds later, when the lid vanished into a puff of black smoke, and a new meal manifested before him. The Deathless was utterly speechless, and for the first time, he was genuinely touched. The system had gifted him something for closing the mana core, and this something was designed to charm his heart in every single way.

"Shiv!" Mortar cried. "Shiv, I'm gonna shit myself if you don't get me out of here soon!"

Shiv, meanwhile, beheld the Last Morsel’s work for the first time. It wasn't a mess; it was a wonder. The orichalcum had been turned into glistening strips of red gold, and a pleasant aroma, hot, humid, but ultimately delectable, burrowed its way into Shiv's very nose. His appetite sang while his mind twisted and tumbled. It shouldn't be edible; this was made from a scoop of magma and strips of metal. Despite this, the texture looked so inviting.

"Ah, what the hells." Shiv reached down into the pan and pulled out his new meal. As he did, the pan suddenly got lighter, returning to being as if a feather again. Shiv hesitated for a beat before biting down. His teeth sank clean through the new meal. It didn't feel like a piece of meat, nor did it feel like any kind of vegetable Shiv had chewed before. The closest thing in texture was a piece of fried dough. It gummed around the corners of Shiv's mouth as his teeth pressed down. Then, it melted upon his tongue, unleashing tumbling streams of heavy flavor down the back of his throat.

The only way he could describe this meal was that it was juicy, and as he imbibed more of it, his body began to change. At once, his skin turned red-gold as his physiology grew even more like orichalcum. A moment later, however, his insides came aglow with a semblance to magma as well.

Cook the Uncookable Activated

Orichalcum Resistance Obtained

Heat Absorption Obtained

Rather than simply being able to ignore it, the rising temperature flowed into him for a moment, and he drew power from it. He was like a conduit for the flames, for the magma, and all the roaring blazes outside were wrenched over into him as if he were magnetic. Yet, just as quickly as the effect triggered, it faded.

As Shiv felt the magical transmutation die down, he heard his heart thundering in his ears, felt his breath coming faster and faster. "Broken Felling Moon, that's a hell of a kick!"