(I) Master

-25 (I)

Master

Vitality Drain > 7

As it turned out, even a woman with multiple Master-Tier Skills could be surprised. And who could blame her? It wasn’t often that one was attacked by a set of skeletal armor—a set of skeletal armor made from the literal bones of the man it held a moment prior. A man who, in an apparent moment of fatal madness, unleashed all the blood and viscera in his body all over his opponent as if a final act of spite.

Shiv wielded his armor like a puppet, using its arms to strike at Harkness. When his attacks were launched off course by whatever strange skill she had protecting her, he attacked her from several more angles, and via different means. The bone drill slammed into her back—and glanced off at an angle. The kitchen knife descended on the back of her neck but was thrown off course, cleaving nothing but open air. Only Shiv’s Vitality Drain did any true damage.

That was something even a Master-Tier opponent couldn’t resist.

But as her inner flame flowed into him, Shiv tasted just how much power her soul had. Her vitality was It might have been the greatest amount of vitality he felt in a person so far. If the first raven Shiv fought was a raging inferno, then Lady Harkness might as well be the sun in the damned sky. And to his astonishment, rather than writhing in pain while crying out in confusion like most of his adversaries before, she him immediately.

she said, her voice like thunder gracing his mind. With a single off-hand parry, she swatted his armor off course, shattered the blade of his kitchen knife, and launched the rounded edge of Shiv’s bone drill into the ribs of an unprepared Umbral. Shiv held his position and drained as much as he could, but then he felt her his mind.

His consciousness rattled and in places. Shiv thought he knew pain when he experienced purification in the teleportation anchor. He was wrong. For the brief moment she crushed his mind, Shiv was It was only because of Uva’s shrouding that he didn’t shatter immediately. Even then, it felt like how he imagined pieces of steel slicing through the soft tissue of his brain would.

“Oh? You haven’t cracked yet? Impressive. Whoever made your protections is truly talented.” Harkness’s blade flashed. Two more clones of her suddenly appeared, swatting aside a wave of azure arrows and even knockingthe off course. Fire and lightning curved around the owl’s body, as if terrified of striking her. Through it all, she continued staring at Shiv, studying him with interest. “Well. Do continue. I want to see the depths of your capability.”

Pushing through the sea of torment, Shiv planted both of his ghostly hands on her again and . But while he did, he turned his focus to where his armor lay. He remembered how she slew him last time, stabbing at his exposed flesh and not the exoskeleton. Shiv extended his Biomancy field and fused the bones of his previous corpse with the armor. New ribs filled the gaps in the exoskeleton’s torso. He sculpted most of the remaining bone to create a dense layer of plate—and even inserted his newest skull into the chest. The excess matter he used to repair whatever nicks and fractures lined his armor. He also added bladed edges to his shoulders and elbows—so he could better slice and cut during a grapple.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Of course, Harkness noticed this too. She followed his Biomancy as she him to drain from her, nodding her head as if impressed. “Well. It seems you’re still a boy indeed. How very… and But I do like it. I have always had a taste for people who wear their nature openly. Like a moth has a taste for flame.”

Valor called out to her from his armor, but whatever the dagger said was lost over the chaos of battle.

Though the remaining agents of Aviary were being slaughtered and Yunni’s mana bomb was badly damaged, the Quest remained incomplete. Furthermore, with each gleam of Harkness’s rapier, another instance of her would emerge somewhere, strolling off as if she was taking a leisurely walk while twirling her blade in a mock salute. Umbrals rushed her. Adam launched a tide of arrows at every clone of the owl he could see.

But Harkness was too arrogant—or lazy—to even respond with proper blocks anymore. She let spells and blades and arrows and halberds hit her over and over. And every last strike twisted violently out of her way, choosing to crash into the ground or tumble off in another direction altogether. It was like her body was maintained by a directing field.

Shiv found himself awed—and . If this was what it meant to be Master-Tier, then he couldn’t wait to find out what Momentum Core would let him do—because he had a Master-Tier Skill now too, thanks to Harkness.

And so he might just have one more surprise for her when he resurrected from this death.

She watched as the shadows condensed around his body, sinking a gloved finger through the darkness as if curious about its composition. “How very interesting. You’re not dead at all, it seems. You’re a continuation of the same vitality signature, even after the destruction of your material vessel.”

Shiv thought. Harkness’s eyes flashed with a surge of mana, and her green irises became as if emeralds beneath starlight.

“Deathless,” she breathed. She sounded almost… excited? “How apt. And you have skills that I cannot perceive? At least two Legendary Skills, then. Oh, poor boy, you tease my curiosity so. Fine. If the System won’t let me see, I’ll just find out from your—wait, where did that come from? Your Reflexes… weren’t they just Initiate?”

Shiv didn’t answer her question as he resurrected. Instead, he called his newly-improved exoskeleton to him, the armor unfurling into petals of bone before closing around his fracturing shadow. He returned to life, already encased in a protective shell, but Harkness just hummed and thrust her blade at his neck where the armor was thinnest.

Despite the strike being a nonchalant jab on Harkness’s part, it was still impossibly fast. Shiv blinked, stunned that he could track the incoming hit—even if he was still dramatically slower. Yet Harkness was a Master among Masters, and her blade split a clean gap in his armor. A clean gap that required more effort on her part to completely punch through to where his flesh awaited. Only then did Shiv manage to react. His Reflexes felt far faster right then, but he was still nothing compared to the owl’s speed—even the elemental golem he fought earlier was faster.

For the briefest of moments, Shiv wondered if the System notification was wrong, if he hallucinated that Master-Tier Skill Evolution. But as he moved, he felt like part of reality moved with him. Then the first distortions appeared. They manifested as faint ripples around his body, translucent tides of energy crashing against him as if his being was a shore. A few other things became apparent to him as well.

The world around him was slowing—and doing so fast. Spells and attacks previously too fast and hard for him to track were becoming observable, but more noteworthy was how the few projectiles that passed close by him stalled drastically as rippling currents of energywere ripped out of them before splashing into Shiv. But it wasn’t just the projectiles that were affected. Of all things in motion, Harkness slowed the most. The progress of her rapier stalled while Shiv felt his own Reflexes Just enough to save his life.

Shiv felt the tip barely kiss his neck before he launched himself off to the side.

As he stabilized himself using his Biomancy, he closed the hole she made in his armor and called his bone drill back. Inside, it felt like his body was caging a growing thunderstorm. Something was building: a force that was only partially fed from his recent evasion.

Harkness staggered, her balance lost. She slowly turned to gaze at him a moment later, and Shiv realized all her clones were doing the same. They weren’t even focused on the other combatants anymore, choosing all to zero-in on him.

“You had my curiosity before,” she began, rubbing at the tip of her rapier between two fingers. “Now, you have my interest.”

Shiv didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Shit,” he muttered.

And then she and five other clones practically teleported from where they stood, driving their blades into his armor. Once more, he felt her chip through his exoskeleton—but he delayed her points of penetration by actively concentrating and reshaping the bones using his Biomancy. At the same time, he sensed the flowing paths of her as her blades drew close to his body—something he failed to notice earlier.

Whatever absorption he performed during her first strike was purely instinctive. Now, his Reflexes amping up and a raging power rattling at his very core, Shiv focused on the waves pulsing out from her blades and reached out to touch them. A shudder of energy rushed through his form as he grasped and then the very momentum out of her strikes.

Momentum Core > 55

Parry > 24

Biomancy > 36

Three of Harkness’s clones staggered to an abrupt halt. All the motion in their bodies vanished—was sucked out of them into the building maelstrom of momentum that was Shiv. However, her final two clones were merely slowed. Slowed because the raging cataclysm within Shiv reached an unbearable peak.

For a moment, it felt like the world stood still. With all the momentum surging through him, Shiv found that his Reflexes were supercharged as well. He could practically count each of Adam’s arrows passing through the air, see the surviving force of Umbrals and Weaveresses trying to push through the owl’s clones to assist him, and read the astonishment in Harkness’s wide, green eyes.

Then, she surprised him in turn by .

And the remaining two Harkness’s clones thrust .

Shiv felt these blades slice through the dense knots of bone he composed and press against flesh. He tried to absorb more of her momentum, but his insides flared with explosive pain. That was the limit of energy that his Momentum Core could store for now—and he wouldn’t be able to endure all this energy for long. He needed to it. Before it boiled him alive from the inside.

And so he did the only thing he thought was logical. He called the bone drill into his hand, picked the closest of Harkness’s clones that he stole all momentum from, aimed his weapon at her face, and released the storm inside.

An enormous blast of force exploded out from Shiv like a tidal wave—pushing the blades still sunken into his armor back out. A veil of sound burst around his body, and the air briefly combusted into flames, lighting up the dim cavern. Though the initial detonation of kinetic energy simply folded around Harkness’s many bodies, something very different happened as Shiv drove the tip of his drill into her mask.