Paragon

—Georges Archambault and Princess Plum Blossom325

Paragon

“How in all the godsdamned hells am I going to cook this?” Shiv muttered to himself. Back at the Swan-eating Toad, he'd been a confident chef, perhaps not the greatest chef, nor the most creative chef, but he'd been a reliable chef, one who never quavered or turned in the face of any difficulty. He was one who had experienced the true crucible of working under a master who was both unrelenting and unforgiving.

Shiv had done everything in the kitchen. He'd manned every station, skinned and prepared every kind of ingredient, known all the sauces. He even sampled the wines to know what went together. After he gained a Path, his experiences expanded. He learned how to compose exotic meals, hunted strange creatures, tested otter meats, and, with his Cooking Skill evolution, infused every dish with skill-enhancing bonuses.

Such was how he recovered from his neurological damage in record time. He cooked a Jealousy, and then he cooked even grander monsters, such as the Court Leviathan, basilisks, Heroic-Tier orcs, even his own flesh. Shiv had thought the size of a dish was no longer a factor. He'd thought he could face any challenge, overcome any ingredient, no matter how large or bestial the source.

His imagination needed work.

Never in his life could he have conceived of Princess Plum Blossom's sheer immensity, and never in his life did he anticipate being given an entire forest of kelp to prepare as a meal. And what a grand and magnificent aquatic forest it was. The flat leaves of the kelp undulated with the placid waters, radiating through the surface with a soothing emerald glow. Schools of long-bodied fish trailing pods of clustered eyes behind them swam and slithered through the subnautical trenches, feasting on pearl-shelled crustaceans that hid jellyfish-like tentacles within their armored shells. They sprouted out like risen ladders from fertile, midnight-colored soil lining the base of the edible biome. And frankly, that was the best way to describe it. Princess Plum Blossom was large enough to devour entire biomes. The bowl holding the kelp was enormous, wider than all of Lost Angeles before Sullain and his Tarrasque vaporized all of it. It also wasn't made from porcelain, clay, or any common materials. No, it was quite literally sculpted from the tectonic substances that made up a planet’s crust.

It was like someone had plucked a section of a planet free and used it as a holder.

That was what Princess Plum Blossom wanted Shiv to prepare. She called it a slight pre-appetizer. Something to whet her palate in preparation for actual meals to follow.

Shiv was a responsible chef, a brave chef, one who feared not labor nor difficulty. He would fail a thousand times and succeed through sweat and blood alone if that was what it took. But the amount of blood and sweat it would take to fill that aquatic basin was beyond his ability to estimate. Before the Princess, he felt small, literally. Now, his Cooking Skill felt diminutive, comparatively.

“How in the Broken Moon am I going to do this?” he whispered to himself once more. But while there was doubt inside him, there was also another emotion that rose in challenge: thrill.

He was excited; this was something beyond him. Beyond his knowledge. Beyond his expectations. Beyond his capacity to manage. But that was why he became a Pathbearer—to surpass the horizon, that which belonged to the world, and that which served as the borders of his ability.

A feeling of inspired heroism boiled inside his breast. Even if he failed, he would fail in the attempt rather than surrender before the battle started.

To do anything else would be unworthy of his title as Legend.

The Chef Unwavering cast a scintillating veil over every piece of kelp, every bit of fluid, every living organism, even parts of the tectonic matter sculpted to serve as a receptacle. His culinary instincts, whispering tantalizing truths to him, told him that every bit of the aquatic forest should be served to the Princess to satisfy her delights. It even gave him a hint about how he should go about this.

Pyromancy. Layered sections of Pyromancy. The bottom-most of the trenches should be boiling hot, rendering everything there well-fried to ensure the crustaceans were ripened from within. The schools of fish would then rise, fleeing from the heat to embrace and find comfort amidst the shade cast by the kelp. There, they would be seared into the plant matter, lining it with their internal oils and adding a dense flavor of salt to the ensemble. But Shiv needed to prepare the kelp plants themselves. He couldn't just let the heat run wild. That would ruin the vegetation and render the meal as something foul. The kelp would give this meal proper flavoring, and so he needed to preserve the state of the forest if he wanted to tackle this dish at all.

But that was only one way he could approach this creation—the easiest. And despite being the simplest approach, he still ran into a series of obstacles he wasn’t sure how to overcome. He needed to examine the organisms living near the kelp: the fish. He had to know how they would taste, if they were edible at all. How hot the flames needed to be to cook the crustaceans. The flavoring of the kelp when alone, the flavoring of the kelp when mixed in with the other lifeforms—and how all that changed with an application of heat. The aquatic forest would need to be boiled in its entirety as well. This required a Tier of Pyromancy Shiv simply didn't have, so he needed to find another means to heat things up.

Princess Plum Blossom's voice always held the edge of a smile. The Summer Court Princess was a cheerful sort, but the cheerful sort that would eat you without any compunction. One should never confuse pleasantness with morals. Princess Plum Blossom might act like a person, but she was closer to a monster in the way she viewed the world. She wanted to be fed. She wanted to taste delights, novel and delicious flavors; meals that were uniquely atrocious. The Princess wasn't picky. She wanted to devour it all. And that was another reason why Shiv wanted to stick around—if Georges spent any time in the Fairwoods at all, then he must’ve come through here. The man wouldn’t have missed this for his life.

“Just thinking,” Shiv finally replied, shrugging off the hurricane-level winds battering him from behind. “Trying to figure out how I’m going to do this.”

“Yeah, maybe later,” Shiv muttered. He was deep in thought to disagree. “I want to give this a good try first. You can eat me if you’re unsatisfied.”

The Princess chuckled.

Shiv just grunted in response. She sounded determined to consume him, but he already had a plan to deal with that. His Severed Shadow had faded into a faint silhouette, and it was currently making a run for the borders of the table—and the Summer Court. She could bite into his physical body instead and chew that to death for all he cared in the meantime. He would gain more than he lost if she could kill him, and it allowed him to escape and stay at the same time.

“Princess Plum Blossom, this honest knight has a declaration!” Toasty called out. The Bread-Knights lingered close and kept a close eye on Shiv, but had given him more distance since they'd realized their weapons couldn’t hurt him at all. One of them had tried to use some kind of yeast magic to infest Shiv’s mana field and soul, but that ended with their field getting sliced apart by his cutting aura. They adopted a more dignified refrain toward him after he injected a plume of enkindled flame into the offending caster. “The Deathless One faces this appetizer alone! Though he is considerable and strange for a Patternist, he remains small and pathetic, like all your faithful servants, incapable of feeding you by his own power. I think this contest unnecessary! I think—”

The Princess grinned.

The Bread-Knight froze as if a blade had been pressed to his neck. “I…”

Plum Blossom continued. Her emotional core surged with agitation. She was about to do something.

“No, My Lady!” Toasty cried in horror. “I only meant—”

“He means to deprive you of my meal,” Shiv said, seeing his chance to remove an ungrateful annoyance. “Because he thinks that I’m so uniquely bad, you shouldn’t get to taste what I can make. He’s making a decision for you. It’s almost like he thinks he knows better.” He added a sneering laugh.

Toasty turned and stared at Shiv, aghast.

Shiv declared telepathically.

Plum Blossom leaned forward in a burst of terrifying speed—so fast Shiv guessed her Reflexes Legendary at the very least—and loomed over her table, the piece of furniture larger than any mountain on Integrated Earth that Shiv had seen. The rush of wind that followed sent lighter plates and cups tumbling. A three-kilometer-tall glass of wine tumbled in a roll, spilling a lake’s worth of red wine down upon Shiv and the Faebread legion. The Bread-Knights shrieked in comical terror. Their horses shrieked. A wall of wine and glass smashed into most of them like a swatter greeting a swarm of fleas. The knights were flattened immediately. The incoming attack was more devastating than its weight alone—it would have taken a considerable cultivation of his Pillar of Orichalcum to resist.

Which was why Shiv through it instead.

Phase Frame 93 > 94

When Shiv returned, he expected to see the kelp forest contaminated with crimson swirls of wine. To his astonishment, the wine quivered and twisted through the air in crawling tendrils, held back from splashing down and staining any of the other foods. An invisible power guided it through the air in coursing rivers, and soon the wine ended up flowing away and filling a new and empty decanter crusted with emeralds and diamonds to the side of the table.

Princess Plum Blossom announced, seeing Shiv's confusion. She laughed heartily.

Shiv blinked. “You really weren’t shitting me about the Food Magic.”

the Princess replied, confused.

“It doesn’t. It’s just a figure—uh, is… is this Cibomancy a skill anyone can get?”

the Princess sang sweetly.

Shiv wasn’t sure if he should press further, but he couldn’t help it. “So… how does someone get it?”

She giggled. There was a twinkle in her eye as she examined Shiv.

“How's that for another hit of motivation?” Shiv quipped. “Alright, Princess. I got an idea of what I want to make for you, but before I begin… how long do I get? And can I get any help to help with the prep work?”

She pressed her colossal fingers together and leaned in closer, loudly humming as she contemplated Shiv's request

Shiv just stared at her. “Okay. So you want me to prepare a meal the size of a small ocean without any help at all?”

Her words lit the fires of rancor within Shiv’s chest, and that boiled away the impurities in his mind.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Turning away from the colossal Princess, Shiv crouched, and he leaped toward the aquatic forest of kelp. He speared into the water and continued plunging down. His Atlas of the Flesh Scryer allowed him to track the fish and the crustaceans present. Most of them gave him a wide berth, though they all kept careful watch. The pod-like eyes trailing behind the fish stuck out from behind the risen stalks of kelp. Something told Shiv they were trying to guess if he was predator or prey. Up close, he and the fish were about the same size; they also had rows of jagged teeth lining their bellies instead of filling their heads. The crustaceans, meanwhile, could be compared to small buildings, but they rarely lashed out at the fish unless the latter drew close.

A series of booming claps shook the world. Shiv ignored it. Princess Plum Blossom was doubtless amusing herself in one fashion or another.

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His Shapeless Tides spiked downward. Shiv plunged like a ballista bolt, and he struck the base of the bowl in a heavy impact. Dust and dirt filled the water, shrouding his position, and he proceeded to augment his stealth using his Creeping Void Skill. The schools of fish were in disarray. None of them dared approach while Shiv conducted his hunt. He found a solitary crab thing—dubbing it a Jelly Crab in his head—and prepared to pop it open. As he got within ten feet, its glistening tendrils lashed out at him, piercing out from ports and slight cracks between its exquisite shell. Shiv let the creature grasp him, felt the sting of strange neurotoxins seep through his skin and try to ruin his nervous system—a nervous system that had already gone recursive. Using his Eldritch Physiology, Shiv made himself impervious to most damage; however, there was still a little feeling of static strangeness creeping through his body. That soon became a source of strength as his Plaguefueled Skill activated, spiking his strength and size.

Plaguefueled 81 > 82

He grew a half-meter in a few seconds. It was impressive in most places, but he doubted Princess Plum Blossom would even notice. She probably had a hard time sorting him from another human, like he would a louse from a flea with his naked eyes.

Pushing through a wall of lashing tentacles, Shiv sank his fingers into the cracks lining the crustacean shell and pulled. A slight crack disturbed the waters around him. A plume of glossy blue fluid washed over his body, clinging to him like a gelatinous membrane. It tasted sweet and then sour, and then a coppery tang lingered for a moment too long. There was a stinging sensation in his eyes, and after a moment it cleared—absorbed by his Plaguefueled Skill as well. When his senses stabilized, he found himself staring at a mess of sloppy blue substance. It appeared to glow bright with bioluminescence, but in actuality, it was simply an organ that pulsated with a glow of surging electricity and gleaming venoms.

The soft, jellyfish-like tissues were a sort of internal nervous system that also doubled as a protective measure. It was grown into the exoskeleton, but it also seemed odd, like the crustacean aspect didn't fully fit with the rest of the organism. The crab-like shell was being worn rather than being integrated. The blue substance filled space within the shell, but aside from using it as a layer of protection, the brittle exterior served little purpose.

Shiv thought to himself.

Before Shiv could theorize further, however, a swelling warmth seized his attention. His core was resonant with virtue, and he felt an incomparable urge to rise out from the basin and defy the immense Princess—to demand respect and recognition from her, to force her to acknowledge his worth as a chef. Suddenly, a second urge overcame the first. He wanted to make the best boiled kelp soup forest in existence. Shiv was going to earn her respect no matter how many attempts it—

Something slammed into him. It speared deep into his soul, hard, and Shiv's soul flared with a flash of brilliant azure. Whatever struck him felt like a falling mountain landing directly on his back, but instead of pain, he felt an elation, an augmentation. He felt stronger than ever before, and his skills all grew, expanding, hardening, leveling. Shiv had experienced something like this before, but only when Adam blasted him with his Shattered Star. And just then, a whole list of other skills loaded before his eyes. He was staring at someone else's skill status, skill status, and there were a whole lot of things he didn’t understand.

Adam walked the Path of the Archer. Why did it now say Paragon? And what the hells was a Changeling?

A skill notification appeared before Shiv's eyes, one that interrupted his thoughts.

Skill Gained: Commander’s Foresight

Adam's voice boomed inside Shiv like thunder.

Shiv thought.

The dying Jelly Crab stabbed Shiv in his left eye while he processed what was happening.

Adam sounded lost.

Shiv asked.

Adam coughed.

A moment of awkwardness passed between the two.

Shiv asked,

“I can still feel him,” Adam said. The Divination link might have been severed by Shiv's cutting aura, but that bit of Heroism inside his friend burned hot. It was like a second sun calling to Adam, and where the fires of virtue blazed, they shone like beacons, severing darkness and distance in equal measure.

Pure instinct guided Adam as he called his Spellstring to hand. The bow gifted to him by the Composer appeared in his grasp, and when he instinctively tried to shape a Veilpiercer, the typical dimensional arrow didn't form. Instead, a massive shard of brilliant blue flame combusted into existence. It shone so bright that it drowned everything around Adam in a glow of pristine azure radiance. Waves of crushing pressure rippled out from the arrowhead, but with it also came a gleam of incandescence, of power, of the Shattered Star that once hovered like a halo behind Adam's head. The Shard of Exalted Flame was more than an arrow of Dimensionality. It was an arrow infused with the full power of his Domain. It was an arrow of fire, but it gave no heat to the world, yet served as a bonfire for all worthy souls.

And Shiv's soul called to Adam.

It still flared bright in the distance, far, far beyond the horizon. His friend was half a world away, yet practically before the Paragon at the same time. He knew where to aim. He knew how to guide his shot. As Adam drew the many strings on his bow back, the arrow lengthened into a lance of flickering illumination longer than his body.

It trailed flame like a comet's tail, yet it was not a physical thing; rather, it was a dimensional vector infused with divine weight. As the flames danced, so too did Adam's resplendent regalia glimmer in mutual delight. His blazing wings brightened, and each one revealed itself to be another shard waiting to be unleashed. The crown wrapped around his head went off like a solar flare, and tendrils of light twisted in whirls before sinking into his eyes like circuitry. His gaze burned brighter than ever before. The iris of his remaining eye vanished, and pools of starfire spilled out of Adam in beams of glory—searing twin paths toward where Shiv waited. Atop Adam's head, the constellation of stellar fragments spun fast. A path was charted. A virtuous soul had been found.

Instinct took hold of Adam's every action. He was not a Pathbearer who relied on intuition. Understanding was the Young Lord's way once upon a time, but now his very body had been usurped by his skill. All this felt natural. It felt more than destined. It felt like who he fundamentally was.

Nearby, the Culturist watched on with bated breath. His own eyes were wide, and he was wise enough not to interrupt the newly risen Paragon. There was something delicate about this moment. Something precious. Something that was happening for the first time.

Two Pathbearers, one an orc, the first of his blood to be unshackled from the cruel hand of his sadistic god in all of history, and the other something altogether different, stood within that emerald forest, drowned by waves of azure incandescence. From within the stomach of that gargantuan dragon, a shot was loosed. A shot that didn't tear a wound across reality, but rather threaded a needle of flame through it. Adam felt his soul sink into the tissue of Integration itself. He couldn't describe it. It was like a merging between him and the world. He felt closer to the System than ever before, but there was also a layer of insulation, a barricade that separated them inexorably. What's more, the arrow didn't separate from him. Instead, the arrow remained connected to him. More accurately, he remained part of the arrow. Adam could guide its path. Adam could see out from it. Adam could feel its flames connecting back to him in a coursing flow of incandescence. It was chained to his crown, bound to his constellation, bleeding out from his wings. At any moment, he could slip across, could emerge from the sailing shard that was a higher expression of his soul.

It wasn't just an extended limb. It was the shape of his soul itself. There was no difference between him and the arrow. There was no border between him and heroism.

He beheld as his Shard of Exalted Flame tore across the dragon's inner forest. At points, Adam demanded the arrow solidify, and it shredded through trees, severing them down the middle like a blade of unmatched sharpness. Then, with a change of his whims, it softened, sank back beneath the surface of Integration, and became an ethereal fire, slipping from point to point without ever striking the material, gliding across dimensions, swimming through the unstable tides of spatial mana that connected one world to another.

The Fairwoods, however, felt like they were encased in dense marble. He couldn't pierce through, and there were so many points that held him back, billowing tides of pressure that refused his exit. He could move within this place, but if he tried to travel the axis out from this reality into another or back to integrated Earth, he couldn't. It was greater than him still.

He remained caged, even with his great evolution.

But though the Fairwoods proved a prison, Adam found himself unfettered by their inner confines. His shard flew faster by his will. Its acceleration grew with every second it remained in flight. No longer did it travel in a straight path across the dimensions. He controlled how it moved and in what direction. To his delight, he realized it possessed the recoilless nature of his wings as well. It could accelerate and decelerate without a care for momentum. It could hover in place. It could wait. It could explode back into motion in an instant. And just like that, he had a new way of scouting the world. His Seer of Horizons peeked out from the arrow—could be cast out as well. The moment he did that, however, his physical form merged with the arrow’s flaming tail still trailing behind.

Adam was carried within his own arrow. His being echoed in the divine conflagration he left behind. And he felt heavy points of sensation from that which he struck in the world—azure-constructs of his person flickered and faded for some reason, and he felt his These Arrows, My Memory Skill trigger but do nothing. He wasn’t sure why his Propagating Salvo’s Skill Evolution had activated—and didn’t dare to focus on them overmuch.

He didn’t want to risk losing his focus or ruining this flight of his across the Fairwoods. He commanded his shard to travel faster, to seek that fading pillar of heroism he sensed in Shiv. He burst out from the side of the dragon and took stock of its personage for the first time.

The Culturist hadn’t been lying; the massive beast did have a sack of gold slung over its shoulder. There were also hundreds of winged Fae that clung to an even larger forest sprouting out along its back and from the plumes of its wings. Adam caught glimpses of other details as he shot away from the dragon. It was coated with a vibrant clash of colors. Green. Red. Yellow. Blue. It had as many flowers as it did leaves sprouting from its body. It was nature incarnate, but it soon vanished from sight.

Adam wished he could linger and behold the full glory of the great elemental beast, but Shiv’s presence was already fading, and he couldn’t stop and smell the flowers.

Adam commanded.

Shard of Exalted Flame 206 > 207

And then he burst through a threshold. Static mana crashed and flowed around him, carrying him across leagues of space in an instant. There were dense walls of blackness—now more visible than ever—preventing his departure from this dimension. All places within were waves upon which he could ride, and there was a single point in this chaotic sea of space magic that called to him—a tower of brightness far, yet not so far away. Distance was just a factor of frequency in this place, and the constellations connected to the arrow shifted in configuration. Suddenly, it dipped down into the waters of Integration, and then surfaced right in front of the tower Adam sought, hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers away.

He surfaced back in reality and struck Shiv dead-on. A crash resounding with power detonated. Adam’s soul shuddered as he found himself stumbling forward, staggering in a place of azure brightness—nested inside the existence that was his friend.

Shiv had a lot of heroism inside him, and that translated to an ample amount of space. As Adam moved about, he realized their souls were stacked over each other as well, and sharing skills took only a thought.

Thought was another thing. Shiv’s inner monologue spilled over into Adam and vice versa.

The moment was sublime. Weird. Wonderful. Empowering.

They were both still strangers in a strange land in the Fairwoods, but together, they burned brighter than ever before, and it was that unity that made Adam feel a kind of righteousness that strengthened his soul.

You have performed an act of self-worship…

Domain strengthened

Shiv snorted.

The Paragon laughed aloud inside his friend’s soul, his voice resounding like booming thunder.

And then the mockery went as fast as it came, and only gratitude remained.

It wasn’t exactly a thank you, but that wasn’t needed between them anymore. All of them owed each other more than a life. After a while, there was no more score to keep.

Shiv said.

Attention: Character Uva Mettabon has severely deviated from designated character development track.

Resetting Seasonal Narrative in 3…

Shiv's thoughts froze. he hissed.

Resetting Seasonal Narrative in 2…

Adam didn’t fully know what that meant, but something felt wrong. There was a hostile presence to the world—a rival flame that moved in a place adjacent but parted from his own Domain.

Resetting Seasonal Narrative in 1…

Without any warning at all, the world around Shiv turned into a fluttering mess of pages. However, the pages were now rushing from left to right, and Shiv felt himself lurch back in time and action. He felt an agonizing pain as Adam was wrenched out from him—but before he could scream, he was back, slamming the crust of the crab shut, shooting back up through the water, speaking in reverse with the Princess, and back further yet. The world around him blurred faster and faster, until he was tearing his back into that dense mess of gravy, and then—

Darkness.

For a heartbeat, Shiv lost track of everything.

And then a series of recent notifications loaded again, causing a disturbing feeling of déjà vu to take hold.

Restarting Narrative Cycle

Commencing Season of Spring

Phase Frame 90 > 93

Eldritch Physiology 68 > 80

Bifurcated Processing 86 > 89

Inertial Overdrive 271 > 278

Vitality Drain 138 > 150

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 514 > 523

Skill Reclamation Resisted: Lord Commander of the Slumbering Uneaten (Narrative) retained

Warning: Unable to retcon Unique Skill Levels gained for character Tanner “Shiv” Lowe.

Non-Sequitur (Unique) 185

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul (Unique) 219

Shiv remembered… He remembered… He remembered flashes of speaking with Adam, of having been here already.

Restarting Narrative Cycle

Commencing Season of Spring

Once more, the flame of consciousness ignited within Adam, but this time, he didn’t spend so long on the ground. He shot back to his feet in an instant, but instead of seeing the autumn forest all around him, he found himself lying on a vast beachside, with pristine blue waters crashing just in front of him and a salty breeze tickling his nose. A groan escaped the Paragon. He lifted his head and spat out a mouthful of sand. “There you are, System. I was wondering why everything was going so smoothly. Just waiting for me to drop my guard so you could stab me in the balls, weren’t you?”

Character Uva Mettabon is advised to behave for this cycle.

An eighth forced reset of the narrative will result in penalties to your arc.

As he stared out over the vast ocean before him, Adam paused. “Wait—?”