Contender

—The Galloper to the Culturist386

Contender

Pillar of Orichalcum 496

“I fear we might have hit a point of diminishing returns,” the Culturist commented.

“Magygghayaggg!” the lump of Shiv replied in defiance. It was a bit hard to tell someone you wanted to keep going when your tongue was lost in the back of your skull.

Shiv's red-gold pillar shone brighter than ever before. His Toughness had never been greater, and his deformation and wounds never more severe. Where once his Pillar of Orichalcum rose high into the sky like a defiant fist, now it was bent, dented, ruptured, and cracked along its length. The very same brutality had been visited upon his person at the core of the spire. The combined efforts of his myriad mentors deprived him of his limbs, gouged his eyes, shattered his jaw, collapsed his skull, and saw his organs pushed through the breaches left in his body in pulsing bags of viscera.

Yet, despite the devastation and agony they visited upon him, Shiv was far from death. In fact, he thought he could endure a few more blows. But there was little point in such suffering. He had already squeezed what level spikes he could out of his repeated deaths.

Between the Culturist, Valor, Jessica, Hymn, Tulveg, and later even Ekkihurst, his injuries proved both diverse and brutal. But with all the deaths and wounds Shiv took over the last few months, he was practically an archive of fatalities unto himself, and now that he drew close to a Legendary-Tier Toughness Evolution, all the low-hanging fruit had been plucked barren from the branch.

The Culturist dabbed at his jaw with a handkerchief, wiping away the slight bit of perspiration that had built. Jessica, meanwhile, was guzzling gallons of water, trying to get her breath under control. She had gotten carried away beating Shiv, and at several points, he heard her cry out Roland's name, asking him to scream louder and if he enjoyed the feeling of a sword cleaving through his small intestines.

Shiv contemplated telling her to take it down a notch, but ultimately decided that she deserved this bit of catharsis. In the end, one of the major reasons she was helping him at all was to use him as an instrument of vengeance upon Roland.

the advised.

“Sculptor, if you would please,” Tulveg said. His expression was wrought with discomfort and pity, and Shiv recalled the vampire turning away when the training was at its zenith. As Ekkihurst’s flesh grew resplendent with mana, everyone was shrouded in that vibrant red, and the great platform in this dimensional coliseum was drowned by a new hue that defied the dark and static. All the blood that had been wrung from Shiv's body was scooped up by traveling dots of red.

Tulveg used his spell-tumors to travel across space and flesh, draining away the mess that was left upon this hidden arena. Tulveg was prompt about cleansing away the gore and grime; the violence he witnessed sorrowed his heart and left him burdened with darkened memories. His mind grew heavy, and the translucent ether thickened until it was a near-tangible mist that weighed down upon his heart. Like Angelo, Tulveg hated the First Blood, and also like Angelo, his parting had not been kind. Whatever the Bloodlines did to him, it left him scarred in ways that still lingered.

Shiv thought.

The paramour of Uva's long-dead mother was simply one of many enigmas that surrounded Shiv and trained him for this coming bout. And he was another Shiv needed to deepen his relations with so that Gate Piety would find itself a power rather than a pawn.

Shiv's thoughts turned to the other vampire present. His body was like a bag of broken glass pieces clicking back together, bones and sinews snapping back in place. Muscles were woven and stitched onto the skeleton as the fragments that filled Shiv's battered form were drawn like pieces of a puzzle, rendered to their original pristine form.

At the same time, a stream of pitch-black impurities was harvested from Shiv's body, and it hovered as a festering cloud over Ekkihurst, which he promptly formed into a crown. It hovered around him in pointed spikes, each one a sour taste that stained the world and altered the air with a pestilential glow.

Each spike called out to Shiv, a source of disease and infection he could send his plague flies to consume.

As he flexed his fingers and rolled his shoulders, he narrowed his eyes at Ekkihurst’s crown. “What'd you just pull out of me anyway?”

“Ah! Genetic detritus! Plastics! Inflammation!” Ekkihurst rattled off a near hundred other conditions Shiv suffered from the beatings he'd sustained, and shook his head with a joyous sigh. “I must confess, Deathless, your fortitude puts most vampires to shame, even if our bodies can be restored. Our minds, so fragile; the younger bloods, so weak; the current progeny are so unwilling to delve through discomfort and experience the true joys of biology.”

He took a half step closer to Shiv as his dark eyes gleamed with appreciation. He was an artisan who'd just discovered the most fabulous material to chip and carve and the most delightful tool in one, one that put all previous brushes and chisels to shame. “Not you. We are going to do great things together, dear boy. Great and terrible things.”

“Not sure how I feel about the terrible part,” Shiv grunted in reply. “Alright. I’m fixed. Let’s go again.”

“No,” the Culturist said. “You are approaching your Delve, and the deaths we inflict are no longer getting their desired results. Even if we were determined to drive you toward another Legendary Skill Evolution, there would be no guarantee you would arise in time—and the Gate needs your functional presence now. And besides, I fear it will not be your Toughness that allows you to prevail. It is merely the vehicle that will grant a chance to seize any potential opportunities that present themselves.”

“Not sure if I entirely agree with that,” Shiv replied, the itch of combat burning hot inside him. “Every Legendary Skill I get changes things. It makes me different. It makes the way I fight different. Legendary Toughness might let me surprise Roland—force this into a battle of attrition.”

Jessica began to shake with mocking laughter, spilling water all over herself. “Yeah, no, you’re not doing that dumb shit. Attrition just means Roland will keep firing arrow after arrow into you while you have to take it. We've been beating on you, kid, so that you're tough enough to shrug off most physical attacks. All the tides you've been building up will be great for magical attacks, but here's the thing: he'll wear you down, and probably within a day at most. You're a slab of pig iron, but if you hit the same point with enough shots, even pig iron will shatter.” She flicked her hand, and a distortion shook the air. The invisible blade she'd been wielding in place of Rusty, who they were inside of, vanished in whispering streams. “Besides, no one's ever won a fight by taking a beating. You take the beating to land the hit. And right now, we need to find a way to let you land these hits.”

“Stealth and surprise will be your greatest allies,” Valor declared. “With your current Toughness, you will be able to execute on these strategies, so now our focus must turn from the simplicity of this brutal conditioning to seeing you develop new options Roland has never faced before.”

Shiv grinned. “Well, I got some of those already.” He demonstrated his by dodging out of context in front of everyone, leaving them gawking and lost as to what they were looking at.

Backstage again, Shiv prepared to cross over once—

“Hi, asshole. Long time no see.”

Shiv froze, and he turned to greet the girl who didn’t exist. She looked the same as she did last time, her father's golden hair, her mother's emerald eyes, and a deep scowl that gave Shiv the impression of a hawk in conjunction with her aquiline nose. But there was something different about her—a growing presence that made her seem realer than before.

“Uh, hey,” Shiv coughed. “Been a while.”

“Fuck you,” she spat. “It’s been a week. A week of being back here alone.”

“I was kind of distracted.”

“I know. But shit, man, what the fuck? I have nothing to do back here but stack rocks with your Garden and watch some orc fuck torture my family. Nice job protecting Adam, by the way.”

A blast of hot fury lit up the insides of Shiv’s stomach, turning him into a cauldron of fury. “Listen, I’m going to let you have that because I’m feeling some kind of way about this too. But he chose. I did what I could, and I did what he asked.”

“Yeah. And how does it feel to logically know that while emotionally realizing the Challenger made you his pain-bitch?”

On the stage of Integration, the Legends were looking at each other, trying to figure out just what the hells they were all doing in Jessica's sword.

“It hurts,” Shiv replied with honesty. “Is that what you wanted? Make it hurt just a bit more? If so, good job, you succeeded.”

The look on the girl’s face softened. “Nah, I don't want your pain. I just want you to know that I'm watching, and I need you to get a lot better, real fast. Even if I'm not real, even if I'm being unreasonable, I need you to keep my family safe, because that's what they are. Even if they will never know I exist, I don't want anything bad to happen to them. Adam, he did a lot for you; you did a lot for him. I'm gonna ask you to do some more. Make him right. Don't let this happen again.”

And though her voice was even, the emotional anguish it hid shone like a spotlight in her heart. “I'll do whatever I can,” Shiv answered. “I'll do everything I can.”

“Well, you better do more than that, Shiv, because everything might not be enough. It's not just the Challenger out there. The Ascendants, the North, the South, all of the surface, and the Abyss—they're all coming to this gate. They're all coming here, and they're all going to be at each other's throats, and all of them are going to be gunning for you because of that Quest reward on your head and the Quest reward for this gate being offered by Lord Scorn for the First Blood and Compact. You have a lot of enemies now. This little scheme of yours might even pay off, but if it doesn't work, you need to keep my brother, my mother, and my father safe, and so you need to find a way to get beyond everything that I can't.”

The Arrow that never was looked away from Shiv. “I’m not being reasonable. System won’t be reasonable either. You were made to defy by Udraal, so fucking find a way to surprise everyone! You want to beat the shit out of dad to heal your hurt childhood feelings; I want you to get stronger because with the Incursion and all the bullshit coming, there’s going to be a time you’ll have to kill a fucking Myth as a Legend—and endurance and raw force is not going to cut it. The simple days are over, Shiv. Time to devote yourself to becoming a real master.”

“Simple days,” Shiv said, struggling not to seethe through his teeth even though he saw her point. “Yeah. My days have been real simple.”

She sneered. “They have. Up till now. Just one battle after another, but it’s not going to be like that anymore. The battles are behind you, and now you’re getting into the long war. You’re going to have to pick where you want to fight, who you want to hurt, when you want to fight—and for what. You stopped being a brute for a reason and at the right time, because a dumb monster will just be bound by a leash—social or otherwise.”

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Callous though her words were, she was right. “You know, you could have just said ‘visit me more’ instead of pouring all this existential sewage down my back,” Shiv grumbled. “How very prevaricating of you, Arrow.”

“Ew.” The girl cringed so hard that a visible shiver ran over her. “That’s a really painful gerund right there.”

“The hell's a gerund?”

She blinked at him. “Oh, shit, you saw that word in a dictionary and decided to use it raw, didn’t you?”

He refused to answer.

“Look, learn some grammar rules too while you’re at it. But good job broadening your mind, because you’ll be needing a lot more of that to go with your stupidly oversized body.”

Shiv flexed reactively. “I’m not oversized yet: I can get bigger and sicker at the same time.”

The girl gagged dramatically. “Never say that shit to me again.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it sexually or nothing.”

“It sounded that way to me.”

“Maybe it's your mind that's dirty.”

“Who’s my mom, fucker?”

“Okay, I see your point.” Shiv sighed. “I’ll come by and see you more. Maybe figure out a way to tell your parents about it in detail or get you across.”

“Focus less on that and more on getting strong enough to make all the assholes shit their pants. Like Valor said, you need to use your Unique and rare skills. Continuity Error can be stealth, but you can’t stay here for long.” Her words rang true, for Shiv felt his vitality whittle away at a horrific pace. He had less than a minute before things became truly dire. “So, time to get started loading stuff into your Harbinger like the tomes say. If you want my advice, flood it with your cutting aura. That’s pretty good at ripping through everything material and chipping away at magic. Dose it some more with your Nihilistic Flames to give you a cooking shield or something. Maybe try mixing that shit with your Last Morsel so you can get something extra out of your meal.”

That sent a shot of inspiration through Shiv’s system. “Yeah, I don’t just need to rely on my Stealth Skill alone. I can hide with my equipment. Shit. I need to start cooking for this fight. Why didn’t I even think of that?”

“Because your gut is narrow-minded,” the girl answered. “Your intuition is good where it guides you, but you’re going to need to stop thinking in boxes—all your skills should help the others. You should be cooking special mixes with that Last Morsel all the time to give yourself an edge in battle. The way you neglected all the cool shit that frying pan can do is a travesty.”

Shiv grunted in discomfort and stared at the Last Morsel. Its edges glinted red-gold, and the dark depths of its base loomed with a bottomless hunger that seemed to stare back into Shiv’s being.

the Nihilist said.

“Yeah,” Shiv breathed. “Every skill in support of another…” He needed to change how he fought. Brawling wasn’t enough anymore; he needed to practice until he had hundreds of ways of dealing with his problems. “Can’t just try punching things as a first resort anymore: Gotta train to be a bit more creative too. And…”

His body turned, and he looked upon his garden. The damned eldritch domain was far larger than he remembered—all the stuff he broke recently had been added into the mix, with a large city's worth of debris obtained from Longinus’ hellish kitchen.

A mess of wounds he obtained from the Ascendant was also present; they burned as incandescent scars connecting the lacerations, bridging ruined edifices to crumbled blocks. But above all else was a new summit—a wound of all wounds that burned as a crimson star atop the garden like a stolen dawn. Chains of bleeding gashes, burst organs, and smeared gore-stains rose up like chains into the sky above, and there, as star and crown, was the Red Rider’s Hand.

“Fuck me,” Shiv muttered darkly, realizing the hand had followed him here. “No getting away from you, is there?”

“Yeah, and that’s a good thing,” the girl spat. “Learn to use the hand. Stop feeling bad about what happened to you and Adam and figure out how to mix that fist into the fray. I have a feeling it’s about as unbreakable as that frying pan of yours, so even if you can’t do anything else…”

Shiv picked up on her point. “I can use the fist as cover.”

“Yay! I taught him the basic subtext skill!” The girl who didn’t exist flailed a limp limb in faux enthusiasm as her sarcastic cheer needled Shiv. “I see you looking at me: You’re thinking about how much you miss dealing with my brother instead, aren't you?”

“Hm. A little. But I think I’m going to enjoy bullying you more than I ever liked bullying him.” Shiv bared his teeth at her. “You bite back.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Figure out how gerunds work first. You’ll felling kill me with your word-crimes. Now. Get back out there and get your actual training started before all your helpful abusers leave.”

“Wait,” Shiv said. “If I don’t know what a gerund is, how do you?”

“Because I’m literally watching shit from behind the curtain, dumbass. Also, the System is a fuck.”

“Huh. Is that a gerund too?”

“No, using fuck as a noun is mostly me being cheeky. Now, stop being a fuck and get back out there. Use the Morsel! Use the Hand! Make my father work for this at least.”

Shiv raised a fist in salute of his newest trainer and slipped back over into reality. The instant he reappeared, Jessica let out a muffled curse and flinched back. “Boo—”

She hit him so hard and so fast that Shiv only realized he was tumbling head over ass after the third bounce. He skipped across the pearlescent platform like a pebble flung across a lake. The surrounding air had been swallowed by a sea of plasma and force, and Shiv found most of his teeth bouncing around inside his mouth, his bloodied gums painting his tongue with a metallic taste.

With a casual flex of his Shapeless Tides, Shiv righted himself and halted his travel—being able to generate his own leverage offered more benefits than just raw strength. As he spat his red-gold teeth out in a blast of shrapnel, he used his Aegis of Assimilation to regrow his enamel—only to replace his own teeth with that which he had consumed from one of his basilisks. In moments, long, needle-thin blades filled his mouth in stacked rows as he felt his flesh ache and twist. The mana hydra adjusted his flesh to accommodate the new additions—but despite the discomfort and crowding, he didn’t feel any graft rejections follow. “Alright. Experimentation.”

It took a few seconds for the plasma-soup eating away at the world to dissipate. When it did, Shiv was staggered to find himself eight kilometers away from the others. “Good godsdamned shit, Jessica. The fuck did you hit me with?” He tapped into his Atlas and tried to jump into her perspective, but bounced off her body. “Right. Awareness-warded as well. Maybe I can talk her into letting me borrow that armor.”

For a beat, Shiv considered surprising her again to see if he could figure out how to dodge a hit from her by flinging himself into the future using his Harbinger, but decided against it. He didn’t want to suffer a pointless beheading and waste more of his precious vitality. He licked at his split lip, but found himself impressed.

A week before, that hit might have left him concussed and broken. It seemed all the ass-kickings he resurrected from did wonders to boost his will and skill—and orichalcum fed off both.

“How the hells are you still alive?” Jessica shouted at him as he returned. Over her shoulder burned a warhammer of purest gold. Its head was a shattered nest of swirling fragments, and from its core came bursts of Dynamancy so potent that Shiv could feel the gravity waves pass into his very bones even through his active pillar.

“You got a weak swing, I guess,” Shiv taunted in reply, yawning.

The Giantsbane’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see you. Little shit. All those free beatings, and now you’re using them against me. Yeah, I see you taking advantage of me. Keep your head still—let me take a few more swings if you’re willing.”

Shiv planted himself down in front of her and held out his arms. “Go for it.” He pointed at his lip. “See if you can do better than that.”

Jessica scoffed. “I’m gonna—the fuck did you do to your teeth?”

“Oh. You knocked my weak human teeth out, so I added in some basilisk biters.”

“Really. No shit.” Jessica’s eyes widened. “Damn. That’s some pretty good dental.”

“Huh? You think so?”

“Yeah. I’m not jealous of monsters about much, but with how easy it is for them to regrow teeth? Yep. Envy, envy, envy. I hated going to a Biomancer after every nasty fight back in the day.”

Ekkihurst, meanwhile, frowned. “Did you directly fuse the basilisk teeth into your gums?”

“Yep,” Shiv answered.

The ancient vampire’s right eye twitched. “I will ask you to take them out later. The anatomy of your jaw and skeleton is not aligned with them, and they are not anchored properly. I expect most of them will cause your gums to swell and recede within the hour.”

“I mean, I can just fix it when that happens.” Shiv shrugged—and caught sight of a hellstorm of restrained anger consuming Ekkihurst from the inside out. It was the truest outpouring of emotion Shiv had seen in the old vampire.

“Or you can do it properly and avoid such embarrassment,” Ekkihurst declared as calmly as he could.

Once more, Shiv read the subtext present. “Don’t worry, Sculptor. I’ll see this done right. Call it a proper Biomancy lesson.”

Much of Ekkihurst’s frustration parted in an instant. “I am glad that you are wise enough to see reason.”

“Wise enough?” Jessica asked, eyeing Ekkihurst. “What’d you mean by that, sucky?”

Shiv interrupted any potential reply to avoid seeing the Legends fight among each other. “Alright. So. Now that we can’t reliably level my Toughness through crude violence anymore, we’re doing surprise and stealth, right?” Shiv regarded Valor. “How’s what I just pulled for stealth?”

Valor was deep in thought, tapping a dagger against his exposed jawbone with a tick, tick, tick. “Potent. Surprising. But can you affect someone while hidden and forgotten?”

“Yeah, but it costs a shit-ton of vitality, and without dodging a mana-intensive attack, I can’t stay hidden for long.” Shiv paused. “It’s the main reason I survived my fight with Longinus. Also won’t work against Roland the same way because he’s not a god. He doesn’t have that much mana.”

“Correct,” Valor answered. “Roland is not a titan, but he is a Master above Masters. Even without all my skills returned, I can tell he does nothing thoughtlessly. He will not expose himself to you if he can help it, so unless you can locate and strike at him while missing, you will only have a few moments of respite.”

“Maybe,” Shiv said. “But I got more than one Unique Skill I can use against Roland.”

The Legends all leaned in.

“If you would be comfortable in betraying yourself to us,” Hymn commented from the back as he studied Shiv with a peculiar expression. “We might be able to offer you strategies and insights that inexperience cannot.”

“And besides,” Jessica said, releasing her hammer—and causing it to dissolve in a burst of starlight. “You’ll probably evolve some more different bullshit skills by the end of next week with how you’re going. So. Tell us about the special cards you got hidden up your ass.”

Shiv summoned his hollow flame in response and cleaved a portion of it away using his Last Morsel. “Be better to show you directly, because there are some bits about them that are beyond me right now.” And with that, he dumped his Unique Pyromancy into his frying pan before igniting its base and cooking his flame with itself.

A lid formed over the Last Morsel. Jets of glittering gray erupted from the sides as the Legendary frying pan did its work.

Cooking Recipe

Warning: Unique ingredient discovered.

Cooking time - 63 Minutes

“Huh,” Shiv muttered. “That’s a while.”

“What did you just do?” Jessica asked, tilting her head. “Did you just… cook your Pyromancy mana?”

“Yeah. Something like that. I’ll be able to eat it after and see what that does, but since the skill’s Unique, the ingredient will need an hour to process."

“How long does it usually take?” Hymn inquired.

“For just a speck of mana? A few seconds.”

Hymn’s brow furrowed. “How extreme.”

“The Morsel lets me cut non-tangible things too. Like shadows. Which reminds me—Valor, I got other options for Stealth beyond just a straight evolution. I can hide in the dark, or merge with the shadows, or become water. Morsel cooks things, and when you eat them, it changes you to be a bit more like what you ate.”

“Does it now?” Valor answered with a hint of interest. “We will need to examine this in great detail. But while we wait, let us not waste time.”

“Yeah. Hey, Hymn: you know I’m a progenitor to a new Eldritch entity now, right?”

The Headmaster’s expression tightened into one of curiosity and displeasure. “Somehow. Quite remarkable, since you have little to no knowledge about Outsider bullshit, and have repeatedly displayed a lack of interest in learning.”

“Well, not much choice in this anymore.” Shiv shrugged. “Here: tell me what you make of this.”

Then, without any warning, he swung his Morsel up at his own face.

And it bounced off.

Shiv smashed himself again and again, with his pan recoiling from his pillar every single time, ruining the moment. “Felling Toughness levels…” He didn’t want to waste any of his tides, so he adjusted. His mana hydra reared away from his body and splashed down, tearing into him and wrenching his flesh open down the middle as he refused to wield his Magical Resistance to guard his being.

Tulveg flinched and looked away while Jessica grimaced. “Okay, kinda—whoa!”

She shifted back as the Garden began spilling out from the gateway that was Shiv’s broken body, and the first thing that crossed over was a massive, gleaming fist that droned and blazed.

The Red Rider’s Hand erupted high up into the air like a climbing spire pointed in defiance of the heavens, and to Shiv’s surprise, it felt light and natural to move in conjunction with his Garden of Wounds and Broken Things. Even so, its true power was latent and slumbering, and seemed more an attached ornament than anything else for now. The rest of the Garden was dragged out in its wake like chains connected to an anchor.

In seconds, Shiv the man vanished, and Shiv the literal embodiment of devastation loomed as a colossus made from an archive of devastation.

“So,” Shiv said, speaking through his Severed Shadow nearby. “Breaking and hitting it just makes it stronger—”

Jessica tested Shiv’s claim by casually swiping her hand at his Garden. An invisible blade tore through his towering eldritch form as it was hewed clean through like butter. It was split open horizontally first—and absorbed the slash as part of its laceration-based architecture. Yet, as Jessica’s unseen blade arced from the ground up, it struck the Red Rider’s Hand and shattered.

A rippling burst shook the air as Jessica let out a surprised snarl, clutching her finger. “Fuck! I chipped a nail!”

Shiv blinked. “You were cutting me with your nails earlier?”

“Yeah? I was trying to toughen you up, not kill you immediately. But seeing how you took my hammer earlier and now this…” Whatever joke she wanted to make died as she swallowed. Her pupils shrank as the Red Rider’s Hand burned ever brighter, and a crushing atmosphere of wrongness settled over the world. “Hey, uh, kid… That hand’s under your control, right?”

“Mostly,” Shiv said. “It’s kind of connected to me, but I can’t exactly use it yet.”

An uncomfortable silence followed afterward.

One that was broken by Hymn clapping his hands together. “I petition that we find a new, more expendable venue to test this. Legend Valor! I strongly support your idea of sending Shiv back over into the Stranger’s Garden. Let us harass and abuse my wounded patron as much as we can as a pretense toward developing the Deathless’s most ominous capabilities.”

The Culturist, meanwhile, looked upon the hand as a defiant child might the belt of his abusive father. “Why did you keep it?”

“Wasn’t really up to me,” Shiv said. “It kind of just—”

A low, rasping laughter echoed through the pocket arena, and everyone aside from Shiv stiffened.

“Okay,” Jessica said, her goosebumps showing, her throat bobbing. “Tell me that hand didn’t just laugh at us, because if it did—”

“No, it’s my fire,” Shiv said, glaring at the spark of hollow flame sizzling nearby. “It’s just being a prick.”

Shape of Monstrosity 177 > 179

Jessica closed her eyes and growled. “Shiv. Call your Pyromancy a cunt for me. Thanks.”

“Trust me, he already knows.”

The Nihilist simply chuckled.