Core

—(Necrotech Education PsyTome; Banned in Yellowstone) 400

Core

Like most of Shiv's regrets, the thought arrived too late for him to change anything. The eldritch column slammed into him and consumed him in the same instant. It pulled him along and drove him deep into the mana core. And now he found himself lost in a space consumed by clashing magics, delving into utter chaos.

Originally, Gate Piety's Unique mana core was like a sphere of azure-colored soup. Inside was a mana derived from Adam's Unique essence. But now it was infested by Uva's Unique nature, and her tainted magic spilled into the sphere like spools of ever-thickening noodles that forked and branched. Seconds passed, and the metaphorical soup was filled by spreading strands. Soon, Adam's sky-blue colors were diluted by a kaleidoscopic infusion of shifting hues.

And there, tangled at the epicenter in a weave of translucent threads, was Shiv. His being burned bright and with scintillating flames, his Unique Pyromancy standing as a third variant of unique mana that shone in opposition against the other two. Fibers of tainted mana linked and slithered through Shiv without corrupting him further. Adam's unique magic simply bathed the Deathless and inflicted no harm.

From Shiv spread a wildfire that ignited the surrounding corruption. The branches came ablaze, as did the strings and the fibers. All that was tainted was kindled by his being, and the metaphor of Uva's magic being like invasive noodles was made ever more literal as Shiv's Nihilist flame began to cook the taint.

But though he flickered as a cleansing flame at the heart of the core, Shiv's time was limited. The meal's heat was meager, and he had minutes at most to inflict as much damage as he could upon the intruding eldritch mana before the resistance granted by the dish fizzled out.

It wasn't a battle that he could win.

As fast as he incinerated the corrupting limbs coiling through and around Adam's mana core, even more Eldritch webs sank in and began bundling tight. The taint simply infected far faster than Shiv could burn, and so in a battle of direct attrition, he could only delay the inevitable usurpation of Gate Piety for so long.

Even so, he still unleashed his flames with wild abandon. Every second he gave was another moment provided toward the realization of a proper solution. Between him, the Educator, Roland, the Culturist, and all the others, there had to be a way to solve this crisis. Shiv didn't have the knowledge, but he had raw power. He had raw durability. He had lives to spend, and he had Unique skills to wield.

He might not be the solution, but he could still be the bulwark—

A shroud of pressure gripped and shifted the mana around him, bending inward toward a sudden singularity. The colors that defined the mana core diffracted, and a new presence manifested. A chasm of static mana opened within the core, and through that spatial tunnel came a humanoid presence. One that seemed all too human, yet not close enough. Fingers and hands sprouted out from its back like a cluster of malformed wings. Its body was defined by too many eyes: red along the exterior, but sporting golden crescents where the irises should be.

Shiv recognized the abomination in an instant. He didn't think; he acted. His Last Morsel glistened with ripples of severing power, and he split both Adam and Uva's commingled mana to cut the Fingerling from the tapestry of existence.

“Deathless—” the monster began, before flinching back in surprise. “No, wait—”

Shiv refused. He hacked into the Stranger’s minion with prejudice, his cutting aura grinding through magic like a machete through branches yet gliding smoothly through flesh, but the Fingerling he faced proved wilder than most. It ejected a cluster of lesser Outsiders, allowing them to stall Shiv's blow and die on its behalf. But Shiv wasn't done. He prepared to deliver a second swing when something halted him. The Fingerling's head shone bright, but it emitted twin colors from two eyes. Instead of being pools of red containing half-moons of gold, its orbs burned with violet and translucence.

Shiv halted his blow before his cutting aura could inflict any further damage. “Hymn? Warn me when you teleport in. And why do you look like a Fingerling right now?”

The parted remains of a sacrificed Fingerling cluster rolled away in opposite directions—and then were unraveled into novel horrors by Uva’s unconscious influence. Behind the bifurcation, Hymn regarded Shiv with a flat stare. “It's rather hard to survive the Outside when one is not fully attuned to it. Not all of us can return from death like you—and practically none of us are so favored that we are bestowed the privilege of becoming a Progenitor on the System's whim. But I do take your point about the pre-warning. Jumping in without sending you a telepathic missive was a foolish thing to do. But we have scarce time before this dimension unravels and becomes a breeding pit for nightmares and Dreamspawn, so let's save our mutual etiquette-based criticisms for now and see about resolving this matter.”

“Fine by me. You got any ideas? Because this is the best I could come up with off the top of my head.” Shiv gestured at the tainted threads burning around them, the only reason why Hymn himself was not infected right now. Ropes of cooked mana plunged down to the base of the core like noodles spooling at the bottom of a bowl. “I mean, maybe I can cook enough of Uva’s mana for everyone to eat and give them some kind of Outside resistance, but if the entire Gate collapses, then anyone who’s sub-Hero is still screwed.”

“Sub-Hero? Well, you are an optimist. I would say everyone who's not a specific kind of Legend is going to die. Dealing with the Outside is not a conventional struggle, and you, the Culturist, and I might be the only ones predisposed to survive this scenario with a high likelihood. But worry not, Deathless. I have a plan so cunning you can stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. But to see it come to fruition, I need a few things from you and to inflict a great deal of pain upon you.”

The shrug Shiv gave was reflexive and automatic. “So like every other crisis we had to solve before. Alright, tell me about it.”

“First, we need to evacuate this vessel of yours from this place. We need a series of sacrificial bodies, and from what I understand, your Severed Shadow is actually the central piece of your soul—can't afford to lose that now.”

“I can swap places no problem, but the moment another one of my bodies comes in, I’ll either need to cook a bit more tainted mana so that they don’t end up getting turned into whatever weird shit keeps popping out of Uva’s fields, or—”

“No, quite the contrary, in fact,” Hymn cut him off. “I need your bodies to be tainted—and I also need your Garden of Wounds and Broken Things to be active within this core.”

Shiv's intuition screamed that was a bad idea—as did the Unique Skill itself.

The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things refuses to risk any more of itself in a dimensional clash.

“Dimensional clash?” Shiv grimaced at the sound of that. “Yeah, Hymn, we might have a problem there because the skill doesn't want to come out. Actually, I can feel it receding inside of me, like it's pulling away.”

Hymn’s form went still with tension. “Pulling away? Like, your skill awakened?”

“Well, I think it's had some level of self-awareness from the start. It got mad at me when the Stranger wiped bits of it out of existence. It warned me not to do that stuff again. Honestly, sometimes it doesn't feel like the skill is entirely mine. It's just that I can call on it and I can nurture it, but part of it is its own thing.”

One of the hands jutting out from Hymn’s shoulder curved down to perform a third-hand facepalm. “And this is why I love and loathe Unique skills. You can never predict what manner of madness results. Alright, we pivot. You have more than one unique skill, and you have more than one mana type that can correspond with the eldritch. Your new Cooking skill is interfacing with the taint right now. It can burn bits of it away. I think we can use that—you said it kindles from philosophy?”

“Seems so. Listen, if you got a way of giving me a lot more fire, then maybe I can fry all this eldritch mana until it all becomes edible.”

“As utterly ridiculous and amusing as that sounds, I have another design in mind: we're going to ignite you like never before. As your flames are contained in the place of the mana core, you will project that fire through the nearby gateway and into the Stranger's dimension, thus making this his problem.”

And all of a sudden, Hymn's schemes didn't sound bad at all. “Shit, why didn’t you start the pitch with that?” Shiv chuckled. “If you find me some fuel, then I'll pour as much flame out the gateway as you want.” But then something characteristic followed: Shiv considered the problem further, and tried to imagine what came next. “Wait, hold on. Is this gonna hurt Uva? All this is connected to her, right? I doubt the Stranger is going to be fine with us dumping all this waste into his Garden.”

“Oh, the Stranger will absolutely loathe this, but to answer your actual worry, the girl will likely be fine, I think. Probably.”

“I'm not doing this on a probably, Hymn,” Shiv growled.

“Oh yes, you are, because if you don't do it on a probably, then we’ll both get to experience what it means to survive a dimensional apocalypse firsthand.” Hymn sighed. “She will likely be fine. Really. The skill is tied to her in a way that I don't fully understand yet, but it shouldn't be entirely rooted in her soul. There's too much mana. That's too much power. It's an entire dimension, something only a god might be able to contain. So short of your girlfriend suddenly exceeding Legendary-Tier, whatever retaliatory damage the Stranger inflicts upon the Dreamtaker's leftover realm should not carry over to Uva.”

Should. Probably. Likely. Shiv was starting to hate these words. But when everything was going to hell, sometimes a gambit and a probability were all he had to go on. “Alright. Light my wick if you got an idea. Let’s make this that hand-loving asshole’s problem.”

The Headmaster said no more. Instead, his right eye and his left flickered in oscillating frequencies until the translucent shimmer overshadowed the gleam of Divination mana. Shiv observed him, trying to figure out what kind of Psychomancy Skill Hymn possessed—if only as a means of defense, should they ever become adversaries. Then, without further warning, Hymn’s mana field collapsed inward instead of expanding out, and a series of shudders shook the dimension as the mana spilling out of his telepathic eye poured over into the other glowing with Divination. Hymn’s twin magics worked as one. Shiv tried to decipher what he was doing, but found himself empty of intuition or theory.

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Then, just as fast as the process began, his eyes flashed once, and the glow between them equalized. The mana was balanced, and a commingled beam of violet translucence speared out, impaling Shiv with a flood of magic.

The spell diffracted from Shiv at first, skipping off his tides as a condensed beam of light would from ablative plating. Disregarding his paranoia, Shiv dropped his Magical Resistance and let the magic flow in. A second later, he found his mind filled with countless thoughts, harvested from thousands of minds. A wildfire spread through Shiv. Countless philosophies, beliefs, and perspectives were cast into the cauldron that was his scintillating Pyromancy, and the Nihilist roared to life like never before.

the Skill whispered, shuddering.

Where once Shiv glittered like a spark at the center of the mana core, now he was a growing chasm of fire, and all the mana around him was rendered as strips of well-cooked steak. Yet despite the explosion of power tearing through him, he remained a man wrestling against the world, and soon the outsider energies washed over him and would have consumed him if not for the meal he devoured earlier.

The bit of corrupted Eldritch mana Shiv ate allowed his fire to adopt similar properties to Uva’s tainted essence. As such, he burned the tainted essence and functioned more as a junction for the threads that managed to push through rather than an entity to be re-woven into a creature born from a thousand nightmares.

“How long will your immunity last?” Hymn asked.

“A minute? Not sure.”

“Hm. Not ideal. Merrielmel’s telling me that the Slipgate is going to take a while longer to set up. Can you renew the effects of your meal? It might be better if you act as a carrier than a sacrificial vessel. I underestimated your frying pan—for it to confer such culinary benefits… The System must enjoy your ridiculousness.”

“Enjoy?” Shiv repeated. “The System's responsible for all this shit.”

Hymn laughed. “Quite so. Well. Make sure none of this corruption touches me, and I will see your Pyromancy reinforced; in the meantime, are you the only one capable of gaining benefits from the frying pan, or—”

Shiv acted instead of speaking. He folded a corner of his Pyromancy and allowed the eldritch entities to draw closer. When that happened, he lashed out using his frying pan and carved a chunk of mana away from the outsider infestation. This time, however, Shiv didn't just gouge a bit of his own glittering flame along with the tainted mana; he also carved the groove out of Adam's unique essence, and so, as he cooked a new meal, it was to carry aspects from all three of their souls.

Shiv prayed.

Cook the Uncookable has activated.

Cooking in Progress: 28 Seconds.

As a lid fused over the Last Morsel, and a new emergency dish began to take shape. Shiv felt his current boost slowly unravel as his flames went from mirroring the surrounding strings of infectious mana to that of a baser flame. He felt his Nihilist grow tainted in an instant, and though his flames burned away some of the subversion, far more burrowed into him and drew closer at an alarming pace.

“Should’ve cooked a bigger chunk,” Shiv grumbled to himself. “Hymn. Get closer. This is going to run the wire.”

The Headmaster looked around and saw the shroud of Pyromancy sparing them from harm unraveling in layers like an onion. Creatures of pitch-black darkness flung themselves against the remaining mana fueling the Nihilist. Most were rendered into crispy-dark slabs of cooked matter that reminded Shiv of charred chicken, but a few pressed closer—forcing him to spend even more of his Pyromancy to keep them at bay.

And then came the fractured spiderlings. They began spinning lengths of invasive mana as they skittered around the mana core, bundling it tighter and tighter in a choking web that was actively digesting what few patches of azure remained.

Shiv needed to last twenty more seconds if he wanted to taste his new meal. At the rate the infection was progressing, he would be fortunate if he lasted just ten. “Hymn, if you got any more minds to draw from—”

“I am quite literally reaching across countless dimensions through the hijacked Fingerlings,” Hymn replied, his voice and mind quivering with strain. “A slight mistake will see me discovered and then unmade by the Stranger. And then there will be nobody to see you fueled.”

the Nihilist whispered to Shiv.

“No,” Shiv shot back, emotional stubbornness enduring in the face of observed reality. His body cracked. Vitality hissed out of him, further diluting the insides of the mana core as his Harbinger destabilized.

the Harbinger interjected calmly.

The mind knew; the heart refused. And so, Shiv felt himself tear, and bleed, and hurt as the world outside was covered by an overgrowth of strands, leaving the inside of the mana core darker and bleaker.

Warning: Gate Piety’s mana core is at risk of imminent mana overload.

Warning: Gate Piety’s mana core has been contaminated by mana.

Warning: Gate Piety is at risk of complete dimensional collapse.

A section of the core cracked and burst in imitation of Shiv. His lost vitality went blasting out along with a flood of shredded mana. The instability was growing around him. His flame, once as wide as a large building, now barely extended three meters around Shiv, shrouding both him and Hymn from harm.

Cooking in Progress: 8 Seconds.

Fractured spiderlings danced upon the flames. A massive, flesh-coated centipede barreled into—and through—Shiv’s final aegis. The Nihilist broke and succumbed. Shiv didn’t. He split the Terrorspawn down the middle with ease. But then the corruption exploded out of its corpse and slithered into him. The subversive magic recoiled from his tides while spiderlings broke themselves upon his Scarforged shell, but though Shiv resisted for an instant, that single sting infected his shapeless tides with what was magical resistance, but a retaliatory bound field aping the architecture of hostile spells.

Shiv tried to ignite his Pyromancy, but it only gave a sputter of sparks—overwhelmed and unable to properly combust. Hymn fared better, but only just. He sacrificed Fingerlings in his stead, allowing them to take the brunt of the corruption while sparing his soul any harm. But he couldn't do that forever, and Shiv knew it. With every outsider he shed, Hymn’s body grew more human, his Eldritch nature dulling as he slowly reverted toward the mundane.

“Get out,” Shiv hissed. “We’re fucked if we stay here.”

Hymn chuckled. “We’re damned if we don’t finish this either. There’s no difference in our final fate if we don’t solve this now.”

“Well, then get close and try to last five seconds. I'll split this meal with you. If that ends up making a difference at all.”

With how fast the taint was eating through both of their resistances, Shiv really wasn't sure.

Hymn’s mind spoke with a dryness that hid his emotions well, but his core was like a transparent window to Shiv, who glimpsed an ocean of spite within.

Shiv grunted with understanding. “All this just to hurt the Stranger, huh?”

“Oh, I intend to do more than hurt.”

“Well, here is hoping that we last long enough to…” Shiv's mind trailed off as a radiant sunrise seared through the Eldritch web, burning a gap into the mana core—before promptly slamming into Shiv in the form of an arrow. The incandescent projectile detonated over him, shrouding him in another layer of Magical Resistance, and another such arrow followed, striking him and conferring the same protections. Before the webbing could heal, Shiv stared beyond the wound and beheld the one who ensured his survival.

Roland hung high in the air, twin wings of flame extended out by his sides, but he wasn't alone. The Starhawk was manifested around him, wielding his own bow, firing in tandem with Roland. The Ascendant was still missing both of his right arms, stumps where the Challenger had torn the limbs away from his flesh with contemptuous ease.

But even maimed, a god was a god still, and Shiv was overjoyed to see another Ascendant come to his aid in this time of desperate need. “Never mind. Hymn—hold on with me. We just might be able to pull this off yet.”

Though Uva's Unique power allowed her to taint even divine mana, the magical resistance bestowed by the Starhawk bought Shiv and Hymn enough time for the Last Morsel to finish cooking. As its lid burst apart, evaporating in a rush of dark steam, what remained inside was a strange meal of ever-changing colors. It resembled a mess of noodles, but the strings were hair-thin and constantly shifting from color to color; however, its outside was outlined in a glow of azure energy. Finally, there was a glitter in the soup surrounding it. Shiv poured half of the messy meal into his vitality and then offered the rest to Hymn, who stared down into the frying pan and cringed in reflexive disgust.

“This won't give me the runs, will it? Because if that's a risk, tell me now. I'm going to switch into someone else's clothes before I shit myself.”

“Just eat the fucking food!” Shiv snapped.

It was with initial reluctance that Hymn obeyed, yet as he slurped down the food and his body began to shift, becoming as if a mess of tangled cords, much like the invasive eldritch mana, his consumption grew ever more enthusiastic. “I can't say the flavor is good, but I might just want to have this again, if only to reach a point where I can decide whether I like this or absolutely despise it.”

The Nihilist giggled weakly.

Form of the Mana-Tainted Obtained

Both the Deathless and the Headmaster paused as the notification appeared before them. “I guess this means we're carriers of mana corruption rather than victims now,” Shiv concluded. He also examined his Last Morsel with growing appreciation. Being able to cook and assume the properties of whatever he ate was a powerful boon indeed, one he ignored too long and had not considered at length or in appropriate detail. “Yeah, you and I are gonna get a lot more acquainted from now on.”

A merged beam of Divination and Psychomancy slammed into Shiv, and once more an influx of philosophies was channeled into his mind from a thousand others. The Nihilist crackled and flared. What once was a murdered spark now resurrected as an explosion swelling around Shiv, raging with newfound vivacity.

Hymn's mind thundered with effort.

Hymn continued pouring his Legendary skill into Shiv, who mantled his growing Pyromancy. The scintillating flames swirled once and then condensed. Rather than spreading out, Shiv allowed the infectious magics of the Outside to fester along its exterior, and then he sent it forward, blasting free from the mana core, cooking all on its path until it broke from the surface. It cleaved through the air, arcing unnaturally as it groped for the surface gateway.

Though Shiv didn't have line of sight within the mana core, his Atlas allowed him to steal bits of perception from the organic entities that glittered around the gateway. Through their eyes and ears, he guided his fire—avoided frying anything he didn't need to and sent it spearing through the dimensional rift swirling at the center of the now-active portal. Some of the static mana was burned away as well, but Shiv sent his magics through, accelerating faster until it plunged across the other side into the Stranger’s Garden.

Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 156 > 160

Nihilism Be My Hearth, My Banquet 113 > 126

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul 307 > 315

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 560 > 564

“” The Stranger's ragged voice echoed through his Garden, radiating from everything he invested himself within. His Supplicant was damaged. Its middlemost finger on the right hand had been shredded and refused to mend. Its length was a mess of shattered bone and spilling black ichor. The hand that struck it, that hand of strife, that hand of the hateful one, the raging one, the war-born one, one of the Riders, had left a wound that lingered beyond time, beyond power.

War was, and war scarred the Stranger.

The Supplicant remained maimed beyond the power of memory or time to mend. A strange emotion tore at the Stranger. His emotions had been growing noticeably odder with every passing day for a while now. He wanted to express something painful. He didn't understand what he wanted to do. It was like there was a heavy knot at the center of his being, and he wanted to push it out somehow. He wanted to describe how unfair everything felt, how wrong existing was. He wanted to vent or fight or hurt an enemy that wasn't here.

He wanted some manner of retribution, some kind of justice—for everything to go back before he was diseased with consciousness, ruined by this lesser intellect that now afflicted his state of being.

The word came from nowhere yet resonated most truly. The Stranger grieved. He grieved the state of himself. He grieved his injuries. He grieved because he was losing more of himself. He knew what it meant to lose himself, and he knew he couldn't go back.

He would never be able to return to that point where he was whole, where he was more than just this limited thing, this Garden, this mess, this monstrosity of eyes and fingers.

He missed when he wasn't defined, when he wasn't bound by themes and skills, when he could have been anything, anything, when his potential was endless, when his godhood was endless. He missed being omnipotent and omniscient. He missed being totality unto itself.

“” the Stranger sobbed, not like a god, but as a child who realized he was alone, an orphan, unwanted by whatever that came before, with no true children, only parasites or minions, forged of his design. Now he was under the care of a thing that cared nothing for it aside from what strife could be wrought from the Stranger’s struggles.

And cruelly, tragically, nonsensically, there came a glitter, a glint, a chasm of scintillating flame that tore a gash into the Garden once more and carried with it threads that flicked and spread across the surface of this invading fire. Threads that were like infected veins, threads that spread from the flame to everything kissed and ignited, spreading through the Stranger's Garden and into the Stranger himself as the System inflicted another insult upon his wounded heart.

Warning: Your dimension has been tainted.

Warning: Your dimension is being invaded.

Warning: Artificial Incursion in progress.

the Stranger wailed. His Fingerlings raged with it, lashing and pouring tears of tarnished time from their eyes.

Quest Complete: Stabilize Gate Piety’s mana core to prevent a total Ambient Mana Threshold collapse.

Attention: The Gate has gained 2 Unique-Tier Skills