(I) Struggle

Essential Reading at Phoenix Academy of The Yellowstone Republic44 (I)

Struggle

There were a lot of screams and sounds of violence coming from inside the other room since Heather and Tran went in. Shiv absentmindedly thought about how he would have liked to murder and experiment on the Inquisitors himself, but… He quickly shook his head, frowning. That was the orc skill messing with him.

“I guess I need something to set me off,” Shiv muttered. He spent a few moments thinking back to how fast his rage spiked earlier, how thoughtless some of his actions were. The Orcish Skill didn’t drastically alter his mind that much, it just amplified his aggression and anger to extremes and made committing acts of violence on people feel even more rewarding. Shiv sighed and took a sip of tea. “You know something, Siggy? About a few days ago, I was telling my… Well, I can’t really call him a friend.... My and mentor, Adam, about how I was harvesting my own bodies. I used them to experiment because I didn’t like torturing animals or captives that much.”

Shiv stared at the spot just beyond his table. There was a spread of plastic across the ground, and it was stained deep with blood. So much blood. And more than a few severed fingers. He ate and then implanted wounds between himself and the Inquisitors over and over again. It didn’t even seem that bad to him at the time, even with Tran and Heather growing more terrified by the second. Shiv was pretty casual about testing his Biomancy on himself, but that was just a pragmatic option. The learning was the pleasurable part.

The blood on the plastic wasn’t learning. He didn’t need to learn this way. It was like the beginnings of a terrible habit; a foul addiction to violence. Shiv wasn’t against fighting. Hells, he kind of loved the adrenaline and the chaotic struggle that came with pitting his skills against a rival Pathbearer. But afterward… Usually he just wanted to cook. That was a place of peace and restoration. A place where he could gain tranquility and find his center.

Be a , like Georges called him.

And now the damned Orcish Skill was twisting his sanctuary of peace into a nest of rage and bloodlust. He went into the kitchen twice while Heather and Tran with the Inquisitors. The first time, Shiv saw the cutting board and almost charged back out to rip Siggy’s head off just to soothe the building earthquake of rage trembling through his muscles. The second time, he made it all the way to the pantry before Culinary Berserker flared up again. He ended up preparing thirteen different styles and flavors of noodles over four hours. By the time he returned, both of his skills had climbed again, but his anger got worse. Worse because he tasted every dish he made, and they were all .

There wasn’t any defending it. There was no avoiding the truth. Every single noodle dish he made over those four hours was absolute trash on a plate. A chef who made that was no chef at all, and deserved to be torn in half. “I’d rip myself in half right now,” Shiv muttered, staring morosely into his tea, studying his own miserable reflection in the water, “but that would just end with me draining your vitality. And I don’t think you’d like that. It would also probably make everything worse, because only hurting people feels good anymore. Hurting people, breaking things, and making shitty food!”

Shiv snarled as he flung his tea cup against the wall. The cup shattered. The wall cracked from the sheer force of the impact. Both Siggy and Oldsmith flinched nearby, unable to look at him.

Shiv thought, clenching and unclenching his fists.

Cooking > 35

Culinary Berserker > 6

Dread Aura > 60

A sheen of sweat was building on his forehead. Every few seconds, his thoughts drifted toward experimentation. An unscratchable itch was growing somewhere inside him, and the only way he could calm it was by applying a series of brutal and painful wounds to a certain goblin. Because she had it coming. Right? She was a slaver. She was a drug dealer. She was the enemy.

But Shiv restrained himself. He even restrained himself from breaking Oldsmith—was waiting for Tran or Heather to do that.

Shiv didn’t have a problem with killing, but it was usually a matter of necessity or pragmatism. It wasn’t something he enjoyed. Hurting people wasn’t something he constantly obsessed over—even when he was studying Biomancy. Likewise, the pain and torment he got from the wasn’t the thing he enjoyed or fixated on. Rather, it was a price he had to pay to receive the best education, and he paid it without regret or misery.

Now Shiv was pretty miserable. And he was increasingly not himself.

he cursed mentally.

“B-brave Pathbearer,” Oldsmith whimpered. “Great, powerful Master Pathbearer. I can see you are a man—no, a —of immense internal fortitude. I also understand that what you did earlier wasn’t something you desired. That—that, despite your grievances a-and the misunderstanding between you and my City Lord, you are a good person. Who resists the darkest impulses. Dark impulses unrighteously foisted upon you by the foul hand of the orcish r-race…”

Oldsmith trailed off at this point and broke down into incoherent sputters as Shiv unleashed the full strength of his Dread Aura on it. There wasn’t even a conversation, just a cold, hard glare. That was one thing Shiv enjoyed about Dread Aura. It let people understand him pretty well, even when he didn’t say anything.

Too bad he couldn’t use the aura on himself. That would have been convenient. If Shiv could have scared himself using the Dread Aura or even done something to his mind with Psychomancy…

That consideration died as he considered his initial misadventures with Biomancy—how quickly he gave himself cancer and ended up dead thereafter. That wasn’t too big of a deal for the Deathless, but if he broke his mind somehow, or gave himself a thought-cancer he didn’t know about, that wouldn’t be good. He didn’t want to be some undying vegetable or insane person.

Shiv moaned internally. And he realized the aggression was spiking another urge in him to the extreme as well.

It had been a hard day. Lots of customers. Lots of rushed orders, mistakes, and accidents. Shiv listened to Georges raging behind him, spitting endless curses while rushing from station to station, stopping things from falling apart. Several people hit their breaking point. They just dropped their aprons and left. Shiv thought Georges was going to completely lose it by that point, except the head chef just shrugged in response.

Georges said, hacking at the lettuces like they murdered his family in front of him. Georges snorted, and then his expression flattened. He looked at the door where the chefs who quit left through.

He buried his knife in the cutting board.

Georges somehow managed to finish five different dishes over the course of the rant. Shiv could barely follow what the man was doing.

Shiv looked down at his shaking hands in the present, at Siggy and Oldsmith, who he increasingly wanted to kill, and then at Tran and Heather, both looking more haggard than when they went into the room.

The Jump Mage wordlessly dropped the female Inquisitor’s armor and sword on the ground. She held up a glittering necklace threaded through three glowing crystals. “I’m keeping this,” Heather said, voice hoarse. “It’s useful for me. For my Dimensionality. It’s like a small teleportation anchor. The bitch used it to keep me and Tran from escaping.”

Shiv’s first impulse was to tell her no and take the item from her. He didn’t like the Jump Mage much, and that dislike was boiling hotter inside him with every passing second, bubbling into loathing. She sneered at him for years when he wanted to learn about being a Pathbearer. She treated him like he was a diseased creature, just like most of the town. Now, he was powerful, and she was far weaker than he was, far slower. He could spite her in any number of ways. Shiv didn’t even need to hurt her to make her give him the necklace. Dread Aura was more than enough.

But he didn’t. Even when it made the growing itch inside him get even worse.

“Yeah, sure,” Shiv grunted, trying to keep an eye on his anger. He walked over and examined the weapon and armor.

Equipment Obtained:

Tier: Master

Condition: Perfect

Composition: Celestial Jade

Enchantments > Temporal Warding; Spatial Warding; Magical Resistance 110; Self-Mending

Shiv smirked slightly at the armor. His exoskeletons might be able to adapt well to direct physical attacks, but this armor was warded against time, space, and even had Master-Tier Magical Resistance imbued into it. That was probably a lot better for Uva than just his bones.

He examined the saber next. It gleamed bright, like a rising dawn on a clear day.

Equipment Obtained:

Tier: Master

Condition: Perfect

Composition: Stellarite

Enchantments > Self-Mending; Portomancy 55; Binding; Conduit of Dawn

“Conduit of Dawn?” Shiv muttered.

“Yeah,” Tran said, nodding at the sword with undisguised envy. “It basically allows the sword to absorb light—especially sunlight—and then get so hot it practically melts through anything. It also lets the cuts be channeled out as beams.” The Slayer scoffed with disdain. “The equipment of these bastards is You could probably buy a good portion of Blackedge with the armor alone.”

“It’s that good?” Shiv blinked.

Tran gave him a stunned look. “You can’t tell?”

“Not really. My armor’s free because I just die and harvest bones from my corpse.“ Heather and Tran stared at him like he was a freak. Shiv resisted a shuddering desire to scream that he wasn’t. “I'm basically tough enough that I don’t really need to buy or loot armor from people.” Shiv gave a proud grin as he thought about how durable he was now. “I think it worked out pretty well.”

“So,” Heather breathed. “This entire time you’ve just been…” She gestured at herself and the gleaming skeletal armor Shiv fused around her. “Wearing this?”

“Well, it’s kind of recent. Originally, I just kinda took it, you know?”

“Took it?” Tran blinked.

“The beatings. The deaths. I just dealt with it.” He considered all his encounters and smiled fondly as he thought back to how much difficulty he had against a cave biter or the feral weavers.

“I…” Tran was speechless. “What about weapons?” Heather nodded next to him, also curious.

“Well, I started out using the kitchen knife Georges gave me,” Shiv said, pulling out . “It has self-sharpening and self-mending Enchantments, so that was useful. Can be soul-bound, too.”

“And then?” Heather asked.

“Well, I had a spear for a while that let me do Cryomancy, but that broke when I got incinerated with what felt like half the world by a dragon. That was also how I achieved Diamond Shell, actually. And got Foreshadowing.”

“Dragon? You fought a dragon?” Tran breathed, his eyes widening to a ridiculous degree.

“What? No. I just got killed by a dragon. A Dragon-Knight, in fact. A Legendary one. He burned an entire mountain out of existence—ah, it’s a long story.”

“Wait,” Siggy said, her curiosity briefly allowing her to overcome her mortal terror. “Was this Sir Marikos?”

Shiv looked upon the goblin in surprise. “Did you run into him too?”

“What? No! But you met him? The Fortress That Soars? And you survived one of his tantrums?”

“Survived isn’t the word I would use,” Shiv said. “It’s more like I didn’t stay dead.”