(III) Jealousy

49 (III)Jealousy

Inside the Jealousy’s twisted, mutilated limb, Shiv underwent twin metamorphoses while engulfed by black, bitter blood. His Might of Mass, once a thing that made him harder to move, made him stronger and heavier against even the likes of an elemental golem, broke and .

The new Gravitic Dominion Skill swept through him, infused his flesh and layered itself over his skin, becoming a tactile field that was close to magic, but not quite.

His very strength went beyond his muscles now, beyond his Physicality.

At the same time, a rush of intuitive knowledge flashed through his mind. Instinctual understanding of leverage, of where joints were, and where an enemy’s center of balance could be discovered, settled into Shiv, like sand gathering at the bottom of a lake.

But then, these twin skills collided in a marriage of power, the lesser merging into the former, as Gravitic Dominion became even greater than what it was. Rather than a static field that shrouded him, that let him channel his strength beyond the limits of natural physics, his Gravitic Dominion became an animated, reactive thing that was made to bend, grip, and throw anything he could touch.

And right then, he could touch a lot.

His fingers were digging into the rapidly healing flesh of the Jealousy. All around him was meat and broken bone and carapace.

Shiv could feel all of it. And what he could feel, he could . His field expanded, flowing out from him, gripping the entire, colossal limb in the span of a second. Shiv felt his now immense strength bring the tentacle to a halt with considerable effort.

His wish from earlier came true. He could grasp the entirety of the Jealousy’s tentacle now. And more than that, he could squeeze, and he could twist. So he did.

He squeezed so tight that even its internal layer of loose, protective fat parted. And he squeezed even tighter, until he felt the jealousy’s bones start to creak. And then he directed a portion of his gravitic field inward, right along the length of a solid bone. Along the length of a bone, not flexible cartilage. Along the length of a bone that was snapping and breaking.

These words exploded out from the Jealousy’s mind, but he paid it no heed. The bone snapped. He felt it. He felt it snap like he was just gripping and breaking the arm of someone his own size via a joint lock. It was natural. It felt intuitive. Instinctive. .

And Shiv kept going, twisting the bone outward, using the compound fracture to slice through the inner flesh of his enemy. The Jealousy wailed. It tried to pull its limb back, but Shiv held on tight. A brief tug of war raged between them, and Shiv reared back hard, willing himself backward. His field dragged on him—a spike of gravity pointing in the direction he desired.

And to his delight, his field was a reactive and adaptable force, just like using his own hands. It was like a sort of tactile telekinesis, but more than that. It was tactile gravity manipulation, further bolstered by a deeper understanding of how to pick someone up and slam them down, how to bend a limb out of place and keep it broken for good.

The Jealousy pulled, and Shiv pulled right back. The limb they fought over tore and bled, and as Shiv used his gravitic field, he went from being a bullet passing through the monster again to being a rival titan in this struggle. But he was still weaker. Despite everything, despite his new Skill Evolutions and his Skill Fusion, he was still weaker than his adversary.

But that's how it'd been almost his entire life. He had been weaker than the lesser vampires, but they didn’t know how to fight that well. And neither did the Jealousy when it came to a proper brawl.

He didn’t need to overpower the Greater Demon entirely. He just needed to break them where they were at their weakest. And so he twisted the limb with his gravity field. The sinews inside snapped and came apart. The bone began to coil nerve clusters around itself until they, too, parted with a sickening crackle—and tore from the Jealousy itself.

The tentacle came apart in two pieces down the middle, not even the carapace allowing it to hold on.

The Jealousy . It was a wail of pure pain. It was a wail of absolute misery. And it was a wail that signified the breaking of its focus, despite how tightly it clutched the other crystals. The two needles of Psychomancy it had been channeling through the slaves dissipated just before they could strike Shiv. Every mind that was destroyed below left a trail of blossoming explosions, mental tides of devastation that were meant to follow the needles. They too faded.

Shiv glared. Shiv raged. And Shiv felt the final piece of his newest advancements slide into place. A new Feat was available to him. And just then, after all the people this monster killed, he had plenty of anger to spend.

Feats :

He Who Rises From Ash Eternal (Unique) - Allows the Pathbearer to quickly learn new Skills and advance existing Skills through repeated deaths.

Master of Rage (Master) - Allows the Pathbearer to infuse a Skill with rage to increase its effectiveness. Consumes the Pathbearer’s anger.

Shiv burst out from the Jealousy’s severed arm and clutched the titanic limb in a single hand as he fed his rage into his Gravitic Wrestler Skill. His arm was practically a blade of grass clutching and bearing an entire tree when it came to the limb. His muscles tensed and screamed with strain, swelling as his gravity field used them as anchors of strength and to guide its movements. Whatever he touched, he coated with his gravitic field, so this severed limb was his, and unless his enemy was strong enough to take it back from him right now, or to break his grip somehow, the limb would remain his.

But Shiv decided to be He gave the limb back to the Jealousy. By throwing it as hard as he could at the nearest crystal he saw. The massive limb twisted through the air, causing tides of displaced air to throw what few slaves were still standing straight off their feet as it snapped and turned. Shiv drank some of the momentum rushing through him from how much force he was getting.

Gravitic Wrestler > 104

Momentum Core > 77

As he finished flinging the limb, he also realized something else as his field launched him through the air—he could use it to himself as well. Or just lighten his weight until he was hovering. His face twisted into a vicious smirk.

Shiv released his exoskeleton from the clutches of his Biomancy. For a beat, he just drifted through the air as he wrestledgravity to be a bit past his head. The field bulged, and he swayed as if hanging from a string. He was weightless. Despite everything, Shiv .

The Jealousy screamed again as it flinched away from him.

He decided to exploit this new skill for all it was worth. He directed his gravitic field against a nearby wall and crashed into it hard. The metal dented inward as if it had been struck by the fist of a giant rather than a man. Shiv’s Momentum Core filled at the same time. The world slowed. He targeted another one of the Jealousy’s limbs—one still clutching a focus crystal—and discharged.

Shiv exploded across the chamber. As he accelerated, he also amplified his gravity field as much as he could. He impacted the limb and the crystalline handhold at the same time. The focus crystal shattered in all directions, bursting into debris as the limb the Jealousy used to hold onto it was smeared to bloody paste before Shiv’s crushing strength.

The Greater Demon screamed again, but Shiv didn’t care. He reached into the mangled limb, and then he broke it. He broke every bone he could feel, twisting, wrenching, and jerking them until everything was out of place, every tendon shuddered and snapped, every nerve was coiled tight on the verge of ripping, every bone was a drifting shard.

Gravitic Wrestler > 105

the Jealousy howled. Its courage was quivering. Where once it stood a mountain of implacability, now cracks lined every section of its bravery—cracks made worse by Shiv’s building Dread Aura. With an animalistic roar, he tore this limb in half before launching its tip at the Jealousy’s eye, burning away the remainder of his rage. The limb became an artillery piece, an artillery piece to end artillery pieces.

It slammed into the creature’s eye, knocking it back hard. The Jealousy flinched back dozens of meters, howling as its remaining arms bunched closer and tighter behind it. It was afraid to spread out. It was afraid that he was going to touch it, that he was going to dismember it again and again.

It was afraid of Shiv.

“Come down and fight me!” Shiv roared. His anger was building again, slowly, but there was another benefit to his Feat. It burned his rage clean, it helped him think, even after turning off the Song of the Vigilant. And as he found himself capable of thought, he realized that its Magical Resistance was also damaged from earlier. In fact, he should have been attacking it from multiple vectors, just like how it tried to overwhelm him.

“Alright, you big, ugly bastard,” Shiv snarled, a feral grin painting his features beneath his mask as he flung himself in charging bursts after the Greater Demon. “I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna pull your arms off, I’m going to mutilate you and break you over and over again until there is nothing left but your ugly head, and then I’m going to line it with so many injuries and wounds that you will beg me to kill you.”

The Chef Unwavering told him there were 948 slaves still alive. 948. In the brief clash between him and the Jealousy, hundreds of people had died. Shiv’s anger climbed again. He was going to follow through on that threat. It was going to be more than a threat. It was going to be made .

the Jealousy hissed, clambering upward, its body pulsing with a shroud of darkness. This was a new skill. It started floating upward as well, releasing its handholds as it retreated toward the top of the chamber. Darkness expanded out from its body, rushing down to greet Shiv.

Dread Aura > 65

The Greater Demon's collapsing courage was like blood in the water, and Shiv, in that moment, was closer to shark than man. He blasted towards the retreating demon. Again, it wasn’t quite flight; it was more like flinging himself or falling along an accelerated vector of gravity he designated for himself. Every few moments, he would run out of momentum, and then he would need to effectively touch himself with his field and fling himself forward again, like a wrestler would launch an opponent off their feet with a takedown.

Along the way, he tore himself open. He mangled his body, broke his own bones, and fed a growing Woundeater wyrm at his side. He was going to smash into this thing, and he was going to break it down to its bedrock, flesh and soul.

“I’m coming for you,” Shiv growled. “You better stop running. There’s not much room left! Stand! Fight! Die!” He chuckled. “Wonder how your meat tastes too!”

The Jealousy was borderline screeching now, terrified and furious beyond measure. Its eyes flashed, growing bright, and Shiv sneered as he prepared himself for what was to come. A massive beam of hyper-accelerated water cut out towards him. And this time, he didn't even try to dodge. He let it crash into him, and he touched it with his field. He touched it, and he anchored himself in place with his gravity field. He let the water flood his Momentum Core momentarily before he started pushing against it. It split in half, one jet stream turning into two, crashing against the walls. And then he struck it from the side, parrying it as if it was a straight punch from a foe.

Parry > 46

There was a brief break in the surging stream. It split off at an angle, and then Shiv discharged his Momentum Core. The world around him exploded. He lurched forward, shooting toward the Jealousy. Its eye widened, and it shrank back into the darkness it emanated in fright.

At once, he vanished into the black after it. His cloak’s Shadowsense allowed him some sight, but not that far. As Biomancy washed over the space, he felt… . Nothing of Magical Resistance, nothing of biology, nothing for him to direct his power against.

And then the shadows broke apart like night lifting with the rising of dawn. Shiv heard a noise and looked down. There, to his utter disbelief, he saw the Jealousy far below him, crawling away along the walls.

“How? What?” Shiv gawked. “How the hells did you do that?”

The Jealousy was growing new limbs to replace those it had lost, leaving smears of red along the walls. As it fled, it turned briefly, eyeing Shiv one last time. And then it turned its entire body downward toward its

The slaves were screaming. Shiv launched himself down with a spike of his gravitic field. He crashed against the side of the anchor to fill his Momentum Core, then discharged immediately. He blasted down in an instant as the wall beside him folded inward.

He was fast approaching when the Jealousy began to cast a spell. Shiv clenched his Magebreaker. It was still damaged, but he thought he could parry this oncoming attack. Even if it broke, he would be able to get to the Greater Demon and end this.

But instead of casting a spell at him, the Jealousy shaped a long, complicated working, spending meticulous moments to concentrate as Shiv descended the entire length of the vast chamber toward it, even as he nearly was upon it. And then it was done. A spell unlike any he had felt or seen. A constellation of Psychomancy drifted around it, the mana turning into a complex weaving of shapes that coalesced and outlined the Jealousy’s entire being. It was like it was developing a coat of mana. Then it pointed its eye down at the many, many slaves, the glowing orb twitching from place to place.

And then the Jealousy .

Shiv’s mind reeled in disbelief and confusion. “What the hells?” he gasped.

He stopped accelerating—used his gravitic field to pull back against his momentum before he slammed down and accidentally killed a bunch of the slaves. He cut off his constant bursts of speed, and his gravity field shifted upward, allowing him to float.

He hovered in the air, scanning the masses. Most were moaning, some were wounded and scared, but all of them—seemed normal, seemed fine. And the Jealousy—it was gone, nowhere in sight.

“How the hells did…” Shiv muttered. “How does a creature the size and weight of a small mountain ? In fact, how the hells did it snip-flip past me earlier? Does it have Master-Tier Stealth as well?”

That was a horrifying thought. Why the hells would something that big have Master-Tier Stealth?

As Shiv scanned the people below, he heard a woman cry out. He drifted closer, close enough for his field to overlap with her person. She suffered from multiple ruptured organs, severe internal bleeding. She winced. Many of them were in bad shape. The clash had caused debris to rain down—heavy rock, broken pieces of massive crystals. He could see sections of the room where people were crushed and mangled.

He felt sick. But what the hells was he supposed to do this time? It was like the System was taunting him, making him kill people in every single one of his struggles. If 811 was an act of rage and recklessness on his part, then this was outright torment and insult against him.

He shaped wyrms with his mana and directed them outward. He fed them as many wounds as he could, and then he pulled out some of his old bodies, injecting what injuries he could into them, and taking on some lesser wounds himself. Shiv frowned. There were too many wounded, and somewhere, somewhere in this chamber, the Jealousy still remained. But where was it? Where it?

And then a spell came from nowhere—a lance of pure psychokinetic energy crackling through the air, building with a scream of rage and torment. Shiv barely reacted in time, so taken by surprise. But he did. He struck out, angling his Magebreaker to backhand the attack into the wall. His gauntlet rang, but it endured without damage. The spell shattered, leaving the gauntlet shrieking in the aftermath. However, Shiv still didn’t know where it came from. He couldn’t trace it.

The attack was sudden, instant. It was a perfect ambush.

Shiv stared down at the many slaves, and a horrifying thought passed through him.

He started this fight expecting a brawl against a titan, matching his strength, his magic, his very determination and willingness to die over and over again until he finally chipped down that Greater Demon, a beast the size of a mountain. Now he realized just how much he underestimated his adversary. This wasn’t merely a titan of Psychomancy and Physicality. It was a full-on Pathbearer itself.

It could learn, it could think, and it had experience. Experience in surviving for centuries. And of all the skills it had, Stealth was among its best.

Shiv sighed, eyes darting between the hundreds of people in the chamber, each a potential carrier of the Greater Demon. “Shit. How the hells am I supposed to find this thing now?”