Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

The main goal of Project Deathless is multifaceted.

The first and most obvious one is creating an entity that can make the System choke on its own eternal urge to constantly engender war and strife.

An entity that simply won't die, no matter what world they find themselves in, no matter how high that world's ambient mana threshold.

An entity that constantly grows, death after death, until it exceeds the limits of its world and eventually forces an incursion to occur.

I theorize the eventual and inevitable outcome here to be a World Quest targeting my Deathless. After all, what is a world supposed to do against a threat that is rapidly growing beyond its means to contain?

Should such a thing happen, I will be able to use my Deathless to further my goal of discovering the absolute ceiling of power within the confines of our Integrated existence. In my travels, I have witnessed worlds so utterly choked with mana that even our Legends would be regarded as common Pathbearers there.

But I do not think they are the ceiling, either.

No. I think that we can go far higher, assuming we can drive the System to the very brink. Perhaps we will be able to match the System's constant escalation and see if it can be over-strained or taxed to a breaking point.

Even if this does not occur, I will still be able to use my Deathless to further cultivate my own skills and power while gathering useful data for other associated projects.

The second purpose of Project Deathless, however, is something born of my personal desires.

I lost my mother some years ago. The System took—the Great One took her during one of their terrible dreams. But what the Great One takes, they also remember, and so how dead is she, truly?

How dead is anyone truly within the eyes of the System once their life ends? The System that records all, that uses our stories as the fuel of its miracles and infuses us with these evolving powers shaped from the struggles we face and the trials we overcome?

And so, if a skill is a fragment of a soul, and the skill resides in the person, could you perhaps distill enough of a person to see them reborn through incubation within a skill?

Perhaps so. And perhaps Rose Van Erren will be among the first to return from this—

-Incomplete notes recovered from Udraal Thann's abandoned laboratory

163 (I)

Descend [II]

Success: Select a Skill to Evolve to Legendary-Tier.

Shiv didn't notice the reward notification initially.

It was kind of hard to focus when Marikos was using him to bludgeon the Tarrasque. The apocalyptic beast was assailed from all sides. As Shiv impacted its skull once more, his Pillar of Orichalcum glanced off, like a metal rod impacting a meter-thick bunker made from titanium. Even so, the blow was hard enough that the Tarrasque turned its head, just enough to expose a slight crack lining its crystalline shell.

A slight crack that Hawgrave drove the tip of her colossal blade into.

Once more, her greatsword shifted. It became smaller and thinner, and it slipped between the cracks before the Tarrasque's regeneration could kick in. Black blood erupted out from the fissure, and the great beast let out a bellow of absolute agony.

But after a moment, the howl turned into a cackle of pained laughter. "JUST A LITTLE PRICK!"

"What the hells is wrong with you?" Hawgrave shouted back in its face. It reached out and drove a fist against the ground. Marikos shot upward, bearing his shield high. A resounding impact shook the world as he parried a descending gravitational attack.

The Tarrasque growled and pushed down harder. The gravitational waves intensified—but then two snaking ribbons of black lightning speared into its eyes. Blood erupted from massive sockets. The Tarrasque reeled black, blinded. Then, Marikos dropped Shiv down on the monster's back once more as the other Avatars unleashed their powers as well.

Waves of flame, force, ice, and more washed past Shiv and hammered the Tarrasque. A massive hand formed from dust pressed down on its body, and it let out a rageful cry.

"GOING TO SHOW YOU—"

Its jaws were slammed shut by a wave of force, and they pinned it just long enough for a certain special arrow to tear out from a dimensional rift and spear through its body.

The Tarrasque's flesh ignited once more, and it let out a choked gasp. That very moment, Hawgrave's sword, Rusty, exploded in width and length. The Tarrasque's entire body was split in half.

But it was already dead, and so the vitality it spent to return was paltry.

If nothing else, it gave Shiv the opportunity to finally rip some more of its vitality away. "Marikos! Plant me in its flesh, now!"

Shiv didn't know if the Dragon-Knight heard him, or if Marikos was simply responding based on pure instinct, but it worked out regardless. Shiv's pillar sank deep into the Tarrasque's bloodied carcass. A wet squelch greeted the base of Shiv's pillar as the Dragon-Knight slid him into oozing organs, and he reached out from his Orichalcum with his Vitality Drain Skill.

Shiv focused. He stopped time, and thought about what Sullain did earlier. He thought about how the Vicar managed to shift Shiv's vitality over into that sheen that lined the world itself.

The Deathless pulled, and faint streams of red lit up his pillar, infusing him with a dose of life force. But though the warmth rushing into Shiv felt intoxicating, he was still drinking it in at a trickle, suckling water as if a man trying to drink in the sea. This wasn't going to work. Shiv knew that, but he kept trying. He focused on the vitality. He pushed everything else aside.

He ignored how his temporal shell shattered after eleven seconds, how the Tarrasque was resurrecting with a flash of white and red. Ignored how the Ascendants were hammering it with powers and skills that made the world shake, shudder, but not break.

Despite all their power, the Avatars inflicted little damage upon the world and maximal harm upon the Tarrasque. Yet through it all, their blows barely affected its vitality. It only cost the Tarrasque a sliver of life force for it to resurrect, and that annoyed Shiv the most.

When Shiv died now, he didn't lose any more vitality due to his Vitaemancy skill. As a Revenant, though, he'd immediately started bleeding vitality everywhere and fading from existence. Why and how the Tarrasque managed to skip this inconvenience made Shiv more than a little pissed off. He used that anger to fuel his Vitality Drain, and still the amount he pulled into his body barely increased.

But rather than being demoralized, Shiv thought there might be a point to that. This wasn't a matter of raw power. He was still missing something. Something based on understanding. He needed to adjust the way he was doing things.

Time to try something new.

So Shiv went against his instincts. Instead of pulling vitality from the Tarrasque, he tried to deliver a trickle of vitality back. Yet he found himself unable to. His threads of Vitae were frozen within his pillar, unable to overpower his Toughness. They quivered around him. And the vitality inside his body began to twist and flow. Shiv's eyes widened.

He noticed how everyone else seemed to emanate vitality in a faint aura. That was why they seemed like fires to him. But his vitality was fused with his soul, contained within it. And now, thanks to his Vitaemancy field, it didn't even leak from him. But everyone else? They were an imprint. They were radiating life force as if it was heat, letting the emanations spill over into the world.

But the Tarrasque was rather like Shiv. It was a closed System, a silo unto itself.

Then he considered the fourth party in the vitality equation. Existence wasn't a silo. Or even if it was, it was far wider and grander than Shiv was. And though he couldn't touch the Tarrasque or break off any of his Vitae within its body, the presence of reality, of the System and all Integration, it embraced Shiv. He existed within its structure, and he was only a part of the totality, as was the Tarrasque. So when Shiv drained the Tarrasque once more, he willed the flow of vitality to avoid him.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He used his skill to bend the path of the Tarrasque's lifeforce, curving it away from himself and into the faint sheen lining reality.

And just as the Tarrasque snarled and reached out to rip at Shiv—who was still staked through its resurrecting body—its vitality shuddered and hemorrhaged. For the first time, Shiv felt his Vitality Drain Skill suffer a strain like never before. When he sapped the Tarrasque to feed himself, to restore his own life force, it was like sipping water through a straw. But as he diverted the currents of the Tarrasque's vitality into the embrace of the System's Integration itself, it was like he was muscling a river aside, trying to divert its flow, and Shiv was only barely strong enough to guide it.

A pulsing burst of brilliant red washed over the world, and the Tarrasque shook like animal in the middle of bleeding out.

Drain Vitality 74 > 76

"No, no, away, STOP!" the Tarrasque whimpered. It sounded like Shiv, but toward the end, its voice distorted, and a faint hint of Sullain lingered there as well. The Deathless would have flashed a feral smile if he wasn't encased in his own Orichalcum.

The Tarrasque's body shuddered. A rain of incandescent needles punched into its eyes, slipped between its teeth, sank into its joints, and detonated. Part of its skull imploded briefly, but then it regenerated, and it launched itself up from Shiv with a burst of gravitational energy. The Deathless heard Marikos cry out as the Tarrasque knocked him aside, slipping free from Shiv's pillar with a wet squelch.

The ground cracked as ash swirled high, forming an obfuscating curtain that masked where the apocalyptic beast fled. But Shiv could still see its life force, and it was dimmer than before. Noticeably dimmer. What's more, Shiv's Vitality Drain had also advanced a good two levels from the attempt, and it was then that his building thrill hit an apex as he noticed the reward notification still flashing before his eyes.

Select a Skill to Evolve to Legendary-Tier.

"Yes!" Shiv hissed. "Godsdamn finally! That took fucking forever." Though it hadn't been that long before, it felt like a lifetime ago when he'd accepted the Composer's Quest. He'd changed so much since then, and he was about to change so much more. As soon as this fight was done, that was.

That dampened his thrill a bit, realizing that he couldn't just pick the skill right now, due to the risks posed by Delving. Even so, he had arrived. Shiv was almost a proper Legendary Pathbearer now, or someone an inch away from becoming a Low Legend, considering he was figuring out the true potential of his Vitality Drain, a skill that had never felt like it lived up to its Legendary Tier, up until now.

The moment felt surreal. It felt—

"Prismatic Guard."

A crisp and deafening voice shook Shiv to his very bones. He heard it inside his skull. He heard it outside with his ears. He heard it absolutely and clearly. He would have heard it even if he was deaf.

"March forth and secure Blackedge. Cleanse the town of all non-citizens and deliver aid to those who require it!"

A feeling of worry passed through Shiv. Uva. Valor. The orcs. If the Republic was moving on Blackedge, how were they going to respond to the Abyssals? How were they going to handle the people there who needed aid? And what were they going to do if the town just didn't stop? The Starhawk was pretty determined to reach the Abyss, and he probably wasn't going to just give up. Not when he was so close.

Shit. That's going to be a problem too. What about the Descenders?

"Also, mind the Dragon-Knights, and…"

The crisp voice paused for a moment. A flash of incandescent power was followed by a shriek from the Tarrasque. A flicker of motion shot past the corner of his eyes.

"...you can cut the orcs down if you find any present," the speaker finally finished. Shiv's eyes widened ever so slightly. It wasn't ideal that the Ascendants were planning to kill his orcs, but it also wasn't unexpected.

Frankly, Shiv expected his orcs would enjoy this too, even if it meant their certain and horrific deaths. Of all the things he had to worry about, they were the least. He could still hear some of them cheering and laughing, hounding the Tarrasque alongside him.

Another surge of motion jolted past Shiv's periphery.

"It comes again!" Marikos roared. Then the Dragon-Knight was moving so fast that Shiv failed to react—failed to notice until Marikos had already driven the Deathless against the skull of the Tarrasque once more. A resounding crash shook the world, and Shiv focused, making himself even tougher.

Despite this, his Heroic-Tier Toughness was beginning to falter. The Tarrasque was practically immune to Hawgrave's blows by now, and the Ascendants' skills only inflicted superficial damage for the most part. The only thing Shiv could impart on the beast now was concussive force as Marikos swung him with his full might. It would have to be enough to stun the Tarrasque, enough to hold it in place until he—

The Tarrasque unceremoniously slumped dead against Shiv's pillar. It crashed down upon the ground like a crumbling mountain, displacing even more dust.

A wall of ash was displaced upward, coiling around Shiv, but he noticed something. The Tarrasque was utterly devoid of life force. It was empty and cold, which meant that it wasn't the actual Tarrasque at all. The Ascendants couldn't have killed it enough times to extinguish the rest of its vitality in that short of a period. Not when their other attacks were only getting skin-deep. But where was the monster?

Shiv tried to grit his teeth but failed to even move his lips. Something's really felling wrong right now.

"Aha!" Marikos shouted with glee, twirling Shiv high in a flourish of triumph. "The beast falls! Victory is ours!"

"Marikos!" Shiv cried as he struggled, but his Pillar of Orichalcum left him pinned in place. He couldn't even twist his neck to look around. "That's not the Tarrasque! That's not the Tarrasque! It's a decoy corpse! It's still alive! It's..."

But the Dragon-Knight didn't get Shiv's warning in time. The ground beneath them exploded upward in a geyser of ruin and shrapnel. A massive fissure split the land from horizon to horizon, and what seemed like a living mountain rose into the sky and crashed fist-first against Marikos's body. A series of sickening cracks sounded from his torso, and the Legend was wrenched free from Shiv and thrown high up into the air.

Hawgrave tried to respond—only for the Tarrasque to hit her with a contemptuous gravitic backhand. A blast of force tore a pocket in the dense cloud of ash choking the battlefield. The Republic Legend and her blade both yelped and vanished skyward from the impact. And then the Tarrasque swept its hands wide as it unleashed cascading walls of shrapnel toward the Ascendants.

As Shiv fell, he watched the Tarrasque open a gravitic well in its hand to pull Marikos back toward it. Then it gripped him with two hands and twisted. A horrific snap followed. Shiv screamed from inside his pillar, trying to get at the Tarrasque, trying to—

Then the Tarrasque smashed Marikos's limp form against Shiv. The Deathless felt a crack form throughout his pillar, and then things broke inside him as well. He barely noticed. His eyes were locked on Marikos. His body twisted over itself in a nauseating heap. The front side of Mariko's torso was now sprawled against his tail, and as the Dragon-Knight fell, rivers of blood trailed out from between his teeth and out his very eye sockets.

Shiv didn't know if Marikos was slain, if his vitality was merely flickering or fading altogether, and he didn't have time to make sure. The moment he extended his mana-hydra to pull away some of Marikos's wounds, the Tarrasque caught him as well, and despite all his durability, Shiv was much easier to break than a Legendary Dragon-Knight.

"The beast falls," the Tarrasque mockingly drawled, mimicking Marikos. It wrapped its hands around Shiv, but it didn't just use its brute force. Its body came aglow with shuddering tides of Dynamancy, and the Tarrasque's gravitational power was magnified a hundredfold. Shiv tried to go out of context, but the Tarrasque was faster than him. Far faster.

First, the cracks lining Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum widened into chasms, and then they shattered altogether. A ragged cry of agony escaped from the Deathless as he felt the left side of his body get crushed to a bloody paste.

"Why is it always that side?" Shiv snarled in frustrated misery.

He tensed and waited for another death to follow—prepared to cast himself back across time the moment he resurrected back to Blackedge, leaving the Tarrasque to the Ascendants and the Auroral Council. But then a cage of black lightning crashed down around the Tarrasque's body, and the tip of its index finger was halted but a scant centimeter away from Shiv's falling form.

The Tarrasque shrieked with frustration, but its shriek was drowned out as a high and alluring voice began singing once more. Shiv's pain immediately faded. His wounds vanished as the song passed through him, as the song swallowed his agony and left only joy in its wake. That voice was beyond divine. That voice was holy. That voice was everything Shiv wanted and everything he would ever want in this life.

That voice—

Psycho-Cartography: That voice is ripping through your mind and slowly conditioning you into becoming a slave. Remember, the Ascendants aren't your allies here. Focus on something else, anything else. Collapse your eardrums.

And Shiv did as his Master-Tier Psychology Skill demanded. His heart screamed as the sweet melody was cut off, but the moment it vanished Shiv felt his senses return, and he noticed how vulnerable the Tarrasque was. Its eyes were wide and distant, and a strangely childlike expression lingered on its face. Through the chaos and carnage Shiv caught sight of a small and slight body, and despite his ears being burst, a giggle washed through him, the giggle of a child.

"You finally got him held still, Halsur!" a young girl's voice said cheerfully. Her words washed through Shiv from the inside out, and unlike Kathereines, whoever this was filled Shiv with a sense of impending dread. "Well, looks like it's time for me to play doctor. I want to find out what the insides of a Tarrasque snack look like…"

And then Shiv struck the ground, his body left fragile after his Toughness skill broke in several places. His bones tore out from his flesh in compound fractures, but he didn't let that stop him for long. He fed his injuries into his Biomancy, and they ignited around his field, rendered into crystallized spell patterns.

"Alright, I just need—oh, shit!" Shiv gagged as a waterfall of oil-like blood smashed into him. A waterfall of blood followed by a plunging shadow. Shiv's eyes widened as the Tarrasque's corpse toppled forward. He went out of context before it could crush him, and soon, he found himself standing within a wide chasm lining its throat. It was like someone managed to garrote a literal mountain open. How did they get through the crystal and everything else underneath? This cut is clean and deep…

He had no idea how the Ascendants had managed to wound the Tarrasque this badly, but he wasn't going to complain, especially since it gave him the opportunity to continue experimenting with Vitality Drain. He flung himself deep into the Tarrasque's wound. As he swam through the mess, he soon found himself pressing against a cracked wall of crystal. There was so much blood washing over him that it was hard to tell where what was or even which direction he was heading in, but he simply needed to make contact, and as soon as he did, he began funneling the Tarrasque's vitality into existence once more.

He bent the flow of the Tarrasque's lifeforce, and this time, he saw in full what it looked like. Instead of all the red rushing into him, it began to swirl atop his palm and coil around his body. Shiv was a singularity for the vitality, but he wasn't its ultimate resting place. Instead, he was just a guide now, and he groaned as he continued channeling his power, letting the vitality dance around him in an unending current.

The vitality flowed constantly, ceaselessly, forming a maelstrom of bright-red essence that slowly began to dissolve into existence. Every bit of brightness that was drained out from the Tarrasque nourished the world itself, and that faint sheen of vitality layered over everything became ever denser.