Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

163 (II)

Descend [II]

Veronica flinched back from where she hovered in midair as a massive maelstrom of vitality began to swirl within the downed Tarrasque.

"What the hells is it doing?" she asked her Ascendant.

"Hm? Oh, well, I don't know, dear. Do your best." Kathereine's words were nonchalant, but Veronica knew her grandmother well enough to know the woman was distracted. A breath of annoyance escaped the Councilwoman, and she shaped another spell.

A dome of Dimensionality emerged over the Tarrasque, but the world itself was beginning to tremble with overflowing vitality now. Veronica's eyes widened as brilliant colors of life force began to turn and turn. In the distance, she saw ruptures close. She saw mana storms vanish. The air felt fresher. Reality somehow grew denser, and most astonishing of all, Kathereine's presence grew fainter.

The other Avatars were affected too. Their incandescence was reduced. The divine mana leaking from their bodies, hinting at the presence of their Ascendants, grew muted.

And thus, it was Kathereine's turn to ask a question. "What is happening, Veronica?" Her voice was a hiss, and her sudden urgency just made her granddaughter roll her eyes.

"Who knows? We're not sticking around to find out." Veronica waved a hand, and, with a casual gesture, she and the other Avatars were relocated three kilometers away from the Tarrasque. They blinked back into existence just over Blackedge, standing atop the planar gate Veronica had manifested earlier to unleash the Prismatic Guard. In fact, the guard was still spilling out beneath them. The top, however, was entirely stable and perfectly suited to bear someone's weight.

Beside her, Anthony was standing up now. His jaw was hanging wide open, and he staggered out from his bathtub in a hurry, no longer treating this matter like an annoyance. The other avatars and Councilmembers were looking around as well.

"I got it! I killed it once!" a girlish voice declared with pride. The Waif danced past Veronica, flicking blood off her crimson-soaked body. Her golden pigtails spun in the air, and Veronica's right eye twitched as she felt some of that blood splatter against the back of her neck and her hair.

"The beast! Where!" A ragged gasp escaped Stormhalt as he shot up and swung his head from place to place. His flesh was badly charred. What bits of his body weren't burned were now raw-red, making him seem like a slab of uncooked meat. His armor was mostly melted as well.

He had been over-channeling Halsur's power, and now the Ascendant was looking down upon his Avatar in confusion. Black lightning flickered around Stormhalt, but every now and again, the electricity would briefly pulse blue or white, shifting back to mundane Aeromancy.

As Stormhalt's breathing calmed, he staggered to the edge of the planar gate they were all standing on and watched as the Tarrasque was drowned in a confluence of twisting bands. Curving gales of vitality were bleeding out from its form and sweeping into reality, dissolving in moments.

"What is it doing?" Stormhalt asked.

"I really hope someone else can ask me that question again," Veronica said through clenched teeth.

"What's it doing?" the Waif squeaked.

Veronica decided to do the mature thing and briefly teleported the small girl into a plane filled with clowns. The Waif hated clowns.

With punishment administered and silence restored, everyone just stared as the Tarrasque resurrected and groaned. A few kilometers away, Hawgrave plunged down through the distant clouds and made a pluming crater in the ground. But no one bothered to spare her a glance. Instead, all eyes were aglow with Divination and locked on the Tarrasque.

Yet, as Veronica gathered her power and sifted through the chaos swirling about the Tarrasque, she centered her focus on one single thing: the second presence still hidden within its body. The second presence that was the composer of this maelstrom of life. It was that boy she'd caught sight of earlier, the boy encased in Orichalcum, the boy the dragon was using as a bat to beat the Tarrasque. Vitality was rolling around him in a hurricane.

"Oh," Veronica breathed, realizing what she was seeing. "He's doing the Funnel. Wait, who is he? Who are we looking at? Why does he have a Vitality Drain Skill?"

What's more, she realized that she knew the boy.

Without waiting for any of her colleagues to respond, Veronica triggered her Legendary Memory Skill. Time slowed to a near-halt outside as she fell into her Perfected Memory Palace. An endless structure of vast and impossible geometries in the shape of a shining mansion expanded around her, and she moved through her own recollections, taking every instance of memory she had of that boy and organizing them into rooms.

She knew his face. She'd seen it somewhere before, and suddenly, she started walking back some more, following her instincts. Doors upon doors upon doors materialized before her. She walked through many rooms containing other memories, other moments from her past, and finally, as she turned the knob of a wooden door, she stepped into a small office.

She slowly walked up to the wooden table at its center, where a pale woman who looked to be in her late twenties sat with her face collapsed into her hands. Her hair was dark and curled at the ends, as it was now.

Veronica looked over her younger self's slumped shoulders, where a file sat on the table.

Her eyes turned to regard the file, one that she'd received some 18 years ago.

It was a harrowing report. A tragedy had occurred at Blackedge, something beyond reason, something foul and black and nonsensical.

Two members of the Eclipsebreakers had turned on their trusted companions. Vera and Harlon Lowe had enacted a vile ritual, using Rose Van Erren and her unborn daughter as sacrifices.

Vera perished during the ritual.

Harlon was subsequently slain by Roland. Without a fight.

Veronica looked down at Harlon's face, and her gaze lingered for a moment. She had many other memories of him, but she let them go for now. No sense in dwelling on old pain while new miseries lurked on the horizon.

She stepped out of that room and returned to a recent memory, one from just a few seconds ago. It was of the Dragon-Knight flying through the air, swinging the boy around. Veronica halted time within her mind and regarded the frozen face of that boy, encased in Orichalcum.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

As everything stopped moving, Veronica walked across the air and stood across from the subject of her interest to better study him.

"Yeah. He does look like you, Harlon," she whispered. "And a bit like Vera."

She sighed. The son. The child. The Omenborn that Roland refused to release. Godsdammit. Why did everything have to be so messy and complicated? She wanted to be back at the capital, dealing with feuding nobles. That was at least straightforward. But she was here now, and so she would have to unravel the situation. "So what is he doing here?" she asked herself.

"Curious, isn't it?" Kathereine said. Veronica looked to her right, where her grandmother stood, regarding the boy with a slightly lascivious expression. Veronica cringed.

"Grandmother, come on. Seriously? You're going to leer at the boy inside my mind?"

Kathereine rolled her eyes. "Oh, come now. If we cannot leer at people within our own minds, where can we leer at them?"

The Councilwoman simply stared at her Ascendant flatly. "Our minds?"

"Yes," Katherine said, briefly patting Veronica on her head. "After all, there's no you without me."

Veronica simply glared at her grandmother quietly before she scoffed and shook her head. "Okay. Well. At least we know who he is. Now. Other questions: Why does he have Vitality Drain? That's a Legendary Skill, and unless we're looking at some Legendary-Tier ratfuckery—" Her voice trailed off as another memory smashed into her the moment she thought of a certain Legendary Ratfucker who made her a rat-fucked mess during the war. "Udraal fucking Thann. Godsdammit. Okay. I have a guess."

"Hm," Kathereine hummed with pride. "And that's why you're the first among equals on the Council, dearie. Now. What's the guess—"

And as if to spill oil upon fire, a Quest notification appeared before Veronica's eyes. It appeared before Kathereine's eyes as well, considering how she suddenly stopped talking.

Hidden World Quest Activated: Slay Tanner "Shiv" Lowe, the Deathless, before he fully comes into his power and forcefully drives your world beyond its current Mana Stability Threshold.

Success: Integrated Earth will experience its next Ambient Mana Threshold Evolution. The [Mythical] Skill-Tier will become available to all Pathbearers within this Ambient Mana Zone; Evolve 10 Skills to Legendary-Tier.

Failure: A specialized Incursion will be triggered to destroy Integrated Earth in 10 years, 6 months, and 5 days.

Both Kathereine and Veronica stared at their notifications. Speechless.

"Grandmother," Veronica said after a few moments. "Did you happen to get a Hidden World Quest, perchance?"

"Perhaps," Kathereine replied. "And I might not be the only one."

***

Shiv didn't even notice that he left his Outside Context Problem state as he continued draining the Tarrasque. He was too enchanted by the churning sphere of vitality dancing upon his right hand, by the vortex that constantly spun around him. A loud and thunderous groan shook Shiv's ears as the Tarrasque resurrected once more. Shiv's draining was briefly interrupted as the monster's vitality collapsed inward.

A heartbeat later, a dense wall of tissue healed over Shiv, leaving him pinned in place as if an insect sealed in wax. But he never stopped draining its vitality. He never stopped feeding its life force into Integration. Shiv was wrong earlier. The Tarrasque wasn't an ocean. The System was. The world was. The world had a lifeforce of its own, just as Shiv, just as the Tarrasque, just as everyone else in Integration.

"Stop… Sucking…"

Shiv could hear the Tarrasque groaning, but he didn't heed it. He drained as much vitality as he could, and he relished as he watched its blazing life force dwindle

"Stop!" the Tarrasque cried out with a wrathful snarl, and waves of gravity suddenly rushed inward. Shiv didn't get a chance to respond. The crushing force passed through the Tarrasque and splattered him in an instant.

Pillar of Orichalcum 221 > 224

Gravitic Wrestler 171 > 175

Strider of the Unbending Path 151 > 153

Vitaemancy 86 > 89

Outside Context Problem 76 > 82

Vitality Drain 76 > 83

He died, and in the same moment, he shifted the path of the Tarrasque's vitality back to himself. Once more, his drain went from a flood to a trickle.

A trickle wouldn't be enough to save him. The Tarrasque's cascading waves of gravity continued to crash inward. They battered Shiv's Vitae form, like tsunamis of metal crashing against a house made from clay. Coldness exploded through Shiv in patches, and his insides went into freefall as he felt the telltale chill of final oblivion loom.

But Shiv wasn't going to go into that nothing without a fight. He drained harder, he drained, and he thought once more. He thought about how everyone else's vitality radiated, how they were always bleeding lifeforce into existence.

But I'm not like that, Shiv thought as he was reduced down to a chunk, then a rope, then a string, and then a fraying knot. I'm not like that. The frigid cold was seeping into his very soul, settling into the deepest part of his being. Can I be like that? Shiv thought. He tried to open himself, but he failed. He had no concept of how to do such a thing, and it might be impossible anyway, considering the shape of his soul.

Yet he wasn't done. He thought about how the world sapped so much vitality from the Tarrasque. He thought about the flood passing into the world. So what if… What if I let the world drain from me? What if I do that while I'm still connected to the Tarrasque? What will happen then? Will… will it just kill me or… No. I have to try. It's death anyway if I don't.

As he felt that final piece of himself begin to come asunder, he knew there was no more time and no more chances. So he took a final risk.

And he discovered the true depths of his first Legendary Skill. Vitality rushed from the Tarrasque into Shiv, but he added a third point to the junction. Shiv reached out to that faint, red membrane lining everything, and he compelled it to take from him, to take from him just as it had taken from the Tarrasque a few seconds ago.

And the world used Shiv as a channel to drink the Tarrasque hollow.

Drain Vitality 83 > 85

Shiv let out a cry of discomfort as a rush of frigid nothingness swam through him. That frigid nothingness was promptly scattered as a cataclysmic blast of heat ignited his insides. The Deathless resurrected instantly. In less than a second, he went from being a knot to a sprawling mass, and then a full person once more.

And he kept draining. He didn't stop. He drained and he gave, pulling from the Tarrasque and giving unto reality. And where Shiv could only pull in a trickle when he only called vitality into himself, Integration was far greedier than he. Even with him serving as a bottleneck, the sheer amount that the world drained every second dwarfed the total vitality residing within Shiv by exponents unimaginable.

A moan of misery sounded from the Tarrasque once more. "Bleeding… my… soul…" It slurred its words. And for the first time, Shiv thought he might be able to win this fight. He might be able to bring this thing down. "Let me go!" it screamed.

"Make me, asshole," Shiv growled from inside its body.

This proved to be the wrong thing to say, as a tentacle blasted through his chest, leaving him impaled. Shiv let out a bark of surprise, but halfway through, blood spilled out from his mouth, and he found himself dangling limply as the eye at the tip of the tentacle turned around to glare at him.

A concentration of translucent mana began to gather within the eye, and Shiv just sighed.

Then he cast himself across space and time, back to Blackedge.

The thrill of his newly mastered power and a building thrill pounded through him with the beat of his heart. But this wasn't done. As he blinked back into the Perch, he prepared himself for—

Hidden World Quest Activated: Slay Tanner "Shiv" Lowe, the Deathless, before he fully comes into his power and forcefully drives your world beyond its current Mana Stability Threshold.

Success: Integrated Earth will experience its next Ambient Mana Threshold Evolution. The [Mythical] Skill-Tier will become available to all Pathbearers within this Ambient Mana Zone; Evolve 10 Skills to Legendary-Tier.

Failure: A specialized Incursion will be triggered to destroy Integrated Earth in 10 years, 6 months, and 5 days.

Shiv let out a miserable groan as he stomped down on the ground, repeating the action of his temporal echo, and nearly doubled over at this new helping of bullshit. System… what the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you hate me more than everyone else?