NOVEL NEXT 167 (I) Enough
You should cultivate a certain madness in your heart. To be a good warrior and a great Pathbearer, one must hold two conflicting desires at the same time. A willingness to be gentle and nurse the wounds of your flesh and mind after battle, to be a creature of boundless love for yourself. Understanding is essential. Understanding and an impossible amount of forgiveness for all failures.
Then, at the same time, you must be merciless. You must drill every last failure out of your body and soul. To push yourself to the brink over and over, to arrive at a place where few others dare to tread. It is not brutality that will prevail here. That is a mistake. Internal brutality is not the adversary of self-affection, but its sibling. It is a maladaptive practice of the same desire to mend yourself—by cruelty or kindness. What will prevail is coldness. It is determination. It is absolute focus.
And you must shift between the two paradoxically so that you can reap every last level from your struggles.
I remember the people I have slain. So many deserving. But too many who were not. I did not mean to shed the blood of the weak; the brittle blood of the lamb. The act has debased me many times. Collateral damage is unavoidable; collateral damage is an unacceptable display of incompetence and weakness.
Both of these statements stand true at the same time.
I was too weak, too inexperienced, too emotional, too unfocused, too unwise, too wounded, too lost to do the right thing. Everyone becomes an unfailing paragon in retrospect, but I have come to learn that many of these mistakes are inevitable. The ones who will not admit this have the softest hearts of all.
But inevitability does not mean they are allowed. So I learned. So I drilled. So I turned these moral failures into lessons and made sure I would never fail the same way again. Until I encounter a new point of defeat. A new unacceptable failure. And I comfort myself. And then I learn. And the process continues.
There is no emotion that will make you a Legend. There is no singular philosophy. There is only you and the struggles you have faced. The ones you failed at. The ones you will fail at. And the ones you might be able to overcome.
Embrace who you are—and lift yourself high. Hatred, sorrow, or joy… They are all meaningless unless what follows is change.
Unless what follows is evolution.
-Legend: Reforged from Ruin, Written by Semper Paragon Caine Hauser of the Descenders Union
167 (I)
Enough
Shiv was falling.
The air screamed around him, licked at his aching flesh with a harsh, cold tongue. He didn't know where he was or where he was bound, but the fragments of his mind were coming back together with every meter he dropped. And what followed was fury with no one to vent it on.
His Berserk Skill almost triggered, but another skill interrupted Shiv before he could descend into a blind frenzy.
Psycho-Cartography: We can be pissed off and effective at the same time. There's nothing for you to go Berserk on right now. We're Delving. Whatever the hells that means. By the end of this, we'll have a Legendary Skill. We need to focus on getting that and then breaking out of this felling prison we're in. Spend your rage through your Farsight Skill. Figure out where we are first, and then discover what or who you can break after.
The wounded child in Shiv's heart wanted to ignore his Skill out of spite, to scream and lash out blindly. Yet, his time with the orcs granted him a level of awareness that made him cringe. He spent so much of his focus watching the gray-skins' behaviors that he started studying his own. Impotence disgusted Shiv. Waste made his blood boil. There would be no satisfaction that would come from screaming into the void, and it wouldn't let him help Adam, Uva, or anyone for that matter.
He needed to solve the problem—to push through the shit before he was good enough to make an actual dish.
And so he used his Master of Rage Feat to fuel his Farsight. His vision magnified beyond its previous limits. Dense folds of frigid moisture battered his body, but gradually began to part below. Something came into view. It resembled a place—a place Shiv knew.
The town of Blackedge greeted Shiv as he crashed through the bottom of the clouds.
Shiv tugged back on his gravitic field, and his plummet became a glide. He scanned the town from above and immediately noticed several things that were wrong. The first was the buildings. Some of the structures were not of Blackedge; he could see the mural-carved towers of Weave, and residential blocks from Gate Theborn.
And the many people walking the streets of the warped town were similarly foreign to his home, most numerous among them being the slaves.
A sickening feeling built in the pit of Shiv's stomach as he noticed an emaciated boy huddled against a wall and recognized him as the slave that had suffered under Oldsmith's belt. The one that had met his end between the digits of a sneering orc. Another woman passed by him, and Shiv's recollections stirred. He knew even less about her, but he'd seen her among the dead when the Jealousy crashed down inside its teleportation anchor.
There were non-slaves here as well. On the lawn behind Starhawk's Perch, Shiv saw the automaton Pathbearer that gave its life protecting Georges. He saw Feather, the Arrow Family Guard—the elf who offered his breastplate to Shiv before he passed. There were Umbrals here too. Umbrals that died during the raid at Passage, and those who were recently slain during the Vulteg raid.
Shiv wanted to ask why they were here, but he knew. Inside his bones, he already knew.
Psycho-Cartography: You believe you failed these people because you weren't strong enough. The System took notice. And now they're here to make our lives more difficult. Because—
"Just no end to the fucking strife, is there?" Shiv spoke to his skill. Psycho-Cartography offered no further reply. Nothing needed to be said.
Shiv landed just before Starhawk's Perch. He slipped past the inner ring of the town and found the parapets unmanned. Truthfully, Blackedge seemed quite barren, aside from the people Shiv thought he'd failed. He hadn't taken a look inside the buildings, though. He wouldn't be surprised if there were people in them. Shiv saw the faint glow of vitality signatures all around him—but their lifeforce all flowed back to him.
It's like they're created from me. Makes sense, since they're part of this skill. Well. They're actually dead. These are just recreations, I guess. But still, these are some really godsdamned accurate recreations. Accurate enough to scare the shit out of me.
He surveyed his surroundings as he began walking toward the Perch itself. He looked up at the top of its central spire and considered launching himself straight up. Shiv wondered if there was a clone of Roland up there. If there was, well, Shiv deserved to have a practice punch in this skill-plane as a pregame to the real deal.
But before he could do anything, a scroll of massive text manifested before his eyes.
Environment finalized.
Simulating critical encounters…
Initializing Skill-Shaping
Delve Quest Gained: Defend Blackedge from major threats. Prevent the town's destruction and keep at least ten percent of its population alive. Deaths from collateral damage will result in an immediate failure.
Success: Finalized Legendary Skill Evolution.
Failure: The simulation is reloaded.
Shiv took in the information. His hands tightened into fists. He saw the System's game here. It didn't just bring the slaves and other victims here to mock him; it was testing him on the basis of his worst failures. He fought too recklessly, too carelessly; his skills were too destructive. That bothered Shiv, and so his failures were carved into the skill as well.
Valor had warned him about this, about how every feat he performed was recorded by his skills. That didn't just mean his triumphs. Considering how often he died, he likely had more defeats than victories stored for the System's use. But he also considered the failure condition. The simulation being reloaded made it sound like he would get to try again. So, if that was the case, why was Valor so worried about him Delving? Was it just a matter of time and difficulty? The way the ancient Pathbearer was speaking earlier made it sound much worse.
Shiv was still missing something here. But he would find out soon enough.
"Alright," he said to himself. "Let's get this done, turn ourselves into a proper Low Legend, and get back to Blackedge. The actual Blackedge." He looked up at the sky and sneered. "Hey. System. If you're conscious at all, eat fucking shit. All I've done is give you more struggle. And all you've ever done is make things worse. I don't know why you're so determined to do this, but whatever the reason—if there's an actual reason—go fuck yourself."
Initiating Encounter (1/5)
As soon as the text appeared, Shiv noticed the space around him stutter. An enemy just got added to the Delve. It didn't take long for Shiv to hear screams in the distance. His head snapped to his left, and he saw a beam of fire slash high up into the air.
Shiv stopped time and moved. The world went still as he shot up into the air. As soon as Shiv climbed beyond the parapets once more, he followed the magical beam back to its origin. He recognized the enemy immediately. An elemental golem was attacking a group of slaves. It was the same one he faced inside Passage's teleportation anchor.
A savage grin pulled at the corner of Shiv's lips. Now this brought back fun memories. Well, that and the intense suffering that came from being slowly burned to death inside what basically amounted to a magical incinerator, but no pain, no joy.
The elemental golem looked much the same as it did before. Seemed about as powerful too.
The same couldn't be said about Shiv. Compared to the boy that had been pushed into the teleportation anchor by the fake Metven, present Shiv was practically a demigod. He wasn't just faster, tougher, stronger; he had a whole suite of Magical and Social Skills he could unleash as well.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
There was no fight between him and the golem. It remained frozen in place as he slammed into it like a pickaxe descending on brittle stone. He rammed his fist through the golem's chest and crushed the mana core inside. The entire encounter took less than two seconds. He let time resume, and the golem crumbled around him.
Shiv shrugged the remains of the dimensional aside as he brushed off smears of dirt and dust from his partially bare torso. He noticed that his Voidmantid armor was beginning to regenerate. That brought a flicker of joy to life in his chest. After losing his mask, his knife, and his gauntlet, it was nice to have one piece of equipment that could rebuild itself from the ground up.
Helix really knew what he was doing when he picked out a bribe for me. I need to figure out how to apply the regeneration for my next knife or something. The Skysplitter was good, but I need something with a bit more durability…
Encounter Complete (1/5)
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
The notification appeared before Shiv's eyes, and he frowned. He wasn't sure how his Skill Fusion was being adjusted. So far, it still just felt like he was using Gravitic Wrestler and nothing more. He couldn't even trigger his Magical Resistance in any way. Maybe I need to finish all the encounters before I get anything.
Something moved in the corner of his eye. Shiv instinctively turned to greet the people he'd just saved—and shuddered at the sight of Guardshead Leu.
"Thank you, Pathbearer," Leu said, her voice monotone. "Your aid was most welcome."
It wasn't her. Not really. But even the shadow of a dead Vulteg was enough to remind Shiv of her fate. He grimaced as he regarded her. She and the nearby slaves took on neutral postures now that the golem was dead. He saved them here, but he'd failed to do it in life. He'd had no chance to save Leu. Not from the Recollector. Maybe not even as he was right now.
"I'm sorry," Shiv whispered. The words were wasted on this imitation. But they weren't for her. It was one thing to logically know he had limits, that he couldn't save everyone. Feeling it was a different matter. Accepting it was impossible. Shiv didn't blame himself. Not really. But he did hate the System, hate the world, and hate his lack of power.
The last thing he hated the most. Because in a reality molded from conflict, only the hardest fist and the strongest will prevailed—so long as they were supported by worthy allies.
Initiating Encounter (2/5)
The Delve shuddered again. There came a loud, rumbling laugh. A vicious laugh he would never forget. Shiv's features twisted into a snarl as he blasted skyward once more. He was a hundred meters up in the air when he noticed the slaughter happening on the patio behind Starhawk's Perch. Blood glistened along fresh blades of grass, and Shiv flinched as he watched 811 rip Feather in half.
"Godsdamned fucking bastard," Shiv snarled to himself. He surged forward through the air with a crack of force, and 811 turned to greet him. The massive orc offered a jubilant smile to Shiv as he held a crystalline fist high.
He opened his mouth to say something.
Shiv drove a boot through his jaw instead. The orc's chin shattered into pulped flesh and skipping shards of bone. His head snapped back—but Shiv seized him before he could be launched anywhere. As soon as the Deathless touched the orc, a rush of electricity blasted through Shiv. He let out a hiss of discomfort and pushed through the orc's Aeromancy. Shiv yanked 811 off-balance by the orc's wrist; slammed the gray bastard against the ground through a hip-toss.
As the orc bounced, Shiv brought his foot down on 811's chest. Flesh tore. Cartilage and bone snapped. Hot blood welled around Shiv's ankles as he drove his foot down against the orc's spine. 811 gagged and choked on his blood as the ruined flaps of tissue constituting his chin flapped before Shiv's eyes. He was trying to say something, but Shiv didn't give a shit. He wanted this orc dead more than most others, and he wasn't going to lift his foot until 811's body was completely—
Something else let out a loud crunch beneath 811. The orc gave a gargling laugh—and twisted his body. Shiv caught sight of a goblin strapped to the orc's back. A dismembered goblin being worn like a backpack. Their face was nonexistent. Completely caked against the ground. And that was Shiv's doing.
The Deathless let out a snarl of pure frustration. "YOU PIECE OF FUCKING—"
Encounter Failed
Resetting Delve
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
The Delve shuddered violently. Shiv found himself falling once again. He blinked in surprise, and the snarl returned to him. "Motherfucking orc! Godsdamned—"
Psycho-Cartography: There is a social lesson in this Skill Evolution too. You're rushing blindly. You need to get in the habit of watching and observing. Use your Awareness. You're not bad at thinking. You have the capacity and the instinct for deception, so develop more patience. You can afford to let 811 kill a few people. He can't destroy Blackedge on his own in a short amount of—
Applying Partial Skill Evolution: Maelstrom of Stars Unmoving (Heroic)
Shiv let out a gasp as power exploded out from his muscles. His marrow and sinews trembled with building pressure, and a wave of gravitic force exploded out from him. But it was more than gravity. It was more than a manipulation of mass around him. It was a projection of building force that crashed inward toward his body. Waves of kinetic energy collapsed toward him as he writhed. Shiv didn't get any bigger, but his muscles did get denser. Every fiber of his being was infused with so much strength that Shiv felt his bones creak from the build-up.
By the time he recovered, he struck Blackedge like a falling hammer and tore through the battlements surrounding Starhawk's Perch. Shiv fought to catch his breath as he tried to shrug the debris aside.
Yet the rubble clung to Shiv's body even as he pawed at it—tried to push it away. The dust in the air was wrenched inward, pressing against his skin and revealing billowing waves of unseen force. The waves crashed against him, akin to water kissing the shoreline, and with each cascade of kinetic force, Shiv felt his physique grow stronger, felt the pressure around him go from magnetic to crushing. The rubble pressed against his body began to crack and turn to dissolving particulates.
The cobblestones lining the ground and other bits of masonry composing battlements he was partially embedded in came asunder as well. Even Shiv's own body creaked underneath the force closing tight around him. He focused on increasing his Toughness to compensate. His pillar formed, emerging as a faint rod that spiked high up in the sky.
Unlike before, Shiv found himself capable of moving with ease. Right then, he was stronger than he was tough, and with every wave, his strength climbed further still.
Shiv noted how similar the penalties for Inertial Overdrive and Maelstrom of Stars Unmoving were. Both inflicted severe damage on his body once they exceeded a certain level. But they were also skills that constantly grew, that allowed him to reach new heights of power so long as he could offset their costs.
The fundamental weakness of both his Physicality and Reflexes now was Toughness. The integrity of his body was the bottleneck. He could move as fast as he wanted, he could take in as much strength as he wanted, but there would come a point where his toughness was outpaced, and wounds would come thereafter. Meanwhile, if his toughness was too high, he wouldn't be able to move at all.
"Dynamics and tradeoffs," Shiv muttered to himself. He relaxed his muscles for a moment, and the crashing waves of kinetic force died. All the strength that had been building up inside him faded, and a brief feeling of lethargy washed through Shiv. His legs shook, and he barely noticed the notification informing him that the first encounter had begun in his temporarily weakened state.
Once more, a beam slashed through the air, but this time Shiv was in no hurry. He waited for himself to recover fully, and then took to the sky.
Flying with Maelstrom was different from Gravitic Wrestler. Previously, he just flung himself like a projectile. Now, as he pulled on the kinetic tides washing over him, the crashing waves that originally shifted Shiv flattened the other way and blasted him upward. He spent some of the strength he'd gathered to do that, but he had more in reserve.
Every inbound wave of kinetic energy fueled him more and became a resource for him, something he could continue cultivating or spend to achieve certain feats. As such, when Shiv sailed through the air, he found himself capable of modulating his force better than before. He didn't need to fling himself that hard; in fact, he could spend only a little, just enough to nudge himself through the air.
It also allowed him to counteract his inertial sheath to some extent. Inertial Overdrive fed off the momentum acting on his body, and made him go faster and faster. But right now, Shiv was stronger than he was fast, and he managed to wrench the vector of his movement aside until he was pointed in the desired direction.
Shiv considered the details of this partial evolution further.
Right, so I can build up more force, then spend it to fly around or exert my strength on something pretty good. The penalties are a feeling of fatigue when it ends, which seems to last around five seconds or so. It might be longer if I focus on drawing in more force across an extended period of time. That, and if I get too strong, the space around me effectively becomes dangerous for everyone else.
He descended on the elemental golem with caution and precision. The golem turned its flaming sphere of a head and unleashed a stream of Pyromancy. The stream splashed harmlessly around him, and the deathless came to a sudden halt directly over the golem. He focused on gathering more strength. Waves of force crested against his body with increased frequency, and Shiv felt himself tremble with might.
He spent a fourth of that might and pointed his waves downward. The bottom of his pillar greeted the golem's body as if a steel tower being dropped on an insect. There came a loud crack as the golem all but dissolved beneath Shiv's feet. A blast of dust spread out underneath the Deathless, and the golem's lightning-infused limbs of lashing water burst apart into parting puddles.
A final flicker of electricity danced across the spreading waters, and the golem was no more.
Encounter Complete (1/5)
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
"Alright," Shiv breathed, "and that was something else." His Heroic-Tier Physicality Evolution was worth more than mithril on its own, and it was only a partial Skill Evolution granted to him after his failure with 811.
Despite everything, despite the direness of his circumstances, the flames of anticipation were kindled inside Shiv as he yearned to see what form his Legendary skill would finally take. He thought about Marikos swinging his Pillar of Orichalcum like it weighed nothing, and he recalled Hawgrave, how she could grow to titanic sizes, or shrink down to the dimensions of an insect.
I also have Magical Resistance, Shiv remembered. That's the skill I chose to make Legendary, but how the hell is that going to come together with Physicality? What does that even look like?
He didn't know, but he would soon. Maybe after he crushed 811 properly.
When the orc spawned, Shiv was ready for him. He didn't go after him directly, not like last time. Instead, he triggered his temporal shell right as the notification appeared. The world was still when 811 was loaded in. Shiv plucked the orc off the ground before he had a chance to do anything and launched them both upward, high into the sky. For a beat, he considered crushing the orc using his collapsing waves of kinetic energy. But he wanted to see 811's face before the orc finally expired.
Shiv let time resume. 811 shuddered in his grasp. And then his features were drawn back in a surprised growl. "Well, that is just impolite."
Whatever else he had to say came out as a croak of pain. Shiv tightened his muscles. A wave of crushing power slammed into him, and by extension, 811. The orc's body began to fold and deform in several places. His bones shattered first, turning to shrapnel, then powder within his own flattening flesh. 811's organs squeezed out from his mouth, from his prolapsed anus, from the lacerations and ruptures lining his torso. He couldn't even produce a sound of his own volition anymore, and Shiv simply glared his hate at the dying creature.
Another wave swept toward Shiv. He pulled the orc hard against the pillar, and a series of satisfying cracks were accompanied by delightful puffs of blood.
"This is what I'm going to do to you when we actually meet each other again," Shiv promised, and he ground 811's skull to a mangled mess against his pillar. The orc gave a final gurgle. Shiv squeezed. His kinetic waves imploded around the orc's head, and his skull transformed into a dense marble of red. Instead of smearing Shiv with gore, the blood, giblets, and other fluids spilled down the face of Shiv's pillar before spilling like foul rain onto the grass below.
The Deathless let out a satisfied breath as he tossed 811 aside. The orc's corpse resembled a pancaked piece of bloodied meat, and Shiv spat after it, intending every bit of disrespect. He wasn't lying. When he met Hawgrave again, he would take her blade from her, and then he would go inside to visit the actual 812. After that, well, Shiv didn't feel like having an orc nemesis anymore, so he would just solve that problem. Besides, he had bigger prey to contend with.
He wasn't interested in fighting individual orcs for the rest of time. No. In the end, his target was and would always be the Challenger. He wasn't going to do any of this halfway.
811's body struck the ground and came apart like soup. Nearby, Feather and the automaton that had protected Georges looked up before flatly proclaiming their thanks to Shiv. They said the exact same words Leu spoke to him earlier. That confirmed something for Shiv. This was merely a simulation, facsimiles of those that were lost. It didn't truly capture their spirit.
Encounter Complete (2/5)
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
They were gone. Everything here was an act of psychological warfare conducted on him, on the part of the System.
But something didn't seem entirely right about that. After all, there were people with Legendary social skills. You couldn't possibly test a Social Skill against someone that was merely a mannequin, someone who only spat stock phrases. Maybe Social Skills or social functions are withheld inside a Delve that stressed my Physicality and Magical Resistance?