Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

Ah! Dungeons and jails! My favorite places to socialize and meet new friends. Naturally, because I don't like being captured, I usually sneak in myself and hide in the walls.

You learn a lot of things when hiding in people's walls. You learn about their habits, what they like, at what times they touch themselves, how long they cry afterward, and also what they're good at.

It's how I recruit helpers for my heists these days. Because most people are in a dungeon for a reason, and some of them are actually more unlucky than incompetent.

If you can find those people, you can put together a pretty good crew.

Anyway, I just want to say thanks to all nation-states across Integration. Keep capturing the most dangerous, mentally deranged Pathbearers in existence. Saves me the trouble of hunting for them organically.

-Legendary Thief Velie Roberie, "Ms. Avarice"

173 (I)
Riot [II]

Inertial Overdrive 130 > 132

Farsight 53 > 56

Strider of the Unbending Path 153 > 155

Golemancy 12 > 15

Outside Context Problem 88 > 92

Vitaemancy 95 > 97

And then she was upon him again, ripping into his Vitae with a primal howl. Shiv barely managed to follow the Waif's movements thanks to the aura of lifeforce painting her presence in the ocean of darkness. He projected a burst of tides out from his final fiber of white-red mana. A clash followed. The first of the Waif's blows was halted by his counterforce. A crack sounded as part of her blade fractured, and the Waif screamed.

Shiv couldn't tell if from pleasure or pain.

But then she was everywhere. A leash of vitality came aglow, connecting her to other spots in the crawlspace. A second thereafter, Shiv saw a dozen more life signatures coming at him through the chaotic darkness. With little vitality left, he couldn't dive out of context. I need to change things. This felling girl is a psychopath. I can't even tell if she just wants to put me down or take me alive anymore.

"Now this is getting fun! Fun! Fun!" the Waif shrieked. The other signatures rushed in, and the sheer speed at which they moved tore pockets in the tar-black substance still clinging to Shiv. He caught sight of more versions of the Waif. Yet, they were obvious replicas of her—made from straw and fabric, and leaking a pitch-black substance from their eyes and mouths.

Shiv halted time with his Strider of the Unbending Path. The straw replicas went still. The original Waif continued coming at him, slashing in wide and scything arcs. Yet, the Waif herself had changed. Her voice turned to an animalistic snarl, and he felt an inhuman hand burst out from the darkness and grip his Vitae tight.

The hand was too pale, too taut of skin to be human, and he could see the spasming veins underneath. He could see segmented bone greeting him, and through the dark, he caught sight of the Ascendant's face for the first time.

A golden aura veiled them, and the Waif was nested within their translucent body. The Ascendant's face was a splash of paleness amidst the choking blackness that held Shiv in place. The Ascendant was beyond deformed. One eye that was a little too large compared to the other, which seemed only half grown because part of the skull had been caved in or was simply pressed from the moment of birth. Its nose, missing cartilage, swung over its mouth, and between wide, drooping lips were pointed teeth that resembled needles more than anything else.

A foul odor assailed Shiv's nostrils. He thought his armor was feeding him pheromones, but then he realized he was dead. The Voidmantid armor wasn't on him right now. This smell was magical—and worse than that, it was a skill he couldn't ignore. The taste grew so foul that Shiv wanted to retch, but he lacked the organs to do so.

"You know how much it takes from me," the Ascendant whispered, their voice a ragged, haunting thing. They struck out twice more using the wicked dagger wielded by the Waif. Shiv noticed the cracks on the dagger were gone now. But more than that, he noticed a faint glimmer of divine mana radiating out from it. It took his full concentration to ward off the Ascendant's blows using his Shapeless Tides. With every flick, their blade vanished from sight, and cuts greeted his strand-thin body. Fragments of Vitae burst free from what remained of Shiv, but he kept himself alive by unleashing bursting vectors that halted and repelled the countless blows.

Shiv's concentration and speed were strained to the limit. With every burst of force he exerted, his Inertial Overdrive climbed—and that meant the strain on his body grew more severe as well. A Pillar of Orichalcum rose from the tendril that was Shiv, and soon the Ascendant's blade was carving shallow grooves into his Toughness Skill instead of him.

Even so, he was a breath away from true death, and he found himself trying not to plunge off a treacherous edge. If he failed to repel the Ascendant with his Reflexes and Physicality, then they would cut him down. If he didn't increase his Toughness, his Inertial Overdrive would see him destroyed.

Inertial Overdrive 132 > 133

Pillar of Orichalcum 231 > 232

Multi-Tasking 24 > 27

As the Ascendant flicked and slashed, bursting in and out of the darkness, Shiv felt his temporal shell begin to crack and knew his time was running out. A thrust came at him from the left—but vanished and materialized on his right. He had to revert himself a second in time to send his force vectors in the right direction.

A resounding clash shook the crawlspace. The Ascendant laughed. "You asked for a name earlier! So, I will greet you properly. I am Daughter the Deadly, and you are delectable prey. So resilient. So desperate to live. Ah, what struggle! What strength!"

As they spoke, Shiv caught sight of the girl, hiding inside the nightmarish Ascendant's transparent flesh. She was staring at him with malice and glee, swallowed by her possessing god, or wearing her god as if they were a suit of armor.

"Do you know how much I wish to just close my fist and end you?" the Ascendant continued.

The Deathless didn't reply. He didn't have the focus. Instead, he gathered more overflow tides to keep himself alive. The Ascendant was unrelenting, unceasing, unyielding. He needed to match them. More than that, he needed to turn this into an offense. If he could just touch them, he would be able to rip the vitality out of them and resurrect. But it was too much. His mind screamed with strain. There was just too much he had to do at once. His temporal shell was cracking; time was literally running out.

I need to counterattack, but the Ascendant's too fast. I'm not fast—wait, no, I'm a damned idiot.

Shiv was only relying on his own skills, but he had new shoes. Shoes that allowed him to sink into darkness. He didn't think it would help him hide from the Ascendant for long, but it should throw them off. The Ascendant's strikes grew frenzied—they were pushing him to the edge. Cuts lined his pillar. Shiv lost a few more pieces, and he shivered beneath the cold touch of impending oblivion.

He threaded a string of Vitae out through the blackness, groping for his corpse. As soon as he made contact with its feet, the equipment notification appeared before his eyes.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Equipment Obtained: [Nightwalkers]

Tier: Master

Condition: Stable

Composition: Shadeleather; Spatial Magic

Enchantments > Nightswim; Last Step of Midnight; Self-Mending

Shit… Please work…

He activated his Nightswim Enchantment just as his temporal shell broke. Time resumed. The straw-made Waifs came at him, trailing blackness from their screaming mouths. They tore through the air—and fell upon nothing as Shiv turned into a puddle of darkness. The Ascendant was gone. The Waif remained their place, but she was momentarily surprised by what Shiv just did—

And then doubly surprised as he used the shoe's Last Step of Midnight.

The tar-black substance unleashed by the Waif worked against her for the first time. It gave Shiv plenty of charge to perform a Nightswim, and it also gave him an instant teleportation option to further confuse his adversary. The Ascendant was fast—but Shiv's Inertial Overdrive sounded like tides of debris slamming together time and again. He was faster than he had ever been, and that was all it took.

The moment of surprise gave him a microsecond for an opening. His amplified Reflexes allowed him to seize the advantage.

He flung himself forward. His Orichalcum column slammed against the Waif's body. The moment of surprise ended. She cleaved—but he was already draining from her. A surge of vitality flowed from the Avatar into Shiv, and he went from a string to an explosion of spreading Vitae.

For the first time, the Waif cried out in genuine agony as she was sapped—and Shiv kept draining from her. He resurrected. Her cut went wide, and he seized her arm. Instead of crushing her body again, he used her as a shield against her straw replicas while draining her continuously.

"Not fair! Not fair!" the girl shrieked. "You surprised me!"

Shiv chose to drain more of her vitality in place of a response. She kicked and writhed, and though she was impossibly strong for her size, Shiv was beyond conventional strength. Shiv converted the force she exerted into overflow tides and used that to accelerate both of them through a horde of her straw replicas and into a mithril support beam.

A resounding crash followed. She tried cutting him again, but he had her knife hand in a vice grip. He pinned her against the mithril pillar and continued savaging her vitality. The Waif let out a weakening groan, and then it was Shiv's turn to grin viciously.

"Who's the prey now?" he snarled.

Her eyes snapped open, and as she grinned, her teeth fell out, replaced by the needle-thin teeth the Ascendant had. "Still you!"

Shiv's instincts screamed at him to flee. He left context just as the Ascendant's ethereal form ruptured out from her body and ripped through the space he once occupied. The Waif exploded into a blast of all-consuming blackness, and as Shiv tried to navigate his way out from the miasma, his pulse quickened as he realized the Ascendant had vanished without a trace.

Shit. Shiv grimaced as he tried to figure out his next steps. Getting out of here himself was a good idea, but something told him that Daughter the Deadly wouldn't be the easiest to shake. Regardless, he accelerated through the crawlspace and made for the next cube over. He couldn't stay in place.

As soon as he passed through the thick tar left behind by the Waif and a few gears, he surfaced from his soul to preserve vitality. His senses were screaming at him, and he used the enchantments on his Voidmantid armor to try and track the Ascendant and her Avatar. That immediately proved to be a mistake as the foul odor in the air made Shiv pull his helmet open and vomit.

System, it's like a dead rat took a wet shit down my throat, he thought, gagging. Just what kind of bullshit skill is this?

Shiv took a second to regain his bearings. He was fighting an elusive foe, one that hid and swam through the darkness around him. Seeing as he just threw up, he expected the Ascendant to be on him once more. He did have one edge, though: He used his Vitamancy to track their life force. Ascendants and Avatars had a pretty big weakness in that they were infused with so much vitality that it was impossible not to see them if they were—

A flash of pain spread across both of Shiv's hamstrings. He swiped his Aegis of Assimilation down, expecting to find his tendon split, but the truth was worse than that. He tried to assimilate the injury into his Biomancy field, but he couldn't.

Darkness was leaking from his wounds. As he looked down, he saw a small hand extend out from his injuries, wiggling its fingers at him in a casual taunt. Just then, another two cuts painted paths of pain across his torso and cheek. The blows cleaved through his Orichalcum pillar and armor like they weren't there at all.

A third attack came, but Shiv got lucky—noticed it coming. A rush of lifeforce went from impossibly fast to a lesser but still possessed of a staggering velocity. He tried to intercept her slash but failed to turn in time. Yet, rather than slitting his throat, the dagger dug a few centimeters out of his Orichalcum pillar and went no further.

Understanding passed through Shiv. He realized her skills were amplified by stealth. If he didn't notice her, she was faster, stronger, and her cuts passed through his armor as if it wasn't there.

Unfortunately, this epiphany didn't mean he had a solution. Especially when she burst out from one of his tar-infested wounds. Shiv cried out in pain as the Waif drove her blade upward. A length of metal was digging chunks out of his pelvic bone in an instant. By the time he noticed her and allowed his Toughness to take true effect, her cut had glided halfway across his taint and was resting against the underside of his privates.

Shiv didn't wail in agony, but it was a near thing. He left context once more. As soon as he did, he found the Waif displaced from inside his body, and that made him feel a special kind of disturbed. Whatever that skill was, it allowed her to invade his flesh after cutting him.

"Come the felling fuck on! Of all the places you can stab me! Really?" He groaned as he bled from a variety of wounds. He examined his injuries to make sure he wasn't oozing blackness anymore. It seemed that he needed to be within context for that skill to work. That also meant he could feed these wounds into his Aegis of Assimilation to mend himself. "Can't let her keep cutting me. To hells with this, I don't want to be anywhere near her."

He pointed his Shapeless Tides toward the nearest Orichalcum wall. Part of him wanted to fight to show the Ascendant that he was no prey, that he was a Legendary Pathbearer who could contend with a god. But that was just pride talking. Pride and his ingrained need to brawl. I have to be smarter than that now. She's not going to let me drain her like earlier, and her skills are too godsdamned strange. I need to get out of this fight before she accidentally kills me for good.

Just then, the Waif blinked into existence right behind him. Shiv nearly jumped out of his Vitae.

The Waif's eyes burned bright violet, and she stared right at him. Her head was tilted, and it was only then that Shiv noticed he was looking at an entirely different girl. She was far gaunter than the last one and had an enduring frown instead of a cruel smirk lining her face.

Suddenly, a sick feeling came over him as he considered a few horrible possibilities: Just how many Avatars did Daughter have? And were these girls willing Avatars?

What the fuck even is the Yellowstone Republic…

If he didn't want to stick around before, it was doubly worse now. The Ascendant's Intimidation Skill was grinding against Shiv's psyche. He was probably more resistant than most, but that didn't make him immune either.

He pulled hard in the opposite direction of his Inertial Overdrive, and Shiv hissed as he felt part of his hip get wrenched out of place. He fed that into one of his Biomantic mana-hydras as well. Once more, he really needed to improve his Multi-Tasking Skill. He wasn't capable of fighting at maximum capacity if he couldn't improve both his Toughness, manage his Inertial Overdrive, and gather more overflow tides at once.

A Legend wasn't made a Legend by a single skill, but a concert of supporting skills allowing the Legendary Skill to operate at peak capacity. Every time he got stronger, the lack of these supporting skills grew more and more evident.

Multi-Tasking 27 > 28

His Vitae shuddered like a candle in a snowstorm. He was spending himself fast to stay unnoticed by the Waif, but she clung close to him with a curious expression on her face.

"What's that, my Ascendant?" the new Waif muttered. She didn't sound nearly as happy as the last one. "Oh. O-okay. I'll keep following them. Whoever they are." Her lip quivered, and Shiv felt the faintest connection form between him and the brown-haired girl. It was like wisps of air swirling between them, but the sensation was unmistakable. "I-if you're out there, c-come out! Daughter the Deadly demands it!" She bit her lip and clutched a new, even more wicked dagger, the blade shaped like a snake in motion, with two shaking hands.

She was afraid. She didn't want to be here. And she didn't have a say.

Immediately, Kathereine was dethroned as his least favorite Ascendant. Shiv was coming for Daughter's head for whatever sick, twisted shit they were doing to these girls. The last Waif might've been a little psycho, but the new one just seemed like a scared kid. She could be faking, but from the way her eyes darted about, like she was trying not to jump at every shadow, Shiv had a feeling she was genuinely terrified.

Psycho-Cartography: It's likely also a deliberate tactic used by the Ascendant against you. The last Waif didn't die, so they were swapped out for a reason. They're trying to figure out your moral limits. The last girl was more psychotic animal than human child. This one seems to be a victim, and we don't have it in us to murder a kid with our own two hands. Or maybe that's just what we tell ourselves. Whatever the case, we need to get out of here before Daughter deepens her offense. Get into the next cube and find a place to break contact or create a mana storm inside here.

He looked around for an easy exit, and he noticed how the gap left in the neighboring cube from the stream of soulfire earlier was growing even larger. Bits of Orichalcum dripped down as bright white slag, and Shiv pointed his Bladewand of Fire's path in the direction of the opening, and a dense thread of Pyromancy speared out from its tip.

Right now, things get messy.