The Seedmother screeches in response, aborting whatever change it was attempting and instead bucking forward with enough force to fling away; He-Who-Guards is imdiately against my back, supporting and keeping within range. A flash of what looks like a Reflex skill on the beetle's back tells that it understands the danger it's in, but it's far too late for it to stop what I've begun.
A new form of Temporal Firmant blasts out of , tuned to a new force: an attack on causality, on the very nature of cause and effect. A Causal Shattering.
A shockwave of pure ti ripples across the Seedmother's carapace, strong enough that it lights up in my Firmant sense like blinding fireworks. I feel the skill establishing itself across the Seedmother like a network of twisted spiderwebs, spinning a storm of threads not only around but through it. It establishes almost a hundred distinct, distorted segnts within the beetle that each resonate with Causal Shattering's power.
The Seedmother tries to resist. It has a scant few seconds to try: the amount of Firmant it wields is so imnse that it takes that long for my skill to complete. I can feel it blasting wild bursts of power out of its shell, trying to shake the hold I've established.
Then a circuit forms across its shell—it's trying to use a skill.
"Black Hole." He-Who-Guards identifies it faster than I can. In a mont, his thrusters are fully engaged and he's there, right in the middle of that circuitry; I've tried to disrupt the Seedmother's skill circuits before, though to no avail. It's filled with too many redundancies.
But maybe Guard's figured out sothing I haven't, because he strikes with a blade of Firmant directly into a corner of the circuit, and the whole thing sputters out.
He's been studying the circuits too, it seems.
It tries again. A circuit forms in another part of its shell, and Guard is once again there, striking and cutting the skill out; I can't help him, because it takes all my focus and energy to keep Causal Shattering going.
"I cannot do this forever!" Guard calls out. Ahkelios hesitates for a mont on my shoulder, then flies forward, determination ringing through his Firmant.
"I can help," he says.
I've only ever seen Ahkelios doing this with before, but apparently, his own capabilities have been evolving. I watch as he darts toward Guard and then rges with his Firmant blade, turning it a shade of bluish-green. I see Ahkelios's color spread through Guard's body as their Firmant becos one.
And then he's moving. Twice as fast as before. The Seedmother tries desperately to fight, forming a half-dozen circuits at once, but it doesn't matter when Ahkelios and Guard can move fast enough to get to all of them before they can fire. The mantis shares his speed and agility with Guard, draws directly from my Firmant to empower him, and together, they stop the Seedmother from fighting back.
Which allows to focus everything I can into the skill. It's my first ti using it in combat—my first ti drawing this much Firmant into a single skill. I can tell what I'm trying to do with it is stretching it to its very limits.
But, crucially, not outside of those limits.
Causal Shattering rips apart the tistream of whatever I strike with it. The Knight is still active, and like all Inspirations, its influence changes the form of the skill just slightly. It gives it direction. It gives it intent.
We've filled the Seedmother's past with wounds. All the holes we've torn into its shell, all the damage that Guard, Ahkelios and I have worked to inflict—It's been hurt again and again, and even though it's managed to heal itself, those wounds are still there in its past. They exist in that tistream.
I've filled the future with Tistrikes, aid haphazardly across the space the Seedmother occupies. Every one of them is loaded with enough force to tear apart the shell, but far more likely, they're loaded with enough force to rip through whatever internal organs might be present at the ti the punch is delivered. Those attacks, too, are in the Seedmother's tistream.
And that tistream is mine. That's what a Causal Shattering is. That's the truth of the skill.
[Mastery of Causal Shattering has improved!]
The air cracks. No: it shatters. It fills with the scent of blood and decay.
The sound that erges from the Seedmother tries to be a roar but erges as a choked, inhuman scream. There are suddenly dozens of wounds torn into the Seedmother's body, oozing with blood and calcified ti; half of them are from the past, the other half from the Tistrikes I've placed in the future. So of them are far enough in the future that the flesh within has begun to rot, with worms and insects eating through it.
Looking at the Seedmother through my Firmant sense is like looking at it through a cracked mirror. The damage is everywhere, all throughout its body, and I can feel the temporally-skewed inconsistencies through its cracked and twisted Firmant.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
In one mont, it's healthy, and in the next...
Half-dead. It's not completely dead, even now, but it's dealing with more damage than we've ever managed to do to it, and it's dealing with all that damage all at once. Even with Firmant reinforcent, it can't keep up with its own body, now mutilated throughout ti—even if it tries, that Firmant ends up being sent to the wrong ti and place.
Ahkelios has separated from Guard and is now standing on his shoulder, watching, but all three of us are basically frozen in place. I expected my plan to work, of course, but I hadn't expected this degree of effectiveness; the way the Knight changes Causal Shattering turns it from a skill that's a bit of a gamble to a skill that's almost a guaranteed one-shot. It's taken nearly all my Firmant and I feel a bone-deep exhaustion slowly filling , but...
Damn.
"Your plans are... highly effective," Guard remarks after a mont of hesitation. His voice is a little quieter than it normally is, and he can't quite seem to look away from the Seedmother.
"Is it still alive?" Ahkelios flies a little closer, though he maintains a respectable distance. I don't bla him.
"For now," I say. I'm breathing heavily, I realize—the skill was a strain on . Third-layer or not, I haven't completely adapted to using skills at such a high level with that much Firmant.
But we've won. I know that for a fact. Three tries, just like I predicted.
What's left are just the death throes.
The Seedmother struggles to compensate. New patterns flicker to life on its shell as it tries to reverse the effect of my shattering. It fails. It can't keep that circuitry consistent across ti, nor does it even have enough shell intact to create a working circuit.
It tries anyway. It tries to heal with a new, smaller circuit. It fails. Small or not, there's nowhere for the circuit to be written. Flickers of Firmant start and then dissipate. It's clinging on to life through sheer will, at this point.
It tries the concrete-lting skill again. It fails. That one was barely an attempt—the circuit flickers to life, and then fades just as quickly.
Slowly but surely, its struggles fade.
I let the Knight evolution dissipate, wincing a little as my body screams in protest and a dozen aches and pains return. There's a distinct sense of smug satisfaction from the Knight, as if it enjoyed beating down the Seedmother; I give it a small sense of thanks for its help, and there's a response of what almost feels like a purr.
Terrifying. I'm going to need to spend so ti to understand exactly what these new Inspirations—these Evolutions—entail. But for now, I'm just grateful for its help. A part of expects so last minute change, so disaster to occur, but... there's nothing.
Instead, an Interface notification pops up in front of , bright and bold.
[You have defeated the Seedmother (Rank SS)! 372 Strength credits. 655 Durability credits. 322 Reflex credits. 407 Speed credits. 500 Firmant credits.]
Rank SS. I can't say I'm surprised, considering how much of a battle that was, though with the way each rank seems to jump exponentially I'm surprised the battle wasn't harder.
Not that I'm complaining. This is a lot of credits. It almost makes the pain of the Knight evolution worth it. I can practically feel the Inspiration scoffing within at the thought—of course it's worth it, it thinks—and I laugh internally in response.
Honestly, considering the kind of damage I was able to take, it isn't wrong. So of the Seedmother's attacks were entirely ineffective against our new armor. It's part of the reason I was able to spend as much ti examining the Seedmother's shell and skills as I did. Part of the reason I was able to learn as much as I did.
I'm still trying to deconstruct the implications, though. Strength, Durability, Reflex and Speed; if the skills can be physically distinguished based on how they're constructed...
A new Interface notification interrupts my train of thought, and I make a low, irritated noise in my throat.
[Ritual Stage 1: Collect the Seed]
Prerequisites:
Defeat the Seedmother: 1/1
Keep the Seed safe: 1/1
"Looks like all we need to do now is pick up the Seed," Ahkelios comnts, looking up at the rooftop. It's balanced precariously on the corner of a now mostly-ruined building; the shockwaves from fighting the Seedmother didn't exactly leave the city untouched. "Want to get it?"
"Not yet." I want to figure out what's going on with the Interface skills before we trigger the next Ritual stage; whatever it is, I doubt it's going to be easy to deal with. If we have to fight another series of monsters like this, the next stage is going to take a lot of loops to beat. "Ahkelios, have you ever noticed anything weird with the Interface's skills?"
"What do you an?" The mantis blinks up at . "They're all weird."
"The way they're sorted," I clarify. "The categories."
"They never seed like they fit completely, but I figured it was just the Interface trying to sort them," Ahkelios says with a shrug. "Why?"
"Just trying to figure sothing out."
It's possible there's a language limitation here—that the Interface is just picking the closest equivalent word that describes a given category and using it. But if I try to sense the overall shape of the skills within my soul...
It's not sothing that's easy to notice. The skill constructs are imnse, complicated things, and Firmant sense doesn't lend itself easily to geotric shapes. But I can approximate a guess by pushing Firmant through each skill and watching the shape that erges.
I'm right. Each category besides Firmant—Strength, Durability, Reflex, Speed—they have consistent, repeatable, recognizable properties. Shape is an oversimplification, and this is only noticeable because the simplified nature of the Seedmother's circuits gave an idea of what to look for, but...
This ans the categories aren't just the Interface trying to sort the skills into the best available category. It ans the categories themselves aren't nearly as arbitrary as the Interface wants us to believe.
Ahkelios is watching , following my train of thought. I don't hide it from him. After a mont, he speaks, a little hesitant. "You think the Interface's nas for the categories are wrong?"
I cock my head. "No," I say. I glance at the Interface again, at the faintly glowing words that tell how many credits I have in any given category. At the thing that's both the source of my power and the thing that's corralling the direction of my growth.
Strength, Durability, Reflex, Speed.
Basic categories. Easy to understand. Easy to dismiss.
"I think it's lying."
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