Transcendent-Heretic Udraal Thann has entered Synchronized Integration
Udraal Thann:“Mana operates in defiance of entropy. Magic is the expression of belief, codified belief perhaps, but still belief, that which shapes the material from taphysical aning. Ex Nihilo, in other words. Often, when one gets a Unique Skill that is the purest expression of ex Nihilo, you are giving birth to sothing that has never existed before, simply from the novel trail you blazed. And more than giving you an edge in battle, it offers sothing more: insight into the System itself. You get a glimpse at what it deems to be truly novel and thus worthy of being a Unique Skill. My success in creating the Deathless is that he alone stands apart from all other Pathbearers, as consequence fuels his strength, and death is rely the lubricant of his progression. As such, his expression of ex Nihilo is further mirrored upon , for as he gains his evolutions, so do I and my insights grow ever more. But the true beauty of ex Nilhilo is the fact that you are experiencing a new horizon within yourself. Even if the System is a tyrant, it is one that must slowly adapt to you, and every Unique Skill is an edge, a card no one else can play. Even if you are of a lower Tier or find yourself outmatched by an adversary who should be your better, possessing sothing that no one else does can grant you the most miraculous of victories, which further feeds into your growth. Should your Unique Skill be born from an attuned magical lore, then what follows is a new extension built upon the existing infrastructure of a mana type. And so, my peers and rivals, I am here to taunt you. I am here to proclaim that I have evolved a new Unique Skill from the study of vitality and the rging of Necromancy. I have gone against the System's rules through the evolution of the Deathless. I now possess Entromancy, the act of conceptual withering. The art and lore of decay that ca before. In , the shape of the elder realm still lingers. A ti before the System, the shape of magic before magic. A paradox unto itself: Nihilism Echoes.”
Mythic-Intelligencer MuValk:“Apologies, Transcendent Udraal, my Unique Deafness Skill self-activated the mont you teleported through our wards. Can you repeat all that?”
Udraal Thann:“I’m going to hurt you soday, MuValk.”
Mythic-Intelligencer MuValk:“Apologies, Transcendent Udraal, my Unique Deafness Skill self-activated the mont you teleported through our wards. Can you repeat all that?”
Udraal Thann:“None of you hold any interest in truly advancing our struggle against the System. A sha, a pity, and a disgrace, but soday you will see that all I have talked about will bear fruit, and you will co to begging for a taste of it. I will deny it to you until the last second, until I see that you have truly understood.”
Transcendent-Heretic Udraal Thann has left Synchronized Integration.
Mythic-Intelligencer MuValk:“Finally. He’s gone. I think that’s a new record. How soone like him ever got to Transcendent, I’ll never know.”
Udraal Thann:“That would be due to my near-unparalleled, determined genius.”
Transcendent-Heretic Udraal Thann has entered Synchronized Integration
Mythic-Intelligencer MuValk:“I motion to ignore Transcendent-Heretic Thann. Let’s talk trade taxes.”
Udraal Thann:“Alas, you cannot ignore forever.”
—Transcript of Transcendent-Heretic Udraal Thann breaking into Chorus Highmoot and boasting of the “Deathless” (First recorded instance)
382
Ex Nihilo
The Skill Fusion took hold inside Shiv like a spark setting fire to kindling, a clash of stone on stone from which a fla was spawned. Yet it wasn't he who combusted first, but rather the Red Rider's Hand looming behind him.
It ca ablaze in a burst of mana, but rather than being of that harsh glow which signaled the presence of Pyromancy, it was barren, utterly devoid of all coloration beyond a strange and ominous grayness. The very sa magic ford an aura around Shiv, billowing out from him in undulating waves, like a misted fla dancing to the caress of passing winds. Yet the grayness remained, even for him, its coloration the embodint of ambivalence and indifference.
The hollow fla stood as a paradox, for as it burned, Shiv felt a coldness settle over him. It was not the kind of cold that chilled the air and alchemized one's breath into fog, but rather an empty coldness. It burned away one's will, sapped the spirit, and drained any notions of purpose and poignancy.
“For ever treacherous are the hearts of n and monsters alike.” Shiv heard his own voice tremble forth from the hand that lood behind him. “For though we impose aning on the world, aning in turn is burned away and stripped down to the hollow delusion. For faith is a fickle fuel, and n and gods are bound toward the sa oblivion regardless of character and struggle. For philosophy is no true salvation, but only a higher lie spoken by shivering sophists.”
As the Red Rider's Hand spoke on, Shiv realized he wasn't the only one who could hear it. Its voice hamred the world and sent blast waves of gray fla spreading through existence. It licked at Marikos. It swept through Candles, and both of them combusted, their insides burning just like their outsides were, but their skin did not wither or scald. Still, they were ablaze, caught within Shiv's grasp. He could feel them as his mana licked at them. He could sense their intentions boiling, their sense of self withering along the outside.
As his skill took hold, another revelation was delivered unto him, one he had never sensed before. There was an exterior to one's ego: the false husk you constructed from your beliefs, ideals, understandings, and culture. Philosophy in action was the vehicle of your life, and most did not build it well. Shiv could feel how fragile both Marikos and Candles were. The forr was too simplistic and unwilling to grapple with the hard aspects of his psychology and his environnt. The latter was broken, madness gripping him in its stifling grasp, but there was sothing else: the ruins of sothing grand, a marvel of architecture that now lay in scattered pieces around the outer shell that once comprised his sense of self.
“And there is no difference between them,” the hand proclaid. “There is no difference in the absolute, but perhaps there might be every difference to the individual and the relative. For who can say one thing is false, even though it is fleeting, even though it is frail, even though it is hollow and devoid of an empirical self?”
“Deathless… is your hand speaking to us?” Marikos looked more stunned than Shiv could ever recall seeing him, but his astonishnt was second only to Shiv's own.
Before Shiv ca a new notification, and it dubbed the rider's right hand with a new moniker, an assigned title given to the entity that now embodied the limb, an extension of Shiv born of his new skill.
Nihilist:“Give unto faith, belief, a glimpse of how another sees the world, your understanding of philosophy, your conviction, your purpose and that of those around you, the invisible hand which propels mortals, delusion or not, deception or otherwise, that fabric of epheral fabrics, that elusive facsimile of aning which is forged by mortals yet unfound in the greater architecture of the System. Give this unto so that I might burn them like fuel and so that I might be able to deglaze flesh, bone, tal, or even magic within the hearth of my absolute unaning. For if you feed my fla, so too will I see your glory undiminished in return, O devourer of death and aning.”
As the Nihilist spoke, its ashen voice spread, no longer thundering from within the Red Rider's Hand, but instead echoing from every bit of gray fire which clung to the world surrounding Shiv. It kept spreading and kept spreading until a massive conflagration was sweeping through Gate Piety. Bodies were consud, the hollow flas clinging to them like tar and refusing to let go. They did not clash directly against Magical Resistance, though Shiv could still feel the trembling counter-mana co alive at the touch of his new, aberrant Pyromancy.
Instead, it continued latching onto sothing that felt social, but higher: philosophy. aning. The very notions that one projected upon the world, the way one perceived the world. The way Shiv believed the world to be.
The dragons and Hydra present were speechless, gawking at Shiv's sudden evolution. Their hearts filled with terror and confusion. Marikos, anwhile, found himself trying to put out the hollow flas, to no avail.
A translucent arrow splashed against Shiv's mind, Roland's voice carried upon a telepathic hiss. “Shiv, what's happening? Do you need my help? What's spreading out from you?”
Shiv didn't reply, for he had no good answer to give. He was as lost by his own skill as everyone else. The only thing he could do was reassure them that he didn't intend to cause any harm.
But with that thought, the fire around him began laughing once more, the hollowness filled with a cold, almost scornful mirth, if not for how uncaring the fla was. “But why does what you intend matter? In the end, it is the material harm you do that has weight upon another. Your impulses, your feelings, your beliefs: those are aning to you, but not aning to another. I am your fla. I cannot burn from their perspective. Take hold of your responsibilities if that is what you truly believe at all.”
And for the first ti, Shiv felt sothing gnaw at his belief. It was an insidious feeling, so subtle that the damage almost went unnoticed, but he found himself questioning why he felt so beholden to others. Why he thought their lives mattered. Why he did all he could now to keep collateral damage to a minimum. The hollow flas grew grander and wilder, crackling and whipping until they were skybound, licking toward the very heights of the dinsion. Yet still, nothing was reduced to ash, for it seed an aspect of the flas remained in slumber.
But already it exerted a portion of its power upon Shiv, making his Philosophy wither and weaken, and it felt like sothing was burning through his way of perceiving the world. Then mories ca back to him. Of the slave child he couldn't save from 811. Of Guardshead Leu. And of all the people he wanted to protect but couldn't.
Shiv's fists clenched, and the resolve within him grew ever harder. At the sa ti, his hollow fla cald but continued to grow. “We should be responsible for the world,” Shiv began, sensing the Skill’s intent. “We should be responsible for the people in it, for the ones we feed and the ones we will end up fighting for. For the people we try to protect and the people we try to kill. We should be responsible for all of them because we're not alone here. I don't fully get what you're talking about in this abstract philosophy stuff, but it matters. It matters because I believe it matters, and I'll act on that belief. And in the end, I don't really want people to die because…” Shiv paused, and the Harbinger bade him to consider his words carefully.
In the anti, the gray flas were silent and stable but burned with a greater intensity than ever before. All eyes were on him: The Descenders, the Dragon-Brokers, the people in the distance along the surface gateway, the Arachnae Order, Roland, and more were all watching. And with how widespread the flas were crashing through the gateway like a wildfire—consuming the ground, avoiding the Perch before reaching the surface district and wrapping that in its shivering embrace—everyone could hear the Nihilist’s voice.
“Because life seems to be everything,” Shiv finally said. “All those experiences, all that mory, everything soone can be… It's too much to be worth nothing in the end.”
Nihilist:“So you say. Yet all of them are only waiting to be swallowed by that nothing which awaits. All except you, perhaps.”
And with that, the Nihilist stopped speaking. The flas were fed. Shiv felt his Pyromancy mana climb to astronomical heights. As he composed himself and took hold of his mana field, he realized what had happened. It had spread, creeping and building as it savored and drew succor from every bit of internalised philosophy surrounding him. It found fuel in his own beliefs, in how he perceived the world and how strong he felt his convictions to be, but it also absorbed other people's perceptions like an uncontrolled hearth fed more firewood.
In summation, philosophy beca its kindling, and from that it arrived at a power. What kind of power? Shiv wasn't sure, but as he delved into his Pyromancy, he began catching glimpses—flickers of dancing flas wrapped around the surrounding Dragon-Knights that played silhouettes in motion, displaying formative monts from their pasts. Shiv flinched back. The insight his new skill gave him was invasive and astounding. It made the flas effectively a canvas, a stage to portray how one believed and witnessed the world.
But while Shiv could see into the others, could read the ripples of philosophy from the fires that shrouded those caught in his inferno, they seed utterly ignorant. Never once did Tallowine lift her head and stare at the mirage taking shape over Tall Ben, depicting the Hydra in days long past, sweeping and slashing out with twelve heads and two arms, protecting what seed like a small house filled with terrified figures against unseen invaders.
Neither did any of the Dragon-Brokers turn their attention to Poverty as a silent pantomi play took shape in the flas that clung to him. Shiv saw a small dragon, far too young for even flight, be torn into by ravenous beasts. He watched as they ripped pieces away from him and pulled limbs free from his body, and then regenerated what they took with Biomancy to feast upon him all over again. Within those monts, lingered a desperate urge to never be without: to be so stuffed full with wealth, power, influence, and protection that he would never fall prey and beco sothing between sustenance and a slave to another ever again.
And then there was a hint to a mystery Shiv had long since been curious about. His gray flas co-mingled with Candles’ glowing body, and as a twin fla dance unfolded between the raging blaze that defined the Pyromancer and the hollow bonfire subservient to Shiv's will, there was the shape of a man, an elf that stood tall over Candles. He held sothing in his arm, a smaller shape, perhaps that of a child, and he reached up and pointed a single finger toward the firmant. From that finger ca a needle of fire, a thread of light that speared high and pierced the dark. As both the figures watched, from that single point the thread parted, spreading as bright veins across the void, drafting trails and paths to paint constellations between the stars in the night sky.
But the vision wasn't to last; the glimpse Shiv got into Candles' philosophy faded far quicker than that of Poverty, and the elf was replaced by a gleaming skeleton that simply wanted to burn and burn and burn until there was nothing left.
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“There is a tragedy of tragedies there,” the Harbinger comnted, gazing upon Candles with renewed sympathy. “He was more than a Pyromancer. That was a feat of peerless Cartography. He had a mind once, sothing that sought to chart the distance between the stars. What happened to him? What did the Ascendants do to reduce such a man to a primal expression of fire?”
And it was then that Shiv noticed sothing else about Candles' Pyromancy. When the shade of his past projected the fla, it wasn't a wild thing with flicking whorls or explosive embers. It was a concentrated beam, fla distilled into concentrated light.
A laser, as Can Hu had once called it. Far more than a re uncontrolled wildfire.
“Uh, don’t be alard!” Shiv cried out, finally shaking off his stupor. A reverberation of his voice spread through his gray flas. “I just went through a bit of a skill fusion. So of my Pyromancy just decided to… spread out.”
“If that’s Pyromancy, then why don’t none of us burn?” Tall Ben asked, coiling his necks around the fla, trying to affect it in any way possible. His confusion was palpable and shared; the atmosphere amongst the Descenders was quickly turning from alarm to general befuddlent.
“Unique Pyromancy,” Shiv answered honestly. “Mixed in with Philosophy. And Cooking.”
“Those skills can be fused?” Tallowine asked in surprise. “Sir Chesty’s Flaming Cock, how does that even work? Why is the fla talking to us?”
“Not entirely sure yet,” Shiv said, neglecting to ntion how he could catch vague symbols and glimpses into another’s governing philosophy.
“If you wish for more details, you need but ask,” the Nihilist whispered.
“We must find a way to make the fla keep quiet when we need it to,” the Harbinger replied.
The Nihilist humd, the emotion behind the ebbing sound unreadable. “That can be indulged by request as well. I am just a skill after all. Or so we believe.”
“What’s it talking about now?” Yellowbelly grumbled, squinting one good eye at Shiv’s new capability. Unlike the Descenders, the Brokers were more alert than ever before—for they were beasts that actualized through the highest of Social Skills, and with a Unique rger between Philosophy, Cooking, and Pyromancy, the Deathless now possessed a new dinsion they could not predict.
How about I just ask you about what you can do? Shiv thought, frowning at his semi-awakened fire. And you can stop being creepy as shit.
The hollow flas rolled with mockery and bemusent. “I am a fla born of Philosophy. I burn away the impurity of weak-ford worldviews, and I am invigorated by fuel given structure and enforced with purpose. Such is what makes a hearth. Such is what feeds my fla. And such is what will allow to provide you with a banquet.”
And you prevaricate like a felling jackass too, don’t you? Shiv muttered dryly. Glad I rembered that from the dictionary earlier. Nice word to use right now.
Writing 19 > 26
The fla had the audacity to laugh. “My foundations are based in Philosophy, Deathless. If you truly want to discover my worth, if there is any true worth to at all, then you must put into action, much like all your beliefs have to be put into action before there is any force that justifies their existence. Might makes matter from aning.”
“Are you making it sound like that on purpose?” Tall Ben asked. “Because your flas are startin’ to remind of Sir Croweye the Jolly.”
“The Jolly?” the Nihilist asked just as Shiv opened his mouth.
One of Tall Ben’s heads nodded. The rest remained on guard. “Refused to associate with anyone, spent all his ti looking at ancient texts and telling us things didn't matter, and constantly made these strange, bitter, cutting remarks to anyone he considered stupid. He also never showered.” Tall Ben then paused as his empathetic core filled with sadness. “He died holding the Dry Rivers against the First Blood. We look forward to suffering him again when we are reunited in the Great One’s embrace.”
The worth of Tall Ben’s faith burned more philosophical than religious. Shiv glimpsed a truth about the Hydra: He didn’t truly believe that he might be reunited with his fallen brother-in-arms, but he did hope, and he carried within him an echo of the lost.
“Then by your hand and will, Sir Croweye was wrong,” the Nihilist declared in response, speaking on Shiv’s behalf.
Shiv clenched his teeth. “Fla. Shut the fuck up.”
Tall Ben went still. “What ya’ an by that?”
But the gray flas were fearless and bold. They burned, because what else could a fla do? “He did matter to you, for the ti he was alive. And so long as you remain, that truth will endure in the relative.”
The Nihilist’s reply caught Shiv—and almost everyone else—off guard. “Huh,” Shiv muttered. “I thought you were going to say sothing pointlessly an or cruel.”
“What aning is there in being vicious? I do not kindle from pain or inflicted suffering. Only perceived truths of the world.”
“And not the world as it is?” Know-Nothing asked, jabbing at the fire to discover its personality.
“Your perceived truth is the world as is. Nothing matters unto itself. Perhaps this is to be attributed to the Architecture, but as the world is, for better or worse, there exists no overarching purpose or governing will beyond the eternal pointlessness of struggle and strife. Yet, we still exist. We still believe, have mythology, and do things beyond violence and war. You exist, dragon. Your worldview is part of existence—derived from it. It is not a thing-in-absence.” The Nihilist laughed once more. “The manufacturing of aning is what makes one Awakened. The canvas might be dark, but there are spots of light that defile its absence—even if only temporarily.”
And Shiv observed that the skill had to be Heroic-Tier, because there was no drawback like that of suffering a Pre-Legendary Evolution of such an abstract skill. Instead, the gray flas built and built the longer they clung to existing philosophies. However, a single issue remained: though the amount of fire Shiv gathered was aweso, it still seed a barren fla that refused to serve its fundantal purpose.
The Nihilist simply did not burn.
“That is because you have not asked to grant you a banquet yet, Deathless.” And with that declaration, the hollow flas changed—a scintillation arose within its depths, and the aspect descended from The Chef Unwavering was aroused. “What do you wish to cook?”
“Well, the potstickers,” Shiv said. “Kind of the entire point of us being here?”
“No. That is not the entire point. It is just a pretense. But it can be done. I can be used to make food of food.”
“Food of food?” Shiv blinked. “What? I don’t… Look, can you just answer things straight instead of talking in roundabouts and hints?”
The Nihilist didn’t sigh or complain; it did as Shiv asked. “Look upon : I bear the legacy of The Chef Unwavering. I bear that which can turn anything into an aspect of culinary design and purpose. Within is a kitchen granted attunent. Burn the flesh, and I will see flesh well-done. Burn armor or material, and I will see it made dium or rare. Burn mana, and I will see it given form and sustenance. Does this suffice for a direct answer?”
Shiv struggled to process the Nihilist’s claims. “You being taphorical?”
“No.”
“You can turn anything into food? Kinda like my pan?”
“I also stain flavors into that great banquet I offer from the philosophies that have fueled . Even wood offers an imbuent of taste.”
Tentatively, Shiv drew the Nihilist back in on himself. All the spreading fires were wrenched back into place—gathered atop Shiv’s hand in a condensed ball of placid grayness, waiting to be unleashed.
Nearby, the Red Rider’s Hand returned to its original colors of war and vitality. Yet, Shiv could feel it spent sohow—like sothing that sustained it had been eaten away by a hungering blaze. A deep feeling of outrage welled up inside Shiv, yet it ca to him through a layer of insulation, as if it had to cross a barricade before the feelings beca his. He shook off the Challenger’s transplant-bullshit for now; he had another ridiculous skill to figure out, and he was going to get the potstickers done before he did anything else.
Everyone looked on with bated breath. Roland drew close enough that his mysteriousness faded as he departed from the backdrop of the mana core and ford a flaming arrow in anticipation of a potential calamity to co.
“Marikos,” Shiv said. “If this thing goes out of control and starts turning everyone around into potstickers sohow, you have my full permission to splatter .”
Marikos nodded and lifted his mace without hesitation. “If the darkest cos to pass, I will make it quick, friend Shiv.”
A reliable killer’s a good friend to have, Shiv thought wryly. And then the sentint collapsed as he rembered that practically all his friends were reliable killers.
“Shiv,” Uva’s voice echoed in the back of his head suddenly. Her thoughts were tense with frustration. “Was this necessary?”
“Huh? The Skill Fusion?”
“It’s barely been a few days. We’re already dealing with countless problems at the Gate. Must I beg you not to set the insides afla with this… What manner of Pyromancy do you even possess now?”
“So dark,” Candles whimpered. “No vibrancy. It’s not a real fire.”
“Trying to figure that out myself,” Shiv answered. “Alright, everyone. Nihilism Be My Hearth, My Banquet, test one: hope we don’t all get cooked.”
Marikos angled himself in front of the other knights with his shield upraised. The Dragon-Brokers began casting a chain of wards that ford a hexagonal do around them and, notably, the Descenders. Uva opened a fissure in reality and spawned a wall of fractured spiderlings ant to intercept and infect Shiv’s mana if it got out of control. Roland had his arrow pointed directly at Shiv.
“Felling… Guys, really?”
“It said it can cook anything,” Tallowine called out. Shiv could barely see her silhouette through all the wards, but realized she had an arrow aid at his sphere of fla as well. “My urge to beco fried dragon-leg is sowhat limited.”
“Quite understandable,” the Nihilist answered. “But does what you want truly matter?”
“Hey, Nihilist, can you mimic the skill of shutting the fuck up when I don’t want you to talk?”
“Philosophy is, Deathless. I am not a Social Skill. I am sothing else. I am sothing more.”
“You’re quickly starting to annoy more than A Glimpse of Perspective, so there’s that.”
“Egads,” the Nihilist said without any emotion. “Wilt thou use my—”
Shiv channeled the gray fires out in a gushing wave. The release nearly blasted him back. He had accumulated an imnse amount of fire from how long he allowed his flas to kindle. Being untrained in Pyromancy saw him taken by surprise as well; the fire wasn’t just an explosion, but the very lore of excitation, destruction, and ignition. Wrestling his mana back under control, he adjusted his fires to flow more as a trickle than a broken dam, and hence they glided over his potstickers, searing them deep and through. To Shiv’s growing delight, he realized he could feel the dough harden and fry, sense the shrooms, chives, and ground pork within simr and cook—and then his delight turned to disbelief as he noticed the insulating tray holding the shack-sized potstickers.
The tal, possessed of no magical resistance, was bathed in scintillating mana and then marked as foodstuff. From there, its texture changed and fried—it began to sizzle and hiss, and as columns of steam rose high into the air, an overwhelming taste of a new, novel flavor took hold. The best way Shiv could describe it was a cousin to bittersweet; he'd never savored anything like that before. As the pungency grew stronger, so too did the tal alchemize and deform until it resembled a glistening, grilled slice of alloy.
Shiv stopped channeling his Pyromancy, and he descended in an instant. Barely able to believe his senses, he ca to a stop beside a partially cooked potsticker that stood taller than him by twice over, and knelt down atop a patch of altered tal that was now sothing else—sothing edible.
“Deathless, what happened? Have you burned through the tray?” Marikos called out from behind his shield.
“Impossible!” Poverty bellowed. “That tray was also forged in a higher Dinsion of Fire. No heat constrained by the Legendary Mana Threshold can—”
Shiv interrupted Poverty by using his Last Morsel to cut and scoop a portion of the cooked tray out from the ground. It parted like supple rib-at ready to fall off the bone. So close, he was drowning in all the slls, and sothing inside him watered with hunger and true curiosity.
Shiv resurrected himself from his Severed Shadow, producing a new body of flesh and blood.
“Shiv,” Uva said, urging caution.
But the allure was beyond Shiv’s ability to resist. He bit into the tray. He expected his teeth to greet sothing tallic—to gag on the taste.
Instead, the texture felt… perfect. It was seared through but not overcooked. And the flavor itself… the flavor itself…
“Holy fucking shit,” Shiv gasped. “This might be the best tray I’ve ever eaten.” Slowly, he pivoted and stared at his gathered guests. “You guys take a break. I’ll see you fed in a mont. You and everyone else.” He looked at the gray, scintillating fires dancing upon his hands as a smile dawned on his face. “And I think we’ll be having more than potstickers today. A lot more. I think… I think…” Shiv then widened his senses and felt the urge to experint take hold. “I think I want to figure out how many things I can actually cook.”
And in the background, Tallowine coughed aloud. “Did he truly just take a bite out of that tray?”
***
The scent of this new, novel flavor coiled through the air on curling fingers of smoke, and it traveled across the Gate, staining every nose and tongue, and sinking through walls and wards alike.
One such place it found itself in was the bunker down at the Gate’s center—now layered and guarded by new protections to hold back any attacks from the Tutorial, and also hosting a very specific guest of its own.
It was here that the Culturist lay aslumber in a barren room, under constant watch by Trapdoor Operatives Liquid Serpent and Spark Ripper.
“I still think we should electro-torture him!” Liquid Serpent snickered while leering at the orc Legend. “That wakes anyone up. Even a Delving Legend.”
“You just think it's fun,” Spark Ripper mumbled glumly.
“It's fun because it works.”
“Because you like hearing people scream. You also make do all the electrocuting."
“And it works. Or they die! Which also works!” Liquid Serpent tilted her head. “Say… What’s that sll? Are you leaking, Ripper?”
“W-what? No.”
“Hm. Show your oil ports.”
Spark Ripper shuffled and looked around nervously. “Liquid, we’re on assignnt…”
“I’m not sticking my palps in this ti: just show .” She leaned far down and ran a clawed hand through his white hair and another two along his back. Being designed after a male Umbral rather than an industrial machine brought many positives, such as fitting into just about any space designed for humanoids without issue, but it also ca with disadvantages, such as being two-thirds of Liquid Serpent’s height. “Co on,” she urged. “I'll even get on my knees for you. It'll be quick.”
“Not h-here!”
“Don’t make remind you of the basics of CQB, Ripper…” she breathed tauntingly into his right ear, making a shiver run up his titanium spine, which doubled in intensity as she ran another hand down his chest.
But then the very real possibility of Still Water being in the room without either of them knowing ca to his mind, and Spark Ripper ducked out from under Liquid Serpent’s hands and took a step back in the sa motion he drew his single-edged sword with, electricity jumping across the length of the blade. “Stay back, Liquid.”
The Weaveress let out a cackle and produced six tactical knives from her combat garnts. “Defend yourself, Ripper!”
As a highly workplace inappropriate impromptu grappling match took hold outside the warded vault in which the Culturist lay, the mana-charged sll born of a cooked tray leaked through the protections little by little. The unattuned mana of Philosophy and Cooking were aspects unprotected against, and the flavor, like the skill that made it, was totally unique. It found its way to the Delving orc, and as he lay there, a blissful expression on his face, his nose responsively drew in a breath—and then he sniffed.
He sniffed again. And with a third sniff, his stomach began to grumble with vicious need. “Food…”
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