Special Jessica chapter here. If you're here to read Jackie ramble on about another fortress he made from mud, you might want to skip to the next chapter. This one's gonna be a little different.
In all the chapters you read before, we talked about the essentials and logistics of war. Everything it takes to keep a troop supplied and combat ready, and all the goofy little fucking shenanigans that happen in between. Here's the thing: Wars are not duels. Every now and then, you might find yourself facing a single opponent, better than a showdown, with no one else interfering. These tis are rare. Duels are ultimately social affairs. Never get that confused: Yeah, it's primarily combat-based, but it's a social affair because there's usually only one main reason people fight duels in the Yellowstone Republic—pride.
And pride's both powerful and pretty fragile when you're noble or soone with a heavy reputation.
The way this usually goes is like this: You offend soone, or soone offends you. The insulted insults the insulter back, and they get more offended. Then you, whichever one you are, start declaring a challenge. Usually in an area you are well-versed in. If you're a Rider, you wanna joust them. If you're a sword-fucker, you wanna stab them. If you're a brawler, you wanna drag them down into the mud and then beat them to death with whatever you can rip out of their body.
But your rival gets a say as well. Even before the duel begins, you start the social battles. Where are you gonna fight? What are you gonna fight with? Who's going to be your second or third in case things go wrong? Who's going to officiate? Is this going to be an officially sanctioned duel at all, or are you just gonna do this on the spot, impromptu? All this stuff needs to be considered, because going half-assed into a duel is a real great way to see yourself humiliated or deaded.
And it's usually the forr that has more sting if you're a noble. You see, your na carries weight. I don't much like nobles, but one thing I have learned over the years, and one thing that has been taught to over and over again, is that the common folk are fucking morons. They are. If you're reading this, you're a fucking moron because you believe in a bunch of bullshit that shouldn’t be real. Bloodlines are not a real thing. Yeah, sure, the whole genetics thing is actually real, but there is a lot of weird variability in that, according to a bunch of bio-engineers I know. Short of you ramming a bunch of favorable traits into your kid or trying to code them into yourself at so point, yeah, you're kinda rolling the dice. Except there are so many sides, you have no clue what you might get.
So, any ti a noble claims that they're naturally and inherently superior to you, that's mostly horse shit, but enough of you believe it, so it's technically true anyway. And because you people think that's true, it becos functionally and socially true, a part of our whole culture—an extension of identity. Because when you have a bunch of pri-blooded motherfuckers running around, one of them has to have worse blood than another, right? So soone needs to figure out who's better. And that is the primary reason and the primary tension behind most duels. If you lose, you're shaming not only yourself but your bloodline as a noble. Individually, though, there's also sha. Sha that you're an inferior Pathbearer.
This is why you usually don't have Vanguards challenging Mages to swords or spears. There's no rule against it. You can invoke that challenge, and they can accept, but it just makes you seem like kind of a cowardly asshole. And it goes the other way too. A Mage challenging a Vanguard to a magical duel? Yeah, absolutely humiliating for the Mage. So, lots of social barriers are already in place.
And then there is a lead-up ti to a duel, a ti for both or one to find an excuse to back out. This happens a lot more than you think, because again, most duels are built on the foundations of pride, and losing is usually a lot more painful than the pleasure of winning. That ti is a double-edged sword: You prepare, you gather information about your enemy, and you try to find a way to beat them down in advance. Another social warfare thing. They're going to be using that too. They'll send people to sabotage you. You can do that to them.
Don't ever think a duel is about being upright and honorable. No, you're supposed to do upright and honorable things while you're fighting, but everything up till that? Fair ga, and that's part of the duel. But if you both manage to make it to the day of the decided bout and neither of you backed out over so sudden and mysterious injury or a desperate need to aid your family sowhere on the other side of the Republic, then the fighting starts. This can go several ways.
Most duels aren't to the death, because when people die, that's blood, and blood between families is hard to wave away. Duels are not death. People can hold a grudge over wounded pride, but that's just it. It's just a grudge. Soone killing soone you care about is not a grudge; it changes your way of life, and enough of that ans the Republic collapses in on itself.
Short of extraordinary circumstances, you can't exactly invoke a to-the-death duel. The typical options are: First Blood, submission, official decision. Believe it or not, Flacrown actually has an entire office dedicated to watching over and deciding who won which duel. Which was how the dueling circuits beca a thing in the first place—and why representative duels are more common than personal ones.
After all, having a stand-in who won all their bouts address your slight is a better idea than getting maid and shad yourself.
But if you have to fight yourself, well, it’s ti to start your very specific training, because instead of wanting broad options and Skills, you’re trying to figure out exactly how to counter the abilities of a single person with what you got and what you can get in the ti leading up…
—moirs of a Master-Tier Warmage
384
Contender [I]
“Shiv! Shiv! What is this shit?” Jessica ca storming through the crowd, gliding between people using her diminutive size. Most of the forr slaves and civilians were wise enough to part when a Legend approached, but so were far too slow, and she simply slid through them like a dagger slipping between the gaps in armor. In her hand was a flyer, one that had been distributed all across the Gate, and upon its page was an illustration detailing Shiv leaping up into the air, trying to smite Roland Arrow from the sky before the latter shot him down.
The header held a cursive chain painted in magical filigree: The Blackedge Grudge Match: The Dead Against the Dread!
The ridiculousness of the depiction made Shiv snort. For one, his head wasn’t that small in proportion to his body. The way he was drawn made his face look like a small skin tag sticking out from a ss of tumorous lumps, while an endless tide of nightmarish flies spilled out from his ass. anwhile, Roland looked like a divine hero of beauty and grace bearing a furious bow made to fell the anest of monsters.
“Felling artists. Anyway, Jessica, you want a potsticker?” Shiv gestured to the small mountain of potstickers stacked at the center of the Surface District.
The central square was almost entirely occupied by his foodstuff, and the taste of heated pork and baked dough wafted in crushing waves that drowned every tongue and throat. The locals, only just recovered from their ordeal at the hands of the mana leeches, were practically scrambling over each other, climbing off the pyramid-like steps to seize a potsticker for themselves. On average, it took two Initiate-Tiers to carry the burden of a single potsticker, for they ran three ters long and constituted three hundred kilograms in terms of mass—not to ntion having far higher caloric density than most non-monstrous organics would ever need.
I think my flas boosted the nutritional contents too, Shiv guessed. That’s probably what’s imbuing people with those endurance and satiety enhancents.
Jessica jumped up and slamd her poster straight into Shiv’s face. Her thrust was hard enough to paste the skull of an Adept, but Shiv didn’t even blink. Jessica was about to start complaining again, but then she did a double-take, and her jaw fell open at the edifice of fried dough-dollops nearby. “I… Holy shit, those are so big godsdamned potstickers.”
“I made them for dragons,” Shiv said, grinning against the rough paper. “Can probably feed a goblin or a goblin-sized human for years.”
She scowled. “Fuck yo—Ugh, what is that sll?”
“Philosophy. A lot of it is my Nihilism.”
“Philosophy? Shiv, what the felling fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, my new Pyromancy Evolution draws mana from kindling philosophy.”
“That I do,” the Nihilist proclaid.
Jessica’s befuddlent grew three tis that second. “Did your fire just speak to ? Wait, was that who was talking earlier? The gray shit that bounced off my armor?” And then the worst part of Shiv’s declaration smashed into the back of Jessica’s skull like a boorang. “Wait, new Pyromancy? You did another evolution?”
“Philosophy. Pyromancy. Cooking.” Shiv held up three fingers and casually shoved them against Jessica’s forehead to taunt her. “Heroic-Tier. But functionally Unique. Cause no one else's as special as—”
She exploded in size, dwarfing Shiv in an instant as she seized and began to throttle him. “You little fucking shit.”
“N-n-not my fault,” Shiv stuttered, grinning and limp as she tried to rattle the life out of him, “that I'm so much b-better than you.”
“Rusty! Sheathe this ass!” Jessica’s order caused Shiv’s smile to crack and his body to tense in more ways than one. Muscles he normally couldn’t control in his ass woke and squeezed his rectal path until not even a molecule could pass through.
“I refuse,” Rusty rumbled, displeased with his wielder’s behavior. “Jessica, compose yourself.”
“A triple Heroic Skill Fusion in a fucking week! You wanna know how long it took to beco a Hero in a Skill? Decades! Felling decades!” The now three-ter-tall Jessica was seething at Shiv, while the latter enjoyed so much smugness it should have evolved its own skill.
“You should really try a potsticker,” Shiv said. “You can be pissed at , and also enjoy the food at the sa ti. It’s a win-win. Or don’t, and make yourself easy to manipulate.”
He could practically see the flas of frustration behind her eyes. “Excuse ? Easy to manipulate?”
“Yeah, if I didn’t say that, you would have gone hungry out of spite because that’s your nature: soone tells you sothing, and you do whatever you want. Aside from Veronica, but you know—”
Jessica punted Shiv between the legs so hard a concussive blast swept out and flung dozens of residents and guards off their feet. As their bodies toppled over each other, Shiv's form went flying skybound, and even then, he remained indifferent, though there was a slight bruise forming on the underside of his fifth limb. Even so, he kept his Shapeless Tides in restraint, for he was building up as much as he could in anticipation of the coming duel. His Physicality was an appreciating asset—one he couldn't spend frivolously right now because he needed to preserve everything he had to give Roland a new asshole.
As he crashed back down, Shiv bounced once, gave Jessica a nonchalant nod, and returned to seeing the public served. While one body was committed to seeing the denizens of the gate fed, the others were hard at work and in anticipation of the duel to co.
Back in the capital, Marcus Unblood was studying harder than ever before, with his main focus given to Chronomancy. Shiv had to give his Legion of Self routine breaks to not lose hours to cognitive exhaustion, but for now, he still possessed ample energy, and the mind fog remained a distant threat. Spread open before him upon the pages of his tos were spell shapes and chanics bound to the principles of Magical Alacrity. As his reading revealed, every ti he used an anchor, he was exercising a portion of magical alacrity, effectively pinning a section of his own temporal mana onto the world. What he needed to do then was expand his Chronomancy to encompass another spell or action he was performing in a mont, and then accelerate that forward until it was swept into its Chronomancy, held in place, and prid to be used at any point in the future.
However, storing spells and actions within his Chronomancy placed variable strain on his mana. Capturing a series of punches and slashes was simple; all he needed to do was imprint a temporal anchor of himself on the world and then draw that anchor back into himself. He could do that over and over again until his Harbinger was on the verge of cracking. But placing a spell derived from another mana type inflicted another level of strain altogether.
“Our advantage is that we possess an imnse quantity of mana fueled by rage and emotion, but to fully draw on that power ans we must be focused; we cannot think of Adam or our regrets or grief lest that see us broken,” the Harbinger advised. “Simplicity, quantity, and reliability. We are not skilled enough in magical theory or, frankly, any of the magical lores to construct a single siege-level spell, let alone a more complicated working that normally requires a formation working in concert. Even if we spend every waking mont across all our bodies digging through textbooks and tos, we won’t be able to match up against the decades or centuries of experience amassed by a single mage. As such, we should build up a reserve of strikes and slashes from our Last Morsel and deploy them in reserve against Roland in an ergency. But to counter his endless rain of arrows, we should focus on capturing our cutting aura and the hollow flas to create a protective barrier that we can spawn at any mont so we can stay focused on the actual fight.”
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Shiv was about to agree when a huge hand seized his Surface District body from behind and started shaking him again. “Jessica, co on—oh, how do you like it?”
She still looked three shades of pissed, but she was gobbling one of his potstickers. “It’s… Yeah, it’s good, but the whole philosophy-cooking is… is…” The redness left her face, and she smacked her lips together. “Huh. It’s pretty good. Is that what nihilism tastes like? Almost… sweet and bitter?”
“Mixed in with a bunch of other perspectives at the sa ti,” Shiv said. “So think of it as a unique sauce derivable only at a specific place, from a specific group of people. If I used another group of people to kindle my flas as a critical focus, then it would probably taste different.”
“Shit, kid, that’s actually… That’s got so kick. Reminds of my first liquor.” Jessica shook her head. “Not just in the intensity, but the feeling of… of…”
“Acquired taste?”
“Yeah, that. It’s really an acquired taste. It felt like I was swallowing shit for a mont at the start, but later it really stuck to . You know sothing, you should advertise that—I think this’ll get you shit-tons of custors if you ever manage to get your monster-kitchen up in the air outdoors.”
Shiv looked over the crowds—so of whom were actively staggering back to their feet and giving the Deathless and the Giantsbane a wide berth. Despite him coming to feed them, there was still a heavy feeling of nervousness when he was nearby—and he understood. Tier-Dread was a very real thing: the kind of primal, instinctive terror you would feel when you had to coexist beside soone so much more powerful than you in practically every way. A single sloppy swing from a Legend could see the entire district rendered rubble, and there was nothing anyone present could do about it.
But though the feeling would never fully go away, it could be alleviated. Shiv had no problem with people fearing him. On so level, he even enjoyed it. But he wanted more than their understandable terror, because there were multitudes to them and there were multitudes to him. Even if they remained wary of his strength and volatility, they could still appreciate his service as a chef and judge him by his character.
“It will,” he reassured her. And himself. “Real soon. I think I’m going to start inside the Gate first. Have all the residents and rcs co aboard for the opening night before heading out and seeing what we can do for all our new guests.”
And there were plenty of new guests flooding into Gate Piety with every minute. Uva, the Arachnae Order, and the remains of the Blackedge guard were being taxed to the limit trying to process everyone. Apparently, the surface gateway was completely surrounded by encampnts and pocket dinsions housing Pathbearers from all across Integrated Earth.
Roland Arrow’s reputation carried a great deal of gravity, and it seed few could resist its pull, be they enemy or ally.
The bridge leading to the surface gateway had been expanded into a customs tower—sothing Gate Theborn once had as well. All the newcors were directed to wait and declare themselves in detail before they were allowed to mingle amongst the existing population.
At the sa ti, Can Hu and the Geomancers were literally dragging entire residential clusters up from the soil. Domiciles and housing were desperately needed, and even with all the experience the Penitent possessed, they would be hard-pressed to satisfy the logistical demands that ca with a population spike of this size. And these were just basic worries. Aside from shelter, sustenance, and protection, people often needed things to occupy their interests and ti.
Such was why most places had practice arenas, racetracks, debate forums, theaters, and more. With so many different Pathbearers bound to so many different Paths, there were countless skills they all needed to hone, and with the proper facilities and resources, they would find the gate lacking as well.
But that gave Shiv a hit of inspiration. Maybe I can distract them from how rough the Gate is using myself. This could be a benefit to too: I can see if so of our guests have what it takes to break or even kill one of my bodies. Yeah, Deathless practice dummy. That’ll give a few Pillar levels.
“Look, you should have talked to about this,” Jessica said, causing Shiv’s attention to snap back to his surface district body again.
“About what? Sparring with Roland?” He rubbed his nose. “Yeah, don’t take this the wrong way, Jessica, but our grudges are separate. I know you still might want to put Roland down, but—”
“It’s not that,” Jessica said, shaking Shiv with a single hand and frowning at him. He arched an unimpressed eyebrow as his Gardener of Doubt and his Harbinger both signaled how much shit she was spewing. “It’s not entirely that. Look, I’d love for you to drag Roland through the dirt and give him the ass-beating of a lifeti, but you’re rushing into this. You should tell him the fight’s off—or get an extension or sothing. A month, at least. To prepare and build yourself up.”
“A month?” Shiv chuckled. “Are you worried he’s going to hurt ? Because I’m not. I got deaths to spare.”
“No, it’s just…” She clenched her spare hand as a look of motherly agitation ca over her. “Fuck’s sake, I don’t want to see you humiliated.”
He paused. “Huh?”
“Dying’s one thing, but humiliation is another. I don’t want to watch Roland Arrow beat your ass so bad that he breaks sothing inside you.” Jessica paused, and she shot a quick look around, worried soone might be listening in. “Look, can we do this talk in private? Because I’m pretty sure Roland is listening to everything we say.” To emphasize her words, she cast a wary look toward the Perch in the distance.
“Telepathy?” Shiv asked.
“No. Inside Rusty. It’s the safest place we got right now.”
Shiv shrugged. “Alright. But I’m going to do this: It’s been a long ti coming, and a little violence between us will probably be good. Let us both get so of that nasty shit we’ve been holding inside out.”
“Yeah, in my experience, the nasty shit coming out just ans you get it all over everyone else instead of getting rid of it,” Jessica replied. “But what do I know? I just got a bunch of kids who I can barely talk to and a series of bars I can’t go back to. Rusty!”
Her Legendary blade shot up into the air like a static missile and then exploded in size to beco like a ten-story tower. A series of worried shouts sounded from the various diplomats and forr slaves that made up the surface district’s population, and Shiv winced. Their voices were cut off in an instant as Rusty splashed down over him, and they found themselves hovering over a vast opalescent platform that stretched far beyond the visible horizon. To Shiv’s surprise, he saw chains connected to the skies above, and massive blades, spears, shields, and more bound in that ssy nest of alloyed knots.
“How many of these dinsions do you have?” Shiv asked, regarding the vast and resplendent arsenal looming directly above. “Because this place is pretty—”
Shiv grunted as she spiked him into the ground. He slamd dead-on against the platform—but it didn’t break. Instead, all the kinetic energy contained within his collision was inverted, causing him to bounce right back. Again, Jessica swatted him down with the palm of her hand. Then, like a yo-yo, Shiv went back up.
“Co on, Jessica—” His voice was interrupted as he crashed skull-first against her index finger. She started dribbling him like a godsdamned ball. “Fucking—Jessica, quit it! I’m trying to save up my Shapeless Tides for Roland. I don’t have ti to ss around with—actually, wait, hit harder. I can use so more Pillar levels.”
With a final launching toss, she dashed him against the platform. The air sparked, ignited, and then ionized. Plasma blossod and embraced Shiv, licking at his flesh and washing over him in a tide of heat and devastation. A ligant in his shoulder tore, and his blasé expression broke—Jessica was genuinely trying to hurt him now.
He rebounded into the chains in an explosive instant, but what they struck was his mana first—for the chains were tessellating like lengths of fluid bricks.
Inertium, Shiv realized. How the hells does she have so much of this stuff? I thought—
An explosion of light and force washed over him from behind. Shiv tilted his head to the side as he barely managed to dodge Jessica’s spinning roundhouse that painted an arc of fla in the air as the wheels beneath her feet spun.
Continuity Error 233 > 234
Rolling in mid-air to face her, Shiv scowled but kept his hands low. “Hey, it was funny a minute before, but now this shit is getting annoying. I’m not fighting you, Jessica. You wait your turn after Roland if you want to kick my ass. I’m doing everything to keep these tides in circulation.” He held out his arms and showed her all the striped vectors stacked against each other, swimming over his body. “They’re for him, not you.”
She replied with a hoarse, bitter laugh. “And you think you’re ever going to get close enough to Roland to use them?”
“I won’t need to. Grudge-Tethered will let take a swing at him the first ti he takes a shot at from far off,” Shiv said. “He’s not going to be able to avoid a brawl even if he wants.”
Jessica shook her head slowly. “Roland’s going to be able to decide whatever he wants, whenever he wants to. How many skills do you have? Are they over a hundred?”
He briefly brought up his skill status and counted. “No. But—”
“Roland told you how his Unique Skill worked yet?”
Shiv paused. “That level-shuffling one? Yeah. Well, more like he told Adam first—”
“He has more than just Respec. More than all those special arrows. He killed you once before, right? While you were scouting Lost Angeles?”
“Yeah,” Shiv answered. Then, the subtext in her words struck. “He has an arrow based off my Vitae.”
“Probably. But that’s not even the worst of it. Besides the three Uniques, the Inquisition suspects that he’s got a whole arsenal of Legendary weapons hidden away—and a bunch of different armors he can swap between depending on who he is fighting. He can choose which skills he wants to evolve and fuse, and you don’t have any skills that can pin him down. He knows general Magical Theory better than a lot of Mages, can choose which lore he wants to go Heroic in, even for Magical Skills he’s not really trained in, and that’s not to ntion the really weird shit he can start doing by mixing Pyromancy and Writing. You ready to burn every ti you read and understand a word he paints in mid-air?”
“Can he really do that, or are you just trying to psyche out?” Shiv squinted.
The Giantsbane sighed. “You know what it takes to beat the shit out of a Master-Tier as a Low Adept?”
“Skill? A plan? A lot of luck?”
“A miracle,” Jessica said. “A miracle for most. There’s no fight when soone is faster than you by a magnitude. There’s no fight when none of your attacks really shake them. None. But Roland broke a Master before he even left the academy. He embarrassed so many people that there were no duels issued to him by his final year—fucking House Heads were just trying to arrange his assassination instead. Even before he went Unique and decided to hide just how powerful he was, he was his own miracle. The first ti I t him, I watched him butcher a Heroic-Tier Stormlord while he was just a Low Master.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it: Roland Arrow’s a genius Pathbearer,” Shiv said. The Harbinger helped convert his jealousy and annoyance to sothing useful, but the feelings were still there. “But I’m not going to let how good he is turn away from facing him. I’ve fought plenty of favored and geniuses. I’m not afraid of humiliation either. I’ve been hated my entire life. Losing’s not that bad if you learn, build, and don’t stay broken.” Shiv folded his arms. “If this goes bad for , it goes bad. I want to know how good he is for myself, and I want to understand so I might be able to match and beat him—whatever it takes.”
The agitation within Jessica dulled, and her shoulders grew limp. More than anything, she seed tired—emotionally tired. Genuinely worried.
Shiv snarled. “Fucking Veronica. Look at what she’s making you do.”
Jessica froze. “And what is—”
“You’re not bullshitting , so I won’t bullshit you: I’m glad you’re here and for everything you’ve done, but Veronica’s sche to have you close to us and use whatever friendly pseudo master-student thing might be here is obvious. But she doesn’t care that it’s bothering you more than it’s influencing .”
His words struck like a blade across the throat. Jessica was silent and calm on the surface, but he could see she was gushing blood where it counted. “I don’t hate you for caring. And I’m sorry I was so rough to you before. I don’t know what it’s like. Even after losing Georges. I don’t know what it’s like to be you. I wish you had an Adam or an Uva or soone who bothered to do right by you when you needed them. I wish you had a Jessica yourself.”
An enkindled shadow hissed out from Jessica’s cracked core, but the shade that ford wasn’t of her, but a man shaped from stone—a man who was crumbling, reaching out from her, but never able to truly touch her anymore.
These Words of Truth and Adoration 87 > 89
Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 326 > 329
“Go away, System,” Shiv spat as the notifications appeared. “Don’t give this shit now. I’m not trying to manipulate her. I’m not her.”
“Levels?” Jessica said, trying to hide it.
“Yeah,” Shiv sighed. “Harbinger’s taking effect on you. Pre-Legendary. It’s just—”
“I know you don’t really an it. Veronica would have never told .” Jessica nodded and lowered her eyes. “I know.”
For a mont, neither had anything to say.
“I was going to co looking for you earlier,” Shiv said honestly. “I want your help—whatever you can give in this short ti. You and Valor and Uva and anyone. And at the end of this day, I’m still going to tell him that we need to have it out. Because he needs it.” And a lance of pain went through Shiv. “And I need it too. I might be a different person now, but I still rember biting into rats, Jessica. I still rember what it felt like to be hated, the way the stones cut , and how the cold winds made the sting worse. The Onborn isn’t done hating the Town Lord. And he isn’t finished hating the Lowes. So. I think we need this. Ti is not going to fix this wound. It might get more prepared, but… The fight itself happening now is worth more than any victory. Because of Adam. Because we need to be better, if only for him.”
Instead of using any kind of sche or logic this ti, Shiv bled. He bled emotionally, in front of the wounded Jessica—because there wasn’t a need for a lie. He just had to be honest, and it felt like the right thing to do.
Slowly, sothing inside her dislodged, and she sighed. “But you would like to win.”
“I would felling love to win. I would love to kick the shit out of him.” Shiv clenched his teeth. “Can you help ?”
Jessica closed her eyes and almost reluctantly nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think this is going to fucking go well, but let’s see if I can make a bigger miracle out of you than the Starhawk made with Roland.”
“It’s not just you,” Shiv said. “Valor—”
“Ah, you rembered again.”
“FUCK!” Shiv squeaked, spinning around. “You scared a squirt of piss out of , Valor!”
Valor—who'd been right behind him for an uncertain period of ti—nodded—and used the nod to dodge a reflexive slash Jessica sent toward him via an invisible blade. “Yes,” Valor intoned. “Surprise, deception, and stealth are essential weapons in war. And they might be the only true edges you can deploy against Roland Arrow. Remind , Shiv: What Stealth Skill do you have? And what level is it at?”
Jessica barely held herself back from skewering Valor, but the old lich paid her no heed as the green flas behind his magic-ford eyes narrowed.
“Uh, Master-Tier. The Creeping Void. It’s at 175.”
A sound of pure disgust escaped Valor. “Absolutely horrid. Unspeakable. Disgrace. This won’t do. This won’t do at all. It must be corrected with utmost haste.” Then, a smirk ca over his expression. “And I think I have an idea how to incentivize this growth, improve your other skills upon failure, and potentially see another objective fulfilled. And since you have multiple bodies, you can undergo direct combat training at the sa ti. How opportune…”
Shiv suddenly felt a lance of searing pain travel up his asshole. “Valor. What… what is this idea?”
“Hm. Shiv. Use your Severed Shadow and go seek out Uva, Legend Hymn, Candles, Tulveg, and everyone who can render aid. After that, find Enchanter rriell and have him set up his Slipgate in the Tutorial bunker. Rember how one must level, Shiv.”
“Strain and… and novelty?”
“Yes. And constant, extre, borderline torturous struggle.”
“Oh,” Jessica breathed. “I think I like the sound of this.”
“I fear we have incensed a terrible wrath in Valor by not speaking to him about this first,” the Harbinger whimpered. “His core… it is afla with scorn and jealousy.”
“Valor,” Shiv began, trying to apologize.
“For now: endure.”
“What?”
“Endure!” Valor repeated. “Pillar only! Toughness training!”
Then Jessica smashed her heel down on Shiv’s head before he could blink. Once more, he blasted straight down—this ti sporting a full concussion rather than a ager bruise. And once more, he bounced off the platform and rose high into the air—where both Valor and Jessica hovered with malice and blades in wait.
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