Path of the Deathless

344 (I) The Way of Tripartite Ruin [V]

—The Wanderin’s of Tall Ben344 (I)

The Way of Tripartite Ruin [V]

Discovering that Legion of Self didn’t require five hours of thoughtlessness with each use filled Shiv with relief. Such a penalty levied upon him during this encounter would have seen him claimed by Longinus for sure.

His seven selves flew across the land with a hundred meters of distance between each of them, curving in parallel with the rivers of sauce below. While his physical forms spiked down in unison, each one expending a paltry amount of Shapeless Tides, his Revenant broke away from the group to grant his truest self the safety of distance and a vantage point to observe the battle from afar.

The Wanderer struck without hesitation. His divine visage was scattered once more, contained within thousands of galloping riders who burned like descending embers—each one scintillated, combusting with incandescent mana in an asynchronous pattern. Needles of concentrated emotion exploded from their spear tips, painting lines of festering magic that reached down from the sky. The air over the dimension of the Boiling Toad was drowned beneath an illimitable number of godly waterfalls, and Shiv felt the crushing weight of Longinus' passion long before any of the threads greeted the ground.

Each of the Ascendant’s riders was already far faster than Shiv's physical vessels, but the magical and emotional attack arrived in a night-instant.

And so Shiv adapted. Where he lacked speed, he had the advantage of perspective. He could see exactly where the attacks were coming from, their origins, and their paths. The positions of his multiple bodies granted him much-needed foresight and perspective. His ability to inhabit all six of his physical forms at the same time, meanwhile, granted him a stay of execution—if only barely.

The overwhelming density of Longinus' onslaught made dodging a near impossibility. Shiv had scarcely any time to consider his actions at all before the wall of attacks descended. And so he transitioned into a horizontal instance of time, assuming the place of one of his synaptic clones. The moment played again; Longinus’s empathetic tide was upon Shiv once more. He had less than a half-second to think with each transition, but each shift bought him time. Enough to plan and respond instead of just reacting.

His Inertial Overdrive made his Reflexes quick enough to notice the attack, but not nearly fast enough to maneuver. Since none of his physical forms possessed Chronomancy, he couldn't reposition himself otherwise. For a moment, he considered shifting his Severed Shadow with one of his bodies to extract them, but his material shells numbered six, and to his dismay, he realized he wasn’t even swift enough to swap places.

His options grew fewer; a pulsating pressure built at the core of his skull. Two hourglasses were filling with sand. He faced Longinus' wrath on one hand, or an impending incapacitation from using his new skill on the other—or so he assumed. Shiv's objectives became twofold: right now, he needed to survive the initial barrage, but the greater challenge was dodging a spell to use as fuel to sustain him Backstage if he was going to end up comatose.

Eldritch Physiology became the answer for his immediate survival. He altered his material bodies, melding his flesh into long crescents edged with cutting vitality. He kept his eyes and ears on the flat sides of the blade. Though he couldn't see clearly, he still had his Severed Shadow to help angle his deflection. The riders’ threads impacted his physical forms, and a cacophonous crescendo rattled the world in the clash that followed.

Where Shiv's Toughness had been found wanting, and his Shapeless Tides barely allowed him to hold the Wanderer at bay, his Cutting Aura, along with Return to Sender, allowed him to strike at the vector of Longinus' many threads. He pushed back, reflecting the emotional cascade. The God of Travelers let out a bellow of pure fury. He said something, but his voice was distorted.

Stolen story; please report.

Shiv didn't need to hear the words to know what his enemy felt. The rawness of Longinus' frustration was palpable, like a sweltering heat choking the air. That filled Shiv with inspiration. Before Longinus could adapt, Shiv's bladed forms tilted on their sides and unleashed a gush of Enkindled Flames. So true was Shiv's anger that his flames seemed near solid in intensity; they rose like geysers, consuming the descending riders before they could crash into Shiv's many forms.

This follow-up inadvertently saved him, for Longinus' threads were only part of his offensive; the cavalry themselves would have driven their lances through Shiv's Magical Resistance and sundered him of mind, heart, and soul.

Now they were held at bay, and the counterforce from Shiv's resistance sent his bodies plunging downward. He struck the rivers of flowing flavor, hammering pockets into the soil of the Boiling Toad.

Taking the time to ruin each sauce carefully and deliberately would be ideal, but Shiv had no intention of making this a battle of attrition. He discharged his inertial sheath with the force of a high-yield mana bomb each, raising the damage to the landscape by an order of magnitude. Massive gouges were ripped through the land, and the flowing currents of sauce were flung up into the sky, splashing over the charging forms that made up Longinus' totality. The sauce perimeter had sustained additional damage, but the Boiling Toad was a vast space.

This kitchen dimension would take some time to tear down. Good thing Shiv could be patient.

he thought.

But before he could consider how best to taunt Longinus, he noticed something: a series of faint threads connecting his physical forms to the many riders above. Threads forged of fear. Dread-Tainted had marked Longinus. Shiv had shown the god that he was not untouchable, and with every scratch he bestowed upon the Wanderer's soul, that fear had grown truer.

Shiv's heart thundered with a want for violence. He wanted to seize those fear chains, rip the god out of the sky, and batter him down into the dirt. But Shiv's rage bestowed upon him a rationality he didn’t otherwise possess.

He shifted cognitive lanes once more. At the same time, he rebuffed Longinus' charge; just as he struck the ground, he guided his six skin-whips toward their fatal goal. Each of his physical bodies cleaved into one another, and his cutting aura hewed deep and true. He felt glances of pain flick across his soul. The agony was deep, but letting Longinus pierce him would result in a wound far deeper.

As he transitioned to another synaptic clone, he realized his physical bodies couldn't perform another reaction. A shadowy veil consumed them when he tried to get them to act. They simply didn't have enough Reflexes left—and neither did his Severed Shadow, for that matter. He had discovered another limitation to his new Skill Evolution: his Reflexes skill remained a bottleneck when pushed to the extreme. Minor adjustments could still be made; spells could be cast. Beyond that, however, he could give no more.

He needed to let time progress.

Shiv let the tunnel extend ahead of him, sliding forward into the future as he once traveled across countless parallel presents. A ticklish sensation flooded his mind. He was still far from cognitive overload, more than capable of complex thought or actions, but the limits of his Reflexes made themselves known once more. Though Shiv barely allowed time to progress, Longinus unleashed another flood of spells and lances. Such was the separation between Pathbearer and god. The latter seemed to have no limit to their endurance, to how much mana they could unleash, or how much strain they could endure.

Shiv's foresight was rewarded. A microsecond after he cut his physical bodies down, Longinus' following attack drowned an entire section of the horizon in divine fire. So many threads ran down from the sky that Shiv couldn't separate one string from another. Following them were riders that plunged through the soil, intangible to all things yet leaving blazing trails of hateful flame and lingering lust in their wake. Just looking upon it filled Shiv with an illicit desire to surrender—a desire that was burned away by his Sage, working to preserve his sanity from within.

Just as relief filled his core, Shiv was struck by another epiphany: he now had something to dodge.

His actions surged. He cultivated as many Shapeless Tides as he could. At the same time, he performed another resurrection, halving his already scant vitality to create a living decoy. Longinus' skill curved through the ground, creating a woven nest of incandescence around Shiv. Every single thread arced toward his physical body, running him through until he was a pincushion. But before Longinus could infuse him with that empathic venom, Shiv's Severed Shadow materialized along the path of the threads, overlapping with his physical form.

It dodged. His physical body dodged. Veins born of divine mana were contaminated, consumed by Shiv's Vitae, and an entire stretch of the world flashed bright red—the color of life force unchained—as that entire attack was rendered a Continuity Error.

A flood of vitality gushed into Shiv. He felt like an ocean of heat once more. The Backstage wasn't so cold anymore. He hesitated for a heartbeat, worried about what might happen when he dropped his Legion of Self skill, but there was nothing left to do. He had survived and stolen enough divine mana to last him a good few hours at least. If nothing else, he wouldn't vanish from reality if he went dormant for five hours.

Before that, however, a chain of notifications appeared before his eyes:

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: 195 > 197

Inertial Overdrive: 311 > 318

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides: 535 > 538

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul: 227 > 234

Continuity Error: 209 > 214

Tactics: 9 > 13

Legion of Self: 106 > 109

Eldritch Physiology: 95 > 101 [Skill Evolution Reached]

Something inside Shiv .

A part deep inside him changed. Something inverse to his flesh, connected to his biology, yet ever so aberrant and distant.

Far, far away, apart from both this place on the other side of the curtain and Integration itself, in the distant reaches of the Outside, something stirred.

And Shiv felt it bleed into him as he bled into it.

An Outsider has been born to you!

You have become a Progenitor to a nascent Eldritch Entity!

Shiv’s mind reeled in horrified disbelief.

The [Garden of Wounds and Broken Things] has manifested.

The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things has been bound to you.

The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things has manifested as a dimension unto you.

Skill Evolution: Eldritch Physiology (Master) > Garden of Wounds and Broken Things (Unique)

Garden of Wounds and Broken Things (Unique) 101

If Shiv didn’t want to drop Legion of Self before, he definitely didn't want to now. But he couldn't undo a Skill Evolution, even if it was potentially one he didn't want. It was also a Unique Skill now, so Evanescia turning the pages back likely wouldn't revert it either.

Outsider bullshit always gave Shiv a migraine. He definitely didn't want to be connected to that. He didn't want to become a progenitor to one of those abominations. His apprehension was bad enough that he found himself considering extreme measures—namely, crossing back into reality and calling out to Evanescia to see if she could somehow reverse the evolution after all.

He didn’t, but the fact he considered it at all illustrated the heights of his desperation.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

"I can try to perform surgery on myself," Shiv muttered. "See if I can cut it out of me."

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Sage’s voice overlapped with itself again.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Shiv really, really wanted to throw a tantrum. But the System wouldn’t give a shit, and there were other things he needed to resolve—a god he needed to grind down.

Shiv allowed the pace of time to resume. Legion of Self deactivated. His mind filled with static. It was like a bubble burst at the core of his head, but aside from a second or two of confusion, he shook off the cobwebs clinging to his thoughts with little difficulty. At least, that was how it felt. His five hours of thoughtlessness didn't feel that long, either.

“How long was I gone?” Shiv asked, shaking his head. “Girl?”

She was there beside him, but she wasn't looking at him. Nor was she looking across the curtain into Integration. Instead, she was staring blankly at the vast canvas of nothingness all around them—or at least, what used to be a vast canvas of nothingness.

Shiv frowned as he turned. “Girl, what are you even looking—BROKEN MOON, WHAT THE F—”