I know it's loud, son. The world is loud. The world… It screams. It sings. It calls to us. And it's bright too. And you haven't even learned what taste can do to you. What you experienced earlier is called a migraine, Adam. You're going to experience it again when the noises and sights become too much. But you'll get better at focusing on what matters and tuning the rest out.

Trust me. You will. Bit by bit. But what is important is that you struggle now. When I can still help you. Where there are people that can still comfort you. Build yourself now among those who care for you, so you can stand alone against a world that doesn't.

Now. Pull your hands away from your eyes and try again. It will hurt. But I will be here. I will always be here for you.

-Roland Arrow to Adam Arrow

149 (I)

Trap

"It's like walking around with bombs going off in my eyes and ears. And in my skull." Shiv continued grumbling to himself as he lobbed himself through the air. He was hunting for the orc Psychomancers, the Amnesiac in particular. So far, Helix's claims about the Voidmantid's Awareness-boosting enchantments helping Shiv with his hunt were turning out to be bull and shit. There were felling bunkers and trenches everywhere, and anything that moved pulled at Shiv's eyes like a magnet.

In fact, he was extra sensitive to movements now. With the Ocular Compound Network, he didn't just see further and with more detail, he detected motion abnormally well, to the point he couldn't ignore literal grains of dust passing through the air. Every time an orc moved in his expanded field of view, it was like someone waving their hand directly over his eyes. And with how many orcs there were in the Tutorial, he was constantly being blasted with stimuli.

But his new eye enchantments were only part of the misery. His Antennal Resonance and Pheromonic Cipher wreaked havoc on his sense of taste—and the orcs tasted nightmarish. Different flavors assailed Shiv's olfactory senses. His Antennal Resonance had to do with Chemoreception. That basically had to do with someone's chemical signature. Their scent. No two orcs had the same scent, so the sheer maelstrom of taste Shiv had to gag on was bad enough. Then the Pheromonic Cipher signaled complicated details to Shiv through pheromones, and that was a helping of rotting corpse on top of a shit-crusted pie.

Pair all that with his Magnified Vibrosense, and the slightest tremors in the air sounded like a cluster of mana bombs.

"No idea how I'm going to find the inquisitors like this. I can barely stop myself from throwing up in this helme—alright, Shiv, enough complaining. Let's figure this shit out." He shook his head and focused harder on his senses—tried to narrow in on someone that could guide him. His antennae also gave him a sense for True North, but that wasn't particularly useful for what he needed right now.

He could try dropping into the trenches and asking an orc if they know where any of the surviving inquisitors are, but he suspected they would just screw with him like the orcs aboard the Court Leviathan.

"You want my advice yet?" Adam asked. The Gate Lord lingered just a few meters behind Shiv, flying with his arms crossed and his back to the ground, carried by his pyramid wings as smoothly as if he were lounging on a couch.

"Maybe in a bit," Shiv said, sniffling. He coughed as he tried to get the taste out of his mouth.

"Don't bother," Adam said with a slight sigh. "I used to do that too, but it doesn't work. The taste never really leaves you. You just learn to get used to it. It never really tastes good, but you stop noticing so much when you find something else to focus on."

"Yeah. Well. I'm having trouble there too. Focusing. It's like my attention's getting pulled apart. There's too much happening all at once."

"Try to concentrate on a small part of the world. Or maybe just a single sense. Ignore everything else."

Shiv took Adam's advice, though it was an uphill battle. His mind jumped from moment to moment, from detail to detail, like it were natural. Uva said his mind was shaped this way for a reason, that he was used to reacting quickly and dealing with many things. That came with drawbacks. But then again, so did these Awareness enchantments.

And Inertial Overdrive, Shiv noted. There were a great many skills that didn't work so great on their own. They needed to be supplemented. Toughness, Magical Resistance, and Disease Resistance were self-sufficient skills, but they were also utterly reactive and mostly passive. Shiv would go so far as to call them foundational, but there were plenty of people who didn't level those skills at all.

Multi-Tasking 19 > 20

Multi-Tasking, meanwhile, seemed to be an essential skill for anyone that wished to delve into high complexity magics. Or sort through all their sensory inputs at once.

Alright. Try not to focus on the vibrations and the tastes. Let's just— And then Shiv's mind stilled as he caught a whiff of something that wasn't quite an orc. No. It tasted a bit like him and Adam. Not quite Uva—though she wasn't that far off. That's a human flavor. Other humans! That's why Helix said it was going to be easier.

And Shiv realized there was another part to the whole tracking people down thing: Deductive reasoning. If he had no plan about what to look for, of course, he wouldn't be able to find the Inquisitors.

Awareness 37 > 38

Shiv followed the chemical signals down to a chain of connected crystalline bunkers five hundred meters away. Behind him, Adam followed, while Uva, Can Hu, and Valor remained aboard the Court Leviathan to continue "talking about important matters" with Helix.

"Did you find them?" Adam asked.

"I think so," Shiv said. He had the antennae on his shoulders twitch. "I caught a whiff of humans on the wind. I think they're human, anyway. Smells more like you and me than one of the orcs."

"Right. Good. You managed to figure that out on your own. You track things based on divergent characteristics. You start broad and narrow down. Habits, pheromones, colors, diet, noises, all these things can help you locate someone easily if they don't cover their trails well."

Shiv nodded as he drew closer to the crystalline bunkers. He pulled back on his gravitic field as hard as he could and detonated his sheath briefly before he slammed down into the trenches. Several orcs called out to him with happy greetings, and Shiv offered a grunt of acknowledgement in response. As Adam landed just behind him, the cheers turned to jeers and muttered insults.

The Gate Lord glared at the orcs. "They're deliberately trying to start something between us. They give you the hero's welcome and treat me like garbage."

"Yep," Shiv said. "Probably want us to fight each other because of that or something. That, and you're their desired prey."

Adam did a double-take. "You know, I never understood that. Is it the way I talk? The way I act? Do I seem weak to you?"

"No." Shiv squeezed past two orcs as he entered a tunnel leading into a bunker. He was still following the smell, and soon it led him through a series of cramped corridors and then deeper underground thereafter. "Well. Maybe a bit. But the first thing is that they're trying to bother me through you. And another thing is that you're a Hero. You're dangerous in a fight, which makes the possibility of facing you exciting. But also, you're very human."

"Very human?" Adam asked, not understanding. "And you're not? Well, besides your monster mind and not-dying thing. Is that it?"

Shiv tried to figure out what his own instincts were telling him. "Not dying is one thing. But it's the fact that I can just put up with their brutality. Not you. Right. So, not really human, but humane. You care a lot more than I do. And because they can make you care and bother you, they like attacking you. They're all assholes, Adam. They're assholes looking for a sadistic hit, and the more uncomfortable they can make someone powerful feel, the greater the dominance. Something like that."

"Gods, these creatures are wretched," Adam muttered.

"And don't you ever forget it, Gate Lord," an orc called out as he sneered at Adam.

Then, he spat at the Gate Lord. And Shiv caught sight of something moving within the orc's phlegm. It looked like a needle. The Deathless halted time and focused his compound vision on the orc's spit. It didn't just look like a needle; it was a needle. He stretched his Biomancy field over the tip, and a few spell patterns came aglow. He wasn't sure what it was exactly, but he remembered seeing another spell chain like that somewhere.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

It took a moment for it to come back to him. The basilisk venom, Shiv remembered.

Memorization 13 > 14

Shiv plucked the needle out of the time-frozen phlegm and glared at the orc. The large bastard had green veins running along his neck. He also had a glass eye with a crosshair inside. Shiv assimilated the toxins lining the needle and considered using his mana hydra to inject it into the offending orc assassin, but decided against doing that.

Instead, the Deathless drove both thumbs into the orc's eyes and squeezed hard. The orc's natural eye turned to paste. His glass eye shattered. Shiv's gravitic field collapsed inward around the orc's skull. After a brief struggle, the orc's head turned into a compressed sphere of gore.

There. That should be a good enough warning.

He let time resume. The orc's skull exploded in a fountain of giblets. Adam had already been in motion of dodging to the side—having noticed the needle too—but he flinched as he caught sight of the dead orc. The other gray brutes around Shiv let out loud laughs but kept their distance. More fear chains extended from their bodies and flowed into him thereafter.

"What—" Adam hopped over the dead orc as Shiv continued down the hall, following the smell. "What in the Ascendants' mercy was that? He spat something at me."

"A poisoned needle," Shiv growled. "Don't worry. Got rid of it. And then I got rid of him. And this is why I was godsdamned worried about bringing you and the others here. It's just a matter of time before one of these cunning but low-impulse motherfuckers tries something. Probably not going to be the last orc I kill."

Adam looked around at the other orcs. They just stared back, but didn't act.

"They're not going to attack us," Shiv said. "That's my gut feeling. This idiot just played his hand hard. And badly. Next time, I'll felling mutilate his soul and leave him a nugget of screaming meat like Band."

"Why didn't you do it this time?" Adam asked.

"Because I'm trying not to lose track of the inquisitors."

"They're a few rooms ahead. We're heading into an underground prison complex. Or more like a torture ring, judging from all the implements the orcs have set up." Shiv turned to stare at Adam. "What? Of course I know where we're going, Shiv. I've known since we entered the gate. I'm always checking my surroundings. I just wanted to see how far you could get on your own. More struggle means higher levels—best to only offer the minimal level of help required."

Sometimes, Shiv needed to be reminded of just how useful having a Heroic-Tier Awareness Skill was.

True to Adam's word, Shiv soon found himself in what could best be described as a bizarre torture site. A large chamber lined with countless cells and strange implements greeted him. Another peculiarity was how the walls here were made entirely from focus crystal. Shiv looked around, noticing a few orcs grinning down at him from the walkways above. They all had various Magical Skills. Adept-Tier at the least.

"I changed my mind," Adam said, glowering at the orcs. "This isn't a prison or a torture site. It's a human experimentation facility."

"Might not be just for humans," Shiv said. "A lot of these racks I'm seeing are orc-sized."

The Gate Lord shuddered. The orcs staring at them laughed.

They found the Amnesiac and a cadre of ten other Psychomancers gathered in a larger cell within the chamber. Inside, Shiv bit back a groan as he tasted the scent of infected flesh and loose bowels. As he entered the room, he found the orcs flooding their Psychomancy mana into their prisoners. There were around eight Inquisitors left, and all of them had been stripped bare. Their clothes were nowhere to be seen, but Shiv concentrated on the smell of blood and found another set of scents nearby.

"What are you monsters doing to these poor bastards now?" Adam sighed. He tried to hide his disgust and deliberately kept his gaze away from the inquisitors. Most of the orcs turned and smiled sweetly at him. One continued focusing on the prisoners, and that one, Shiv guessed, was the Amnesiac.

The Amnesiac was quite short for an orc, but still probably weighed about three times as much as Adam. He wore a vibrantly-colored, feathered duster that depicted an eye on his back, and he had a small black circle painted at the center of his forehead. "Ah. Insul. Finally. You have deigned to meet me. I am honored. Please, behold our labors."

The orc's voice was rather high, and he gestured at the Inquisitors. Their expressions were blank, their mouths were slack, and drool ran down their chins.

"We had them cleaned and properly mended by our Biomancers," the Amnesiac said. "So that they will be ready for whatever operations we decide to commit them too. A few were disqualified due to innate mental instabilities or lingering magics we could not overcome in the short time we have. We hope you understand."

Shiv nodded, but he still gave Adam a look. "I think Uva should be here for this too."

"Ah. Yes. The Seeker…" the Amnesiac breathed, as if he had been anticipating this moment. "Please. Invite her."

The Deathless froze. He turned a wary gaze on the orc. "What did you just call her?"

"The Seeker," the Amnesiac repeated. "It is a field of expertise I share with her." The orc tapped his forehead, and the black dot brightened with colors beyond Shiv's ability to describe.

Adam groaned. "Oh, gods. We chose the orcs specifically to avoid dealing with the felling Outsiders."

"The Shapeless Ones are never close. But they are also always close." The orc giggled. "But worry not. I am not a Seeker myself. I am just a Listener. I hear, and I tell the Challenger things. I tell my fellows things. And I hunt that which shouldn't be hunted." The Amnesiac licked his lips. "Dreams taste delightful."

Just then, Adam fired an arrow through the flesh of existence, and as a dimensional pathway expanded, Uva appeared on the other side. Behind her, Valor had his right hand placed atop Helix's head. The orc's beady eyes gleamed with something close to fear as Valor talked about "Skill Plagues" and "Curses that affect even Reincarnators". Can Hu stood beside the orc, glaring up menacingly.

"Adam? Shiv? Something requires my attention?" Uva stepped aboard her shield and began drifting across. As soon as her mana strings spilled through the rift, they cracked against the orcs' Psychomancy fields.

"Potent," an orc chittered.

"Delicate," another mused.

One tilted his head. "Hmm. Strings? Haven't seen this skill before."

"Puppeteer," the Amnesiac declared without hesitation. He fully turned away from the prisoners and stood at the ready, preparing to greet Uva. As she emerged and stepped onto the ground, she regarded each of the orc Psychomancers only briefly, and then turned her magic on the prisoners. She slipped her strands into their minds and rooted about for a moment. The orcs did nothing to stop her. Instead, they all sported eager grins, as if diligent students awaiting praise.

After a minute, Uva retracted her mana from their minds and regarded the Amnesiac for a beat. "The rewritten memories are sound, but the damage you inflicted on their egos is extreme. They are barely self-aware."

"Deliberately done," the Amnesiac said with a bow. "We focused on letting them retain their combat capabilities in case the Insul wishes to waste their lives attacking the Necrotechs."

"Waste?" Shiv said.

"Yes. I believe they are best returned to their comrades. To serve as internal saboteurs and the like." The Amnesiac hummed with joy, still facing Uva. "Before you continue with your criticisms, understand that we are not entirely done with our adjustments, and that this is not their final configuration. But I also wanted to have something presentable. For you."

"For me," Uva said dully. Shiv was watching the orc intently now. He fought the urge to just hack the Amnesiac's head off. The orc was playing at something with Uva, and Shiv didn't like it. Especially because he didn't know what he was playing at.

"Yes," the orc Psychomancer breathed. "Your skill… It is favored by spies. It is the Psychomancy of a spider pluck-pluck-plucking on her strings." He mimicked the motion of pulling at a stringed instrument, grinning.

"And yours is that of a Thief," Uva replied. "You grow stronger by swallowing others' memories. Collector of the Forgotten Pasts, is it?"

The orc nodded joyously. "Indeed. Indeed. Quite well studied. Mine is very esoteric Skill Evolution. As is yours."

Uva regarded the inquisitors once more. "You understand that I will never enter their minds, yes?"

The Amnesiac's expression flinched imperceptibly. "But why? I am—"

"I studied what you have done. I know you've hidden memories inside other memories. That means you're very skilled with Psychology and Psychomancy. More skilled than I. So. I will not risk myself. I am not entering this trap. Let that thought die."

The smiles on the orc Psychomancers' faces turned to frowns. Several of them turned to glare at the Amnesiac. "Was that what you were doing while the rest of us were doing the actual work?"

"You will have to be more subtle to see my skill," Uva replied. "And I will give you nothing if you provoke me. I care nothing for pride. I see your capabilities and have no interest in playing this dominance game. Pursue it if you must, but I will simply avoid you."

"I won't," Shiv said, his voice rumbling with an undercurrent of violence. "I'm not exactly sure what you guys are doing, but I'm getting the urge to mutilate an orc's soul again." And then he squinted at the eye motif on the orc's back. "Amnesiac. You have dealings with the Outsiders, yeah?"

Uva's head turned to Shiv, then back to the orc. "Does he, now?"

"I do," the Amnesiac said. "I—"

"What did the Stranger offer you for her life? It is a Quest?" Shiv's guess was as wild as it was blunt. Adam did a double-take. Uva stopped breathing.

The Amnesiac blinked. Shiv noted how the orc's facial muscles were rolling under his skin. "How—"

The Deathless manifested his temporal shell. A faint Chronomancy ward rippled out from the Amnesiac. Shiv shoved it aside with his Magebreaker. He coated his Skysplitter in Vitae and started carving into the orc. He tore and mutilated him in body and soul, snarling like a rabid dog. When he was done, when the Amnesiac was in tatters inside and out, he leaned close beside the orc's right ear. "Hey, Stranger. If you're watching this, find better servants. Maybe one that doesn't wear a big godsdamned eye on his coat."

Then, he caved the Amnesiac's skull in, just as his temporal shell shattered.

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