153 (II)

Unexpected

Shiv's mind reeled as he considered his response. "I… I don't know you," Shiv breathed, still trying to fake it.

The orc sighed. "You are still not very good at this. They have delved into a few of my memories. Well. I let them. And they know I am not lying. Just as they know I can sense you because of the Curse." 812 scoffed. "Alas, the City Lord has a loathsome personality, and he refuses to allow me to be of service. But dear Legend Hawgrave was more than accommodating. She even allowed me to stay as a guest within her sword."

Godsdammit. Challenger, you're just letting this shit happen?

The Challenger wants to see what happens next.

Shiv sighed. "Fuck me, this was bullshit."

"Oh," Hawgrave said, frowning. "Not really fair, was it?"

"Yeah."

Shiv manifested—

Hawgrave flicked a finger against his head. Her inertium-forged armor cracked against his outer helmet and split it down the middle. Shiv let out a grunt as the tip of her middle finger cracked his Mask of False Paths right down the middle as well.

Mask of False Paths

Condition: Severely Damaged

Husk of the Adamantine Voidmantid

Condition: Wounded

"Shit!" Shiv growled as his head snapped backward. Hawgrave's flick hit as hard as some of Bonk's heavier swings.

He tried to stop time once more, but she vanished from sight—only to reappear and drive a sloppy jab into his solar plexus. Her form was horrible, but the blow came so fast Shiv didn't even perceive it, and he felt his bones turn to powder and flesh to paste as his armor shattered.

Adamantine Adaption 171 > 172

Shiv impacted the far wall. It rang around him, and then the room shuddered like the insides of a gong. A shockwave smashed into him a second thereafter. Then came more billowing waves of force and heat, crashing over him like ocean waves upon an ant.

Despite all that, the room took no damage. Only the cot and table dissolved into motes of dust. Shiv swallowed back a mouthful of blood and snarled. Legend or not, he was going to hurt her for that.

Shiv pulled himself off the wall using his gravitic field—only for Hawgrave to slam into him, pinning him in place with an outstretched hand. He thrust out his Skysplitter, but she grabbed his thumb and twisted backward before he could get anywhere near her neck.

"I—" Hawgrave started.

Shiv headbutted her. He felt part of his helmet cave in. Her expression didn't even change. She pressed him harder against the wall and threw another light jab into his sternum.

Adamantine Adaption 172 > 174

His ribs shattered like glass. His sternum dissolved. Sections of his spine snapped apart. An ocean of blood spilled down from his nostrils and mouth. It pooled inside his cracked mask, spurting free from the opening in his helmet. He ignored it. He grabbed her arm and smashed his mana hydras into her.

For the first time, she gave a response. She moved slightly backward as columns of crimson mana exploded around her. He drove his Biomancy field against her flesh. Her body came alight in outline of spell patterns, but her Inertium armor made his magic bounce off in an instant.

It did give him a moment to recover. Shiv finally activated his Strider of the Unbending Path. His temporal shell ignited. The world around him stopped.

Then a spike of gold smashed into him. That faint mana concentrated in the atmosphere he'd seen in the cell earlier suddenly collapsed around his body, hardening into a solid structure. It ground against his temporal armor, breaking it, costing him precious seconds.

But he still had enough to—

Hawgrave's eyes narrowed. A smirk slowly spread across her face. Her body came aglow with vaporous, bright-white mana.

Shiv looked on in utter disbelief. He was accelerating his own progression of time so fast that anyone without Chronomancy of their own should be utterly still. She had none, so how was she—

Shiv's mind ground to a halt. Holy fucking shit. She might just be that godsdamned fast. How high are her Reflexes? Is that even possible?

Her radiant mana detonated outward. It impacted each of Shiv's magical fields and tore through them like a blade would split through Pathless flesh.

A cry of pain forced itself out from Shiv's lungs. His temporal shell shattered into grains of golden dust. Shiv fought through the pain as he attacked her. He threw a knee at her chest, using his badly ruptured mana hydras in tandem with his gravitic field to control his broken body and give force to his blow.

Hawgrave vanished again as she dodged. She appeared to his right, and she lightly flicked him again.

His helmet burst apart completely. Shiv felt his right ear cave in as well. The world spun, and the ground came up to hit him. As he crashed down, he clawed at the floor, fighting against how the room around him spun over and over. He managed to grab Hawgrave by her leg, and he used his gravitic field to twist against her knee. He tried to dislocate the limb, but found himself pressing against an unmoving pillar. He tried to lift her up, to throw her aside after that, but though she briefly left the ground, she slammed down a second later as she got heavier and heavier, exceeding his strength in an instant.

"Ascendants, you just do not give up," she commented with naked glee. "You're a real brawler, aren't you?" He spat blood at her face through his cracked helmet and mask. She let the gore splash over her and even ran her tongue over her blood-coated lips. "Fine. Fuck it. Show me what you got, kid."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

His right ear wasn't working, his soul was lined with searing agony, but the battle lust was on, and he wasn't going to let a few things like shredded mana fields or a crippling wound stop him from putting up a good fight. He jabbed his Skysplitter against her several times. The blade bounced off, but he knew Deepest Edge would send his cuts through her armor.

Even so, the Legendary Pathbearer didn't react.

"Deepest Edge," she said, recognizing the skill. "Not a bad skill to have at all, but that other stuff, what was that? Gravitic Wrestler? Strider of the Unbending Path, Aegis of Assimilation… Now that's in a pretty eclectic collection, if I do say so myself. What do you think, Rusty?"

"I think this one isn't human. Or his true nature has been altered."

Shiv fought through a haze of agony as he directed a surge of basilisk venom into his flesh using his Biomancy. Plaguefueled activated. His body swelled larger. He fed his injuries to his Biomancy mana and swung his hydras against Hawgrave.

A crimson blast of mana consumed the room. Before he could jump to his feet, she reached through the explosion and pulled him up. Shiv borrowed her momentum and threw a rising elbow. She dropped her own elbow in response. Her blow cleaved through his. His limb came apart in a welter of gore. Shiv stared at what remained of the limb for a moment and then hit her in the face with it anyway, ignoring the intense pain.

Hawgrave blinked at him, her mouth dropping open slightly. "How are you not in shock right now?"

"I've had worse," Shiv growled.

He hit her three times more with his ruined limb before she finally broke from her stupor. She grabbed his arm by the shoulder and simply ripped it off at the base. A sounding snap shook through his body, and as soon as the arm detached from his shoulder, he rammed his jagged shoulder bone into her face. It didn't do much, but it did make her cough as she accidentally ingested some of his blood.

Her coughing turned into surprise laughter as he slammed into her repeatedly, his Inertial Overdrive building—

She flicked him just under the chin. Shiv's jaw exploded. His skull fractured. His sheath discharged. Hawgrave walked through the cataclysmic blast like it was a light breeze and flicked him across the forehead.

A flash of white exploded behind Shiv's eyes. The world was drowned away by a warbling siren and dappled colors. He tried to get his bearings, but his body was spinning. He couldn't tell where he was. Shiv pulled on himself using his field and found himself bouncing off a wall immediately after nausea swept through him.

As Shiv coated himself using a mana hydra, he realized that part of his chin was sticking out from the back of his neck. A spreading numbness washed through his body. Shiv didn't even feel much pain anymore. Still, as far as injuries went, that one was pretty unique.

Adamantine Adaption 174 > 176

Good godsdamn shit, Shiv thought to himself. She's barely jabbing me. She makes the Recollector feel like a pushover with these hits. Bonk doesn't have shit on her either.

Suddenly, he felt a heavy weight slam down on his chest. Shiv let out a groan, and he tried to exhale. A wet cough left him instead, along with a splurge of blood. As the bright colors faded out of his eyes and sound returned to his only working ear, he found Hawgrave standing over him, looking down with a thin eyebrow raised.

"Hells, I might have hit you a little too hard. You still alive?"

Shiv wanted to say, just about, but what came out was a messy slur of gurgled blood and mucus. His mask also parted around his face in halves.

Mask of False Paths

Condition: Destroyed

Shit. Need to get that reforged.

She winced. "Yeah, sorry about that. I held back as much as I could. I was trying to knock you out. Since you survived my first few hits, I assumed you were Heroic-Tier in terms of Toughness, but I guess you might just be a really High Master instead." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I also think I know what you got. That's Adamantine Adaption, isn't it? You felt harder the second time around. Your body was trying to get used to me. Just what exactly are you?" She let out a surprise giggle. "Shit, Rusty, the orc was right. There might actually be a crazy human kid getting monster skills."

Shiv rolled onto his side with a sudden burst of his gravitic field. He launched off the weight pressing down on him for a moment, but then it crashed back down, and he felt part of his torso cave in entirely. It was only then that he noticed that her huge sword was leaning against him. Shiv's senses began to drift as his mind went cold.

Death was soon approaching. He tried to trigger his Chronomancy again, but the field hadn't recovered enough yet.

Shit…

"No, no, I know that look. I know when someone's on the way out. Don't die on me yet, Deathless."

She reached down and pulled the broken Mask of False Paths off his face. And at the same time, a swirl of Dimensionality concentrated around her hand, and from a black static sphere emerged a large, bulbous elixir. Its underside was transparent, and Shiv saw what seemed to be bottled fire swirling within. She popped its cork off, and began pouring it down over his face and into his wounds.

The flames shot through Shiv, consuming him from within. He felt himself combust, but rather than burning alive, the fire began to reconstruct him, rebuild every part of his body and armor that she'd just broken. She plugged the elixir a moment after, and she dismissed it with another casual spell of Dimensionality. The fire worked through Shiv, and as soon as it extinguished itself, he felt his right arm again, and his chin was back in the right place. More importantly, however, his Perfect Semblance was lost. His true form was exposed for the first time, and Hawgrave held the two pieces of his broken mask in her hand.

"Mask of False Paths." She chuckled to herself. "Heroic-Tier. That's a pretty nifty thing to have, but you're no spy. No, definitely not. Well, even if you were, we already knew you were coming, especially with our special informant."

Shiv stared at Hawgrave for a few moments, annoyed that she didn't let him die, but also thinking of how he could exploit her curiosity. This infiltration thing had gone to shit in record time as per usual, but she was trying to keep him alive, and more importantly, she didn't know about his Outside Context Problem Skill. His mistake earlier was not using the skill first, before he triggered his Chronomancy.

When his field recovered, he would use Outside Context Problem to shroud himself from Hawgrave's Awareness and whatever that atmospheric counter-mana was, so that he could escape. But before then, he might still be able to confuse them—perhaps even accomplish the goal of his mission all the same.

Shiv held up his two hands and sighed. "Alright, you got me. Really not that good at this whole spying thing."

She nodded at him in sympathy. "Yeah, judging from your skills, I think you're probably a bit more like me. You like that bone-on-bone fighting, don't you?"

Shiv met her gaze and simply let out a quiet laugh. "Suppose you could say that. About as much as I like cooking."

She nodded and extended a hand, "Legend Jessica Hawgrave, Titansbane. And you are? Your real name."

Should have considered withholding that information, but there was no point. If 812 had really let them sift through his mind, then they were probably aware of who he was. Or at least suspicious.

"Hero Shiv. And I don't really have a nickname I prefer to use right now."

He reached up and accepted her hand, though. She pulled him back up with a casual tug, even lifting him off his feet for a moment. And once more, he was surprised by her strength. Surprised and fascinated. There was nothing about her Physicality that told him how she was hitting that hard. She was overwhelmingly powerful. But the nuances of her strength and speed were also staggeringly subtle.

"So, just Shiv, huh?" she said, craning her neck to look up at him. With Plaguefueled active, one could have stacked two Jessica Hawgraves on top of one another and still barely reached his shoulders. He guessed her entire body had about as much mass as one of his arms at the moment, which made her strength even more terrifying.

"Yeah," he replied, leaning over slightly to meet her eyes, "just Shiv."

She regarded him for a moment longer and turned away. "You know, I'm surprised that Roland let you live. Especially considering what your mommy and daddy did to his wife."

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