205 (II)

Academy [III]

Shiv walked over to Marcus and looked down at the boy again. He knelt over the body and peeled the sheets away some more. Shiv winced slightly. Though the boy looked robust, and there was a metallic gleam that hinted at Adept Toughness, his musculature had deceived him earlier. His arms were rigid with bulging veins, but his torso was far softer. In fact, Shiv would say this one was a little bit plump.

"Skipping out on the conditioning a bit, are we, Marcus?" he said under his breath. Then, his snark died as he examined the corpse's musculature once more. There was such a lack of definition and softness along Marcus's chest and shoulders that he looked deflated and deformed in places. The substance around his stomach also didn't seem to react like fat when Shiv shifted the body slightly. It flopped around rather than jiggled. "The hells…"

He wrapped a mana hydra around the body and let out a gasp of surprise. Marcus's muscles felt like they were shriveled. His organs were also lined with horrific scarring. "The felling—what did the Jotuns do to this guy?"

"Not the giants; soul condition, unfortunately," the liaison said, "and a mana condition as well. His Physicality is crippled, bottlenecked before it could fully develop. As such, his Toughness is excessive due to... negative and painful experiences while growing up, while his strength remains at the level of a Pathless."

"Just another thing you and I share, huh?" Shiv said. "Well, at least you had your Toughness at Adept. So, wild card… I'm guessing that he basically got in on pity."

Irons cleared his throat. "It's not so much pity as a golden opportunity offered to junior Pathbearers who otherwise wouldn't be selected due to circumstances that limit them. Not everyone will be a warrior. Not everyone has the capacity to be a great mage, an intellectual, an engineer. But some can still provide great benefit to the Republic, and this was one such person."

"Indeed. For you see, Marcus was enrolled under the College of the Lifegiver—medicine."

And that captured Shiv's interest entirely. "Medical College? He was a Biomancer?"

"A minor one," the liaison said, "with his main talents in Practical Metabiology, combined with Fieldcraft, Survival, and Surgery. He was slated to see his Biomancy skill developed further, to see if he had an aptitude for the art. But, alas, some roses are snipped before they can bloom." The liaison gave a moment of silence, but Shiv knew he was playing to the crowd. As soon as the liaison mentioned the college Marcus was bound for, Shiv's choice was already made.

"Yeah," Shiv said, "orphan, non-combatant, studying human biology. What's not to love?"

"So, I take it you have made your choice?" the liaison asked. Shiv drew in a breath and turned away for a moment. He walked back toward Irons and faced the instructor. "Listen, when my Perfect Semblance activates, it's going to burn his body. There's gonna be nothing left of him other than ashes."

"Why are you telling me this?" Irons asked.

"Because it's going to bother you. It's going to bother you like it's going to bother me. But there's a reason why I'm picking him. Hells, there are several reasons. You're a straight-up guy, and so am I. You got a problem with me doing this, or if you got a better idea, you tell me now. Otherwise, I'm going to go through with this thing, regardless if it makes me feel bad. And then we move on. We start dealing with other shit. We don't linger on this."

Irons fell quiet. Then he offered Shiv a brief nod. They both understood where the other was coming from. "I don't like it," Irons began, but then he swallowed. "I don't like it, but since I've already done so many things I dislike, I think I can stomach one more. But after this..."

"Yeah, after this, I'll be able to move around in the open and help you with your problems too," Shiv said. "Melissa, was it?" Irons nodded again. "Alright, we're going to be going after her, going after whatever the hells Daughter's doing in this city. There's no way in hell I'm going to let that crazy godsdamned monster keep snatching children if I can do something about it."

"But, before we can really even get to that…" Shiv hesitated as he looked to the two professors. Through the entire discussion, both Concelhaunt and Merrielmel had looked on at the bodies. The goblin took in the macabre display with far more grace, offering little more than winces and a frown at times. Merrielmel, meanwhile, was leaning against the wall, violently heaving air in and out of a strange rectangular device that flashed every time he exhaled. "Got some other stuff to deal with there as well," Shiv said. "Alright. You can take the other bodies. Leave Marcus."

The liaison nodded. "It will be done." He gave a slight whistle, and the stone dimensionals began pulling the other corpses out.

"Wait," Adam called out. "But if you're going to put them back, what about this one? There's going to be one corpse missing, won't that bring about problems?"

The liaison simply shook his head. "Of course, we arranged for duplicates to be made beforehand."

"Duplicates?" Adam asked.

Helix cocked his head, and Shiv immediately developed a guess.

"Yes, we cloned the bodies. We inflicted the same wounds upon them, and we left them within the morgue in advance of this operation. We are not going to be placing the bodies back there. Instead, they will be going to other people."

"What other people?" Irons almost growled.

"Bidders, most likely," the liaison said. "Organs sell for a good deal, especially an organ from a young and healthy body, one that has not been tainted by too much Skill History." Then he considered something else. "Well, on top of the organs, there are others who have need of youthful vessels. Necromancy is an expensive art to practice."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Though Irons said nothing, Shiv could practically feel the murder radiating off the captain's body. Necromancy was still considered an ugly thing in the Republic, with practitioners often being put to death from what Shiv remembered hearing from Slayers and reading in newspapers.

"I understand you disapprove," the liaison said, without a hint of worry at all. With his words, Shiv felt a tug of affection building—an emotion that was crushed when Psycho-Cartography noticed it. "I disapprove of certain things as well, but the market always has demands, and we need to meet those demands to make sure that someone more cruel or more base than we does not fill it."

"Is that what you always tell yourself?" Irons growled. "That you are being noble in an ugly situation?"

"No, just that I am a part of an order. A sunken order, but an order nonetheless." The liaison sighed. "You need not approve. My superiors don't care for it. You have already bound yourself to us, and should you find yourself thinking about doing something deeply unwise..." The liaison shook his head very, very dramatically. "...I strongly recommend you do not, because a certain set of documents might find its way into Flamecrown Castle, and everything you are, everything you want to do, can turn to dust."

"Is it common practice for the Neath to blackmail the people it works with?" Shiv asked sardonically.

"Only if they threaten to impede other profit margins in play." The liaison smiled again and bowed. "I leave this one with you, then, Legend Shiv. Oh, and lest I forget..." He reached into his leather doublet's inner pocket and pulled out a glistening letter. Its material seemed to be made of some kind of crystalline substance, and as Shiv accepted it, he realized it was mithril. He could feel his magic thrumming around the letter, and on one end, a seal held it in place. It wasn't a wax seal, though. Instead, it was a thing of Dimensionality, and it called to him. There was a trace of his Vitae there.

Shiv's mouth fell open. How the hells did someone—

His mind went to a grinding halt just then. Who had his Vitae? Who could have prepared this so far in advance? Only one.

"This was said to be delivered to you once your powers and Path fully activated," the liaison said. "It has been primed in advance and sent by your Creator. On top of that, the Dragon Brokers wish to have a personal audience with you, at your nearest convenience." The liaison's expression went from warm to utterly dead. "I strongly advise that you do not keep them waiting. They are patient, but they are not to be insulted."

Shiv wanted to say something cutting, but decided to hold back. Psycho-Cartography warned him against playing the petulant child. Everything I say or do from this point on can be used against me, Shiv reminded himself. "Tell them I'll let them know when I'm available," he said, keeping his tone even.

No sense in avoiding this. Time to see who runs the underbelly of the capital. See what they can give me—and what bullshit they bring my way.

The liaison bowed once more, and his smile returned to his face. "A wise decision. You seem like a wise man, Deathless, a wise man in desperate circumstances. You could do with many, many reliable friends in these trying times." With that, he retreated with his stone dimensionals, leaving only Marcus's corpse behind.

"I still think you should have picked the blonde girl," Helix said with a lamenting sigh. "She would have given you so many opportunities to..."

"Helix," Shiv said. "Shut up."

"Of course, Insul."

Giving Marcus a final look, the Deathless hardened himself for what he was going to do to the body and returned to the two crafters. "Alright. So now that that's settled, let's talk about enchantments. What's the damage?"

"Well, as we said earlier, the Mind Shield enchantment has been completely worn away." Merrielmel gestured at the center of the mask, and Shiv noticed that there was a slight crack there. The crack also seeped droplets of translucent mana. A lot of lost Psychomancy. Shame, but not necessary now that I got Shapeless Tides.

"Additionally, the Adept Skill Thief and Initiate Skill Thief Enchantments have also sustained substantial damage. That being said, they still function. We managed to repair them." Merrielmel's face turned into a bright smile as he gestured at a certain part of the mask. Shiv squinted and saw patches of shifting patterns gliding just underneath the material. It came alight and faded intermittently.

"Okay," Shiv said. "So I'm going to have to find new skills to replace the ones I lost."

"Yes, but I have another suggestion." The goblin chuckled under his breath. "These two enchantments were like add-ons, you know? Just side-bits of mana connected to the core. The main thing is that this whole mask, it's built around that Perfect Semblance skill. It's a good thing, too, because if it was only the Perfect Semblance skill, it would be practically useless right now from all the mana it leaks."

"So, what does that mean?" Shiv asked.

"That means we can probably do quite a bit of tweaking around it. Instead of just leaving it at the Adept Skill Thief ceiling, we have something that could bring it to new heights. Reforge the enchantment entirely." And then Concelhaunt sprinted toward the many mana cores slotted upon the stand lining the far wall, and he returned with a glistening shard that radiated with vapors of black and gray. "We can give you a few choices here. If you want to increase the Adept Skill Thief enchantment to having five slots—ones that can be filled immediately—we could definitely do that. But we can also give you a single Master-Tier enchantment as well. Depends on how we rebuild things. But…"

"What's the problem?" Shiv said, waiting to hear the trade-off.

"Well, if we're going to put in a Master-Tier Skill Thief, it's likely going to eat up what's left of the mana capacity for this mask. It was already stretched tight before." Shiv remembered that. Tran had barely managed to add Self-Mending to the mask, just before the fight Shiv had with the Jealousy.

"So, if I just expand the Adept Skill Thief into five slots, could I get still another enchantment?" Shiv asked. He hummed with interest. "And it's just one other Master-Tier Skill instead of five Adept ones?"

"Correct," Merrielmel said in a singsong voice. "Flexibility or power is always—"

"I have enough power," Shiv grunted decisively. "I want more subtlety. I need… You got anything for Invisibility? Or Chameleon? Actually—" He reached into his cape and pulled out his broken gauntlet. "You think you can move a few enchantments from this?"

"Inertium," Concelhaunt breathed. He leaned in close, and his eyes flashed with mana. "How in the fuck did you get that? Why didn't you just show us that earlier—ahem." He caught Shiv's flat stare and nodded. "Merri. Let's… let's see what we can do here."

"No," Merrielmel muttered.

Both Shiv and Concelhaunt stared at him. "The hells you mean, no?" the goblin Smith spat.

"I mean, this shouldn't be for the mask," Merrielmel continued. "We need it for Project Trespasser." He swallowed. "For getting to the Outside! This—this is what we have been missing for the stabilizer!" He reached out and gripped Shiv by the arms in a burst of excitement. "If—if you will let us have this, I—there are many other things, I will… Trade! I offer another trade!"

Shiv blinked. "Trade?"

"Heroic Equipment," Merrielmel squeaked. "Please…"

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