Every skill can be countered, every Pathbearer has a blind spot, and every environment offers opportunities and limitations. You are not going to be able to control every single variable. That is impossible. Do not even try. What you can do is understand the variables you have the best chances of altering and then use them to your advantage by overwhelming your enemies before they can figure out the same thing.

  When conducting a raid into hostile territory, stealth and speed are your best allies, but on top of that, distractions are viable options as well. In fact, a multi-faceted approach might be to your greatest advantage. But in this is a lesson. Ignorance protects you. What your enemy does not know, they must assume, and assumptions are deadly. If you face a Pathbearer with any experience at all, they will not rush to be made prey. They will wait, they will watch, and then they will act, but only after they have accrued a certain level of surety. Do not give them that. Continue to act under conditions of chaos. Be an agent of havoc and carnage, and never be predictable. The harder it is for your enemy to understand who you are, to grasp your skills, to know your limits, the longer you will remain alive in all situations.

  But above all, if you are the one on the receiving end, if you find yourself facing a foe you don't understand and cannot predict, then the wisest thing to do is to retreat.

  Retreat, gather more information, form your intelligence, and fight when the terms are more favorable to you.

  No songs are sung of fools who rush in. Even tragic heroes perish knowing the insurmountable odds they face. Theirs is a bleak choice. But even then, it's better than an accidental suicide built on the foundations of stupidity.

  —Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101

  308

  To Break a Curse [V]

  "Stop cutting your head off."

  "But it's fun, and I'm bored."

  "Well, it's bothering me. It keeps bouncing off the ground and making that thumping noise—was that a bloody smirk? Were you smirking at me? You're doing this on purpose, you bastard! Stop it! I already have enough nightmares!"

  "Trust me, I'm not actually trying to traumatize you. It just feels kind of funny. Like when the world gets too much, I'm just gonna cut my own head off, and then everything is peaceful for a while. It's pretty great."

  "You want to know what else is great? Being able to distinguish between my actual life and a fever dream."

  Shiv ignored Adam and cut his own head off again. Once more, everything went dark. Blissfully, peacefully dark. No noise, no complaining. Without ears, Adam wasn't real. Without eyes, Adam couldn't be seen. Without a nose, even the foulest smells could be avoided. Truly, headlessness was the finest way of existing.

  A Glimpse of Perspective 75 > 76

  Alas, peace could never last forever. After a few seconds of blissful silence, Shiv felt someone jab his mind.

  “Shiv,” Uva said flatly. "Adam is leaving. You've bothered him too much. If you were trying to be annoying, you've succeeded.”

  “I really wasn't. Not having a head is just peaceful. Trust me.”

  “I will… take your word for it at present. But though I loathe to be the harbinger of bad news, I need to inform you that the Slipgate is almost ready.” Faint emanations of tension radiated out from her mind. “Are you truly sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah, I promised the Enchanter I'd help him find his brother. I don't think the poor guy is still alive or anything, but it's better to find something to bury than nothing at all. Besides, the Stranger is hurting right now. The best time to hurt or kill someone some more is when they are already in pain. If I can shit in the Stranger's breakfast some more today, then it's gonna be worth it. Besides, what's the worst thing he's gonna do? Kill me? Crush my mind? Been there, suffered that.”

  Shiv restored himself. A new head sprouted free from the stump that was his neck. All his senses popped back into being at once. The bunker was the same way as he'd left it: dull gray metal walls; shimmering Dimensionality drifting through the air, lighting everything in a paradoxical bright blackness. The orcs had applied their ridiculous attention to detail in replicating every aspect of the bunker on the other side of the portal, back in Gate Piety. They even had the right scratches and blemishes. The only differences here were the mana diffusers that had been bolted into the nearby walls, and the unseen obelisk that was now stored within a tunnel underground.

  At that moment, Shiv sensed the frequency of the gateway changing. If he were to walk across now, there would be no telling where he'd end up. Definitely not in Gate Piety. Absolutely not the Outside either. The transition chamber held only two: Merrielmel and Shiv. The rest were connected to the latter through psionic links maintained by Uva. Or so Shiv assumed. He'd lost track of Valor at some point. The ancient Pathbearer was probably testing Shiv, trying to see if he could improve his awareness. But try as he might, he couldn't feel, hear, see, or smell any indication that his mentor was nearby.

  But that meant little when it came to Valor. He could be standing right next to Shiv, and the latter wouldn't notice.

  Still got a lot of stuff I need to improve.

  A ripple flickered across the surface of the gateway, and Merrielmel let out a triumphant squeak. "It's done, it's done! We've connected again! We've found another point of instability that—Ah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all."

  His legs moved faster than his body could react, and his torso lurched back as he sprinted at Shiv. He nearly fell over in his over-excitement, but Shiv caught him, preventing him from cracking his skull open against the metal walls.

  The Enchanter seemed utterly indifferent to the near impact he'd almost suffered, and instead began digging through his tasseled robes. "Here, I've been working on calibrating this Divination matrix with every chance I've got! This—this, perhaps second only to the Slipgate, is the realization of all my labors. Now if I can only find it…"

  "You take your time. I'm not going anywhere. Neither is that gateway." Shiv offered him a calm expression to steady him. Sage of the Enkindled Heart saw through Merrielmel like he was transparent. The Enchanter was a mess of terror, hope, and yearning. He'd dreamed about this moment for a long time: a redemption, a return of the brother he'd lost. In the form of Shiv, there was hope. Someone not only brave enough, but also capable enough and expendable enough, to delve into the Outside.

  Should the Deathless fall, it would be of no matter. He would depart again and again and again until he found some trace of Merrielmel's brother. For a promise was a promise, and the Stranger's misery was added cream atop that cake.

  "There! Found it! Finally!" From within his tattered robes, Merrielmel produced a strange, cube-shaped box that constantly leaked the violet hues of Divination mana. It tainted the air with a faint sheen of gloss. With Merrielmel being less than half of Shiv's size, the divination matrix was a small, fragile box, barely larger than one of Shiv's fingers. He pinched it carefully, once again glad he'd picked Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides as his Legendary Skill evolution rather than an ability geared toward raw, bestial destruction. Life was about more than inflicting damage, and even in times of constant war, control was invaluable.

  You just couldn't afford to break some things.

  "Give me a second," Shiv said. Pinching the matrix between his fingers, Shiv repositioned his Severed Shadow using his Chronomancy. His Revenant form was cast back in time—but the time it referenced was his physical body, so it blinked into place right behind him and immediately began applying the spool of Vitae over the Divination matrix. Soon, the small cube was utterly encased in a layer of solidified life force and orichalcum. Shiv examined it a moment further and then detached part of his hand, wrapping his flesh around it like an additional glove.

  "Just for safety, and to make sure I don't break it before it sees any use." He gave the Enchanter an apologetic grin. "Also, I hope you have a backup or some kind of grand schematic because I don't know the odds of you getting this back."

  A nervous chuckle escaped Merrielmel—and then he started choking on his laughter when he tried to inhale at the same moment. "It's fine, it's fine. I can… I can make more. I know how to make more. Once you have the design down… Ah, I'm rambling again. You don't need this. You don't need this at all. Feel free. I have more prepared. As many turns as it takes, right? As many attempts as it takes."

  "Yeah," Shiv replied, confident. "As many attempts as it takes. I'll find your brother, Merrielmel. I can't promise that I'll find him alive, but if there is any trace of him at all, I'll find them. And I'll bring something back for you. But you keep this in mind: I can't promise you peace. I can only give you a resolution."

  Something hardened first behind Merrielmel's eyes, and then in the expression on his face. "A resolution is more than what I would have gotten anyway. Before it was a dream, then it was a hope. Now, now there is an attempt. I thank you. I thank you a thousand times over. I thank you. I thank you."

  "Thank me after I get this done," Shiv said. "Besides, we owe you more for getting Uva and the others out of the Outside and us back home. Now, I know you're still attached to the academy, and you're a citizen of the Republic, but… maybe talk to Adam. We don't offer much yet, but we don't let Inquisitors drag off our people into torturous dungeons."

  "No need for Inquisitors when you have an army of grayskinned behemoths at your beck and call, willing to extract pain at a moment's notice and on the whims of their own cruelty." Merrielmel’s smile was forced.

  Shiv sucked in a slightly embarrassed breath. "Yeah, don't worry about them. I'll make sure they don't do anything to you."

  "It was a joke."

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: He means that only partially. The orcs terrify him. One of them likely has already threatened him. His drones are meager, even for self-defense. He's not a martial Pathbearer. This is a terrible place for him to be. He is exercising significant amounts of bravery being in the Tutorial at all.

  Shiv reached down and carefully gave the man's shoulder with an appreciative squeeze. "Stay strong, Merrielmel. And stay patient too. This might take a few tries. As many as needed."

  The bald elf nodded and took his leave of the Departure Chamber. Finally, Shiv alone. He stared into the depths of the dimensional gateway. Its frequency tuned, Shiv saw a glint of eldritch colors seeping out, trying to pierce through that static black fabric.

  “Shiv?” Uva said, her voice gentle but stern.

  “Look, I promised Merrielmel I'd do this. Actually, I want to do this. I want to make the Stranger's life miserable for everything he put us, but especially you, through. You don't need to worry about me. The bastard has no easy way to put me down for good. You don't need to feel ashamed either. You’ve done more than—”

  “It's not that. I simply have something to tell you: Die violently. Make it hurt for him.”

  Shiv was already vicious at his core. Something about her request turned him downright feral. “Well, since you asked…”

  He ended his reply by launching himself through the gateway, into the dark, into the Outside once more. His body glowed bright red, a ravenous mass of edges, of bone, of cancers unfettered, and of wrathful intensity. His skin cape dragged behind him, straightened by sheer acceleration. As soon as he passed through that tunnel of pressure, he emerged in the Stranger's hellish garden once more—

  And immediately found himself assailed by nightmarish screaming.

  Echoes of psionic anguish rippled through the entirety of the dimension. It was like the fabric of the world was a displaced wave slamming into Shiv over and over again. The Stranger's Garden was somehow drawn taut, all of the blackened branches pressing together, ripping into each other, an act of self-mutilation to distract from a greater pain. The eyes that lined them were all squinted shut as well. The Outsider God was experiencing an agony above anything Shiv could express.

  And the Fingerlings he could see remained in a miserable state as well. Most of them were curled like digits on a hand gripping bed sheets during a boiling fever. He caught sight of them using his Atlas. Their bodies lit up a mess of incomprehensible architecture, but they glowed all the same. They drifted through the Garden, weightless debris amidst the surging limbs of the eldritch forest. Some of them were threaded through like sausages impaled on the end of a stick. But all of them shared a single thing in common: an emanation of tarnished gold, an expression of retro-continuity, Eldritch-twisted Chronomancy.

  In the golden light they cast were shadows, imprints, and distortions. Shiv used his farsight to get a closer look and saw someone he recognized. The outline of Valor holding a blade, carving into something. A thing that resembled a hand. A thing that writhed and screamed. A thing that was screaming still.

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  "The Outsiders are both gods and slaves of their own nature," Valor said from right beside Shiv. The Deathless barely held down a high-pitched scream. Regarding his student with a faint hint of amusement from the corner of his left eye, Valor continued, "For that which allows them to defy the natural ways also sees them enchained and tormented by the mutation they seek to apply to our world. This Stranger sees the past and present as the same thing, and so he must relive everything that happened before eternally, infinitely, without choice. The future is simply more glories to be archived in that eternal now, but also more scars will be accumulated as well."

  As Valor spoke, the scene played on. Shiv could see the ancient Pathbearer's past shadow cleaving away fingers. Everything he severed within the Chronomantic veil burned. Cuts opened on the Fingerlings, painting paths of pain along their lengths. The wounds of the past leaked over into the present. It seemed like Valor's earlier encounters had reopened old scars—and made them new injuries as a result.

  "You know, I kind of suspected you were beside me the whole time." Shiv studied his mentor. "You sure it's a good idea for you to be here? With what you did to the Stranger, I think he'd give just about anything to have a piece of you right now."

  "That would require him to find me first." A hint of an arrogant smirk hid in the tone of Valor's voice. "But indeed, I will not remain unnoticed for long. Nor do I desire to deprive you of your deserved struggle. I am simply here to take in the after-fruits of my labor, and to remind you that our adversary is far more fragile than you know. The Stranger is a unification of time. But that means he does not have the insulation of history. Whatever you remind him of, he must suffer. Where you can fall time and time again, and rise every instant after. One wound, one humiliation, one defeat is all it will take. Use patience."

  Valor briefly paused. "Also, don’t embarrass me, Shiv. I will be watching."

  Shiv chuckled. "No pressure, huh?"

  A thunderous roar shook the entire dimension. It rumbled forth from every branch, from every Fingerling that was. From the very particles in the air itself. The noise was terrible. It made things within Shiv coil and twist. He wanted to turn it on himself. He wanted to rip his own head off to silence the sound. And he almost did. But he realized he didn't need to go to such extremes. Instead, he unmade his ears. They sank back into his flesh rather than bursting apart. But with that, he heard no more. Despite this, his equilibrium remained, and the psionic aspect of the Stranger's screams continued to get louder and louder with every passing second.

  “Vermin… Will take you… Will keep you in a CAGE! Will BREAK you. Will make your suffering and death eternal. No way out, NO WAY OUT!”

  Shiv's retort to the Stranger's ravings was silent, spiteful, and brutal, all at the same time. He launched himself into a mountain-sized tree’s trunk that had a single colossal eye open at its core—and punched through like a ballista kissing rotten wood. Particulates of festering, black matter erupted out, but Shiv's own biology changed as well. Limbs extended out from his skin. His cape swiped out, wrapping and consuming the hostile biomass. He could feel the Stranger's will wriggling against him, lashing at him, trying to prevent him from taking what once belonged to the master of this realm. Though Legendary, Shiv was still nothing more than an insect before the Stranger's complete might. Yet he possessed one thing the Eldritch God didn't have: a Severed Shadow, a means to mutilate both matter and soul.

  The Stranger reached across, tried to re-sheet those particulates, tried to pull them away. Shiv triggered his cutting aura. His slashes slipped through the physical without effort and then skipped hard off an ironclad wall of Eldritch mana. Shiv grunted. It felt like he was trying to drive a cooking knife through plate armor. But the Stranger's dimension shuddered as well. Everything grew tighter, the pressure got greater, and it was like the Eldritch God was dragging in a ragged inhale of disbelief and rage.

  “YOU! Abomination! You dare return, you wretch, you festering boil on existence! You unnatural, ruinous, deceitful, devouring, gluttonous, hateful THING!”

  The particulates Shiv fought to secure scattered entirely, becoming so thin and desperate that he couldn't hold on at all. He failed to puncture the incredible barrier of mana guarding the Stranger's soul as well. The Eldritch magics at the Outsider God's disposal weren't just dense, they were also deep. But his shredding aura wasn't altogether impotent. It left gashes and scratches upon the mana. That was damage. Though not severely, he could harm the Stranger. For Shiv to reach the subtle essence that was the Stranger's soul, he would need to drive harder, walk in the same place over and over again.

  And where the Stranger himself was far grander than Shiv, the Fingerlings were neither of their equals. He continued on, ripping through everything in his path. Along the way, he triggered the Divination matrix. He used his Tides to rip away the outer layer of flesh, and then peeled through the Vitae as well. As soon as it was exposed, it began to spin, its cubic shape twisting and turning, every segment shifting from place to place until it projected a beam of violet energy. A pathway of mana streaked forth into the horizon, sliding between gaps in the branches and even passing through certain Fingerlings.

  Shiv followed that trajectory exactly.

  It didn't matter what was in front of him. Whatever didn't move would be split in half, and whatever he couldn't split in half, he would eventually find his way around. He was a blade traveling through supple flesh. Pinkies were utterly obliterated in the face of his coming, dissolving outright instead of being carved apart. Recollectors were split down the middle, their fingers tumbling out, bleeding from their severed stumps, ripped asunder of mana and matter, with golden fractals spilling into the air and blackened pustules following thereafter.

  Spells sailed out to claim him from almost every direction. Most of them were magic powered by retro-continuity, things meant to pin him in place temporally. Then some beams served only the purpose of destruction. A great many of the hostile spells missed, blindly unleashed by unprepared Fingerlings. The weaker spells never got anywhere near Shiv. The mana powering them was shredded apart by his cutting aura. Then came the strongest of the spells, magics unleashed by the Indexes. Shiv had faced these attacks before. Portions of the world vanished as golden suns flared into being, and after them came coruscating waves of twisted time.

  To be struck meant fated destruction, even for Shiv, and with how dense the Chronomancy powering these spells was, Shiv wasn't sure how easy it would be for him to cut through. He implanted an Animated Skill Infusion of his Shapeless Tides for this body. It was an extension to his naturally present Shapeless Tides that didn't have magical resistance. But Shiv knew he couldn't soak that much damage, and so there was one skill he relied on in particular. He struck the oncoming tide of gold dead on. His timing was perfect: the world gave a resounding clash, like steel greeting steel, and his Return to Sender Skill triggered.

  The oncoming attack was sent back the same way it came. The entire wave twisted inward, inverting in an instant as Shiv bent its directional tides with a flare of effort. Some of his bones creaked, but thanks to his Eldritch Physiology, the damage wasn't even minuscule. He simply regained the full functionality of his form with a thought as he dove on.

  More such attacks came, more such attacks were parried, and the Deathless continued to move. Everything that was of base matter, Eldritch or not, he shredded through. Entire trunks had massive crevices left along their sides. Branches fell, alongside scattered remnants of Fingerlings.

  Every Outsider he ripped apart was connected to the Stranger in some way. And as he left scratch after scratch upon the Stranger's being, the damage accumulated. The dimension groaned and trembled. Faint marks began appearing within the garden, spreading across all the Fingerlings and expanding along the midsections of the trees. It looked like someone had dragged their fingernails across leather, leaving faded white marks in place.

  But though Shiv was getting faster, was getting tougher, was building more strength, the entirety of the Stranger's Garden knew he was raiding and responded in kind. The forest shifted around him, and he began feeling that overwhelming pressure again. Every bit of the Eldritch woods was drawn away. The Pinkies retreated. The Recollectors glided back, forming a protective wall as they continued bombarding him with unceasing beams of elemental, gravitic, and temporal devastation. The Indexes did the same from much further away. But instead of unleashing their full might, they jabbed at him with narrow threads of time magic instead. Their attacks now wouldn't guarantee certain destruction if returned the same way. And Shiv couldn't parry everything. Some of the attacks got through and slammed against him.

  He resisted the harm using his body and magic, his Shapeless Tides flaring bright as hostile spells broke against him. Direct blows of kinetic force broke against his ever-strengthening Pillar of Orichalcum, or in a few cases left dents within the red-gold surface. However, though Shiv's body was punctured, he didn't suffer any true harm. The wounds he sustained closed immediately, as more bone, flesh, or enamel simply replaced that which had been lost. Above all, his cutting aura reduced the damage he sustained. Any Fingerlings foolish enough to engage him up close found themselves utterly reduced to threads and tatters. No spells arrived intact either. Portions of shape and pattern were hewn free from the grander magical architectures. Some of the spells destabilized, immediately detonating as chaotic expressions of mana. Others lasted a while longer, even striking Shiv, before they burst apart without achieving true injuries.

  Through it all, Shiv continued following the trail painted by the Divination matrix. He didn't stay and fight any enemies. He didn't linger in place or spend an unnecessary amount of time considering his next step. He was here to find anything left of Merrielmel’s brother. Any monster or object that got in his way would be cleaved down the middle. And through it all, Shiv remained without ears, with no intention of suffering any of the Outsider's shrieks or the Fingerlings' attempts to distort him using sensory-based attacks. As a series of pitch-black quills slammed into his Pillar of Orichalcum and punched all the way through, Shiv felt three holes pass through his body. The quills went in one side and left the other. The holes then promptly closed.

  The Deathless continued on.

  Eldritch Physiology 15 > 18

  Few things countered Eldritch bullshit better than the Eldritch Physiology skill. People died because the stability of their bodies broke down. Organs were ruptured and began to fail, or severe damage was sustained by the brain, and everything collapsed thereafter.

  Shiv no longer had such weaknesses when he drew upon his unnatural physiology. His body was a single organism, but a desynchronized one. Something that could regenerate, grow, and continue to adapt to almost any situation, so long as it didn't burn him, prove too overwhelming, or cause his body to suffer an instability cascade or something like with Bifurcated Processing.

  The world around him began to blur. The thunderous membrane that sheathed his body rattled with joyful rage. He grew faster with every second he spent traveling through the Stranger's Garden. And ahead, he could see a final destination nested far below, through a ravine deep down in dense foliage. However, he wouldn't be able to arrive without facing down a final foe, as even more skills and spells greeted him from all sides. A single colossal entity finally entered the fray. It was the very same entity Shiv had fled from before, the one that the Educator and Valor faced down, buying everyone else time and inflicting a final hit of trauma upon the Stranger. A creature made of twin hands, clasped together in praise of the Eldritch God, drew closer and brought with it a palpable weight of all-crushing pressure, a weight that slammed into Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum and crumpled it like a tin can.

  As the red-gold veil folded inward, Shiv felt his body pull, then break. A second later, he re-inflated as if nothing had happened. He needed to be pulled apart for him to properly lose biomass. He was still burning through some of himself, but with an added Aegis of Assimilation skill, he regenerated what he lost and kept himself going. There was an unusual synergy between his Biomancy field and his Eldritch Physiology. It was like how his natural flesh magic remembered the wholeness of his body without being confused by the instability of his Outside-touched biology.

  More obliterating wavelengths hit him one after another; Shiv suffered normally fatal damage every time. But as he was, he endured without any suffering at all and drew closer.

  For the first time, he faced down the Stranger's greatest Fingerling, surging forth without fear.

  “Get out of the way, you big ugly bastard!” Shiv cast telepathically.

  Furious at his insult, the steepled hands of that colossal entity grew bright with unnatural Chronomancy. The gold grew tarnished. The world around it turned dim, and it began to surge forward at a speed altogether unreasonable for a creature large enough to dwarf mountains. Shiv didn't know much about physics, but he felt like Integrated Earth as a whole wouldn't fare particularly well if this creature slammed into it at that speed.

  As it drew closer, the only thing Shiv could compare it to was the Tarrasque, and even then, it was a near thing. He was less than a spec compared to this leviathan, and in the scant span of a heartbeat, it blurred across the many dozen kilometers separating them, striking him so hard that his pillar ruptured wide-open before it even passed by. Yet, Shiv didn't die. Half of his body had been utterly obliterated, trailing as disconnected tissue and blood far behind him. He regenerated himself from what remained of his biomass.

  It had been a close thing. If that Supplicant had hit him dead on, Shiv would have disintegrated. But it missed, mainly because Shiv carved a small groove along the edge of its body. A gap formed along its length, and because of that deformation, Shiv was sent along a new path as they crashed together.

  It took him little time to reform himself. It took the Supplicant longer to realize he wasn't actually dead.

  Though Shiv wanted to turn and make a fight of this, he never lost track of his main goal and was ever closer now. It seemed like there was a building dot of condensation for the Divination matrix. He was going to find a final stop in this clearing where Merrielmel's brother apparently remained. What was left of the man, anyway.

  Undeterred, the Stranger's greatest Fingerling turned, trying to chase Shiv down before he finally arrived at his destination. It was far faster than he was. Every second he spent in its presence caused him to suffer greater ruin. His body was flatter than a sheet and constantly being squished into paste. The retro-continuity bleeding out from the Supplicant had shattered his temporal shell like an egg and was now eroding through his Shapeless Tides at an alarming rate, even with his cutting aura chipping away at the tarnished gold.

  Ultimately, it was a near thing.

  As Shiv pierced through another section of the Garden like a spear threading through leaves, he saw a small gap, something that he wouldn't have noticed himself, something that made his awareness dim, that commanded him to look away. It was an uncomfortable sight, seeming like a cavern built into the side of a trunk. And it was built in. It was not organic. It didn't light up before his Atlas like everything else within the Stranger's dimension, and the insides gleamed with an artificial texture.

  But that wasn't the most peculiar aspect. The most peculiar aspect was that being near it made Shiv feel sick, made Shiv feel weak, made Shiv feel the same way he did when walking the old-world ruins not far away from Piety’s Abyss gateway.

  Radiation? Why isn’t the System—

  Twin waves of crashing gold slammed down on Shiv from two sides, then they passed through him. Suddenly, his Legendary Magical Resistance collapsed. Then his Pillar of Orichalcum was ripped in twain from two directions. His upper body went along with one wave, his lower half was dragged away by another. It was like two clashing riptides of time intersecting and then pulling everything between apart.

  As soon as Shiv found himself separated, he had to pick a portion of his biomass to continue inhabiting. He chose his legs—which were then promptly crushed to a microscopic ball as the particular riptide that held him collapsed in on itself before spreading out in all directions, turning him into less than fine mist.

  Death took him. Death, when he had come so close to his final destination. When he had glimpsed something most peculiar. Previously, he didn't think there was any hope of Merrielmel's brother still being alive. Now he wasn't so sure.

  A place that the System couldn't reach, that magic didn't work in, that even Shiv had a hard time laying eyes on, was infused right inside the Stranger's Garden. And something told Shiv that the Eldritch God didn't build that place himself.

  He resurrected in an instant, and a new body stepped out from his Severed Shadow, taking in the metallic walls of the bunker back in the Tutorial. Once more, he began transplanting Animated Skill Infusions into his new physical body as he also activated his Eldritch Physiology. A thread passed through the walls, slipping into him.

  “Already?” Uva asked, sounding surprised.

  “Got a little distracted there at the end,” Shiv admitted. “But I saw something interesting. Don't tell him that, but Merrielmel's brother might not be a corpse at all. And I'm gonna have to be a little bit quicker or avoid getting noticed by the Stranger's big, mean Supplicant, because up close, even with Eldritch Physiology, I can't survive for that long. But maybe I can make myself last just long enough to reach that cavern.”

  And so, Shiv began concocting a new scheme. “Alright. Let’s go again.”