I like to think of most Pathbearers as puzzles to solve. It’s an effective way of thinking about dealing with enemies that aren’t like you. Usually, you win because you’re outright more powerful, you got a skill they can’t counter, you have a good plan or better strategy, or—and this is my favorite—you learn to use the skills you have against the skills your enemy doesn’t.

That lets you turn a bad fight around on itself.

Let me give you an example.

A Lone Star town was getting butchered during a brutal summer. Orcs again… And let me tell you, the big bastards are quiet when they want to be. Anyway, while they were trying to set up a proper fortification, somehow, they just kept getting inside. They slipped through the cracks in the walls at night, and they just keep losing more people. By day, they retreated back down holes in the ground and stayed gone.

One of the stupider mercenary commanders led a team down into their murder-tunnels, and because he didn’t use his skills wisely, he got returned to us the following night in installments.

I saw his flayed skin flapping in the wind like a flag when my company and I finally came in.

Command told us to smoke out the orcs, but I knew that wouldn’t work. A low level Aero can shift smoke with ease. Poison gas usually doesn’t work on orcs that well because of how damned robust they are, and fighting orcs in close quarters is something you do when you want to be included in an elegy.

My solution proved to be relatively simple. See, there’s a problem with having Master-Tier Stealth. Even for orcs. Stealth usually keeps you out of fights. That means less damage. That means not so much struggle. That means your Toughness usually isn’t that high. And your Physicality usually lags dramatically behind your Reflexes.

So. Instead of doing any of the stupid shit, I started reaching down and collapsing entire sections of the earth below. I started sleeping during the day and started unleashing earthquakes at night. And the parts of the ground I couldn’t collapse, I had Lone Star’s artillery crews bomb.

In the end, if you get anything from reading my memoirs, it’s this: You decide the fight. Make it on your terms. Don’t be the dumbshit who jumped down a tunnel with a knife and a dream. Be the bastard that floods them and sends in a special Hydromancer team. Be the earthquake. Knock the board off the table. This isn’t chess. Kill the other felling bastard whatever way you can with the least amount of effort possible.

–Memoirs of a Master-Tier Warmage

110 (I)

Surface [II]

Alright, you godsdamn bastards, Shiv thought to himself, let’s see who’s better at Stealth.

He spiked himself down from the sky, slamming back into the ground and creating a massive crater right in front of the gateway. A sphere of destruction emerged around him, but the shockwave and shrapnel remained frozen in stasis by halted time.

He left a temporal anchor there, in case he needed to reset his position, and Shiv assumed that he was going to. At the same time, he drove his Skysplitter into the earth and absorbed a few tons of mass. The ground crumbled away, its composition and integrity compromised by the sudden mass-loss.

Some weight to throw around was good to have in a fight—it would let him throw his dagger at someone without worrying about a shockwave or a casual parry knocking the blade aside. When that was done, Shiv blasted forward toward the distant mountains in a zigzag formation, trying to guess where the shots were coming from.

Against most attacks, Shiv didn’t care too much about taking the damage head-on. He could adapt; his Woundeaters could keep him standing; his Magebreaker could let him deflect magic. But Necromancy was a special kind of dangerous for him.

If even one of these arrows glanced him, he’d go off like the mother of all mana bombs.

Hence, Shiv moved with layers of Concealment active. He triggered all his Stealth Skills at once, including the new Enchantments ingrained in his Unseen Magebreaker. The gem on his left shoulder came aglow, projecting out a minor illusion that was a perfect replication of his current form. He stretched the minor illusion outward by over two kilometers so it slipped just beyond his Creeping Void. He wanted to keep it barely beyond the threshold of his darkness. That way, he could lure some shots out without risking himself.

Additionally, he also activated Chameleon, with Silhouette held in reserve, should Creeping Void prove to be more of a liability than a boon. For now, he unleashed more of the miasmic blackness. Adam needed some cover for when he finally emerged.

Shiv trailed across the land in the meantime, observing the Necromantic arrows above him. He flung himself parallel to the ground, his chest just a meter above the rolling hills at all times. There were a few things he could do regarding these arrows, a few things that would allow him to deduce their points of origin.

He flew opposite to where the arrowheads came from, and he accelerated towards another distant mountain. He intended to put as many positions of cover between himself and his surroundings as possible. If he flew along the ground and the shots came right in front of him, that meant he was probably dealing with an unseen enemy at ground level. If the shots started coming from above, then he could guess if it was coming from a mountain or even the sky, depending on the angle. If that were the case, Shiv would adapt his plan: He would dig into the earth and continue traveling by drilling a literal tunnel across the land as concealment and cover from his enemies.

As the first cracks developed on his temporal shell, Shiv let time flow again. And at once, he found himself glad he paused time exactly when he did. A chain of corrosive explosions swept the place he was in a moment ago. A patch of the sky vanished into a growing field of all-withering green. It was like a screen of acid searing the very fabric of reality. Just looking at it made Shiv’s stomach plunge.

Damn close to a bad death.

He immediately triggered one of the dormant plagues he had embedded in himself while continuing his acceleration. His inertial sheath roared with thunderous vigor. The horizon lurched toward Shiv as he absorbed the disease. It was a metabolic virus, something meant to damage Shiv’s hormones and overheat him from within, effectively causing his body to cook itself. It triggered for around two seconds, and Shiv felt a surge of heat rush through his blood vessels.

But then his Plaguefueled Skill triggered, and he felt a rush of euphoria pass through him. His mind swirled in a whirlpool of relief and pleasure. The sensation of intoxication came over him hard. But Shiv applied some of what he learned earlier with Uva. He grafted a piece of an older memory of him slicing potatoes, but specifically his act of slicing and not the potato itself. Suddenly, it was like he was piloting his own body.

The act took some additional focus, but it stopped him from drifting off into a drunken stupor.

A second passed. Shiv’s eyes remained wide. His senses were—

A chain of shots tore through his minor illusion and then detonated around it. Corrosive screens slashed out and splashed upon the land. Stretches of land and air disappeared outright, the ground withering into blackened, rotted patches as the Necromancy spread.

One hundred meters—danger range for each arrow, Shiv thought as he examined the blasts. His Chronomancy saved his life earlier. Even if he could have dodged some attacks, their exploding might have sealed his fate either way. He didn’t know just how bad the Necromantic arrows would hurt him compared to Adam’s rift, but he did know these wounds would be lasting.

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“‘Keep moving’ is right,” Shiv muttered, thinking back to Adam’s advice. “Time to get even faster.”

Shiv spiked his gravitic field over fifty times, and only then did he feel the first hints of discomfort. Plaguefueled was like having another Berserk. Just one that was easier to control.

Some of his bones began to fracture. Hairline cracks formed as his muscles tore in tandem, but he was moving fast and faster every passing second. The air ignited around him. A blastwave was drawn just behind him, building into a tsunami of kinetic energy trapped in Shiv’s climbing acceleration.

The sheer amount of force he was displacing offered another surprising benefit: The tidal wave of destruction he carried along his wake swept across the world just as more corrosive detonations consumed Shiv’s minor illusion. He watched as a few hundred arrows were suddenly flung off course before they could arrive—the exact thing he wanted to avoid with his knife if he had to throw it.

More than flung off course, the once invisible Necromancy arrows were exposed. His shockwaves scattered the winds and peeled away the invisibility shielding the arrows. They were made invisible by air-distortions! And that gave him a clue as to where the shots were coming from.

The volley of arrows was cutting down through his minor illusion at an almost forty-five-degree angle. A river of Necromancy trailed along each arrow, creating a withering stream that cleaved into the ground.

That means the shot’s probably not coming from the sky but one of the mountaintops…I have you poor bastards now.

Shiv wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. He let out a cry of effort as he started angling himself downward. His Inertial Overdrive was past the point of easy maneuverability, but that wasn’t an issue. He was going to drill himself into the base of the mountain like a missile from below the ground. Then, he was going to detonate his sheath again and again until there was nothing but rubble left of the mountain range. Then, if the shots kept coming, he would proceed to the next group of mountains and repeat the same actions.

Three seconds, Shiv thought as he shredded through the earth. He was going so fast that the air friction turned the soil to slag. Around three seconds before I hit the base of the mountain at my current speed… I’ll give it everything I got at the end.

He counted the seconds. The pain made each one feel like an eternity.

One…

Something burst within his eyes. Parts of his skin began to unlatch.

Two…

His bone armor began shaking and breaking.

Three… Alright, let’s godsdamned do this.

Shiv spiked another twenty times, and darkness crept in from the corners of his vision as his heart ruptured. Blood and clumps of gore oozed out from the cracks of his armor. And then he detonated himself. If he didn’t have Plaguefueled actively, he would have died. Even with it, his body came apart. His limbs were mangled. His insides burst apart. And everything around him ceased to be.

A cataclysmic explosion blossomed out from Shiv as the earth and stone around him faded into motes that were smaller than dust. The mountain above him cracked apart like glass, and then it became as if dust as a shroud of force and flame consumed all solid matter within a seven-kilometer radius around Shiv.

Death approached him. But as he looked up, he noticed a shiny shape. It looked like a deformed pot in his agonized mind, but Shiv realized what it was as his blastwaves carried it higher into the air, peeling out from the vanishing sections of the mountain.

Teleportation anchor. And then he saw how it had a slot along its side. A horizontal slot long enough to accommodate a group of archers. No… A warded bunker… built into the mountain. So that’s how you were avoiding the Light-Curse. Clever felling bastards.

Despite the wretched state of his body, a feral grin crawled across Shiv’s face. Alright. Let’s see if I can crack you open.

Shiv cast himself one second back in time and detonated his inertial sheath once more.

And just then, the tidal wave of force he was dragging behind him earlier smashed into them at the same time as Shiv’s second detonation.

Adamantine Adaption 155 > 156

Inertial Overdrive 105 >106

***

Deathstalker Perspicacity Pricelles slammed against his second as they were flung about within their observation post. Something splattered against his armor. He tried to keep up with the chaos, but the insides of the bunker were turning too fast, constantly just spinning—

His leg struck the wall at an angle. It folded. Perspicacity shrieked—and then bit off his tongue as he slammed into the wall. Blood flooded his mouth, and as he fell toward the firing slot of his armored post, he triggered his Split-Second Master-Tier Reflexes Skill.

Time slowed for a single instant, and Perspicacity tried to regain his bearings—only for despair to take him. The others were little more than sacks of crushed meat seeping free from skeletal armor.

His disciples… His students… All dead.

Beyond the firing port of his protective bunker, he saw two tides of devastation fast approaching. But far off in the corner of his vision, he saw a shape—a shimmering figure. He cast his Farseeing Skill at his murderer, and he felt his mind go blank.

They were clad in the vestiges of death too, though the air around them scintillated as if they were but a mirage. But they weren’t another Deathstalker. No. Their armor was the shine of adamantine rather than Grave Iron, and the helmet was misshapen.

And then there were the eyes… Two white irises…

What are you… What… We fired so many—are you just an illusion? Who are—

Time resumed. Perspicacity’s Reflex Skill ended. A cold feeling flooded into the Deathstalker as his death approached. He came here to avenge his father, to avenge his mother, his brother, his sisters, to avenge everyone he lost during the siege of Submission.

And now he was going to die here, die within the mountain he hid, die without ever truly seeing the real face of his foe.

Then, twin waves of sundering force smashed into Observation Post SC102, and Perspicacity closed his eyes. He combusted within his armor first as a surge of heat flooded into his bunker. Then, the post itself folded around him, crushing his seared body into paste.

Ironform 103 > 104

He survived that too, for a few moments. Until his heart finally burst.

Sometimes, having Master-Tier Toughness was a curse rather than a boon.

Rendered a burned, mangled lump of flesh, disfigured and crippled of limbs and senses, all Perspicacity could do was pray.

Pray to the Great One that the other posts noticed. That they would avenge his death.

***

“Shit! Fuck! Shit!”

Deathstalker Psychomancer Mendacity Pricelles let out a cry of pain as her mind link to Observation Post SC102 shattered. The Psychomancer she had been connected to was gone. Dead in an instant. And across her field flowed a deluge of panicked cries and exchanged thoughts.

“Great One preserve us… Attack! We’re under attack! Contact!”

“FUCK! AN ENTIRE SECTION OF THE OLD SANTABAR MOUNTAINS JUST VANISHED! MANA BOMB! MANA BOMB!”

“Does anyone have eyes on SC102? Anyone? SC102 is within the blast radius—I can’t reach them!”

“They’re… they’re gone!” Mendacity gasped. She stared out from her observation post, and her fellow Deathstalkers looked on. A tense silence followed. A massive mushroom cloud rose over the horizon, and chunks of an obliterated mountain range began to rain down from above. Meanwhile, a sphere of fire and force swelled past the twenty-kilometer mark. But from within it came an oozing blackness that soon spread past the fire and coated everything within a four kilometer patch of space from visible sight.

Mendacity couldn’t easily see through it, but she still had other means of observation. She cast out a Hyper Echolocation ping, and everything within a twenty-kilometer radius pulsed into shape for a brief moment. “Hold… Hold… I think I see…”

Her mind stopped. A shape briefly vibrated into her awareness—a shape moving fast… Heroic-Tier fast. The ground was cracking behind them. A wall of fire and devastation trailed in their wake. And they were heading for the Tidewall… In the general direction of Lost Angeles.

“Shit!” Mendacity cried out. “Unknown Heroic-Tier Pathbearer detected. Fast approaching. Sub-fifteen seconds. Dynamancers! Shields up! All observation posts! Activate wardings!”

A chain of telepathic confirmations passed through—sans one. Perspicacity… Mendacity suppressed the welling sorrow inside her. She’d grieve her brother’s passing later. Right now, they needed to pin and eliminate the target.

“SC599!” Mendacity cried out, channeling her Adept-Tier Tele-Psionic Skill across the land. “Incoming Heroic-Tier threat. Heroic-Tier speed. Scramble temporal interceptors!”

SC599 responded instantly. “Received SC-Central. Deploying Interceptor Squadron Gold-Primary to your location. Transposition in five seconds. Arrival in ten.”

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