Because Unique Skills fall beyond the bounds of anything the System has seen before, it is hard to judge exactly when they will evolve and what they might become. But that they do evolve is a certainty.

My own Unique Skill evolved once it passed the Adept threshold. Then, until level 300, it didn’t do anything at all. It remained the same. As it reached level 300, it fractured inside of me, splitting into two Unique Skills. The change was utterly unprecedented, and the experience shaped me deeply. The skill splitting was among the most painful things I’ve ever experienced, but also the most sublime.

I examined both of the resulting Unique skills with my Animancy years later, and I discovered many secrets about myself and my connection to the skills themselves. All skills advance when they accrue enough legend, which infuses one with mana. My own skills, however, were so complex that their thresholds were different.

To my fascination, it seemed they were always meant to be two skills rather than one. It’s just that my experiences over-favored one to the other, and it couldn’t fully bud. Only when I hit level 300 did it flower, and the stored mana was split between them. They evolved once more upon reaching their own milestones—level 200 and level 500, respectively. They didn’t split again, evolving along the general rules of skill progression.

But every Unique Skill is a labyrinth unto itself, and its intricacies must be delved by an Animancer for true comprehension…

-Udraal Thann’s Animancy Notes

117 (I)

Vitaemancer

“No, no, no, Shiv, no!” Adam cried, his Seer of Horizons playing the horror before his eyes.

Of all the things he could have expected, of all the things he predicted, of all the things he imagined, the Vicar’s power rendered him speechless.

A mere few seconds ago, Adam watched Shiv as he rampaged across Lost Angeles. He had fired a few arrows, eliminating what few Diviners he discovered, alongside a few other threats Shiv couldn’t easily counter.

The orc was an unwelcome surprise, but Shiv had handled that matter himself. Adam had considered firing an arrow into the dome to extract Shiv in case things got out of hand, but as per usual, Shiv proved himself the superior brute.

A patch of time went missing in Adam’s mind thereafter, then Shiv suddenly reappeared in the air. Every time the Deathless used Chronomancy, it made it hard for the Gate Lord to track him. That, and Shiv’s constant misdirection, made it difficult for Adam to keep up. He had Shiv imprinted with his own Divination mana, so the Deathless was always highlighted in Adam’s Awareness. Yet, every time Shiv jumped across time or teleported to his knife in rapid succession, it took a few moments to locate him again.

No wonder the other Diviners are having such a hard time,

Adam thought. They need to constantly adjust. Not a bad strategy at all, Shiv.

But then, Adam saw Blackedge, and his insides went hollow.

There were so many eldritch entities biting, clawing, and gnawing upon the protective wards that shrouded the city. There were Dragon-Knights, necromantic artillery, snipers, mages, and more. The chasm was alive with the movement of Sullain’s Abyssal Army, and arcing projectiles infused with corrosive power were fired from all corners of the surrounding ruins.

Blackedge was encircled in more ways than one. But still, Roland Arrow fought on.

His arrows retaliated in a constant rain, but only his arrows. Adam didn’t see anyone else on the field. There were no Republic formations. Roland Arrow fought alone. That nearly shattered Adam’s faith in the Republic altogether.

He whispered lies to himself, lies he knew in his heart were untrue. Perhaps the capital doesn’t know. Perhaps some of the other Ascendants aren’t aware. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

But he knew what he saw, and what he saw broke his heart. He loved the Republic; he believed in it, but they weren’t here. The Inquisition was coming, not to support one of the Republic’s heroes, but to aid an Abyssal Lord in sacking one of their own towns.

Blackedge had been abandoned. Betrayed. Sacrificed to an enemy of impossible power. And Adam saw that great enemy, then. He saw the Vicar’s undulating, kilometer-long body, shaped from gleaming black metal and forged to resemble a serpent or centipede. He saw a faint blue mana lighting the Vicar’s eyes, the same hue he’d seen when gazing upon the Animancy core.

And he saw all the spells the Vicar was weaving at the same time. So much magic, so many different spells all at once.

Adam’s pulse quickened as he witnessed the Vicar summoning hundreds of eldritch nightmares. No, not hundreds—thousands by the second, from so many rifts. It was like there was no end to the Vicar’s power.

To Adam’s eyes, Sullain was godlike, impossibly skilled. To call him a Legend felt insufficient. With him unleashing so much power, so many complicated spell patterns, Adam felt like he was a flea trying to comprehend the workings performed by a man.

There came a moment of hope as his father’s arrows descended. They cracked down upon the land, fracturing the ground for leagues, drowning the world in glorious, radiant ruin. Flames hot and bright enough to kill Shiv with just a few shots descended by the hundreds.

But something happened. A second passed, and then the flames sputtered and died. They were drawn away from the world and summoned to the Vicar’s grasp. They coalesced as streams, and a moment later, the Vicar perverted the flames further, shaping them to his whim. Roland countered with more arrows from above, but Sullain simply shifted them away with a shroud of Dimensionality that was beyond anything Adam could ever hope to manage. Then, Sullain finished his mockery of Roland—he lifted the captured flame high into the air and left it as a sun. Then, he channeled Necromancy into it.

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A flood of corrosive mana infused the small star. The same corrosion replaced the light and splashed down upon the land, causing all matter to corrode and decay.

Suddenly, time skipped forward, and the Vicar was looking around, seeming confused. But after a moment, Adam noticed something hovering beside the Legendary Pathbearer. A ball of red and white.

Before Adam’s lagging thoughts could catch up to what had just transpired, a body crashed into the soil right in front of the gateway he was hovering above. The soft mud parted beneath the figure’s weight.

Adam descended in a frantic blur.

At the same time, the Vicar unleashed a stream of Necromantic mana upon Blackedge, only for it to be split in half by an arrow with a pink-blue tip. The Vicar tried to intercept the arrow with a shroud of Dimensionality, but it blinked out of existence, jumping forward across space and impacting the Vicar’s Necromantic sun.

The corrosive dawn burst apart, spraying mana into the world like a festering egg. Some of it crashed against the Vicar, but he held out a hand and kept the searing mana at bay, directing it away from himself and barely avoiding harm.

At the same time, he took care to shield the sphere of red and white hovering beside him. The Vicar looked repeatedly at the sphere, even as he fought to control his shattered Necromantic star. His body language revealed something to Adam: indecision, followed by a decision.

“Apostles! Press the attack! I will return shortly! There has been a new discovery gifted unto us by the Great One! Our victory is ordained! Press! Break the Flamebringer’s fortress. Spare none who do not bow before the Great One. Give no quarter to the murderers and butchers, but leave room in your heart for the feeble and meek. May the Great Adversary be undone! May the Great One rise again!”

And with a casual wave of his hand, an implosion of Dimensionality consumed Vicar Sullain, and he vanished from existence. His forces continued the assault without him. Almost immediately, they started thinning from the veritable rainstorm of arrows unleashed by Roland.

But the sphere of Vitae was gone. Taken by the Vicar. And now Adam was desperate to find out what was wrong with Shiv.

Please don’t have your soul ripped out. Please don’t—

Adam slammed down onto the ground right beside Shiv, and it was all the Gate Lord could do not to throw up. “Oh, Ascendants, oh gods, Shiv! Shiv, can you hear me?”

Adam had seen the Deathless wounded before, had seen him die over and over, but what had the Vicar done to him? He scarcely looked human anymore. His bone armor was shattered in so many places, and flesh bubbled out in swaying clumps that wept pus and blood. His helmet was cracked through, and part of Shiv’s face had been fused with the bone. But it was a poor fusion. There were so many holes in his flesh that revealed fragments of misplaced bone. Patches of skin were—

Shiv let out a choked rasp.

“Shit, shit,” Adam breathed. He channeled his Righteous Dawn Prevails into the Deathless. Shiv came alight, but Adam had channeled his glow too late. Shiv shuddered, and then, after a few final twitches, he went still. “No. Godsdammit, don’t—Drain me! I’m here! I’m… Shiv?”

The Deathless didn’t move at all. His eyes were unmoving, unfocused. His legs kicked out a final time and stilled. There was no breath in his lungs, no beat in his heart, no mana around his body. He was dead. But there was no Revenant either. Where was the Revenant? Why wasn’t anything happening?

Again, Adam thought back to the Vitae hovering beside the Vicar. No, he’s not dead. Shiv isn’t—

“Shiv.” Adam’s words came out as a whisper. He knelt beside his friend’sbody and shook him. “Shiv. Shiv! Get up, you bastard! Drain me! Don’t… Don’t…”

Shiv didn’t move. No drain came. Only the soft breeze made a noise that followed in the silence thereafter, rustling the grass. Adam looked at the corpse and felt sick. This was supposed to be just a scouting run. How was he going to explain this to—No, something else had to be happening. He wouldn’t accept this—Shiv was supposed to be Deathless. Aside from the Necromancy—

An explosion of red and white erupted from Shiv. Adam was blasted off his feet. He rolled and threw himself back to his feet in a second, and as he stood, he saw a twisting weave of colors before him; currents of brilliant red and purest white. Then came ripples amidst the color. Pulses of an outline. But then the outline started to break apart, and all that remained were the hues.

Adam blinked as he tried to comprehend what was happening to Shiv. He failed. But at least the big bastard wasn’t actually dead.

Or so Adam hoped. A sigh escaped him as he took a tentative step closer to the mess of red and white strands. “Shiv. Are you… Are you in there?”

And right as he asked that question, the streams of color began to rapidly fade from sight like a dying flame.

***

Skill Evolution: Revenant (Unique) > Vitaemancy (Unique)

Strider of the Unbending Path 130 > 135

Adamantine Adaption 164 > 166

Woundeater 87 > 89

Pain lined every part of Shiv. Pain became Shiv. But more than pain, there was something else, a strange sensation, as his body unraveled.

His body? What was happening to his body? He felt fluid. Like a mess of different overlapping parts. He was dead. He was supposed to resurrect as a Revenant, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t simply rematerialized over his body, incorporeal, as nothing more than a faint outline of the figure he was.

Instead, he felt scattered. Like a mess of limbs, groping, starving, trying to find a source of heat. Coldness rushed through him. It was like ice-cold flooding his veins, dousing his existence.

He forced himself to focus before his vitality was finally extinguished. And as he did, he found the world around him coming into view. No longer was everything painted in muted colors. No, some things were vibrant now. There was a contrast, and beside him was a beacon of vitality.

That was Adam.

Shiv observed Adam as a hunger roared to life inside him. An all-consuming thirst almost overtook him. He wanted to drain Adam, drain every bit of him until there was nothing left of the man.

But besides Adam, there were other patches of color in the world as well. In fact, all of the world seemed brighter than before, with a thin layer of vitality layered upon it. But it wasn’t the vitality he saw before. No. There was more than just heat in the air. There was red and white throughout the world. Just like his alloyed soul and vitality.

Shiv faded. His senses drifted. When they returned, he realized he wasn’t a Revenant at all. No, his new body was a mess. It was like a swirl of dancing streams. Streams of Vitae. As he saw his new Unique Skill Evolution, his mind went blank. Vitaemancy. He got a magical skill specifically for manipulating his own being? How did that work? And what was he supposed to—

The streams of color felt like they were part of him. He moved all of them without issue. And as he did that, he realized it was hatching free from something. Something almost invisible. An outline that used to be his Revenant cracked apart into pieces and dissolved seconds after.

It felt like a metamorphosis unlike any other.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep