Alright, boys and girls. A lesson on fast-healing adversaries. You’re going to run into them, and some of you, if you’re lucky, are going to develop a skill that will allow you to heal much faster yourself.

When you face someone like that, use fire.

Now, some other instructors might advise that you use acid. That could work. Just one problem. How many of you keep acid on you? How many of you are Biomancers, specifically specializing in flesh-melting acid? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Additionally, you’re probably facing a Biomancer or someone Biomancer-adjacent if they have elevated regeneration. So when you use an acid, they likely know the specific compound of its composition better than you do. However that works.

Why am I so against acid? Because once upon a time, a certain young Sergeant Irons threw a vial of acid at a Biomancer. It splashed off like water as she laughed at me and gave me a series of fast-acting tumors. As I lay dying, she walked over to mock me, telling me that she had turned its specific composition into a neutralized substance.

While she gloated, a Pyromantically-charged artillery shell hit us both.

I had the Toughness and the armor to survive. She didn’t. Well, she survived for a bit.

But the flames? A little bit of advice when you’re burning to death. Put it out or put yourself down. Burning to death is no way to go.

Anyway. With that happy bit of advice administered, get back into your squads and pin that adolescent hydra down. No fire for you kids today. You get to learn the fun of trying to beat down a regenerator head-on.

-Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy

139 (I)

Leveling

Adam drew a long and deep breath as he took a moment for himself. It had been a day and a half since they left Shiv in the Tutorial. Almost two days of preparing, rebuilding, intelligence gathering, and reinforcing. Parts of the gate had been restructured. The wounded at the Surface District were still being treated. And certain threats had been issued by Inquisitor Sijik, who now promised Master-Advisor Oldsmith damnation and imprisonment.

A promise he said he would personally deliver upon the—unbeknownst to him—long-dead automaton in but three days.

The Gate Lord had left through the Surface Gateway and observed Blackedge from afar on the second day. He’d found the Necrotechs more passive than before, doing little more than intermittent bombardments. Then, the Gate Lord had projected his senses toward Fortress-City Diego and encountered the inquisitorial forces halfway there.

They numbered around two thousand, mostly High Adept and Low Master Pathbearers. All of them bore the insignia of the Inquisition, and they were moving fast. Adam guessed they would be at the gate in less than another day or so.

Too bad for them, they were likely going to be marching into the jaws of oblivion.

And too bad for Adam, said jaws of oblivion were the orcs.

“Gods,” Adam breathed, currently back within the gate. “Starhawk. Hear me. I really, really would like a more reliable army. And a few minutes just to breathe.” There came no answer. “I haven’t even gotten to rename this damned gate yet. Or the tower. Or anything. Not a single moment between all these problems. I can’t believe I ever thought being System-favored was a good thing.”

Then, Adam thought about Blackedge again and pushed his mental exhaustion away. This update is available on novel★fire.net

“Come on, Adam,” Adam chided himself. “Your father has been fighting for weeks straight. Weeks. You have so many people supporting you. Shiv’s literally occupying the orcs’ attention by himself to make them stay away from the gate. Get yourself together. Stop being a coward. The orcs are the only ones that can help you save Blackedge. The only… Oh, for the love of—orcs. My army consists of three million orcs. Ascendants, what is my life…”

Adam turned around and grimaced at the thick, alloyed door leading to the Tutorial. It was sealed for the other side, only to be opened from within the gate once his identity was vetted, and Uva ensured he wasn’t mind-controlled. And speaking of Uva, she was practically the only person who could come in and out of the damned checkpoints just by squeezing herself between the cracks. And she still wanted more defenses for the bunker, because the orcs unnerved her that much.

Adam couldn’t blame her.

The entire reason why the Vulketh breach happened was because of one of the orcs, a power play on their part, to deliberately force Shiv’s hand and accelerate the ritual. And these were to be his allies. This was the army he was expected to lead. No, not lead, just point. Point in the general direction of his adversaries and let them run amok. Adam didn’t think leading the orcs like a traditional force was even possible.

Perhaps Shiv could pull it off. Or maybe he was just there to keep their attention.

And Adam pitied him for that. He knew the orcs were bad, cruel, psychotic creatures. But during his brief time with them, they’d seemed so… Well, he wouldn’t say charming, but interesting. Their Social Skills influenced even him. But beyond their skills was an ever-present urge to hurt, to dominate, to inflict harm on both mind, body, and soul.

And then there was Band, that orc which had a connection to Adam’s mother, that orc that Shiv broke so brutally. Adam watched him die with a joyous smile on his face, despite his soul being mutilated. Never once did he beg or even whimper. Adam shuddered at the memory. Orcs were—

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“Adam,” Uva’s voice sounded in the back of his mind.

The Gate Lord froze, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Yes, yes, I’m going across right now. I just needed a moment to—”

“Take your time. I am not rushing you,”

Uva said, her voice soft. She infused him with a dose of calmness, but also alarm. Adam shook as his anxiety rose, but slightly transformed. He wasn’t worried anymore. Rather, he was alert, waiting to intercept something, prepared to engage.

“What was that for?” Adam asked.

“That’s to help you in case there is an ambush on the other side. You never know what they’re like. There is always an undercurrent of malice and violence flowing from their minds. Shiv wasn’t lying about the itch. It is hard to resist. It makes you want to hurt and break. It took more than a bit of focus to remove the urge from myself.”

Adam grimaced. “You’re good at making me reconsider going through.” But he had to. Someone needed to brief these bloody orcs, and it was going to be him. He had been interfacing with Inquisitor Sijik. He was the one who knew the key Necrotech observation posts and defenses all across Lost Angeles. More importantly, he was the one who was going to lead the rescue efforts for Blackedge. He was going to be at the front of this fight, and so he would need to greet his army eventually.

There was no way he was going to let a group of orcs run amok in his hometown. That would likely be a more brutal massacre than simply letting the Necrotechs breach its walls and put his people to the flame.

“I can’t trust them. But I need to have their measure.”

“Lean on Shiv if you need to,” Uva said. “You know you can count on him.”

“I think I count on the big bastard a bit too much,” Adam replied.

“There is no too much with him,” she insisted. “And it will be good for him as well. If he spends too long with the orcs, I worry how that might affect his mind. We ground him.”

“Right,” Adam said. “Good for him too. Well. Time to cross.”

“Don’t worry. I will be with you. I will make sure your mind remains untampered and your person untouched.”

With a final breath, Adam stepped through the Tutorial Gateway. He clutched his bow tight and tapped the wand on his hip. It was potent with Hydromancy, capable of briefly letting him shift his physical form into a current of water, good for if the orcs expected easy prey. More than that, if they tried to cast anything—

A thunderous blast shook the air. As soon as Adam arrived on the other side, he was launched off his feet and flung down that mountain of—

Adam crashed shoulder-first against an edge. He realized the corpses making up the mountain were all gone. Rather, he was landing on a series of stone steps, his Legendary plate chipping the rough edges as he bounced down the long flight of stairs. He manifested his vector wings and hovered up into the air, recovering. As he shook his head, trying to get his bearings, he drew a Veilpiercer and saw a massive encampment sprawling out all around him.

The orcs had set up large tents and started fires as they gathered here. Stone fortresses, bunkers, and fighting rings had been set up as well, extending far beyond the horizon. It looked like a crude forward operating base. And that’s what it was. A forward operating base right outside his gate.

“Shit,” Adam muttered.

Furthermore, the mountain of corpses that once stood as the foundation of the gateway was completely gone. Instead, something akin to a ziggurat remained in its place. And that was when Adam realized it was likely always a ziggurat. It was just that the orcs had placed all the bodies on top of it to demoralize him.

“Bastard creatures,” Adam muttered under his breath.

As he took in the orc encampments, he saw most of them were standing outside, gathered around large fireplaces, but they were waving gleaming pieces of metal in their hands. It looked like mithril. It gleamed like mithril. It was mithril. Why were they waving mithril around? Were they betting on something?

He got his answer when a faint silhouette shot overhead, tearing through parting clouds. Adam’s eyes widened as he watched a bone-armored figure shoot further and further into the distance, away from the Court Leviathan parked just two kilometers away from the gateway. Shiv spiked his gravitic field and righted himself. He came accelerating back the way he was flung, and a collective cheer went up among the orcs.

“Smash! Smash! Smash!” some of them cheered.

“Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!” others cried.

“Shiv! Shiv! Shiv!” more called out.

“What in damnation is happening here?” Adam breathed.

Adam cast his awareness up into the air just as Uva asked him the very same question. “What is happening?”

“I have no bloody idea,” Adam said with a sigh.

Just as his Seer of Horizons snapped into place, granting him a panoramic view of the land, he watched as Shiv charged a large orc standing atop the Court Leviathan. The orc held a strange weapon. It was a club that resembled a mass of tumors, but its texture was familiar to Adam. He remembered seeing that somewhere. Was that adamantine bone? And wood?

Shiv blurred across the air just as the orc swung his massive club. Adam’s breath got stuck in his throat as he watched the orc smash his weapon into Shiv’s skull. The weapon vibrated like a gong, and the vibrations shifted over into Shiv’s shaking head. The world went still for a moment. Then, The Deathless was blasted across the sky again.

A massive shockwave splashed out from atop the Court Leviathan, spreading far across the land. It washed over the encampments; the flames lighting the camps shivered and danced. Adam had to accelerate his vector wings to avoid being flung away.

Adam cast his awareness after Shiv, just as he prepared to loose a Veilpiercer at the large orc atop the leviathan. Adam hesitated, however, due to two factors. The first was the fact that he was surrounded by a few million orcs, and that if he shot his arrow right now, he was very likely to be swarmed.

The other thing was Shiv’s bone armor. There was something wrong with it. Parts of it had cracked away, and it trailed blood for some reason. But before he could assume Shiv was the one who was injured, the bone armor knitted itself back together. Missing sections healed. Veins of biomass extended outward and grew over absences inflicted upon the plating. The armor was regenerating. And it looked strangely scaly. A bit like a basilisk’s hide.

“What is happening?” Uva repeated.

“I…” Adam stared on in confusion as Shiv spiked his gravitic field once more. The air around him shivered, his inertial sheath thundering with kinetic energy. He shot toward the orc, accelerating faster and faster until he passed through the clouds shredded earlier like a descending meteor. As the Deathless got closer, Adam could hear him laughing. He could also hear something filling up in Shiv’s lungs.

“Alright, you shit!” Shiv roared. “Give it your best shot!”

“Oh, I will!” the orc replied. “Don’t you worry.”

Adam scoffed and shook his head in disbelief. “I think… I think Shiv’s letting the orc hit him.”

Uva let out a groan. “Why?”

Adam winced. “Leveling, probably.”

“Composer, that man… Ah. I suppose I should have expected this.”

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