15 (II)

Rematch

The raven gawked. “What?”

“You really shouldn’t have come after my home. And you really shouldn’t have thrown me off Blackedge. This was your fault to begin with, but I’m going to see this to its end.”

There was also the small matter of the bastard knowing about what Shiv could do. He didn’t need the raven telling the Composer or anyone else about that.

The raven just looked at him and let out a long sigh. “You don’t even care about mithril, do you? You’re not going to stop no matter how much I offer.”

“No,” Shiv said. “I just want one other kind of payment.” He took a stance, shifting his legs wide and bringing his rib-daggers high. “Come on, you’re not that injured. You must be a High Adept or a Low Master. Don’t just let me kill you. I was just Pathless a few days ago. Can you imagine dying with that kind of shame?”

The elf sneered and ripped away what remained of his broken helmet. He couldn’t put any weight on his right leg, but that didn’t stop his Reflexes from being so much faster than Shiv’s. The enemy rushed him, and Shiv accepted that he was going to be stabbed. That was the first rule of knife fighting: you were going to be bled.

The raven lashed out with precision, cutting Shiv in multiple places, making a mangled mess of his torso. But the same as before—when the raven’s nightglass sank through Shiv’s ribs, it didn’t go all the way. Every inch was a struggle, and the resistance meant that the blade was likely to get stuck.

Stuck long enough for Shiv to bring down both his ribs against the elf’s broken arm. The man let out a gasp and tried to take a step back—but slipped in the blood leftover from Shiv’s old body. Shiv followed the enemy down. He stabbed at every open wound he could find, tearing them wider. As the raven toppled back, sobbing from the agony, Shiv sprawled, letting the enemy’s nightglass rip out from him. The raven let go of his knife as he fell. Mistake. Shouldn’t give up in a fight. That only meant death.

Shiv fell on top of the raven. He jabbed a rib into one of the man’s eyes. The raven howled. Then Shiv picked up the bloody piece of nightglass and drove it into the raven’s throat—shaking hands taking a moment to find the raven’s carotid artery.

“Nuh—please! Please!” the raven cried.

But Shiv couldn’t risk it. The raven knew too much about him. And frankly, the raven was his rightful kill. He needed to finish this. He needed to see the enemy die for the defenders of Blackedge. Shiv whispered to the raven, “I don’t care who you are or why you did what you did—I’ll find out about that later. But you ought to know something before you head off to wherever the hell that comes next.” Shiv pulled his nightglass blade along the raven’s throat and the enemy gurgled. Blood welled. The raven tried to throw him off, but the blood pooling beneath him made the assassin slip and flop around.

Shiv dragged the cut deeper and harder, his arm shaking with the strain against his enemy’s Toughness and straining Physicality. “The moment you threw me off Blackedge, you sealed your own fate. I was coming for you. One year, ten years, a thousand—I was coming for you. It’s better this way. It just puts an end to this farce sooner.”

And, with a final heavy shove, he drove his dagger all the way through his neck and began to pull in the other direction as well. The elf’s eyes went wide as his mouth opened in a silent scream. “W-who—” the raven managed to wheeze before his cords were cut.

Shiv forced his enemy to look up at him, and he grinned—his face the expression of a victorious predator. “I am the one death will never get to keep,” Shiv whispered. And then he released his blade. The raven blinked a few more times and, after no more breaths reached his lungs, he kicked out with his legs and went still.

As Shiv held the corpse of his first great enemy in his hands, he couldn’t help it—he started chuckling, sated by this victory, satisfied that he avenged the deaths of so many, and heartened by his progress in so little a time. He tried to rise off of the raven but found himself exhausted beyond measure. Then it hit him.

Foreshadowing: The raven’s death echoes across the world, causing a chain of destruction. Back on the surface, a certain City Lord screams in agony as one of his Quest-bound Skills shatters. His schemes are unraveling due to the vicar’s betrayal. Soon, he will have no option but to involve himself.

He has no choice. His loathing for Roland Arrow is just that severe.

Diamond Shell > 56

Physicality > 48

Reflexes > 41

Shaking his head to clear his mind, Shiv tried to stand and slipped in the blood—his own and his enemy’s. Looking down, he felt a sickness come over him. God, he was barely human—more like a slab of cut meat hanging in a slaughterhouse. Still, Shiv forced himself to rise. Every movement made his body scream in pain, and his Biomancy revealed how deep the wounds went. It was only thanks to his Diamond Shell that he wasn’t bleeding out. The skill extended to his veins and arteries, making them as hard to cut as everything else in his body. But more than a few of his vitals were now exposed to open air.

“Broken… Moon,” Shiv groaned.

“Shiv! Shiv!” He heard Valor’s voice calling for him, and slowly he turned, feeling a pulse—an after-effect from a Jump Mage. He looked to see his group of Umbral escorts quickly approaching him. The Psychomancer was still at their helm, and when she saw Shiv, her mouth dropped wide as her eyes widened with horror.

“Oh, worse than it looks,” Shiv joked as he staggered toward them. His head spun, and he looked at the raven-helmed stranger. “You should… you should see the other guy.” And then, somehow, he managed another step before they had to catch him.

The Psychomancer swallowed, pressing her hands against his wounds. He looked up at her, and he smiled. “You know, you never really did tell me your name.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Are you serious right now?”

“Hey, look.” He shrugged. “Not exactly bleeding to death, just a lot of pain.”

She sighed. “Uva.”

“Hi, Sister Uva. I’m Shiv. Your security probably needs some work,” Shiv joked. “You can’t have your guests doing all the fighting here.”

Her face went through several reactions before she settled on a disbelieving smile.

“You—are all surfacers like you?” she asked.

Shiv then looked at the raven once more. “No, some of the unlucky ones are more like him.”

A Weaveress Jump Mage teleported them back up to where the fight began. As Shiv rematerialized on the bridge, the pressure clenched at his wounds, and he felt himself bleed even faster.

“So that’s why Tran said that you needed to heal up before jumping,” Shiv groaned.

“Are you all right?” the Psychomancer asked, letting him lean against her. She didn’t seem to be that upset about him bleeding on her.

“Yep. Been worse. Been better.”

She looked at him as if she didn’t believe him.

“Trust me,” Shiv said. “I’ve been a lot worse.” And he had—many times in the past few days.

Looking around, he marveled at the destruction left in the wake of his struggle against the raven-helmed stranger. Several bridges below were dented, their edges missing chunks—imprints left by the battle. He also saw the massive floating, flat creatures—beings that resembled the mantas he saw in the Blackedge Aquarium.

Manta meat tastes pretty good, Shiv thought to himself, his mind feeling a little unfocused from all the blood loss. “Could go for a good cooking session right now.”

As he looked around, another group of Umbrals appeared from the opening guarded by the two Weaveresses.

“Did you see him?” a new Umbral called as she emerged from Passage’s exit. She led her own group behind her. “Did you find the surfacer—”

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“We found your assassin, Mipha,” Uva snarled. “You were supposed to keep him mind-chained and controlled. Look what happened.” She gestured at Shiv.

System… she’s genuinely mad about this, Shiv realized. He never had someone get mad over him getting hurt before.

“Sister Uva!” the Umbrel leader of the other team cried, and then found herself distracted by Shiv. “Is that a surfacer? What happened to him?”

“Your assassin is what happened to him,” Uva replied through clenched teeth. “Your Weaveress will be hearing from me. This failure is unacceptable for a sister of the Arachnae Order. You prepare yourself for this.”

The other Umbral swallowed and nodded. She didn’t argue.

Shiv almost felt bad for her, but the thought didn’t linger, because that’s when he saw what the Umbrals in the other group were carrying. There, lying on a stretcher, beaten, bloodied, with some of his limbs still broken and bound in tight casts, and looking like he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in a week, was Adam felling Arrow.

Slowly, the Young Lord craned his head. He looked at Shiv, and his eyes widened in surprise. Shiv stared right back.

“T-Tanner,” Adam mouthed.

Shiv just kept staring.

“Do you know each other?” Uva asked Shiv, looking between them with suspicion.

Shiv’s lips tightened as he looked at Adam Arrow. He considered how he could answer. Adam knew about his abilities too, but… considering how badly injured he was… Shiv couldn’t help it. He had the chance to do something funny, and he took it.

No one could say Shiv wasn’t a bit vengeful.

“I’ve never seen this man in my life,” Shiv declared. He’d deal with that later. For now… for now he didn’t want to talk to Adam Arrow. He didn’t even want to think about the Young Lord.

Adam Arrow’s face contorted into an expression of disbelief, and then delicious anger. “Bastard! Tainted bastard! Tanner! Don’t—don’t let them take me… Tanner…” Then he lapsed back into semi-consciousness.

“Tanner?” Uva asked. “Who’s Tanner?”

“Beats me,” Shiv said, shrugging. “My name’s Shiv. It’s the only name I’ll ever have. The only real name, anyway. Now, let’s see your Composer before I have to fight someone else.”

“We can’t present you like this,” Uva said, looking him over with concern. “You’re bleeding. You’re a Biomancer, aren’t you? Why haven’t you mended yourself?”

Shiv looked at her. “Yeah, about that—I’m, uh, let’s just say I’m untrained, but I’ve got a lot of skill.”

She eyed him and slowly nodded. “Oh, oh dear.”

“Yeah, you, uh, you don’t want to deal with a cancerous mass, do you? Those don’t quip as well as I do.”

“That would not be preferable.” She pressed her lips together. “Another Biomancer should be here at any moment.”

“That would be great,” Shiv said.

The few remaining tatters of his chef’s outfit peeled off from his upper body as a strong breeze washed through him. He was now entirely shirtless, and then he caught Uva staring at him for a moment too long.

Shiv arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we can find some clothing for me to wear. I don’t think it’d be proper for me to be standing half-naked before your Composer.”

Uva shook her head, finally sobering as she stared back at him. “I, uh, yes.” She swallowed, then looked away.

Shiv snickered, and to his surprise, the younger Umbral who had tried to speak with him earlier also laughed. They exchanged a knowing look.

“So, how are your first impressions of Weave?” the young Umbral asked.

“Yeah, it’s pretty high. I think I can get used to it. Hopefully I don’t need to fight someone every time I want to go down a floor, though.”

She laughed.

***

“I have no idea how you’re still standing,” a Weaveress Biomancer said, shaking her head as she sealed the last of his wounds with her many limbs.

Shiv took the opportunity to examine exactly what she was doing in detail, focusing intently to learn if he could replicate the same techniques. He caught some of what she did: she was culturing specific parts of his body architecture to heal in certain ways, while counteracting that in other areas and suppressing healing overall. It was hyper-focused repair rather than on a broad scale.

Maybe that was my mistake before, he thought. I was trying to encourage the entire body to regenerate, or at least too much of an organ to regenerate, and that caused the cancer cascade. He still didn’t get everything she did, but he had enough of an understanding to start correcting his mistakes. Maybe with a few more deaths—or a hundred—I can get some headway into actually healing myself.

“Yeah, uh, I’ve got a pretty high pain tolerance,” Shiv said as he watched the last of his wounds close. He felt his restored skin and nodded. “You did a good job. Not even a little scarring—the Biomancers back on Blackedge usually left at least a faint trace after their work finished.”

“It shouldn’t scar if you do it right,” the Biomancer said.

“I’d be interested in learning about that—doing it right.”

The Weaveress eyed him. “Are you now?”

“Is he well?” Uva interrupted before Shiv could answer.

The Biomancer nodded. “Yes. He’s… Well, frankly, it’s absurd how resilient he is. He has some kind of hyper-strong Toughness Skill Evolution that makes him durable all over, including his veins and cells. It took quite a bit of effort to heal that, but aside from his wounds… Well, you have Disease Resistance, don’t you?”

Shiv looked at her. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You’re not sick at all, which is remarkable. You’ve taken many wounds in your life, haven’t you?”

“What is this, interrogation before the proper interrogation begins?” Shiv asked.

“No, just curiosity,” the Biomancer said. “Surfacers—we don’t get many of you down here. If you’re interested and you are allowed by the Exalted Mother, you can come to the Cradle of Flesh. We’ll be interested in examining you. And, perhaps, they can make a trade—a little bit more in-depth examination into surfacer biology for an education in Biomancy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Shiv said. “I’ll come looking for you, if they actually release me. I might have to look up a few books first, though.”

As he turned, Uva handed him a wet towel to wipe the dried blood off first, and then a silken doublet that was a deep crimson in color.

“Thanks,” he said. “How’d you know my size?”

“By looking at you? And analyzing,” she replied.

“What, you got some kind of Seamstress Skill?”

“What if I do?” Uva said, sounding slightly defensive.

“Then I’d say you’re a pretty interesting person—Sister Seamstress Psychomancer.”

She looked aside, and he couldn’t quite read what her face meant.

“Well, now that that’s over, I think we should get along before another attack occurs,” Valor said, sounding slightly annoyed.

“We once again most deeply apologize for this affair, oh great one—” The Weaveress began.

“Just get us to the Composer. There is no excuse.” Valor sounded angrier than Shiv ever remembered. Angry over him. That was two people now. “Shiv, you’re all right?”

“Yeah. I won. The other guy didn’t. Good day.”

“It sounded like a particularly brutal fight.”

“Like almost every other fight I’ve been in,” Shiv muttered. “I think I’ve got my fill of violence for the day. Let’s get this meeting done so I can get put in prison or get set free to do some cooking.”

At his urging, the group continued on—and Shiv watched as the Umbrals carrying Adam Arrow jumped away.

“I’m surprised you allow spatial magic inside the city,” Shiv said.

“Only some have the privilege,” the Weaveress explained. “For immediate emergencies, mostly. Like someone about to die from their injuries.”

Shiv blinked. He had been too tired to examine Adam. Now he felt kind of bad.

As they got to the very end of the bridge, he found them standing around a platform with a massive crystal hovering in the air. It shone in a series of prismatic colors, and the pressure around it felt spatial somehow—but different.

“Oh, Denizen and Neighbor, we beseech you,” the Weaveresses began, talking to the crystal. “We ask that you loan your aid and child to us so that we might soar the skies for a temporary time for a proper and measured price.”

“What’s happening?” Shiv asked Uva.

She shushed him and simply gestured for him to watch. A second later, the crystal came alight, and a fissure opened in the air. Shiv felt something—something akin to the pressure emitted by a gateway—as one of the strange flat mantas he’d fallen on earlier emerged. It let out a loud moo and slowly lowered itself before him, its flat underbelly hovering just a few inches off the ground.

Shiv blinked. “What is this?”

“It’s a demon. You’ve never seen one before?” Uva asked.

“A demon?” Shiv muttered, sounding terrified. “This is the thing that taints people?”

“Oh, no. That’s a specific variety of demon. Those are from the Dimension of Flies—Plagueforms meant for combat,” Uva explained. “This one’s perfectly docile.”

“Docile? A demon?” Shiv said.

Uva chuckled. “It seems that you might need to add another book to your repertoire.”

“Or maybe you can just explain more things to me.”

“I suppose I could. Now, would you please climb aboard, Adept Shiv?” And that was the first time she used his name. And his Pathbearer Tier.

Shiv acquiesced, since she was so polite. “Off to see the Composer, then,” he muttered.

“Yes, off to see the Composer,” Valor echoed.

The dagger sounded more than a little worried, though. “What’s wrong?”

“For security to be breached like this? For them to fail in their duties so much? Something must have happened. The Sisterhood in my day would have never allowed this.”

Shiv paused as he looked at Valor. If the others took any offense at the dagger’s words, they didn’t show it. “Yeah, well—good thing I was here, right?”

“Yes,” Valor said, sounding a little proud. “A good thing you were. Good work, Shiv.”

He grinned, and he looked up to gaze at the Heart of Weave—the Symposium, within which dwelled a goddess. All in a day’s work, Shiv thought.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep