70 (II)

Base

Can Hu’s years of artistic dedication made it more than capable of slowly drawing out a detailed map of the gate, mapping out all its districts.

The group was now observing said map, seated on stone chairs and gathered around a steel table, both having been provided by the Penitent as well. They marked the most important structures as well as places to avoid. Shiv created a tarp made from his skin decoys and lined the bottom of the excavated tunnel they came through as well. Passing through would be easy for him, but with a little dirt and some rubble, they stood a chance of avoiding notice, even if the enemy sent someone to investigate the structure.

As time passed, they began to plot their most immediate operations. A mana explosion sounded in the distance while they debated and planned, the noise signalling Leu’s false-flag on herself.

“I saw some very interesting structures and facilities while we were making our way to Guardshead Leu’s personal chambers. I think I know where their main troops’ barracks are, along with where the bulk of the mercenaries reside.” Adam’s eyes were constantly aglow as he cast his senses from place to place.

“I also detected a few of their Master-Tier Psychomancers,” Uva said. “One should be a High Master. They almost noticed me, but I pulled away before they could truly sense my presence.”

“Were you busy jabbing at them so they wouldn’t focus on me?” Shiv asked. “I encountered a suspicious lack of Psychomancers.”

“Well, a slew of inexplicable betrayals befell a few,” Uva said. She winked at him, and Shiv grinned.

“You’re the greatest, Sister Uva.”

“Alright,” Adam said, tapping a large group of buildings etched into the steel table. His brows were furrowed in concentration as he shifted his finger to the descending obsidian tower. “Shiv also scouted Confriga’s personal hell-tower. Inside, we have a vile weaver-breeding operation, the Animancy Core, probably Confriga’s vault of treasures somewhere, and a good amount of his personal guard. Anything else?”

Shiv thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “No. Not many slaves aside from the breeding chamber. Mostly Vulteg-guarded too. Maybe a few mercenaries. Not sure how we’re going to get the people there out. Or where the belts were really taking them. There might be another section to the operation, but I didn’t get to investigate because Confriga was always just a step behind.”

“Oh, right,” Adam said. He pulled out the notebook Shiv had handed him all those days ago. “I have been responding to Inquisitor Sijik’s messages when I had the chance. I think they still believe that I’m Master Advisor Oldsmith.” The Young Lord licked his lips, and there seemed to be a certain nervous agitation to him. “Isabella is still on Blackedge.”

Shiv stared at him. “You sure?”

“Yes,” he breathed, “and they are trying to find her, but they can’t.”

“So that fully exonerates her of anything, right?” Shiv asked.

Adam nodded slowly. “It seems so, but after everything, I am hesitant to trust… Well, anything. City Lord Stormhalt is plotting against his own people, and he has powerful Inquisitorial backing. It’s all madness.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, shaking his head. “All the lies they told us… You have any idea why?”

Adam sighed. “No. And I get more lost with each conversation. They’re sending someone to meet with Oldsmith soon. Some kind of ‘Educator’ from Lone Star. Not sure how she’s supposed to enter the gate, but I suppose we’ll have to handle that problem once she arrives. According to his latest message, she isn’t due for a few more days.”

“That might be a problem,” Shiv muttered. “I don’t have Oldsmith as a Perfect Semblance anymore, and the Inquisitors aren’t around either. Couldn’t use them even if they were around after what Tran and Heather did to them.”

Adam paused. “We might need to consider destroying the consulate to sever that link entirely. Without someone there to make Confriga open the gate, this Inquisition agent will be stranded outside either way, but we can’t dismiss her as a potential threat.”

“Maybe,” Shiv said. “There’s still someone working there, a Secretary Mira—”

“We can move her,” Adam said. “Uva can helpher forget. And you said the goblin had a relationship with her?”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, eyeing Siggy, who was sitting off by the side, alone. “Siggy’s her dealer.”

“Dealer?”

“Drug dealer,” Shiv answered.

Adam grimaced. “I see.”

As they discussed things, Can Hu dropped its Garden of Bountiful Alloy behind them, and the minor dimension expanded. Slowly, the Penitent began to acquire materials of all varieties while also shaping new pieces of furniture for everyone.

After a while of brainstorming, Shiv rolled his neck and grunted. “Alright. I think we’re due a bit of a break after everything today.” He stepped free from Can Hu and began walking out from the anchor.

Adam called out to him, “Where are you going?”

“To get us some dinner,” Shiv said, looking back over his shoulder.

The Young Lord frowned. “What do you mean, some dinner? There’s nothing here. We don’t need to eat every day, Shiv. Just forget about cooking for a while.”

Shiv stopped, turned, and glared at the Young Lord. “What did you just say to me?”

Adam flinched at the intensity of Shiv’s stare. “I mean, we have to make do in times of hardship.”

“These are not times of hardship,” Shiv said, walking off into the dark.

“And what are you even going to get? There’s nothing here.”

“There are the rats and the insects,” Shiv said.

“The rodents and slimy insects from earlier?” Adam asked, sounding horrified. “You expect us to eat sewer-dwelling rats and insects?”

“There’s some moss too?”

“You must be jok—”

***

“Please,” Adam said, forcing the words through clenched teeth and lips stretched into a forced smile, “may I have another plate?”

“What was that, Adam?” Shiv said, leaning closer. “My ears—they’re ringing. You see, Marikos really yelled pretty loud, and—”

“Don’t push it, bastard! Give me a plate.”

Shiv laughed, and he offered Adam another plate of deep-fried rat coated in questionable insect sauce and served with a side of wall-corner moss. Between his Biomancy and The Chef Unwavering, he managed to isolate all the healthy insects and rats. Then, he caught a few of them, cleaned them, caught some more because he accidentally exploded the first group of bugs he got with his Pyromancy, and after about an hour of careful, calculated toil, he finished with that night’s dinner.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

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A crunch sounded as Uva slowly chewed. The Umbral paused and hummed. “Surprisingly filling, and my Stealth is better too.”

Shiv bit into his fried rodent, crushing the thing’s brittle skull. The removal of calcium and the extraction of its marrow did wonders for the taste-texture. “A normal chef probably couldn’t have done that. It took careful work with Biomancy to pull off.”

And once more, Shiv was almost thankful to the orc god for giving him the Culinary Berserker Skill. Almost.

The Challenger appreciates your gratitude.

Shiv’s lips pressed together, and he glared upward at the ceiling.

While they ate, Uva continued her Psychomantic operations. She focused on penetrating the mind of the Observers, the floating eyeball dimensionals that watched the city from above. She pierced through a good few of them and tracked all that was happening across the gate.

The sun had stopped unleashing its massive waves of oppressive coldness. The ice coating the buildings and gripping the very air began to thaw. But still, there were constant dimensional patrols now, and a slightly injured Leu was spotted standing at the center of a plaza next to Gate Lord Confriga.

The Gate Lord was less than pleased. His pitch-black blade hovered beside him and remained idle as the Gate Lord began violently murdering random underlings, tearing mercenaries and Vultegs alike apart.

Adam, meanwhile, cast his Awareness into the Animancy Core’s chamber once more. There were now two adamantine golems there, guarding the elevator. But Adam noted that there was a cut lining the elevator.

“Necromantic corrosion… I think we have an angle of psychological attack on Confriga,” Adam declared. “He is volatile and uncontrolled. We should harass him relentlessly until he breaks. I read many books in the Academy about the fall of tyrants and the accountability of leadership. He seems to be a poor leader. He rules through fear, but fear will eventually give way to defiance once you hit a point of no return.”

“And what’s a point of no return?” Shiv asked.

“When he kills enough of his own people, or enforces a regime of tyranny so severe that the only logical choice is to rebel. He’s already doing most of our work for us now.”

“This is a good idea,” Can Hu concurred. “We Penitents achieved several overthrows of minor Altered nations.”

“Altered?” Adam asked, not certain what the automaton was saying.

“System-Altered nations,” the Penitent clarified. “Those touched by mana. People like you.”

“Oh,” Adam said. He paused. “What is the Legacy Empire like?”

“They are great, and they are vestigial, and they are fallen. They possess incredible technologies, lingering relics from a time before. Do not make a mistake, Pathbearer. We did not rise after the System’s arrival. We are simply continuing to climb in another direction. For most of the world, the individual is now far more powerful than the masses before. Where once, long, long ago, everyone was less than Pathless. Everyone was merely mortal. But they still defined their own fate. They still forged great technologies.”

Can Hu sighed. “Humanity reached beyond the veil of the sky. We sought distant worlds. It was only the foreign dimensions that were beyond us. And we were on the close cusp of so many more miracles and wonders after achieving so many. And then the System came. The Great One supposedly fell, whatever they even are. And what followed was chaos. Chaos of the most absolute degree.”

Everyone had fallen silent, listening to Can Hu’s retelling with rapt attention. “The nature of magic and mana is anathema to Unintegrated technology. The very way one’s skills work, and the emergence of the existence of a soul, was crippling to the world that was. And so those of the Legacy Empire live within the great domes. And so people like my pilots are dispatched. People they deem deviant or unable to integrate with their own society. They are cast out. But they are blinded. For they do not think of themselves as outcasts, but rather wardens.”

“Wardens for whom?” Adam asked.

“Us. The Penitents. The awakened automata. Not drones, but machines that truly think. Just as the System twisted the Legacy Empire’s adversaries, so too did it twist machines. And thus we were condemned by the very act of existing. ‘I think, therefore I am, therefore I cannot be.’”

Adam blinked. “That was very poetic and bitter, Can Hu.”

“It was a quote from a philosopher many, many years ago.” Can Hu paused. “All is not yet lost. Perhaps, perhaps someday, another Integration can take place, joining the world of the old with the rising of the new.”

“That sounds very hopeful,” Adam said. “I’m not sure how such a thing might come to pass.”

Can Hu chimed. “A thousand years ago, it was unheard of for most people to ever even get the chance to reach Master-Tier. The mana density was just too low. Now… Things are different. There will be new Quests, and at the System’s hand, there is very little that is impossible. Even broken, we must try. I was broken. I fell, and yet here I remain. By my own want, by my own desire, by the System’s hand, subtle and vulgar, and by the generosity of a stranger.”

It stared at Shiv, dipping its tasting apparatus into Shiv’s food. Nearby, Valor leered, glaring at the food as if it were his personal enemy.

While Can Hu spoke, it also built bits of architecture and furniture within the teleportation anchor. It shaped benches, beds, tables, and more. And then it began constructing new, more intricate mechanisms. From within its realm, it extracted more bits of silicone, metal, plastic, and other sources of matter. Carefully, Can Hu began to mold them like clay as it built the beginnings of a new drone.

After a bit more time passed, Valor gestured towards the Young Lord’s vambrace, and they spoke of the damage left upon the elevator. They spoke of potentially using the Graven Cage on the elevator itself and clenching the Animancy Core in place before it escaped.

“It is theoretically possible,” Valor said, “but we must be quick, and we will likely need even more effigies to power the construct if we wish to corrode through the adamantium.” Valor looked down at his hands, his right arm briefly crackling with corrosive energy. “This effort… It is possible for me now, though it will be difficult. I forgot how bad the mana strain was before, but now… It’s time for me to remember what it was like being a mere Adept. To truly struggle.”

“That’s… good,” Adam said, unsure what Valor was getting at.

Valor once again looked at Adam’s vambrace. “There are things you need to understand, now that you have that item.”

“I’m not really interested in learning Necromancy, Valor,” Adam said. There was a slight hint of unease in his voice. “I know that the Republic has been dishonest in many ways…”

“You have touched Necromancy. The System has imparted something of corrosion upon you. I fear that you can only delay, not avoid the inevitable.”

Adam stared at him. “So what? I am to be a Necromancer?”

“You don’t need to be a Necromancer. You do have to understand how it works. You will face a Necromancer here in this gate. You must understand the ways of your enemy to best kill them. Do you wish to be a rival archer, or a beast ignorant as to the means of its own demise?”

Adam paused, and he nodded slowly. “Fine. But I’m no Necromancer. The way this art works—”

“You are no Necromancer.” Valor agreed. “But you can slay them. You can understand them. And I will teach you how.” He sighed. “I would have rather taught Shiv this, but…”

“Don’t wish to blow us all up?” Adam asked.

“Not quite yet,” Valor said.

As everyone focused on their own affairs, Shiv pulled Odes out of his cloak to do some studying, only for Uva to send him a telepathic message. “I have an idea.”

Immediately, something stirred inside Shiv. “And what kind of idea is that, Sister?”

“Not that one. Not right now. But the High Master Psychomancer in the city, I think I have isolated his position.”

“Oh,” Shiv said, his own interest piqued. “And how guarded is he?”

“That’s just the thing. With everyone in such disarray and Confriga sending people around, not nearly guarded enough. Not physically, anyway.”

“Oh,” Shiv said.

“Especially not guarded from a particular corpse-shedding, skin-taking, silver-tongued, cooking-capable—”

“Uva, I’m already willing to go out and do this. You flatter me some more, and we might end up doing the other thing instead.” She laughed, and he smirked. Adam looked between them and shook his head in faux-disgust. “When?”

“Soon.”

“I will see if I can compromise the mind of a dimensional looking down at the Psychomancer’s tower. This High Master is quite astute. Twice he’s tried to reach out and grab my threads, but I avoided him. I can close quickly while he’s distracted, but I suspect it will be a proper fight if I am to face him, mind against mind—especially since I suspect he has the edge in experience.”

Shiv tapped his finger on the bone handle of his kukri and smiled.

“Adam,” Shiv said, “I think I’m going to go out on a walk.”

“What are you doing now?” Adam said, his eyes narrowing. He watched as Uva began casting her strings into Shiv’s mind. “Please tell me you two aren’t about to do something stupid.”

“Oh, nothing. Uva and I are just going to take a walk. Enact a murder. Maybe escalate it into a serial killing.”

Adam nodded. “All right—wait, what?”

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