74 (II)

Burn

A trail of devastation followed. A new chasm opened behind Shiv as he obliterated entire portions of the already destroyed city, using the orc as a prow. As he crashed through a dozen buildings, paint splattered over him. Paint from the orc. Shiv drove his kukri into its eye, and the orc just sighed.

“Just… stop,” the Educator’s voice came from the orc’s lips. “This is pointless. I have the others. They’re not—”

Shiv caught the orc by the jaw and drove his blade up under its chin before he channeled Conduit of Dawn out from inside its eye. The illustration’s every orifice lit up as burning radiance cooked the orc’s skull from the inside, and Shiv crushed the beast’s skull before he launched himself back at the Educators.

There were hundreds of them now, standing on buildings, staring at him with the same annoyed expressions on their faces. A few even had their arms folded or were tapping their shoes on the ground.

Exposition: What a waste of good paint. Oh, well. When I include him among my illustrations, I’ll have something to replace the orc. I spent months illustrating that one.

“We cannot win this battle,” Rose whispered. Despair consumed her. “We are trapped. There is no way out—”

“Shut up and fight,” Shiv growled. He didn’t care if the woman was Adam’s mother. If she wanted to break, that was up to her. Shiv intended to stain every page in this incomprehensible dimension using his own blood if that’s what victory demanded.

And there was something else beyond that. Despite Shiv’s all-consuming rage, despite the Educator taking his people from him, Shiv wanted to be here. Through everything, he wanted this fight. He wanted to fight. Always. Forever. Eternally. Hopeless struggle or not, Shiv wasn’t going to stop being himself.

He fell toward the city like a meteor—and then the Educators started vanishing. He growled as he realized they were jumping into his perception. Just then, the tall creature that attacked his mind earlier appeared as well. It launched a spell at him—but caught a bone drill in the throat. It went down in a spray of paint just as ten Educators emerged to strike at Shiv.

He shifted out of context. They struck nothing—and the dozens of remaining Educators hiding within his Awareness were knocked free as he sank into his own Vitae. The flames of his very existence sputtered once more, but Shiv took a moment to consider his actions. He observed his enemies, observed the terrain, and he thought about what to do next—if only for a second.

The Educators just kept coming. Whatever the god-like entity was, it seemed more than capable of spawning endless copies of the Educator. And more than that, it had other Pathbearers it could summon as well. Illustrations, it called them. What Rose conveyed to him was disturbing enough. He had no idea what kind of magic he was dealing with, but not even the Composer could just paint people into being.

What’s the limit?

And then there was his ability. When he shifted out of context, the world remained, and he could still interact with it, but he couldn’t be affected in turn.

“Your self-existing nature is acausal in the eyes of the System,” Rose breathed. She was weeping. Blood ran down from her pale, gleaming eyes. “I am caged within an abomination.”

Shiv ignored her for now—even if she was starting to get on his nerves. Then, just as he found himself on the verge of performing a desperate ambush, he noticed something.

Adam’s corrosive rift was still open. The Necromancy infusing the insides were still active. A terrible plan developed in his mind. It might literally be suicidal, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tried. And frankly, it was his best means to inflict as much damage as possible in as wide an area as possible.

Exposition: Why… why am I still here? Who was I fighting? Why did I unleash 122 pages of active illustrations here? And why does my Exposition Skill feel so… lost?

Shiv released himself from his armor and shot past the Educators falling from the air. He wanted Can Hu away from the blast radius, and he needed to directly clash against the Necromancy for this to work.

Confusion still creased the faces of all the Educators. And it was that very confusion that Shiv exploited a final time as he made a mad, instinctive gambit.

He exploded back across into reality in a blast of Vitae. He hatched out from a veil of crimson and white as he barreled into an unprepared Educator and accelerated down toward the Necromantic rift as he drained vitality through her. The others immediately chased after him, flicking strokes of paint and—

Shiv suddenly stopped dead in the air for seemingly no reason at all. Even as he accelerated, he couldn’t go any further.

Then, he noticed on the ground below—a lone, thin pencil stroke marking a Border. Paint struck Shiv from every side as pain tore through his body. Without his armor, he was still adamantine, but there was no outer layering protecting him from the all-consuming pain. He immediately started losing sections of flesh, then muscle, then bone. Everything the paint touched, it assimilated.

Shiv tried feeding Adamantine Adaption with rage, but it didn’t work. Another spray of color barely hit his head—and Silhouette saved him from an early death again.

Silhouette > 72

He tried going around—only to be struck from above by a massive blow. Shiv grunted but held himself in place using his gravitic field, twisting and catching the limb that struck him. He found himself clutching the claw of a dragon. Unlike the Dragon-Knights, however, this one moved animalistically and operated without the aid of armor or equipment. It tried to channel a blast of flame into Shiv, but he twisted its neck at an angle and used it to burn some of the Educators nearby.

This story originates from NovelBin. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

A surging jet of paint blasted through the side of his hip and disintegrated most of his groin as well. Shiv vomited from the torturous pain, but he kept fighting—even as he felt both his legs fall off. He swung the dragon against the Border Sketch, but it went nowhere either. With a roar of frustration, he blasted forward and shifted out of context again.

This time, he did pass through, but at significant cost. He didn’t manage to drain enough earlier, and so he found himself near-empty of vitality almost immediately. He cried out as he strained himself, but this wasn’t a thing of effort, it was just a thing of quantity.

The skill burned his vitality and left his soul hollow. Right now, he was fast approaching the point of having no vitality to burn.

As Shiv surfaced back into the world, he reached for the slowly closing corrosive rifts where Adam and Uva once were. Darkness crept in around the corners of his eyes. He felt more exhausted than he ever had in his entire life. But he made himself continue. He had to continue, if out of battle-want and spite alone.

Momentum Core > 85

Gravitic Wrestler > 118

“No more,” Rose said in the back of his mind. “Should you dive again, should you burn our life force once more, there will be nothing left of either of us!”

He ignored her. Pulling on his gravity field one last time, he blasted toward the rift, wondering if he was absolutely mad for planning this, or if it would actually turn out well.

Adam, Uva, Valor, Can Hu, and Siggy were gone. Captured and painted out of… wherever this place was. He didn’t know how this dimension worked, what kind of enemy he was facing, or how he was going to exactly stop them. All he had was previous experience to draw upon. Specifically, the experience of how his very being detonated when Confriga struck him with the whip.

The reaction of a Necromancy clashing against his soul was enough to trigger a massive blast. It burned Confriga. It burned a Heroic-Tier enemy. Maybe it could at least disrupt this place.

It was either that or die, resurrect, and hope the enemy didn’t just spawn enough mind mages to obliterate his consciousness.

Just then, Rose called out. “Another is riding your awareness! I can hear her—”

An Educator appeared in the corner of Shiv’s vision. He seized her with his gravitic field and drained her vitality. But not before she slashed his upper chest with a pencil. He lurched to a violent halt as a loud crack sounded from inside him. Something split within his flesh. He tried to breathe, but the damn Border Sketch had parted him from half his lungs.

Then the paint crashed into Shiv. It hurt bad, but after his beating at the hands of the dragons, this bad was only so-so. Still, he felt his lower body dissolve into blood as the paint ate at him. The Educator that had halted him with a pencil moved to take his head with a brush stroke. Rose called for Shiv to shift out of context. But he wanted as much vitality inside him as he could when he struck the rift.

So he did something else. He shaped a quick Biomancy and tore his head off his body. His tendons, tissues, bones, and blood vessels came asunder at his command, and with a final surge of effort and a howl of pain, he zipped through the air toward the rift, tumbling with his left cheek forward.

This is going to hurt even worse, Shiv thought with snarl.

Behind him, the Educators stared at his headless body with flabbergasted disbelief.

Exposition: What in the damnation is—

Rose couldn’t whisper the rest of the exposition to Shiv. He crashed face-first against the corrosive rift, a second before his consciousness would have faded.

The resulting pain was indescribable.

His Vitae recoiled at the Necromancy. The corrosive mana splashed into the waters of his soul-vitality fusion, and it felt like he was being melted apart in a place far deeper than his flesh, but though the corrosion gnawed at the shape of his soul, it couldn’t deform him. Rather, Shiv’s infused vitality began pushing back like a cornered animal, started growing brighter and getting more volatile.

A considerable part of Shiv’s soul ruptured open, but from that rupture came a flood of uncontrolled Vitae, like an ocean spilling out from a marble. A pulse of red swept through the painted city of Lost Angeles, and for a moment, the dimension broke. Buildings began to leak paint, and the sky crumbled like a piece of paper.

The Educators and other illustrations took a step back—

And then they started shrieking as a flash of white spread across the land, igniting everything.

It was like a star was being born. All colors faded into that devouring white tinged with red. Shiv howled silently through it all, and Rose screamed with him. The left side of her face burned and melted as if someone had poured acid over her as they received a wound upon life and soul. Her left arm and hand developed the very same wounds as well.

But as Shiv staggered away from his charred head as a Revenant, delirious from soul-scarring pain, he caught sight of the immense entity connected to the Educators—bound to them by channels of vitality—and he saw that they were burning as well. The world broke into discordant colors and burning paper. The dimension began to wilt and blacken. The horizon rushed over the city of Lost Angeles as he found himself in another illustration—a gentle farmland flanked by pristine rivers and grazing animals. But this page began to burnas well. The flames unleashed by Shiv’s combusting soul had spread. They had spread to the unseen god, and they spread across whatever this place was as well.

More pages passed by, and Shiv saw settings and drawings of all styles and kinds. And he also saw them—the Educators. Drawn on page after page. And between them were other beings as well. Dragons. Orcs. Elves. The strange tall creature he faced earlier. And more things he couldn’t name. Most looked unfinished, and they remained still as they burned, but the ones that looked completed screamed with the voice of the Educator as they writhed and burned.

And when they burned, they didn’t melt down to paint, but were charred of flesh. Shiv had hurt his enemy. He had wounded them. He had hurt the unseen god.

Through thought-rending pain, Shiv began to laugh, and Rose stared to him like he was utterly mad.

I got you… bastard.

Vitality Drain > 45

Revenant > 39

Outside Context Problem > 54

Momentum Core > 87

Exposition: BURNS! I’M BURNING! WHISPERER OF DUST AND ASH, I’M BURNING! I NEED—AGH! I RELEASE THIS TOME! I REVOKE MY BLESSING! I WITHDRAW MY POWER! I SEVER THIS SACRED PHYLACTERY!

And then something snapped around Shiv. It was like all the power in the world was crashing inward, and through the haze, chaos, and his own anguish, Shiv lost all sense of coherence, and a chill washed through him. A chill that came when the flames within drew closer and closer to a final end.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep