266 (II)

  Beyond [III]

  Slowly, the Culturist lowered his hand, and he breathed out. "I stand atop the corpses of giants. But not triumphant. I stand ashamed. And yet, I stand inspired for my next attempt, for my next life, for the next Delves I will experience. In the vain hope that I might be able to get something right. In the vain hope that I can be something beyond myself. Beyond this thing of impulse and brutality the Challenger has made of me."

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: He means every word. And he has a genuine animosity toward the Challenger. Notice how the flames at his core flicker. Notice how they grow more intense when he speaks of his god. And notice how he is unashamed. He tells all this to us as if we cannot harm him. As if he is unafraid of giving us any information, any insight into his psyche.

  "That is because I am unafraid," the Culturist suddenly said. He stared at Shiv from beneath his shadowed feather hood. "Because the System has ruined you. Because the System has poured so much power into you that imbalance is all you know."

  Shiv kept himself from tensing, but a spike of alarm went through him regardless. The Culturist seemed to be able to read his thoughts, read what his skills were telling him, and judging from how his Magical Resistance hadn't been overtly pierced, it couldn't have been a thing of Psychomancy. So what was left: Divination? But intuition told Shiv that it was more than that. And with a guess, he spoke the following words: "Just how many social skills do you have at Legendary-Tier to guess what I'm thinking?"

  "Every single one," the Culturist admitted casually. "Every single social skill and mental skill I possess, though admittedly it is a paltry number in the grand scheme of the System's breadth."

  Shiv tried not to swallow as a follow-up question slipped out of him. "And just how many skills…”

  The Legendary orc thrust his bayonet forward. The Deathless reacted. His Inertial Overdrive rattled like thunder trying to tear free from blackened clouds. He flung himself at and through the Culturist, his swings splitting nothing but air and black mist. In an instant, the orc was gone, and only a ghost of Valor remained. A ghost that Shiv cleaved through without harming at all. Then, like a candle being blown out by a rush of wind, Valor vanished as well, and Shiv cast himself back in time to avoid being swallowed by the ravenous black.

  Inertial Overdrive 191 > 193

  Bifurcated Processing 62 > 64

  Shiv felt himself reeled backwards across time. He blinked into existence within the maze. And there, Adam was flying by, his vector wings flaring bright. But then something slammed into Shiv. Something speared into his back at the same place he'd been struck earlier, right under his ribs.

  A golden blade erupted from his stomach, and before he could call out to Adam, he was wrenched back across the same way he came. Once more, he plunged into the darkness, and once more, a thick arm wrapped around his neck. This time, however, instead of trying to squeeze him unconscious, the arm wrenched to the side, and he felt something in his vertebrae crack. His lower body ceased to respond to him. His legs spasmed and stayed stiff.

  Shiv tried to move his arms, but they failed as well. His Aegis of Assimilation flared, and his mana hydra ripped away his injuries while a surge of Overflow Tides snapped his head back into place.

  At the same time, he detonated his inertial sheath. The air around him turned to plasma. Boiling brightness flowed and consumed the surrounding shadows. A chasm of light erupted around his body. He felt his attacker vanish, but he knew the Culturist wasn't done.

  Indeed, the orc concurred by firing a hyper-accelerated bullet right into the back of Shiv's head. A series of tendons tore in the back of his neck, and the rear of his skull cracked. His Pillar of Orichalcum fractured down the middle, and the world spun as nausea overtook him. Shiv assimilated this injury before he could throw up, and on instinct, he swung his Last Morsel up, just in time to block another shot. The impact flowed down his arm and caused his bones to rattle; if Shiv's Physicality wasn't Legendary here, it probably would have snapped the limb entirely. Twin trails of white and violet mana painted the trajectory of the shot. It came from afar, extending deeper and deeper into the distant darkness.

  Shiv was overwhelmed. He wasn't sure how he would find the Culturist down here. But then he remembered his new Awareness skill, and he created a mana simulation of the parts of his own biology he knew the orcs shared with humans. A magical rendition of his own organic architecture flared before his eyes, and in the rightmost corner of his vision, he saw him—the Culturist was less than a hundred meters away, and he had his rifle pointed in Shiv's direction. Shiv tilted his head.

  The Culturist fired in the same instant. A bright channel was painted into the endless dark, parted by the bullet’s pure acceleration. Instead of splattering his brain, a hole was punched through Shiv's right ear, and he prepared to stack his inertial sheath a few dozen more times.

  Dodge 34 > 38

  But before he could fling himself at the Culturist, his Chronomancy trembled. Someone else was about to halt time. He had activated his Temporal Shell first, and the orc followed a second later. When he did that, he felt something shatter beneath his ribs. Yet, it didn't hurt. In fact, he felt better, felt like something had been removed from his body.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  "Good, good," the Culturist cheered. "Knowing where your enemy is the first step to fighting them."

  “Profound advice,” Shiv sneered. “Is flapping your lips and sneering at them the second?”

  “Only if you find them amusing.”

  "Well, come get a laugh out of this!" Shiv spat, pointing his frying pan in the direction of his enemy. He wrapped coils of Vitae around his Last Morsel and prepared to use it as a Legendary version of his cancer flail. In a moment, he would send those red and white strands forward—see if he could catch the Culturist off guard by—

  But before Shiv could do anything, something tore open beside him. The Deathless nearly swung his frying pan down on Adam, who speared out from a dimensional pathway.

  Shiv's heart soared and then dropped. Adam shouldn't be here. They couldn't face the Culturist here together—that was courting death.

  Shiv connected his mind to Adam using his Psychomancy, and the Gate Lord didn't even need prompting. Commander's Foresight made the world stand still. Yet, just as everything stopped, Shiv felt another tremor resonating within him, a tremor that indicated the Culturist was about to activate his Chronomancy field again. When they were done planning, Shiv would need to do everything he could to get Adam out of here, to get both of them across the dimensional pathway.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Remember what the message said. The Culturist has already been here for two days. That means he's been watching Adam as well. If he wanted to kill him, he could have done it at any time. He might not go lethal immediately. However, you can't rely on that, and he will definitely target Adam first because it's a reliable way to make you react. It narrows your options. We can't let that happen. We can't.

  A scoff came from the Gate Lord, and his mind was tinged with exhausted annoyance. “I see our hour of peace has expired, and the System has sent someone to ruin our lives again. Who is fighting us now?”

  “It's worse than you think,” Shiv hissed. “It's the Culturist. He's been right next to us for two days, Adam. Watching us, studying us.”

  And suddenly, the Gate Lord wasn't so tired anymore. An explosion of anxiety and alarm took hold. “What? The Culturist? But he's supposed to be in—”

  “He wasn't waiting in the Tutorial for us,” Shiv replied with a growl. “He bullshitted Hymn. And the orcs knew about this. They left a message telling me the Culturist is here, and the bastard jumped me the moment I read it, pulled me into the shadows. Wait, how did you get to me down here?”

  “My Divination Skill,” Adam replied. “Also, the darkness in the maze turned into some kind of pocket dimension. Hawgrave got pulled across too.”

  “Shit,” Shiv hissed. “Well, she has better odds of fighting the Culturist in close quarters than we do. Adam, listen. The moment you finish talking, I need you to prepare another arrow. I need you to fire it to wherever Hymn is. He's not going to like us dragging him into this fight, but I'm going to use him anyway. He managed to beat the damned orc before. We can't stay here in the dark. The Culturist has Valor's torso. And this piece of him has at least one Legendary Skill.”

  “He has what?” Adam cried. His alarm turned into absolute terror. “How does he have that?”

  “He traveled to a whole different world and took it for himself,” Shiv explained. “Now he doesn't have one Legendary-Tier Stealth Skill; he has two at the same time.”

  “And I haven't truly used either against you, Shiv.” The Culturist's calm baritone rumbled in the back of the Deathless' mind, and a cold, dreadful disbelief took hold of him. Commander’s Foresight was still active. The orc's thoughts were spilling over from Adam. “Let this be a lesson: you must consider everything, absolutely everything. For if I had two days of time to observe you, surely I must have compromised one of your minds? Surely I have slipped my Psychomantic parasite within your dear friend. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Before Shiv could respond, the effect of Commander's Foresight shattered. The pace of time resumed. Shiv activated Strider of the Unbending Path—a heartbeat too late.

  The Culturist emerged from behind Adam, bursting free of the darkness like a falling meteor of blazing gold.

  Shiv accelerated toward the Culturist in a rush of vectors, desperate to—

  Something struck him under the ribs again. A bullet. A blade. He wasn't sure. It drilled hard against his Pillar of Orichalcum, and a spray of red and gold chipped free from him. A gash opened along his hip, but he suffered no greater wound. However, the impact stunned him. Just long enough for the Culturist to reach Adam first.

  Pillar of Orichalcum 273 > 275

  The hooded orc seized Adam's torso with one hand and wrapped the other around the Gate Lord's head.

  A chain of vectors, overflow and innate, pointed toward the Culturist. The Deathless launched himself toward the orc. His mind was blank. He was past the point of fear, past the point of thinking. He needed to—

  The Culturist twisted slightly, using Adam as a human shield. Shiv hissed and suddenly inverted his vectors. A few of his bones creaked, and some tendons tore, but ultimately he ground himself to a brutal halt. The Culturist was vibrating violently now, his body shaking as if there was an earthquake happening under his flesh. Shiv's social skills were howling at him, trying to get him to listen, but the Deathless couldn't focus. All he saw was the orc's hand slowly tightening around Adam's head.

  "NO!" Shiv roared. "Let him go! You let him go, or I swear I’ll break things in you. No matter how many deaths it takes. I'll break the damn skill that lets you come back. I'll do to you what I did to Band, and then you'll never be anything ever again."

  "I would be impressed if you could," the Culturist said smoothly. "But alas, I believe I hold all the cards right now. And here is another lesson for you, my dear Deathless. Never let someone know when they possess something you treasure. Otherwise, they will understand exactly how to hurt you. Like so.”

  Shiv’s heart thundered painfully in his chest, and the Culturist flexed his fingers. "No! You motherfuck—Wait! PLEASE—"

  The Culturist looked Shiv in the eye—and then he unceremoniously ripped Adam's head clean off his neck.

  You can read the entirety of Volume 5 and the first half of Volume 6 over on ! (Over 400,000 Words ahead of Royal Road for $10)

  Join the to talk to Mammal and other fans of the series!