I didn’t expect to beco a Master. I didn’t expect to skip Adept altogether for my Geomancy and for it to beco Warden of Stone. It was just a thing of desperation for . But I suppose the way my comrades tell the story sounds different.
We were being assaulted from all sides, taking heavy losses. We were fighting so group of invaders that day, towering grey-skinned monsters, who were, for all purposes, heavily magically resistant. Direct magical attacks didn’t work against them. They shrugged off bombardnt from our conventional artillery corps, and, to our horror and surprise, they were, to the last monster, terrifyingly strong and brutally resilient, even against concentrated fire.
As you can imagine, the battle was going poorly. But command refused to order a retreat. We were told to hunker in place until reinforcents ca, and to create a fortification to establish a foothold within the primal gate.
There was simply one issue, however: I was the last Geomancer alive. When the Greyskins launched an attack, they did so cunningly, dropping their own forces using a crude catapult from high above. They survived the impact, slaughtering countless rear support and logistical Pathbearers.
The fighting was brutal, and in the combat, my Geomancy Skill reached 50. A breath away from that final threshold, the System indicated to that my Skill Evolution was imminent. But so too was the enemy, massing their hordes and coming at us from all directions. They had these primitive, sharp-tailed and winged raptors they rode on, and they lobbed explosive eggs the size of small boulders that crashed into us at alarming speeds.
Right then, I found myself exhausted. My Geomancy was stretched to the very limit. I knew that there was a good chance the magical strain could kill if I tried any harder. However, if I didn’t, all my brothers and sisters in arms would die. And that idea, the concept of failing them, proved to be a darker nightmare than my own demise.
I don’t know where I found the strength, drawing from reservoirs I didn’t think possible. But then, as my eyes bled, as I coughed blood from my mouth, as all my senses faded, I reached deeper and deeper into the earth, feeling like I was burning my very soul to co to a pact with the stone.
I was supposed to be an architect.
My brother ruined that. But I told the stone I could still shape it, that I could still make art even in this ruined place, in these damned gates, and that I would always be its slave if it would only be my sculpture. And to my astonishnt, the stone listened, and the System blessed with a Master-Tier Skill Evolution.
And that’s just the thing. The System, godlike as it is, is always watching. It always studies your experiences, judges you based on your feats, your achievents. And when you finally push yourself beyond all your previous limits, and have done so over and over again, your soul will be broken, and then reforged into sothing magnificent.
Now, as for how I managed to fuse my Master-Tier Warden of Stone with my once-lacking Physicality, that is a story for another day. Skill Fusion… that requires a bit more… proactivity from a Pathbearer.
-moirs of a Master-Tier War Mage
25 (I)
Master
Vitality Drain > 7
As it turned out, even a woman with multiple Master-Tier Skills could be surprised. And who could bla her? It wasn’t often that one was attacked by a set of skeletal armor—a set of skeletal armor made from the literal bones of the man it held a mont prior. A man who, in an apparent mont of fatal madness, unleashed all the blood and viscera in his body all over his opponent as if a final act of spite.
Shiv wielded his armor like a puppet, using its arms to strike at Harkness. When his attacks were launched off course by whatever strange skill she had protecting her, he attacked her from several more angles, and via different ans. The bone drill slamd into her back—and glanced off at an angle. The kitchen knife descended on the back of her neck but was thrown off course, cleaving nothing but open air. Only Shiv’s Vitality Drain did any true damage.
That was sothing even a Master-Tier opponent couldn’t resist.
But as her inner fla flowed into him, Shiv tasted just how much power her soul had. Her vitality was monstrous. It might have been the greatest amount of vitality he felt in a person so far. If the first raven Shiv fought was a raging inferno, then Lady Harkness might as well be the sun in the damned sky. And to his astonishnt, rather than writhing in pain while crying out in confusion like most of his adversaries before, she noticed him imdiately.
“Ah,” she said, her voice like thunder gracing his mind. With a single off-hand parry, she swatted his armor off course, shattered the blade of his kitchen knife, and launched the rounded edge of Shiv’s bone drill into the ribs of an unprepared Umbral. Shiv held his position and drained as much as he could, but then he felt her squeeze his mind.
His consciousness rattled and cracked in places. Shiv thought he knew pain when he experienced purification in the teleportation anchor. He was wrong. For the brief mont she crushed his mind, Shiv was agony. It was only because of Uva’s shrouding that he didn’t shatter imdiately. Even then, it felt like how he imagined pieces of steel slicing through the soft tissue of his brain would.
“Oh? You haven’t cracked yet? Impressive. Whoever made your protections is truly talented.” Harkness’s blade flashed. Two more clones of her suddenly appeared, swatting aside a wave of azure arrows and even knockingthe spells off course. Fire and lightning curved around the owl’s body, as if terrified of striking her. Through it all, she continued staring at Shiv, studying him with interest. “Well. Do continue. I want to see the depths of your capability.”
Pushing through the sea of tornt, Shiv planted both of his ghostly hands on her again and drained. But while he did, he turned his focus to where his armor lay. He rembered how she slew him last ti, stabbing at his exposed flesh and not the exoskeleton. Shiv extended his Biomancy field and fused the bones of his previous corpse with the armor. New ribs filled the gaps in the exoskeleton’s torso. He sculpted most of the remaining bone to create a dense layer of plate—and even inserted his newest skull into the chest. The excess matter he used to repair whatever nicks and fractures lined his armor. He also added bladed edges to his shoulders and elbows—so he could better slice and cut during a grapple.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Of course, Harkness noticed this too. She followed his Biomancy as she allowed him to drain from her, nodding her head as if impressed. “Well. It seems you’re still a boy indeed. How very… loud and outrageous. But I do like it. I have always had a taste for people who wear their nature openly. Like a moth has a taste for fla.”
Valor called out to her from his armor, but whatever the dagger said was lost over the chaos of battle.
Though the remaining agents of Aviary were being slaughtered and Yunni’s mana bomb was badly damaged, the Quest remained incomplete. Furthermore, with each gleam of Harkness’s rapier, another instance of her would erge sowhere, strolling off as if she was taking a leisurely walk while twirling her blade in a mock salute. Umbrals rushed her. Adam launched a tide of arrows at every clone of the owl he could see.
But Harkness was too arrogant—or lazy—to even respond with proper blocks anymore. She let spells and blades and arrows and halberds hit her over and over. And every last strike twisted violently out of her way, choosing to crash into the ground or tumble off in another direction altogether. It was like her body was maintained by a directing field.
Shiv found himself awed—and excited. If this was what it ant to be Master-Tier, then he couldn’t wait to find out what Montum Core would let him do—because he had a Master-Tier Skill now too, thanks to Harkness.
And so he might just have one more surprise for her when he resurrected from this death.
She watched as the shadows condensed around his body, sinking a gloved finger through the darkness as if curious about its composition. “How very interesting. You’re not dead at all, it seems. You’re a continuation of the sa vitality signature, even after the destruction of your material vessel.”
How did she tell all that at a glance? Shiv thought. Harkness’s eyes flashed with a surge of mana, and her green irises beca as if eralds beneath starlight.
“Deathless,” she breathed. She sounded almost… excited? “How apt. And you have skills that I cannot perceive? At least two Legendary Skills, then. Oh, poor boy, you tease my curiosity so. Fine. If the System won’t let see, I’ll just find out from your mind—wait, where did that Master-Skill co from? Your Reflexes… weren’t they just Initiate?”
Shiv didn’t answer her question as he resurrected. Instead, he called his newly-improved exoskeleton to him, the armor unfurling into petals of bone before closing around his fracturing shadow. He returned to life, already encased in a protective shell, but Harkness just humd and thrust her blade at his neck where the armor was thinnest.
Despite the strike being a nonchalant jab on Harkness’s part, it was still impossibly fast. Shiv blinked, stunned that he could almost track the incoming hit—even if he was still dramatically slower. Yet Harkness was a Master among Masters, and her blade split a clean gap in his armor. A clean gap that required more effort on her part to completely punch through to where his flesh awaited. Only then did Shiv manage to react. His Reflexes felt far faster right then, but he was still nothing compared to the owl’s speed—even the elental golem he fought earlier was faster.
For the briefest of monts, Shiv wondered if the System notification was wrong, if he hallucinated that Master-Tier Skill Evolution. But as he moved, he felt like part of reality moved with him. Then the first distortions appeared. They manifested as faint ripples around his body, translucent tides of energy crashing against him as if his being was a shore. A few other things beca apparent to him as well.
The world around him was slowing—and doing so fast. Spells and attacks previously too fast and hard for him to track were becoming observable, but more noteworthy was how the few projectiles that passed close by him stalled drastically as rippling currents of energywere ripped out of them before splashing into Shiv. But it wasn’t just the projectiles that were affected. Of all things in motion, Harkness slowed the most. The progress of her rapier stalled while Shiv felt his own Reflexes accelerate. Just enough to save his life.
Shiv felt the tip barely kiss his neck before he launched himself off to the side.
As he stabilized himself using his Biomancy, he closed the hole she made in his armor and called his bone drill back. Inside, it felt like his body was caging a growing thunderstorm. Sothing was building: a force that was only partially fed from his recent evasion.
Harkness staggered, her balance lost. She slowly turned to gaze at him a mont later, and Shiv realized all her clones were doing the sa. They weren’t even focused on the other combatants anymore, choosing all to zero-in on him.
“You had my curiosity before,” she began, rubbing at the tip of her rapier between two fingers. “Now, you have my keen interest.”
Shiv didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Shit,” he muttered.
And then she and five other clones practically teleported from where they stood, driving their blades into his armor. Once more, he felt her chip through his exoskeleton—but he delayed her points of penetration by actively concentrating and reshaping the bones using his Biomancy. At the sa ti, he sensed the flowing paths of her montum as her blades drew close to his body—sothing he failed to notice earlier.
Whatever absorption he perford during her first strike was purely instinctive. Now, his Reflexes amping up and a raging power rattling at his very core, Shiv focused on the waves pulsing out from her blades and reached out to touch them. A shudder of energy rushed through his form as he grasped and then tore the very montum out of her strikes.
Montum Core > 55
Parry > 24
Biomancy > 36
Three of Harkness’s clones staggered to an abrupt halt. All the motion in their bodies vanished—was sucked out of them into the building maelstrom of montum that was Shiv. However, her final two clones were rely slowed. Slowed because the raging cataclysm within Shiv reached an unbearable peak.
For a mont, it felt like the world stood still. With all the montum surging through him, Shiv found that his Reflexes were supercharged as well. He could practically count each of Adam’s arrows passing through the air, see the surviving force of Umbrals and Weaveresses trying to push through the owl’s clones to assist him, and read the astonishnt in Harkness’s wide, green eyes.
Then, she surprised him in turn by blinking. “Well. I suppose congratulations for your Reflexes Evolution are in order. Here, boy, let finish giving you my tal.”
And the remaining two Harkness’s clones thrust harder.
Shiv felt these blades slice through the dense knots of bone he composed and press against flesh. He tried to absorb more of her montum, but his insides flared with explosive pain. That was the limit of energy that his Montum Core could store for now—and he wouldn’t be able to endure all this energy for long. He needed to unleash it. Before it boiled him alive from the inside.
And so he did the only thing he thought was logical. He called the bone drill into his hand, picked the closest of Harkness’s clones that he stole all montum from, aid his weapon at her face, and released the storm inside.
An enormous blast of force exploded out from Shiv like a tidal wave—pushing the blades still sunken into his armor back out. A veil of sound burst around his body, and the air briefly combusted into flas, lighting up the dim cavern. Though the initial detonation of kinetic energy simply folded around Harkness’s many bodies, sothing very different happened as Shiv drove the tip of his drill into her mask.
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