I have seen once-hopeless Initiate Pathbearers beco reborn through the completion of a Quest. And I have seen Masters fall and shatter from the consequences of failure.
There is sothing every Pathbearer learns during their life: the System abhors the weak. The System abhors defeat. And the System wants you to struggle, to fight, to claw at the lid of your casket even as it is closing to reach one more level, to slay one more foe.
And every now and again, when the stars align and fate’s ugly face sneers down upon you, you will find yourself bestowed with a Quest through the divine or—in the most remarkable of circumstances—the System itself.
And the rewards you get from the System are staggering as well. For each person, it often creates sothing they need—or sothing that drastically boosts the effectiveness of their Path and skills. Even if they don’t realize it. These items can rarely be found naturally, unless purchased from a dedicated crafter. Or the reward can be an aweso flood of skill levels—enough to break soone’s bottleneck or send them into a new threshold after years of languishing.
But that is if you succeed.
When it cos to failure, the System rarely focuses on punishing you specifically. But it does punish you. It punishes you by changing sothing in the world, or upending a certain status quo. Because change invites conflict. And that, more than anything, is what the System thirsts for.
War.
-moirs of a Master-Tier War Mage
26 (I)
Victory
Harkness’s Psychomancy spell was a shapeless, colorless thing. It looked like a shifting, translucent net manifesting around her hand, and Shiv felt his dread spike. But then another spell smashed into Harkness’s first. The owl’s spell shattered into fragnts, and she glanced upward for a beat, smirking at the culprit.
Uva launched spell after spell of her own, even as her face turned into a mask of blood. Shiv’s stomach twisted. His shadows were forming, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. Harkness casually traced a few quick spells before launching them at Uva. The Umbral cried out with effort and strain, but Shiv felt sothing break sowhere, like a tremor of a fallen vase rushing past his feet without the accompanying noise.
The other magi tried to support her, unleashing all they had on Harkness. But the owl continued as she did before with Shiv, focused on a singular individual, her face awash with shifting expressions. “Hm. Good, good. Very thorough. How extrely skilled for an Adept—detail-oriented.” She created a large spell that expanded around her head like a crown. She slamd it down on the world—and for a mont Shiv felt the urge to kneel and obey.
Then, with a defiant cry that built and built, a counterforce impacted the crown like a falling axe. The oppressive urge to submit vanished as the crown shattered. Uva snarled as she burst another of the owl’s spells. But the way she blinked the blood out of her eyes, the way she swayed, told Shiv she was long past spent. Even he hadn’t strained his mana field to this extre before, and if she kept going—
Uva, stop! You did enough! Run! Get out of here! Shiv called out to her ntally.
“No,” she replied without hesitation. There was a resolve in her akin to cold steel. “I will not abandon you. I will not abandon my mission. I will not. If this is to be death, then so be it. But if you can do it, then I can too.”
Then a mory from her brushed his mind. It was a mory of terrifying pain and bitter-sweet wonder. It was of him as he endured the cleansing flas within the teleportation anchor, sacrificing himself to keep her and the other Umbrals protected from the purification process. Before that mont, she was fascinated by him, attracted to him, amused by him. But with that sacrifice, a part of her was in awe of him. Was enamored and wounded by him.
Now she wanted to see if she held the sa strength inside her. Because what Pathbearer didn’t?
“And yet you stand,” Harkness said, chuckling. She gave a slight bow at her Adept rival, indifferent to the other mages. “You trace a pretty little weave of thoughts, girl. You’re a seamstress as well, aren’t you? I recognize that thought process—that thought pattern. That, and I also took a peek at your surface thoughts while you were struggling to undo my workings. So much frustration. So much pain. So much yearning to find out if your mother was slain by soone like .”
The owl smirked. “I might know, but I’ll keep you in suspense. Maybe I’ll inform you after I finish shackling your mind.” She looked at Shiv’s breaking shell of shadows. “Not truly what I hoped for after sensing your skills, boy, but it's fitting. Two promising soldiers for the price of all my current forces. The System gives. The System takes. But I am always generous.”
Revenant > 4
Shiv burst out from his shadow cocoon, preparing to strike his enemy from as many directions and through as many thods as he could. She could be distracted and overwheld. She could be bled. He could kill her—as long as he was willing to die over and over again. But before the broken remains of his skeleton armor could reach him, she cut into him using her true blade: her Psychomancy.
Shiv heard Uva scream his na as she was forced out of his consciousness. His protective shroud cracked. Lady Harkness pried. It felt like soone was ripping his brain open down the middle. The pain nearly drove him insane. It wasn’t anything like physical pain—it didn’t last nearly as long, but the hurt ran so deep that it was beyond words to describe. Shiv still managed another step before he felt her full presence bear down on him. In that mont, as she tried to pluck through his personal history, he wanted to hate Psychomancy. But he failed. What he actually hated was the fact that she had this power while he didn’t.
Stolen from , this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Magic was bullshit. And Shiv wanted more of that bullshit for himself. Even now.
“Get… out…” Shiv gasped, clutching his skull.
“Hm. Resilient. Unnaturally resilient. I've only seen sothing like this a few tis. You seem to be absolutely devoid of genuine trauma. How curious. You have the mind of soone that had a chard life—yet that is most assuredly not who you are. And what’s this in the shallows? A building affection for… her?” And she looked up at Uva—the Adept Psychomancer pulling at her Master-Tier adversary to no avail, like a mouse trying to move a mountain. “Oh, how sweet. The seed of unblossod want and affection.”
There was nothing mocking in Harkness’s tone. She genuinely sounded happy to discover this. “You might not believe , but I’m really quite the romantic. But alas, this life of mine doesn’t allow anything beyond impersonal monts of the flesh, so we make do soti, vicariously. Perhaps you two can start sothing terribly taboo and forbidden when I leave you at Aviary. The instructors will hate it too.”
She suddenly lifted a finger and made a gesture. Four Weaveresses promptly collapsed behind her, their invisibility cloaks flapping as they started writhing and clawing at their skulls. She pointed again, and other mbers of the order cried out as well, wailing as she took their minds. And then, she looked at Uva. Uva, the Adept Pathbearer, still struggling against her, practically the last woman standing. The Umbral looked on the verge of unconsciousness, her eyes rolling while her body shook. But then she bit down and let loose two final spells before collapsing.
Shiv felt her body with his Biomancy, and her skull felt like it was on fire—and so much blood was rushing out from her. He wanted to try and heal her, but he knew that his touch would only ensure that she died. Godsdammit all! She felt alive but—
But his thoughts were his own again. Shiv realized that after a beat. A gap had ford in Harkness’s attention. It was like she was montarily blind to him. Shiv snarled as he rose. He drew on his Biomancy and Might of Mass once more as he slamd into the owl. To their shared surprise, he managed to pick her off the ground in a brutal takedown. To his continued surprise, he found himself on top of her, slamming elbow after elbow into her face as she blinked, frowning at the impacts.
Whatever Uva did, it sohow made the Master-Tier Pathbearer blind to his presence. She carved out wildly—her glowing blade ripping whips of blood out from Shiv’s now bare torso from the quantity of her strikes alone. Shiv snarled and continued raining blows down on her while using his Biomancy to bludgeon her Magical Resistance. Right then, Shiv was willing to die for good if it ant taking his enemy with him, and with each of his punches, his Montum Core climbed.
Soon, he was dodging and parrying so blind strikes—at least angling his body and inner organs to avoid taking a fatal wound. Harkness summoned more clones, their blades flashing out. Shiv felt several strikes punch clean through him, parting essential veins and arteries. He was a dead man again, but he was going to make this death matter.
Just as she started shaping a new Psychomancy spell, Shiv roared as his Montum Core hit capacity. He wrapped his Biomancy around his body, straining his field so hard blood erupted from all his orifices—uncaring if it killed him. He used that to accelerate every part of himself in tandem with Might of Mass as he emptied his Montum Core via a descending elbow that he landed against the owl’s jaw.
Montum Core > 61
Might of Mass > 68
Striking Proficiency > 23
Grappling Proficiency > 39
Diamond Shell > 76
This ti, her head snapped back, and he heard it—a distinct gasp of discomfort from her even as both his spirit and body practically ca apart with the blow. He used everything he had, and death claid him instantly. His reward was a front-row seat to the absolute destruction that followed.
His corpse deford and warped into a horrific shape as his elbow impacted Harkness’s jaw. The air completely ignited this ti—not just a brief combustion. A wall of force and fla swept out—and it was only thanks to the Umbral magi that most of the order wasn’t killed as well. Adam was flung off his feet and sent flying against the mana bomb—the mana bomb he still hadn’t shot yet.
And then there was Harkness. The webs beneath her tore as the spatial stability of the entire cavern fractured. It felt like the entire chamber was tilting at an angle.
But despite getting hit with a blow hard enough to snap even the hyper-dense webs serving as the foundations for an entire cave’s worth of spatial magic, all Harkness sported was a split lip and a scowl.
Yet, Shiv didn’t walk away empty-handed.
Biomancy > 44
Might of Mass > 69
Diamond Shell > 79
Montum Core > 63
Skill Gained: Psychomancy 1 (Initiate)
Shiv felt a third mana field expand around him—this one mainly encompassing his mind. He also had the displeasure of sensing how colossal Harkness’s field was compared to his. If he was a flea, then she was the entire sky. Her mana stretched beyond the point he could see—and Shiv wondered how Uva could contend with this monster at all.
But then he sensed another thing: there was a dense layer of magic coloring his mind, and he realized he was camouflaged within Harkness’s own field. Shiv’s astonishnt at Uva’s feat grew as he turned to regard the Umbral. Her field was huge too, encompassing a large part of the cavern they were fighting in, but he could still see the edges. She was ridiculously dwarfed by the owl as well.
Shaking off his admiration, Shiv reached down and started draining his enemy again. He tried to use his Biomancy field as a weapon again, but it felt raw, like a flayed limb. Every ti he moved it, he writhed in spiritual agony. I can’t be using that until it gets better, Shiv thought, and he focused on draining his adversary’s vitality.
By this point, Harkness knew sothing was wrong, and she adapted with rapid efficiency. Once more, she ford a Psychomancy spell—this one larger and more complex than the others. It shaped, twisted, and writhed, creating a rounded pattern that circled itself faster and faster, until it seed to move like a solid sphere. Then it slamd down on his field, rippling across it.
Shiv felt it hit his mind like a colossal wave flinging a small boat into the air. Suddenly, the coloring that hid him within her own mind was broken. He erged, a small dot in the domain of her Psychomancy, and as she pressed in on him, he struggled back. It was feeble, it was hopeless, but he still struggled—because that’s who he was; a pillar. Even if that pillar was going to break.
Once more, though, Harkness stopped. She observed him, blinking as she licked the blood from her lips. “You. I… forgot.” Her mouth fell open once more as an expression of subli delight spread over her features. “Well, well.” She smirked in the direction where Uva once stood. He saw other Umbrals dragging her away to safety, and his gut tightened even more. “I must have that one. As I must have you.”
The owl let out a breath as his resurrective husk began to solidify. “In the beginning, I thought you were just a reckless—albeit fearless—child, willing to die for whatever lies or glory Valor filled your mind with. Then I understood you have sothing special: sothing to do with your soul. Maybe you were an Animancy experint. Now, I don’t know what you are at all, Deathless—but I am so very keen to find out.”
His small field of Psychomancy mana flexed outward for but a flickering heartbeat—before she overwheld him, like a hurricane dragging away a singular raindrop. Shiv prepared himself to experience the inevitable pain of a ntal attack.
Yet, before Harkness could do anything further, a notification appeared in his mind, just as he resurrected for a second ti.
Quest Complete: Stop New Albion's Aviary from bombing Passage and crippling Weave’s critical teleportation anchors.
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