Path of the Deathless

328 Patience

—Georges Archambault to Shiv328

Patience

It took Shiv way too long to figure out a solution to his water boiling problem. He kept trying to think of a way to boost his Initiate-Tier Pyromancy so that he could heat up the aquatic forest through magic, and when that failed, he started considering how he could steal the body heat from the various fish and transfer that over to the waters. But just as he realized the inherent stupidity in such an idea, the concept of transference clung to him. He realized how his inertial sheath was rattling violently—how the atmosphere combusted or ionized when he got fast and uncontrolled enough.

Ultimately, he didn't need magic. He just needed strength and vibrations—and he had both in ample supply.

But before he began, there was an insult he had to address. Shiv shot out of the water like a bullet, and he came to a sudden stop before Toasty. The sonic boom he left in his wake flung a tide of water over the Bread-Knight formations. A few of them were swiped right off their steeds, while others cried out in alarm, declaring they were soggy and unfit to be consumed by the Princess.

Toasty stared Shiv down with his chin held high and his eyes narrowed. “What do you want, Undying One? Have you come to admit defeat? Have you come to offer yourself to Princess Plum Blossom in redress of your insulting presence, of your disgusting, fetid nature?”

Said Princess leaned in from her mountainous seat, entertained by this little spat as she watched Shiv's attempts to cook a bowl of kelp soup, a bowl that spanned wider than a city.

A lazy grin clung to Shiv's face as he shook his head. “Nah, not doing anything like that. I want to make a bet with you. I think you'll like this, Princess.” He pointed at the Bread-Knight in front of him. “I'm going to bet that I can heat up this bowl of water in just a few minutes.”

Toasty did a double-take before laughing haughtily. "You bet what? I saw you earlier. You spent almost half an hour throwing little balls of fire against the surface. You are an idiot, a fool, a buffoon. I will take this bet. You have no hope of success.”

Shiv sneered. The Fae’s confidence would be his undoing. “Yeah? You sure? Because if I'm wrong, I'll let you use me as a horse instead of your current one. Until the Princess decides to eat me.”

The Anointed Knight fell into a trance of contemplative silence. “Come on,” Shiv prodded. “You can't say that you aren't offended by everything I put you through. I stuck you in that cage. I left you ignored for days. I used you as a shield. I abused you with my social skills. You were screaming like a battered—”

“Be silent!” Toasty cried, more to spare himself the humiliation of his experiences in the past weeks being recounted to his Princess than genuine rage. He looked around, glaring down the other Bread-Knights, as if daring them to respond. They kept their faces respectfully even, but Shiv could see their emotional cores coming alight with faint amusement. There was a hierarchy among the Bread-Knights, and the Anointed One seemed to rank highly, but that didn't mean the others were without socio-political aspirations of their own.

The Princess herself was openly delighted. She clapped her hands together, and it was like a series of mana bombs going off in the distance.

With that carefully planted psychological suggestion, everyone was squeezing down on Toasty, pushing him toward a destination from which there was no retreat—and where the cruelest of traps lay. He chuckled darkly. “Very well, then. I look forward to strapping my harness behind your back, Undying One. But when you are my steed, you will be a silent one. Only neighs and braying are allowed. No words, no complaints, no resistance, and I will ride you thoroughly until you are utterly spent.”

The poor, bread-made bastard didn't know how dirty that sounded. Shiv snorted despite himself. “Yeah, I don't think you have the stamina for that.”

“You dare doubt me? I've ridden hundreds of horses. My thighs and hips are like iron bands! Oh, I’ll not let go until you are utterly ruined!”

Shiv was glad neither Uva nor Adam was here to hear this. The teasing would have bordered on the verge of psychological terrorism. “Alright, those are your terms, but as for mine? Well, Toasty, if I do heat up that bowl in, say, under five minutes, I want you to eat something.”

“Eat something?” The Anointed Knight looked confused, but also a bit wary. “I've tasted your food before. It's uniquely horrible. It's part of the reason why you are still here, instead of being condemned to offer yourself to the Light itself.” Then slowly, his emotional core clouded. He seemed to realize that a most unwholesome meal awaited him. “What do you wish for me to consume?”

“Shit,” Shiv replied with a wide smirk. “A big happy mound of it, from all kinds of animals and me. Fertilizer for the greatest flower of the Summer Court.”

“What? No! Absolutely not! You can't possibly…” Before the Anointed Knight could achieve full outrage, he felt the weight of several stares resting upon him, the heaviest of which belonged to his Princess.

The gazes of the other knights who rode out with him glinted with conspiratorial considerations. Shiv was pretty stupid when it came to certain things, but when it came to matters of the heart and acts of emotional terrorism, he was a savant.

“I think this is a fair and entertaining bargain,” one of the bow-wielding Bread-Knights declared. “I am sure our Anointed Commander, who once held the skill of the Slumbering Uneaten, bestowed upon him by our illustrious and most corpulent Princess Plum Blossom, will be righteous and prevail in the contest against this…” They looked upon Shiv as they considered a proper insult. “...over-braggadocious fool!”

A raucous chorus of and , followed suit, and now, Toasty was being pressed closer to the cliffside of his own arrogance. If he turned back now, it was humiliation and shame. He would be unable to bear the burdens of his own honor before the eyes of his bored mistress, and that meant losing favor and suffering the loss of status, as it were. Status and favor that could be claimed by another of the Bread-Knights. But if he lost the bet, the end result would be the same, and he would have to eat a massive helping of shit on top of that. For what respecting Princess would let her guard be led by a knight whose legend involved a scat-eating skill?

Shiv was openly sneering at his victim. The best part was how the Anointed Knight couldn't do anything about this.

Scheming Bastard 14 > 17

“I… I… I… you… you… you…” the Anointed Knight stammered.

Shiv shrugged with all the innocence he could muster, which really wasn't much at all. “Odds are I'll still fail, and you'll get to keep your dignity. Frankly, the chances of you eating a mound of shit are pretty small. However, if I do succeed… I'm going to find all the living animals on this table, coax them into relieving themselves, and then I'm going to be the one who lays the cherry on top. I'll be sure to ruin my own appetite and make things easy to go down for you. I'll have a bad stomach—a real tummyache. Add my thing as a layer of cream rather than a solid hunk. I'm nice that way. No need to thank me.”

The entirety of the Anointed Knight turned to glass.

Sticks and Stones 93 > 96

***

Evanescia had intended to insert herself into Harkness and take charge of the hunt herself. But there was a part of her soul still cracked, an alien urge festering inside her, calling for her to end the narrative loops for good and set all the Fae bound to the Watchtower free.

She ignored it. Her soul damage would heal. She was sure of it. She had characters who were capable of performing such repairs.

In the meantime, she decided she wanted to check in with the Deathless. Surprisingly, he was the least troublesome of the trio.

And sometimes, the most ridiculously entertaining.

The strange thing about Udraal's boy was that he could be an utter idiot one minute, and a diabolical bastard the next—and his little plans always kept her guessing, kept her entranced.

Despite the miserable state of her soul, despite their defiant amateurs, the Usurper-Narrator couldn’t help but laugh as she cupped her face in a hand. “What a cast of colorful heroes I have received…”

***

“But again, you're the wise knight, after all. I'm really unlikely to succeed, so what do you got to lose aside from a bit of pride?” Every syllable Shiv spat struck an unseen tinder, and the sparks descended upon the other Bread-Knights, who caught on, pushing Toasty to accept.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“You have the measure of this knave, Lord Commander!”

“He's right where we want him!”

“The outcome of this bet is practically assured!”

“We are almost certainly going to win. What's the worst that can happen?”

The sheer pleasure Shiv experienced from drinking in the betrayal upon the Anointed Knight's face bordered the realm of lust. The final nail came as the Princess let out a giggle.

And suddenly it wasn't Toasty’s choice anymore. The decision was made for him, and now he had to suffer the consequences. “I… Yes, my Princess.”

He sounded on the verge of tears, but he refused to let them out, for weakness was punished before the Princess of Summer. With this fertile harvest come to pass, one could not lose their position. After all, the Anointed Knight had shamed himself enough by being whisked away when his Lady needed him.

“Undying One, Undying One, I need you to promise me something,” the Anointed Knight hissed, trying to get Shiv to stop.

“Yeah, I can't really do that right now. Gotta bowl the heat up.” Then Shiv shot away, accelerating fast across the world as he splashed down into the kelp forest once more. The water parted around him, and his sheer speed immediately induced a blast of boiling bubbles that spread out wider and faster. Shiv didn't accelerate further. Instead, he held himself in place and used his Bifurcated Processing to first augment his Toughness. A pillar formed, one that speared high into the air, glowing red-gold, like a beacon of defiance amidst this most strange and exotic realm. It grew harder and stronger, encasing Shiv and protecting him from the limits of his own speed and strength. He was going to need it.

In the moments that followed, he began to shake. He concentrated his tides around his body, causing them to turn and swivel. Soon he was spinning in place; the world became a blur, and he got faster and faster. His Pillar of Orichalcum rattled. The water around him shook violently. The once placid waves turned to turbulent tides, and the schools of fish fled in all directions, seeking the borders of this great soup bowl. Shiv crashed against the base of the forest, grinding through the soil and sand, creating a swirling mist that obscured him, but his pillar continued to shine through. He pulled himself slightly off the ground using his Shapeless Tides and then held himself there as he gritted his teeth and exerted his physicality to its maximum extent. Every overflow tide he cultivated was then spent in an instant, driving his acceleration to new heights, though it was his inertial sheath that did the bulk of the work. It was practically stretching and ripping parts free from his body now. The only thing stopping his dismemberment was the counteracting powers of his Heroic-Tier Toughness Skill.

He was a Pathbearer enjoying an arms race against himself. Everything needed to be in relative balance; otherwise, pain and death were certain to follow.

Pockets of steam clambered upward around him. He was moving fast enough to combust air now, fast enough that he was constantly generating shock waves that shaped displaced chasms in the ocean-sized soup bowl. More hissing bubbles tumbled upward around Shiv. He was feeling the burn too, mainly inside his skull. He wasn't in danger of an aneurysm, but there was still a burden placed upon his subconsciousness—an active and purposeful strain that made him feel alive.

He wondered how many other Chefs could perform such a feat of cooking. He wondered how Georges would have seen this done. Shiv wondered a great many things, but while he kept his eyes closed, his senses were open, and his Pyromancy, though underdeveloped, was still more than capable of detecting fluctuations in the temperature around him. The water still wasn't hot enough. He wasn't going fast enough. Shiv needed to accelerate. He needed to use more strength, more speed. His pillar remained bright, but the first fissures crawled across its surface as Shiv accepted pain as a price for the Anointed Knight’s promised humiliation.

It was piping hot when he finally opened his eyes again and stopped his vibrations. A feeling of hollowness swallowed Shiv. He had gone into a trance at some point, lost track of time. He had no idea how long he spent trying to boil the water.

But it was boiling.

He'd succeeded.

Inertial Overdrive 278 > 281

Pillar of Orichalcum 383 > 385

Blood oozed out from slight rips in his flesh. Even with his Pillar of Orichalcum, he could see minor gaps lining the red-gold tower around him. His inertial sheath was less a membrane and more a cloud of constant destruction, thundering with a cataclysmic yield of pent-up destruction. An intrusive thought forced its way into Shiv's mind. He wondered now if he accelerated into the Princess's flesh and discharged, would he be able to cleave a bloody chasm into her? Would he be able to slay a noble of the Summer Court?

Such a thing was tempting to find out. If his overall meal was judged to be insufficient, he would make an attempt on her life if only to fulfill his curiosity.

But for now, it was time to discover if he was the winner in his little bet.

However, the moment he tried to move, he discovered an unexpected penalty that came with his success. The inertial sheath was overloaded with momentum. It wasn't going anywhere, and every time he moved a bit more, it built. As he tore out from the water, water tension clung to him thicker like a chain, and a few thousand tons of displaced boiling water exploded up into the air like a rising fist the size of a small mountain.

Shiv remained in place even as the fist plunged down, but most of the water rose around him like a stream of steam, evaporating upon contact with his person.

Curled fingers of white-hot air rose free from his body, and Shiv turned. He used his Shapeless Tides to control himself, to keep his membrane compressed. Even so, it was a heavy battle. He had to devote at least 2% of his Legendary Physicality against his speed at all times. That was how much kinetic energy he'd stored up. As he stopped spending more overflow tides and focused on using them to contain his rattling person, he awkwardly glided toward the gawking Bread-Knights in jerks of movement. It was hard to control his speed and stop himself from tearing a gash across the air. He wasn't used to being this fast, and a slight slip would cause the air to ionize and undo all his work as plasma disintegrated the meal he was trying to make.

Still, he wanted to stare the Anointed One down to greet him eye to eye, face to face, as he discovered how much shit his enemy was about to eat.

The moment he saw the Anointed Knight's face, Shiv couldn't help but laugh. He looked like he had seen death. He looked like a man contemplating suicide. He looked like a knight who had been stripped of his dignity. His emotional core was a miasma of misery.

“So, how long was I under?” Shiv shouted to the Princess. His voice was barely louder than the constant thundering that went off around him. His inertial sheath made communication hard now. Despite this, Princess Plum Blossom heard him without any difficulty.

She held up a huge golden pocket watch, though it looked small in her hand. The Deathless did a double-take as he fell to the wave of Chronomancy radiating out from her mechanism.

The impression that he was just a big fish in a moderately sized pond on Integrated Earth cemented itself. Shiv knew there were other worlds out there, ones with higher mana thresholds, ones that he would have to face in the future, with the inevitable Incursion or World Quest connected to his death. But that understanding was mostly theoretical. Aside from Evanescia’s stolen abilities and glimpses at Udraal’s power, he hadn't faced anyone beyond Legendary-Tier. The gods were a different matter altogether, but they powered their Avatars to operate at the very peak of a world's ambient mana threshold.

There didn't seem to be such rules in the Fairwoods. Everything worked here, but at the same time, narrative laws reigned over material force. Power came second to character development and literary entertainment.

With that epiphany, Shiv’s A Glimpse of Perspective triggered. He caught a flash of something, something from the perspective of an omniscient deity. It glimpsed down at the Fairwoods, at the clock hands connected to the Broken Watchtower at the heart of this place. Across the great and vast realm of the Fairest, massive explosions enveloped the world, truly colossal explosions, great enough to obliterate Integrated Earth. These cataclasmic attacks were unleashed as magic spells, as strange artillery projectiles carrying apocalyptic payloads, or simply caused by entities moving so fast they were beyond Shiv's ability to perceive, appearing as thin tendrils of light.

But as every blast cleared, the Fairwoods remained unblemished. Not a tree was incinerated. Not a patch of land was cratered. Not a single building was defaced. Even the clouds remained in place, fluffy and blue or gray and sour with rain, depending on where in the Fairwoods the calamity originated.

Ultimately, it didn't matter, and the message was clear. Your personal power and the Tier of your skill were still respected. You could unleash that much energy. It just wouldn't matter. This place was not a place of matter. This place was a place of folklore.

And ultimately, no one read about a bomb breaking a particularly large piece of rock unless there was an emotional weight behind the shattering.

A Glimpse of Perspective 79 > 82

As the rush of philosophical insights faded, Shiv found himself staring directly into the massive eye of Princess Plum Blossom. She was leaning over the table, looking down at him, and he was so utterly dwarfed by her ocular organ that the absurdity of his current circumstance slammed down upon him once more.

Shiv chuckled. “It wouldn't even tickle you if I popped my sheath, would it?”

Shiv grunted in acknowledgement. If she was going to eat him, he would try to blow her up regardless. There was always a chance she was bullshitting, but in the meantime…

The Deathless pointed a finger at the Anointed Knight's face. “When I'm done trying to make a meal out of that,” Shiv gestured at the boiling bowl of ocean-sized kelp forest, “I'm going to go on a little trip, and I'm gonna find every living creature here. Every single one that's capable of laying a black and brown and filthy egg from the folds between their legs. We're going to give it to you. A promise is a promise, my Anointed Friend.”

“A promise is a promise,” the other knights repeated as a chorus.

Princess Plum Blossom echoed in a sing-song tone.

“A promise is a promise,” the Anointed Knight choked, his mind veering toward the sweet bliss of suicide. “Why…”

“See you soon,” Shiv whispered with a malicious rasp. With that, he speared through the air and splashed into the boiling waters once more as he considered his next step. First, he examined the jelly crabs, sinking low. Some of them were utterly gone, dissolved during his vibrational trance, but others still remained; however, a new problem emerged. The moment he got close to one of the jelly crabs, it tried to get away, but was quickly flung off the floor of the forest as it tumbled through the air from the shock waves radiating from his body.

There, it began to develop cracks, and death soon followed. It was basically crushed by the passive waves of pressure washing out from him, and that dealt damage to the surrounding kelp as well. To Shiv's surprise and fortune, however, the kelp themselves were of a sturdy make—far harder than most of the creatures. That made sense. Soft, weak vegetation would basically turn to slurry before the Princess could get to indulge in their flavors.

She needed something strong, something that would last. Of course, the kelp would be more durable than what might be found on Integrated Earth.

Shiv promptly swapped his Severed Shadow with his physical form. The vibrating body blinked to the other side of the table, casting ripples of destruction across the horizon. Cups, bowls, plates, and more were flung high in the air as a rain of descending shrapnel. Shiv felt the heavy impacts as a hail of plunging porcelain bombarded the great wooden expanse. He hoped none of the descending shrapnel would spill into his bowl, but that was a chance he had to take.

Still, the risk was minimal, and the distance between his physical body's current position and Princess Plum Blossom, considerable. He wasn't out of the Summer Court yet, but he would continue fleeing using his Revenant later. And suddenly, he was glad that he didn't have his Vitae golems anymore, because if he were still running a Vitaemancy Skill, then he would have never been able to escape from this place, would have never had such an overwhelming advantage. In the Fairwoods, the only thing that gave him a true edge was his Unique Skills. The levels he gained with those couldn't be reset with each loop. They were why, sooner or later, he'd find a way to escape. He was sure of it.

Right now, he just needed to be a little more patient.

Rather than catching the jelly crabs physically, Shiv reached out with the twelve heads of his mana hydra and swept through them. He seized their biologies and examined their damages. Most of them were already dying, drying rapidly. Few of them burned outright due to the protections allowed by their shells, but the rapid diminishment of the moisture and the sudden shift in temperature was fatal for them—and not in a good way; the jellyfish-like meat inside the exoskeleton grew dry and crusted quickly. They were dying too fast.

Shiv reeled one of the jelly crabs in and, with a casual flick of his arms, pried its outer shell open. Only bits of tissue remained. Its essential organs were practically vaporized, and everything else was crusting along its hardened ridges.

And while Shiv considered the jelly crab, something moved in his periphery. He turned and saw an entire school of fish hovering upward with their bellies pointed at the surface. Using his Atlas, he quickly realized that he had induced a sort of fatal fever in the fish, and the rest of them were going to die soon as well. It was a disquieting sight. Something about the ecological disaster he just caused made Shiv feel shame, and a little bit of resentment toward Princess Plum Blossom. A few gulps and a bit of flavor on her tongue came with a whole lot of death.

But weren't the appetites of humanity so different?

The fish were pretty well steamed; however, their scales were bursting free from their body as pockets of subcutaneous fat exploded in messy detonations. Shiv wasn't sure if he could preserve any of them either.

He released a few jelly crabs and used his Aegis of Assimilation to capture a few hundred fish. From there, he did his best to preserve their biological state. Suddenly, quite simply, a solution revealed itself. His Biomancy was a weapon against biological degradation. He could maintain their biological architecture even in the face of extreme environmental changes. He could keep them alive. These were injuries, after all.

The thought made Shiv grumble. The System had pushed him to this point. He'd picked up what he could along the way, but he was still overwhelmingly powerful, raw in strength and magical potential, but tragically unskilled and bereft of practical knowledge. His brief time at the university was interrupted by the System throwing random encounters and chaotic events his way. He still had a body there, still intended to finish his schooling no matter what it took, but there was something else now. The loop was a trap. This place was technically a prison; however, he could also make use of it.

He didn't know how fast things were progressing outside, if Valor and the others were trying to find a way in to save him, but if the narrative loop could be reset, then maybe, maybe this was a sign, a symbol of truce between him and the System. At least a place where it couldn't reach him so easily, where he could practice his non-violent skills, where he could enjoy and accept his deaths without throwing himself into one desperate battle after another.

Shiv realized. And with that, a feeling of serenity came over him as he began experimenting with his biological magics to ensure the flavor of the fish and jelly crabs.

The Chef Unwavering 82 > 84