I should have died. I should have died. The Outsiders… They should have claimed me like the others. They should have…

  But they didn't. I… I am recording this on my Diviner Compass for posterity! Brother, if you ever find this, it wasn't your fault. It was mine… I passed into some place where they refused to go. I can see them now, outside the crevice of this cave, if this is even a cave. The walls here are too stable; they're not made of recursive biomass. I thought it was a stable point in the Outside, in this chaotic, nightmarish place. I thought it had been a location from our world pulled over. But when I felt the walls, they were smooth, cold to the touch. This is not natural. This is metal, alloyed. Someone made this place. Someone created this refuge, this sanctuary. And for whatever reason, those fingers won't come in. There's nothing blocking them from coming in. There are no wards placed over this place. There are no spells, there's no defenses. Nothing. But they're just staring at me. They refuse to draw closer. It's like there's something in the air.

  But it's not just the Fingerlings. I feel like I'm getting weaker as well. I tried using my Analyze skill on the metal. It didn't work. I received no notifications.

  It hurts being here. It hurts. It feels cold. And it feels like something is drifting further away from me. Further and further… My Physicality is… fading? I've lost too much blood. Ascendants… Why does it hurt so much? Why does my flesh feel so soft… I’m an Adept. My skin should…

  …

  Wait, what's that? Is someone there? I can hear you! Come out! I can hear you creeping around in the dark!

  What are… Wait… are you a person? Oh, thank the Ascendants! I thought—

  [Neuro-Shocker Firing]

  —Recording of Hero-Enchanter Dustin Merrielmel

  307

  To Break a Curse [IV]

  Shiv's first lesson in learning to trigger his Eldritch Physiology skill started with an autopsy. He wasn't sure when or how Hymn had managed to secure one of the Stranger's Pinkies, but lo and behold, the eldritch monstrosity lay dead within one of the gene pods in the Court Leviathan's bowels.

  Once, this place was used by the First Blood to spawn uncountable blood horrors and experiment on prisoners. Now, it served a new purpose and a new master as well. Behind a translucent membrane, further shielded by a series of Biomancy spells, Uva, Adam, Roland, Shiv’s Severed Shadow, and Valor watched on, protected from direct exposure. Within the flesh-crafting chamber itself were Hymn and Shiv, looking down at the Pinkie. The three were shrouded by a dim glow of overflowing Biomancy mana, and the slick walls that surrounded them glistened with a layer of glossy mucus. The biomass of the pod resembled that which might be found inside someone's inner mouth.

  Though soft to the touch and easy to lacerate or bruise, the gene-pod healed quickly—it was imbued with a substantial regeneration—and could also reach out and link itself with any organic entity through threads of Biomancy mana. From there, the biological architecture of the bound creature could be changed to suit the Biomancer’s desires. With nothing more than an offering of flesh and organs, new blood horrors could be created.

  The Pinkie, however, didn't work the same way. Its body was shrouded in a weave of micro-spells, like a flea caught in a magical web. Yet its nature was aberrant—unified, but also desynchronous. As Shiv studied the many small shapes that made up the constellation of the Outsider’s molecular biology, he found himself speechless and confused. The Pinkie didn't have any separate organs. It didn't have different patches or architectures that denoted blood from skin or muscle. It didn't have any systems running inside its body, either. Every single micro-spell was of the same shape. They were all connected to each other. They were all of the same size as well. The only difference was how easily they shifted from place to place.

  And that wasn't even getting into the vivisection itself. There was nothing of substance inside the Pinkie. It was just a sprawling mass of bubbling black particulates. Even though the Pinkie was dead, the particulates continued to flow and blend. Clumps of darkness slammed together, fusing back into shape. The incision made down its torso quivered, trying to close. Even dead, it seemed to have a natural inclination toward wholeness. Shiv didn't understand why. It didn't have any kind of mind to guide it. It gave off no life force. There wasn't even any magic. Like practically everything to do with the Outside, the eldritch physiology of the Pinkie made no felling sense.

  "You said this thing was dead?" Shiv muttered.

  Hymn nodded. "Most certainly. It is severed from the Stranger's control, and that paltry peanut that comprises its own mind has also been obliterated. No need to worry about it suddenly resurrecting and killing us." The Headmaster paused and considered Shiv with a muted smirk. "However, with you, I suppose that is a valid worry. You and the Outsiders really are more alike than you can imagine. The rules really just don't apply to any of you."

  Shiv remained on guard. He scowled down at the two-meter-long finger-shaped monster, prepared to strike it down if it came back to life. During Blackedge's time on the Outside, the Pinkies had gained a terrible reputation—one that eclipsed both the colossal Recollectors and the Titanic Indexes. While the latter two were regarded more like natural disasters, the refugees of the town hated and feared the Pinkies like the predators they were.

  Unlike their larger brethren, the Pinkies were capable of being stealthy, and worse yet, they enjoyed devouring and then using the temporally displaced screams of their victims to draw more prey away from crowds. According to Uva, they could temporarily appear as someone they'd recently consumed by chronomatically flickering between their present and their past. Things got bad enough that some more paranoid townsfolk deliberately chopped off their own pinkies, as if afraid their hands or fingers would betray them to the Stranger.

  Shiv side-eyed the Headmaster. "Do me a favor, Hymn: Never compare me to this thing again."

  "Ah. Scorn. An appropriate reaction when it comes to the Outsiders. But I will grant you something more than that. I will grant you the knowledge to use the power you've taken from them. In the same way they have defied the natural laws, you can as well." The elf hummed. "Udraal really must’ve done something special to your soul. Eldritch Physiology is most commonly acquired by Void Dragons or other creatures that repeatedly feed on Outsiders. You said the skill appeared when you used your Biomancy to assimilate some of the Fingerlings?"

  Shiv nodded.

  "Uncommon, but just as well. Understand that Eldritch Physiology is not an attuned skill. There is no lore to speak of. There is no lore to deform. It is a skill that transforms you physically, that changes your body into the same composition as that which makes up this here Pinkie."

  "So I'm going to turn into a chaotic soup of darkness, eyes, and pointed fingers?" Shiv asked. "Not sure if I want that. I'm already bothered by how ugly I look compared to Adam. If I turned into a messed-up finger thing, you're going to be practically insufferable."

  "You mean positively insufferable?" Adam's muffled voice came through the magical patterns lining the walls of the pod.

  "Yeah. That."

  "Oh, I'll guarantee you'll be much uglier and more nightmarish than the Pinkie," Hymn replied with a laugh. "It looks the way it does because it is an extension of the Stranger's will. Eldritch Physiology is more directed by what you think you should physiologically look like. Only the skill tries to materialize that look using ingredients derived from your natural biological makeup."

  Shiv tried to process that information. "So if I think I have a coat, it's going to make me a coat made from my skin?"

  "Skin, teeth, muscles, tendons—anything, really. The aesthetic will be there, but the materials and design are fundamentally recursive and abominable. Because ultimately, the Outside doesn't understand patterns reliably. Always remember that it is a place untethered from all but thematic concepts and unformed laws. The beings there refuse to be contained within patterns. Frankly, I could lecture on them for a hundred years, but it eventually becomes a practice of processing nonsense, and you don’t strike me as the academic type."

  Shiv wasn't sure if he should be offended. "Hey, I'm literally enrolled in your academy."

  "You've barely taken three classes, boy. And from what I can tell, your writing, math, and other rudimentary learning skills are sub-Adept. You don’t have a Logic or Physics Skill, either."

  "Let’s just say I had aggress—uh—arrested development?" Shiv turned to his friends for confirmation. Adam offered a thumbs-up.

  Hymn hummed. "I’m not judging. I didn't learn most of my basic skills until I was over ten. In fact, I didn't even know how to wipe myself until I was twelve. Clothes continued to remain a mystery until I was thirteen, however."

  Sometimes it was hard for Shiv to tell when the Headmaster was bullshitting him for giggles or actually being honest. "So... your parents had you streaking around naked until you were thirteen?"

  "Not exactly naked, it's just that the placenta of Outside touch-beasts aren't regarded as commonly accepted attire in polite society. My mother also demanded I wear a corset made from her bones to honor our family." Hymn’s expression darkened. "She insists upon it even now, though she's been dead for an unreasonable length of time."

  Shiv grunted, refusing to internalize anything the Headmaster had just said. "That’s rough, man. Anyway, how does this skill work?"

  His pure callousness made Hymn laugh.

  Comedy 13 > 14

  Shiv gestured at the Pinkie. "Please don't tell me I have to wrap myself in some messed-up beast's womb meat. Actually, does that feel good?"

  "Oh, yes, like a very comfortable glove around your body. It's soft and insulating. It does smell terrible at times, though. Feels a bit slimy too if you don’t like that. But no, you don’t need to do that; that’s for another ritual entirely. Instead, I’m just going to kickstart the skill by having you inject the Pinkie’s biomass into your body."

  The Fingerling’s corpse continued to bubble and shift. Pitch-black matter flowed in sinuous rivers. The thought of letting that tar-like substance inside him made Shiv’s stomach churn. Wouldn’t be the grossest thing I've shoved inside myself, though.

  “You know, a Recollector dumped some of that stuff inside me,” Shiv said, thinking back to the brawl that destroyed Gate Theborn. “Felt like something was growing inside me. It hurt like a bastard, like my organs were trying to escape my insides."

  Hymn nodded as he'd described the most natural feeling in the world. “Ah, yes, that’s also a function of Eldritch Physiology. It burns through biomass at an alarming rate, so the Outsiders tend to be… quite gluttonous as a result. Spiritually as well. Aside from the Outsider Gods, most of the lesser abominations are unable to sustain themselves in terms of mana or material. Their souls are incomplete, in a sense. But don’t worry about being consumed from within. It should go the other way around this time. I think. Worst case is death, and I understand that’s rather beneficial in your case.”

  Shiv huffed. The Headmaster wasn’t wrong.

  And so, he shrugged his self-doubt aside and plunged a head of his mana hydra into the Pinkie. His Aegis highlighted all the aberrant qualities of the Outsider’s nature, and an unsettling sensation scuttled out from within Shiv’s soul before seeping out under his skin. The transfer occurred with a sharp stab of pain as Shiv breached the insulating inner layer of his Biomancy field meant to protect him from biological attacks or, more often, his own mistakes. The Pinkie burst apart in ropy trails of sticky darkness. Shiv jabbed the ends of the unraveling Outsider directly into his body and felt his insides turn to lead. An immense weight coursed parallel to the flow of his blood as a secondary architecture began to layer itself under his biology.

  Scrying into his own biology, Shiv observed a terrible but enchanting sight: The complex shapes and structures that represented his organs were changing. The eldritch biomass he infused was bleeding over into his cells, lining his bones, coating his muscles—and ultimately absorbing them. But what he saw wasn’t what he felt. Aside from a crawling of static dancing along his nerves, Shiv felt normal. And that disturbed him. From what he was seeing, his stomach should be missing by now.

  “Should I be in pain or uncomfortable? Because I’m not.”

  “I have no idea,” Hymn said. Shiv suddenly noticed how the Headmaster had a floating quill and notebook hovering beside him. “Eldritch studies are closer to interpretive art than a proper lore or science. And your soul is quite frankly an aberration as well. So. Wait and see.”

  “Hymn. If I grow a placenta out of my asshole or something, I’m ripping it off and ramming it up your ass.”

  Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 125 > 126

  Then, for no particular reason at all, Shiv’s hand started melting. Dollops of flesh began to sway like lengths of descending wax. As his skin came down, Shiv found the insides of his fingers to be made from a chainmail of orichalcum-tinted teeth. Red-gold fangs of enamel were riven together in a mocking replacement for bone. But as his other hand spilled apart, he found it to be a mess of tumorous tissue and teratoma. Soon, the rest of Shiv’s skin detached from his front—and then shifted to his shoulders. A cape of sloppy, flayed skin drifted behind Shiv as he stood, a mess of slatted teeth, bone, and hardened tumors. His exposed ribs resembled jagged blades. His elbows and knees had stiletto-like extensions that gleamed bright with a tinge of vitae and cutting aura. The lengths of his forearms, knees, and spine were curved and edged like cleavers, and further ripped with an intent to cleave.

  Hymn took a step away from Shiv as he studied him. “Hmm. Interesting, interesting. But also, this makes sense.”

  “Makes sense?” Shiv asked, using Psychomancy in place of his now missing tongue and throat. He gazed upon himself with growing disbelief. “I don't even have any tissues in my neck anymore. None of this makes sense. I’m some kind of… of… skeletal knife-cancer monster.”

  “Because that’s what your legend understands your body to be,” Hymn explained. “A pseudo-skeleton that wants to rip and stab people. The cape, however, eludes me.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “I’m proud of you for not vomiting, Adam,” Uva said from the other side.

  “It was a near thing, watching his lungs turn to sludge. But I think I can answer the part about the cape.” Adam cleared his throat. “It’s probably because the damned dimensional cape has been bound to Shiv for so long that he doesn’t feel right without it.”

  “I think I can move it, actually.” Mustering a bit of concentration, Shiv directed his skin-cape back and forth. It slithered and glided through the space around him like a tail—or a whip. With a thought, Shiv tangled it into a dense series of knots and struck the supple walls of the gene pod. Blood squirted out from the point of impact. A jet of red left a trail down Hymn’s back. The laceration placed upon the chamber healed in an instant, only for Shiv to unleash a barrage of lashing strikes that opened more cuts everywhere. Sprays of hot red fluid rained down as he lashed his skin-cape around in a delighted frenzy.

  “Yeah! It feels pretty good. Like I’m just moving my arm around.”

  “How grand,” Hymn commented, drenched in crimson splatters. “This is an effect of your recursive biology. Though Eldritch Physiology isn’t exactly a shapeshifting skill—“

  The Headmaster’s lecture was interrupted as Shiv’s inner arm erupted in a branching mess of new fists and jagged bones. “Whoops. Shit. Not sure how that happened.”

  Eldritch Physiology 5 > 8

  "As I was saying, your biology is now recursive. You can't reliably shape your form into something like a dog, a cat, or a cuttlefish. But you can grow and create additional versions of your existing biology at any moment. It does cost biomass due to how unstable it is, but you don't need to worry about cancers. Every bit of eldritch mass is the same as another bit. It's practically a desynchronized unified organ."

  "Does that mean if I cut my own head off, I can grow another head?"

  "Yes."

  "Wait, can I grow more eyes right now? You know what? Don't answer that. I’ll try it myself.” His jagged body shivered in anticipation. “No cancers, huh? This is gonna be great."

  Thrilled by the possibilities offered by this new skill, Shiv commanded his flesh to change. Previously, any unstable reconfiguration of his biology would cause a cascade of fatal mutations at best. Now, thanks to his Eldritch Physiology skill, those restrictions were no more. But rather than growing a massive cluster of limbs from his arms or turning his body into a forest of blades, he decided to enhance one aspect of himself that was still desperately lacking.

  Shiv's baseline awareness left him vulnerable. He didn't see far enough. He didn't see wide enough. And he lacked all the spectrums of sight an animal, or someone with a dedicated skill, possessed. On top of that, he wanted to stack more senses together without easy access to his Voidmantid armor—which now seemed somewhat obsolete in a variety of ways.

  I’m gonna give myself some new eyes first. That’ll give me, hmmm… Insight. Yeah. I need a bit more insight, don’t I?

  He suppressed a snicker and got to his glorious task. There was no pain as parts of his flesh opened, unveiling a new set of eyes. He felt more adaptable and flexible than ever before. It was like he could control every aspect of his body, like he could feel his very cells. And they responded to his mind intuitively. There was no intellectual capacity involved when invoking the Eldritch Physiology skill. Everything was a facsimile of actual organic tissue, and whatever he invoked mentally materialized on him physically a moment later.

  There was just one problem: he couldn't see out of his current manifestations.

  "Hymn, there's something wrong. I tried to grow some eyes inside my ass to see what it looks like inside. I think I grew the eyes, but I’m not seeing anything."

  Both of the Headmaster's eyes twitched. "Is your ass perchance bright on the inside?"

  Shiv paused to consider that. "No?"

  Hymn held out both hands open in front of him and said nothing else.

  "I kinda forgot about that," Shiv admitted.

  "Not an uncommon mistake," Hymn replied. "I recommend growing eyes along your exterior. Since you don’t have the Darksight Skill, you’re likely not going to be able to see anything inside yourself. You can’t use your Physiology to make up for missing skills. There’s only so much cheating the System will allow its lesser kin."

  "Lesser kin?" Uva asked from the other side of the protective wall.

  "Oh, yes, I’m quite certain the System is an actualized Outsider God. Or at least behaves as one might. Consider: humanity and a section of reality existed before the System. That suggests the most likely hypothesis for the System is an Outsider God that sees the world through strife."

  A long gasp of suffering escaped Adam. “That sounds so miserable that I think it’s more than likely to be true.”

  Shiv provided a nice segue to the conversation by lopping off his own head. He didn't use a knife or his Last Morsel. Instead, he simply slammed the edge of his arm against his neck. Even his baseline Toughness felt like little more than salmon under a kitchen knife. For the first time in Shiv’s life, his head rolled off his body, but he remained alive. Deprived of most of his senses, but alive. He could still feel things, but sight, sound, and smell were all gone.

  It’s… actually kind of peaceful. I think I want to stay this way for a while. Headless life is pretty good…

  Alas, his peace wasn't to last. Something prodded him, striking his consciousness and pushing thoughts through. “Shiv, are you alright?” Uva asked.

  “I'm more than alright. Pretty nice, not having a head. There's nothing to bother you. No bad smells, no bad sights, no noises that make you flinch. It's really peaceful. You should try it…”

  But while he remained in a state of beheaded tranquility, Uva was far less willing to detach such an essential part of herself. She might have strained her mind and mana to their very limits, but self-mutilation still disturbed her.

  Done soaking in refreshing silence, Shiv compelled his body to grow a new head. But instead of reforming it where it once existed atop his shoulders, he opened up a crevice within his chest and nested his skull there. The first thing to appear was his mouth. It tore open but offered no blood. His ears were muffled. However, they pressed against what felt like the ridge bones of his insides. He wasn't exactly sure what those were, since his lungs and other organs had now completely dissolved. But he would have time to figure that out later. His eyes erupted out from the substance of his biology like twin islands surfacing beneath a cream-colored sea. He added a throat somewhere inside his body to be able to speak. And then, finally, he remembered he was supposed to have a nose.

  With the ensemble completed, Shiv began shuttling his head from place to place. His body was like sand before his will. Everything that was classified under his physiology bent to his touch in an instant. Shiv's head surfaced like a buoy from his back, his shoulders, his armpit, his ass. Finally, it resettled in place atop his neck.

  "You know, this is pretty fun, actually."

  The Headmaster gave Shiv a genuine smile. "I know, right?"

  "Oh gods, their mental illnesses are synchronizing, Uva," Adam choked out.

  "Our mental illnesses," she corrected flatly.

  "Well, I don't bloody want a skill that can make me push my head out from my ass."

  "Now you're probably going to get it," Uva replied, doubly reassured. "You know better than to annoy the System, Adam."

  "Felling Hells…"

  "So you experienced no discomfort or pain at all, did you?" Hymn asked Shiv.

  "Nope," he replied. "Not even a little. Actually, even beheading myself didn't hurt that much. It felt… Well, everything just kind of feels ticklish, actually."

  "I see. You've taken to this transformation well. Some people describe this as claustrophobic, and they often exhibit suffocation-related symptoms. Have you suffocated often?"

  Shiv thought back to all his deaths. There were many, but suffocation? "Oh, wait. I did suffocate a couple of times when a cave biter sat on me. That wasn't very fun. But this doesn't feel anything like that."

  Hymn nodded. "Good, good. I think we should move on to something more strenuous now. Stress testing."

  "How's that supposed to work?"

  "It's quite simple. We're going to stand outside and have a group of orcs try to kill you. To keep going until they succeed. Along the way, we discover if you have any other eccentricities or special privileges in relation to this skill. I also want to see how easy it is for you to simulate someone else's biomass. That's also a benefit provided by Eldritch Physiology."

  Shiv grinned. "Say no more. Ripping people apart and stealing their meat is pretty much every day for me."

  ***

  "I can't believe it. Shiv… you’re actually a full cockroach now. This is… Broken Moon, I think I'm going to throw up. I'm going to throw up right now. How is anyone supposed to kill him now?" True to his words, Adam actually looked three shades of green.

  But while his complaints flowed like bile, a cacophony of joyful violence unfolded far below where he hovered in the sky. Spells descended like falling meteors before him, bombarding the place where Shiv stood, which was a crater one kilometer deep and ten times as wide. Once, the earth was comprised of black and rich soil lined with a veil of ash and decaying bone. Now it was glass.

  A fork of lightning painted a path across the sky. But rather than being a spell of pure Aeromancy, every bolt held spikes clasped at its end. From a distance, they seemed like metallic needles. Yet as they drew closer, each revealed itself to be a hundred-meter-tall spire charged with ferromagnetic energy. Shiv was little more than a flea beneath their descent. The first struck the ground, and waves of glass rose into the air like shrapnel, causing a rain of jagged blades to fall for leagues across. Then came the second and third spikes, each landing one atop the other. The following ten impacts followed in a cascading chorus. Rather than being a ladder of needles, they became hammers upon the first spike, driving him deeper and deeper into the ground.

  In scant seconds, Shiv found himself driven kilometers deep into the parted ground. Without his Pillar of Orichalcum strengthened, the sheer kinetic energy imparted by the magnetically accelerated towers was gargantuan. The damage saw his head, arms, and legs bent in impossible directions, folding badly enough that he would have sustained crippling fractures if he were still a normal organism. With his Eldritch Physiology, however, breaks, lacerations, and minor ruptures did no damage at all. He snapped his limbs back into place. His head sank down into his body and popped back out without any cost.

  With an almost contemptuous shove, he launched the many towers pressing upon him off his body. His Shapeless Tides flung them back into the air, and they tumbled past the clouds and beyond sight. One of them sailed a bit too close for Adam's comfort, and the Gate Lord was forced to dodge. Out from the deep chasm rose the Deathless, unharmed, unburdened, only coated in dirt.

  Shiv shrugged casually. “I think we should go back to cutting and incinerating attacks. Maybe some of those dissolving spells too. Right now, all this concussive stuff isn't really doing anything at all.”

  He could almost hear Adam gagging in the distance, trying not to lose his lunch.

  "Monstrous," Uva declared, agreeing with Adam. "Absolutely monstrous. Shiv, the Heroic Orcs have been attacking you non-stop for an hour. Just how much of your biomass do you have left?"

  He stopped and examined himself as more attacks came up from all directions. With the magi shaping their next round of spells, the Vanguard and Shadows came, bringing weapons and skills to bear. Colossal hammers impacted Shiv, sending him sprawling across the ground. He kicked up a cone of devastation. Through it all, his expression remained unchanged. Getting hit still hurt; his back still caved in. However, his sunken flesh soon re-inflated, and it was like he had never been struck at all. Shiv didn't even try to regain his bearings. He let his momentum bleed out naturally. And then a wave of jagged shadows erupted from the ground, biting into his ribs, digging against his torso.

  The darkness shifted much as his Eldritch Physiology did. It turned into a chain of saw blades dragging against his flesh. Yet, even at baseline, his Toughness was hard to shred.

  A miserable grinding sensation rattled Shiv’s body, and that was the only discomfort he suffered.

  Shiv's retaliation was far more potent in comparison. Ebbing waves that split and severed erupted out from Shiv's curving ribs. The bones folded out from his body as swinging sabers, their bends gleaming the bright red of Vitae; the air around them quivered with distortions that could hew any form of matter down to its quivering marrow. Where the shadow saw failed to bleed Shiv, he carved the darkness asunder—and then some. An orc spilled apart in several pieces, splattering crimson and gore across the ground. As Shiv walked over the remains, it was further minced down to little more than diced bits and bloodied mash.

  Some other orcs tried to regain their momentum. Shiv ruined that by growing more blades out from himself. New, edged lengths of bone ruptured free from his arms, and his cutting aura began cascading in all directions. Orc Vanguards bifurcated themselves as they slammed into Shiv. They were pieces of butter being flung against an upraised blade of unparalleled sharpness. The following barrage of spells was a bit more difficult to rupture through, but bleed and break the spells did.

  Then, from seemingly nowhere at all, a part of Shiv was wrenched away from his body. A moon-colored slash split the land from over the horizon and took the upper half of his body. Once more, the bliss of being headless returned. It actually took him a moment to realize he was missing his right arm as well.

  That was a pretty good attack. Cost me a fifth of my biomass. But guess what? It still isn't fatal. Shiv loved Eldritch Physiology. This was where he wanted to get to with his Biomancy: to easily re-mold and rebuild his body on a whim. To survive beheadings and dismemberments like they were slight inconveniences.

  In an instant, his head regrew, his arm erupted out from the hollow socket that remained, and he was back in the fight once more. A bit of him had been shorn away, but he was still alive and would remain alive so long as a critical mass of biomass remained.

  Shiv scanned his surroundings, trying to anticipate where the next strike might come from, but he soon chided himself as he realized he had new options available. He grew eyes all over his body—and immediately felt a headache come on. Seeing from all directions was beneficial, but also chaotic and overwhelming. Much like with controlling multiple bodies, a human was not meant to process so many things at once. Shiv bestowed the burden of that on his Bifurcated Processing—but let out a surprised yell as his body ignited from within.

  He didn't have time to decipher why. Another moonlight slash was coming toward him. This one so vast it was practically the size of a descending tsunami. Should it strike him, Shiv didn't think there would be anything left of his body to regenerate from. So he let himself burn and focused on reshaping himself instead. His arms and legs bled into his torso, everything pooling together. His head shrank back, blending into his shoulders, as a portion of tissue extended out from his forehead, bending back to make a curved tip.

  He rendered his entire body sharp, and he flared bright with Vitae and an edge that could butcher a soul. With that, he drove himself forward like a dagger seeking to greet the moonlight slash edge to edge. Tides accelerated along Shiv’s sides. The world before him unraveled into an expanse of all-consuming silver. At the same time, a constellation of siege-tier spells began cleaving into the flat sides of his body. Beams of Pyromancy and more stripped bits of him away, and he was being ground down as he burned. But what boiled him the most still seemed to be his Bifurcated Processing. Whatever had gone wrong earlier caused him to consume himself from the inside.

  Maybe it's because of my recursive biology, Shiv thought. Maybe it's because every part of me now does the work of my brain. There's no single organ; everything suffers the same if there’s no concentrated point of failure.

  And with that, he had learned that even incredible skills still had brutal downsides. But the weaknesses of his Eldritch Physiology were nothing compared to the martial feats it allowed him to achieve.

  Like splitting an enemy's cleave down the middle. Somehow, Shiv had used his Severed Shadow skill to cut and cut. Blades weren't meant to be split down the middle, but Shiv managed. Worse than that, he also achieved a perfect parry, and thus both halves of the moonlight attack went sailing back toward its sender.

  A chain of levels followed. A spill of notifications filled Shiv's mind, and there they remained, even as his senses winked out, even as the last bits of his being were boiled away. By the time there was only a third of him left, he dissolved into an incoherent slurry, no longer able to sustain his own existence. A second after, even that turned to dust.

  Death claimed Shiv, but death claimed Shiv because of his own mistake. Because he suffered a uniform consequence for using one of his most reliable skills. That was a lesson in understanding his new nature, his new capacity. To achieve maximum effectiveness, he would need to switch between his Eldritch Physiology and baseline biology.

  But one thing was certain: Shiv really wanted to level his Eldritch Physiology skill as much as he could, as soon as he could. He wanted to see what evolution followed and what other benefits it might bring.

  With that, his mind drifted toward Merrielmel and the Slipgate, and the most reliable means of improving his eldritch skill.

  There really wasn't any consequence to losing his expendable bodies. He would come back every time. It would make him better. It would make him stronger. And it would prepare him for the future, for his restaurant, and for all the other problems to come.

  Sometimes, it was good to remember why being a Pathbearer was just godsdamned felling awesome.

  Eldritch Physiology 8 > 15

  Return to Sender 108 > 110

  Pillar of Orichalcum 295 > 299

  Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 509 > 510

  This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul 166 > 169

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