81 (III) Core

81 (III)

Core

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 104

It took the better part of three minutes of hitting, running, jumping from mind to mind, and then striking the strangecreature from new angles before its Magical Resistance finally crumbled. With each stabbing strand, Uva found herself digging a little deeper, dipping her awareness briefly into the odd being’s mind.

The knowledge that splashed over into her was discordant, alien, but ultimately fresh. Its mind was like nothing she had ever linked with—not even the Jealousy. In fact, the Greater Demon felt practically human compared to this thing.

It was called a Shoggoth. She wasn't sure what that was. But then again, there were countless creatures from many far-flung worlds, many strange places, scattered across stranger dimensions yet.

By now, the battlefield was in complete disarray. Confriga had unleashed the creature right upon the abyssal gateway. There, it conducted the bulk of its slaughter, pushing the Blood Horrors and vampires back. But at the same time, its limbs reached far, grasping the nearby vanguards from Confriga's front line. The defenders were not spared. Worse, the Shoggoth's many eyes unleashed beams of shadowy light that cut through sections of Confriga's army, beams that drew Pathbearers into the Shoggoth's body.

Inside, Uva could see them writhing, could hear their minds screaming as they slowly came apart. They boiled alive, their beings dissolving into the black mass that composed the Shoggoth. She wasn't sure what this thing was, but an instinctual, existential dread washed over her. The Shoggoth shouldn't exist here. Not in this plane, not in this reality, not anywhere nearby. She had no idea where Confriga got his sword, or what this monster he summoned truly was. But she intuitively knew, in a place deeper than her bones, that he could not be allowed to wield Absence against her and her companions.

When she finally tapped into this thing's consciousness, she would direct it against Confriga, and she would try to take that sword from him, no matter the cost.

"Stop it! Stop! Show yourself! Show!" the Shoggoth howled, and to Uva's displeasure, the sound came with an echoing chorus, everyone it had consumed howling from within it. The very nature of its being was wrong. But unfortunately for the Shoggoth, it still had a mind. And Uva directed every single one of her curling mana strands across all angles to converge.

They swept over the Shoggoth, slashing into it, collapsing around it in a tightening net that she squeezed and squeezed. Uva ignored the beginnings of mana strain as she pushed hard. And before she truly got exhausted, the Shoggoth broke, its Magical Resistance detonating.

But unlike the cracking of an ordinary Pathbearer, its external shroud splattered apart. No longer was the Shoggoth wrapped in darkness. The protective shadows burst away. Beneath, its true skin was slimy and slick. There were bubbling pustules and festering bumps that expanded across its entire body, and disgusting, intertwined strands of drooping flesh dangled before its many mouths, around its many eyes, flapping from its many reaching limbs.

She saw how the Pathbearers within these pustules were slowly being dissolved moment by moment, turned to unattuned mana. And as she wove herself into the Shoggoth, she found herself surprised that she needed literally all of her mind to wrestle its ego into submission. It wasn’t just how large its consciousness felt, but how many parts made her mind recoil—how many parts she had to seal away to protect herself.

The Shoggoth began lashing at itself. "Let go! Let go! What are you doing, creature? Obey me! Kill it!" Confriga roared from above, but the Shoggoth thrashed chaotically. Its massive limbs smashed through the bridge connecting the first building to the Abyssal gateway. It burst apart, but the limb cracked and splattered. It was bleeding, and the Pathbearers contained within its pustule leaked out.

Suddenly, they were screaming, falling through the air, traumatized but still alive. Confriga held his blade up. Absence shimmered unnaturally. Darkness shouldn't be bright

It was like trying to tie a rope around water in certain places. The monster leaked through and into her, and her mind reeled at the intrusion. But not for long. Psychomancers learned how to control their own minds first, and to block off things they couldn’t deal with. It was essential when facing mentally ill adversaries. She applied the same techniques here. She made knots with her own mind, blocking away the parts of the Shoggoth that were too alien as she tapped into the parts that she understood. It took all of her Parallel Thinking to achieve the feat.

Parallel Thinking > 59

And it took every bit of her Parallel Thinking to keep it suppressed as well. It wasn't human at all, but it was still close enough to her that she could understand some of its impulses, especially hunger, desire and hatred, and curiosity. But it was immense. Even its mind felt cancerous in some ways. Just bulbous clumps of ideas and thoughts clustered together. The best thing she could compare its consciousness to was that of an extreme schizophrenic that was also psionically infectious in some ways.

Uva winced. She suspected she might be among the few Psychomancers in Weave that could deal with something like this.

WHO ARE YOU WHO ARE YOU EAT YOU DIGEST BURN LET GO–

There was no break in its thoughts. The Shoggoth’s mind constantly jumped from impulse to impulse. It struggled against her, but she severed the link between its ego and its body. She assumed that position, tightening herself as she held back a snarl of effort. But it was done. Just as she had melded her mind with the Jealousy and secured it under her control, so too did she enchain the Shoggoth, albeit partially.

And suddenly, the beast stopped. It turned away from the badly battered and mauled forces of the First Blood. There were still Blood Horrors and vampires splashing through the gateway, but they were clearly fewer than before. Most of the Master-Tier vampires were setting up layers of blood wardings against the Shoggoth that would allow them to maintain a final foothold in this gate.

But Uva was no longer interested in them now. She suspected that she did more than enough damage to the invading forces of the First Blood. So the Shoggoth turned, and even as Confriga slashed his long blade through the air, splitting parts of the Shoggoth open, hurting it brutally, she directed it forward. And it drew from all the Pathbearers trapped within its being.

The Shoggoth sapped their very skills, dissolving them into raw ambient mana, spending them as it blasted through the air. For a moment, the Shoggoth wasn't a Master—it was Heroic, and it moved at a speed unnatural for a beast that size. The air combusted. The Shoggoth struck the center of Confriga's army, and a blast wave of immense heat crashed over them, an avalanche of an inferno greeting the ever-crashing blizzard unleashed by the mana core. The sheer struggle between fire and ice released a dense coat of fog in the air. As the monster came to a halt, Uva found the Shoggoth almost withering, strained and weakened.

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And that's when Uva learned another bit about the monster's unnatural nature. It didn't truly have levels of its own. No, it had stomachs, organs meant to store a skill. Most of them now were listed as unfed. Unfed because the Pathbearers it consumed were gone. Each Pathbearer consumed was converted into ambient mana, and Uva was horrified to realize it was literally spending their skill levels as currency.

In fact, the Shoggoth seemed to have its own interface, but the notifications it got were so alien and incomprehensible that she had to turn her mind away. Every time it used a skill, it was spent. But the Pathbearer usually fully came apart into a slurry of ambient mana before a skill was entirely used up.

The existential dread Uva felt spiked to new heights. Whatever this creature was, she suspected it was born to kill Pathbearers like her. And now it needed to feed again.

"So feed," Uva commanded. And despite its struggling, despite its eldritch nature, it still had hunger and desire, and Uva bent that to her will most of all.

It lashed out with its eyes. But without the shadowy layer of its Magical Resistance shrouding it, she saw that it was actually projecting viscous nets out from the center of its irises. Nets that were actually its many stomachs. It caught Pathbearers within those nets, and the sticky substance immediately grasped them tight and began to sear them in body and soul.

The sudden betrayal by the Shoggoth caught Confriga off guard, and also his forces as well. "Stop! Stop, you mongrel creature!" Confriga yelled. "You are mine! Your Eldest offered you to me to serve me! Stop!" He was cutting violently, severing large portions of its flesh. The Shoggoth was screaming inside Uva. But she didn't care. This wasn't her body, nor was this her monster. She was just borrowing it.

And then Uva had the Shoggoth digest all the Pathbearers it consumed. She fed all of their power into it, focusing on one skill and one skill alone: Reflexes. The Shoggoth leapt up into the air like it was a living mana bomb going off.

The customs and processing building ceased to be, entirely dissolved from the sheer kinetic force rippling off the hundred-meter-long creature's body. All but the hardiest Pathbearers within Confriga's defender core were dissolved into bloody mush. Even the Master-Tiers were thrown back and sent reeling across the gate.

That hit might even stun Shiv for a while, Uva thought proudly. Then, she considered the thought further. Well, until he dies and just… gets stronger. Profoundly unfair in my opinion, but quite effective.

Confriga, meanwhile, reeled back as the Shoggoth slammed into its former master, roaring more in frustration and rage than actual fear. He tried to lash his blade down at the Shoggoth, but it bit down on his arm first with a jagged mouth.

It only ended up breaking all its teeth.

Confriga tore his blade out a second later, and the Shoggoth was almost immediately split in half. Moreover, she felt something clash against the Shoggoth’s very soul.

"Cease!" Confriga roared. He drove his many-petaled wings into the Shoggoth, and they pierced the beast's flesh deep. Without Magical Resistance, it suffered the impact directly, and the Shoggoth combusted from the inside. But it didn't have organs like a person did. No, it was mostly made up of strange nerve centers and those pustules. So it fought on, unburdened by anything but pain.

And since Uva wielded it, pain was relegated to the Shoggoth while she maintained a clear head.

"You are meant to obey!" Confriga punched the Shoggoth. For a moment, she expected just a hard impact. However, where the Gate Lord's fist struck, a channel formed—a channel of ever-building force. It drove a deep wound into the Shoggoth's flesh that just kept going. And though it endured for a moment, a hole was blasted clean through the Shoggoth.

The remains of digested Pathbearers blasted out from the other side. The Shoggoth screamed. Uva turned the creature’s eyes on Confriga next. Viscous nets splashed over the Gate Lord, but the Vulteg let out a roar as he flexed his body. A colossal shockwave of force sent her and the Shoggoth blasting across the gate at agonizingspeeds. Parts of the Shoggoth tore away as it was driven against a distant plaza of Gate Theborn. Its arms were dismembered from the impact, and its body was burning from how fast it was flung. It tumbled several more times before it crashed body-first against a tower, which was enough to send the entire structure crashing down on the Shoggoth. Jagged beams of reinforced metal split into its hewed body, splitting it in half entirely.

And the Gate Lord let out a roar of absolute fury in the aftermath. And it was then that Uva realized the Gate Lord was over five kilometers away. But Confriga didn't have any time to deal with the Shoggoth.

For the first blasts of Biomancy crashed against him. She heard him grunt in discomfort. Tapping into the mind of a mercenary fleeing from the battle, she saw a swelling tsunami of flesh, jagged teeth, and. wounds splash into his remaining forces. The First Blood was taking advantage of the opening she caused.

And that pulled Confriga's attention back to the true battle at hand. Uva tried to make the Shoggoth rise, but it was simply too broken.

Without Pathbearers to digest, it had no more Toughness. And so it lay there, slowly bleeding its vile fluids onto the plaza. But it still had breath inside itself, and it could still shout. And at that moment, Uva considered a new and final, asymmetric angle of attack.

An angle that might make up for her not managing to take Confriga's blade out of the fight.

She had the Shoggoth shout a declaration across the city. "Gate Lord Confriga has abandoned us!" it roared. "The gate is falling! The First Blood is inside! The gate is falling! It's falling! Abandon all hope!"

The Shoggoth's voice choked off, but the words it did manage were loud enough to echo across the entire gate.

Uva untangled herself from the Shoggoth. Or at least she tried to. The complexities of its nature were too much, and with a frustrated groan, she pushed herself out forcibly, as she did with the Dragon-Knights. Its inner body burst apart, every single pustule lining its flesh splattered apart as Uva emerged, staggering into the coldness and the light.

Turning back, she saw how the Shoggoth fully melted away into fetid, festering bile.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 105

The smell was horrible, and her Magical Resistance suffered constant damage from the sheer coldness unleashed by the mana core above, so Uva got aboard her shield and prepared to flee until she could find another body to jump into.

But then the mana core flickered, and it shook, and with a final flash, a notification entered her eyes.

Desynchronization in progress: Lesser Mashal Confriga is no longer recognized as [Gate Lord]

And Uva smiled. She smiled as she got on her shield and sailed under the districts, underneath the bridges and plazas, avoiding notice. She sailed as Confriga howled in absolute outrage. And for the first time in days, the temperature in Gate Theborn began to climb. She grinned in relief.

That would—

The Stranger’s gaze is upon you.

Uva frowned. Stranger?

Skill Gained: Eldritch Insight (Master)

Eldritch Insight > 1