92 (II)
Radiant
Slowly, Adam's eyes widened as he turned to regard the core. Its color had changed entirely. Rather than a consistent grey, it was a shifting aurora. Mana spilled out from it, dissolving into the gate. Yet, it was of a strange color, a color that Adam couldn't ever recall seeing. It resembled a particularly dark shade of purple. But then, as it changed once more, something happened. The purple began to crack. The mana core reconnected with Adam, and slowly, it started taking inspiration from his being. Because, as the gate had once been pierced by the Stranger, he could feel its influence bleeding over into him, and his history bleeding over into the core in turn.
It began to shine, a blinding radiance unlike anything Adam had ever seen in a mana core. It was azure blue mixed with the corona of a rising dawn. It was the color of Adam’s eyes.
"What? What is happening?" Adam said.
"The core will undergo decay due to the damage suffered by this gate," the Starhawk explained. "However, its nature has been changed. It has undergone a unique incident: something that has never before happened in its known history or yours. This core is now a Unique Core.”
Adam stared on in awe. "Cores can be Unique?"
The Starhawk looked down upon Adam. He had a feeling that the god's human head was smiling under his helmet. "Indeed. Just like how you can gain a Unique Skill if you survive an impossible experience, perform a truly novel feat, or perhaps get nudged in, you will see yourself shaped by the System's hand."
"The System," Adam wheezed. He didn't fully understand.
"Indeed. It made sure that the Stranger could escape me. And it deliberately weakened the boundaries between dimensions to allow its entrance to begin with.”
"Why?" Adam whispered. “All for strife?”
“Because there was an opportunity for evolution. Because it desires constant, eternal evolution, and nothing inspires change more than desperate conflict. Usually, the System can casually hold the great eldritch entities at bay. The greater the Outsider, the stronger their allergy to mana. But it allowed its resistance here to thin just long enough for the Stranger to breach the core and to affect you. And then it called to me. It sent me and several other gods a Quest to save you. I responded. And the Stranger was the one that paid.”
And then, a list of notifications loaded before Adam as he doubled over. Something was igniting inside him. The fragments left in him by the Stranger were merging with his soul, becoming skills, mixing with his mana. He could feel the change, and it hurt.
Adam’s jaw clenched, and he struggled to stay upright. "Godsdamn the System," he muttered under his breath. "There’s no time to rest. Not even a single moment of mercy…" His voice trailed off to an exhausted whimper, and the Starhawk let out a sigh of pity.
"I fear I understand you more than most, more than you can possibly think. But take heart and stand now.Ascend!” The Starhawk smashed a fist against his star-forged cuirass, and a sound like a great bell chiming rang out. “Soar! Defy! Righteous blood flows in your veins, Young Arrow! And a noble architecture has become your character. This world will seek to break you down. The System cares nothing for goodness, for the righteousness that men do. But I do. We do, Young Arrow! Because even should strife fall upon us, even should the heavens be unkind, we do not need to be. Strength is beyond cruelty. Strength is above it. Strive for strength. Be yourself in defiance of the world. It seeks to lay you low. Prevail regardless. We shall speak again soon. My true self awaits you… at Blackedge.”
The deity’s projection disappeared in a flash of brilliance, and Adam sucked in a sharp breath of air. His insides felt like they were on fire, but rather than burning, he felt parts of his soul get reforged. He felt a new power flood out from his being. Suddenly, a brilliant azure sun pulsed out behind Adam, flaring over his head like a crown and brightening the world around him. He felt the sun. It was bound to him. It was a part of him, an extension of his very soul, forged from a broken piece of the Stranger that had been purified by the Starhawk’s arrow. A fragment of eldritch power blunted by divinity melded with Adam, and it changed him just as it changed within him, acclimating itself to his legend, his very soul.
Skill Gained: The Righteous Dawn Prevails 1 (Unique)
The other fragment continued to merge.
The azure sun’s light wasn't just a thing of heat and brightness. There was a power to it, a power that extended beyond a mere lore of magic. There was something divine ingrained in it still, and that divinity allowed him to spot Uva laying somewhere just below him.
The light glinted against her shield, and it hovered over her, expanding wide into a dense layer of floating fragments. Adam could see the Dynamancy Core showing, and underneath it, Uva was utterly flat. Her body extended across ten full meters of space. More than flat, she was practically like a rope in some ways. Her fingers extended like cords, and they were still spooling outward. And she was writhing, whimpering. He'd never heard that from her before. Well, aside from when she overstrained her mana.
Adam landed beside her, and just then she drew a sharp intake of breath. She blinked, and she looked up. She then took on a nature of awe and wonder as Adam Arrow descended. "Uva," he said, "are you all right?" He examined her and tried to find any wounds on her body. Parts of her shield were badly dented, but aside from that...
"My mind is wounded." She tried to reach up to clutch at her head, but parts of her shoulder wiggled like someone swinging a rope. More of her unspooled. "I think… I would like to lie here for a while," Uva whimpered. “I think something tore parts of my…” She stopped talking and grimaced. The remaining pieces of her shattered armor barely clung to her. She was going to need a replacement.
Adam gathered her up into his arms, and she still drooped around him, but slowly she began to tighten, turning like a cord. He didn't feel her presence like a snake coiling around his body, but rather like she was just leaning against him. She still weighed the same. It was just that, as he examined her, it was like she was moving oddly, moving in directions and across spaces he couldn't...
He shook his head. Both Uva and Shiv came out of Gate Theborn's capture utterly transformed. He was the only one still standing, and even then, it took a direct intervention on the part of his patron god to do so, a situation engineered by the System to enhance his power as well, to save him.
It is empowering me for Blackedge. It wants me to fight. It wants more struggle. If I'd died just now, then the Stranger would have gained something. And Uva and Shiv… If they managed to escape, they would have never let it go. But then, if it had taken over all of us, we would have been used against the world anyway. There is no way the System can lose. But it can make greater gains in one circumstance over another.
"Adam," Uva muttered.
"Yes?" Adam said.
"Why are you... Why are you glowing?" She noticed the sun hovering behind him. "Why do you have an azure sun drifting behind you?"
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"The System," Adam sneered.
"The System?" Uva said.
"I got claimed by the Stranger," Adam explained. “But it was a trap by the System. An opening for the Starhawk. And now I have a Unique Skill.”
And just then, his other skill loaded.
Well, not exactly a skill.
Feat Gained: Smite the Wicked (Unique) - Allows the Pathbearer to infuse one of their attacks with absolute lethality after they slay a hundred beings who have committed the vilest of deeds.
“And a Unique Feat,” he muttered.
She laughed. “I think I… there are notifications… Hm.” Uva swallowed. "The light of your sun… It is making my skills… It makes me feel better…”
Adam blinked. "What?"
Suddenly, Uva sobered. Her eldritch eyes glowed brighter. "Yes, my skills are growing. The levels are increasing… Your sun is making me stronger." Adam paused, and then he felt at the dawn following him, at the triumph of righteous light. Adam tried directing his sun’s brightness, and he managed to channel a beam directly into Uva. He focused its brilliance, straining his very soul to guide the star's glare.
Uva gasped. She gasped as her Psychomancy mana threads exploded, more threads shearing out from her. She went from being a spiderweb to a literal jungle of Psychomancy, and then more threads sheared back inside of her. She began to pull at the parts of her own mind, sliding pieces back together, fixing things, stitching things.
"Keep—keep going," she breathed. She immediately reformed back to her three-dimensional self, and a look of utter exhilaration washed through her. It was more open emotion than he had seen in Uva's face than ever before. "Keep going." She laughed. "It feels... It feels incredible."
Adam tried to pour more, but he groaned. The sun strained him immensely. It was a stressful power to wield when he focused it, when he made it flare, but it was a power that enhanced everyone around him. What happens if I run into an enemy? Adam thought. Would it enhance them too?
Intuition told him otherwise.
Thanks to his vector wings, he arrived back at the Surface Gateway in mere seconds. His acceleration was weightless—reactionless. Through it all, neither he nor Uva even felt the slightest hint of turbulence.
As they landed in the middle of the plaza, he found two mercenaries tending to Shiv. The Deathless hadn't died, but his condition looked worse than before. He was pale. He was spent. His eyes were blinking rapidly. Adam could tell he was on the verge of unconsciousness. He was on the verge until Adam's light fell upon him as well.
Shiv gasped. His Biomancy exploded out from him. Several nearby Pathbearers also had an obvious response. Some of them grew larger, their muscles swelling. Others became faster. Many felt their magic explode out from their body, growing more potent in a matter of moments. People stared at Adam. So many people. And their eyes were locked on dawn hovering just over his head.
But not everyone was so blessed by his presence, for some among the masses burned. They cried out, their bodies coming afire beneath Adam's azure dawn. Their flesh did not melt, their skin did not blacken, but their soul simmered where their material bodies did not. Adam felt them wither, felt their bodies weaken, felt their strength lessen, felt their magic shrink back into them. More than a few were Jump Mages. Their Portomancy shriveled practically back into their bodies. Some gasped and collapsed entirely. Entire groups of mercenaries suffered an adverse reaction just at his very coming.
And as they burned, Adam felt his Feat trigger for the first time, flashes of their ill deeds blasted into his mind. He gained near premonitions of the vile acts committed by the people around him, premonitions and an urge to strike them down, to feed the wrath lurking inside him—unleash his first smite.
He clenched his jaw but barely held himself back. He wouldn't kill them, not yet, not without a tribunal. If he slaughtered them now in front of so many, it would be misconstrued. And he would not lose his newly obtained lordship because he was hasty, because he was hateful and rageful.
But this power… He was starting to understand what this power granted. It let him know who committed an act of evil. It let him know, and it fed him. It fed him with a building power as he struck and burned at the very spirits of the vile.
Suddenly, Shiv shot upright. His wounds were still severe, but the massive gash on his chest was ever so slowly beginning to close. And to Adam's astonishment, some of his Necromancy burns flaked away as well.
The Righteous Dawn Prevails 1 > 2
"What the hell?" Shiv breathed. "What the hell did you just—" And he noticed. He noticed the burns flaking away from his hand, the first growth of new and healthy skin revealed underneath. His eyes widened.
Adam reduced the flare he was sending at Uva, and she let out a gasp. "More. More—" She grabbed at him, and then she blinked as if just realizing what she'd said. "Sorry, it was intoxicating."
"I know," Adam said. "I could feel… I could feel how you all flourished in my light… Or burned…”
And still, some people were writhing, fleeing from his light. Adam clenched his jaw. And then he channeled his azure sunlight directly into Shiv. He focused his power, and the Deathless flinched. An entire section of his soul wounds began to mend at a crawling pace—but still far faster than before.
Shiv laughed. “What the hells happened while I was down and out?” He looked at Adam’s wings and blinked. Before he could speak, he noticed the mana core had changed colors as well. Adam hadn’t even had bloody time to examine the core’s status.
“System,” Uva breathed, staring greedily at Adam’s hovering sun.
“The Stranger tried to eat me. The System allowed the bloody bastard to get close. Then the Starhawk fired an arrow across realms, and now you’re looking at a Unique-Tier Pathbearer.”
“You?” Shiv said, narrowing his eyes sarcastically. “I don’t know. You still look frail. Are you sure you evolved?” Adam narrowed his eyes and cut off the sunlight. Shiv doubled over, clutching his body. “Shit. Fuck. Okay. You’re Unique. Please, great Pathbearer Adam, just turn the light back on.”
And Adam did. And it felt good. And he grinned as Shiv let out a sigh.
“That’s… that’s all three of us.” Uva frowned. Just then, she made eye contact with Shiv, and his expression hardened.
“Your eyes,” Shiv rasped.
“A gateway to another place now,” Uva replied. “To the Outside. And… when I dove into the Recollector’s mind, I got something else as well. Another skill…”
“You did?” Adam said, surprised. “What is it?”
Uva looked uncomfortable. She eyed the many people staring at them. “Not here,” she said telepathically. “Best that I show both of you where there are fewer prying eyes. And where it won’t affect anyone else.”
“That bad?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” Uva admitted. A cold anxiety radiated from her. Uva didn’t much get scared, but after all the shit they went through…
“Wait, shit!” Shiv threw the bedsheets off himself. Uva did a double-take as she realized he wasn’t wearing anything. Siggy’s eyes bulged as her mouth fell open. “Can Hu. Valor. Adam. We need to go. We need to find them.”
The Young Lord realized why Shiv was so animated, and raw worry exploded inside him as well. “Shit. I think I saw a few teleportation anchors. They were damaged but intact. They should be fine. They should be.”
Shiv growled. “System, you piece of shit, do not fuck us now.”
Adam’s worry worsened. “Don’t do that.”
“Why?”
“It might send another eldritch entity or god after us.”
The Deathless glared. “Good. Let them come. I got plenty of fight left in me.”
The Gate Lord just stared at Shiv and cut off his sunlight again.
Shiv folded over, and Uva turned bowl-shaped and caught him before he collapsed.
“Right,” Shiv wheezed. “No provoking fate. At least for now.”