Thanks to the gifts offered to them by the Lineage Cores and the malleable and ever-enduring nature of their bodies, the embraced of the First Blood are unfettered from consequence, free to use their bodies as a canvas, their blood as paint, their very foundational biology as a means to discover the great mysteries of what life can be. And that is the truest gift the Lineage Core has given them: discovery without consequence. Discovery with consequences for all other people who are not them.
What matters mutilation if you can simply reform? What point is there in fearing disease when you are afflicted by none truly? And what fear do you have of physical ruin when, at the allowance of your elder, a simple bestowal of power on their behalf can bring you back from the brink of utter destruction? If the vampire's core is not destroyed, they remain truly whole and can return regardless.
And it is with this blessing that they have created their armies, their artworks, their kingdoms of blood and flesh. They have delved deeper into the nature of Biomancy than any other faith in the Abyss, and perhaps any surface nation as well. And though the war beasts they have forged are not truly Pathbearers, few leave an encounter against the Blood Horrors not feeling shaken by their numbers and the grotesque quality of their features. And few can deny feeling a sense of awe as they lay eyes on a Court Leviathan for the first time.
-Sire and Sired: The Chain of the First Blood
100 (I)
Cremation
"You—you will not escape your fate. Even if you kill me, even if you murder me and crush my core, you will not escape your fate," the vampiress Biomancer muttered. Her face was a jigsaw of ruin, blood dripped from pieces of jetting bone, and her limbs were missing. Her chest had been flayed wide open, but Shiv still couldn't find her lineage core.
Her Biomancy was potent, and to make matters more annoying, she'd fused it with a Stealth Skill. A few minutes prior, she dove into the Court Leviathan and melded with its flesh. Unlike all the other vampires who attacked Shiv directly, she ambushed him, and she probably would have killed him too, if not for his Chronomancy, paired with the fact that, approximately thirty seconds ago, he found and broke the Chronomantic pylon that sustained the wards within the beast.
When Shiv hit the Biomancer, she didn't even know how her limbs got broken, how her face was caved in. She didn't know why her companions were all suddenly dead. What she did know was that this fight was lost. He could hear it in her voice and taste it in the way her courage shook. His Dread Aura quivered in delight.
Dread Aura 88 > 89
And she was now the last surviving vampire. The last surviving anythingwithin Shiv's Court Leviathan. There were no more Blood Horrors around. No bloodsuckers. Not even the large maggots remained. He made sure to pulp them all. He had seen enough maggots for today. Especially maggots that burst out from his flesh.
"We will come for you," the vampire hissed, shaking as she tried to regenerate.
"Your core is in your head, isn't it?" Shiv guessed. He pressed his Biomancy against hers, but she was a stronger Biomancer, even in this broken state. And more than strong, she was unnaturally focused and masterfully skilled. He couldn't get a read on her inner biology at all. And he rolled his eyes, though he appreciated her stubbornness. “Yeah. That’s right. Better to die clawing at your casket than just go with a final sigh. Least I can say that about you.”
“Save your compliments.” She let out a whispered laugh. "When Hero-Elder Kraid finds you, when my great mentor lays his hands on you and peels your flesh into a sculpture, he—"
"Wait, did you say Kraid?" Shiv interrupted her.
She paused. "You know of him? The great System-favored?"
"Know of him? I killed him about a day ago. Well, maybe less." Shiv shook his head. "God, it's been a long-ass day." He looked up at the sky, and he frowned deeply into the bioluminescent ceiling kilometers above. The top half of the Court Leviathan had been blown open again, though it was slowly fusing back together. "Yeah, more like twelve hours ago, maybe. He put up a bit of a fight, but he was nothing compared to the guy that came after."
The vampire's mouth opened and closed. "You lie. You couldn't possibly—”
Shiv was tired of the “you couldn’t possibly” talk. He stomped her head in, and beneath his heel, he felt the delightful crunch of a Lineage Core bursting apart. A flood of Biomancy and blood gushed out around his feet. The floor beneath him used to be made from stone and lined with carpet. The room he was in probably belonged to Malteek. His personal quarters, judging from all the finery. There were statues here, some kind of cage with a collar inside. Shiv didn't really want to know much about what went on there, but there was also a small library, filled with books on Biomancy, if judged by the diagrams, and then books mostly on smut, based on the pictures.
Malteek was kind of a freak.
Shiv collected all the books he could. The Biomancy for his own use. The smut to bully Adam with at some point.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelBin for the genuine story.
There were also a bunch of other things, but they didn't quite survive Shiv’s inertial detonations. A shame, but potentially not so much. He really didn't like the First Blood. Everything they did was sour with violence and depravity.
The best thing he did to this Court Leviathan was wiping the vampiric scourge from its body. Figuring out how to do the other stuff with the Leviathan would be a longer-term project, but operation “no vamps alive” was done. Didn’t stop the Leviathan from spraying a constant stream of diseases out from its body, but hey, good for leveling.
Plaguefueled 59 > 61
His Plaguefueled Skill had climbed two more levels since last time, but now he was no longer gaining. He probably needed to get something special to gain more levels in it now, but it was a good skill. And it also showed him his priority. It also adjusted his learning priorities for Biomancy. He needed to learn how to inflict plagues on himself, as many plagues as he could, as potent and deadly as they could be. That way, his body could assimilate them, but he needed to be a bit careful.
There were costs to being Plaguefueled.
“Like being drunk as hell,” Shiv muttered. He hadn't been drunk that many times in his life, but this was unmistakable. His head pounded like he was hungover, and a sense of lethargy filled his sinews and muscles as the plagues began to die down. Simply feeding himself the same plague in rapid succession also didn't work because his system simply assimilated them, got used to them. It was like drinking the same amount of alcohol after your body had been conditioned to its degree. He would need to go harder, or, potentially, and this was an assumption, he needed to wait a while before he could absorb more plagues and feel the buffs gain strength again.
With his last enemy slain, he shot up into the air and sailed out from the open wound, dangling himself before the Court Leviathan’s face. He waited for it to heal its newest injury. Once it regenerated, he deactivated his Creeping Void so that it could see him. The beast regarded him for a moment, its massive bulk shaking, its four kilometers of length shuddering and sending massive blast waves through the air. To him, they were like a slight breeze caressing the face of a mountain.
For a few moments, it stared at him, and he stared at it. He wondered if he needed to wrestle it into submission, to use his Dread Aura to intimidate it into obeying him, or something. But it seemed surprisingly… vacant. Vacant of thought, vacant of reaction, vacant of self-desire.
The monster's mind was nothing but impulse and chaos. He briefly interfaced with it again earlier, using his Psychomancy, trying to control it. He failed a second time, but by that point, it was less because it was too chaotic and insane. Rather, he just didn't understand it. It was too alien by far.
He didn't know how Uva did any of this. He would probably need to have her instruct him on how best to pilot an animal's mind.
There's another thing you can give me, he muttered under his breath. Psychomancy training. I think you're the bigger windfall here, not the new skill.
The Court Leviathan didn't respond. The reason it probably felt insane earlier was that a good portion of the vampires had been fused into its body. And, to his surprise and delight, it didn't have one brain. It had twelve cluster-like brains, all intricately connected to each other via lined cords of reinforced tissue. Destroying one cluster wasn't going to kill this thing. All twelve needed to go to really do anything, and they kept regenerating anyway.
Furthermore, it had a series of stomachs. Stomachs and weird womb-things. The wombs seemed to be able to grow things. The vampires had Biomancy lab-things connected to the wombs by one-way reinforced windows.
On the Court Leviathan's underside, connected to the stomachs by dense sacs, were cages, holding cells, and macabre torture chambers. The First Blood captured people and placed them in these containment units. And recently, there had been people inside. He could tell from the leftover blood. But they had all been offered to the leviathan, assimilated within its guts, like he was after his first few deaths.
But the most important part of the beast was the Biomancy mana core lodged at its very center, a constant flow of blood and tissue rushing out from it. That was the reason it could keep healing. The Biomancy mana core hummed out to him from deep within the beast, and even from the outside, he could taste its tantalizing power.
But without any vampires to direct its will, it couldn't do anything with it. This was how the Court Leviathan unleashed so many plagues. This was how it assimilated flesh, how it could shift its body.
And this would potentially be how Shiv could learn to do the very same. His Woundeater was a first step. But after fighting these vampires, he realized he was barely scratching the surface of Biomancy. There was still far more that he could do. And it was thanks to their donation of a Court Leviathan that he would be able to do it ahead of schedule. Having a living, enduring, and constantly regenerating test subject went a long way.
"So, you're not going to do anything, are you?" Shiv said, looking at the Court Leviathan. The massive, slope-headed beast didn't even respond. Its many eyes glared lifelessly, but it just hovered in the air, its many tentacles undulating, swinging over the land. But it did no more than that, and slowly Shiv descended, keeping his eye on his new pet, making sure it didn't bolt away at the last second, or get teleported. “Just stay here. I’ll come back for you. Got a sad vampire I need to talk to first.”
And that's another thing I need to get better at dealing with, Shiv thought to himself. There were a few Jump Mages there, and one of them almost got me. Almost ended up tossing me into another dimension or something. Probably need to ask Adam for some tips to fight those guys without my Chronomancy. That could have gone sideways real fast.
And that was just it. His Chronomancy saved him a great deal. It allowed him to have retries when he made mistakes. It allowed him to go back in time and attempt the same action over and over again until he got it right. It allowed him to freeze time, giving him free hits and the ability to tear apart enemies that should have been able to contend with him, at least for a period. His Chronomancy was only at Master-Tier. But Shiv was going to focus hard on it to make sure that it was going to get to Heroic as soon as possible. It was a game-changer for him. More importantly, not many people were attuned to the lore of time itself.
All to prepare me to fight Sullain, huh, System? Shiv thought. There was no response. But with everything that had been positioned in his path, with all the obstacles that shaped him, the System didn't need to give a response.
Shiv knew. Shiv strove. Shiv died. And then, eventually, Shiv prevailed. That was the only exchange needed between them. He was done blaming the System, done talking to it, until he could figure out what it was. Right now, he was going back to his old way. The best way, the way he knew. He would take things as they come, and he would get whatever he could out of it, no matter what life threw at him.