Harlock the Midnight claims to be a God of Darkness and Stealth. I would believe him if it weren't so easy for me to slip unnoticed through his domain as a shortcut between worlds.

Darkness is not stealth. Darkness, at its simplest, is an absence of light. It makes things hard to see. Conceptual darkness is an idea of something being hidden, an obfuscation against the senses. But this is where Harlock's childish notion of the unseen collapses. Because, prior to his transformation and false ascension, he had only lived as a man. And human senses are quite pitiful.

Do you know what it takes to mask yourself from a human? It's quite simple. You stand beyond their field of view and make no sound. A trifling feat. But for you to avoid the notice of a god in their realm? That is a struggle worthy of a Legend, and it is not something Harlock managed to achieve.

He boasts about wandering the Void as if it were a grand achievement, but his survival came at an extreme cost. He twisted himself into a thing of the dark to blend and camouflage himself. The first time I ventured into the Void, I was barely a man, and I found the hungering black to be sloppy, predictable, and ultimately blind. Because though it yearned to sup vitality from the living, it loathed the presence of light and flame, and I used that against the darkness. I created a grand wildfire and vanished into the flames, where the dark could not follow.

For what is stealth but the obfuscation of one's senses, hm?

No. Stealth is more than that. To be unseen means the mastery of another's ignorance. I did not need to submit to the dark and surrender the shape of my body. I simply bothered to learn the nature of the Void and how it interfaced with Integration.

Do you know how I managed to achieve Legendary-Tier Stealth? By successfully hiding from an Omniscient being. Or a so-called Omniscient being.

Uulthathed the All-Seeing was a far grander foe than the bestial Voidlings, and true to her word, she could see all within her realm, notice everything happening across that little stretch of reality she owned.

But though she could see everything, she was blind to herself. To her own thoughts. To her own mind.

And when you are evolved enough in terms of Stealth, you learn that there is nothing you can't use as a potential disguise. And this is a lesson that a god should have learned.

Power stolen is not power seized, Harlock. You know this. And someday, you will suffer for this.

-Valor Thann

183 (I)

Dark [II]

Even as Shiv's Vitae tore free from his corpse, he could still feel the cold length of Anthony's dagger pressed up against the roof of his skull. Pulsations of pain radiated through the Deathless's senses, and he felt like he was going to drown beneath a tide of suffering. The wound that was inflicted on him was more than material, more than even mental; it was metaphysical as well. His spirit had been gouged open, and as such, Shiv was in no condition to resist as the darkness collapsed around him.

Faintly, he heard Adam scream his name, but the Gate Lord's voice was muffled, as if Shiv was underwater. As tendrils of darkness burrowed into Shiv's red-white form, a sense of overwhelming doom consumed Shiv. Things were beyond hopeless. He knew that he was facing an Ascendant he had no true counter against, along with their Avatar. And with the wound he'd just sustained, fighting back meant little to nothing at all.

Should have just stayed in my cell, Shiv thought. The weary ache of depression soaked his mind, and soon he found himself utterly despondent. It was foolish of him to think he could escape from this prison. Everything he managed to do was a little less than a fluke. An undeserved set of possibilities engineered by the Path he was on. If he weren't the Deathless, he would be nothing at all.

Nothing. Not even a chef. He was a bastard born of murder and bloodshed; a wretch shaped from misery itself.

"It's alright," Anthony whispered through the darkness. The Legendary Avatar sighed as he guided Shiv deeper into the blackness. Compared to the lashing limbs of shadow wielded by the Ascendant, Harlock's Avatar was comparatively gentle. His tone was grandfatherly, and he even seemed slightly reluctant about this whole matter. But slightly reluctant didn't mean he was going to let Shiv go. "There's no shame in it. Come along. I can still feel you fighting. But there's no fight anymore, not after I pierced your soul. Your skills will be compromised soon, as will your memories. It won't feel so bad in a moment. Harlock will release you once the rewrite takes full effect. Just let it happen. Give yourself mercy."

The shadows around Shiv parted, breaking like shifting waves, and through a sudden gap, Shiv caught sight of the old man once more. He was dressed in a gray ensemble, looking like someone heading for a formal gala of some kind rather than the battlefield. He wore a wide-rimmed hat, and a dusty double-breasted coat swayed around his waist, but it was his silk shirt and slacks that drew Shiv's full attention. Veins of mana circulated through the silken threads, and a faint hint of interwoven magic made itself known, pressing against Shiv's various mana fields.

In the man's right hand was a dagger bearing the shape of a porcelain needle. Beyond the brightness of its metal, there came a faint glow of soft blue. It was the color that Shiv had seen before. It was the color that was imprinted over what remained of the Recollector after its brutal defeat. The old man bore an Animancy blade, and Shiv had suffered a wound that was now rewriting the fabric of his very soul.

Inertial Overdrive [Error]

Aegis of Assimilation [Error]

Frictionless Vector [Error]

There was something wrong. Something was prying and twisting inside Shiv, battling against all his skills. Yet, even though it brushed through his body like a spreading infection, clawing and mangling his deeper architecture, it failed to twist him entirely. Instead, searing bursts of agony pulsated from random spaces within Shiv.

His skills were under assault, but even as the Animancy tried to reshape them, the skills resisted, and the skills remained, for Shiv was different from most Pathbearers. His vitality and his soul were fused together, and one couldn't reshape one without harming the other.

By now, a frown pulled at the old man's face. The wrinkles that defined his aged features grew ever more creased. He stopped pulling at Shiv for a moment and simply observed the Deathless. He held on to a branch of Vitae while dragging the rest of Shiv's sprawling mass across the ground.

The Deathless was practically catatonic with depression now. He thought little and felt only the overriding sensation of defeat. But where his mind had succumbed, his Vitae fought on, and that bade the aged Councilman to stop, to consider just what was going wrong with his dagger.

"Should have taken effect by now," Anthony muttered to himself. He looked down at his needle-thin blade, and then there came another flash of blue—a blueness that slashed through the shadows around him.

The Ascendant of Darkness let out a brief breath of discomfort as a raging azure dawn cleaved through this realm of absolute black. The azure sun vibrated with building power, hovering near the ceiling, and slowly drew closer to Anthony and Shiv. Beneath the defiant star born of Adam Arrow was another raging fire cast forth by a Pyromancer of unparalleled potency. Candles laughed like a madman as tumbling waves of scathing heat licked at the writhing shadows.

The Ascendant pushed back with his own considerable power, and two concepts went to war. Light against dark, despair against hope, flame against the coldness of oblivion.

"It seems you have some good friends," Anthony commented.

Shiv didn't reply. He was still wrapped tight in the grip of the Ascendant, but just then, he felt the old man let go. A resounding clash of steel on steel echoed through the air, and Anthony tumbled back, letting out a ragged cry of surprise. Blood spilled over Shiv then. Blood stroked free from the elderly Avatar's face and neck. Shiv caught sight of a flickering shape blinking from place to place, striking and flashing at Anthony as if a half-meter-tall whirlwind of unstoppable violence. The Avatar threw himself backward, diving into the embrace of his Ascendant. Curling fingers of darkness collapsed around Anthony just as the small shape tried to strike at him once more.

Finally, Shiv saw his savior for a brief moment as she kicked off the dense shadows guarding the Avatar. It was that Legendary goblin that accompanied Adam, Gone. Her quills vibrated with electric-like Chronomancy, and whips of shadow cleaved through her body over and over again, but they never struck her true form. Instead, they were always a second behind, always a second displaced.

Shiv saw Gone's skill for what it was. He, too, was a Chronomancer, and he realized that her Reflexes and Chronomancy were likely fused together based on how she moved. She wasn't in the present, not entirely. It seemed like as she moved faster, she simply cast herself further into the future. There was a displacement between her visible self and the Chronomancy field that outlined her silhouette. But more importantly, the Chronomancy field was filled with lifeforce instead of her body still trapped in the present.

That made Shiv realize he was looking at something of a temporal afterimage, and with just how fast Gone moved, even without Chronomantic enhancement, it was little wonder why the dense jungle of darkness couldn't claim her as a victim. But it was only a matter of time before she made a mistake, before the darkness encircled her and drowned her. Even the fastest swimmer would grow tired, and there was no out-swimming the ocean itself. They were Legends, but Legends were no different from other insects when it came to the overwhelming might of a god.

Shiv's depressive thoughts were cleaved asunder as a beam of righteous essence slammed into his very being. The Deathless felt his Vitae strands twitch as the shadows coalescing around him were banished. Rage and disgust ignited within Shiv as he realized how much the Ascendant had distorted his thoughts, had twisted him into a pathetic creature so willing to surrender itself as a slave to the enemy.

Shiv wasted no time exacting his revenge. He drove a branch of Vitae into the shadows, but instead of contending against them using his shapeless tides, he left context once more, ignoring the fact that he was on the verge of running dry of vitality. For a moment, the darkness lost track of him. He could tell by the hesitation, how the shadows went still.

He knew the Ascendant had once been a human. Freezing, after all, was a very human habit when one was shocked, and Shiv ripped away the vitality hidden inside the darkness. He burst out into existence in a splash of red and white, and those colors only grew brighter as he absorbed more and more vitality, refueling himself in an instant. Gods were like bottomless oceans of life force, but Shiv had felt the same way about the Tarrasque as well.

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Where Shiv couldn't drink an ocean alone, the world would gulp in his stead.

When he connected the god to Integration itself, he was sapped as well. He was hollowed of that precious resource which kept him in existence. Such was why the Ascendant flinched back, unveiling a massive patch of stable space amidst the coiling darkness.

As Shiv hatched free from his Vitae once more, he reached out with his strands and ripped the Orichalcum dagger he dropped upon being killed from the ground.

"Touch my mind again, motherfucker!" Shiv snarled at the retreating blackness. "Do it!"

But the Ascendant hesitated. The Ascendant stayed away. The Ascendant left a clearing for Shiv and a few Legendary prisoners to recover, unwilling to suffer another vitality drain.

The color flickered in the corner of Shiv's eye, and he saw the faint static of an opening dimensional rift come into existence beside him. Adam emerged, and soon there was a swell of near-unbearable heat. Candles followed the Gate Lord, chuckling all the while, muttering things about how pretty the flames were, how he yearned to see the dark itself come ablaze.

Shiv was pretty sure Candles was not all there mentally, but considering the enemy they were facing, Shiv didn't mind someone not being all there. One probably needed to be a little insane to face the Ascendants, and Shiv wasn't about to complain about the help right now.

"Shiv," Adam said, patting Shiv on the shoulder. "You alright?"

The Deathless briefly regarded Adam and gave a nod. "Yeah. Probably wouldn't have been if it wasn't for you. Felling shit, my skills… "

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides [Error]

Pillar of Orichalcum [Error]

He still didn't feel all that good. It was like his insides were swirling. Just what kinds of enchantments does that knife have?

Just then, Shiv felt something leave his cape, and he saw Rebis and Bonk take their positions to his left.

"What fresh hell have you gotten us into this time, insult?" Bonk said with a wide, vicious grin. He stared at the curling shadows dancing before them.

The clearing they held was approximately twenty meters wide, barely any space at all, but from the receding black were several Legendary prisoners that had once been trapped. They rose with groans from the ground and found their flagging spirits bolstered by the glow of Adam's Righteous Dawn. Among them were a few people Shiv recognized.

Kura scrambled to her feet, shaking her head. Three golden shadows stepped free from her body and formed a defensive perimeter against the dark. A loud groan sounded nearby, and Shiv looked down to see the blade-covered prisoner rising not far away from him. The Deathless leaned down to pick the man back up. As soon as he did, he felt a jolt of surprise flare through him as the blade-covered Pathbearer suddenly turned, swinging an arm out to claim Shiv's life.

Two blows were delivered in that instant. The first was the blade-covered Pathbearer. He thrust a gleaming sword toward Shiv's skull, attempting to impale him through the right eye. The second was Gone. The goblin proved her staggering speed once more, bringing her claws up to intercept the blow. But where her Reflexes were Legendary, her strength was lacking. She was knocked aside—flung backward past Shiv's peripheral vision.

But she'd slowed the strike enough for the Deathless to react. By the time he caught the blade coming to claim his life, Adam had loosed six Veilpiercers into the blade-covered prisoner's chest. Then, a golden length burst out from the back of the man's head. The blade-covered Pathbearer let out a rasping gasp as his body went rigid. His legs kicked and twitched, and with another swipe, his head came free.

Behind him stood a golden shadow. A few meters away, Shiv saw Kura looking at him, offering him a nod. The Deathless reciprocated, and he realized that she was relatively serious about this whole honor-debt thing.

Beat the shit out of the right person, you might make a good friend, Shiv thought to himself with a feeling of odd disbelief. He then looked down at the blade-covered Pathbearer and snarled. "Really, asshole? I was trying to help."

Just then, Gone appeared beside him. She prodded the unmoving body of the blade-covered Pathbearer and spat on his corpse. "Think this one saw his opportunity. Tried to take it. Tried to take it by playing possum." She looked Shiv up and down and shook her head. She was constantly vibrating from the sheer amount of speed rushing through her. "You don't go near anyone. No, you never go near anyone. Too much risk. Can't afford your death right now. We'll unbalance the fight right now."

Her words came in rapid bursts, and it took a while to decipher them. At the same time, Shiv noticed how the shadows were still held at bay.

That was when he noticed the shield wall comprised of golden shadows standing guard against encroaching blackness. Though the darkness lashed at them, the shadows of Kura appeared and dissipated, only to be replaced by another the moment after. Shiv guessed that the elven Chronomancer was constantly replacing her magical clones to avoid a buildup of depression.

As the fight reached a brief stalemate, Shiv looked at Adam and cast out his Psychomancy. The Gate Lord triggered his Commander's Foresight, and the two of them began to plot once more.

"Okay, so I managed to run into the Ascendant's Avatar."

"You did?" Adam asked. "Is that who killed you? I had no idea when you went down, just that you did."

"Yeah. Calls himself Anthony. Just walked right out of the black and stuck a knife up my chin." Shiv felt his vitality spasm. "Whatever he did jacked up some of my skills. Feels like I have a soul flu of some kind. Bastard has an Animancy dagger."

"He does?" Adam hummed with building disquiet. "Well, we know a few things now. First, this Ascendant isn't that good with Divination. Or at least, he has a hard time using it."

"How can you tell?" Shiv asked.

"Because he can't seem to track you very well. I noticed how a few of the others were looking in your general direction back when we were fighting the Tarrasque. I felt their Divination mana as well. They were powerful. There's still some Divination mana coming from this Ascendant, but it seems reduced somehow, as if the dark doesn't conduct it well."

Shiv thought about that for a moment and added his own observations. "Well, it hides the Ascendant's life force pretty good too, but it's there. You can't really see it, but I managed to drain some of its vitality."

"I guess there are costs to hiding too well," Adam commented. "All right, so our fires work, my azure sun works, your shapeless tides can hold the black at bay, and it despises your Vitality Drain, so we have means of repelling it, but we can't just hold them in place. There are probably other Avatars coming as well."

"Barely handling this one, I don't want to think about how we'll do against two, or three, or twelve," Shiv grumbled.

"Or twelve," Adam agreed with a shudder.

"So we don't wait for them to come," Shiv said. "Listen, I have a skill that's about to evolve."

"Again," Adam cried aloud. "Really?"

"Yes," Shiv said, entirely serious. "It's my Outside Context Problem."

Just then, a few of his other skills flickered. The error notifications appeared before his vision, and something assailed his memories. Things changed in his past, and then reverted to normal. He remembered losing to the elemental golem inside Passage, burning to death within the teleportation anchor.

His Physicality skill briefly winked out, and his Legendary-Tier Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides changed to something else. Something that was little more than a stream of nonsensical letters and errors. But the change wasn't just visual; it was quite literal as well. His strength left him for a moment, leaving him as weak as he was as a Pathless, but then he was fine again.

Yet, it wasn't just his Legendary-Tier skill that was affected; his other skills were also compromised. One after another, from his Reflexes to his Toughness to his Magical Skills, his vision was filled with error notifications.

A groan escaped Shiv, and Adam's mind filled with worry. "Shiv! Shiv, are you alright?"

"No, it's the godsdamn Animancy dagger," Shiv groaned. "My skills are acting weird. It's not affecting my Outside Context Problem, though."

Despite all the skills that had been compromised, Outside Context Problem was untouched. It was untouched, primarily, because Shiv was practically part of Shiv. It was unique. Shiv couldn't find it in himself, even when he rooted through his very soul using his Vitaemancy. And right now, in the heat of battle, he didn't have time to isolate whatever damage Anthony did to him.

However, he could evolve the skill, and he could take a gamble and see where that led them. It didn't seem like they had any better options anyway.

"Alright, so next steps are evolving the skill, and…" Shiv trailed off. "Well, that's all I got, Adam. I'm going to see what I can get if I evolve this skill. I'll be honest, the situation's looking kind of fucked. The dark's all around the entire cube, so we can't exactly break out and make a run for it. Five might be able to tap into some of the Dimensionality flowing through the entire prison, but we need to find the right mithril column, and it needs to have the right spells running through it. I don't think we're going to have that opportunity when the fighting gets started again."

"I have doubts as well," Adam said. "Wait, you said you have a means to contact Cripple."

Shiv's thoughts ran still. "Yeah, yeah, I do."

"Give it to me," Adam said. "I'll see if I can communicate with it. Let's see if it can offer us any aid. In the meantime, how are you going to level your skill quickly?"

"I was kind of hoping that you or one of the other Pathbearers could kill me," Shiv muttered. "Most of my other skills are out of whack right now. My pillar's on and off. I don't think we're going to get a better chance at putting me down than right now."

"Alright, best let me do it." A shudder ran through Adam's being, and Shiv realized just how much killing him might bother Adam.

"Thanks, Adam. I'd prefer to be you than someone else anyway."

"Don't mention it," Adam said. "Fingers crossed that the Skill Evolution will be a new level of bullshit."

Shiv chuckled. "Well, that's a first from you."

"It's probably not going to be the last, either."

As their conversation came to an end, Shiv called out to the others nearby. "Hey. Adam's going to kill me now. Don't get spooked."

Candles nodded sagely. He offered Shiv a flaming grin shaped from pure-white flames—which disappeared as he tilted his head in confusion after a second. "Huh? What you say?"

Adam then fired a Veilpiercer through the back of Shiv's head as his Pillar of Orichalcum stopped working. Several of the other prisoners nearby flinched, and Shiv held out his branching Vitae before Kura. He cast a telepathic thought into her, calling out, stating that Adam was doing what Shiv asked, but the telepathy broke down halfway as Shiv's skill was compromised. Even so, Kura blinked as she looked between Shiv's corpse and Adam.

"It's alright," Adam said. "We're just testing something right now."

"You have an odd way of testing things," Five noted, looking down at the gore-ridden hole in Shiv's head.

Ten strands of Vitae stretched out and drank some vitality out of Bonk. The orc winced slightly at the Deathless's touch but just hummed to himself with amusement.

"You can take from me," Adam offered.

Shiv waved a hand in his face. Need you in top condition, Adam, Shiv thought to himself. The Gate Lord understood and pulled his hand back. As Shiv grew closer toward resurrection, a series of notifications appeared, and his skill went over the threshold.

Pillar of Orichalcum > [Error]

Outside Context Problem 100 > 101 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Skill Evolution: Outside Context Problem (Unique) > Non-Sequitur (Unique)

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