Slower. Slower. Even slower. If you can’t do it slow, you can’t fuckin’ do it fast.

  Oh, for—You know what, it’s my fault. I’m the fuckin’ dumb fuck. Why did I think some starved, half-dumb, cousin-fuckin’ born bastard shit of a girl can learn how to draw a sword? I’d tell you to go home and shit out some brats—make yourself useful, but I’d sooner tell you to stab that thing between your legs to spare the rest of us any more of your useless blood—

  Ah. There it is. See? You finally got it. All it took was a bit of encouragement.

  Alright. Pour me another glass. You got up until it's full to tell me what you were doing wrong before, and what you did right just now. Tick tock—ah, time’s up, I’m thirsty and you’re stupid. Let’s just skip to hearing someone who knows what they’re talking about.

  You were flinging the sword. It’s not a stick. You’re not trying to throw it at someone. The draw needs to be smooth. Natural. Gotta be like sliding into someone’s ass after rubbing yourself down with oil—ah, fuck, I keep rememberin’ why I hate teaching fuckin’ girls, fuckin’ cockless things shouldn’t use swords. Just unnatural. Bleh. Look. Imagine you have a cock. It needs to just glide. No resistance. No friction. It should feel like that when you draw, when you strike, when you block, when you cut through a motherfucker.

  That blade should feel weightless. Like it's a part of you. It needs to dance, and it needs to hit whatever you want it to hit and move however you want it to move. You were letting that shit fly as hard as you can. Doesn’t work. Tired your arm out and just slammed it into shit. Could be considered a draw by someone who isn’t worth a damn—and practically no one is worth a damn. But I don’t wanna see those sloppy bullshit flicks anymore.

  You gotta be like a… a glistening cock—glide and… Wait, already used that one. Uh…

  Be like… water. Or some shit. My father used to say that to me. Might be the only thing the dumb motherfucker was right about.

  -Varghan the Unseen Draw to Jessica Hawgrave

  287 (I)

  Instruction [II]

  Pillar of Orichalcum 280 > 281

  Dodge 38 > 40

  Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 113 > 115

  Frictionless Vector 95 > 97

  Strider of the Unbending Path 176 > 178

  Inertial Overdrive 217 > 220

  Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 507 > 508

  Aegis of Assimilation 130 > 132

  Bifurcated Processing 75 > 77

  Memorization 24 > 26

  Magical Theory 3 > 8

  “They were mine,” Shiv muttered, kicking a femur on the ground.

  “Then why didn’t you kill them first?” Jessica replied.

  He could feel her grinning at him from behind her helmet.

  The growing disappointment ached like inflammation within Shiv's body. He had been looking forward to indulging in some violent self-therapy through the removal of vampiric vermin. That urge grew double when they pinned him in place and killed him earlier, grinding his Magical Resistance down to nothing through a chain of destructive spells. Even so, he wasn't overly worried. His Enchained Heart of Lifegiving was still filled with vitality, and he knew the general direction from where the First Blood fighters were unleashing their magic. His Atlas revealed a horizon glowing with brilliant life signatures.

  It took him no time to close, even under constant bombardment. Through the haze of blinding magics and crushing spells, Shiv swam as a fish through the sea. But his time under fire wasn't wasted. It was cultivated. With his Bifurcated Processing pushed to the limit, he observed all the spells used to batter him. He took in the siege-level magics, each one chained to another colossal shape, serving as nodes and critical junctions, bound to one another along circuits and mana veins. In that, the lores of magic revealed itself to him.

  There was a logic to the casting of magic. The shape of a spell was an order to what one wanted the natural laws to perform on their behalf. The great difference between manually shaped spellforms and Shiv’s Strider of the Unbending Path, for instance, was that it was an internalized thing. He willed it to activate, and it did. His Chronomancy field wasn't something he could easily wield, could casually fling out, or shape into a myriad of effects.

  Not so for many other magical skills, where the possibilities were nearly endless. Though there came a cost of mental strain and recovery, the time magic wielded against him by the First Blood could do more than simply halt the pace of outside time or revert one's personal history a few seconds into the past.

  The same went for all the other spells they'd unleashed upon him. Spared the consequences of a final death, and with his mind experiencing no lull or interruption in thought, every destruction of his vessel was just another lesson, just another chance to learn.

  It was under such crushing pressure that he performed his first counter-spell. Ignoring the tearing pain that came with moving his hydra under severe mana strain, he lashed out and struck the descending crimson-colored artillery bombardment in a frenzied attempt to batter the landscape-scouring rain aside. As his mana clashed against theirs, however, he felt a connection as his Biomancy bled over into the hostile spells.

  A series of detonations ripped through the air, shredding Shiv's mana hydra further, deepening his pain, but he was used to that agony, and so it didn't distract him from the fact that the volatile reactions between the clashing fields were a matter of asymmetrical configurations. Shiv's Aegis of Assimilation was simply not aligned with whatever skill or combination of skills shaped the artillery spell. Their shapes ground against each other, point to point, edge to edge. And he noted how there were openings in every shape: places for mana to trickle in and outward; gaps that were meant as outlets, allowing other spells or patterns to link and connect.

  Another barrage of Biomancy spells hammered against him. These siege-level spells expanded into balls of unraveling decay meant to inflict mutation and rapid degradation to anything that held biomass within 500 meters of impact. After that, their effects diminished but didn't go away entirely. Even at the furthest distance that he could see, trees withered, and he could see their biological signatures rapidly undergo chaotic cascades of collapse. He didn't directly analyze the matter, but he'd faced tumorigenesis enough to recognize a rapid onset of cancer ripping through an organic structure.

  Surviving that wave of destruction cost him over 20% of his overflow tides. Vectors dissolved on his body, utterly exhausted as they warded him from the magical effects. Ultimately, he was more dangerous against a purely physical foe. Their blows, if intercepted, would be absorbed to serve as his reservoir of might and power, ready to be turned back against them. Every bit of force applied to him would also be converted to Magical Resistance.

  Against a pure mage army, however, he needed to continue cultivating innate tides. That demanded a debt from his Bifurcated Processing, and as the First Blood was educating him, he could be worn down by an army of mages casting in concert. He didn't think most of them were above Master-Tier, maybe a single Hero leading the attack, but with a few hundred to a thousand dedicated Master Magi? Yeah, it didn't take that much to bring down a Legend in the grand scheme of worlds and nations. Especially one fighting sloppily.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: You were too focused on butchering everything you could get your hands on. We should have done this methodically. We should have gone for the backline first and broken their cohesion before working our way back. That Hero you killed earlier was a sacrifice. The fifteen seconds she lasted gave them enough time to stabilize their rear midlines and gather their magi formations.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Next time I'll punch all the way in and mangle them from the inside, Shiv agreed mentally. But for now…

  Another chain of siege spells came down upon him. He counted ten massive shapes, each one the size of a small building, falling like bolts of lightning. He was focused. Gathering all he observed about the spell patterns, Shiv directed his mana hydra again—what few of its heads still remained untattered—but found himself surprised as his Biomancy field rapidly regenerated. It seemed that his Aegis of Assimilation took after a hydra's nature more than he expected–both magically and physically. He hadn't noticed in the heat of battle before. But he was healing fast, far faster than all his other ruptured fields.

  Most of his lesser layers would take a good while to stabilize, discounting his Chronomancy. But Biomancy? It healed much as his Voidmantid Armor did. And that allowed him to wield his biological magics with greater freedom.

  Instead of clashing magic against magic, he shaped the spell patterns lining his Aegis. No longer did he think of his hydra’s heads as hammers to swing and batter with. Now he treated them like lockpicks. He created an asymmetrical pattern meant for him to pierce through and slide into the siege spells where there were gaps and openings. He couldn't do it perfectly. It was far too complex, and he was facing a great many mages at once. But he could force his mana in along certain points—and he did.

  Microspells shaped like arrows allowed him to slide between the gaps of the siege-level magic. Moreover, he managed to create lines bottlenecking the mana flowing through the chains lining every artillery spell. Soon, Shiv's mana hydra severed the first of the siege spells, and a series of detonations went off inside the spell rather than out. Shiv's mastery of the lore was lacking, and so his infiltration of the hostile mana field was but a fleeting thing. Yet it was a fleeting thing that was turned to his advantage. The spell collapsed, exploding before it could hit its destination, and a crimson explosion expanded a few hundred meters in the air. Blunting the other spells with its premature detonation, a few of them were sent off course as well, while the others were set off by the chains connecting them all.

  This time, his Shapeless Tides were spared of any attrition. The sky above him turned crimson as envelopes of mana burst out from the spells that held them.

  His Biomancy and Magical Theory jumped several levels as a reward.

  And that wasn't all. He saw a trail of Biomancy mana snaking across the air toward the distant city looming over the horizon. It was like watching a flame crawl along the length of a fuse. And then came a distant eruption of Biomancy as well. Shiv wondered if he'd inflicted some kind of explosive backlash on the casters trying to cut him down. With the brief interruption in Biomancy spells, he suspected that was the case. More Aeromantic lightning bolts struck him, slashing into his body by the dozens every second, the rapidity of the electrical strikes increasing. That consumed more of his Shapeless Tides, and he suspected he was about to be slain again in a few moments. But this was good. The First Blood's greatest lore was their Biomancy, and even if he couldn't overpower them directly, he still had more than enough magic and other skills to allow for counter-casting and destabilization.

  That ought to give the bloodsuckers something to think about when they try to ruin my flesh. Hells, I might be able to do this with all of the other magic types. Wait. What if I try countering spells with my Vitaemancy?

  Shiv prepared to experiment with that. Strands of white and red erupted out of his body, spreading like an animated forest. Yet it was at that moment that the reign of enemy magic was silenced entirely. All at once, the crushing weight of the temporal and spatial wards meant to keep him held in place, keep him from reverting himself back in time or teleporting out of the area, burst apart and vanished. Two final stray missiles cleaved down from the sky and hit nothing in particular, leaving furrows in the ground kilometers away from Shiv.

  Only when Shiv arrived in the sky over the city of Ur-Abathur half a minute later did he discover why.

  The first signs of the Giantsbane’s work revealed themselves in the form of bifurcated towers. A clean slice along a 45-degree angle left a dozen massive spires shaped from bone and enamel that once stood in a line at the front of the city, lying in a ruined heap all over its inner confines. Blood bubbled up where architecture had been cut and crushed, and the vampires who once manned these towers, likely the Biomancers powering and unleashing the bombardment Shiv had faced from atop their heights, lay dead amidst the ruins.

  And in the distance, more destruction reigned across the city proper. A looming titan drifted over the city upon wheels of fire while her blade split fortresses in half and left ravines deep and wide enough to swallow buildings in the soil. Shiv arrived just in time to see three Court Leviathans rising into the air at once. Three Court Leviathans that were quickly turned into six split chunks that rained down and added chaos and destruction to the vast landing strips below in their fall. Shiv heard screaming. Shiv saw dying. That brought Shiv back to the present, where he realized that he'd made another mistake. He had forgotten that Jessica was a part of this struggle as well. And catching up with her at this point wasn't even worth trying.

  ***

  About a minute later, Shiv greeted the Giantsbane with a nod as she sat with her visor up and her feet dangling girlishly atop Rusty’s handguard, the kilometer-long blade buried in the ground now the single greatest structure amidst the badly battered city.

  Most of the residential clusters, if they could be called that, remained standing. They looked like enormous lungs, pulsating as they filled with air and then flattening as they breathed out. There were slaves in the streets as well. They huddled in the corners, glaring up, terrified, and shivered as if waiting for their final end. But that final end didn't come. The Giantsbane didn't seem interested in the butchery of the meek and innocent. No. In the short time it took for Shiv to arrive, she seemed to have slain all the most dangerous vampires and allowed the weaker ones to scuttle away like cockroaches squeezing through cracks in the walls.

  Blood and other fluid oozed out from the megastructures that once dotted the skyline of the city, which was about nine or ten kilometers in diameter, if Shiv had to guess.

  He collapsed his biological helmet and let the wind rustle his hair. Looking at the mutilated and gory state of the biological architecture that characterized the First Blood’s home, Shiv thought that the landscape seemed like a corpse rather than a ruin. In the far distance, along the eastern periphery of the town, Shiv could still see a few towers standing, but they were towers made from inorganic substances, shaped from stone, steel, and crystal.

  Bursts of black static flashed from atop their spires in rapid intervals. Shiv suspected that the elites of the city, the few that could escape, were fleeing this place.

  And Jessica just let them.

  The Giantsbane, watching the people below with an impassive expression, rapped her fingers against Rusty’s hilt in a slow, rhythmic beat, like she was reminiscing of some song or another.

  If Rusty took offense to her using it as a stool, the blade didn't say anything. In fact, Shiv felt a weird warmth in the atmosphere, like this was a common occurrence between the two, and all the death they wrought was like an afternoon stroll deepening their bond.

  "Took you a while to get here,” Jessica said as he landed next to her, eyeing him with a faint hint of amusement. “Saw all those siege spells knocking you around a little bit. We need to work on your dodge, kid. Just taking everything on the chin… Don't care how hard-headed you are, if you can avoid getting hit, you should. Also, what's your favorite flavor of beans? Because I'm pretty partial to Jacobson's Mamba Hot Chilies.”

  Shiv tried not to cringe. He failed. "Georges hated that brand. Thing’s practically 70% oil. He also claimed to have found roach bits in the cans."

  Jessica nodded enthusiastically. "The insects, they like the hot taste, see? So they jump into the big industrial pots on their own. At least, that's what the manufacturer told me. Wrote them like a fan letter, and they sent me a year's supply of cans as a gift along with the reply. Even asked me to print my face on the cans for a limited edition wave, but I felt like that would ruin the magic, you know?”

  Shiv stared blankly down at her, and she frowned. “Aren't you supposed to be a connoisseur of food? It's pretty judgmental, being disgusted by some insects."

  "Look, that's not the problem here,” Shiv replied. “I don't have any issue with people eating insects or enjoying exotic delicacies. I'll even cook them myself if that's what they want. My problem is that the label on the back of every Jacobson’s can is clearly lying about the ingredients. And if you lie about your ingredients because you feel like you need to, then you're not cooking to feed people. You're just cooking for money."

  "We're all doing something for mithril," Jessica said with a scoff.

  "And there's another thing Georges used to say to me: 'If you want to make money, the easiest way to go about it is by being born rich. The second easiest way of getting rich is taking the money from someone else, either by marrying the poor bastard or literally robbing them.'"

  "Hm. You know, that sounds about right." Jessica sighed. "Sorry he's dead, kid. Sorry we didn't get here in time. Didn't mean to open up fresh wounds."

  "It's fine," Shiv grunted, trying not to think too much about his lost adoptive father. "He might just be gone for now. I'll do anything to find a way to bring him back. To bring everyone back."

  "Uh-huh," Jessica said. Now there was more than a hint of doubt in her voice, and her body trembled in his perception. Her suspicions that his power of resurrection might be more limited than he'd led her to believe in their conversation in the Lusty Eunuch were rendered evident by his Gardener of Doubt skill, but she just shook her head and shifted the topic. "Anyhow. Let's get the hells out of here. The mana bom—"

  Before she could finish her sentence, a series of massive explosions erupted along the west side of the city. Large hangars made from bone and covered in red membranes came apart in waves of destabilizing Biomancy. As the structures were frayed apart, flesh giving way to decay, the Court Leviathans inside withered down to nothing as well, bursting in sprays of horrific fluid and turning into pools of sludge.

  "Shit," Jessica hissed. "I was trying to time that dramatically."

  Shiv could only blink in response. Then he frowned. "Wait, you just got here. When did you place Biomancy bombs inside the hangars? Where did you even get them?"

  "Oh, that." Jessica waved him off. "Stole the mana bombs from the vampires. They had a storage facility nearby. Works the same way for every military force. Doesn't matter if you're a group of vampires who grow or manipulate your own biology. You need to store supplies somewhere. Considering how many mages I just cut through? Yeah, a lot of potions, a lot of bombs, a lot of alchemical assistance. And all that got turned on their own staging grounds. Speaking of which, let's get the hells out of here for real now."