[Beefy chapter today, happy reading!]
"Skethis, you stupid fucking moron, listen to me! Don't you dare ignore me!" Nal-Skethis ignored the voice bouncing around his skull and kept his attention on the transformation into that golden-haired vrathi.
The moment he settled into her form, things started clicking into place. Who she was. What she was. Both questions, as it turned out, had rather interesting answers.
Now, the core mechanic of his class worked in a peculiar fashion. He could take any form that stood before him, provided it ranked below him in terms of tiers— monster or sapient, it didn't matter much. If a monster was less evolved than his class tier, or a sapient sat at a lower class tier, he could borrow their shape and skills as easy as borrowing a coat. Except the coat also came with the person still inside it, in a sense.
Because it wasn't simply an illusion of shape. He would become them. A living reflection, right down to their abilities, their instincts, everything they could do. Their own tools, turned right back around.
The trouble was it wasn't instant. Once [Capturing Reflection] settled him into a new form, there was always that awkward grace period of fumbling around inside a borrowed body, learning what it could actually do. And the system was no help there either, he got no tidy status screen helpfully listing off their abilities for him.
He had to poke around his mirror core himself, which would now be shaped as whatever core belonged to the being he'd copied, and work out the contents the slow way.
The first thing he noticed was her core's true colour, and he was mildly surprised to find it sitting at high red. Huh.
Though something else about the core nagged at him, something he couldn't quite put a finger on right away. A high red core should have been a bright, confident crimson. Hers wasn't. It glowed dull, almost tired, the kind of red that would make anyone glancing at it through spirit sight assume low red core and move along without a second thought. Which was, he suspected, rather the point. Having slipped into her form, he could look closer than that, and yes, dull as it was, it was genuinely high red. No question.
Fascinating.
But even setting that aside, there was a second problem nagging at him, and a more confusing one at that. Even granting her a high red core, there was simply no sensible explanation for the performance she'd been putting on. Creating a bow of that size from pure magic alone was already a proper spell, and she'd held the thing stable for an impressively long stretch of time. That alone would have been noteworthy enough.
Except that wasn't even the strangest part. No, the strangest part was the detection range. Picking out his kin through the faint, subtle shift that happened when they phased into the material plane, that was its own entirely different problem to untangle.
But he had her abilities in hand at the moment, and that was the first one to wake up entirely on its own. The spatial sense skill.
And it was passive.
He was already parsing the spatial information flooding in around him, and the quality was good. His Intelligence sat comfortably up in the 700s, which meant he could process all of it without his head turning into a problem, but the range still bothered him. He couldn't find anything in the skill itself that would explain how she'd stretched it to cover an entire city. No trigger, no obvious inflation mechanic. Nothing.
He'd figure it out eventually. But for now he was simply impressed, and he didn't impress easily. Because if she was running that detection range across a whole city while simultaneously holding a massive magical construct together, while simultaneously making precise, surgical predictions, while simultaneously reducing everything in her way perforated— and doing all of it at a lower tier than him— then her Intelligence had to be something genuinely unreasonable. Even his own would have started complaining under that kind of cognitive load. So just how high was hers?
Skethis was already working himself into an unease about it, but pushed on regardless.
He turned his attention back to the bow construct. Everything in it was structural. Load-bearing, every last piece of it. Nothing there just to look impressive. It was, he had to admit, impressive.
"Skethis, you scale-brained, lizard-lipped shit-for-brains, I know you can fucking hear me! Answer me or I will personally drag my saggy old ass to wherever your smug little face is currently hiding and remove it from your goddamn neck!"
The same voice came again.
"First Elder," Skethis said, pleasantly. "My apologies for earlier— the transformation must have compromised my hearing somewhat. I couldn't quite catch you."
He said this while already moving, having found another trigger tucked into her body that neatly explained her comfort with the Shadow Dimension. He phased into that inky, half-real version of the world without breaking stride. She didn't appear to have access to sacred energy the way he did, so her version of it was a notch below what he was accustomed to, but it was workable. He pulled enough of it around himself to drop off any detection and, in the same breath, redirected two Kovrath away from a Faerin mage who had quietly repositioned into a spot that would have been quietly catastrophic for both of them if they'd carried on as they were.
He had come prepared for this, naturally. Everyone in the field had been equipped with shards from the same set of artefacts for clean communication. It was a kind of shared perception, the bare minimum needed to keep a coordinated operation from becoming a comedy of errors. Through that additional link humming in the back of his head, he said, "I hear you clearly."
"Don't you lie to me, you circus-reject buffoon! You know I see every fucking thing! If you can hear me then WHY," the First Elder's voice climbed, "are you still inside that shithole of a city? I told you to pull back. I told you minutes ago, you deaf cunt. I told you the moment that fateless fucking freak appeared there. I told you in a way that I felt was clearer than a nun's conscience, and yet here we are— here YOU are— apparently doing exactly what I explicitly told you not to fucking do!"
"You did tell me," Skethis agreed, in a tone of perfect reasonableness.
He found the next gap through his subordinates' positioning, fed coordinates to a cluster of three of them sitting in the northwestern sector, and watched through the borrowed detection as they adjusted course. Clean. He kept the line to the First Elder open throughout, because that was simply good manners.
"Your instruction was noted."
"NOTED." First elder screeched. "He NOTED it. Nal-Skethis, you cock-sucking imbecile, I have seen fates. I have seen the fates of every vrathi in that city, every single one— I can tell you what the enchanter had for breakfast, I can tell you the precise moment that red-haired Rakari bitch will trip over her own clumsy feet in approximately four minutes, I can see every thread of every miserable little life stumbling around in that prison like headless chickens, and I am telling you—"
"You cannot see her," Skethis finished for him.
"DON'T YOU DARE CUT ME OFF, YOU MOTHERFUCKING SCALY PRICK and yes, I can't see the bitch," the First Elder said. "Which is precisely why I am telling you to drag your sorry ass home, you moron. When I cannot see something, it means the something in question is either nothing, which she very clearly is not, or it is something my sight was never meant to find, which means it will eat you alive and shit out your bones. And in my one hundred and forty-three years of doing this I have never once encountered the second option. Not once. Everything that has ever entered these sacred grounds has been visible to me if looked at the right way. Everything. So what the fuck does that tell you, genius?"
Skethis was quiet for a moment. Not from any shortage of response, but because the abilities and artefacts he was currently running were demanding considerably more of his attention than he had budgeted for, and attention incorrectly divided produced mistakes. He wasn't keen on doing that.
"That," he finally said, "is exactly why I am not leaving."
"I will put wasps in you," the First Elder said. "I will find the largest, angriest, most dick-shaped wasps available in this world, and I will shove them up your scaly puckered butthole, and I will seal that shithole shut with molten lead, and I will not feel a single goddamn thing about it."
"That was… more detailed than last time."
"Because the threat remains valid, you dense fuck, and I feel it deserves repetition. With nuance. And I will also cut off the connection to the artefact you are using to maintain your awareness all over the city like a goddamn pervert, I swear it in the name of the Divine Dragon's crusty left tit!"
"You know you are not allowed to do that, First Elder. Even though it runs off your power."
Which was true, and both of them knew it. The artefact operated on some variety of Fate fuckery that Skethis had no particular insight into and hadn't especially needed. What he knew was how it worked in practice: it wove a shared awareness across all Kovrath in the field, anchored to whoever was leading, which kept the whole operation from communicating like people shouting across a large field in bad weather.
The First Elder held power over it, yes. But the High Priest and the full council had made their position on unilateral use of that power quite clear. He was temperamental, not foolish. He wasn't going to doom everyone currently in the field over a disagreement with one subordinate who was annoying him. So for now he could rant freely and at length, and Skethis had no real objection to letting him.
He had a new motive now, and retreating didn't feature in it anywhere.
Skethis moved through the shadow layer, angling toward a better vantage for his own sight. The woman was still on the rooftop, the enchanter beside her, the enormous bow turning above them in its steady unhurried rhythm. From where his kin were positioned she looked exactly as she had before he'd borrowed her shape, like a flail mage with too many visible barriers and a detection range that had absolutely no business existing at whatever tier she was at.
Too bad Skethis couldn't copy their exact stats along with everything else, or he'd have skipped all of this theorizing entirely. Without a system screen to do the heavy lifting, he was left guessing at everything on his own, which was already beneath him, but here they were. What he could at least confirm was that she wasn't nearly as much of a flail mage as she was clearly working very hard to appear.
"Her prowess doesn't match her core level at all," he said.
"Obviously it doesn't, you brain-dead lizard, I am so glad your extensive career of sucking has produced this stunning fucking insight. What gave it away? Was it the part where she was killing our people faster than I can name them, you useless cunt?"
"But it is true though. She is high red core, equal to mine, the ability never lies. And she's at a lower tier than me, which I don't even want to think too hard about right now. I was able to copy her form, and that supports it. She isn't hiding anything. She is genuinely at tier five. What kind of class advancements would she have needed to be this powerful at such a low tier?" He let that sit for a moment. "Aren't you curious, First Elder?"
The line went quiet.
Skethis made use of the silence. He ran the borrowed detection forward across the next thirty seconds of city movement, mapped four more Kovrath positions, cross-referenced them against the current gaps in the defenders' formation, and issued the strike timings. Clean work.
"The abilities I'm running right now do support the 'something is very wrong here' argument," he continued. "I am tier six, high red, and several of them are producing results I have to actively work to keep pace with."
Tiers were a fickle business, and Skethis meant that sincerely. Someone sitting at a lower tier could still be a deeply unpleasant problem to deal with, depending on the rarity of the class the system had handed them. And the system handed out all manner of classes, calibrated to individual worth and achievements in ways it never bothered explaining. Lesser, common, uncommon, rare, unique, legendary and then, supposedly, mythical, though Skethis had no concrete evidence that tier existed at all, let alone any idea how one would go about getting there.
What class rarity dictated, more than anything else, was the pace at which someone moved through the cores.
Cores were a separate matter from classes entirely, and an important one. Every time a core changed colour it rebuilt the cultivator from the inside out. Going from yellow to red, for instance, reconstructed the body whole, turned back the years, and stacked additional bonuses onto every level gained afterward. So the sensible play was always to crack the higher cores as early as possible, and class rarity was the primary lever for doing that.
Lesser, common, and uncommon classes each pushed the core up by one tier at advancement. Rare and unique classes pushed it by two. And legendary classes, shoved it up by three in a single advancement.
A mage sitting at low yellow who somehow landed a legendary class would walk out of that advancement at low red, skipping mid yellow and high yellow core tiers. And that wasn't even touching how much stronger the higher rarity classes were in pure stat terms per level. He didn't know what mythical classes did to the core. He suspected the answer was something offensive.
Everyone started at black core, tier one. First class selections were always lesser, unless the system had specific reason to feel otherwise. Even Skethis— son of a reasonably renowned hunter, already hunting beasts before his first class selection, which was more than most could say— had only pulled an uncommon class, which bumped him from black core to low gray.
Then came the inheritance. A depth dweller, long dead, had left something behind, and Skethis had found it, and with it came a new affinity, and with that affinity came a new class at his next advancement. It was of Unique rarity. Two tiers per advancement, every time, without exception. High gray at tier three. Mid yellow at four. Low red at tier five, which made him one of the rarest Kovrath to have managed that. High red at tier six.
Gold core was still some distance off. He'd get there.
Gold core was the real turning point, the one that became genuinely unreachable without a strong early foundation, because as tiers climbed, so did what the system demanded before it would let you climb further. You had to hunt things at your own tier or above just to keep levelling. So the core you were sitting at when those requirements kicked in was, the difference between having a future and not having one.
All of which meant the woman on that rooftop was almost certainly a legendary class holder. It was the only explanation that held together.
A grin crossed his face.
He wanted her.
"I know exactly what you are thinking. Don't be fucking foolish, boy!"
"What am I thinking?"
"You want to kill her and store her as a reflection. It's plain to read, you predictable fuck. It will backfire, I am telling you. There is not one possibility in this entire shithole world where you walk out of there alive. Take your brethren and return this instant before you get us all killed."
"After," Skethis said.
"After WHAT? After she skull-fucks you? After whatever she is decides to stop playing nice and removes you from this existence entirely like the piece of shit you are? I cannot see her fate, Skethis. I cannot see what she does next. I cannot see what happens when you do whatever the fuck it is you are planning. I am operating completely blind on this one, you cocksucker, and you want me to sit here and twiddle my fucking thumbs while you—"
He let the First Elder's voice fade to background noise and put his full attention back on the battlefield.
The old man wasn't wrong, strictly speaking. But he'd gone a bit senile about it, the way someone with perfect sight might if you suddenly blindfolded them. It was all panic and no real perspective. He wasn't even stopping to account for how formidable Skethis himself was, which stung a little if he was being honest. But oh well.
The reason he was still here was simple: he wanted her as a [True Reflection].
His alignment ability let him store those he'd killed into dedicated slots, one slot opening with each tier. Six slots at present, four of them filled, and he had been very deliberate about who filled them. Four formidable fighters, chosen carefully. He wasn't in the habit of wasting slots.
This was distinct from [Capturing Reflection], which was an active juggling act, it required cognitive effort, mana drain, a duration ticking down in the background the whole time. His stored [True Reflection]s had none of those problems. Ease of use, no upkeep, and a suite of additional benefits his class layered on top. If he played this correctly, he might be able to kill her here and now.
He wouldn't do it in her form, obviously. He was only wearing it to take the measure of her from the inside, while the Kovrath kept the pressure up and bought him a few more minutes to work through what she actually was. She hadn't moved from her rooftop position this entire time, which made sense once he understood why.
She had some kind of ability that had simply rebuilt her. Gave her organs she hadn't been born with, which she was running for what seemed like a considerable variety of effects. She could produce clones of herself, full copies with the complete ability set, he hadn't tried that one because the mana cost looked eye-watering. There was a passive mana recovery skill paired with an active one, which he was still getting his hands around and which would need more time than he currently had available. Her mana was strange too, a violet haze that seemed to operate on something closer to probability than straightforward flow. And she had sub mana cores, which he hadn't been expecting and which he filed away as deeply interesting.
He kept digging.
And eventually he found the ability that explained all the rest of it.
It was transformation-related.
Skethis' eyes went wide before the grin got there. He'd had a suspicion since the beginning that she was wearing a shape that wasn't hers. This was about as confirmed as it was going to get without her telling him directly.
He activated it immediately. The mana cost was still a proper chunk, but nowhere near what the clone ability would have demanded.
And then he was somewhere else entirely. It was a blank space with four shadows standing in front of him.
He focused on the first shadow and found it was what the vrathi called a Drakkaris. Dark hair, dead eyes, a pair of horns. Skethis had the nagging feeling he'd seen her somewhere before, but couldn't place it and moved on.
The second was the form she was currently wearing, the one he'd copied. Vibrant, tall, almost aggressively majestic about it. Long golden hair, long ears, eyes that swirled violet. Looking at the shadow of it gave him the distinct and irrational impression that it was looking down at him. He moved on from that one too.
The third was stranger still. It was shaped like them. Like Kovrath. But refined in a way that theirs weren't, less like a people that happened to have draconic features and more like a dragon that had agreed, reluctantly, to take a smaller shape and was making its feelings about that known in every line of the form.
It unsettled him in a way he couldn't fully articulate, and once again he had the crawling sense of being watched by something that didn't appreciate the attention he was paying it.
He shook it off. He wasn't stopping now.
He turned to the fourth shadow, whose shape he couldn't read at all. For a moment it gave him nothing. Then, without any particular warning, he felt it, like a crushing weight of primal darkness dropping over him like something enormous had just noticed him rifling through its belongings and was now deciding what to do about it. The gaze of a true ancient predator, glaring at him.
He went completely still.
The fourth shadow unfolded itself.
Massive. Golden-scaled, with wings that filled the blank space, a sinuous body, terrifying claws. Where the other forms had merely felt like they were judging him, this one was different. This one was present. It looked down at him with an almost living intensity, enormous and very patient, as if it were genuinely curious whether he was stupid enough to try claiming it and wanted to find out.
Skethis' heart did something it hadn't done in a very long time.
He stopped channeling the ability.
A dragon.
A DRAGON.
She was a gods-damned dragon.
Then, with every scrap of composure he had ever possessed thrown completely out the window, he opened every communication channel available to him and screamed into all of them simultaneously.
"RETREAT! EVERYONE RETREAT RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"