Blessing Gained: Entombment of Tranquility — For the span of one month, no acts of force or violence will take effect upon or because of you. You are to be spared from all destruction, and severed from the ability to conduct your wrath.
Turn your gaze inward, Child of Strife, and repent, for a new heaven comes to overthrow your fallen paradise.
—Challenger’s notification screen
VII-76
Immigration
For forty hours, the pilgrims flowed and never ceased. For forty hours, the orcs, children of bloodshed and darkness, ascended the ziggurat, stepping into a new god’s light as they allowed themselves to be burned and changed, purified by a light Integration had never borne witness to. For forty hours, they came, from across all Tiers, all cliques, all Paths. The orcs came and continued to come. Familiar faces and strangers alike arrived to pay homage to their new patriarch.
The Challenger stood true to his word. He offered his orcs a chance to decide for themselves: to stay their course or choose a new destiny, to shed the itch for something else, for something novel. In Adam, they found that novelty. The Pathbearer once deemed a frail victim for them to exert their influence over so that they could manipulate the Deathless was now their most unforeseen salvation. And that surprise suffused the orcs with a warm joy that Shiv had never detected in them like this before—it was genuine wonder.
The first to arrive were familiar faces, the original group sent to Shiv's side by the Challenger himself: Whisper, Mortar, and Tequila. They kept ahead of the masses as they reached the summit and paid fealty to their new Demigod. Adam, though broken in mind and unstable in spirit, refused to retreat back across the gateway. He said that he needed to make a stand here, that the symbolism had to endure, that light needed to pierce this benighted place and see it riven of war and horror, for Peace was Tyranny, and Tyranny's destiny was in imperialism. One could not usurp the System through purely defensive efforts, after all.
To claim the sky, one must overtake it and wrench the heavens free from their foundations, the Harbinger intoned.
And so Shiv stood guard, with all other matters coming second to his friend. The great dawn Adam cast beyond the horizon was made ever brighter by the new azure band that the System had bestowed upon him. Though the Paragon tried to pull it free several times himself, it wouldn't come loose. It was at once a blessing and a curse, a piece of equipment that wouldn't separate from him of his own volition. It empowered him, but it was a reminder on the System's part that he still reigned beneath the heel of a true sovereign.
Shiv was sure the System was taunting them all, and that filled him with a truer, colder loathing than he'd ever known. The Challenger, then, was as Adam had said: merely an expression of one of the System's pillars, the facet or war, strife, and cruelty. Perhaps the last was least among the many, but cruelty itself came naturally when one exulted in power and faced no consequence so long as they claimed victory.
The darkest part of the Challenger, however, was how dignified he was. There was a virtue to the God of Strife, and it could be seen in how the orcs marched forth orderly and disciplined, never once ripping into each other, never once using subterfuge or schemes to strike Adam down, though he was a prime target right now. It was clear how broken he was, even after his partial ascension. His eyes jumped, his gaze above flickered, and every few minutes, he would whimper and shiver as dark memories and deeper pain assailed him. He did not come out of his ordeal unscarred, far from it. He was closer to a permanent breaking point than ever before, and Shiv could feel it. Adam was more shattered than even the Harbinger by far. He was like a thousand grains of dust pasted back together, held firm by a higher power—a power that dwelled within Adam, a power that rebuffed the System sometimes, but not completely, not absolutely. That power, then, radiated from Adam, staining him in vapors of Tyranny and Heroism. The incandescence that he wielded was something different entirely from the glow of the Starhawk or any other god, for it was a dimmer incandescence, one that held traces of peace itself. It was an expression of order and power before even mana.
Or so Cripple claimed when Shiv questioned it. “I have never felt this Domain before. I have known Gods of Tyranny. I have struck down beasts that used the fires of Heroism to imbue their warriors and champions with might unsurpassed. But a combination between the two? This is unheard of. It should not be possible. The Domains should clash and cause the god that wields them to shatter. Yet he has internalized both, and both exist in harmony with each other. In fact, it feels like they are of a merged Domain rather than separate parts.”
“And it shouldn't be that way?” Shiv asked. His knowledge of Divinity was paltry, but even he could feel that wrongness within Adam. Truth be told, the powers that Adam wielded felt more eldritch than any outsider God Shiv had faced before. Even though the Stranger was powerful, even though it was hard to understand what the Dreamtaker could do with dreams and nightmares, even if the Eldest was an invasive entity beyond all others, they were not absolute. There were things a Pathbearer could do to resist them. There was a measure of self-determination one could take hold of.
Not the same with Adam. When his Zone of Absolute Dominion fell, Peace reigned, and it reigned absolute. There was no rebuttal, there was no rebuke, there was no way to break free, not unless someone had another body somewhere else. Even then, Shiv could feel it: the mists coiling over him, pressing against him, searing his Red Rider's hand.
It was like an intruder had breached this reality and installed their own laws—laws not of communal or political origin, but laws of natural order. Peace then became as true as physics, as true as biology, as true as the star would shine and the winds would blow. Peace became a fundamental force of the universe.
And those bestowed of that Peace became vessels to it as well. For as Whisper, Tequila, and all the other orcs reported, in turning away from the Challenger's Domain and stepping into Adam's, the orcs experienced their own evolutions. Where once their right arms were scarred and bloodied, then coated in enamel—like veins of blinding gold in a mirror of what wounds were sustained by their sovereign father—now that injury was shed as the scabs fell away, revealing pure limbs, unvarnished of the Challenger's mutilation. Instead, it was their right eye that was lost. Their right eyes burned away in flaring pits of incandescence. The ocular organ was dissolved, but what remained was not an empty socket exposed to the elements, but rather a channel for the vapors of peace to flow free.
“I gotta say, Insul, this feels bloody weird.” Mortar growled those words as he smacked the right side of his skull, trying to dislodge the awkwardness he felt. “Is like it got seared right out of me. Didn't feel that good, but can't say it felt bad either. Feels like I got part of myself snipped, and now there's something else, another hunger filling me. Just can't tell what's that yet…”
The huge orc artillerist regarded Adam's diminutive form, and his expression softened. Even so, Roland didn't trust the oncoming grayskins, and he stayed close to his son. Isabella and Rose arrived—and refused to be apart from Adam, though being in the Tutorial exposed them to great danger. Yet the Challenger held to his honor, as did the orcs. Shiv felt a thousand angles of attack made manifest. There were countless orc mages, archers, and shadows who could have moved in on the most vulnerable of the visitors, but they didn't. For the Challenger was inflicted with a month of peace, and that fast was to be shared by his fellow orcs. Though some of them radiated judgement and agitation, they held themselves to that higher discipline, while others of their race turned away from the itch into a land of new promise.
Helix and Bonk arrived as well, bringing with them the original orc rebels that had decided to stay at Gate Piety, mostly to feed their own desires. They, too, found themselves purged of the itch, but their responses were far more muted than their counterparts who arrived from the Tutorial. It seemed that that self-determination which guided Helix and Bonk had made them different from all the other orcs already. It wasn't like they were beyond cruelty, but it was something they put up with more than they indulged in, and perhaps that spoke volumes of what an orc could be even without the presence of a just god changing their fundamental nature.
“And here I thought I was going to witness something fantastical,” Helix muttered with a note of disappointment as he examined himself using his Biomancy. Strands of mana passed through his body as he analyzed his flesh in vivid detail. With a disgusted snort, he spun on his heel and strode back toward the portal, indifferent to the proceedings, with a trail of mist leaking out from his right eye. “I suppose being unburdened by the itch lends itself to my studies, but alas, this flesh of mine remains as it always has been. It would have been interesting if I was turned into something of a hawk.”
The image that conjured made Shiv laugh aloud. “With how much you squawk, Helix, I'd guess you wanted to be a pigeon instead, or maybe a parrot.”
Helix scoffed. “Do not demean me, Insul. I have no desire to turn into an avian. It's merely the fact that I might have turned into an avian that interested me. After all, all gods seek to inflict their own image upon the mortals beneath them.” But then he hesitated, and he looked over his shoulder. His eye gleamed bright and vivid red with biomancy mana, and he regarded Adam with a measure of hesitation. “Yet it seems different in his case.”
True to his words, it was, for it wasn't the orcs that were fully captured by Adam's image, though they took on aspects of his Divinity. Rather, it was Adam who slowly became more orc-like with every pilgrim who greeted him. His body grew larger. His original form, small and dwarfed by the gray-skinned brutes, extended. His bones elongated, his skin darkened and turned grey. His ears turned sharp and thicker. And while the glow remained in both of them, his eye sockets grew thicker and denser, like sunken tunnels.
Near the end of those forty hours, Adam stood transformed. He wasn't fully orcish yet, but he was close enough. His nature as a Changeling made him a mirror god, but his mirror was that of those he represented.
But according to the Educator, his transformation wasn't complete. For aspects of him remained human still, as his hands resembled fingers instead of claws, as his musculature hadn't changed entirely. The Educator pointed these facts out to Shiv as she made a quick draft of his changing form within her tome. For what purpose she didn't say, but the Deathless didn't press either. She was clearly as overwhelmed as the rest of them, and in hushed tones, she exchanged questions and theories with her fellow Ascendants who grew further and further from Adam, calling their Avatars to convene.
But Roland ignored the Starhawk—and the Ascendant of Justice pressed no further. Roland chose his son, and the Starhawk left with lingering shame and an unwillingness to humiliate himself further in this place of darkness where he shared in the Challenger's dismemberment.
That wretched fact didn't go unnoticed by Shiv. Even now, the Starhawk was deprived of his lower limbs. Gods were capable of regeneration, but there was something else beyond the physical that inhibited their reconstruction: Symbology.
Everything Adam did was beyond Shiv's experience, beyond his ability to conceptualize, but he was growing closer. Everything had significance when you were a god, and you did things to honor your own Domains. You embodied the traits that you were worshiped for, and the juxtaposition he composed in opposition to a high god many times his power, yet who recognized him as a true rival, fed the once feeble flames of Adam's divinity.
The acts of reciprocation, contrast, light and darkness, Peace and War. The invasion of Adam's mist into this realm of destruction and death. The supplication performed by the Challenger, who honestly and truly wanted a proper rival, all fed Adam's growing incandescence. It was through that that his godhood grew. It was only by that means that the incandescence which powered him grew brighter. It was much like any other attuned mana field, an expression of common beliefs and lore. The lore of Divinity was specific and higher still than the shared understanding of what made Biomancy or Pyromancy function.
But again, there was something more invasive and insidious about the mists inside Adam. For the mists wore him, took hold of him, and in those moments, he wasn't himself, but rather a vessel enslaved by his own divine power.
And thus, Shiv wasn't sure if he could trust the mysterious god that rested inside Adam—for did such a creature truly have his best friend's interests in mind, or was it just using him to further its expression of dominance?
It was at the twenty-fourth hour that Adam finally emerged from his stupor. He drew in a ragged breath, sucking in air as his left eye blinked. His fugue state came to an end, and he finally realized that everyone surrounding him, all the orcs, had come to greet him. Some of them left offerings, nothing of great material worth, but everything of great significance.
The symbolism continued. Skulls taken from great foes, now abandoned, laid the feet of the god of Tyranny and Heroism. Those skulls burned, but they were not dissolved. Instead, the cinders of Heroism imbued them with divine light, and thus they were changing as well.
Then there were cracked weapons, swords broken at their base with only the hilt remaining, slowly regenerating into a lattice of life-infused design, sprouting flowers instead of steel-lined edges. Then there were tomes whose pages were empty of text, placed down by scholarly orcs, now being filled with illustrations and words as if the System itself was inscribing lore in progress.
And as Shiv glanced upon the fluttering pages, he realized his assumptions were true. The struggle between Adam and the Challenger, everything that transpired in the Tutorial, was being burned onto the pages in rolling tides of scripture. He himself was mentioned and even granted titles: The Dusk that Guards the Dawn, the Shadow that Veils the Light.
Uva lifted one of those tomes and flipped through it. Many pages toward the back were still blank, so the testament was incomplete, but it was in progress, and it was filling with every orc that passed into the bunker beyond the gateway, quietly anticipating what future proclamations the Paragon might announce.
“We're being recorded by the System,” Uva declared. She swallowed, and though her posture remained stoic, Shiv could read her better than anyone else. The present moment unnerved her. Adam unnerved her. Though she was actively reconstructing his mind, there was nothing she could do for his soul, and that was the part of him that was undergoing the most drastic transformation.
“It's bloody taunting me, is what it's doing,” Adam managed to grind out after a full day of besotted silence.
The moment he uttered those words, everyone drew in on him like a swarm of piranhas lured by bleeding chunks of meat. His mother cupped his face while his father seized his shoulder. They needed to be in contact with him, desperate to cling to their boy, to know that he was alright. But Adam wasn't alright. Shiv could read the horror inside him from his very eye.
Despite this, he was himself again, truly himself. The mists remained with him, but the presence inside had gone dormant. Adam looked shaken. He had the expression of a man who'd struck a bargain he couldn't fulfill, made a pact with something greater and stronger than himself, that he couldn't defy or change.
The orc pilgrims formed an outer perimeter, each of them courteous enough to give the Paragon his space. But decency alone couldn't hold back the pressure they inflicted on not only Adam, but everyone else present. There was a dread that came with being watched. There was a wretched thing about being observed by the world, without escape, without privacy.
Here, at the top of the ziggurat, surrounded by thousands of orcs who never blinked, who observed their new Demigod, waiting to see how he would react. The weight that pressed upon Adam was enough to drive a groan of discomfort from him. Once more, his father tried to extract him from the scene. Once more, Adam refused. He stayed in place as he had to face the orcs. He had to face his followers, and he looked to Shiv, letting out a soft sigh as he tried to make light of his present circumstances.
"How long was I out this time?"
"About a day," Shiv answered.
Adam nodded slowly. "I see. How many Delves did you complete since then?"
Shiv snorted. "I came close to one. You have no idea how many levels I gained for my patient meditation skill. I actually killed myself a few times just to speed things along.”
The Paragon rolled his remaining eye—and his omniscient star above. That part was something Shiv would have to get used to. "I'm disappointed in you, Deathless. You should have pushed it to Legendary-Tier already. I should be seething now. Instead, I'm back, and you are what? Only Master-Tier?"
"Heroic," Shiv corrected, playing along.
Adam sighed and covered his face with a hand. "Pathetic. So close, yet so far."
Then he cracked his fingers open to peer at Shiv through them, and the two held each other's gazes a moment longer before both broke out into laughter.
“It's good to have you back, Paragon,” Shiv said, repressing the dread he felt toward the mists that continuously leaked forth from Adam. The new Demigod shared his sentiment, for he couldn't stop himself from looking upon the dread and null that whipped out behind Shiv as an extension to his dimensional cape.
“I can't quite claim it's good to be back,” Adam moaned. His eye flicked up and down now, and Shiv realized he was looking through a series of notifications. Uva linked their minds, and Shiv saw what Adam saw: a wall of updates from the System regarding completed Quests and incoming challenges. Adam's hand shivered, and for a beat, he turned his eye up. He reached up to feel at the band fused to his head, and a rasping growl of discomfort sang forth. "Well, I guess that wasn't a dream. I was mad enough to come here.” Then Adam shot Shiv an outraged look. “And you didn't even bother stopping me.”
Shiv did a double-take. "Huh? You practically begged me to let you come over! You used your palm on your dad and the Culturist. I stayed close to you to keep you safe all this time, and now you're blaming all this on me?"
“Of course I'm blaming all this on you. You're the only one I can rely on to stop me from doing something stupid."
“What the fuck, Adam? Your dad could've stopped you too. The Culturist. Valor. Anyone. Why are you just looking at me?” He waved a hand in the direction of his girlfriend. “You didn’t even try to blame this on Uva, and she was attached to your mind this entire time!”
She promptly narrowed her eyes at Shiv and threw her head aside with a loud 'humph'. "Do not drag me into your lover's quarrel; you bear the brunt of the blame, as the new god has spoken. This is your responsibility to atone for, Deathless. I was simply preoccupied with maintaining the Paragon’s mental stability. You had to be responsible for his body, and clearly you failed.”
“Shame!” Bonk bellowed from behind.
"Shame, shame, shame!"
The other orcs took on the chant, and for some strange reason, or maybe just because all orcs were fundamentally pricks, even those who did not give themselves to Adam's light took on the battle cry. A series of boos and jeers rained down upon Shiv, who pressed his lips together. Drowned in that deafening cacophony, Shiv looked at Adam with disbelief, and he caught the faint, weak smirk lingering on his friend's face.
A breath of disbelief slipped out from Shiv as he sent a telepathic message straight to Adam. “Seriously? You're turning into a felling Demigod, and the first thing you do when fully recovering your sanity is using that power to screw with me?”
Adam rubbed his now incredibly broad chin with a hand, like he was stroking a nonexistent beard in thought. “Remember Weave, and that time we were in the apartment? Remember what you made me suffer? How you told me that the Weaveresses and the Composer were planning to impregnate me with spiderlings?”
Shiv's incredulity grew three sizes that second. “You’re still holding on to that? That was like… two years ago!”
Uva shot him an incredulous look, one that Adam mirrored.
“It's most definitely not been that long, Shiv,” Adam deadpanned. “And besides, I'm a god now. My rancor and imperious nature will not be so easily satisfied. In fact, I feel like I'm sinking into my own legend. My identity is turning murky…” To complete the act of mockery, Adam gently placed the back of his palm against his temple, as if aping a feeble maiden about to faint.
Then, slowly, infusing the gesture with as much meaning as he could muster, he extended that hand and pointed his index finger at Shiv before declaring: “Shame! Shame the Shameless who calls himself Deathless! Shame him until he knows true shame!”
And somehow, for some stupid reason, this juvenile prank made Shiv feel like everything was going to be alright, despite everything they were going to face and everything that was changing among them. They might just make it out of this stronger than before.
***
“Holy felling shit, ram the Crown of the Anti-Savior back into my skull,” Adam moaned. “Cast me back into the pits of insanity. Spare me this labor…”
Rose frowned and lightly slapped Adam across his shoulder. Her fingernails rang against the metal, but she betrayed no hint of pain while the Paragon winced in apology to his mother. "Don't even fucking joke about that, son."
“I—I’m sorry, but…” His expression became desperate and overwhelmed, and he threw up both arms as if offering his submission to the heavens. "How can so much happen in just a month?" Everyone stared at Adam, especially Shiv. "Okay, forget I asked that. But still, how? The Gate nearly fell. You did a Delve and got how many new skills? You know something, Shiv? I have another bone to pick with you."
"Yeah, what is it?" Shiv asked nonchalantly, studying the dirt under his fingernails as he stood leading against the metal wall behind him.
Everyone was gathered in the bunker now. The orcs were overflowing. There were still long chains running outside the gateway, and a new inner encampment had formed upon that ziggurat that led to Gate Piety. There were thousands of orcs already packed into the bunker, allowed through dimensional magicks expanding spaces and allowing the highest-Tier grayskins to house themselves, at least on a temporary basis. This wouldn't be a long-term option. Not with the impending invasion down the line. They needed to make a decision, and thus Adam was faced with a series of dilemmas.
One of many. He had to be caught up with the coalition that was currently being built up inside his Gate, a coalition formed of major representatives from the surface nation and Abyssal Faiths. Powerful Pathbearers, known and unknown, had gathered here, and that was not even getting into the transformed nature of Gate Piety's mana core. It sported three Unique skills, three Unique mana types, all of them harvested from Shiv, Adam, and Uva, each one imbuing this place with a portion of their own nature.
Then there was the undying Tarrasque up north, and the Court of the Shattered Moon that held it. They would be part of the invasion along with the orcs, Lord Scorn, Compact, and the First Blood in the span of a month, if they were not dealt with.
Finally, there were the two million or so orc turncoats who were departing from the Tutorial and seeking immigration to Gate Piety long-term. Orcs that Roland and doubtless many others weren't keen on trusting, but who seemed to be purified by Adam regardless.
“Was it your plan too?" Adam said, his voice taking on a desperate quality. "Were you just waiting for me to wake up so that you could dump all this administrative suffering on me? Is this your idea of retribution?”
“Why are you still blaming me?” Shiv shot back, tearing his gaze away from his nails like he was making a great sacrifice in listening to Adam's whining. "When have I ever done anything administrative? Look, man, if you want to attribute blame, I'll take my share, but you know immigration was technically Uva's job. And you can thank your dad and Valor for the invitations.”
Three sets of eyes locked on to Shiv, and the glares they sent his way were anything but kind.
“Shiv, please perform the 'shut the fuck up' technique right now. Talk no more. Speak no more. You are dragging yourself into a pit of horror and pain.” The Harbinger's pleas were three-quarters playful and one-quarter terrified. Shiv slammed his mouth shut, but he failed to dodge a poke from Uva that threatened a specific kind of retribution later.
He barely managed to hide his gulp and accepted one of his physical vessels as lost.
“Whatever the case, this has only happened because you set all of us on fire. I'm not blaming everyone else. They're just dealing with this problem. You're the one who caused all of this. We're all burning because of you. You're the one who was originally favored because you couldn't stay dead.” Adam suddenly turned to Isabella, who flinched back in fright. She had been mostly a silent participant, glad to see her fiancé back but utterly overwhelmed and overshadowed by the incomprehensible developments taking place and all the Legendary Pathbearers and gods present.
“Isabella, I'm making sense, right? This makes a lot of sense. He's the one that caused all this. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. Everything might just be fine. We might all be dead, but that would be fine too, as long as I didn't have to do so much work in the great beyond. All this! All this! The orcs! The horror! The constant torture! It's his fault! It's his fault!”
Isabella squirmed uncomfortably as Adam seized her by both arms. Rose approached and gently pried Adam away before he terrified the poor girl too much. However, Isabella showed her nature and her goodness as she looked upon Shiv and gave him an apologetic stare. "Well, I wouldn't say everything is Shiv's fault exactly. I mean, we can technically call him the cause if that's how this whole favor thing works, but it doesn't seem like he wanted to do this either, so he might just be the… patient zero of victims?"
Then she licked her lips, and her back straightened. A measure of steel entered her as she spoke from her heart and, to Shiv's surprise, defended him, from the one she was set to marry. "Besides, if it wasn't for Shiv, we would all be dead. I would be dead. He came down trying to fix our sickness. He died for us over and over again. So, yes, maybe he is System-favored, and maybe we're all burning because of him, but without him, where would we be anyway?”
The clarity of her gratitude cut through the air and actually made Shiv choke up a little. Just a little. Just a tiny bit. However, it struck Adam the most, and the performative outrage died as he turned and hovered past everyone to embrace his friend. Shiv found himself surprised, as Adam was about his rival to him in size now, for he exhibited the physiology of an orc. Shiv reciprocated the embrace, and he leaned forward to whisper in Adam's ear, "You know, I liked it better when you were a little guy."
Adam snorted. “Deal with it, you oversized sack of shit. I'm turning into a god now, you know? Someday, you're going to look up, and it's going to be me who's treating you like a toddler.”
The Deathless just sneered, and he thought of a great comeback.
"What, are you gonna develop the—”
“Shiv! No! Don't say those words!” the Harbinger wailed in desperation. But it screamed too late.
“—Domains of Mammaries and Milk and feed me?”
A harrowing silence settled over the room. Adam froze, and then he slowly lifted his arms from Shiv's back and took two steps backward. Practically everyone present cringed or audibly gagged, Rose especially.
A shudder of pure disgust escaped Uva; the disappointment she felt toward her lover was genuine. “By the Composer, why am I damned to understand language? Actually, no. We're not doing this, Shiv. I'm going to remove this memory from everyone's mind right now.”
A chorus of agreements followed, and everyone exposed their minds to Uva so that she could rend this horrific memory from them, and then herself, to pretend it never happened.
“The System should take levels away from you for saying that,” the Harbinger chided. “Perhaps a Feat of three. I know you're excited to get your friend back, but please think before you speak. Please stop just trying to jest with him thoughtlessly—you're turning back into your old self. You're torturing me. You're torturing everyone.”
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry—" Shiv's string of thought was cut off as he suddenly forgot what he was sorry about.
As everyone looked at each other and Uva frowned, unsure what had made her mutilate her own mind and shred a memory asunder, Adam shook his head and regained his composure. “Look, it doesn't matter what just happened. What we need to do is figure out how to solve our problems in an order of operation, starting with…” He looked around the insides of the teleportation anchor at all the orcs that were now sworn to him.
Below a hum of rumination, he looked to Uva. "Could we build something quickly? A large, open encampment for the orcs. Near the Abyssal gateway, perhaps? Or somewhere in the middle, somewhere away from everyone else for a time, so as to not cause a calamitous uproar?”
“Ah, you're breaking our hearts, Tyrant!" Tequila cried from the back of the room. "We came here to give ourselves to you, and you have no faith in us? You're still worried that we might carve and butcher our way across your Gate, is that it?"
Adam hesitated, but Shiv didn't. “Even if you don't, there are Lone Stars still in this gate. If you're going to be here, we're going to need to do this properly instead of starting a sudden war. I know I might have changed your natures, but that doesn't change your history. We let you all out, and I think there is a good chance you're going to run into some of your former victims and enemies. What do you think follows after that?”
The orcs understood. None of them raised their voices in protest. They knew what they were and they knew what they'd inflicted upon others. This was the best strategy going forward.
“It might take some time," Adam began—
Before Uva cut him off. “No, it won't. I've constructed a rudimentary coliseum. I've sealed the ceiling as well. I've built it around the top side of the bunker and I folded it around the perch as well. It's larger on the inside. To make a request, however: All orcs who enter Gate Piety must accept my presence within their minds. This will allow more mana production and grant me the ability to personalize their temporary abodes, but also ensure a measure of safety. Best for everyone.”
In an instant, Adam was struck speechless. "Wait, wait. How do you—and you fused your Psychomancy with a Geomancy skill or something?”
“We’ve all changed, Legend Arrow.” Uva smirked. “Some of us are just not as ostentatious as others. You've become a god, and I've become stranger. And Shiv continues to be Shiv.”
“And Shiv continues to be Shiv,” Adam agreed.
The man in question frowned. “Everyone’s out for my ass today.”
A fork of translucent lightning slithered out from Uva and brushed the back of his head in a gesture of amelioration.
“If she can ensure their pacification, the orcs might just be a boon to the Gate,” Roland suddenly said. “Isn't a population increase part of the conditions for your Gate Quest, Adam?”
Adam froze. “Yes! We have two million orcs, and we are almost at five new Gate-based skills! It's already Category Four, and the only thing we're missing is…”
Gate Quest: Increase Gate Piety’s population to 500,000 (Currently at 3,000,044), construct 10 districts, gain 5 Gate-based Skills (Master-Tier Minimum), and advance the gate to Category 4 within 90 days.
Success: Grants the Gate Lord a Master-Tier Elemental Dimension Biome they can select; grants 2 selectable Heroic-Tier Skill Evolutions; grants a unique piece of Heroic-Tier Equipment based on the Gate Lord’s Path
“...ten districts,” Adam finished.
“Only ten?” Uva muttered. “Well. It seems our surge of new immigrants might just prove more beneficial than dangerous.”
“Oh, that still remains to be seen.” Whisper winked. “But we promise not to be dangerous until the Insul or Tyrant begs it of us.”