Chapter 776: Another Step For Shadow Heart...?

Chapter 776: Another Step For Shadow Heart...? [Bonus Chapter]

Inside Bastion Ground, the air turned thick as tomb dust.

Curved slabs of bedrock arched overhead, and the whole space pressed down like being buried under a mountain.

The broken crater floor had been swallowed and sealed over with smooth solid stone that hummed with a steady vibration straight up through the soles of their boots... Faint crimson veins ran through the walls like cracks of lava, the only light anywhere.

For Brida, this was home.

The second her domain took hold, the earth mana in her bones started singing in harmony with the stone around her.

The slate across her chest finally loosened without a fight, and she dragged in her first full breath in minutes.

Her Bedrock Body felt twice as dense, and every breath pulled fresh strength back into her lungs.

"Haaaah..."

For Tasmin, it felt like an iron coffin slamming shut.

The weight of the bedrock pressed down on her shoulders like a fallen ceiling.

Worse, the darkness in here wasn’t hers... It was dead empty dark, without a single soft natural shadow to swim through.

The polished floor had no cracks, no roots and no edges to cast anything, and every wisp of shadow leaking off her leathers was pinned flat against the stone and smothered.

’She wants to bury me in here,’ Tasmin thought, gritting her teeth as blood stung the corner of her eye. ’She really thinks she can choke out my shadows with a pile of rocks...’

Tasmin refused to die in a brawler’s quarry.

She planted her boots, sucked in a lungful of dusty air and drove her will down to the very bottom of her core.

She reached out with her mind, grabbed the dead darkness all around her and turned it inside out.

VUUUUUUUUM!

A ripple of absolute light-swallowing black burst out from under her feet.

The stone floor melted away into a bottomless lake of liquid shadow that rippled with cold silent waves, and overhead, a second dome bloomed against the inside of Brida’s bedrock, a hollow sphere of swirling midnight fighting for control of the space between them.

The two domains collided with a sound like mountains grinding together.

GRRRRRRRRRNNNNN!

Brida looked down at the black water around her boots, then up at the thin trembling dome of shadow pressed against her stone ceiling, and a bloody grin split her face.

"Is this supposed to scare me, Tas?" Brida mocked, her laugh booming off the curved walls. "Your little dome was tiny the first time, and now it looks like a cheap silk tent! Did you really turn my barrier inside out just to make yourself a blanket to cry under?"

"Shut your filthy mouth, you oversized clod," Tasmin spat, her fingers trembling under the strain of holding the inverted space in place. "I built this cage to take apart brutes like you... By the time I’m done, you won’t have enough marrow left to hold up that stone roof."

"You’re welcome to try, rat!"

Brida planted her feet in the dark water and drove both fists straight down into the floor.

KRASSSSSH!

She poured everything she had into the foundations of Bastion Ground, and the bedrock overhead convulsed.

The huge slabs began to close in, groaning under a massive surge of weight as Brida forced her whole dome to squeeze inward.

The crimson veins flared into blinding rivers of molten light that scorched the edges of Tasmin’s sphere and burned the darkness away like dry straw.

The pressure doubled then it tripled.

KRRRRAAAACK!

A long jagged crack split across the ceiling of Tasmin’s shadow dome like breaking ice.

Crimson light bled through the tear, and the weight of a whole mountain ridge pressed down on her shoulders through it as Tasmin’s knees buckled, and her boots sank into the black water.

Blood burst from both of her nostrils and her core was screaming.

Holding a domain inside someone else’s barrier was close to impossible, and every second felt like holding up a falling fortress with her bare hands.

KRAAAACK!

Another crack tore across the shadow ceiling, and more crimson light flooded in and boiled the black lake around her ankles into hissing steam.

Brida took a heavy step forward through the water, her eyes blazing through the dust with both fists raised like stone mallets.

"Your dome’s breaking, Tasmin!" Brida bellowed. "You don’t have the juice to hold a domain against me, and you know it! Yield before I flatten your spine against the floor!"

Tasmin’s vision blurred.

Her arms shook as she fought to keep the shadow walls from caving in. Blood ran down her chin and dripped into the black water.

Her chest burned, and her core flickered like a candle in a storm.

’Yield...?’ The word echoed through her head, and the hatred that came with it burned hotter than the pain. ’To this thick-skulled bitch? After everything? After I told her to her face I’d carve her pride into ribbons?’

...No... She’d rather let her ribs be ground into powder...

Deep in her chest, her Shadow Heart beat.

THUMP!

It had been beating since the moment she got serious, pumping darkness into her body every time she ran low, but it had never been finished.

...It had always been a half-formed thing, a stubborn black knot that only gave her as much as she could drag out of it.

Now, with Brida’s dome crushing her from every side and her core screaming at the edge of breaking, she stopped dragging.

She shoved everything she had left straight into it.

THUMP!

The knot took it.

It drank in every scrap of darkness in her body and every drop of strength in her core and pulled it all inward, tighter and denser, compressing it down until it felt like a black star was collapsing in the middle of her chest.

THUMP! THUMP! BA-DUMP!

Cold liquid fire burst outward from her heart and flooded through her whole body.

It still wasn’t finished... She could feel that but it was closer than it had ever been, and it had changed.

The grinding in her channels stopped as the darkness didn’t need to be pulled anymore.

It poured out of her heart on its own and ran through her veins like warm blood.

The pain in her ribs dulled to a distant ache, the exhaustion dragging at her arms drained away and the dead empty dark that Brida’s domain had pinned down all around her suddenly felt different.

It wasn’t dead anymore... It was hers. She didn’t need a shadow to swim through, Her heart was making them.

’I’ve made some progress once again...’

Tasmin slowly straightened her knees.

The cracks in her shadow ceiling stopped spreading ten, one by one, they began to close, the darkness knitting itself back together over the crimson light like a wound sealing shut.

The smoke streaming from her eyes thickened into two roaring jets of solid black.

Brida’s grin faltered for the first time.

Up on the platform, Silas’s breath caught.

Nobody outside could see a thing through the stone then a translucent blue window flickered open in front of his eyes.

PING!

[Your Subordinate, ’Tasmin’ (S-Rank Shadow Commander), has taken another step toward condensing her ’Shadow Heart’!]

Silas stared at it, and slowly, a grin spread across his face as the gold ring in his eyes flared bright.

Beside him, Morwenna glanced at the grin on his face and slowly looked back at the dome.

"...Captain," she said carefully. "What just happened in there?"

Silas didn’t answer.

’I want to see too...’

Inside the bedrock, the darkness exploded.

BOOOOOOOOM!

Tasmin’s domain burst outward in a ravenous tidal wave of black that slammed into Brida’s stone from the inside.

The crimson veins in the rock flickered and went out one by one, swallowed whole... The shallow water around their boots surged up and spread into a vast bottomless lake of shadow, feeling silent and very deep.

FWOOOOOOOSH!

Brida’s fortress wasn’t hers anymore.

Her boots slipped... For the first time since she’d raised her domain, the solid grip of the rock under her was gone, and a cold jolt of panic shot through her gut.

"What the hell did you just do?!" Brida barked, staring at the black swallowing her walls. "Where’d all this mana come from?!"

Tasmin didn’t answer.

She raised both of her bare hands.

Something new had been born out of that heartbeat, and she could feel it waiting at the bottom of the lake like a word on the tip of her tongue.

She clenched her fists and activated a new skill.

’Umbral Hands... Kekeke...’

BLUBBLUBBLUB!

The surface of the lake began to boil... Then, all around Brida, dozens of thick corded arms made of solid darkness tore up out of the water.

SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH!

There were fifty of them, each as thick as a pine log, with long clawed fingers that flexed in perfect unison as they rose around Brida like a forest.

Brida looked around at them, then back at Tasmin.

"...Oh, come on."

"Grab her," Tasmin said softly and the arms lunged.

Ten hands burst out of the lake under Brida’s heels and wrapped around her ankles and calves like iron chains.

Six more exploded from the water behind her and locked around her waist, pinning her left arm against her cracked ribs, while four more clamped onto her right bicep and stopped her punch dead before she could throw it.

GRAB!

Brida locked her Warrior’s Heart into slate and threw her whole weight forward, the veins in her neck bulging as she strained against them.

SNAP! SNAP!

Two of the arms on her ankles burst into smoke. Before she could take a single step, four more rose from the lake and grabbed her knees.

Tasmin was already moving.

With her heart pumping darkness into her faster than she could spend it, [Shadow Strengthening] didn’t just double her strength anymore.

It held there without draining her at all.

She crossed the ten paces between them so fast she seemed to tear a hole through the air and landed lightly on the black water right in front of Brida with her left fist wrapped in a spinning drill of darkness.

"This one’s for the headbutt, you loud-mouthed ape," Tasmin hissed.

Her fist slammed into Brida’s broken nose.

KRAK!

Brida’s head snapped back.

Before she could recover, three shadow hands grabbed her by the hair and the collar and yanked her forward, straight into Tasmin’s rising elbow.

KRUNCH!

It caught Brida flush on the chin and rattled her skull all the way down her spine.

"BREAK!" Brida roared through a mouthful of blood.

She flexed her huge back and twisted hard enough to snap all six arms around her ribs into vapor.

RRRIP!

Her right arm came free, and she swung a wild hammer-fist down at Tasmin’s skull.

Five shadow arms shot up between them and crossed into a thick layered wedge right above Tasmin’s head.

BANG!

The fist smashed three of them into splinters, and the last two caught it and held it there, inches above Tasmin’s hair.

Tasmin glanced up at the fist hanging over her head, then at Brida, and her smirk came back.

"Missed... Kekekeke..."

’What’s Kekekeke? When did she start that...?’

Tasmin stepped inside, and the beatdown began.

Her palm slammed into the cracked rib on Brida’s flank.

Her fist drove into Brida’s solar plexus before Brida could even grunt, and a spinning backfist cracked across her swollen cheekbone.

SMACK! THUD! KRAK!

"Hold still!" Tasmin snapped, burying a knee in Brida’s stomach.

THOOM!

"That’s MY line!" Brida wheezed, coughing blood.

Every time Brida’s arm came up to block, a shadow hand yanked it back down.

Every time she tried to step back, more hands seized her ankles... Two arms rose behind her and slammed twin palm strikes into her kidneys while Tasmin buried another straight punch in her shoulder.

WHAM! WHAM!

Brida’s slate was flickering now, locking and loosening and locking again with every hit as her Warrior’s Heart tried to keep up, and it couldn’t.

Hits were landing in the gaps... Every time the slate came up a fraction too late as Tasmin’s fist was already there.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Get off m– Ugh!"

She staggered backward after tanking another hit then Brida stopped trying to swing.

"Fuu... Why don’t you just die?"

She locked herself into slate from head to toe and activated [Aegis Charge].

VROOOOOOM!

Brida didn’t bother to rip free of the hands... She just ran and dragged them with her, the arms clamped to her legs and waist stretching like ropes and tearing away one after another as she plowed straight through the forest of shadow at Tasmin.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Her shoulder hit Tasmin like a falling wall.

KA-WHAM!

Tasmin skipped across the black lake twice and went under in a huge spray of dark water.

SPLOOOOSH!

A heartbeat later, the lake under Brida’s feet opened, and a dozen shadow hands dragged her down into it up to her waist.

Tasmin rose out of the water behind her, soaked and bleeding.

"How’s the puddle?" Tasmin hissed. "It feels wet you know..."

Fifty arms came down on Brida at once like a collapsing roof.

KRA-KRA-KRA-KRASSSSH!

When they finally pulled back, Brida was barely standing.

She threw one last left hook though it was pretty slow, like she was swinging it underwater.

Tasmin slipped under it, eight hands wrapped around Brida’s arm and waist to hold her in place, and Tasmin drove her knee up into the cracked ribs on Brida’s left side with all of her strength.

KRRRRAAAACK!

"GAAAAAHHH!"

Brida’s left leg gave out, and her knee crashed into the black water.

SPLASH!

She stayed there on one trembling knee with her hand pressed against her shattered ribs and her head hanging low.

Blood dripped off her chin in slow rings as the slate across her body had gone completely dull.

The forest of shadow hands stopped and hung in a silent ring around her.

’It’s over,’ Tasmin thought, a cold satisfied smirk spreading across her lips.

Then a strange sound broke the silence.

HIIIIISSSSSSS!

And from every pore of Brida’s battered skin, thick plumes of scalding white steam began to pour into the air.

’We’re breaking limits, huh...? I can do that too.’