*
The only entrance—and exit—of the draconic lair resembled a veil of liquid silver. The spectral fabric trembled as it admitted two cocoons, one of golden vapor and the other of shadows. An acid-scarred humanoid followed in their wake.
The Juggernaut dropped to his knees to general indifference. His friends were used to it.
“Priam, you owe me a hundred thousand Sun points,” Jasmine muttered while inspecting her hair.
“Wh—”
His vocal cords dissolved, Priam coughed while burning lifespan to channel vitality through his injuries. “Why?” he asked mentally.
“That’s the price of the best shampoo in the Sun Shop. It’ll take at least that much to get the stench out of my hair.”
“What stench? Your Concept shielded you from the gastric juices.”
“That’s the only reason I still have hair.” Jasmine turned toward him. “Unlike you. By the way, bald doesn’t suit you.”
Priam conjured a mirror out of his mist and grimaced. Hair, eyelashes, eyebrows, and the rest of his body hair had been eaten away by the stomach acid along with his cheekbones. If he hadn’t kept the corrosive liquid away from his eyelids…
“Damn. I look like cannibal puke.”
“Don’t change the subject. I want my money.”
“You’re getting nothing. I don’t smell anything bad.”
“That’s because you no longer have a nose.”
Priam shrugged.
“Our hair smells about as bad as Blueberry’s breath,” Esmée confirmed while gathering her own platinum mane into an elegant bun. “No one will ever convince me to go spelunking inside the corpse of a giant fish again.”
Another shrug. It wasn’t the first time Priam had ventured into an enemy’s body. The stomach of the wyvern from his first quadruple Tribulation had even granted him [Acid Resistance].
The Terror’s gastric juices had gone even further. The Juggernaut smiled as he read his notifications.
Hidden prerequisites fulfilled:
Bath in the stomach of a draconic creature.
[Acid Resistance] maxed.
Your entire body fat has been transformed into soap.
[Base Resistance] maxed.
Bath in the stomach of a creature of a higher Tier than your own.
… Spontaneous fusion between [Acid Resistance] and [Base Resistance]. POT -500
You have gained a new ideal skill [pH Inert - Rare].
[pH Inert] - Standing for potential of hydrogen, pH measures the concentration of hydrogen ions—protons—in an aqueous solution. In layman’s terms, it is the unit that determines whether a liquid is acidic or basic in water. The farther the pH strays from 7 (pure water at 25°C), the more acidic or basic the substance becomes… and the more likely the hand you plunge into it is to vanish.This skill reinforces your chemical bonds at the atomic scale, hindering the loss or gain of protons—one of the principal mechanisms behind acid-base corrosion. As a result, dissolving your cells becomes harder, and may even become impossible for weak reagents.Note: Not all acids and bases operate through proton exchange. Against those which don’t, this resistance has no effect.You are now incapable of suffering from acid reflux. Combined with your immunity to cancer and your resistance to viruses, pharmaceutical laboratories are beginning to view you with suspicion…CONST +3
Priam read the description twice and lingered on the note. With his scientific background, he knew that countless acids and bases could not be described through pH alone—a simplified notion taught in middle school. Chemistry was not so simple.
Lewis acids and their electron pairs, redox reactions, nucleophilic attacks such as saponification, solvation… all of those can still bypass this resistance and harm me.
More physicist than chemist, Priam suspected the list of chemical processes capable of dissolving him was far longer than that. The thought did nothing to stop him from smiling.
The ideal skill was only rare, and it still had room to grow. From his perspective, what mattered was that eventually it might evolve into something like [Chemically Inert]. At that point, it would be only one fusion away from [Matter Resistance] or [Energy Resistance]. Assuming those skills even existed.
The shadow at his feet shifted until Jasmine’s face emerged from the darkness. She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re smiling way too much. That’s suspicious.”
“I—” he began. Noticing his vocal cords had regenerated, he continued aloud. “I finally managed to fuse [Acid Resistance] and [Base Resistance].”
“Ah. So bathing in a vat of base until all your fat turned into soap wasn’t completely pointless.”
Priam winced at the memory. That particular experiment ranked near the top of his list of traumatic deaths.
“Anyway, it confirms that spontaneous skill fusion is possible,” he said with a grin.
He had fused skills before using Tokens or rewards, but that had been a crude way of forcing the issue. The idea of combining [Acid Resistance] and [Base Resistance] had come from the earlier fusion of [Heat Resistance] and [Thermal Resistance], a process that would eventually yield [Pyro Champion Physique]. That success had required his phoenix bloodline as a catalyst, but Priam had theorized that sufficiently similar skills might merge naturally, needing nothing more than a pile of Potential.
A resource he possessed in abundance.
“One step closer to your dream of becoming unkillable,” his Shadow smiled. “And good news for your gates,” she added mentally, out of Esmée’s hearing.
Priam returned the smile. Seven gates, each tied to one of the seven Concepts, and a fulcrum at the center to build his invincibility. With the spontaneous fusion of two resistances, the System confirmed his dream was viable.
Which means assembling every physical resistance becomes a priority. Addon, update the ‘Physical Juggernaut’ plan and raise its priority.
[Plan “Physical Juggernaut”:Summary: Fuse the ideal resistances for each mechanical constraint to obtain perfect physical resistance.
Current State:[Compression Resistance] → Sun Steel Body (ideal epic lvl 59)[Shear Resistance] (ideal epic lvl 55) ̶[̶B̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶R̶e̶s̶i̶s̶t̶a̶n̶c̶e̶]̶ ̶[̶T̶e̶n̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶R̶e̶s̶i̶s̶t̶a̶n̶c̶e̶]̶[Torsion Resistance] (high common lvl 14)
To Do:
Discover hidden prerequisites of [Sun Steel Body] and [Shear Resistance] for fusion during the Legendary upgrade.
Upgrade [Torsion Resistance] to ideal quality.
Unlock the two missing resistances.]
Reading the final point, Priam recalled an item he had purchased at the Sun Shop auctions.
Legacy Core (Rare/T0) - Territory: Knaya/Wanderings Islands - A core containing memories of an Ace who survived 9 Tribulations at Tier 0.
Note from the seller: One Legendary resistance confirmed, [Flexible as a Reed, Elastic as Rubber]. An upgrade and fusion of [Bending Resistance], [Torsion Resistance], and [Tension Resistance].
Purchased for nearly eight hundred thousand Sun points, the core was expensive, but Priam hoped to extract two resistances from it after studying it. Something he would do when he had more than five minutes to spare.
One thing at a time.
For now… let’s plunder—Mmm. Loot this lair.
“Alright, ladies. We all know why we’re here. Whoever finds the hot spring first doesn’t do dishes for a month.”
Jasmine vanished into a shadow while Esmée hurriedly opened her grimoire.
Each Terror had roamed Valaryth for centuries—more than enough time to accumulate treasures. One type interested Champions above all others: hot springs infused with Valaryth’s Concept, a cousin to Adaptation. The natural formation concentrated it, stimulating different aspects of a bather’s constitution.
The sixth Terror’s spring had leveled [Sun Steel Body]. The fifth had unlocked [Torsion Resistance]. Priam was eager to see what the fourth would offer.
“Found it!” the princess and the assassin exclaimed simultaneously. “Priam, dishes are yours!”
The Juggernaut simply smiled. For someone who trained even in his sleep, chores were practically a vacation.
Thirty seconds later, Priam and Esmée stood before a pool where lazy coils of orange aether drifted through the water.
“Which resistance do you think—”
“Make way for the baddest bitch!”
The slap of bare feet against stone preceded Jasmine’s arrival by a few seconds. She burst into the chamber, dismissed her shadow-woven outfit—flashing her audience in the process—and dove into the pool with a splash that drenched everyone nearby. She resurfaced laughing before lounging against the rim of the spring in her birthday suit.
Priam shrugged and stepped forward. An index finger pressed against his chest stopped him.
“Right now, this is a women-only bath.”
“I know you brought a swimsuit.”
“But Jasmine didn’t,” Esmée said, stepping toward the pool. A golden veil appeared behind her.
Priam waited his turn with a smile. A jealous woman was an interested woman.
*
Lvl up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 56, 57, 58, 59CONST +28META (Endurance) +8
Feeling Log’s bark beneath his feet, Priam smiled. Sometimes happiness was made of simple things. The scent of rich grass. The murmur of waves. The sight of a sunset. The atmosphere of a meal shared among friends.
The sounds of celebration rose from below the tree, waiting for him, but Priam forced himself to put duty before pleasure. As he always had since the Tutorial. A discipline that was beginning to weigh on him.
I’ll think about resting later. Like when I’m dead. Well, deader.
Pressing his forehead against the cool trunk of his tree, Priam linked with it for a moment to survey its domain. Each necro wave strengthened the undead, but for now the Champions’ progress remained faster than that of the necro-slaves. Moreover, after two months of regular slaughter, the surrounding area was relatively clear.
Even so, no one lowered their guard, and everyone had continued investing in Oasis’s defenses.
Barriers and ramparts stood in perfect condition. Finding the bio-traps still digesting freshly harvested corpses, Priam scanned the rest of the woods before stumbling upon Rose and Osiris kissing. He hesitated for a moment, then decided to ignore the teenagers.
You’re lucky her father’s dead, kid. He would’ve fused you into an abomination without blinking.
Shaking his head, Priam selected another channel, and information regarding the Auctions of Knaya appeared. Thanks to the Property Deed they won in the tribes’ tournament, Oasis had been able to connect to the elven empire’s network. Without money, they couldn’t buy anything, but Priam was already content just window-shopping.
Five minutes later, he jumped down from the tree and raised an eyebrow when he saw someone occupying his seat at the crowded table. A colossus with bronze skin and tusk-long canines was doing full justice to Blueberry’s cooking.
“Hey Braato.”
“Yo,” the leader replied through a mouthful of food. He washed it down with a gulp of sap, belched loudly, then patted the spot beside him. “Come sit.”
Priam wasn’t particularly fond of people who made themselves too comfortable in his home, but he owed the Gaesert one. Swallowing his remarks, he sat down.
“How have you been?” he asked.
The colossus shrugged while leaning forward to grab a greasy drumstick. “So-so. With the Necromoon looming, nobody questions my orders and people stick together… but the moment someone coughs, they become a pariah.”
“The Necromoon can infect like that?”
“Anyone whose Constitution is under a hundred, yeah. That’s a lot of kids. And a few crafters.”
“Why not have them unlock resistances?”
Braato shot him a strange look.
“I think you’ve forgotten what everyday life looks like for normal people. You’re asking me to whip or burn my own people? The children? The elderly?”
“…I suppose I have forgotten.” Priam sighed softly. “Those can’t be easy decisions.”
Braato exhaled heavily. “The situation’s stressing me out. If it keeps up, I’ll end up as bald as you.”
“I’m not bald.”
“You don’t have a single hair on your chest.”
“Like plenty of humans,” Priam pointed out while glancing at his guest’s body. At that point, it’s practically fur.
“Besides that, there’s also the worrying state of space itself. Your shaman must’ve mentioned it.”
Priam glanced toward Sna. The Transcendent had told him that for several weeks now, the spatial fabric had been thinning in certain areas of the island.
“Hmm. Wild rifts will appear soon.”
It didn’t worry Priam too much. One of the side effects of Log’s evolution toward Yggdrasil was the spatial stabilization of his domain. No rift would ever appear in Oasis without his approbation.
“They’ll either lead to the Necroworld, or they’re tied to the war that’s coming. I don’t know which is worse,” Braato sighed before turning back to him. “But I do know I’d better prepare now. You promised me five ideal prerequisites for [Karmic Resistance]. That still stands?”
Priam nodded.
“Of course. But you might want to pick another skill. That one… I almost feel bad telling you how to get it.”
“Mmph. We agreed on this one, so this is the one,” Braato grunted. “If you managed it, I can too. After all, I’m Tier 3; don’t underestimate me!”
“As you wish.” Priam began counting on his fingers. “First, you need a racial Talent and a Title that validate the first two prerequisites. I recommend [Life Is Hard; I’m Harder] as you just have to collect resistances.”
“I already have it. The racial Talent too,” Braato said with a grin.
Priam returned the smile.
“Next, you need to die after answering a sphinx’s riddle incorrectly. Then you’ll have to kill yourself against a thorn effect. And finally, you need to reach Prince in a Path with affinities for rebellion. For me, that was Juggernaut.” He hesitated. “Alternatively, you could get cursed by the Tier 9 that governs Fate… but I wouldn’t recommend it.” His grin returned. “Anyway, if you handle things right, two deaths are enough. Could be worse.”
“…You’re messing with me.”
“Not even a little.” Priam scooped up a passing ball of fur. “If you want, I can even lend you Sphinx.”
“…”
“I don’t mean to be mean, but I feel like he won’t have to try very hard to get the riddle wrong,” said the little sphinx.
*