A chapter... plus a bonus today. Enjoy!
Priam Character Sheet by the Discord guys! or https://anovelstatus.github.io/ by @fmorel / Fred on discord. Patreon key: FC9LXDxYC2uDsmQaL7w1dXCOCTTYY4PS: the Discord. Come say hello!
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Chapter 465: Reaction II
Benjamom Padlk Tsu was grinning from ear to ear. He had two rows of teeth, freshly sharpened to points—the latest fashion among the drow. It had cost him far too much, but the female across from him seemed to appreciate it. If he made it through the mating, he would consider the investment worthwhile.
“So, what do you do?” asked Madla. Or Malda? Between the shuttle’s atmospheric friction and the opening chaos, he hadn’t quite caught her name—and hadn’t dared ask her to repeat it. Classic bad move.
“Personnel management,” Benjamom replied, as the mothership exploded overhead.
“Ah.”
“A fairly senior position,” he added, ignoring the rain of flaming debris streaking across the sky. “I work on Gaia’s surface.”
“Ah!”
Seeing interest spark in her eyes, the drow opened his mouth to elaborate—
“Pipe down!” snapped the squad leader. For a dwarf, he was polite. “We’re about to cross the strato-barrier. Strap in.”
No sooner had he spoken than the shuttle pierced the planetary force field and dove toward the phoenix capital.
“Alright, final brief.” The other three fell silent to listen to the bearded guy. “Touchdown in thirty seconds. Healer, buff us on landing. Tank, maintain coverage, and be careful about the Depths ritual. Berserker, don’t die immediately. Reminder: we’re here to disrupt Keltan’h, not to engage with every defender, so avoid them whenever possible. Any questions?”
“Nope.”
“None.”
“No.”
“Then good luck to us. The fate of an entire people rests on our shoulders!”
Benjamom rolled his eyes at the roleplay just as the shuttle crashed. Thrown forward, then yanked back by his harness, he slammed the back of his skull against the seat. His vision went black until a charge of [Precast Heal] triggered, saving him from a concussion.
Fuck. The drow blinked, then sighed in relief. The sexy female hadn’t noticed. He still had a chance.
The shuttle door opened. The dungeon had begun.
Using a legendary skill, he buffed his team against heat and burns, then stepped out last into a ruined city. The old phoenix capital. Above them, billions of runes formed a planetary array; the work of a traitor who had sold his people to the Depths.
Madla the berserker—or Malda? He still wasn’t sure—patted his shoulder before sprinting off. Benjamom followed, leaping from rooftop to rooftop toward the pyramid at the city’s center. Though the least agile of the group, his avatar was still Tier 3. The drow smiled, intoxicated by the sense of freedom and velocity his vessel granted him. I can almost understand the bastards who cultivate the Zenith.
A few kilometers later, the team entered the noble district and paused inside the Red Library.
“Can we loot real quick?” the tank asked. “A friend told me there are hidden Transcendent books. They sell for a lot.”
“Three minutes—wait.” The leader narrowed his eyes, then crouched to lick the dust on the floor. “We’ve got company.”
“Enemies?” Benjamom whispered.
“Hard to tell by taste,” the rogue deadpanned. “But likely. Tank, do your job. Watch for traps.”
Benjamom cast a hush buff over his team, allowing them to move in armor with no more noise than a rat.
They advanced, passing a window that revealed a sky turning red… and gold. One of the main characters has arrived.
“Keltan’h, end this madness!” a voice thundered, shaking the entire planet. Beyond the strato-barrier, a sunbird writhed.
“No madness, Mother, only hope,” answered a flame shade atop the pyramid.
“Fool. You are about to kill millions!”
Beneath the now-crimson sky, the ritual rotated slowly.
“To save trillions. The next generation of phoenixes will have a chance to purify their ichor.”
“Even if [Chimera] could adapt draconic power to our race, our children would still be tainted by a Depths Talent! The Seven will never allow this!”
Benjamom ignored the dialogue of a scenario he had played through ten times already. The pitch was famous.
Refusing to watch his civilization’s blood dilute further, Keltan’h the Traitor had sought to grant phoenixes the dragons’ ability: to refine their bloodline through combat. An elite of victors would give birth to a new generation of noble phoenixes, who would compete against each other in turn to establish a new elite who would breed… and so forth to produce increasingly pure phoenixes. With strict natalist policies forbidding the weak from reproducing, the renewal of his clan was theoretically possible.
“History books call him a eugenicist, but the prince wasn’t entirely wrong,” the tank muttered. “According to official numbers, roughly one phoenix in a thousand is now born with animal-level intelligence due to a low purity bloodline. ‘Flame-winged chickens’ isn’t so much an insult as a reality,” he chuckled.
“Still… sacrificing millions of phoenixes to awaken the Talent in a small elite…” Benjamom shrugged.
“Shut up,” the leader hissed. “Healer, ready for phase two?”
The runes overhead vibrated before an aether wave activated them. Benjamom cast one of his three Mythic skills as the ritual began. [Aegis of Athena] absorbed the crimson surge before it could use their bodies as fuel to summon the Depths.
Forty meters away, the glow of another shield betrayed the position of enemy players. True to berserker stupidity, Madla—Malda?—charged ahead of the tank. Benjamom fell back to support his team. Within seconds, he recognized their opponents as another well-equipped Tier 3 group.
Lightning, projectiles, and severed limbs flew in every direction. Ignoring the blood, the jaded healer caught an arm midair, identified it as the rogue’s, and waited for him to blink back into position before reattaching it.
Ten seconds later, three enemies were dead. The bruiser, last of his team, roared. Refusing to fall without a kill, he charged the healer, smashing through bookshelves. The rogue tried to intercept him, but a dagger to the ribs did nothing to halt the enemy’s dash. The poison would kill him in a minute. Benjamom would be dead by then.
Fuck.
An axe filled his vision. He braced for the death notification.
It never came.
Announcement to Sector Hope:
Priam Azura has triumphed over the 95th wave of the Colosseum (Tier 0)!
The world held its breath. Cries ceased, fighters froze. Benjamom blinked, an enchanted blade a hair’s breadth from his retina, as the city trembled while the phoenix Queen battered the strato-barrier above.
“Fucking Depths…” the enemy bruiser muttered. “That caught me off guard.”
“You’re telling me,” Benjamom said. “You’re not finishing me?”
The colossus shrugged and lowered his axe. “Not feeling it anymore. And I don’t think I’m the only one.”
In the background, the drow saw his leader clench a fist, then vanish. Disconnected.
“Some people confuse the System realm with real life,” the enemy went on. “It hits them hard when they’re reminded this—” he gestured around them, “—is fake.”
“Half fake. A huge part of the universe’s economy runs through here,” Benjamom pointed out. In a universal society spanning billions of light-years, information had to travel far faster than matter.
“Maybe. But at the end of the day, real power is out there. Your rogue rage-quit because Priam just hit him with a reality check. One too many. Poor guy must’ve had enough.”
“And he’s not the only one,” the tank growled, approaching. “It’s been months of those damn announcements. If he were in front of me, I’d teach him not to show off, I swear.”
“If the Juggernaut stood in front of you, you’d look down,” the berserker scoffed.
“I’m Tier 3 in real life too, woman.”
“And he’s basically a prince,” the drow female pointed out. “Probably the strongest in the Sector. Tier 3 or not, he’d tear you apart without breaking a sweat.”
“Bah, you don’t know shit.”
She tapped the tank’s gleaming armor with a finger. “If you were that good, you’d be out there trying to break into Tier 4.”
“A Tier 0 trash lecturing me?” The defender dragged his mace across the ground in a threatening scrape. “Don’t talk about what you don’t understand. In this realm, the System gives you a taste of power to push you toward the Zenith, and yet you’re too cowardly to truly try. Come back after your first High Trib.”
“I’m not an orc, so I’d rather not die,” the berserker replied coolly. “But if courage gets you that excited, I’m surprised you don’t like Priam.” She turned to Benjamom. “What is it now, his seventh published Achievement?”
“Yep.”
The tank spat on the ground. “I admire courage, not recklessness. He’s going all out because aether and magic are still new to him. He’s like a child casting his first fireball and already picturing himself the next archmage. Give it a few years, once he’s lost people to the Tribs and his skills only level up once in a Cursed Moon, he’ll slow down. Assuming he’s still alive.”
Ah. Not a hater, just a bitter guy. Like me.
As a child, Benjamom had wondered why everyone didn’t strive for the Zenith. As a teenager, he had realized that spending weeks lifting weights or grinding mental calculations for a single level-up quickly wore thin. It took a particular mindset to devote one’s life to chasing an almost impossible goal. His brother had stayed on that path. The third Tribulation had claimed him.
The Zenith is a mirage in a white desert. Neither snow, nor ivory sand, but crushed bones of the thirsty for power. For freedom. For life, thought Benjamom, quoting Thaal.
“Time will tell whether Priam burns out like a shooting star or lights the world like a supernova,” the bruiser said, removing his helmet to scratch his bald scalp. “Personally, I’m more curious whether he can go even further.”
Malda—surely that was her name—perked up. “You think he can finish his run?!”
“Ah! Stick to what you know, dark elf. There’s zero chance he makes it.”
The young drow scowled. “Why not? Six months ago no one had heard of him, and now he’s clearly the strongest Tier 0 in the Sector. That’s what the 2die4 ad says.”
“Wave one hundred is shared across the entire universe,” Benjamom replied. “Priam’s a dark horse, sure, but calling him the top Tier 0? That’s a stretch. I say he stops here. Wave ninety-six has stood since the dawn of the Sector. That’s like a million years!”
“Or maybe he finally knocks the drakes off their pedestal. About time those scaly bastards came down a peg.”
No one answered. The System Realm was secure, but who could say what an Immortal might overhear?
Benjamom cleared his throat. “Anyway, I get the feeling I’m needed at work. Another raid sometime, Malda?”
She shot him a glare. “My name is Madla,” she said before vanishing.
“… ”
The tank and the bruiser patted him on the shoulder.
“I had a fifty-fifty shot,” the hardened bachelor sighed.
*
Surface of Gaia, Ninety-second District.
Walking up Thaal the Sublime Avenue toward Dragonslayer Square, a suited drow came to a halt before a cloud-scraper. On the façade, the name Kleaner glowed in neon. Hidden in plain sight, their boss liked to boast.
“Morning, Bob.”
“Mmh,” the guard replied, extending a hand. Golems were not known for their conversational skills.
Benjamom pressed his forehead against the palm, allowing the sentinel to scan his soul frequency, aether signature, and retina before granting him entry.
Crossing an empty lobby, the thirty-year-old nodded to the receptionist and took the stairs, pointedly ignoring the teleportation booth. As a child, he had seen one malfunction—delivering a resident’s head to the hundredth floor while leaving the body behind in the lobby. Temperamental technology, the repairman had said with weary resignation.
After nearly six hundred steps, Benjamom reached the fortieth floor, greeted colleagues gathered around an energy drink dispenser, and entered his office. The Tier 0 had barely set down his coat when someone knocked.
“Come in,” he sighed.
The door opened onto an elf with slumped shoulders and vacant eyes.
“Hey, E951…”
“Hey, E954.”
Benjamom had nothing against field agents using pseudonyms, but he would have preferred the office staff be spared. Unfortunately, the local branch leader loved codenames—and no one contradicted Slayer.
“Seen the news?” the elf continued, jittery with caffeine withdrawal.
“That’s why I’m here. You’ve been handling things?”
“Barely. Glad you’re back.”
Benjamom nodded. Outside of special operations, he and E954 rotated every two days. Enhanced attributes let them work longer hours, but the two Tier 0s lacked the vitality to sustain heavier shifts.
Once alone, Benjamom sat at his desk and activated [Connection]. A cable of aether emerged from the back of his neck and plugged into the terminal, itself linked to the building’s central server.
Assassins’ Guild Sector Hope Branch: Kleaner
Welcome, clerk E951 (Bounty Inspector).
Benjamom opened his inbox and raised an eyebrow at the numbers. Over a thousand unread messages, and five new ones arriving every second.
“Busy day…”
Everyone wanted someone dead, but few had the funds to hire the Guild.
With the aid of [Fast Reading] and [Parallel Thinking], the clerk sorted requests by priority. Namely, by how much clients were willing to pay for a bit of “cleaning.”
The first two figures drew a low whistle from him.
“Fourteen million rare cores to exsanguinate Priam Azura and deliver his ichor to an intermediary.” The client was anonymous, but it didn’t take a genius to guess the phoenixes were upset. “Strange.”
Normally, Tier 0 contracts were paid in mortal cores. Using rare cores indicated the target was being treated as a low Tier. Understandable for a Noble. Yet given the Juggernaut’s performance, he arguably warranted mid Tier handling, with payment in transcendent cores.
“Are they trying to push low Tiers into throwing their lives at him? Oh, I see. The bastards don’t want an assassination, they want a massacre. Politics,” Benjamom spat before shaking his head. There were going to be a lot of deaths. Slayer had classified the Juggernaut as a Mid Tier threat, forbidding novices from taking the contract, but that only applied to the Guild’s own recruits, not the freelance majority.
With a sigh, the drow consulted the next message. “Ten transcendent cores to eliminate Priam during his Second Reunion. Viracocha’s doubling the bounty he already placed on the Champion a few months ago. Looks like a minor god is starting to get nervous.”
The sum wasn’t extravagant, but the purchasing power of transcendent cores was on an entirely different scale than rare ones. A billionaire in rare cores couldn’t even buy the smallest apartment on Gaia’s surface. Without transcendent cores, entire markets were simply inaccessible.
The next hundred messages pooled funds into a collective bounty to eliminate Priam. As all donors were Mercenaries, a quick search revealed a certain Luc’s bet.
“And they call us the villains? Hypocrites.”
With a mental command, the clerk updated the database, raising the Juggernaut’s bounty to an absurd figure. Within the Sector Hope Tier 0 category, only pseudo apocryphal beings and Depths officers reached such heights. All that was left was to find a recent image for the wanted poster. Nothing was worse for the Guild than an assassin hitting the wrong target.
“Your mother-in-law is dead.”
“No, you whacked my wife.”
Humiliating.
His daydreaming detour over, Benjamom called a colleague from the Intelligence Bureau and raised an eyebrow when he saw the hologram spitting blood. “I didn’t know you could get hurt in a bunker. Did you fall down the stairs?”
“Shut it,” FK-13 winced, wiping the corner of his mouth. “It’s the backlash from scrying Priam Azura.”
The drow whistled. FK-13 was a true Tier 4. Despite the distance, he should have been able to count the moles on the Juggernaut’s ass. Obviously, things hadn’t gone according to plan.
“Are his defenses that strong? Wait, has he already returned to Elysium?!”
Scrying an Elysium citizen was a good way to become one. A status of dubious honor, often synonymous with becoming fodder for some cosmic abomination.
“The System doesn’t like people peeping at its Colosseums… and the guy spotted me,” the diviner admitted. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Here’s the image,” he muttered before hanging up.
Benjamom opened the photo and recoiled. A biped about two meters tall stared back at him with heterochromatic eyes. The left was filled with darkness ready to suck out his soul; the right trapped a storm, a promise of violence. Above, his fate crown, a white halo, topped a mass of wild, fire hair. Intimidated across thousands of light-years, the clerk looked down at a ripped body, tattooed with spectral scales and wearing nothing but a well-packed pair of boxers.
The drow swallowed hard before opening an editing tool. If he posted the image as it was, few assassins would take the risk of provoking such a monster. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Juggernaut looked more like a hunter than prey.
Once the portrait’s menacing aura was toned down, Benjamom released the new bounty. The thread beneath the announcement exploded, climbing into trending topics in under five minutes. But not for the right reasons.
“A shame to kill him. He really has beautiful feet.” —I’llBreakYourHeartNotYourFeet.
“He scares me through the screen.” —EziOditore.
“Are you kidding? He’s actually gorgeous. If I find him, his blood won’t be the only thing I’m extracting…” —Black Widow.
“Wait your turn.” —Yoruichi Shihouyn.
With a sigh, Benjamom deleted the useless comments before reading the relevant majority. Indeed, for most of the Guild, the huge bounty awakened a primal greed. Chasers, killers, freelance mercenaries, the entire underworld of the Sector was salivating at the thought of the payout. The strongest set out to hunt; the weakest sought out partners in crime.
“Looking for duo with spaceship to find planet Earth. No noob.” —Killar
“Anyone know a good geneticist? Thinking of switching race to human to infiltrate the Reunion.” —OneCutMan
“OneCutMan, your profile says you’re T2 and the target’s a famous Prince. Aside from staining his clothes with your blood, what exactly is your plan?” —DarkSpiritDemonVenerable
“Birds die for food, I die for wealth.” —OneCutMan
“In my opinion, you’ll die soon.” —E951 (mod)
“Who cares about your opinion?” —OneCutMan
Benjamom allowed himself a small smile as he banned the soon-to-be corpse. A moderator’s sadistic pleasure.
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