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Chapter 472: Last Wave of the Colosseum
Without even mentioning a short nap, Priam could have slept for twelve hours. The Colosseum refused to bend the rules for him, and the Champion groaned as he heard the gate open for the next boss.
Science claimed the brain reorganized itself during sleep. The same must have been true for the soul, because the moment he awoke, Priam felt a new sense stabilizing within him.
Within a three-meter radius, he perceived the world through a dissonant cascade of senses. One after another, in an order and range that made absolutely no sense.
Without touching it, he felt the warmth of sand bathed in sunlight. Then that strange thermoperception faded, replaced by the sight of a ruined body sprawled across the ground. Priam took a second to recognize himself. First because he was covered in scars, second because his eyes were still closed, and above all because he was seeing himself from every angle at once.
The human brain was not designed to process that kind of image, and the Tier 0 frowned in discomfort.
That too blurred away, and Priam relaxed as he smelled the ashen vapors rising from the arena, then tasted—mouth closed—the salty sweat on his skin. Another wave of heat.
Priam froze, perplexed by the experience. All his senses rotated in sequence, capturing fragments of reality his mind struggled to organize. Only his perception of aether remained stable.
A notification preceded his curiosity.
Congratulations, you have unlocked Domain II.
[Supremacy - Domain] - One of the three Supremacies. Each stage increases your mind’s authority over the world and reveals deeper truths. This Path leads to the Zenith.
At stage 0, you crudely perceive matter within an area centered around your soul.
At stage I, your aether can manifest inside your sphere of authority. Conditional upon your Soul Tier and Mind Ennoblement, the ambient aether is yours to command. Your local domination contests the influence of other wills.
At stage II, all your senses gradually become linked to your Domain. This Supremacy may evolve into the ultimate sensory organ, a potentially holistic sensor.
Current stage: II - Hypersensorial Domain
Bonus: WILL +30 (+20) / META (Affinity) +10 / META (Focus) +20 / META (Perception) +30 (+10)/ Perception +30 (+30)
Current parameters: Radius: 3 meters. Volume: 113 cubic meters. Resolution: one cubic centimeter.
My senses are merging with my Domain?
Priam attempted to influence the perception of his Supremacy, which ignored him magnificently. This was a new muscle he needed to learn how to wield.
Then another question struck him. What about more esoteric senses? Balance, for instance. Or pain?
According to humanity’s scientific understanding, the senses relied on receptors such as eyes and ears to receive and translate light, sound, and other signals, thus providing the brain with information about the world. The scientific community had never agreed on the exact number of human senses, but at minimum recognized nine: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, equilibrioception, proprioception, nociception, and thermoperception.
This did not represent the limit of biology, as animals possessed even more. Magnetoreception, for example, allowed birds to follow Earth’s magnetic field during seasonal migrations. Platypuses—a bizarre mammal that laid eggs, had a duck’s bill, a beaver’s tail, venomous spurs on its hind legs—possessed electroreception, using it to locate prey through the electric fields generated by their muscles.
If I modify my body to include those senses, will my Domain inherit them too?
Excited by his new ability, Priam was already theorycrafting.
The first stage of Domain functioned like echolocation, highlighting shapes inside a sphere of authority. The second stage introduced aether perception and manipulation into the equation, along with the ability to manifest active skills outside one’s body. No need to extend a hand to cast a fireball anymore: it could pop into existence anywhere inside the Domain.
Now, with the third stage, Priam could see, smell, touch, hear, and taste everything inside his Domain. Useful for an elemental or a ghost, but for a him? [Homo Elysian Inspiration] went wild, and the Champion had a revelation.
If I could increase the size of my perception sphere, what could still surprise me?
By measuring someone’s heartbeat, perspiration, and brain activity, he could detect lies. By analyzing air temperature, pressure, and humidity, he could predict tornadoes. By identifying atoms, their position, their velocity, and plugging those variables into the correct physical and chemical equations, couldn’t he predict the future?
Calm down, Priam admonished himself. Even with a very high vivacity and an eidetic memory, I’d never have enough time to perform those calculations. I’d need the help of a super AI running on a monstrous processor… or I’d have to raise my addon to the Immortal rank. Minimum. Then again, the slightest external variable would ruin every prediction. Calculating a bullet’s trajectory is easy, but once the wind changes, everything falls apart.
I’d also need a ridiculously large Domain and absurdly precise resolution. Right now, with one cubic centimeter, I can barely detect a marble; nowhere near an atom.
He frowned.
That’s not even accounting for quantum randomness and uncertainty principle. Some things are fundamentally impossible to predict at the nanometric scale, and those errors would compound over time. Because of the butterfly effect, any models would become worthless… Unless I used an Order Concept to reduce deviations? At that point, omniscience would be within reach. And omnipotence wouldn’t be far behind either—
“First.”
Dragged from his reverie by a deep voice, Priam opened his eyes and turned his head left.
A silver humanoid as tall as a professional basketball player stood watching him with impossibly cold eyes. Bluish veins crossed his body in straight lines, right angles, and geometrically perfect semicircles. Though the color of his armored skin no longer matched Priam’s memories, the mechanical musculature and hydraulic systems visible beneath betrayed the identity of a very familiar homunculus.
“Arnold,” Priam sighed as he painfully pushed himself upright. “You changed skins.”
The Var Elegis appeared far more mechanized than before. Had he not been an alien, Priam would have said he had abandoned his humanity in favor of a path more technological than biological.
“To stagnate is to perish.”
“On that, we agree.” Priam ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to look relaxed. The first time he had shown weakness before the homunculus, he had gotten a hole punched through both his brain and heart. “I’m surprised to see you this early. Is wave ninety-eight really that difficult?”
“My final leave allocation was expended on waves ninety-six and ninety-seven. I possess no data regarding the next wave.”
Twelve hours per wave. Hardly the type to waste time tormenting his enemies, and expecting no further rewards from the Colosseum, the pragmatic Arnold likely redirected his exploration toward a systematic analysis of the final phantoms. Where the Juggernaut struggled to survive, the Tyrant studied.
Priam could guess what.
Patterns in boss strength, template establishment, recurring weaknesses… What’s stopping me from doing the same? If I feed recordings of my battles to my own addon, I might gain insight into the education of a young master like Hastenash.
“Has my original died?”
Arnold’s question pulled Priam back to reality.
“I doubt I’m that lucky.”
“Then a force majeure event must have caused a premature Tier up.” The Var Elegis blinked in an uncanny manner. Priam could not tell whether it stemmed from necessity or from an attempt to simulate familiarity and encourage rapport. “My projections indicated a final run reaching the last wave.”
“Just my luck to face a final boss outside his castle,” Priam sighed. That said, he was satisfied to Tier up last, if only to protect his build and spy on those of his rivals. An excellent Colosseum reward in his opinion. “Well then… shall we begin?”
Arnold NetSky adopted a flawless combat stance. “I await the First’s pointers.”
You’re going to be disappointed…
Priam infused his eyes with Heroic Aura in search of an exploitable weakness and frowned. The enemy looked like a solid block of metal. Time stretched until the young man pointed behind his opponent.
“Friend of yours?”
Lvl Up: [Deception] lvl 5
VIVA +1MEM +1CHAR +1
The Var Elegis turned around.
A fraction of a second later, an incandescent spear struck it in the back. Veritable pillar of fire, the projectile detonated with a thermal shockwave intense enough to vaporize iron. A fireball blossomed at the center of the arena, flames so intense they scorched the air itself.
Priam grimaced as his soul groaned in protest. Ninety-six battles had exhausted it, and both Ignis and Domain II threatened to push it into an apocryphal state.
His expression darkened further when the curtain of flames parted to reveal a homunculus barely affected.
His skin only lightly reddened, the construct turned toward the challenger. No anger showed in his eyes despite the cheap shot.
“Pyro Concept; intensity four percent superior to that of Keltan’h the Traitor,” the Var Elegis analyzed as a gray coating spread across his body. No need to be Thaal to bet on fireproof protection. Then the Tyrant leapt, his silhouette turning into a silver beam under sheer speed.
Raising his arms into a defensive stance, Priam felt a wave of air breach his sphere of authority. His Domain and [Kinetic Sovereignty] snapped shut on the intruder like a bear trap… and returned an error. His Supremacy detected nothing, while his skill simply slid off the boss’s metallic skin.
What the—
Ignoring his confusion, a hand slipped through Priam’s defenses and grabbed him by the hair. Then what felt like a hydraulic hammer began pulverizing his face.
The beating lasted eight seconds. Eight seconds during which every attempt at resistance was erased. Eight seconds; the time it took for Priam to swallow a few of his teeth. Literally.
Illogically, the pain intensified once the barrage stopped. Collapsing to the ground, Priam opened one swollen eye toward the homunculus staring at his hands in surprise. One held a clump of hair torn free by the violence of the impacts. The other… There was no other hand. Alchemy-treated or not, the metallic arm looked like the chassis of a car after a highway collision.
Punching the Juggernaut carried risks, especially since his body had been reforged by [Nova Titanium Body].
Merging with his mist to put distance between himself and the homunculus, Priam identified it. He needed to know why Domain II was useless.
[Heroic Identification][Phantom of Arnold NetSky (clone A7) - Tier 0 - Prince - Var Elegis] - The Tyrant.
A homunculus ruling over a mechanical empire. The cold logic of this silicon-based lifeform may appear cruel, but this Champion is merely pragmatic to the extreme. The gift of instinct from a certain individual only introduced further unpredictability into an already terrifying being.A convinced hegemonist, the Tyrant does not seek to conquer: it invades.
Note: embryonic signs of a technological Path detected with mechanical, energetic, quantum, and virtual affinities.Concept traces detected: Silicon, Light, Logic.Attributes: Physical (4,000), Mental (7,000), META (1,000)Weaknesses:
Disinformation
?
Lvl Up: [Heroic Identification] lvl 6PERC +1MEM +1CHAR +1
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