AN: Sorry for the lack of uploads. I’m currently traveling on the other side of the world, and the conditions aren't ideal for writing. I’m doing my best, and another chapter is coming soon. Probably only two this week instead of three.On the bright side, it gives me time to polish the High Tribulation...
Priam opened his eyes to Thaal's face. Perfect symmetry, skin as black as the cosmos, teeth as white as newborn suns, and a deeply satisfied smile.
The young man closed his eyes again.
“If I'm dead, this is the afterlife, and you're God, I'm going to take it very badly.”
The Primordial burst out laughing.
“You know some civilizations consider me a divine being? Sometimes even the Creator Himself. Displaying incomprehensible powers tends to have that effect.”
“Poor bastards.”
A mischievous glint appeared in Thaal's eyes.
“You know the saying, ‘A gift once given shouldn't be taken back’? Because I don't, and I just healed you.”
Priam glanced down at his body... and realized he had eyes again. The rest of his limbs had returned as well. Stronger than before.
Lvl up: [Nova Titanium Body] lvl 6CONST +24META(Endurance) +3Lvl up: [Fount of Pseudo Ichor] lvl 38VIT +9Lvl up: [Ciphered Record] lvl 25MEM +6META (Affinity) +6META (Authority) +15
“Sorry,” he grimaced.
“A droplet received in need should be repaid with a whole spring,” said Kazuki's voice.
“True. I'm not ungrateful. If you ever need a hand, call me.” Though his instinct remained silent, Priam would have wagered he would regret that promise someday. “Anyway, I'm sure you're a very good god.”
To his credit, Thaal looked away.
Suddenly, two neurons connected in Priam's brain, and he recognized the voice that had spoken.
“Kazuki!” he exclaimed as he realized his friend was there. And not alone. “Bechar, Jasmine, Esmée, and...”
A familiar young man stood beside them.
I saw him in the dream world of my quintuple Tribulation. He's a Mercenary.
“Luc?”
“Oh, you know my name? Awesome!” Luc laughed, extending a hand. “It's great to finally meet you. I've been following you!”
Coming from a stranger in a dark alley, that sentence would have sounded creepy. Coming from the sunlit young man, it landed perfectly. Beauty privilege.
“You've been following me?”
“Since your first Achievement! I've been a fan from day one! Hey, I've got all your boxers at home. Speaking of which, would you mind signing one?”
“Hum… Sure? If it makes you happy—”
Priam watched in horror as the young man dropped his pants, presented his ass, and offered him a pen. He was wearing a 2die4 underpants.
“...”
“Can I get a signature too?” Jasmine asked with a smile.
“There isn't enough fabric on your underwear for that,” Esmée pointed out.
“He can write on my skin. I don't mind,” the Shadow winked.
“Guys, please.” Priam sighed as he sat up. The couch in Bechar's office was comfortable, but holding a conversation while lying down was annoying. “I may have taken quite a few blows to the head during this run, but not enough to start signing asses.”
Especially male ones.
“You'll change your mind,” Thaal said with a grin, gesturing for the young human to put his pants back on. “Later, Luc. Once Priam's had a few lessons in public relations and gotten used to fame.”
Priam raised an eyebrow.
“Fame?”
Pretending to catch the question out of the air, Thaal tossed it toward Bechar.
The shapeshifter dutifully stepped forward.
“You can't broadcast Achievement announcements to your entire civilization without consequences. For many Champions, the Second Reunion is a public-relations trial. For you, it'll be even worse. I hope you enjoy sycophants and groupies.”
A certain vision of hell.
“We'll deal with that later,” Priam sighed. “For now, can I ask why you're all here?”
“We were worried about you?” Jasmine grumbled.
Now, Priam felt like a bastard. “I… was talking to Thaal.”
“Well, since I delegate almost all of my work, I have a lot of free time to watch games,” the Administrator smiled. “Watching you squirm in death's jaws was entertaining.”
“Happy to provide the service,” the Champion deadpanned. “And glad to know my secrets remain protected. The final waves of the Colosseum are supposed to be private, yet it feels like every random person can spectate me. No offense, Luc.”
“None taken!”
“Bah.” Thaal sniffed. “Luc isn't a random . He's your 2die4’s manager.”
“Ah yes, the brand which is exploiting my image without paying me.”
The Primordial coughed. “Well, about that. Since you don't have a bank account yet, I thought I'd convert your salary into answers. I'm sure you've got plenty of questions, and benefits in kind aren't taxable.”
For a moment, Priam suffered a split personality. The greedy dragon inside him demanded Tokens and rewards. The curious human wanted knowledge.
“... Alright. This time, I'll take the questions.” He paused. “Arnold?”
“His phantom will be replaced by yours at the start of your High Tribulation. I have no information about the original as after the last fiasco, the System directly supervises Elysium.”
“The last fiasco?”
“We don’t talk about that.”
“I see. Will my phantom possess [He Who Eludes Death]?”
“Nope. Neither that nor [Tribulation—” Cough. “—Hunter], don't worry. The phantoms get no Talent, skill, bloodline, or other problematic ability. Either because the System doesn't want the ultimate secrets of its elites becoming public, or because certain things are taboo.”
“Like the identity of the Tier 10 who killed Arnold's Patron?”
Thaal raised an eyebrow, then read something invisible in the air. His eyes widened before he invoked.
“Back in five seconds.”
Reality rewound like an old videotape. Priam felt himself moving and speaking backward until his question vanished back into his throat.
Then the Primordial snapped his fingers. Everyone froze except Priam.
“Damn, that was close.” The Tier 8 summoned a throne made of pink clouds and collapsed into it, radiating the exhaustion of a worker clocking out after a nine-to-seven shift. “Listen,” he sighed, propping his feet on Bechar's desk, “I know you only asked that because, in your mind, I play in the big leagues. That's flattering. It's also partly why I'm not turning you into a pancake à la Sweet Mama for forcing me to burn a trump card.”
“...”
I've got a better reward available. Don't tell me an Administrator is poorer than a little Champion.
Thaal must have read his mind, as he answered.
“A Tier 0 and a Tier 8 casting Back in a Minute are two entirely different concepts. Five seconds is enough for me to consult the Ideal database of an Immortal empire and extinguish a solar system or two. In that same span of time, you wouldn't even have finished taking a piss.”
Leaving his addon to calculate the statement's accuracy based on the current fullness of his bladder, Priam exclaimed.
“I didn't even say a name!”
“You would've died before you had the chance. The System doesn't play games with… that thing.” The Primordial glanced toward the sky. “Forget about it, Priam. Seriously. And because I know you're the sort of idiot who has to burn himself before learning fire is dangerous…” A spiral of thousands of sparks manifested above his palm. “As a Primordial, I possess the capability to govern a galaxy.” The model zoomed outward, revealing ten, then thousands, then millions of galaxies. Thaal closed his hand and crushed them effortlessly. “A Zenith being can dominate an entire universe. The Tier 10 we're discussing has destroyed more universes than even the Seven. Or perhaps I should say erased.” The Tier 8 rubbed his temples. “I'm going to have to hire a Tier 7 mind mage to alter my own memories. Then I'll have to kill him. I had other plans for my vacation.”
The statement should have horrified Priam. He felt nothing. As usual whenever Thaal spoke, his negative emotions remained strangely silent. The Primordial continued.
“Before you ask: you don't need to go that far. At Tier 8, my soul is powerful enough to be... appetizing. Yours is frankly uninteresting. As long as you keep your head down and don't connect your addon to random things—especially outside the Seven's sphere of influence—you've got nothing to worry about.”
Priam thought of Mageia. The Seven had made no effort to hide the fact that he would be entering a new universe as soon as he returned from the Second Reunion.
“...And if it does happen?”
“Then you're screwed.” Thaal shrugged. “Maybe you already are. There's a possibility that being touched us long ago and you're dreaming a life that doesn't exist. Depths, from my perspective, maybe I'm the one dreaming and you're just a construct of my consciousness.” Raising a finger, Thaal flicked Priam on the nose. “Seems real, though.”
The young man pushed the Administrator's hand away.
“What about Their bloodline? I'm missing a third one to balance my other two. I was thinking that, being one of the three supreme ones, it might be able to stand against the dragon inside me. Assuming it's centered on the mind rather than the soul.”
Dragon for the body, phoenix for the soul. Priam was searching for the missing piece of the trinity.
Thaal shot him a look laden with judgment, and the Homo Elysian had the decency to look embarrassed.
“I mean, there aren't many high bloodlines capable of strengthening the mind's adaptability or resilience, and I've already ruled out Hydra. While I do have other leads, I don't want to overlook an opportunity—”
“My employer disapproves of that bloodline,” cut Thaal.
“You mean it's prohibited?”
“That isn't what I said.”
“Right. So theoretically, if I chose that bloodline and somehow found myself in a position to acquire it… what would I be risking?”
Thaal narrowed his eyes. “In theory? Nothing. The-One-Who-Must-Not-Be-Thought-About is merely one of the Tier 10 beings of the Eldritch bloodline, and They exercise no particular dominion over those who possess it.”
The Eldritch bloodline… It has a Lovecraftian vibe.
“And in practice?”
That was usually where things became complicated.
“Hard to say, as the purpose of the Dragon Law isn't the same as that of the Eldritch Law. Even if you managed to reconcile the two, and [Chimera] somehow made them coexist... that's the sort of miracle very few people want to witness.”
“People are jealous.”
“Jealous as a shadow.” A smile tugged at Thaal's lips. “Speaking of shadows, I'd like to have a word with yours.”
“Which one?”
“The one who loves you more than her whole civilization,” said the Tier 8 before tapping his wristwatch. Priam was fairly certain the Primordial hadn't been wearing one a second earlier. The gesture dissolved the time stop.
“Béchar, I'm borrowing your office. Jasmine, I'd like a word with you about your Second Reunion. The rest of you, go have fun.”
As he spoke, the door opened—not onto the Colosseum corridor, but onto a moonlit plain.
“One last thing,” said the Primordial as Priam stepped through behind Kazuki. “You and humanity are tiny pieces on a massive board. No matter what anyone tells you during the Second Reunion, don't start believing the players actually care about you.”
*
A warm wind swept across the lunar plain, softened only slightly by the massive trunk of the tree behind the boys. It was a Japanese cypress with reddish-brown bark and a canopy broad enough to cast a pool of soothing shade.
Priam was digging at its roots.
With the combined force of his will, his Domain, and his legendary kinetic mastery, shovelfuls of earth launched skyward. Priam couldn't have said where they landed, but at the speed he was hurling them, the simple answer was: far away.
“Why am I doing all the work?” he grumbled.
“We need to talk,” Kazuki replied. “And an onsen loosens tongues.”
The spearmaster had suggested the activity after Esmée departed to continue training.
“No, I mean why am I doing this alone?”
Béchar, Luc, and the hoplite exchanged glances before rolling up their sleeves. Three minutes later, a basin the size of a swimming pool and a meter deep stood ready to be filled.
Tuning his soul to the resonance frequency of the Concept, Priam called upon Mist. A supernatural fog manifested, then condensed into water, filling the excavation. Beneath the ancient cypress, the clear pond looked like something torn from a painting. Pyro took over. Within seconds, the surface began to bubble. After burning a phoenix, boiling a little water was hardly a challenge.
“Maybe you didn't need to crank the temperature quite that high?” Luc pointed out. “We're bathing, not cooking pasta.”
“Be grateful it's water and not lava,” Kazuki said.
“... Seriously?”
Priam flashed a proud look, on the verge of being smug. Showing off his absurd Constitution was one of his favorite hobbies.
The hoplite dipped a toe into the spring and nodded.
“Between a mother’s womb and the bowels of the earth, the onsen regenerates.”
Leaving his audience baffled by the cryptic declaration, he removed his tunic, revealing scars and other physical attributes. Truth to be told, the Warrior possessed a natural talent for wielding large spears.
Priam followed suit and removed his new boxers. As a Frenchman, he was relatively modest, but his mist concealed his body. Nothing that could fool a System user, yet [Ciphered Record] and Domain II afforded him a remarkable degree of privacy.
Stepping into the artificial hot spring, Priam settled onto a submerged ledge, leaving only his head above the steaming surface.
Heat seeped pleasantly into his flesh, and he closed his eyes. The simmering water soon relaxed his body, which in turn relaxed his mind. For the first time in far too long, Priam allowed himself to enjoy well-earned rest.
His two parallel streams of thought quieted. His brain slowed alongside the rhythm of his hearts. An outside observer might have mistaken him for dozing, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
Priam was listening to the wind rustling through the leaves. Feeling the warmth against his skin. The sweat emerging from his pores. The beating of his hearts. The damp scent of steam rising into the air.
Immersed in a state of complete awareness, he felt alive. The sensation lacked the intensity of battle-fueled adrenaline, yet it ran deeper. Truer.
“When I pee in the ocean, I can feel a warm current,” Luc mused. “Since the bath's boiling, I wonder if it'd create a cold current instead.”
Priam couldn't have said whether the silence had lasted a minute or an hour, but it had been too short.
“If you pee in the water, I may become violent,” Béchar growled.
“You won't be able to prove it was me.”
“No, but you're the only person here I can beat, so you’re getting it. Actually, even if someone else confesses, I'll still come after you."
“Dude, I fear the bath is bringing out your aggressive side.”
Priam thought Béchar was about to pounce on the insolent youth and wondered whether he should intervene.
The shapeshifter surprised him with a sigh.
“Not the heat, but the water. When I was little, I was afraid of it. Instead of washing me, my mother licked me clean until I reached adolescence.”
“Like a cat?”
“With more tongues. One of the perks of being a changeform.”
“Cool. How'd you get over it?” the extrovert asked.
“My late father took me to the ocean shortly before my first Tribulation. My Memory attribute is low, but I remember it perfectly. Endless blue expanse. Bottomless depths. Every single waves capable of crushing me...” Béchar snorted. “It humbled me.”
Eyes still closed, Priam raised an eyebrow.
“A bonding moment before your possible death?”
“Not really. Dad rented a boat, rowed several kilometers offshore, then punched a hole through the hull. I had three minutes to learn how to grow gills and a fin.”
“Talk about positive parenting.”
“He was only repeating what had been done to him... Anyway, by the time I reached shore, I knew how to swim. I'd survived the ocean. Water couldn't frighten me anymore. Which turned out to be very useful a few hours later when the System threw me into a double marine Tribulation.”
“Three minutes to learn swimming and a lifetime to process the trauma,” Luc joked.
Priam focused on something else entirely.
“Introducing a fear, and therefore a weakness, to bait the first Tribulation. Clever. Though it doesn't always work. I hate spiders, and the System's never sent me one.”
“I wouldn't want to meet a spider capable of worrying you,” Béchar shuddered. “By the way, are you ready for your High Tribulation?”
“Why? Want me to add you to the will?”
The shapeshifter tilted his head before turning toward Kazuki.
“You didn't tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“That High Tribulations are less deadly than regular Tribulations.”
“... That's a bit anticlimactic,” commented Priam.
Luc laughed. “The boss said you'd rather fail the latter than the former.”
Priam raised an eyebrow. “I know I have a reputation as a daredevil, but what's worse than death?”
“Mediocrity,” Béchar said. “Failing a High Tribulation means risking remaining at the same Tier for the rest of your life.”
*