2/3 for last week.
*
Priam gawked for a few milliseconds before understanding. The spider must not have been directly hit by the meteoroid’s impact. Surviving on the spaceship named Priam’s Lower Half, it had sought out the largest nearby source of aether and hit the jackpot. A Tier 6 silk boxer… possibly woven by an adult of its species. Who could say to what extent Thaal had manipulated things?
Anyway, the boxer packed a lot. In every sense of the word.
Drawing a bit of comfort from bad humor, Priam observed the growth spurt that simply wouldn’t end. A triple Tribulation that could have finished in a few seconds was taking an uncontrollable turn. The spider must already be the size of a village. I have to finish it while I still can.
Two flaming wings deployed from his back, and [Kinetic Sovereignty] redirected his flight. In outer space, Priam accelerated toward the monster like a shooting star.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 10VIVA +1DEXT +1MEM +1
Priam blinked, surprised to find himself face-to-face with a spider the size of a small town. And to be naked. Had one of the Tribulations stripped him? Weird, modesty isn’t really one of my weaknesses.
A tattoo on his hand summarized the situation for him, and Priam didn’t even consider the fact that it might be a trap. Eliminating any spider larger than his thumb was his duty as an arachnophobe.
A fired Pyro spear crashed onto one of the legs as high as a skyscraper and ignited a forest of hair without difficulty. Space lacked air, but the Tier 1 Concept didn’t need it to burn. Then the spider turned its maw toward the fire. The vortex of aether between its fangs sucked in the magical portion of the blaze which, lacking an oxidizing agent, went out instantly.
The Fire Sage lost his smile. Something deep inside him found it revolting that anyone could deprive him of his flames. Alright, close and personal it is, he thought, recording the failed attempt in his tattoo. Even as an amnesiac, Priam didn’t like making the same mistake twice.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
With a flap of his wings, Priam positioned himself beneath the horrible monster’s abdomen. The nightmarish position did not make his courage waver, and the Juggernaut absorbed a fraction of his kinetic energy to fire Promesse at hypersonic speed. Assuming the adjective meant anything in space.
His meridians heated up under the deluge of energy, but in exchange, the spear penetrated the exoskeleton without trouble before burying itself in the Tribulation’s body. The impact left a crater the size of a house. The equivalent of a pimple for the colossal spider.
Priam blinked before sighing. Due to the size difference between the projectile and the target, it was as if a human were being pricked by a syringe. Perhaps not even that. It was highly probable that the enemy hadn’t even felt the attack. I feel like a featherweight in the wrong weight class…
*
The System turned its gaze away.
A tower eclipsed the Earth, threatening to collide with Priam. Not a tower; a monumental leg, he corrected himself.
The Juggernaut had no intention of being slapped by the cosmic equivalent of household vermin.
Where Domain I would have been ineffective, Domain II overpowered the titan’s innate resistance to allow [Kinetic Sovereignty] to slow it down. Flexing his legendary skill, Priam shattered the limb and frowned upon noticing that the attacker’s flesh was more crystalline than biological.
Before he could study it, the amputated limb disintegrated into a cloud of aether that was sucked in by the enemy. Then the stump began to regenerate, regaining dozens of meters per second.
This thing can restore itself by auto-cannibalizing. Frustrating. If I find the guy who fed it my boxers…
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Priam studied the situation, compared the size of the monster to the one noted about ten blackouts ago, and frowned. The titan spider’s growth was accelerating. When his addon estimated it would exceed the Moon's volume within a week, he realized time was running out.
Ignoring the ever-closer Earth, Priam decided to go for the head. Accelerating between the colossal legs, he felt something change. Above him, his mind crown pulsed. [Curse Anathema] roared to life.
For the second time, the fate weaver had caught the Juggernaut in its web of misfortune.
Something penetrated his sphere of authority. Flying at several hundred meters per second in the spider’s frame of reference, Priam barely had time to modify his trajectory. What should have impacted his head hit his right collarbone. The young man blinked as his balance shifted. He looked behind him and was surprised to see an arm drifting in space. A limb that was no longer attached to his body.
Absorbing his kinetic energy, Priam braked urgently while narrowing his eyes. Neither [Ideal Dark Vision] nor [Echolocation] detected anything. Space was pitch black, save for the distant starlight. It was as if his arm had detached on its own.
Wait—
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 11VIVA +1DEXT +1MEM +1
Priam frowned. One point two seconds was very little time to accept a situation, analyze one’s options, and act. Especially when the end of the tattooed message was cut off.
[Right arm amputated. Watch out for movements, possible traps. [Ideal Dark Vision] and [Echolocation] useless. Remai—]
Looking down at his stump, Priam observed the wound. Clean, as if sliced by a high-pressure water jet or an atomic-sharp blade.
What was that?!
In space, there was no sound to alert him, but Priam’s draconic instinct warned him. Looking up, he observed a gigantic leg falling from the sky as if to crush him. His first reflex was to dodge, before catching himself. The Juggernaut braced and took the hit, absorbing a maximum amount of energy, but the blow shoved him downward.
Something thin entered his Domain, and his leg was sliced through to the femur. The hard bone blocked the enemy weapon, which slid before infiltrating the kneecap, which gave way in a crimson explosion.
Ah, I get it, Priam thought, mourning the loss of his knee.
Back in high school, Priam had learned that certain armies had relied on guerrilla tactics to repel stronger invaders. One famous lethal trick had stuck with him: stretching a steel wire across the road at head height. With speed, a motorcyclist or convertible driver would, at best, have their throat slit, and at worst, be decapitated. The terror of this tactic was such that the Americans had eventually mounted wire catchers—a strip of angle iron bolted upright to the forward bumper—on their jeeps during World War II and in Vietnam to protect themselves.
I doubt this spider has any steel cables, but it can shit out strands of silk without any problem. I should have slapped it to kingdom come when I had the chance.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Narrowing his eyelids, Priam modified the frequency of his aether sight and paled. A web of mind-blowing proportions surrounded him. Each thread was invisible to the naked eye, too thin to scatter much light. In the magical spectrum, reality was entirely different. The strands of silk were so heavily charged with aether that they radiated brighter than stars. In fact, there were so many that Priam had trouble distinguishing them individually.
Lvl Up: [Trap Detection] lvl 13, 14PERC +2
To avoid slicing himself in half, the Juggernaut took flight toward the enemy’s head at the slowest speed he could manage. Without [He Who Eludes Death] primed, his defeat was possible, and he took great care not to die stupidly.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl [12,] 13VIVA +1DEXT +1MEM +1Lvl Up: [Movement Virtuoso] lvl 7… ERROR, PERC SEALED
Condemned to move slowly, flight must have been absolute torture. Priam brought a hand to his head and grimaced as he felt the bare ivory of his skull. A wire had scalped him. His chest also bore a scar running across his ribs. No mention of any of this in the tattoo. The goal was to synthesize information for rapid assimilation: all superfluity had no place here. So what if he had cheated death fifteen times without remembering it? Cool stories, bro, but I don’t get a fuck before you pass your Trib.
Priam observed the monster beneath him. On the spider’s crystalline head, eight eyes as large as Olympic-sized swimming pools stared at him dauntlessly.
You shall know fear, the Juggernaut promised before descending. His bare feet touched the cold crystal, and he felt the material tug at his aether. Between his high meta-endurance and authority, only a minuscule stream of energy leaked out, which would have been worrying… if the latest evolution of his attribute didn’t allow his draconic heart to produce its own aether.
Two can play a game.
His pride stung, Priam activated [Ideal Aether Manipulation]. The primordial skill warred with the enemy’s natural resistance. For control of the energy, two wills clashed: one belonged to a spider belonging to a legendary aetherivore species, and the other, to a Juggernaut who had honed his mastery of aether in his dreams.
Seconds ticked away, and Priam lost his memory, but not his combativeness. Each awakening placed him right in front of the enemy, but the Juggernaut never faltered for a single moment. A weapon had no need to know whom it struck to kill, nor did he.
Ultimately, it was Domain II that tipped the scales. At the end of the day, Priam was more than overqualified for Tier 0.
The Juggernaut seized the aether present in the nearby crystal and stole it. Deprived of energy, the mineral evaporated. Only a whitish powder drifted into space while the aether docilely formed a sphere in the mage’s hand.
If the Tribulation spider can grow with aether, then its body is mostly made of it, Priam hypothesized. And aether obeys me.
With his Supremacy annihilating all matter within his reach, Priam descended into the head until he reached the center. There, he spun around and found nothing but crystal. Looking up, he frowned as he saw the top of the hole he had just dug closing back up.
The spider was still digesting the Tier 6 boxers, and evidently, it was gaining more aether than he could steal.
Next time, I’ll wear counterfeits.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Priam placed his index finger in front of his mouth. Above his finger spun an aether basketball—the energy he had stolen from the enemy over the course of the last hundred blackouts.
Bon appétit.
He swallowed the sphere, which vanished down his throat. It fell neither into his stomach nor his human lungs, but straight into his draconic one. The spiritual organ contracted, and the bloodline’s magic went to work. The aether was condensed, refined, and then fired. Opening his mouth, Priam unleashed an ultra-laser. The hallmark of dragons was the destruction they brought, and the scourge that left his maw lived up to their reputation.
Everything touched by the Breath vanished, annihilated by the rage of Dragons. The golden beam pierced straight through the spider, losing itself in the far reaches of the universe. The Juggernaut swept his head, directing the line of death to turn the enemy into a sieve.
When the breath ended, the ravaged spider had curled its legs beneath itself.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
[Adaptive Golden Meridians - Epic] has reached level 60, its maximum level as an epic skill. Natural evolution to the Legendary Tier requires a connection with a Concept or Supremacy.
Ideal prerequisite—
Error, soul at maximum capacity. No free legendary skill slots. No further notifications.
Priam’s eyes focused on a field of ruins. Raising his left hand, he massaged his throat while consulting the tattoo on his hand.
[The enemy has a pseudo-infinite energy source and a comparable regeneration rate. Homogeneous anatomy? Crystal everywhere, no notable weakness. The Tribulation spark is undetectable by [Tribulation Hunter]. Pyro and Dragon Breath are ineffective.]
Priam pursed his lips as he watched the crystalline structures restore themselves in real time. He was standing in what remained of the monster’s head, an area the size of a dozen stadiums. A fully powered Breath had erased half of the extremity, carving hollow tunnels of void through its body, and even that hadn’t been enough to hinder the spider. The crystal titan’s only weakness, the Tribulation spark, was hidden—most likely at the opposite end of the monster.
Making a decision, he wrote down his conclusion for the future Priam. May he defeat this abomination.
[Must be one-shot or trapped in an infinite loop. Hecate’s New Moon as a last resort.]
The first solution was difficult to implement when the enemy was the size of a small mountain, and the last was a trump card meant for his High Tribulation. As for the second… Priam hadn’t worked so hard on his aether proficiency for nothing.
He knelt on the crystalline ground. The spider was becoming so massive that he was starting to feel a pull of micro-gravity. Planting his index finger into the enemy’s surface, the mage began tracing runes. Aether Absorption to draw the aether from the material—the enemy’s crystalline body. Circulation and Division to channel it equally into Luminous Conversion and Replication. The first to transform its aether into light, an energy the spider could not digest. The second, so that the ritual would reproduce itself and spread on its own across the rest of the colossus’s body.
Priam didn’t have the capacity to carve a giga-ritual, nor the time to inscribe ten billion small ones, but if he had retained one thing from his programming classes, it was that automation was the patron saint of lazy people.
Having traced his five runes, Priam placed his hand on Aether Absorption and used his authority to kickstart the ritual.
The ground lit up, turning the spider’s body into light—across an area the size of a hand. The next second, the ritual had replicated a thousand times, and an entire room vanished into thin air. Two blackouts later, the equivalent of a football field disappeared. Like a plague, the ritual spread at breakneck speed.
A flash of light illuminated the firmament, its brilliance rivaling the sun. For a fleeting instant, night was banished from the Earth.
*
The System turned its gaze away.Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 14VIVA +1DEXT +1MEM +1Lvl up: [Optics Physique] lvl 13, 14CONST +8VIT +10
Sporting the biggest sunburn of his life, Priam grunted while his eyes regenerated themselves. The latest notification made his hair stand on end.
Title won!
[The Lighthouse - Silver] - The Fermi paradox asked why, given the vast number of stars and potentially habitable planets in our observable universe, there was no clear evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations prior to the Tutorial. The answer is simple: many civilizations take advantage of the darkness of the universe to hide, remaining silent out of fear of drawing attention to themselves. For where there are prey, there are predators. You have lit a fire in the dark forest, and some have seen it.While you are on your mother planet, aliens of your Tier (Soul Tier + Noble Tier) cannot observe you without alerting you.
[The Lighthouse] - Tier 0: A single port, a single anchor; you always know which direction your mother planet is in. NEW
5 Unused Merit Points.
Lvl up: [Ciphered Record] lvl 26MEM +6META (Affinity) +6META (Authority) +15
Priam had to force himself not to look up. He could feel gazes locked onto him like a sixth sense. At least six groups of non-Earthlings were snooping around nearby, their ships hidden in the shadow of the Moon. They plan to crash our Reunion.
While Priam loathed that kind of vermin, he had other fish to fry. Or spiders.
The eight-legged monster had gone on a drastic diet. Which is to say, its size had shrunk by a quarter when it abandoned an entire section of its abdomen before the ritual-plague could entirely transform it into light. Unfortunately, that hadn’t stopped its growth. Within a few minutes, it would recover all its lost mass.
If air hadn’t been so precious, Priam would have sighed. Only one solution left.
*
The System turned its gaze away.
Priam dodged several silk threads before placing his hand on one of the eight colossal legs. [Kinetic Sovereignty] pulsed, slightly modifying the crystal titan’s trajectory.
His addon had done the math. The Earth was in the way, but they could use it as a gravitational slingshot. Ignoring his overheating meridians that could no longer progress, Priam pushed the enemy… in the direction of the sun. Bon voyage.
With nothing to slow its inertia, the spider would hurtle toward the star while maintaining its speed. Moving at fifty kilometers per second, it would reach its destination in a little over a month. A long time to finish a Tribulation capable of exponential growth, but Priam refused to believe the enemy could survive a dip in a yellow dwarf. And if I’m wrong, I’ll just find a black hole…
Watching the monster drift away, the Juggernaut looked up. With the appetizer finished, it was time to move on to the main course.
*
The System turned its gaze away. Not the Seven.
I, Priam Azura, call upon the aether as witness to my progression and judge of my Path.
More than a thought, an intention. And with that alone, the realm shook.
Inside the Juggernaut, four gates began to vibrate in resonance with his draconic heart and his Tribulation spark. The universe held its breath before the would-be Heavenly Dragon went back to sleep. Priam was still far from finishing his body tempering.
Then Creation pulsed. Entire reality answered the call of his soul, and the Juggernaut heard the aether. Not with his ears, but with his whole being. Like a believer receiving a revelation, Priam understood.
The System translated nonetheless.
The Mundane close their eyes and open their soul, They stand at the crossroads of Paths,
Let the aspirant to the Zenith step forward.
Aether ProficiencyMicroDomainMasteryMistPyroBreathPhoenixDragonFaithUnbound
D̵͖͝ē̴̺p̴̝̀ţ̴͆h̴̹͋s̷͓̏
*
A/N: Third tomorrow. I couldn't help but edit and edit again to polish them as much as possible. These are important chapters after all!