2/3 for... too long ago
*
Chapter 484: Breath of the Scientist
He had a moon to bring down.
The plan was so insane that Priam had a hard time realizing it was his own. And yet, did he have a choice? Nothing among his mastered skills, his unlocked Merits, his integrated Concepts, and his practiced Supremacies could defeat an enemy as large as a small country and capable of rapid regeneration. Ignis might have a chance, but his soul wouldn’t be able to handle Pyro’s evolution before Tier 1. A Tier he couldn’t reach without defeating the spider. Basic vicious circle.
The only option left was to use the environment. Since reaching the sun would take too long—especially while Priam was busy breaking the all-category world record for breath-holding—he had to make do with the Earth and the Moon.
Now, accelerating the spider onto the natural satellite at several hundred kilometers per second might be enough to obliterate it. Priam doubted it. Half-measures were the best way to end up with bigger problems than before. Worse, if the monster survived, then the second Reunion would be a feast with humanity on the menu. Priam admitted to a certain selfishness, but not to the point of sacrificing his entire civilization.
At least, not if he had other choices.
Smashing the spider onto Earth posed a similar problem. He needed a surer solution. Something definitive. Absolute.
Priam didn't slow down until his Domain caught a few air molecules. An artificial atmosphere. He had reached the Moon without any trouble. I guess the pirates learned their lesson.
Thanks to his latest Title, [The Lighthouse], Priam could feel the direct gaze of three other groups of non-Earthlings. Given the speed of light, they couldn’t be very far. Yet, none had tried to attack him. Thugs were, above all, cowards: strong with the weak, weak with the strong. I guess I’m strong. Now I just have to prove it to the universe.
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 23VIVA +1DEXT +1MEM +1
*
The System looked away.
He had a moon to bring down.
Priam blinked and frowned as he rediscovered his idea. Isn’t there any other way?
The young man did what he must have done after every recent memory wipe: look for another solution. Finding none, he pursued his crazy plan.
Refusing to waste any more time, he landed superman-style. His bare feet stepped on a few sharp pieces of flint... which shattered under the weight and durability of the Juggernaut. Priam blinked, grunted as he realized his blindness—undoubtedly, for the umpteenth time—and spun around as he felt a shape gain a dimension inside his Domain.
“Woah, now that’s a big spider!” Jasmine exclaimed, translated by [Echolocation]. “Are you going to leave it in orbit around your planet?”
“...” Mouth open, Priam exhaled the little air left in his lungs before realizing he couldn’t speak without breathing. A mental bridge connected him to his Shadow. “What are you doing here?”
“Hide your joy at seeing me,” she pouted.
“Jasmine, it’s dangerous! You wouldn’t even have been able to defend yourself against my Trib without getting struck by the System.”
“I know, and that’s why I wasn’t there. I jumped into your shadow the moment the flash of light lit up the Moon. Thought it was the end.” She looked up at the Earth. A black spot stood out against the European continent. The colossal monster was visible from the Moon. “You must have been damn far away because I got a Title for that.”
Priam figured his shadow must have been imprinted onto the Moon the moment he turned half the spider’s mass into light. Jumping into it, Jasmine had found herself trapped with him in space. The concept of a shadow was complicated in the vacuum of space.
“Alright,” the Juggernaut sighed mentally. “And why are you here?”
“Thaal told me that if I helped you during your Reunion, it would influence my Archetype. A first step toward truly becoming your shadow.” A shrug. “I didn’t understand all of it, but the important thing is that I get to be with you.”
During the creation of the Homo Elysian, Priam had theorized that this race could act as a bridge between several Reunions. Of course, that only opened up a possibility, nothing more.
“Even as a Homo Elysian, you were born on Arkana, not on Earth. What connection do you have with humanity to crash our Reunion?”
“I used the Hideout’s Genesis Gift to bind myself to you, and voila!”
The summary was far too brief, but Priam could postpone any explanations until after his High Tribulation.
“Can the Champion of Arkana just ignore her civilization?”
“Oh yeah, I gave up that Title.” She shrugged. “Not like I cared much about them anyway.”
Rejecting the status of Champion of a dystopian civilization was understandable. Rejecting the status of the Chosen of the Seven was stupid. Despite this, looking at the young woman’s radiant smile, Priam couldn’t find the heart to lecture her. Freedom was about making one’s own choices.
*
The System looked away. Not the aether.
Priam blinked. Jasmine. Earth. No, lower gravity. Moon. Tattoo. Understanding.
“Stunned by my beauty?”
“Sorry, I was... No time to explain. Last question: why can’t I feel you through our bond?”
“Thaal helped me hide it so you wouldn’t find out about my plan. I wasn’t sure you’d agree.” She blushed like a child asking for pardon rather than permission. “Sorry.”
How could he blame his friend for a foolish thing she did for his own good?
“It’s nothing. Alright, the Moon is moving and I have a tight schedule to keep so it's in the position that suits me.”
“Go go! I’ll cheer for you!”
With a smile on his face, Priam deployed his wings, his phoenix bloodline, and the associated Concept. An explosion consumed the world. The Juggernaut basked for a few moments in Pyro’s heat before blowing on it, using his will and his aether to increase the intensity of the flames. The goal was to spark a massive fire.
“Are you planning to burn the spider?”
“Nope. I’m working on my High Trib.”
Path of the Dreaming DragonHe who tames the aether, Needs no noise, nor light, To burn the sea forever,A single breath proclaims his might, A dragon patient of no slightWho scorns the Reaper
“The third line tests my Pyro Path, and the mission seems obvious.”
Since the Tier 1 Concept was capable of using water as fuel, burning a sea seemed more tedious than difficult. Unfortunately, Priam didn’t have much time. Fortunately, the definition of a noun was often fluid.
“Are you blind?”
“Temporarily.”
“Oops. Anyway, there’s no sea on the Moon, dummy.”
“Not to be that guy,” Priam said, pushing up invisible glasses. “But as a space enthusiast, I have to tell you that the Moon has several seas.” The most famous being the Sea of Tranquility, the place where man first set foot on the Moon. “They just don't have water.”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “That seems like a major problem.”
“Not to some astronomers.”
“Language doesn’t work that way, Priam. If we start misnaming things, we won’t understand each other anymore.”
“...On Earth, Greenland is less green and icier than Iceland.”
“Fuck humanity.” Jasmine turned toward the plain—the Foaming Sea if Priam’s add-on wasn’t mistaken. A crater as large as Connecticut, formed by ancient volcanic flows and caused by the impact of a large meteorite. Currently covered by a forest planted by the System. “You think you can cheat the system like that?”
“I’m betting on it.”
In his experience, thinking outside the box was a quality rewarded by the universe. Above all, after the System’s revegetation of the Moon, burning such a sea would be easier than evaporating the Mediterranean or another sea. Faster, too. If his plan went well, he would validate his High Tribulation at the same time as his Tribulations.
“Alright, it’s Pyro time!”
Choosing a random direction, Priam began to walk. A slight slope in the ground indicated the direction of the crater's center, and he set out to find its edge to patrol it, releasing and fanning his flames in the right direction.
“By the way, I don’t want to panic you, but you’re blue,” Jasmine said.
“My High Tribulation prevents me from taking more than one breath,” Priam replied, feeling his body grow weak.
When Micro let a few convulsions slip, he understood he had to find a solution, now. Frenchman or not, he wasn’t going to accept his lungs going on strike.
“Mmh. Are we thinking the same thing?” smiled Jasmine.
A parallel thought reviewed his options, stepping back to examine the situation from every angle. Did he really need air? Yes. Did he really need lungs? No? The scientist thought back to his college lectures. Eureka!
“I think so. Time to do some science.”
With a flick, Priam sliced open a vein on his arm and extracted a liter of ichor, which he gathered into about sixty tiny spheres—the limit of his vivacity. This was oxygen-depleted blood, replaced by carbon dioxide through his body’s processes. Then, flexing his kinetic mastery, Priam emptied most of the air from his Domain. Prompted by the drop in ambient pressure, the carbon dioxide hissed out of the blood like a soda can being opened. Now, all that was left was to fill it with oxygen.
Isolating the beads of ichor, Priam recalled the air back into his Domain before compressing it. [Kinetic Sovereignty] then applied its tyranny, reducing the temperature of the gases.
“Oh, there are droplets. Well, they’re flakes now. Looks like snow.”
“It is.” It was in moments like these that Priam realized education was a blessing. “There’s a bit of water vapor in the air. Carbon dioxide too. You’re going to see new droplets, then some dry ice. That means we’re close to -100°C.”
“Is that cold?”
“Very. But we're going even further. If my eidetic memory doesn’t fail me, around -200°C.”
A feat requiring modern industrial facilities... or a legendary kinetic skill. The temperature dropped further, and physics triumphed. Priam felt the gases vanish, replaced by a homogeneous liquid. Focusing on Domain II, he tried to get a visual, but without success. Even for a genius, a Supremacy was hard to master.
“Can you tell me the hue of the liquid?” he asked.
“Slightly bluish.”
“Good. Liquid nitrogen is colorless. The blue comes from the oxygen. That's the one I want.”
Priam began to heat it up again. Nitrogen, making up nearly four-fifths of the atmosphere, evaporated first, leaving an ultra-cold bluish liquid: the oxygen he needed. Anyone who had slept through a few science classes might have tried to inject this directly into their veins. Bad idea. On top of the freezing temperature, the liquid would have turned back into gas as tiny bubbles. A great way to trigger a stroke.
Mobilizing his Domain, Priam warmed the precious molecule to room temperature, then sent it to saturate his blood beads through contact. The same job as a lung, but done artificially. A burst of overpressure to speed up the gas dissolving into the ichor and being captured by the hemoglobin, and Priam gathered the beads of ichor back together.
“Behold, a liter of fresh blood!”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “All that work just to take a breath? My idea was simpler.”
“I’m listening.”
“Mouth-to-mouth.”
Priam raised a finger, then froze. There was a world where that actually worked.
“Ah, you and your big brain, using big guns to shoot small problems!”
“Shut up,” Priam grumbled. “Color of the blood?”
“Bright red.”
“Proof it was filled with oxygen.”
The panacea his body was craving.
After letting the excess gas escape, the Juggernaut cut himself again—the previous cut had already healed—and injected the fresh ichor into an artery. His hearts pumped, distributing the vital liquid throughout his body. Priam let out a sigh of relief, like a diver taking his first breath of air after a long time underwater.
Title upgraded! [Breathless - Silver] becomes [Breathless - Gold]!
[Breathless - Gold] - Breath, the power of life, the air taken into or expelled from the lungs. Yours has transcended those organs.Certain philosophical schools claim that ascending toward the Zenith means detaching oneself from the mundane. Replacing nerve electricity, blood, and even breath with aether, and organs with runes and rituals. Proceed with caution.Your lungs are already capable of inhaling your aether. VIT +20% (+10%)META (Endurance) +10%
Priam was smiling when his brain cut off the endorphins once more. His body demanded more. While still distributing his flames, he began manually injecting air into his blood again. As long as he didn't triumph over all the trials of his High Tribulation, this would be his only way to breathe.
After all, [Curse Anathema] completely ignores the state of my lungs. I can adapt to the constraints of my Tribs, but not my High Tribs. Good to know.