3/3 for... too long ago
*
Chapter 485: Go, my Juggernaut.
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 24, 25VIVA +2DEXT +2MEM +2
The System looked away. Priam took another step before stopping. A sense of satisfaction washed over his soul.
“Congrats.”
“What gave me away?”
“You’ve got a massive smile, and the plain is on fire all the way to the horizon.”
“I validated a verse.”
Of that, he was absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. The lunar sea he had chosen was burning completely.
It was time to move on to the next step.
Setting aside the flames ravaging the Moon to his left, Priam called upon [Kinetic Sovereignty] to dig into the ground. Carving out a trench nearly three meters deep and just as wide, he began to move forward in a straight line. The excavated earth was thrown to the sides, as was the rock. To set up the landscape for the first Reunion, the System had only added two meters of topsoil to support the vegetation; beneath it lay the well-known lunar rock.
Before long, Jasmine couldn’t contain her curiosity anymore. “Gardening activity?”
“I’m drawing a giant rune, let me concentrate.”
Anyone who had ever traced words in sand or dirt knew that curves got ugly when writing characters larger than oneself. Yet, patterns that resonated with aether had strict geometries. A line not straight enough or a shaky curve made the difference between a rune and gibberish.
The difficulty increased even further when the character was hundreds of meters in diameter. Anyone who had ever walked with their eyes closed could testify that it was nearly impossible to go straight without a reference point. In the desert, lost souls often ended up walking in circles because one leg was slightly longer than the other.
Fortunately, Priam had a perfectly symmetrical body below the belt and Micro to move precisely. Unfortunately, he was blind, and Domain had a limited radius. So, he could only be careful and rely on [Runic Language].
And so, Priam walked, turning at the precise angles of the pattern indicated by his add-on to create a rune as large as two football stadiums. The three-dimensional projection of a well-known symbol, radiating on the fourth layer of his soul.
“It looks like a rain of ribbons carried by the current,” Jasmine murmured. “What is it?”
“[Kinetic Sovereignty].”
The pattern acted on kinetic energy. Traced alone on the ground, the rune lay dormant: it needed instructions to steal from a source, and channels to transmit to a target. Inscribed on a spiritual layer, Priam’s soul provided all of that. On the lunar soil, the rune had only one purpose: to amplify through resonance.
“And what is that going to be used for?”
“To bring down the moon.”
“For real?”
“The spider has to die, and I plan to catch it between a rock and a hard place. With the Moon being the big rock. And Earth being another rock. No hard place here.”
“You couldn’t find a simpler way to win than creating a spider sandwich using planets as bread?”
“The Moon isn’t a planet. And I don’t have any other solutions left. I swear things escalated quickly.”
Priam could feel Jasmine's judgmental gaze on him. Rather than facing it, he preferred to take advantage of his blindness to ignore her and focus on his work. The math was clear: he wasn’t powerful enough to control the satellite. No matter. Priam could make do with knocking the Moon out of orbit at the right moment. Gravity would do the rest.
Still, even for that, he had to lay the groundwork.
Once the first rune was inscribed, Priam took flight before landing ten kilometers away to start again, this time much faster. A second giant pattern appeared, ready to resonate with the first. If the legendary skill wasn’t enough, Priam would help himself with a ritual. It was a good thing, too; that was exactly what his High Tribulation was asking of him.
There were no coincidences.
*
Lvl Up: [Memory Manipulation Resistance] lvl 26, 27VIVA +2DEXT +2MEM +2
One thousand and ninety-two runes were enough to circle the Moon. Returning to his starting position one hour before the arrival of humanity, Priam looked up at the Zenith. Toward the place where he knew Earth to be.
If the Moon fell, it would crash into his home planet. The nightmare of ancient peoples would become reality. And he would be the sole guilty man.
The word was well chosen. As a scientist, Priam was under no illusions: the Moon would disintegrate shortly before impact due to the gravitational gradient. As for the Earth, the rain of burning debris would not be the only traumatic element. Its volcanoes erupting everywhere, its crust partially torn away, its core shaken, its magnetic field disrupted, its atmosphere blown away… and all life wiped out. No humans would be harmed—if Priam’s plan succeeded, the Moon would not be in a state to host humanity, which would certainly postpone the Reunion. However the rest of the living species would not survive. Where two centuries of industrial revolution and pollution had ravaged the fauna and flora, the Juggernaut would finish the job in a single day. All animals, from the cutest dog to the most majestic lion, would be erased. Not to mention the history of man, recorded in books, servers, paintings, monuments, and other mediums; lost forever. Art would regress by ten thousand years. Philosophy and science would become oral subjects. Even the worst dictators had never led such harsh campaigns.
Priam was going to become the enemy of humanity. The one who burns the hand that fed him.
All of this just to Tier up. Could anyone imagine anything more selfish? If he hadn’t been the culprit, Priam would have hunted down anyone else with the same design to stop them from causing harm.
A hand rested on his cheek. “Hey, you’re going to win this.”
“…What I’m doing is wrong.”
Jasmine lifted his face. “You don’t have a choice.”
Priam shook his head. It was too easy to absolve himself, to play the victim.
“There is always a choice. I could throw in the towel and try an easier High Tribulation with another Path. I could wait for the end of the second Reunion, find another universe, and retake the exam. I could wait for an apocryphal soul to obtain a Grace. In truth, nothing forces me to destroy my planet.”
“But it is the path of excellence.”
“I suppose.” Priam turned to Jasmine. “Are you not disgusted by me?”
She offered a beautiful smile. “You have never disgusted me.”
“I am selfish.”
“You live for yourself. Those who live for others never achieve their dreams.”
“But you want to become my Shadow.”
“I didn’t have a dream. Might as well make yours come true.”
“You—”
Jasmine placed a finger over Priam’s mouth. “Go, my Juggernaut.”
*
One only had to look at the tide to understand that gravity existed between the Moon and the Earth. So why didn’t the latter fall? Well, it did fall, only missing the planet thanks to its tangential velocity!
The principle was simple: when you rotate around a point, centrifugal force tries to push you away from that point. A sling launching a stone, an amusement park ride pinning the customer to their seat, or a passenger shifting during a sharp turn all follow this physical law. The same went for the Moon. By rotating around the Earth, its tangential velocity compensated for its fall. The very definition of an orbit.
So what would happen if [Kinetic Sovereignty] altered the direction of that velocity? What if, instead of orbiting the Earth at one kilometer per second, the Moon began hurtling toward the Earth at that very same speed? And then accelerated with gravity. That was what Priam intended to see.
His preparations were almost ready. The Moon was covered in runes capable of amplifying his skill. All that was left was to find a medium durable enough to contain the tremendous kinetic energy long enough for it to change direction. Priam had thought of using his Genesis Gift, but the necessary ritual eluded him. Despite all his talent for aether, he was in no position to design a Tier 5 formation. If the legendary skill inscribed directly on his soul came naturally to him, it was thanks to the genius of the System. Reproducing the same thing artificially was beyond Priam.
If the skill remained superior, then only one obvious medium remained to channel it: his body.
“This is madness,” Jasmine grunted.
“Once on the tiger, one has to ride it.”
Closing his eyes, Priam focused on [Adaptive Golden Meridians]. Connecting his flesh to his soul, the spiritual pathways crisscrossed his physical form, transporting aether wherever the fluid was needed. An ideal skill, epic, maxed out… and yet his instinct whispered that it wouldn't be enough. Even with his constitution and his Merits.
All that was left was to upgrade it to legendary rank. Which posed a problem.
Tier 0 Soul legendary skill limit: 5/5
The fourth layer of the soul had a limited surface area. Neither the expansion of his soul space through his deaths, nor the crystallization of his soul through [Iconoclast] and then [Blasphemer] changed that. Special resources were required to push back this ultimate ceiling. Since dragons were born with soul layers, a draconic atavism might work. Priam didn’t have any fire-breathing reptiles on hand, but he had another idea.
[Twisted Soul - Legendary] - Tier 1: Degrade your soul by one Tier to increase its plasticity, adaptability, and regeneration.
WARNING: Only one High Tribulation is possible per Tier and per universe. ACQUIRED
[Twisted Soul - Legendary] - Tier 2: Disguises your soul for [META Authority] seconds. One-day cooldown. NEW
4 Unused Merit Points.
Priam’s soul twisted brutally. Subjected to the strain, the partial crystallization granted by [Blasphemer] shattered like glass thrown to the ground. The Title had artificially elevated a portion of the Juggernaut's soul to Tier 1, which the Merit of [Twisted Soul] now degraded, converting quality into quantity.
In an explosion of pain, the fragments fell like flakes onto a martyred soul. Then, the miracle of the Merit took effect. The snow settled into the spiritual wounds. Between flashes of agony, Priam noticed that every ounce of crystallized soul was turning into two ounces of Tier 0 soul.
Mechanically, the soul expanded. For anyone else, this growth would have been limited by the size of the soul space, but multiple deaths had increased this attribute for Priam. The soul layers followed.
Tier 0 Soul legendary skill limit: 5/7.