Chapter 444: Hailcyon

“That’s strange,” Seuz murmured.

Busy whispering into the faun’s ear, Hastenash did not respond. Wings crossed, Neitlan’h clenched her teeth, still burning from the humiliation she had just endured. Too proud to leave, too furious to participate, she absently licked a patch of bare, featherless skin while devouring the ice cream Sweet Mama kept churning out. Wild berry flavor.

Wang Lin pressed his lips together. When an Immortal spoke, replying could be dangerous… and remaining silent could be worse. The mercenary scanned the other faction leaders, but none lifted their heads. Like children avoiding a teacher’s gaze. Cowards, the lot of them.

Only Slayer, the ruthless head of the local Assassins’ branch, flashed him a wink. No need to be a dirty mind mage to read his thoughts. ‘I didn’t survive six High Tribulations just to die by offending an Immortal. Your problem.’

The older one grew, the tighter one clung to life.

The warrior cleared his throat.

“What strikes you as strange, Immortal Seuz?”

The merchant smiled. Perhaps. Hard to say with a kraken.

“The end-of-battle announcement.”

He gestured, and the Colosseum’s voice echoed once more.

Paakrux, phantom of Wave 92 for 999 years, has fallen by your hand.
Undefeated duration prior to termination: 0 years.

“What do you notice?”

“He lost less than a year ago.”

“Indeed. Can you think of any youths in our Sector capable of such a feat?”

As the local leader of the Mercenaries, Wang Lin had a fairly precise understanding of the Sector’s prodigies… and enough experience to know that dark horses existed only in children’s tales.

“With repeated attempts, I believe two could manage it. If we assume certain factions are hiding their talents… perhaps ten might have a chance.”

In truth, despite the Sector having recently grown to the size of a small galaxy, the number of Princes was laughably low. As expected from one of the universe’s most backwater regions. Worse still, most of them were projects of major factions.

Perfectly curated educations, limitless resources, fortuitous encounters that were anything but… These young prodigies were pampered houseplants, watered regularly by attentive gardeners. Compared to the monsters of Elysium, who found sustenance in the blood of their enemies, their quality left much to be desired. Still, the ability to retry the Colosseum endlessly and learn from failure against fixed phantoms made Wang Lin believe that reaching wave ninety three was not unthinkable.

“Hm. I would have been harsher, but I trust experts when it comes to violence. Now, here is what troubles me: no one has claimed these victories. Not a whisper of pride or arrogance. And you should know that very little escapes my information network.”

“Your spies,” Neitlan’h corrected. “And there is a difference between being theoretically capable of defeating those phantoms and being permitted to do so. If I pour millions into raising an Ace, it’s not so they can die chasing a Colosseum record.” It was not that prodigies couldn’t defeat the early phantoms; it was that most were forbidden from trying. “The young are fools, incapable of accepting that they have limits.”

Thaal sighed. “Words from a woman so old she’s forgotten she was ever young. No wonder my Sector is weak with parents like that. Let them be on their own, they’ll fly farther.”

“The words of a male with no offspring to protect,” the phoenix Queen shot back. “You believe our youth will push themselves to the brink to leave phantoms behind in the Colosseum. That competition will drive the survivors further. I do not dispute this. But that notoriety will also paint targets on their backs. At best, their phantoms will be studied, measured, dissected. At worst, rival factions will place bounties on them—or contact the Assassins directly.”

She snorted as Slayer offered a sheepish smile.

“A problem for weak factions. I doubt the Sole Nova fears such threats. In truth, you see no value in nurturing a star that might one day rival you… or eclipse your most infamous son.”

Neitlan’h did not answer. Everyone knew Keltan’h was a sensitive subject among the phoenix. Five thousand years earlier, the Prince had streaked across the Sector like a meteor. Brilliant, but fleeting. The fate of too many geniuses.

Seuz cleared his throat. “In any case, there was a prodigy who passed just before Priam. And the further we go, the more I wonder whether it is one of his rivals… or someone external to our Sector.”

Wang Lin turned toward the Primordial Gambler. Thaal was smiling. The Administrator was enjoying himself.

*

Wave 93

Despite his vitality, Priam found the relentless succession of battles exhausting. He would have given much to collapse into a bed and hibernate for a month or two.

Yet when his new opponent appeared, his draconic instinct screamed a warning. The Juggernaut raised his eyes and entered [In the Zone].

The boss was a naked humanoid nearly three meters tall, translucent. Through a body of pale, dense muscle, Priam could make out bluish vessels converging into organs of unknown function. The alien anatomy continued with hands that could only be described as knots of tentacles. Similar appendages crowned its head, hanging like dreadlocks from a structure identical to a jellyfish’s bell. Beneath this gelatinous helm, a featureless face was turned toward Priam. Or perhaps it was the back of its head.

[Heroic Identification]
[Phantom of Hailcyon - Tier 0 - Prince - Immortal jellyzoan] - Avatar of the Ocean.
A wondrous fusion of a biologically immortal hydrozoan colony that harmonized their souls over millions of years. Both singular and legion, they are Champion only unto themself.
Having survived where most would have turned Apocryphal, Hailcyon developed a fascinating ego, extraordinary talent, and a mid-Tier race.
Concept traces detected: Hail, Proto-Life, Synchronization
Attributes: Physical (2 000), Mental (2 000), META (2 000)
Weaknesses:

• Sensitive to dehydration

Lvl Up: [Heroic Identification] lvl 3
PERC +1
MEM +1
CHAR +1

Perception exceeds 1,000 points. Second milestone reached. Congratulations!

Priam whistled. It was the first time he had encountered a Tier 0 whose statistics exceeded his own. A second glance at the description explained why: the enemy possessed a mid-Tier race. For each racial tier pushed back the thresholds of Tribulations, Priam intended to upgrade his race to Tier 3 to eliminate five of his six current Tribulations. If Hailcyon’s race had reached Tier 4, surpassing him was only logical. If it had reached Tier 5… unlikely. Their stats would have been even more absurd.

That thought led to another. His mentor had warned him he would be far from holding an attribute advantage against his own image. What, then, would be the racial Tier of a phoenix Prince backed by an Immortal clan? A problem for later.

Hailcyon stirred. One tentacle pointed toward Priam, and a mental bridge shot forth, halting just outside his Domain. Though it could have been an attack vector, the Homo Elysium could not bring himself to ignore what felt like a polite request for communication. He connected using his own [Mental Bridge].

The two aether constructs linked, and static flooded Priam’s mind as if he had switched on an old cathode television without selecting a channel. No prodigy was needed to recognize a compatibility issue. I might as well duct-tape a USB cable to HDMI and hope for a clean signal.

[Mental Bridge] was born from an epiphany during his quintuple Tribulation before the dream-Anatole, refined through the study of a Necro Envoy’s mind bridge. Though it served the same function as Hailcyon’s construct, the two could not have been more different. The result was that the Champions could not understand one another.

Priam was about to sever the link when curiosity prevailed. Staying his hand, he observed the enemy’s method. Runes coursed through the enemy construct, roughly half of them familiar. Like a child before a puzzle, Priam felt his mind engage, deciphering the runic architecture and comparing it to his own.

It’s like we don’t speak the same language… but there must be a translation. If I modify this section, I might introduce compatibility. He frowned. But if I change this rune, it affects that one. Which affects another. I’ll have to change everything, won’t I?

*

Wave ninety-three had been underway for a full minute, and neither Champion had moved.

“Is he truly attempting to modify his skill in order to communicate with the enemy?” Seuz mused.

Patriarch Riusling snorted. “The madness of youth. I know mid Tiers with ten times his mental vivacity, memory, and runic education who would need weeks to solve a problem like that.”

Runes and glyphs formed the largest alphabet in the universe, and the infinite possibilities born of their combinations could, in theory, reshape reality without limit. The price for that power was the nightmarish difficulty of approaching that science at all. There was a reason aetherists were so revered.

“If RAM and processing power were all that mattered to master the runic language, technological factions would rule the universe,” Thaal said with a smile. “You’re forgetting the most important factor.”

“And that is?”

“Raw talent.”

Some people had their brains wired to excel at mathematics or languages. Priam lived for magic… and magic returned the favor.

*

Educated guesses, sudden inspirations, and a deluge of calculations were the cocktail Priam drank to solve his problem. Altering the runes of his mental bridge to make it compatible with Hailcyon’s proved to be an engaging mental game, complicated by the need not to break what already worked.

Lvl Up: [Mental Bridge] lvl 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Meta (Affinity) +15

Meta (Perception) +15

Meta (Authority) +15

Stepping back to examine the new architecture of his skill, Priam pursed his lips. It was far from optimized, but it worked. Part of him was proud of it, like a mother of an ugly child. Another part wanted nothing more than to tear it down and rebuild something better. That would have to wait.

“When did they die?” a question resonated in his mind as the signal finally cleared. Not words, exactly, but a thought articulated with precision.

“Who?”

“Aelbe. Snahert. Geasert.”

Priam narrowed his eyes. “The clans?”

“The Champions.”

“Roughly three thousand years ago. And not of old age.”

Hailcyon inclined their head. Learning that they were a phantom rather than the original did not seem to trouble them.

“Were you their rival?” Priam asked.

“Their superior. I won the Third Reunion and triumphed in the Return. Their civilizations fled to Elysium to escape me.”

Three future Demiurges had lost to Hailcyon. Priam briefly wondered whether the original still existed in Elysium, then frowned.

“How do you know I met their descendants?”

“You are [In the Zone]. [Poison Physique] shields you from my presence. You possess the fluidity of a [Movement Virtuoso].”

As a contemporary of Aelbe, Geasert, and Snahert, how could Hailcyon not have noticed that Priam had wrung the tribes dry of knowledge?

A tremor shook the arena. The Colosseum wanted them to fight, not talk.

A sense of resignation passed through the mental bridge before it collapsed as Hailcyon withdrew their tentacle. The signal to begin hostilities.

Priam summoned a tornado of fire that swept across the arena, vitrifying the sand in its wake. Fifty meters from Hailcyon, a hailstorm rose, concealing its creator and absorbing the flames. The melted ice struck the ground, then rose again as a colossal golem that charged toward Priam. The power of Proto-life?

The Juggernaut dodged a massive punch as his Domain brushed against the elemental. [Kinetic Sovereignty] froze the enemy kinetically before freezing it outright.

Advancing toward the growing cyclone, Priam felt his instincts flare. He turned toward the ice statue he had just created and narrowed his eyes. A fraction of a second later, he leapt backward as it exploded into a million fragments… of hail.

Magically accelerated, most of the pellets were stopped by his kinetic control, but the fastest struck Priam’s skin faster than bullets. A normal human would have burst in a spray of blood. The Juggernaut had long since surpassed such limits of flesh.

Ignoring the dozen bruises that would soon bloom across his body, Priam stepped toward his enemy. The ice crunched beneath his feet like shards of glass, only far sharper. The Homo Elysian had not raised his constitution to fear something as mundane as a carpet of preternaturally sharp hailstones, and lunged forward.

The boundary separating the cyclone from the rest of the arena was a curtain of death. Entering the wolf’s maw, Priam caught sight of a moving silhouette. As [Kinetic Sovereignty] worked in tandem with his Domain to shield him from the worst of the storm, he dashed toward it. Promesse flashed. The shape exploded like the first statue. A golem.

Two more formed nearby. Priam frowned, then summoned his mist. Ignoring the hail, the Concept revealed the truth. No trace of Hailcyon. The enemy had merged with their Concept. The forms Priam glimpsed within the storm were nothing more than agglomerations of ice infused with Proto-life.

If you want to play it that way…

Reaching for [Tribulation Hunter], Priam searched for the heart of the hailstorm. Despite summoning and feeding the storm, the Concept was not omnipresent, but localized in Hailcyon’s soul. To find one was to find the other.

A spiritual flame ignited to his left. Priam struck.

Accelerated by [Kinetic Sovereignty], Promesse was wreathed in the golden halo of [There Is No Heaven], a skill designed to punish souls directly. The absence of a body would not save Hailcyon.

The immortal jellyzoan reappeared, the tip of a spear buried in their head.

Something trembled within Priam. One of his resistances had been triggered. [Rule Breaker]?

The phantom spasmed before a tentacle snapped like a whip and coiled around Priam’s wrist. A voice echoed in his mind.

“Synchronization.”

Hailcyon’s final Concept activated, dragging their killer toward the grave of their victim… and [Rule Breaker] resisted. The Juggernaut had learned his lesson about thorn damage.

Already smiling, Priam then felt the tentacle extend toward his fingers and flex.

A tremendous force pried his fist open, and the appendage touched a pitch-black point within his palm. Sigurd’s weakness, the price Priam had paid to withstand Leo’s atomic blast. A flaw that, as in the Myth, allowed one to bypass his resistances and his constitution alike.

Synchronization took hold.

The Juggernaut screamed as a white-hot blade pierced his soul.

*

Status: 

PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 263
Constitution 2 693
Agility 1 665
Vitality 2 644
Perception 1 000 (+2) 

MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 667
Dexterity 1 008
Memory 1 244 (+2)
Willpower 1 348
Charisma 1 159 (+2) 

META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 503 (+19)
Meta-focus (P) 930
Meta-endurance 1 757
Meta-perception 973 (+26)
Meta-chance 810
Meta-authority 1 105 (+25) 

Potential: 42 588 (+17)
Tier 0

[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 3 attributes > 1 800 / 1 attribute > 2 700