Chapter 443 : King of Mankind

Make sure to have read the 442 before.
Enjoy!

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Lvl Up: [Social Resistance] lvl 3, 4, 5, 6
CHAR +12

Vague 92

A white flash made both duelists blink. His constitution and vitality far exceeded his perception, Priam recovered in a few thousandths of a second, twice faster than his opponent.

[Systemic Record]

[Phantom of Paakrux - Tier 0 - Prince - Naga] - Tide of the Rebellion.
Hope Champion, 17 427th generation.
Nagas are an artificial race born of a curse striking a merfolk people. Amphibian traits, nasty personality and massive natural production of anabolic agents make them fearsome predators of the depths.
…

Thaal ignored the thousands of pages summarizing the life of a gladiator who died before reaching Tier 3 and smiled as Priam grew ruthless.

The naga still had one arm raised before his face when Promesse had already crossed the arena at supersonic speed.

Blood spattered the ground. A Pyro Breath followed the spear but shattered against an immense wave instead of roasting its target. Through the steam rising from the impact, his feet licked by the tide, Priam frowned.

“A blatant elemental weakness… Is this the end of his run?” Seuz smiled.

Priam’s confusion vanished, replaced by a blank mask. Now [In the Zone], the Juggernaut seized the surrounding sand and shaped it into spears. His Fire Concept turned the projectiles to glass, and his kinetic mastery fired them at Mach 3. The energy burst shredded his meridians, but the Juggernaut knew he was in a losing position. He needed to win, and fast.

Lvl Up: [Adaptive Golden Meridians] lvl 38
META (Focus) +3
META (Endurance) +6

The first spear pierced the lower serpent half of the amphibian. A moment later, the water turned red. Paakrux roared as the combo of Heroic Aura and Spear Mastery wounded him. The boss dove into the water before taking the second missile.

Hand raised to fire a third projectile, Priam scanned for his opponent. Nothing. After a minute, he had to accept the truth: the naga had vanished into a pool no higher than his knees. The Juggernaut did not have a monopoly on Unity.

A second of silence, then the water trembled.

“K’sātal balk mêlf!”

Translation: “Little tail with no scales.”

A classic naga insult.

He’s not wrong, Thaal thought as a true ocean surged into existence from the aether.

Aware that he must not allow his opponent to secure terrain advantage, Priam attempted to evaporate the water with Pyro, invoking genuine plasma storms. In vain. Exploiting elemental superiority, the successive waves drowned all his attempts until the ocean covered the full arena.

Deciding to burn through his aether, the amphibian kept channeling his Concept, and the sea level rose until it pushed back the mist. At fifty meters high, the waters halted after pressing against an invisible barrier. The battlefield was now entirely submerged.

Deprived of his Concepts, Priam did not panic. Thanks to [Breathless], he could breathe his own aether; he had several minutes before suffocation. In fact, he might die from the pressure first.

Despite the relatively shallow height, the ocean crushed him with the same force as Valaryth’s. A weight that grew each second, trying to compress his body until it imploded around his lungs. And for once, Priam couldn’t adapt.

Lvl Up: [Sun Steel Body] lvl 34
ERROR. CONST SEALED

In total darkness, the Juggernaut scanned the depths. When a harpoon shot toward him like a torpedo, he sensed the disturbance in the aether and turned to face it. Accepting a deep gash along his thigh, he answered with a massive absorption of kinetic energy. A sphere of ice blossomed at the far end of the waters.

The naga wasn’t inside it.

“O’kmap ékh ta.”

Translation: I am the ocean. The ocean is all. I am no one.

All right then.

Priam plunged a hand into the split flesh of his thigh and pulled. Not a flicker of pain marred his features even as the hemorrhage’s flow increased. Blood clouded the waters as his femoral artery spilled its contents.

The waiting resumed. This time, aware the enemy could track aether, the amphibian tried to disrupt him. A marine current seized Priam and flung him aside.

The water column barely stirred the Juggernaut’s hair as his kinetic mastery anchored him to the sandy floor. Swept along by the currents, the cloud of blood began to spread through the entire arena. Priam was still bleeding. In minutes, he had likely lost liters of blood, regularly swallowing seawater to give his body material to produce more.

After ten minutes of stillness, a form appeared at the farthest point of the arena from him: Paakrux, coughing blood. The naga’s eyes widened as he looked toward the Juggernaut. Priam stared back, [Ideal Dark Vision] piercing the abyssal gloom.

“Poison,” Seuz understood. “Makes the terrain neutral now.”

“We’ll see about that,” Thaal smiled.

The polymath’s hands moved with the precision of a master calligrapher and the dexterity of an ambidextrous prodigy. The left traced barrier runes, the right lightning. Pure water was an insulator, but salt water an excellent conductor. It was like dropping a giant hair dryer into a bathtub: both combatants were struck instantly. Despite distance and thermal losses, the naga spasmed. At the heart of the magical bolt, Priam merely shivered.

When the lightning rune faded, a normal man would have unplugged the cable, or at the very least taken a second to question his life choices. Electric torture ranked high on the pain scale.

Priam drew a second rune. His add-on, a third.

The deluge of electrons hijacked his muscles, froze his lungs, petrified his hearts, and boiled his blood. The Juggernaut persisted, convinced the enemy suffered far more, even if he endured only a fraction of Priam’s punishment.

His obsession paid off. His cells mutated for resistance, and the System recorded the change.

Lvl Up: [Lightning Resistance] lvl 18
CONST +2
VIT +1

Determined to drag his foe to the deepest hell he could muster, the Juggernaut only stopped when Paakrux formed a bubble around himself, shooting his enemy a hateful look.

Cut off from the ocean, the naga no longer feared electrocution or worsening poison. On the other end, he was now without his bread and butter attack. 

Rather than advancing, Priam continued casting barrier runes. The glyphs divided the arena in two, then four, then eight, until Paakrux and Priam were confined to a small section. A prison.

Then, [Kinetic Sovereignty] awoke. The temperature plummeted until white veins appeared. Like a drop of milk spiraling through water, ice converted the liquid… until it replaced it entirely.

Trapped in a pocket of air at the heart of an iceberg, the naga roared. Through a meter of polar ice, the Homo Elysium watched his prey in glacial silence. Corrupted by poison or frost, the ocean no longer answered the enemy. It was time to end this duel.

Supported by a high meta-authority, Priam’s Domain crushed his enemy’s, clearing the path for Mist. A fog condensed within the bubble surrounding the boss. Influenced by the extreme cold, the water froze almost instantly. Less than a minute later, Paakrux hung immobilized.

[Kinetic Sovereignty] kept draining all his heat until the amphibian was fully petrified, his cells as brittle as glass.

Drawing back his fist, Priam slammed his knuckles against the ice egg, which exploded. Shards of sorbet-flavored nagablood flew across the arena as the ocean dissipated, returning to the nether.

“Looks like a Sub-Zero fatality,” Thaal grinned, catching a frozen bone fragment between two fingers.

*

Paakrux, phantom of Wave 92 for 999 years, has fallen by your hand.

Undefeated duration prior to termination: 0 years.

Letting himself fall onto the wet sand, Priam pocketed a few biological samples from Paakrux. Together with Émir’s, that gave him two new references for his race upgrade. Soon, he would no longer need to limit his attributes.

That done, he stared at his hands. They were trembling. The fight had been harder than he had expected. Sure, he had always known the odds of beating the Prince Phoenix on the first try were slim, but struggling already on wave ninety two annoyed him. At this pace, the next might well be the last of this run.

“Come on, since when am I a defeatist?” he muttered. “Even if the existence of phantoms makes the difficulty curve way more exponential…”

The System’s explanation was clear on one point: a soulless clone of himself would replace the current boss of his record wave—the highest he had cleared. The rest was murkier. For example: would the existing phantom be overwritten or pushed down? Since Stryk-7 was four thousand years older than Paakrux and nearly the age of his mentor, the first option was the most probable.

In hindsight, that was the better outcome. A bit less harsh, a bit more organic. And from that answer followed another question: what about two people competing for the same slot? Logically, the fastest victor should have priority, but the System might also make both phantoms auto-duel and keep the winner. If so, Priam had better speedrun each fight at least once.

More questions swarmed the young man’s mind. For instance: the two phantoms showed a very recent defeat—zero years. Was that because of Priam, which would be stupid since he knew he had defeated them, or because of someone else? Certainly a rival. But who? As a Tier 1, Kazuki didn’t count, and the gals aren’t the best duelists.

The answer forming in Priam’s mind did not please him, mostly because if he reached Tier 1 before his rivals, he would leave behind a phantom revealing all of his cards. If Arnold encountered it, he would immediately understand that Priam was an impostor. As for the others, they would have all the time in the world to fight him in loops until they learned every skill, pattern, and secret inside out.

“I really shouldn’t trigger my High Tribulation too early… but on the other hand, it works both ways. If Arnold left a phantom here, then this is a golden opportunity to measure the gap between us…”

From that perspective, the phantom mechanic benefited him. Only one question remained: which wave could he reach?

If he were to be stopped, Priam hoped it would be by a Monarch. Since Vertex, part of him had yearned to measure himself against such monsters. Provided Sector Hope had produced such a radiant being. Considering he had joined the galaxy’s historical elite within months, the Juggernaut doubted it.

The System pinged Priam while he reveled in his exploits. 

“I should have more time before the next wave—”

Announcement to Proxima’s civilizations:

Duke Prometheus (Humanity) has defeated Empyréa.

“And he announces it to everyone… This dude has no shame,” Priam joked.

*

Blood was sticking beneath Prometheus’s feet as he ascended the steps of the Empyrean palace. The capture of a city was never a pretty thing, especially when its rulers clung to power. Not that it was hard to understand: the leader of humanity had refused any surrender and hanged every fleeing noble. Parasites would not be tolerated.

Reaching the top of the stairs, he stepped over the catapult-flung corpse of a spy and came to stand before the doors. At the sound of metallic boots behind him, he straightened and drew on his knights’ power.

The strength of a hundred elites surged through him, and he unleashed it in a single punch. Though weighing several tons, the gates of the palace exploded inward, tearing screams from the defenders.

“Charge!” the king roared.

The slaughter lasted another hour, the time it took to drag the rats out of their holes. Most were cut down on sight, but a number were taken alive and rounded up in the throne room.

Perhaps because its previous sovereign had vacated it less than a week ago, the throne felt cold beneath Prometheus as he sat. It hardly mattered.

Raising his gaze to his mages, the king nodded. After a brief ritual, a massive hologram appeared in the sky above the Empyrean capital, broadcasting a live feed of the throne room. There, roughly a thousand nobles and royal guards knelt disarmed, flanked by twice as many servants, most of them women. Along the walls, before the doors, and under the windows, humanity’s soldiers stood watch over the prisoners.

“Empyreans. I am King Prometheus, commander of the army that has taken your city. You are surely afraid of me… and you are right to be. I am humanity’s protector, and your lives mean nothing to me. Worse, you are my enemies. I do not feed my enemies. They feed me, for the ashes of their bodies fertilize my fields.”

A colder introduction than what his ministers had advised, but Prometheus believed in the strength of honesty.

“However, our relationship could change. My queen, standing to my right, was one of yours before joining my civilization.” Lacking Micro, Eloise blushed adorably. Without embarrassing her further, he continued, “You may do the same. Become Homo Elysium. To do so, you must demonstrate your worth. My spies tell me this city is crawling with murderers, nobles, and rapists. If you do not belong to these categories, bring me their heads. Women need one. Men, ten. Do not cheat: our necromancers make the dead talk, and our truthseekers do the same with the living. You have until midnight.”

One could have heard a pin drop. Prometheus waited, letting his gaze pass over the servants broken by a life of servitude. How hard it was to shatter chains worn since birth. Thankfully, hope always endured. Humanity was not the only race capable of adapting.

It took nearly five minutes before a teenage girl stepped forward. Almost a child. Glancing around fearfully as if expecting punishment, she met the eyes of a knight who gave her a small nod. The servant swallowed, then stepped again until she stood behind an obese noble. Producing a kitchen knife from her apron, she did what she had always done: she slit a pig’s throat.

Prometheus smiled. Now that the example was set, others would follow.

“Casualty estimates?” he murmured to his ministers.

“Fewer than three thousand,” Gloria answered without checking her notes. “About as many wounded. It would’ve been a hundred times worse if Jasmine hadn’t decapitated the kingdom before we arrived.”

“That’s not all,” Guandi rumbled loud enough for half the room to hear. “We penetrated their territory like it was soft butter. Hell, we had to get within a thousand kilometers of their capital before running into an enemy patrol.”

“Esmée must have acted,” Eloise whispered.

No one replied. If there was someone capable of bringing down a kingdom without ever raising a sword… Prometheus preferred not to antagonize her.

Priam… I hope you know what you’re doing.

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Inspiration - Male Naga by Carolina Eade