Chapter 427: An Ascended’s image

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Congratulations, you are dead! Your Talent [He Who Eludes Death] brings you back to life once a day.

Number of deaths: 46

Synergy detected with your talent [Homo Elysian Obsession], your Titles [Four-Headed Hydra] and [Life is Hard; I’m Harder], and the fourth Merit of [Iconoclast]. Your body and spirit are rebuilt and will be more resistant to what killed them:

… Attribute potential redirected to skills per user request.

Lvl Up: [Spirit Resistance] lvl 29, 30, 31

WILL +9
Lvl Up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 28
CONST +7
META (Endurance) +2

Title won!

[Boneless - Silver] - The skeleton, whether physical or magical, is the framework of all living things. Without it, everything collapses. While certain parts of your body can remain hard without bones—Moderator’s Note: your fingernails—it’s highly recommended to find a proper substitute, unless you would read these lines in the form of a puddle.
PS: Unlike other -less Titles, the Gold rarity of [Boneless] doesn’t require full skeletal replacement. You still need bone marrow to live.
CONST +20%

[Tribulation]: One attribute above 2 400 was detected in Tier 0.
Another Tribulation is coming. Six pending.
Time: 68 days 15 hours 40 minutes 8 seconds.

Achievement - Silver: You have obtained [Heartless], [Brainless], [Bloodless], [Breathless], and [Boneless] at Silver rank. Most elites achieve this result thanks to Daddy Phoenix, Mommy Hydra, or a very competent surgeon. You despise such scions.

They who have suffered may not reach the Zenith; they who have not suffered are certain to fail.

Message for Humanity (local):

Priam Azura endured the Five Tortures

The Seven Concepts congratulate you.

Potential +300. Massive increase in the mutagenic potential of your organs. Minor increase in your Micro talent.

Priam’s consciousness stirred in the void of his mind. He skimmed through his notifications, noted the benefit tied to the Five Tortures, and decided not to waste a second before resurrecting.

A heartbeat after his death, the Juggernaut returned to haunt his killer.

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Beneath the contemptuous gaze of a crimson moon, a cluster of islands the size of a planet drifted over an endless ocean. One alone hid from the Necromoon’s sight, shrouded by thick smoke fed by the fires of a thousand homes and a fiery crater large enough to be mistaken for a volcano.

A boneless heap of flesh plummeted toward a lake of molten rock, a gaping hole in its chest marking the cause of death. Its mutilation had come afterward, born of spite and the fear that the absence of hearts might not be enough to banish the soul once bound to it. Unfortunately for the killer, the Juggernaut was the paragon of cockroaches.

Where the body had breathed its last, the air recoiled—and from an aether-born miracle, matter reassembled. The fallen’s twin emerged, eyes gleaming with a soul free of all injury. A moment later, boxers materialized to cover his nakedness.

Priam lowered his head to ensure that the magma was consuming his previous vessel—ever since Mirscella’s possession, he had feared leaving behind an avatar for necrocorruption—and nodded, satisfied. Though sluggishly, the molten rock did its job destroying his flesh. As for his bones, he had scattered those himself five seconds earlier. If his aim had been true, Léo now possessed a second skeleton.

“Now, where’s that bastard?” Priam growled, spinning on his heel.

An explosion answered him.

Accelerating skyward, the Champion tore through Log-a-rhythm’s canopy until he beheld the clash of titans above the great tree. There, Kazuki and Braato were being beaten senseless. Priam arrived just as Léo, using a branch as a springboard, all but teleported onto the hoplite. The Transcendent accepted a spear through his gut to take the Champion’s left knee. Kazuki screamed, and Priam clenched his fists, resisting the urge to charge in.

The Tier 4 was far too powerful. By forcing him into the air, his opponents had cut his agility in half, but even that handicap wouldn’t extend the fight by more than a minute. My resurrection is our best card. If I show myself now, we’ll die together. Our only chance is to wait for the right moment to jump in.

If only such a moment would come. As Léo slowed just before piercing the clouds, then dropped toward Braato, Priam’s mind blazed with thought. A good strategist didn’t wait for luck; he made it. He just needed one idea. One good idea. Good enough to save them all. Otherwise, Priam and everyone he cared about would die. No pressure.

Channeling his formidable thought-speed, Priam listed every lever he could pull while a parallel process and his add-on tested combinations to bridge the monstrous gap between their strengths.

Frustration mounted when no solution emerged within the first few seconds. It deepened as he watched a claw rip open Braato’s femoral artery. The giant retaliated with a punch that could have knocked out a whale. Léo merely shook it off. Despite a dozen deep wounds, the Tier 4 refused to fall. Tearing a shard of Priam’s skull from his bicep, he gave a cruel smile.

“The despair in your eyes… that’s what I wanted to see.”

Roaring a curse in hoplite, Kazuki barely waited for Knightmare’s nanobots to rebuild him a makeshift leg before dashing forward, only to be swatted aside an instant later. Priam’s knuckles whitened as he heard the pain in his friend’s voice. Worse still, madness flickered in the hoplite’s gaze. If Priam didn’t act soon, Kazuki would unleash his full potential, risking his soul and reality itself to drag their foe down with him.

Time was running out. Rather than let panic drive him to error, Priam closed his eyes. [Emotional Discipline] silenced the noise; [Frozen Meditation] slowed the flow of time; [In the Zone] sharpened his focus to a knife’s edge. The Juggernaut wrung every ounce of power from his mind.

Two seconds later, his eyes snapped open. A portal unfolded before him, and he retrieved the core he had purchased the day before. Shaped like an icosahedron—a twenty-faced solid—the aether crystal contained a single rune inscribed in three dimensions. A Mythic glyph, one the fledgling aetherist had translated as [Hydra’s Venom].

Closing his eyes, Priam focused on the crown floating above his head. Symbol of Royalty, the artifact’s power was purification of aether. It was far from easy, but the Juggernaut had spent the entire previous day training for it. Drawing on the spiritual equivalent of muscle memory, he mobilized his Domain to feed the halo with his energy. The transformation resisted him, aether leaking at every seam, but [High Aether Manipulation] held it in an iron grip.

In theory, the optimal ratio for elevating aether by one Tier was three to one. Priam couldn’t manage better than thirty to one. While lamenting the wasted energy, he flexed his willpower and meta-focus until a pearl of gaseous aether formed at the crown’s center. A fluid darker than what filtered through his soul. From the outside, it might have looked insignificant, but the universe recognized the feat.

META(Focus) has evolved!

Priam had no idea what the evolution of the attribute entailed, and his mentor had been tight-lipped. Still, he wasn’t about to turn down one of the five unique ideal prerequisites of [High Aether Manipulation].

With no time to ponder, the young man poured more and more energy into his crown until the aether pearl swelled to the size of a fist. A scream tore through the air. A second later, Kazuki’s body slammed against Log-a-rhythm’s trunk with sickening force. The halo of Duty wrapped around his body was so shredded it unraveled entirely, and Knightmare’s nanobots were no longer enough to keep him conscious. A passage opened in the bark, and Osiris seized the hoplite, tossing him into a vat of regenerative sap. One of Oasis’ Champions was out of the fight.

Before Léo, Braato wavered on his feet, and Priam knew the clock was running out. Halting the transformation process, he tried to inject the refined aether into the Mythic core only for the primordial energy to ignore him entirely. A Prince could purify primordial energy, not command it.

Still, the Juggernaut wasn’t one to quit at the first setback. Earlier that day, he had devised a plan as crude as effective. If you won’t come to me, I’ll come to you.

Through [Kinetic Sovereignty], Priam lifted the aether crystal above his head, then plunged it into the Tier 1 aether swirling around him. The fluid sank into the core until it reached the tridimensional rune which finally reacted. 

A Mythic skill, the symbol of the Tier 1s, had just been cast by a Tier 0.

Aether coursed through the glyph like gasoline in an engine. One second before activation, the instinct honed by dozens of deaths whispered for Priam to stack the odds in his favor. He mentally pressed the button for the last Merit he had purchased.

[The Five Ages of Man] - 7th Merit - Fortuna blesses your fortune; Chaos smiles upon your next endeavor. META (Chance) halved with each activation. Permanent penalty. The greater the loss, the greater the boon.

META (Chance) -811

The halo of Mind Ennoblement thrummed, the fate it contained crystallizing. Priam felt like the world’s chosen son, luck prying open every door before him. Everything he attempted could end only in triumph as reality itself conspired to crown him. A bank error in his favor, the winning lottery numbers, stumbling across a lost Da Vinci at a garage sale… the Merit waited only for his desire. Priam had to choose a path.

The Juggernaut aimed the mythical rune the instant it activated.

The glyph pulsed; the aether resonated with the caster’s soul. Primordial energy found within it the fragment of a Myth, and claimed it. If the rune were a fishing rod and the aether its line, then [Four-headed Hydra] was the bait cast into the universe’s history. 

A blind fisherman, Priam waited for a tug that might never come. His sacrifice to Fortuna rolled the dice anew; critical success. The Juggernaut felt a bite. Now—

The fish yanked so hard the fisherman toppled into the pond. In the next instant, his soul was dragged into a space that didn’t truly exist. Impossible geometry and the absence of an avatar ceased to matter when his spiritual sight beheld the image of a sleeping hydra.

Its size defied estimation, somewhere between a skyscraper and a galaxy. Its multicolored scales dazzled the eye, but less so than the thunder that followed each of its heartbeat. Then its scent froze Priam in place. The hydra did not smell of swamp, blood, or jungle. It smelled of power. One so immense it crushed the very fabric of space. Perhaps that explained the desolation surrounding it: the creature’s mere existence poisoned reality and every Concept. Pyro found no purchase here, nor did time. Here, the beast was absolute. The Juggernaut swallowed hard before the tyranny of a Myth born of a Tier 10.

Only the fifth head opened its eyes. The sheer weight of that single gaze made Priam’s spirit break out in phantom cold sweat.

“Priam Azura.”

“Ascended Hydra—”

The rest of his greeting died in his throat. Priam went rigid as judgment fell upon him.

“One of Ė̵͓ĺ̷̬̼̖̓͑̅e̷̹̫̿̇̈́̂ư̷̢̬̩̯̏͆͒t̴̡̘̲̑͆͝h̷̪̜̯͊e̴͔͕̖͗͝r̶͔̣̭̱͑í̴͓̌̚̚a̶̩̹̐̊͘’s chosen. Did you know I took part in the fall of your Patron? Before that, She cut nine of my heads during my Ascension to the Zenith.”

The image’s fury struck Priam like a cosmic slap. He wished for a mouth to vomit, eyes to gouge out, and eardrums to pierce. Lacking a body, his mind could only crack under the strain. Spiritual pain wasn’t the same as physical pain, but if anything, the agony was worse.

Until, like a bad dream, the suffering vanished.

“Nevertheless, [He Who Eludes Death] isn’t primed, and those who bear grudges dream. This is fate. I accept your offering of meta-chance. Go, and appear before Us no more.”

*

Priam’s eyes snapped open just as the titanic image of a hydra materialized above Log-a-rhythm. Eight hundred attribute points sacrificed for that—three hundred raw stats. For that amount he didn’t get fucked for annoying a Tier 10; a bargain, in his opinion.

Only the fifth head was awake, waiting to be aimed at its prey. Fed by a rune, the technique was far from as instinctive or fluent as a skill, and still reeling from his encounter with the Hydra, Priam struggled to control it. His addon took over, guiding the mythical strike.

The Tier 4 tried to dodge, but Braato hurled himself forward. At the cost of a gut-wrenching wound, the Tier 3 pinned down the Transcendent just long enough for the hydra to strike. As the fifth head lunged, Léo raised a hand to protect his head. The Hydra bit, swallowing the enemy’s left arm.

Priam heard Léo scream as [Hydra’s Venom] triggered. The mythical rune drained every drop of Tier 1 aether available to concoct a poison worthy of the Myth it invoked. In an instant, black veins spidered across the Aelbe’s skin.

Hope swelled in Priam’s hearts, until, before the energy reserve ran dry, the hydra’s image exploded. The backlash fractured the aether crystal, which Priam pocketed with a grim look. Braato landed beside him, face pale, one hand pressed to his belly to keep his entrails from spilling out.

“I hope that little stunt of yours gives us victory,” he rasped, “’cause I’m about to pass out.” He stayed true to his words, and the wooden floor opened beneath him, carrying him toward a makeshift infirmary.

On the ground, Leo staggered, struggling to keep his balance. His left arm was gone. The mythical skill had managed to punch through the four-Tier gap!

Just as hope swelled again in Priam’s hearts, the Transcendent let out a roar. The image of a white tiger reappeared in the air and fused into him. As the Myth overlaid the warrior, a bestial paw replaced his missing arm. While a large stream of aether leaked from it, a sign that the technique was hemorrhaging energy, that temporary limb promised unspeakable violence.

After a few steps, Leo’s gait grew steadier. Stretching and testing his new arm, he raised eyes blazing with hatred toward Priam.

“You again. How many times must I kill you before it sticks?” He advanced a step. “Don’t answer; I only trust what I see.”

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Status: 

PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 263
Constitution 2 664 (+343)
Agility 1 665
Vitality 2 246
Perception 998 

MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 666
Dexterity 988
Memory 1 229
Willpower 1 323 (+13)
Charisma 1 124 

META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 474
Meta-focus (P) 923
Meta-endurance 1 709 (+3)
Meta-perception 945
Meta-chance 810 (-811) (Raw 705 > 352)
Meta-authority 1054 

Potential: 42 471 (+9)
Tier 0

[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.

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

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Braato - black&white