Chapter 420: To have the home-field advantage

I'm late, sorry everyone. This is last week's third chapter. Don't worry, this week will have three chapters as usual! Next one: Thursday 9/10

PS: Priam Character Sheet (you can thanks the Discord guys!)

*

“My brother was right, you’re trying to use me,” Osiris muttered as he manhandled Priam’s stump.

“Hey, easy! I might not have many nerves left, but the ones I’ve got still hurt,” the Juggernaut grunted. Since his return from the Moon he had gone straight to the young Duatian to get his hand treated. “Besides, I’m not using you; you wanted to come. Even if it’s temporary, you’re part of Team Oasis now, and we don’t carry dead weight. So please, do your job as a biomancer.”

“Flesh crafter.”

“Hm?”

“Flesh crafter, not biomancer. Sounds more badass.”

Priam opened his mouth, then shut it. Some conversations weren’t worth having.

“Also, you say you don’t carry dead weight, but Rose—”

“You sure you want to finish that sentence?” Priam cut him off.

Osiris glanced toward the portal leading to the elves’ inner world. “Maybe not.” He turned back to Priam and narrowed his eyes. “You gonna tell her?”

“Heal my hand, and I’ll have heard nothing.”

Fifteen minutes later Priam’s limb was as good as new. Osiris had even matched the melanin of the new skin to the rest of the arm to erase any trace of the repair.

“Thanks,” Priam said, flexing his fist open and shut to test it. “Perfect.”

“Naturally,” Osiris preened. “And that’s the last time I do this today. I haven’t a drop of aether left in me. Your body’s so dense the cost to fix it was absurd.”

“Dense?”

Priam felt oddly insulted.

“A side effect of your high constitution. To make you tougher, the attribute miniaturizes your cells while multiplying their number, alters tissue composition, adjusts the mineral matrix of your bones, and so on. Didn’t you notice you’d put on a lot of mass since your integration?”

Priam squirmed in his chair and froze when the wood creaked. He could have argued that furniture from a ruin still smoldering an hour ago was fragile, but that would have been dishonest. He was heavy.

“To be honest, I noticed without paying it much mind,” he shrugged. “With my increased strength, I don’t feel the extra mass day to day. Plus, linking that change to any one attribute wasn’t obvious. You mention my constitution, but it could just as well be strength or my resistances.”

Osiris shook his head. “I spent weeks testing things on me. Increasing strength barely changes mass. It mostly rewrites how muscles work, the architecture of their cells, and gives them a way to be powered and overclocked by aether. That’s why too much strength and not enough constitution leads you to tear muscles when you flex too hard. You don’t seem to have that problem.”

Priam just laughed. “Not really, no. And you said ‘barely’? So strength influences mass a little?”

The question wasn’t just polite curiosity. How the System transformed a human into a superhuman fascinated Priam.

The teenager nodded. “Strength nudges weight when it replaces fat with muscle. For a male Homo Elysian, the System targets around ten percent body fat. So if you were already fit when you arrived…” Priam didn’t react. His sedentary lifestyle had cost him during the Tutorial. “Most of your added mass comes from constitution, then vitality—since that one literally makes you grow, and that weighs in too,” he finished with a wink.

Ignoring the pun, Priam sent the new data to his add-on. After subtracting the vertical growth parameter of his host, the soulbound system plotted Priam’s mass against his constitution since he arrived in Elysium. The graph that emerged would have looked familiar to anyone with a scientific background.

“A logarithmic function.”

“What?”

“A—” Priam broke off, thought for a moment, and decided he had no desire in giving Osiris a crash course in high-school math. “I’ve found how a System user’s mass evolves relative to their constitution.”

“Really? I only managed to conclude it wasn’t proportional.”

“Yeah, it’s a weird curve. In my case, two thousand three hundred in constitution multiplies my density by three point thirty-six.”

Louis whistled, and Osiris gawked. Priam remembered that his status wasn’t what people expected of a Tier 0.

“Shit, now I see why healing your hand costs as much as recreating Seth’s body,” Osiris said.

“Language!” Louis growled, then sized Priam up. “Without your constitution, you’d weigh…?”

“Four hundred divided by three point thirty-six… a little under one hundred and twenty kilograms,” Priam calculated. His high vivacity made him a human calculator. “For my two meters and my Spider-Man build, that tracks. Why do you ask?”

“Jasmine bet you’d be heavier than Blueberry by the end of the year.”

Priam burst out laughing. “The traitor! And she’s gonna lose. If the logarithmic trend holds, ten thousand in constitution gives density times four. You’d need a hundred thousand to reach a factor of five—impossible before the high Tiers—and, I’d still be ten times lighter than our furry friend.”

A six-meter bear packed a lot of weight, especially one with an augmented physique.

“Is your logarithm function the number of digits?” Osiris asked. “Like six for a million?”

“In broad strokes,” Priam smiled and went back to his subject. “So my mass is soft-capped. Makes sense, the System can’t compact my body to infinity… and that’s for the best. At least I’m not going to sink to my knees into the ground if I keep farming my resistances.”

“Mmh.” Hyshana cleared her throat as she arrived in their corner of the war platform. “I know Priam tends to let curiosity pull his focus, but I expected more from you, Louis.”

The old man stared at his shoes and Priam winced.

“I haven’t forgotten the fight ahead.”

“When thousands die, it’s called a war,” corrected Hyshana. “And a bleak one. We’re facing three Transcendents—one of them Léo, the same warrior who humiliated you yesterday. They’ll be here in twenty-one hours at most. I would like to hear a plan.”

“I thought you had bombs?” Osiris murmured.

In a group where everyone’s Perception was over a hundred, whispers didn’t go unnoticed.

“The nuclear threat will force most of the Aelbes to take refuge in the Demiurge’s inner world,” Hyshana explained. “But thinking that’ll be enough to wipe out three Tier 4s who know about them… I’m not convinced.”

“Maybe not in the open,” Priam agreed. “But I have an idea to catch them off guard inside their dimensional barrier, when they think they’re safe.”

“That’s a start, but I need specifics. My soldiers’ lives are at stake.”

“We’ll make the area our own,” said Priam before giving more details. “The barriers and traps around Oasis can hold back Dukes, right? Now that I’m a Prince I can upgrade them further. The barrier around the Aelbe manor shields them, but it also pins them in. We can exploit that. I plan to set up defensive structures, trap them inside a force field with a nuke or two. If that’s not enough, we’ll do some target practice with lasers and high-velocity projectiles. As long as they can’t break through the shields bought with the Sun Shop, they’ll be sitting ducks.”

“You want to fight on home turf,” summarized Louis.

Hyshana arched a brow. “I like the theory… In practice, I see three problems. First: their barrier is stronger than what you can buy.”

“I’ve said it before, but I have a lead on breaking through it. Alternatively, they won’t stay locked up for a thousand years. The elves leave tomorrow, and Léo will have to either go with them or wish Hekthorn a good journey.”

Priam didn’t need to be particularly polite, but his circumstances were exceptional. Tier 4 or not, Léo had to show the respect due to a Demiurge.

“So be it. Second problem: buying so many runic formations will cost a fortune in Sun points.”

“Lucky for us we’ve got an army ready to farm the undead,” Priam grinned.

The general snorted. “My soldiers enlisted to defend their homeland, not to fill my wallet.” She raised a hand before he could reply. “I know you don’t see it that way, but practically speaking, Sun points are money. If I confiscate my troops’ earnings, Ishaka could have me removed for abuse of power.”

“That was more or less a joke,” Priam grimaced. “I can probably farm ten times faster than your army. I’ll handle the Sun points.”

“I’ll help,” Louis smiled.

“Me too,” said Hyshana. “And my hoplites will follow on a volunteer basis.”

Knowing the honor-bound nature of her people, Priam doubted a single one would stay idle while their commander went to battle. Still, he knew better than to point it out. If it gave Hyshana a political loophole, so much the better.

“That leaves the third problem: a System-approved Lord can only purchase and place structures on their owned land. Last I checked, the Aelbe manor isn’t on Oasis territory.”

Priam winked. “Not yet.”

The general narrowed her eyes. “Meaning?”

“Well, you see, Oasis isn’t built around Log-a-rhythm; it’s bound to it.”

“So? A tree can’t walk.”

“You would be surprised...”

*

At the heart of the Aelbe camp stood a wild grove. Two days earlier, Rohan had brought Priam there to unlock a prerequisite for [Movement Virtuoso].

Leaping from branch to branch with sublime grace, Priam probed the forest. Here, there was no trace of the smoke that polluted the streets outside, no hoplite drones buzzing overhead, no undead screaming for your guts. The only sounds were birdsong and the whisper of crickets. It felt as though Priam were a thousand miles from civilization, when in truth, he was barely a few hundred meters away. That alone made it unnatural.

After circling the grove twice, Priam frowned and made for the center. He settled at the foot of the eldest tree—meaning, he sat his ass on a mossy carpet rather than a hard root—and closed his eyes.

Jasmine had skills to detect her enemies; Priam did not. His opponents had always been courteous enough to find him first. Fortunately, the one I’m seeking isn’t a foe.

Drawing in a long breath, Priam exhaled a slow plume of mist. Guided by his Concept, the cloud began to spread. It first filled the clearing, then weaved between the trees, moistening ferns, leaves, and grass. Minutes later, the entire grove was submerged in a thick fog.

At Unity with Mist, Priam felt as though he were the one enveloping the place. A part of him felt divine, as his awareness extended out a hundred meters in every direction. Slightly too short to sense what lay at the grove’s edge, but his Perception wasn’t yet high enough to exploit his Concept fully. Maybe once I reach the second milestone…

While one thread of thought was dreaming about the future, another half of his attention focused entirely on the fog. Searching for Dishnu, he inspected every surface, every bark fold, every breath of wind as if they brushed his skin. The resolution of his Concept was far lower than that of his Domain, but the mist compensated with sheer volume—roughly forty thousand times larger. For my brain’s sake, better the mental image stays fuzzy. Less data to process that way.

After five minutes of searching, he had found nothing but a pair of Aelbes hiding in a burrow. No trace of Dishnu. Maybe I’m a fool and he isn’t here…

Yet every time Priam considered burning the grove to ash, his instincts screamed. His senses had picked up something his mind hadn’t caught yet. He must be here, just hidden. Or I’m going crazy…

Of course, Priam could have simply called out to the Guardian of the Forest. His pride refused. 

Letting go of Mist, Priam focused on Breath. Unlike the other two, he wasn’t at Unity with this Concept—merely at Symphony. It meant he couldn’t wield it as naturally as an extension of his body. If he had to compare, Symphony was like music: he resonated with the Concept the way one vibrates with a favorite song. He could predict the next note, hum the melody without actively trying, even rearrange the tune to harmonize with another Concept.

It was enough to perceive a great many things.

As the fog thinned, Priam tuned himself to Breath. Through it, he listened to the respiration of frightened birds, startled deer, and the two amorous Aelbes. Amused, he shifted the frequency of his Concept. Around him, a million faint respirations answered—the insects breathed too. Priam sought something more alien. His soul groped through the symphony until he found the right note, and at last, the flora appeared.

Like all living things, plants breathed. True to his curious nature, Priam discovered that they, too, absorbed oxygen and released carbon dioxide and water. The scientist in him connected the dots to a high-school biology lesson about cellular respiration, the metabolic process that converts chemical energy from food into usable energy for the body. System bless my eidetic memory.

Then his brow furrowed. On Earth, they had hammered it into him that plants and oceans fought the greenhouse effect—forests absorbed CO₂, not produced it. I’m missing something.

Behind him towered a magnificent sequoia, a true green titan stretching toward the heavens. At its crown, its needles swayed gently under the moonlight. Priam harmonized his soul with Breath, to view the world through his Concept’s lens. He knew what he was searching for, and soon found it. High above, a second kind of respiration was taking place, one unique to the flora. The tree absorbed light and carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen. Photosynthesis.

For several minutes, back pressed against the conifer’s trunk, Priam lost himself in contemplation. There was something magical in using the fusion of knowledge and power that was a Concept to unveil the world’s mysteries.

I might be the first human to ever truly perceive a tree’s breath, he mused, as a fundamental truth of life revealed itself to his soul. That had to count as an ideal prerequisite for some skill.

Once the wonder faded, the Juggernaut turned toward a smaller, humbler tree. On the clearing’s edge, a strawberry tree had forsaken photosynthesis, shunning the tainted light of the Necromoon. Now that he was paying attention to it, Priam noticed it bore arbutus berries. It was the only tree he had seen with fruit since the beginning of the Necro event.

The Champion smiled.

“Dishnu, I could use your help.” A silence answered. “... It’s about Log-a-rhythm.”

After a few seconds, the tree’s bark swelled, and a silhouette took form.

*

Standing forty meters tall, Log-a-rhythm was far from the largest tree in the forest, but was undoubtedly among the most majestic. Its crimson-and-gold leaves cast a cool shade over the clearing, the outdoor dining set, the Skull Temple, the hoplite barracks, and the brook trickling past its roots. An idyllic scene made possible by its branches. They didn’t grow at random but in runic patterns, forming powerful aetheric formations to shield those under its care.

A keen-eyed visitor might have spotted a few huts nestled in the crown—bedrooms for the Lord and his friends—but no communal hall. The living room lay hidden within a dimensional pocket at the colossus’s heart.

As for the workshops and the rift to Valaryth, they were underground. There, part of the roots had tunneled through the bedrock to carve out secure chambers. Others extended to the clearing’s edge, feeding aether into the defensive barrier and linking to a vast subterranean network. Across five hectares surrounding Log-a-rhythm, every plant was part of a single, sprawling organism—like a clonal colony. They communicated, freely sharing their Potential in the desperate hope of resisting the Necromoon’s corruption.

And it worked. By its mere presence, the tree created an oasis of life amid the hellscape caused by the Necromoon. A fact at the origin of the land’s name, the Tal Quercus’s territory. A prince of the woods, twice-dead, whose mere presence weakened the undead.

Had the corrupted known fear, they might have comforted themselves with the thought that a tree, no matter how mighty, was easy to avoid. Today, they would have been wrong.

At the end of a ritual conducted by Dishnu and assisted by Priam, Log-a-rhythm began to hum.

Its branches trembled, then gathered into four massive, knotted appendages. On those vine-like tentacles, leaves pressed tight like cloth, giving the Tal Quercus a regal garment. Simultaneously, the ground quaked. Roots disconnected from the forest, slithering together beneath the trunk before piercing the surface. Still caked with earth, they wove themselves into six enormous limbs—jointless legs of braided wood that lifted the vegetative titan with ease.

At the top, Moonie began to circle at blinding speed, crowning Log-a-rhythm with a silver halo. The moon wyrm, flying in celebration of her recent ascension to Tier 1, was eager to lend her holy power to the being she now called her lair.

“At the end of the day, Log-a-rhythm is no treant,” warned Dishnu. “He’ll need to replant his roots within a day.”

He?

“That’s plenty of time.”

Priam’s grin froze as, at the climax of the tree’s metamorphosis, the barrier protecting Oasis flickered. The path was free for less than a heartbeat. Most undead were too slow to notice, even less exploit the breach, but a Tier 3 Baron seized the chance. Roughly the equivalent of a mortal Tier 0 Marquess, it dashed in Oasis.

Despite its advanced decay, the simian undead strode across the bio-traps before they could snap shut, dodged the auto-turrets’ fire with terrifying reflexes, and vaulted the rampart a split-second before the secondary barrier reformed.

Landing in the clearing amid a group of hoplites, the creature ignored them completely. Its burning red eyes locked onto Moonie, and it let out a roar of pure rage toward the Holy Guardian before leaping.

Perched atop the Tal Quercus, Priam tensed to intercept—then stopped. Like Promesse, Log-a-rhythm was his soulbound companion. Not a weapon, but a home. 

Even if its consciousness wasn’t yet fully developed, the tree already grasped his creator’s simplest intentions—especially after enduring its first Tribulations. Log-a-rhythm was far more than a wood golem, and it proved it.

One of its four arms erupted in a torrent of branches and leaves, intercepting the charging undead midair. The undead Baron struggled, thrashing against the vegetal storm, but soon found itself trapped in living wood.

Through his bond with the tree, Priam felt the ensnared Tier 3 raging. In vain. Its wood reinforced by Protection V and Necro Resistance V, Log-a-rhythm didn’t even quiver. Instead, the tree drew its prey toward one of its roots. A dozen thick tendrils rose, each strong enough to pierce the bedrock of the Wandering Islands. The undead’s bones were far weaker. They were skewered with obscene ease.

Then the roots secreted life-infused sap into the corrupted flesh. Seconds later, nothing remained of the Baron but a revolting sludge.

“Holy shit,” breathed Priam.

“If it can already do that, I wonder what it’ll become once we inject it with a few million Sun points,” mused Hyshana.

“A monster capable of holding off a Tier 4?”

“Hopefully. If it gets destroyed during the fight, that’ll be a heavy loss.”

Priam stayed silent. Beside him, with his hand fused with the tree’s crown, Dishnu was chirping. If Léo’s got the slightest sense of self-preservation, he’ll think twice before playing lumberjack. Not to mention that Log-a-rythm’s origin has something to do with the elves’ royalty. As long as the Demiurge is nearby, my tree is untouchable.

It was cheating. Priam had no remorse, nor shame.

As he thought the show over, branches and roots began to twist, rearranging themselves into familiar runic sequences. They were the formation Priam had bought long ago.

Necro Purification cleansed the corruption from the sludge before Natural Growth absorbed the nutrients. Moments later, the undead was gone, and Log-a-rhythm had grown a few centimeters taller.

Log-a-rhythm:

Status
Current POT: 8065 (+50 POT bonus from Natural Growth IV)

Through their bond, Priam could feel his tree was still hungry.

“Well, that’s perfect, buddy. There’s an all-you-can-eat buffet right next door,” he grinned, gazing at the undead horde. Full of greed, his eyes no longer saw monsters, but resources. The Juggernaut was ready to make a killing. “Alright! Set course for the Aelbe camp!”

*

Status: 

PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 259
Constitution 2 313
Agility 1 659
Vitality 2 147
Perception 988 

MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 666
Dexterity 988
Memory 1 229
Willpower 1 310
Charisma 1 117 

META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 466
Meta-focus 902
Meta-endurance 1 692
Meta-perception 929
Meta-chance 1 621
Meta-authority 1044 

Potential: 42 736
Tier 0

[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 3 attributes > 1 800 / 1 attribute > 2 400

*

Elysium - magical forest