Chapter 412: Neither Hypocrite, Nor Hero

PS: Priam Character Sheet 
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At a few clipped orders from Kazuki, the hoplites filed out, leaving the two Champions alone.

“I thought I’d find you on the front lines,” Priam said, glancing around. Even months after integration, the wonders of this new life hadn’t dulled for him. Standing on a hoplite war platform fell into that category.

“My soldiers need experience. But I’m ready to step in if another Tier 3 shows up.” Kazuki gestured at the staff planted in the metallic deck beside him.

As Priam stepped closer, he noticed a sheath carved directly into the transport’s plating. Around the platform, similar hollows yawned—slots sized for the blade of a spear. The “staff” beside Kazuki was nothing more than the shaft of his weapon.

“You didn’t have swalya on Earth,” the hoplite realized.

“We had coat racks and umbrella stands, but not this.” Priam crouched to examine the recess. “Some centuries back, a few cultures had weapon racks, but that’s ancient history. We stopped wielding swords a long time ago—takes too much space in the subway.” He frowned. “There’s a sound… like the faint buzz of a grinder.”

“An automatic sharpener. Swalya don’t just hold our weapons; they hone the edge and coat the blades with an anti-corrosion treatment. Normally inaudible, but with your stats…”

Priam nodded, rose, and moved to stand beside him. Before them, the war raged.

The front had shifted hundreds of meters since the hoplites’ initial ambush. Elite Aelbes were rare—most had been pulled to Proxima—leaving the rest of the populace to wage a feral guerrilla war against the invaders. Kazuki had responded to that by ordering the systematic leveling of every building in his army’s path.

Even so, rubble often concealed not-so-dead warriors. With Micro, tribe-hunters could still their hearts and wait for a bit, springing ambushes from beneath the ruins. Though mangled by blasts, they still hurled themselves at the invaders, dragging hoplites with them into death’s embrace. Priam himself saw a one-armed Tier 2 rush a hoplite and tear out his throat with his teeth before falling under heavy artillery.

“They’re worse than undead,” Kazuki growled.

“Cornered beasts are dangerous,” Priam reminded him. “But to be frank, your soldiers drop their guard too quickly.”

The hoplites were disciplined, organized, heavily armed, individually strong thanks to a brutal selection—about one in a million became a true elite—and to rigorous training. To that was added millennia of military science, impressive air support, and AIs backing a brilliant commander: Kazuki Arashi.

However, strategies for a conventional war were failing against System-fueled hunters fighting a guerrilla.

“They lack practice against humanoids enhanced by the System,” Kazuki said.

“The real problem is personal power. We both know that numbers won’t matter against Transcendents.”

“The drones lost them soon after you entered the cloud.”

The Tier 4s had vanished at the onset of the High Tribulation. Likely, they weren’t part of this simulation at all.

Lvl Up: [Rule Breaker] lvl 22
CHAR +3
Meta (Chance) +6

The tempering was still ongoing. 

“And Tier 3s? How many have you taken down?”

Barely a quarter of the phalanx exuded the spiritual pressure of a Tier 1. The gap in attributes and skills was noticeable as the battalion struggled to defeat Tier 2s. Beyond that, the gulf was almost unbridgeable.

“Four. Each took a hundred soldiers with them. We spotted two others; I had their positions bombed, but they managed to flee each time.”

Priam’s smile withered. “Only two?” His tone dripped with irony as he scanned the smoking ruins. “Yet all I see are ruins. Are your artillerymen cross-eyed or what?” 

“If you have something to say, speak plainly.”

Priam’s eyes flared with anger. “We were supposed to cut down their elites to stop them from invading Proxima. Not slaughter crafters defending their homes! What the fuck are you doing?!”

“The Aelbes have quests to drive us back. They don’t die for honor, they die for rewards.”

“Oh, please, I know you don’t give a shit about that. In the end, they’re dead all the same!”

Kazuki turned to his rival, voice hard. “You would have me order my soldiers not to defend themselves when attacked by an artisan?”

The Juggernaut’s hearts thundered, broadcasting his fury for all to hear. Twenty meters away, a hoplite sniper stiffened. 

“The Aelbes aren’t a whetstone for your army. If it can’t handle its mission—or if you can’t control it—it has no place here.”

Kazuki’s gaze sharpened with disdain. “It was hubris to think we could behead the tiger without collateral bloodshed.”

Priam barked a joyless laugh. “Dude, this isn’t a mistake or two slip-ups. You’re committing a fucking genocide! Killing children!”

In the background, bombs rained, gunfire tore the night, and both hoplites and Aelbes fell, each dying for their own.

“It’s easy to judge those who dirty their hands to preserve the peace in your world.” Kazuki’s voice hardened as he seized the shaft of his spear. “Without me, an Aelbe-Empyrean alliance would have razed the continent humanity clings to. Then, with the moral high ground, you would have pledged to avenge them.”

“You’re projecting your failure onto me.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, humans would have died for you to keep a clean conscience.”

“Or, we can all live for an ideal.”

“No.” The General raised his weapon, and his Spear Mastery sheathed it in a metallic gray halo. “If you were an idealist, you would have saved them.” He gestured at the sea of fire. Some people were still screaming inside. “The Aelbes wanted a world where they could live in peace. Valaryth could have taken them in. But you consider this territory yours.”

“Ours.”

Kazuki studied his friend’s eyes, then inclined his head. “Forgive me. Ours. I don’t judge you. It’s a resource that may one day save our peoples. Nevertheless, it makes you, at best, a useless yapping critic, at worst, a hypocrite.”

The word struck Priam like a slap. His mouth opened, then closed. He could have justified himself, argued that not killing was not the same as not saving; that the world wasn’t binary. But he understood: for Kazuki, it was. There were his allies on one side, and the rest of creation on the other. In the face of such conviction, words are useless.

Priam summoned a flame into his hand. Kazuki smiled and dropped into a defensive stance.

“At last, you speak with your body. Yet it doesn’t feel like you.”

Priam returned the smile. Strangely, his anger was gone. “Because it doesn’t matter. We’re in the High Tribulation, and your karma is choking my soul.”

“Is that a metaphor?”

“No. At first I thought our link was killing me because you were my best friend…” Priam laughed at Kazuki’s embarrassed expression. “But now I think the massacre your soldiers commit stains Oasis. You’re accumulating bad karma and I’m paying the price as the Lord. In the real world, the karmic debt would bite me in fifteen, or twenty years—when some survivor from today’s massacre came to slaughter my family while I was away. Here, the High Tribulation collects immediately.” Even right now, he was feeling the noose of corrupted connections tighten on his soul. “If I kill you, I erase part of that debt. I buy myself time—maybe enough to temper my gate.” His draconic instinct surged, and obeying an impulse, Priam declared to the world: “In plain words: I want to exorcise my bad karma.”

Lvl Up: [Rule Breaker] lvl 23
CHAR +3
Meta (Chance) +6

He took the notification as a sign of approval.

“You’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical,” said Kazuki, even as plates of metal snapped into place across his body. When his transformation into Knightmare was complete, he loomed a full meter taller than Priam.

“All the better,” the Juggernaut grinned, not the least bit cowed. “After all the times you flattened me in spear practice, I need to remind you which of us comes out on top in a real fight—”

Instinct screamed, and Priam sprang back. Dori’s blade—Kazuki’s spear—sliced past, missing his face by inches.

“Too slow!” Priam roared, unleashing a tidal wave of kinetic energy. The conical blast hammered Kazuki, hurling him from the war platform. The hoplite smashed into a burning ruin that collapsed in on him.

Too canny to engage the spearmaster in close quarters, Priam unfurled his phoenix wings and began weaving runes of protection out of his aether. They spun around him in orbit, ready to knit themselves into a Mille-feuille barrier to block an unstoppable strike.

The wreckage that had buried Kazuki erupted in a geyser of ash, embers, shattered beams, and bodies. The hoplite’s eyes locked on Priam’s, and he conjured one, two, then three blades of wind. They started strong, but winked out the instant they touched the Juggernaut’s Domain.

“A basic kinetic strike like that won’t even scratch me,” Priam taunted.

Knightmare blurred. With terrifying acceleration, he devoured two hundred meters in a heartbeat. Priam barely got his forearm up in time. The spear sheared through skin, then a centimeter of bone before stopping cold.

Lvl Up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 26
CONST +7
META (Endurance) +2

For a heartbeat, both Champions froze. 

“Disgusting constitution,” grunted Kazuki before retrieving Dori.

Then the dance resumed. A thrust speared into Priam’s chest, slipping between ribs to puncture a lung. At the spear’s tip, a sphere of wind swelled, primed to shred the organ apart from inside. Priam’s Domain short-circuited the detonation, but the split-second lapse cost him an elbow to his face.

With a boxer’s nose, Priam roared and countered with a lightning-fast strike from Promesse. Kazuki dodged with contemptuous ease. Three more strokes cut nothing but air.

The hoplite sniffed amusement, then responded to raw violence with apex technique. A feint forced Priam to overextend, and the spear’s haft cracked into his temple. Dazed, the young man staggered beneath a blistering combo of thrusts, each angled at a gap in his guard. Slashes, sweeps, grabs, and feints weaved together, harrying Priam until desperation forced him to trigger a kinetic storm.

When his eyes snapped open again, the twenty meters around him were a void. No air, no ground, no debris remained.

“Challenging you in close quarters was arrogant,” Priam admitted, panting. 

“... But?”

With a grin, Priam gestured toward the ruins. “But so is facing me on a battlefield.”

The bombings had left whole districts ablaze. Drawn to the Pyro Sage’s call, flames leapt skyward, weaving a cage of fire around the two Champions. Heat surged.

Kazuki tried to retreat, but with a step Priam rode the fire. He emerged from the wall of flame before his rival and unleashed a kinetic wave that flung Kazuki back before he could react.

The Juggernaut bounced his rival across the flaming walls in a brutal volley that lasted just long enough for the blaze to climb to metal-melting heat.

“Ready? Here I am,” Priam said with a smile, clenching his fist.

Like the hand of an enraged god, the cage compressed, swallowing the hoplite whole. For a second, Priam thought he had won. Then, he sensed the flare of wind; a tunnel through the inferno bored by a devastating thrust. 

Kazuki burst free like a cannon shot. He rolled on impact and took a second to rise. Half his mechanized armor had melted; patches of his scaled skin were horrifically burned across his back. Of his eyes, only two empty, smoking sockets remained.

With a mere thought, a small flex of his Concept, Priam had nearly annihilated his rival. Such was the power gap between a Duke and a Prince.

“General!” a lieutenant cried.

Kazuki lifted his hand before tracing a complex gesture with his wrist. The officer saluted and assumed command of the raid. The Champion then closed his eyes. His armor liquefied and poured into his veins. His clenched jaw betrayed the agony.

When Kazuki opened his eyes again, Priam felt his own bloodlines shiver. The Titan’s blood had awakened. The hoplite was pulling out all the stops. 

For now, I’m far from doing the same. Prove to me that I should take you seriously, Kazu.

The Juggernaut raised an arm, conjured a lance of fire, and hurled it. The blazing missile devoured three hundred meters in an eyeblink before exploding in a spray of sparks against the hoplite’s torso.

“Fireproof?” Priam narrowed his eyes. “No. That was my lance. It didn’t even try to hurt you.”

“It didn’t deserve to,” Kazuki replied with half-burnt vocal cords. Lifting Dori, he wove his Aura, his Wind Concept, and the halo of his Spear Mastery around the blade. “Receive mine.”

The spearmaster slashed. 

Priam’s instinct was so silent it alarmed him. Fourteen shield runes deployed, layering into as many barriers. All detonated at once, and Priam felt his flesh split from brow to groin.

Above and below, beyond his protection, the shockwave scythed the air, the building beneath his feet, and gouged a trench two meters deep and five long.

Lvl Up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 27
CONST +7
META (Endurance) +2

“Not bad,” Priam smiled, summoning Pyro to his hand. “You’ve earned your title of Champion. At the bottom of the list.”

“...”

“Tied with Seth.”

“You—?!”

“At last a reaction! And now, let it rain fire!”

For the next minute, a hundred fireballs were batted aside by a spear that seemed unstoppable. Both rivals circled, smiling despite themselves.

Lvl Up: [Rule Breaker] lvl 24
CHAR +3
Meta (Chance) +6

[Soul rupture in: six minutes.]

The countdown to death ticked on. Priam decided it was time to end the game.

Feeling the core of his gate approaching half completion, he summoned his wings. With a single beat, he dominated the battlefield. His jaws opened, and ambient aether funneled into his draconic lung. Three seconds later, he let out a Breath.

On the ground, Kazuki leveled his spear against what looked like a falling meteor. The earth quaked, the air shrieked, and hoplites and Aelbes alike fled the catastrophe’s epicenter.

When the dust settled, little remained of the Champion but a charred skeleton, held together by scorched muscle and threads of molten metallic tendon. His chest had blossomed into a grotesque flower: petals of shattered bone, a pistil of dried blood studded with scraps of organs and fat. Swallowing a bomb might have left less carnage.

And still, Kazuki was lifting his arm, his Duty scorning death.

“….”

With a flick of his wrist, Priam summoned a cascade of fire that drowned his friend. or what was left of him. A heartbeat later, he dissipated it with a frown. Supported by its Concept, the hoplite’s body refused to burn further. Without a heart or brain, its will would eventually fail and its end would come—but not soon enough. By then, I’ll be dead as well.

The Juggernaut was hardly one to condemn those clinging to life, but he had the tools to deal with cockroach-like foes. With a thought, he turned his flames to mist and infused it with [There is no Heaven]. When the cloud touched Kazuki’s bones, unholy energy tore at its soul.

The General opened its jaws and screamed. Not a physical cry—it had no lungs left—but a spiritual howl. The soul, bridge between reality and Duty, fractured. It had no choice left but to die—

A wave of aether slammed into Priam. Its intensity erased his mist-woven clothes, blew out his Domain, and made [Kinetic Sovereignty] flicker.

Unable to hold his levitation, Priam plummeted. His attributes let him land without injury, but his eyes widened as he recognized something familiar in what was happening to Kazuki. This awakened a recent memory. A very recent one.

“This wild aether… This natural majesty… it’s just like Old Nekomata’s High Tribulation.”

To survive the fracturing of its soul, Kazuki’s obsession had found only one path forward: to baptize it. But unlike the old Aelbe, the Champion was overqualified.

Barely a minute into the ordeal, a cascade of aether poured from the heavens like divine creation. The deluge struck Kazuki’s charred skeleton. While it didn’t mend the body, it restored its soul and filled it with vitality. It had passed the trial.

Emerging triumphant from its High Tribulation, Knightmare had Tiered up.

*

Status: 

PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 259
Constitution 2 317 (+20)
Agility 1 659
Vitality 2 213
Perception 998 

MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 666
Dexterity 988
Memory 1 219
Willpower 1 310
Charisma 1 040 (+18) 

META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 459
Meta-focus 902
Meta-endurance 1 692 (+6)
Meta-perception 876
Meta-chance 1 430 (+38)
Meta-authority 1018 

Potential: 43 014 (+15)
Tier 0

[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.

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

*

Kazuki - Knightmare