Chapter 83: He Who Never Gave Up

Chapter 83: He Who Never Gave Up

Louis could feel the drops of water trickling gently down his body. Their path, guided by gravity, took them relentlessly to his feet, where they joined a small puddle. Surely the only drinkable one in the whole dome, he thought.

Everywhere, the lethal deluge was falling. Even without Priam's warning, Louis had directly felt the immense weight of the cloud. The source of the rain was a cloud in appearance only. Louis saw it as a vast, heavy mountain. Or perhaps the graveyard of a million weapons, like a battlefield.

"What a bloody day..."

Every drop hid a sword, a dagger, a bullet. Louis had lived through many wars, and liked none of them. He appreciated the violence of a good fight. That was why he had devoted his life to the martial arts. Their violence was pure and full of philosophy.

The violence of war disgusted him. It killed more innocents than warriors.

Louis was always ready to put his life on the line. But he had no desire to confront the weak and oppressed. His passion made him hate the apathy of war.

"Lives cut short by indifference..."

Perhaps that was what he hated most about this new world - and this cloud. All around him, the drops were falling, raising appalling screams. They quickly died away, like silent testimonies to the horror of the rain. In the adjacent streets, the water running down the gutters was red. The steel rain was finishing off the bodies of those who had not heeded the new Lord's advice.

From the roof of the building that housed his friends, Louis looked down on his street. The rain was attacking the white of the bones of what had only a few minutes ago been a young woman. He hadn't been able to save her. With the exception of a few bones, teeth and hair, nothing was left of her. A drop had penetrated her skull, then passed through her brain and on. The power had dissipated only after digging a hole through her intestines. A quick death.

A useless one.

On the streets of New Earth, hundreds of anonymous people were disappearing at this very moment. In someone else's war.

Louis sighed as he felt his strength decline. Each drop was imprinted with the concept of steel. The concept gave them steel properties, making them artificially heavy, hard, piercing and deadly. Without the concept, they were just standard drops of water. That was how Louis felt about them.

The old man had spent almost his entire life perfecting his art. Practicing a kind of mixed martial art, Louis had traveled the world to perfect his movements and techniques. Lucid, he had never sought to be the best fighter. He wasn't tall enough to have excellent reach, or sufficiently imposing to take the most powerful blows. An MMA champion would have beaten him nine times out of ten.

However, Louis' body remained a formidable weapon. Coupled with his reflexes, techniques and knowledge, he was a Master. He had spent his life observing the bodies of others - and his own - meditating and following the philosophy of his art.

He'd never thrown the fastest punches, but he knew how to execute the best submission holds. At almost ninety, he was supple, agile, dexterous, lively and optimistic.

Upon arrival, the System had given wings to an old tiger.

The curtain of rain continued to obscure the world, and while Priam fought his way to the top of the dome, some inhabitants tried to take advantage of the situation. Three hundred meters from Louis, a man pressed up against the buildings, moving slowly towards a house. A woman's silhouette was silhouetted against one of the house's windows. When the man knocked on the door, the shadow froze.

After a few seconds, the man pulled out a crowbar he'd been holding, hidden under his baggy clothes.

"Hard times reveal human nature," mumbled Louis.

Maybe the man wanted to steal an empty house. Maybe he was there for the woman. Louis thought for a moment of Mirscella. She didn't need his protection. In this new world, gender conferred little advantage. The burglar was possibly attacking a tigress. But when in doubt...

Raising his right hand, Louis caught a drop of water on the fly. His Mastery annihilated the steel fragment inside, transforming the drop into ordinary water. In one swift movement, Louis positioned it on the nail of his index finger before infusing it with his will. His whole body was dangerous, but the man could also work with tools and weapons. It was the ability he had unlocked when reaching stage 1 of his Mastery.

Today, this drop would be his weapon.

[Mastery - Body]. [Fire-arm].

With a flick of the wrist, the drop flew away. Louis' mastery allowed it to retain its shape and speed, crossing the air as if in a vacuum. Two seconds later, as the door opened under the burglar's action, the drop hit him in the back of the neck.

The man stood still for a moment before collapsing to the ground. Tipping backward, his body fell halfway into the gutter. In a few minutes, there would be nothing left of him.

Louis nodded before turning away. It was time to go home.

As he placed his hand on the handle of the roof door, his instinct shook.

A second later, the sky lit up.

Priam felt no pain as the attack vaporized his body. Vaporize was perhaps too strong a word. After all, the beam of light had some difficulty in annihilating him.

He didn't really count, but his Constitution, resistances and various Titles enabled him to gain three or four seconds. Seconds during which his nerves screamed in pain before liquefying. [Three-Headed Hydra] gained him another second, trying to regenerate his bones.

The breath of a wyvern, calibrated to be the fourth Tribulation of a Tier 0, had the power to sublimate the armored door of a bank vault. From solid metal to gas in a matter of moments. Priam had withstood disintegration for several seconds - giving him significant benefits. Diamonds are created under intense pressure...

Lvl Up: [Osmosis] lvl 5

PHY +1

META (AFFI) +4

Synergy detected with your talent [Humanity adapts] and your Titles [Three-Headed Hydra] and [Veteran].

Lvl Up: [Star Iron Body] lvl 8,9

CONST +6

Lvl Up: [Infantile Phoenix Metabolism] lvl 2,3,4

VIT +6

CONST +3

Priam clung to this hope like a castaway to a buoy. It might have been a mirage in the desert, but he wanted to believe it. In any case, in this new world, perhaps a spirit's solidity came from its experiences? It was what his instincts, boosted by Potential, were telling him.

Priam thought back to his experiences. He thought back to his frantic flight, pursued by his Tribulations. To his fight against the wyvern and the Earl. To Anatole and the sacrifices he was willing to make for his daughter. To his father, who was waiting for him somewhere in this city. To his sister, absent from the Reunion. Priam wanted to go and find her What was her name?

The destruction of his mind was eroding his memories. The System held out another hand.

[Brainless] is ready for evolution. No presence of a catalyst detected. Use 1574 Potentiel to trigger evolution?

Priam refused. His rage for life, his resistance to death, to the onslaught of the world, was having an effect. Eroded by the world, fractured under pressure, his spirit was solidifying. A diamond in the making.

He kept thinking about all his battles. His desire to survive. His passion for exploration. To his ideals of freedom. He knew he was still young. He wanted to be free, but didn't really know what that meant. He remembered his shaky speech to Anne and Albin. At the time, his ideas were confused. Even now, he didn't have enough experience or philosophical knowledge to grasp what freedom was. But what did it matter for now? He had the right to change his mind, learn, and grow.

His mind was weakening and the sensation now felt like a mental asthma attack. A feeling of intense oppression took hold of him, like a press trying to crush all hope.

His ego struggled. He wanted to live. He realized he didn't even know his own name but knew he wanted to live. For he had seen death. The real thing. At the end of the Tutorial, he had contemplated the horrible truth. He'd failed, and without them, he'd be dead.

He could forget everything but that. After contemplating the consequences of his failures and death, he was ready to fight with all his might. With all his soul.

Some struggles were worth every sacrifice. Because defeat was worse than anything else.

Nameless, he threw himself into battle one last time. As a fragment of spirit, he fought against the world.

To live. For life was freedom and hope.

[Brainless] is ready for evolution. No presence of a catalyst detected. Use 458 Potentiel to trigger evolution?

Yes...

[Brainless] is evolving...

Status: (Average value for a Homo sapiens male before integration: PHY 10 / MEN 10 / META 0)

PHYSICAL:

Strength 173 (+1)

Constitution 301 (+12)

Agility 210 (+1)

Vitality 319 (+10)

Perception 380 (+1)

MENTAL:

Vivacity 183

Dexterity 236

Memory 50

Willpower 335

Charisma 176

META:

Meta-affinity 188 (+4)

Meta-focus 111

Meta-endurance 101

Meta-perception 51

Meta-chance 114

Potential: 3371 (-496)

Tier 0

[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED.