Priam gently laid the princess's lifeless body on the ground. Her death, sudden and brutal, stirred a storm of emotions he could hardly digest all at once.
One feeling surged above the rest: rage. A deep, burning fury, monstrous and all-consuming. Priam hadn't known Esmée well; their paths had only crossed recently. Yet, he felt an overwhelming urge to inflict pain on whoever had condemned her to this fate.
With the Empyrean Emperor absent, Priam redirected his wrath towards a closer enemy: Sumstreh.
High in the sky, the Fallen effortlessly battled Arnold, Seth, and Léo. Priam's anger hadn’t blinded him to the point of ignoring the fact that his presence wouldn’t change anything in a direct fight. He could take on some Tier 3s and tank a lot of damage, but a Tier 4 would squash him like a bug. Still, even a bug can be dangerous.
His gaze shifted to the tribal shamans, who were trembling, unconscious as the enemy invaded their souls. If nothing was done, three puppets would soon rise.
With a single step, Priam rode the mist hanging over the battlefield. Placing a hand on Mama Apo's forehead, he established a mental bridge. With no defenses to repel him, he accessed her soul space directly. Inside, a massive, brilliant soul was under siege by a grotesque spiritual tentacle. Out of her six soul layers—two more than Priam's—four had already been breached.
[There is no Heaven].
The System had granted him this skill when he earned [Iconoclast] after urinating on a statue of Viracocha. Its ability was straightforward: create an energy capable of damaging a soul.
When [There is no Heaven] struck the tentacle, severing it like a hot knife through butter, Sumstreh screamed. The battlefield froze for an instant as the Fallen turned their gaze towards Priam.
"You dare?!”
The volume alone would’ve killed a pre-System human, and the echo triggered landslides.
“I dare,” Priam grinned cruelly before shouting to his rivals, “Hold them off while I shatter their soul completely!”
Maybe because they were a Fallen, a fragment of a former Tier 5, Sumstreh possessed a massive but flawed soul. They could tank a nuke head-on but were vulnerable to spiritual attacks.
The Fallen dove toward him, but was intercepted in the next instant by the Tier 4 necro. Roaring in rage, Sumstreh unleashed a laser beam that pierced through the corrupted titan, only to be stopped by Léo.
As the aerial battle raged on, Priam continued to corrode the Fallen's spiritual tentacle. It only took a few moments before it was cut in two. The part inside Mama Apo's soul dissipated, while the rest withdrew from the soul space. Sumstreh was retreating.
Priam followed. His Soul Tier was too weak to wield his soul with finesse, but he could latch onto the tentacle, which he did.
Lvl Up: [Mind Bridge] lvl 11
META (Affinity) +2
META (Perception) +1
At the end of a spiritual tunnel, Priam entered a new soul space—Sumstreh’s. A vast but fractured soul loomed before him. Instead of a sphere, it resembled an unnatural patchwork sewn together by a child; massive, but grotesque.
Nevertheless, the quality of the aether and the spiritual pressure in the Fallen's soul space was extreme. At the source of it all, an unfathomable ego reigned. The gaze of an ancient god fell upon Priam, making him tremble.
A mortal could not withstand the gaze of the divine without consequence.
A force as vast as the sky descended upon his soul, and the Champion felt his strength slipping away. Due to their difference in Soul Tier, the mere spiritual gravity of the Fallen’s soul was enough to annihilate his own. Soon, it would dissipate, and he would die—perhaps for good this time.
Neither his willpower nor his attributes could change anything, and Priam let out a whimper before recalling his Phoenix mentor’s advice. There was a forbidden way to resist a god’s will.
Trees of Merit
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 0: You're beginning to feel your soul. ACQUIRED
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 1: Your soul is proud; it resists external modifications. ACQUIRED
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 2: Your soul is pure; its flaws erased, its sins forgiven, it resists the apocryphal. ACQUIRED
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 3: Your soul is sacred; it learns to ignore the authority of other souls. ACQUIRED
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 4: Your soul is celestial; it actively resists divine influence. ACQUIRED
[Iconoclast - Legendary] - Tier 5: Your soul is sovereign; it influences other souls. NEW
1 Unused Merit Point.
More than body and mind, the soul was the core, the foundation of one’s being. Frustration filled Priam as the System granted new qualities to his soul. He was forced to alter the very essence of his being to survive. His soul became clearer to his senses and solidified further. Its shape turned perfectly spherical, and the last traces of Sumstreh’s divine mark vanished.
Priam's soul was being reborn, pristine and sublime.
As the pain gave way once more to fury, Priam assessed his situation and pressed his lips together. The last few weeks had been so lenient that he had forgotten one of the Tutorial’s lessons:
Adapt or perish. And I'm damn good at adapting.
To survive, Priam was willing to kill and suffer, to run and play, to resist and change. As long as he was alive, there was hope.
Arnold levitated down to the ground, landing with the grace of an angel. Behind him, Sumstreh descended as well.
“Because the First is the number one priority. The only thing more important than being his ally is seeing him dead.”
Priam loomed so large in Arnold’s mind that the Var Elegis had decided to gamble on Sumstreh’s help and the possibility of a septuple Tribulation to eliminate his greatest rival.
The situation was so dire that Priam burst into laughter.
“You're going to pay for this.”
His shadow quivered as Sphinx settled on his shoulder. It was time to draw the curtain on this timeline.
[2 hours 30 minutes before optimal activation of Back in Time.]
Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 782
Constitution 1 389 (+2)
Agility 924
Vitality 1 340 (+2)
Perception 817
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 599
Dexterity 680
Memory 896
Willpower 1 193
Charisma 754
META:
Meta-affinity 923 (+3)
Meta-focus 444 (+6)
Meta-endurance 798 (+19)
Meta-perception (A) 443 (+2)
Meta-chance 332
Meta-authority 252
Potential: 12 440 (+7)
Tier 0
Sun point: 0
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED
[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 152 days 8 hours 2 minutes 16 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attribute > 900 / 3 attributes > 1 200 / 1 attribute > 1 500
This arc is already complete on Patreon if you want to find out what happens next!
/ANovelConcept