NOVEL NEXT Chapter 266: Finally Reunited
"Fracturing your soul before reaching Tier 5 is a surefire way to die. Even then, all you have to do is look at me to see it's a terrible idea."
"Yet Priam did it," the fairy said, pointing to the clone. "He's watching us right now through a spiritual connection."
Through the clone, Priam locked eyes with the Fallen.
"Hello, Sumstreh," he said. "Feels good to say your name out loud. Until now, we've been calling you Bastard, but that's an insult to bastards."
Even through the clone's eyes, Priam could feel the Fallen's fury. A rage just as powerful flared up inside him, but he refused to let it take control. The masks were coming off, but the real game was still ahead. Could the brilliance of his plan outsmart the brute strength of his adversary? There was only one way to find out.
Clenching his fist tight enough to shatter the dice into glass dust, Priam signaled the tribes to attack.
Crack.
His hearts froze as Sumstreh destroyed the clone's subsystem and the fragment of the soul hidden inside it. The dreaded pain didn't come, and anxiety took its place. Now, Priam was blind to what was happening in the Fallen's lair.
"Our plan is flawless," Esmée reassured him, squeezing his hand.
"You know what they say about plans meeting battlefields…"
Before Priam's pessimism could jinx him, a rift opened before them. Sphinx and a sort of fairy leapt onto the grass as, in the background, Sumstreh raged against the mythical shield.
Seeing the protection begin to crumble, Priam summoned Promesse. Every attack from the Fallen was terrifying, but he refused to die a coward. He hadn't done all this just to run away now.
The shield shattered, the enemies' eyes met, and the ground quaked. In the distance, columns of light descended from the heavens. The Tier 4s unleashed their power, attacking the Divine Kingdom through dozens of meters of earth.
For a moment, Priam thought the end had come. But then the Fallen turned his attention to the attackers; their pride meant less than their survival.
The portal closed. Priam stood still, locking eyes with his friend, unsure of how to act. Sphinx had spent almost three weeks trapped with a monster, and there was a chance her mental state...
"PRIAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!"
Priam barely had time to toss Moonie to Esmée as his friend launched herself into his arms like a cannonball. The impact knocked the wind out of him. Sphinx might have been the size of a cat, but she was heavy!
"Welcome home, Sphinx," Priam smiled, stroking her head.
"You came for me!"
"Did you ever doubt it?"
"Not for a second!"
The child buried her face against his chest, her tail wagging, before looking up. She looked like a winged cat with a nearly human face, and anticipation shone in her eyes.
"Are we gonna kill them?"
"Soon. You wanna come?"
"Of course! I've whipped up a surprise…" A feline rarely forgot a wrong done to it, and sphinxes even less so. "Where's Blueberry?!"
"In Valaryth, why?"
"Because I'm hungry!"
Priam burst out laughing.
"I'll go fetch him. Meanwhile, you'll stay with Esmée."
Sphinx studied the princess, eyes wide, then whispered in Priam's ear. "She's even more beautiful than Helen of Troy!"
"Isn't she? And she asked me to marry her," Priam whispered back.
Sphinx's eyes widened while Esmée blushed. With her sharp perception, she caught every word.
After witnessing what the System did to those who dared to stand in the way of Tribulations, Priam had no desire to get involved—at least not without taking precautions.
His instincts had always warned him against flying high in Elysium; the upper altitudes were likely the domain of dangerous predators. Dishnu's Tribulations temporarily allowed him to bypass this problem. The third Tribulation had piggybacked on the natural light of the Necromoon, intensifying it to affect the plants. Even trees under Dishnu's influence struggled to regenerate.
Thanks to this, no predators hovered over Oasis... except Priam.
Sitting astride Promesse, he watched the titanic battle below, trying to discern the drya's weaknesses. The first was obviously fire, as evidenced by an army of fire elementals advancing slowly toward Oasis. Each tree consumed by the blaze gave birth to a new being of energy that seemed capable of merging with its kin. Relatively weak if stopped in time, the Tribulation had apocalyptic potential if left unchecked.
The add-on calculated that the conflagration would have devoured over a hundred square kilometers by the time it reached Dishnu. That was twice the size of Manhattan, representing more than five million trees...
"This is gonna get out of hand," Priam muttered, sniffing the air, his nostrils irritated by smoke. "And the others aren't any better."
At the center of the cataclysm, a twenty-meter-tall robotic boss that looked like a cyberpunk axemaster was locked in a duel with Dishnu. As a specialist in close combat, it prevented the challenger from extinguishing the flames ravaging the forest. Despite merging with Log-a-rhythm, the drya couldn't outmaneuver its opponent. More powerful than Taishi, the Lumberjack was incredibly resistant to any physical or magical attack.
Priam studied his rival's movements, hoping he wasn't a master of both aether and close-quarters combat.
Blocking an axe blow with a reinforced bark shield, Dishnu countered with an uppercut. The strike lifted the Lumberjack, while the plant fist transformed into thousands of branches that began to envelop the axeman's head. If they found a weakness to exploit, it could spell the end of the duel.
With a flick of its robotic hand, the ground exploded, revealing an impressive quantity of iron ore. Under the influence of a powerful magnetic field, the metals arranged themselves into a thousand circular saws. The spinning projectiles embedded themselves in the treant's arm, reducing it to wood chips in seconds.
Dishnu reformed his limb with branches and roots, then headbutted his opponent. The axeman countered with a horizontal slash that didn't connect—the treant had leapt over the attack. Oasis shook with a quake when he landed.
The two titans backed off, sizing each other up, before crashing into each other again.
While the Champion was stalled, the fourth Tribulation raged on. Opposite the inferno, a fungus invasion was corrupting the trees. Each infected plant uprooted itself to join the battle's epicenter. Meanwhile, the parasite drained sap from the trunks, creating a cloud of spores that the wind carried away. Between this outbreak and the inferno, the forest would soon be decimated. My forest…
Priam grimaced, ready to bet that a deadly synergy would reveal itself when the corrupted treants met the fire elementals in Oasis.
"Still missing the fifth Tribulation…" he mused.
It was his link with Log-a-rhythm that alerted him. Slowly but surely, fungi were appearing on the treant, while some of its leaves turned to ash.
The final Tribulation was a symbiotic bond between the Guardian of the Forest and its wards. Any damage inflicted on a plant was mirrored onto the candidate. Previously an ally of the drya, the forest was now a burden. Scary System!
[Dishnu's Quintuple Tribulation:
5) Fire Elementals - destruction of plants
6) Symbiotic bond between the plants and Dishnu-Log-a-rhythm
7) Overclock of the Necromoon's light
8) Fungus - corruption of plants
9) Boss Lumberjack]
"Better him than me…"
Shaking his head, Priam let himself fall into a freefall toward the battlefield. The air whistled past his ears as he ignored the plumes of smoke rising. As he reached less than a hundred meters from the two titans, his instincts went silent, like a frightened animal. The System watched him closely.
A grin on his face, Priam sent a reassuring message to his tree before diving headfirst into the grass of the clearing, passing less than a dozen meters from the two dueling giants. A secret passage opened, launching him into the underground chamber that housed the rift to Valaryth.
"Sphinx!"
Jumping from Esmée's lap, Sphinx launched herself at Rose, who hugged her tightly. Next was Alain, who patted her head, then Blueberry, who tossed her into the air like a child. Despite his massive size, the bear was gentle, and Sphinx's laughter rang out like a bell. Seeing his friend so happy to be the center of attention, Priam couldn't help but smile.
"You did it," Jasmine murmured, flashing him a bright smile.
"Did you ever doubt?" he asked, taking a seat on a nearby stump.
"I didn't think you'd pull it off without grinding your skills for months first," Jasmine replied, folding her arms with a teasing smirk.
"I'm not a damn Pokémon."
"I don't even know what that is, but that's exactly what you usually do," Jasmine retorted.
Priam laughed, then admitted, "Yeah, I thought it'd take longer too. I wasn't about to bet her life on the strength of a shield, but Back in Time sealed the deal. "
"Good thing," Jasmine said, manipulating a shadow to decapitate a corrupted creature that was creeping closer, drawn by the noise. "She seems in good spirits for someone who spent three weeks with a psycho."
"Most kids can endure a lot of psychological trauma."
"Doesn't mean it won't leave scars," Jasmine muttered, teleporting behind Sphinx and covering her eyes with her hands. "Guess who?"
"Jasmine!" Sphinx squealed with delight.
"Yeah!" The young assassin scooped Sphinx up into her arms, squeezing her tight. "Did you miss me?!"
"Almost as much as Priam, Blueberry, or Rose!" Sphinx exclaimed with the innocence of a child.
"What… you like Blueberry better than me?" Jasmine asked, pretending to be wounded.
"He knows how to cook," Sphinx replied matter-of-factly.
"Fair point," Jasmine conceded before playfully pulling on Sphinx's cheeks in mock revenge.
Priam found himself laughing easily. The people he cared about were here, smiling and laughing. Things weren't perfect—Kazuki was still missing—and the future was bound to be full of challenges, but right now, he was happy.
"She's adorable," Esmée commented, sitting beside him on the stump. The damp wood was sure to stain her white dress, but she didn't seem to care.
Priam thought about the mythological creature that had crushed him with a simple riddle and smiled. "She can be," he confirmed. "Did you two talk while I was gone?"
"She said if I bought her candy from the Sun Shop, she would help me marry you."
"Ready to sell me out for sugar… What did you say?"
"I asked her what her favorite candy was," Esmée replied with a wink.
Her response caught Priam off guard. It wasn't like the princess to joke like that... But it's far from unpleasant.
"On a more serious note... If your Mythic Gift gets refunded by Back in Time, you could save her the moment you return."
"I think it will be. Even if not, Jasmine was willing to offer her own Mythic Gift," Priam said. As he spoke, a wave of relief washed over him. The knot of tension that had been in his stomach since Sphinx's kidnapping began to loosen.
"We've won," he realized aloud. Saying it made it feel real. No matter what happened next—whether Sumstreh died or not—he now had a quick way to save Sphinx upon his return. The help of his rivals or the Tier 4s wasn't even necessary.
The future seemed bright.
"You should be proud of yourself," the princess said, smiling at him. Priam returned her smile.
The ground shook as an orb as bright as ten suns rose from the hole above Sumstreh's lair. To the north, a wave of thick corruption poured through the breach, along with a monstrous Tier 4. To the northwest, an undead army attacked the tribes. To the southeast, Dishnu completed a ritual that tripled the thickness of tree bark across a massive area, making them fireproof.
Priam clapped his hands, drawing the group's attention. "The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind," he quoted, smirking. "While the others wear each other down, how about we grab something to eat?"
"Yeah!" the group cheered in unison, rushing to help Blueberry prepare the feast.
"Let's go."
The princess nodded, and Priam took her hand. He was smiling.
PHYSICAL:
Strength 782
Constitution 1 386
Agility 924
Vitality 1 336
Perception 817
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 599
Dexterity 680
Memory 896
Willpower 1 193
Charisma 754
META:
Meta-affinity 920
Meta-focus 438
Meta-endurance 777
Meta-perception (A) 441
Meta-chance 332
Meta-authority 252
Potential: 12 431
Tier 0
Sun point: 0
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED
[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 152 days 9 hours 33 minutes 47 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attribute > 900 / 3 attributes > 1 200 / 1 attribute > 1 500
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