A Novel Concept - A death a day, MC will live anyway!

Arms crossed and brow furrowed, Priam watched as Rose inspected her turrets. Each one was composed of three distinct parts: a wooden base fused into the fortress wall, doubling as a battery; a levitating ring that locked onto targets; and nestled within it, a hovering sphere the size of a basketball, ready to fire. After nearly five hours of continuous battle, the weapons were showing signs of overheating. The teenage engineer was making sure her creations didn't blow themselves to bits.

Half of Priam's focus stayed locked on the battle raging below, where the undead kept coming with no signs of thinning. The other half was on the boy beside him.

"This one's holding up," Rose muttered, moving to the next turret.

"Good."

"Hey, it's kinda weird pretending we're the only ones talking, when your friend over there's been staring at me this whole time. Is he mute or just shy?"

"My apologies if I've come across as rude," Osiris said with a deep voice. "I was simply wondering what purpose the glass over your eyes serves."

His voice broke at the end, his adolescent vocal cords betraying him. Rose had the grace not to laugh.

"They're called glasses. They help people who can't see too well. Although, ever since Priam evolved me into Homo Elysian last week, they're not technically necessary anymore." She shrugged. "I'm used to them. Plus, one of my exercises to unlock Micro is tuning my focal distance manually."

Osiris nodded, intrigued. "Training your ocular muscles… Clever."

The conversation between the two teenage geniuses brought a faint smile to Priam's lips. He made the introductions. "Osiris, this is Rose. Rose, meet Osiris."

"Hey."

"Pleasure to meet you, Rose," Osiris said, plucking a white flower from his bouquet and offering it to her.

"Thanks," she smiled. "You always walk around with flowers on you?"

"No, they're for Jasmine."

Her smile faded like the last light before a storm.

"Why would a kid give flowers to Jasmine?"

"I'm not a kid!"

"How old are you, then?"

"Fourteen," the boy said, puffing out his chest.

"Liar."

"What?!"

"I'm fifteen and you're a whole head shorter than me. Plus, you've still got that baby face."

"I—" Osiris flushed a deep crimson. "The men in my family are all late bloomers!"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "I thought a biomancer could just fast-forward through puberty."

"Altering one's own body is taboo among Duatians," Osiris snapped. "Our physique is tied to our soul."

For a Duatien, a single mistake in self-modification could corrupt the soul itself. Best-case scenario, they died horribly. Worst-case? They survived, turning apocryphal… Osiris, brilliant as he was, wasn't ready to break his people's taboos. But if anyone could pull it off… it'd be him.

Rose lifted her head from one of the turrets, grinning. "So your body's tied to your soul? Guess your soul's short, too."

Osiris opened his mouth, stunned, then turned to Priam. "I refuse to talk to her anymore."

"I got a name," Rose snapped. "And it's not my fault you can only make freaky golems."

"Destroyer is not freaky!"

"... Destroyer? Seriously?" She gave him a judgmental stare. "Why not go full edge and call the next one Annihilator?"

Osiris crossed his arms. "Great idea. That'll be the next one."

"You are so—"

"Enough!" Priam's voice cut through the argument like a thunderclap. Both teenagers jumped, visibly shaken. With his enhanced physical stats, his raised voice sounded like a sonic boom. "You two can bicker later," he added, more gently but with finality. He had no interest in babysitting a hormone-fueled argument.

"Rose, how are the turrets?"

She coughed in embarrassment. "After five hours running at full power, they're in surprisingly decent shape. Some runes got scorched from prolonged aether flow, but we planned for that. The secondary circuits kicked in smoothly."

"The switch was seamless?" Priam asked, impressed. The runes Rose etched into her turrets weren't far off from the ones he conjured mid-air with [High Aether Manipulation]. He knew firsthand that even one overloaded rune could blow like a magical grenade.

Not that he made that kind of mistake anymore. Well, not often.

"The 'fuse' runes Alain made me add caught most of the backlash," Rose explained, holding up a wooden sphere scorched black in places. "Anyway, I've got a new design in mind to reinforce the weak points..."

"Mmh. Make sure it's ready by tomorrow morning."

Rose nodded and, cradling a turret, headed off to her workshop.

"Why tomorrow?" Osiris asked.

"Because tomorrow, we head for the Tribal Tournament."

At the top of Log-a-rhythm, Priam teetered between laughter and secondhand embarrassment. As far back as he could remember, awkward situations had always made his skin crawl. Strangely enough, that aversion didn't apply when he was the one involved—anger usually steamrolled shame. What he really hated was watching other people make fools of themselves.

Now, his empathy wrestled with hilarity as Osiris offered Jasmine his bouquet. The assassin looked at the flowers, puzzled, before casually plucking one and chomping down.

"Thanks. Better than salad," she said, mouth full.

Osiris turned crimson, mortified, as Rose burst out laughing behind him.

"Should've told you earlier," she said between giggles. "There are no flowers on Arkana. Jasmine, come on, let's give these to Blueberry. Maybe he can cook something decent with 'em."

The assassin glanced at Priam, who nodded. Without another word, she followed Rose off the terrace atop the Tal Quercus.

Osiris stood in silence for a few moments, then sighed as he stared out at the corrupted army on the horizon. "I thought… Gods, I'm such an idiot."

"You couldn't have known."

"My planet had a thousand different ethnicities. Yours probably did too. I should've guessed that someone from Arkana wouldn't get Duatian courtship customs. She'll never want me now..." he muttered, beginning to pluck the petals from his bouquet.

"Well, if you still want to give her a gift… I've got an idea."

"Oh?"

"Jasmine's a Homo Elysian."

"I know. I was there when her soul switched bodies."

"She might appreciate an upgrade to a Tier 3 race. An evolution built on Homo Elysian." Priam locked eyes with him. "I want your help to make that happen."

Osiris narrowed his gaze, boyish warmth vanishing from his voice. "So that's why you invited me here."

Priam didn't bother insulting the kid's intelligence. "That's right."

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"My brother told me not to trust you."

"If you always listened to your brother, you wouldn't be here." With a thought, Priam asked Log-a-rhythm to manifest two wooden chairs. He dropped into one with a quiet sigh. "I know it pisses you off when people treat you like a kid. So I'm not going to." A pause. "Your brother has a problem."

"He… he's stable."

Priam raised an eyebrow. The kid clearly had no idea his brother had genocided their entire race back on Proxima. No presence left on that planet meant no Champion. Seth probably thought he was sparing his brother from the weight of that mantle. That's full-blown sociopath shit.

"We both know that's bullshit," Priam replied, holding back the full truth. Timing was everything and now wasn't the time to create a schism between the two brothers.

"Maybe." Osiris let out a joyless laugh. "If I help you, you'll return the favor?"

"How? In its notifications, the System claims the Necromoon is after Soul, one of the Grand Concepts. I can't picture anyone under Tier 9 leading that charge, even if it's obvious the moon's losing. Your brother drank from a poisoned well to survive the Tyrant, and I doubt anything short of another Tier 9 or the System itself can save him."

Maybe Prometheus and his busted Talent had a shot, but Priam doubted it. Seth hadn't just joined the necro faction—he had corrupted his damn soul to survive.

"I'm not abandoning him."

"That's not what I'm asking." Priam leaned forward slightly. "Here's the deal: you help me with the racial Tier up, I'll owe you a favor."

"Two favors."

"One. I already have the genetic material to evolve Homo Elysian. You're just my insurance policy."

Osiris laid his hands on the empty seat beside him, fingers brushing the ancient Tal Quercus wood. His brow furrowed in thought. In the distance, a hoplite's cry echoed through the air. The battle raged on—and wouldn't stop for days.

"Any favor?"

"As long as it doesn't endanger my people, doesn't break my values, isn't a trap, and gives me a decent shot at survival… yeah."

The boy pulled a strand of hair from his pocket and handed it to Priam.
"Repeat it, then snap it."

[Heroic Identification]
[Fae Hair - Tier 0 - Legendary] - Infused with the power of a mystical race, this strand of hair may be broken to seal a pact of good faith.
Treachery breeds shame, and shame begets oblivion.

"You don't want me swearing on the System?"

"I'm no lawyer, and this item binds us to the spirit of the oath, not the letter. Besides, the System's influence outside this universe is limited."

"Are you planning to leave soon?"

Osiris shrugged. "According to my brother, the Necromoon believes a universe invasion by the Concepts is imminent."

"Yeah, well, I doubt we're on the same clock as a Tier 9, but whatever. I want your promise too."

"I'll do my best to help you create a Tier 3 race tailored for you—based on Homo Elysian, without any backdoors, and you'll be its primogenitor. Deal?"

"Deal."

Priam made the vow, and Osiris echoed it. Then the Champion raised the white hair high and snapped it clean. A mysterious force swept through him, bypassed [Karmic Consequence Resistance], and vanished just as quickly. Looking at the broken strands in his hands, Priam recognized their owner. Ève...

A faint laugh whispered through the air, but Priam's pulse didn't waver. With [Ciphered Record] clouding his divination trail, his rival would struggle to mess with him from afar.

"I already have a few ideas for upgrading your race," Osiris admitted, slumping into his seat. "With my brother's help, I got access to apex creature bones. Most were corrupted, but good enough to map things out. Here's the framework for race Tier: Tier 0 means shaped by natural evolution, relatively recent species, living in a calm environment. A single racial Talent, usually weak."

Like humanity with our basic adaptation.

"Tier 1 means lucky or artificial evolution. Few genetic disorders and a stronger racial Talent."

That's High Human.

"Starting from Tier 2, there is no more natural genetic disease—barring exceptions—and two racial Talents. This is the rank of Homo Elysian. Tier 3 marks the end of the low Tiers, with preternatural physical attributes and a near-perfect genome."

"Define 'near-perfect'."

"Refined to the max, often with synthetic nucleic acids or analogues. Unlike DNA, the genetic material of a Tier 3 race is partially resistant to radiation, mutagens, and viruses. The encoding and replication processes are virtually mutation-proof, with no non-coding segments or junk sequences—freeing up maximum space for racial Talents. In short, the genetic blueprint is streamlined and fine-tuned for the individual's environment."

Among the info Osiris was rattling off, one bit made Priam frown.

"Wait—if my genome's immune to mutation, how do I evolve? I mean, it's thanks to mutations that a species adapts to its environment. Hell, the mundane part of my resistances grows through that!"

One of Homo Elysian's strongest assets was [Homo Elysian Obsession], a racial Talent that hyper-accelerated cellular mutation in response to hostile stimuli. It was one of Priam's aces in the hole to level up his resistances so fast, and he wasn't ready to give it up.

Osiris sighed. "A Tier 4 race includes a magical element: the aetheric code. It complements the genome by adding a layer of intelligence. In theory, a mid Tier race specialized in adaptation could sort its mutations on the fly—keeping the helpful ones and discarding the harmful—to evolve in the right direction. Say you fall into water. Fifteen minutes later, your body starts sprouting gills. In comparison, a Tier 3 race is binary: you're either open to mutations or resistant. No middle ground."

The explanation didn't sit right with Priam. He wanted to have the cake and eat it too.

"You're sure there's no workaround?"

"Well… I've got a theory. If someone had absolute control over their own body, they could manually accept or reject mutations—maybe even rewrite their own genetic code. If I had to name that ability…" Osiris grinned. "I'd call it Micro."

Priam swore—partly because the kid's smugness was unbearable, partly because he realized just how wide the gulf was between low and mid Tier. A serious issue for a tank like him. The System had already flagged genetic mutation as one of his weak spots during his quintuple Tribulation. His son's virus had twisted his high vitality against him, turning him into a meat stump.

Still, if he had to pick between easily resisting enemy gene-hacks and keeping his adaptation edge as the Juggernaut, the choice was obvious.

"I believe this is how certain martial, technology-averse and magic-averse civilizations evolved their species. However, this aspect of the Supremacy is clearly reserved for mid-tiers."

"Hum. Guess we're going with the mutation-friendly route then…" Priam slumped in his chair. "I'm too into my resistances to give 'em up."

"It's risky," Osiris warned. "Your soul and body are linked. One mutagenic poison and your soul could turn into a nightmare."

"Not if I build up resistance first."

"Your funeral."

"Funerals," corrected Priam with a grin. "So, what's next on the checklist?"

"Environmental optimization. Even with a Tier 3 race, a seafolk with fins is gonna be at a serious disadvantage fighting a low race biped on land."

Priam had already pondered this problem during the initial creation of Homo Elysian, and it was one of the reasons he had shelved Arnold's genetic blueprint. Where humans fell under the umbrella of carbon-based lifeforms, the Var Elegis were built on silicon chains. That kind of biology was suited to sulfuric acid-heavy environments, only viable in hellscapes like Venus. On a water-covered planet like Earth, carbon had simply been the better pick for life.

"My goal is to evolve Homo Elysian vertically," Priam explained. "By that, I mean a biology fine-tuned for my lifestyle. So no fins, no wings, no gills, no tentacles, no claws, no talons, or any extra appendages."

"A boring biped, then," Osiris summarized. "Still sticking with two arms? Four would be way more efficient."

"Yeah? Try finding shirts that fit four arms."

"You wear shirts?" Osiris blinked. "Seth said you're a perv who just struts around naked."

A vein twitched on Priam's forehead. "I wear boxers."

Osiris's eyes widened comically as he waited for a follow-up that never came. The judgment in the kid's eyes was so loud, Priam steered the convo back on course.

"Look, I'm not an idiot. The Tutorial wasn't that long ago, and already I've changed. My pupils are shrouded in mist, my hair flares up like fire when I get bloodthirsty, and my anger messes with people's breathing. I can live with all that. What I can't accept is not recognizing the guy in the mirror. If Priam Azura hits the Zenith, but it's no longer me… what's the point?"

That was one of his deepest fears.

"Looks are just skin-deep. What matters is right here," Osiris said, tapping his chest.

"I agree, but my appearance is an anchor for my ego," Priam admitted. "So here's the line: if a human baby looks at me, I want them to recognize me as one of their own."

Once he was sure Osiris understood what he wanted, Priam pulled a collection of genetic materials from his inner world.

"Ever since I evolved into a Homo Elysian, I've been gathering... racial samples. I figured that by studying them, I could cherry-pick the traits I wanted—build the ultimate Tier 3 race, tailored to my specs."

Osiris raised an eyebrow as Priam opened the box. Inside were vials of blood, a fingernail, a few bones, and even a whole arm.

"I'm guessing these aren't exactly ethically sourced?"

Priam cleared his throat. "Don't ask too many questions."

Osiris sifted through the morbid assortment until he found a note written by Priam's under dictation from his add-on:

[Genetic Material Inventory for Racial Tier Advancement:

Blood of Eleha Aelbes / Rohan Aelbes - Tier 2 Race. Racial Talents revolve around agility, and instinct.

Left arm of Ophis Snahert - Tier 2 Race. Racial Talents revolve around sensory enhancement and poison affinity.

Fingernail from Ève, the fae - Tier ? Race. Racial Talents unknown. Do not use to unlock

[Memory Manipulation Resistance]

; possible backdoor. Consider for ideal prerequisites instead?

Blood of Taishi - Tier 1 Race. Racial Talent revolves around violence. Low priority;

[Hoplite Warpath]

already acquired.

Femur of unidentified Valarythian warrior - Tier 3 Race. Retrieved from the Deluge's core. Racial Talents unknown.

Corrupted blood of Draashat'h, consort of the Drakes - Tier 3 Race. Racial talents unknown. Sample heavily tainted by Necromoon.

Corrupted blood of Nemesis - Tier 2 Race. Dream Tribulation timeline. Likely optimized for me. Racial Talents revolve around adaptation and aether affinity. Mild Necromoon corruption.

Cursed blood of Priam Azura - Sample harvested at the final moment of the Thirteenth Tribulation. Racial Talents corrupted. To use as a benchmark.]

Osiris stopped breathing. "Thirteen Tribulations?!"

Priam shrugged. "More like fourteen. That one was a double."

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