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

"A Tier 5 can command life itself?" Aydan mused, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Not exactly," Felix replied. Maybe it was because he managed the clan's economy, but the third Tier 4 of the Aelbes was far more talkative than the stoic shaman or their grim-faced chief. "The High Marshal's Justice Concept is so deeply woven into his inner world, it's practically a law. If he deems this girl's death unjust, then yes, he can wield power over it."

"Just like that? Feels... arbitrary."

"It is. Everyone sees Justice through a different lens. That's why abstract Concepts like his are called 'vast'—their boundaries blur, unlike those of physical Concepts. In return, they're harder to master."

"So not all Demiurges can bring back the dead?"

"Afraid not. Even the High Marshal only gets a small window to pull it off."

"And here I was thinking he was some kind of god," Alexandre muttered. The Empyrean general noticed his niece stiffen beside him. "What is it?"

"Elves don't look kindly on the Faith Path, Uncle. Comparing their Demiurge to a minor Deity would land poorly."

Though both titles referred to Tier 5s, their origins differed: the first was from the Concepts Path, the second from the Faith Path. Given the elves' loathing for the Fallen, confusing the two was dangerously offensive.

Alexandre glanced left and right. "Do you see any elves here? I only see proud Empyreans and nimble Aelbes." His features hardened, and without warning, he slapped her. "If you have nothing useful to say, keep your damn mouth shut."

Except for Rohan, no one flinched.

As Esmée's lip throbbed, she licked it. The metallic tang of blood hit her tongue. She opened her mouth to apologize—then froze. Alexandre had just told her to be silent. Speaking would earn her another slap. On the other hand, not begging for forgiveness would result in another punishment. A rigged game, she realized. He set this up.

When he wanted to, Alexandre could be cunning.

She looked up and caught a sadistic flicker in the Empyrean general's eye. He knew she understood—and was already winding up for another strike.

"Your Champion speaks wisely. Some words should not be spoken here. In an inner world, walls have ears. In public, implying that an elf has consorted with Faith to progress faster will earn you the lash."

The warning made Esmee's lungs tremble. Not from the volume—its author had not raised his voice—but from the crushing weight of the Concept constantly radiating from the Aelbes' leader. Leo was a walking storm, barely bottled by an iron will.

"I appreciate the clarification," Alexandre replied stiffly, before turning his gaze back toward the arena. Esmée winced as his attention drifted from her without another insult. That was never a good sign. However, she could ill afford to dwell on worry right now.

"Eshars of the Snaherts versus Rohan Twin-Blade!" the announcer called.

"Father," Rohan said, bowing as he rose. "I'll make you proud."

A rare sight, Leo smiled. "You always do. Show them our superiority."

With a nod, the young Aelbe vaulted from the balcony into the arena below. There, he would face one of the Snaherts' elite in the second Tier 0 semi-final.

Not that it mattered. From her vantage point outside the action, Esmée had long understood that this tournament was nothing more than a grand farce. Still, that didn't mean there was nothing to gain.

Although her eyes remained locked on the arena, the princess's attention was focused on her feet. More precisely, on a golden ring wrapped around one of her toes.

The Ring of Ubiquity was a possible reward for conquering wave fifty of the Colosseum. She could have taken the Space Seed like Priam or the Second Life Tattoo like Jasmine, but Esmee had preferred a more active item.

The ring was a handy trinket, but far too conspicuous—and therefore easily identifiable. That was why Esmée wore it on her foot instead of her hand. Unless some perverted thief had a thing for feet or a higher Domain wielder violated her own sphere of authority, no one would ever know it was there.

Fortunately for her, Imperial law considered such abuses of this Supremacy to be extremely serious—akin to publicly tearing off someone's clothes just to inspect their skin. Unthinkable, unless a crime had been committed or in the midst of battle.

A Domain III user could pierce through her Domain I without her even noticing, but the odds of that happening here were slim to none. Aside from the probable exception of the Demiurge, no one here had reached that level. For beings of flesh and blood, that Supremacy was by far the rarest. It took anomalies like Priam, Esmée, or Dishnu to break the statistics—and none of the locals fit that mold. Not even Rohan or his father.

In the arena, the fighters squared off.

"Begin," ordered the Demiurge.

Esmée leaned forward, pretending to be interested in the duel.

Rohan drew his first blade with flair, slicing through a glob of poisoned spit in a flashy arc. Too flashy. As he started circling his opponent like a predator toying with its prey, Esmée sighed inwardly. He was putting on a show—no doubt trying to impress her. Me and every other woman cursed with a pretty face.

Pathetic, but predictable. In fact, the princess had counted on it. As the fight raged below, Esmée funneled aether into the Ring of Ubiquity. A moment later, her consciousness split in two.

Somewhere in Elysium, at the bottom of the trash can of a street food stall, an identical ring flared to life. A spectral body emerged from the garbage. The princess barely had time to scramble out of the heap before becoming fully tangible.

Esmée's duplicate dusted herself off and checked for trash. Finding none, the second self smirked. One meter to her right sat an abandoned Aelbe food cart. No owner in sight, not even a single passerby. They were in the Demiurge's inner world, watching the tournament.

I love it when a plan comes together.

She quickly slipped off a shoe and confirmed the presence of the ring on her toe. As the name implied, the Ring of Ubiquity let her exist in two places at once. While her main body played the obedient princess at the arena, this one had free reign to explore the tribal base.

"No time to waste," Esmée muttered, knowing time was doubly limited. Not only did the ring have an outrageously long cooldown—one full month—but its power only lasted an hour. After that, one of her bodies would vanish. At least, I can choose which one.

Hiking up the cumbersome gown her brother insisted she wear to charm Rohan, Esmée turned a corner, summoned her grimoire and flipped to the beginning.

While most pages were crammed with spells and annotations, this one was displaying squares, circles, and jagged lines. Far from the ravings of a bored math student, these polygons formed a map.

[Spoiler].

Powered by one of her skills, the grimoire tapped into the Akashic Records—a cosmic database that recorded every bit of information in the world. Or at least, that was how Esmée had understood it.

Soon, the map expanded, revealing the entire tribal camp. Though the furthest sections were vaguely drawn, the nearest area was rendered in detail fine enough to show furniture, doorways, and even interior room divisions.

Tracing the black and gray lines on white parchment, Esmée plotted her route. The path zigzagged deliberately, avoiding clusters of red dots slowly drifting across the map. Those marked the few tribesmen who hadn't gone to the arena to defend the camp, tend to chores, or prep food for the banquet.

Grimoire in hand, Esmée set off down the winding street. At the next corner, she paused to study the map, not eager to get lost. Her high memory did nothing to help her terrible orientation skills.

The plain black-wood buildings and white canvas of the Aelbe quarter soon gave way to the blood-red and venom-green opulence of the Snaherts. Esmée frowned, noting a denser concentration of tribesmen here. She grew more cautious, though she was fairly sure it had nothing to do with her. Those whose totem animal was the serpent were known for their deceit. If you were ready to rob your neighbor, you feared he might pull the same trick. Little wonder many families left a poor soul behind just to guard the homesteads.

Using her probability manipulation skills to knock over trinkets or collapse shelves, Esmée kept the curious Snaherts distracted and passed unnoticed. After skirting two patrols, she reached a house adjacent to her target.

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Reaching out towards the door, Esmee froze. Was she really going to burgle someone? It wasn't worthy of the epic stories that had lulled her childhood. On the other hand, the princesses in those old books weren't slaves subjugated by their fathers and offered in marriage to the highest bidder. If I have to save myself, I can bend the rules of honour a little.

Placing her hand on the lock, the princess gathered her aether and condensed it until it solidified. Two turns to the right, and the door opened. She had learned to solidify aether at the age of eight to sneak into the Imperial Library at night. At twenty, her brother still couldn't manage it.

She closed the door behind her and stepped into a gloomy hallway. She ignored the gaudy tapestries, the vault bolted into the wall, and the hidden chamber housing a corpse to cross the house into the courtyard beyond. There, she gathered her skirts and called upon Micro to leap into the next garden.

She had arrived.

At first glance, this green haven was an herbalist's dream. A thousand beds of exotic flora sprawled beneath arched trellises. It was a medicinal garden befitting its infamous owner—the Snahert shaman.

[Spoiler].

The map flickered, with half the manor flanking the garden lying as blank space. The shaman's domain wasn't defenseless. Which might explain the absence of red dots. Unlike Chief Ophis's fortress, the shaman's estate wasn't guarded by any sentries. No one was stupid enough to rob a Tier 4 poison specialist.

Esmée knew fortune favored the bold.

Donning a gas mask and glove she had bought from the Sun Shop, she closed her eyes to steady her racing heart. Unlike Priam, the princess didn't enjoy danger, and this mission was anything but safe. Ubiquity meant being in two places at once, but she still had only one body… and one life.

When her eyes snapped open, a fierce resolve burned in their depths. Though she was no warrior by nature, it was ridiculous to think she could change her fate by staying comfortable.

Channeling aether into her left eye, she layered four tiny runes across her iris. The slightest mistake could have blinded her, but the combined sigils allowed her to see the enchantments woven into the very grain of the building's wood.

"This is no serpent's den, it's a spider's web," she whispered, gauging the hundred shimmering threads crisscrossing the façade. Most strands were interlinked: disabling one would trigger a cascade of effects, ranging from simple alarms to the summoning of powerful toxic spells.

The princess examined the layout from every angle, plotting her safest route. With dozens of magical sigils, the front door was a deathtrap. The chimney was dangerous too, but the small second-floor window offered only a four-strand web. If she disabled the explosive enchantment, the three linked spells would activate. Esmée was fast enough to dismantle two of them, but the third would still go off. Better to silence the alarm and the secondary offensive ward, even if it meant triggering the defensive enchantment. It would complicate her escape route, but that was preferable to taking a direct hit from a poison attack that would kill her outright.

As she calculated her odds, a smile crept onto her face. In a way, this reminded her of the chess game she had played with Priam. You had to plan your moves ahead and anticipate your opponent's. That was the kind of challenge Esmée enjoyed.

Shame that a single mistake means I die.

In a corner of her mind, a small voice reminded her that time was ticking. The princess sprang into action: aether scissors snipped one of the energy filaments sealing the window. Then, with swift precision, she severed the offensive and defensive wards. The last rune of the web flared before an ear-splitting siren ripped through the air. Normally, this would summon an enraged Tier 4; tonight, it would only rouse a handful of guards. Knowing the shaman, none of them held passes for her keep. The odds of them taking the risk to come inside were low.

She vaulted to the window ledge and gripped the sill. Rather than smash the glass, she tried opening it—and smiled when it gave way. With power often came complacency. After tonight, the shaman would be more careful. This lesson is worth a potion, at least.

Twisting her body, Esmée slipped inside and found herself in a tiled room with a single conspicuous feature: a massive hole in the floor. A toilet pit.

Grateful for her gas mask, she pressed her ear to the door. Only the shriek of the alarm answered. Inspecting the doorknob, she spotted traces of poison and opened it with her gloved hand.

The hallway lay silent, devoid of any signs pointing toward the potion storage. That would have been too easy.

Reaching for her necklace, Esmée plucked an Empyrean coin hidden inside, and flipped it into the air.

[Chaotic Luck].

Heads. Left it was.

Following the coin's decrees, the princess navigated two flights and three corridors. Four minutes later, she arrived before a monolithic door. It wasn't even the shaman's lab entrance, but the sheer density of enchantments would deter most burglars.

Esmée frowned as she studied the masterpiece. That was the word that came to mind when confronted with such a sublime creation. Thousands of runes formed hundreds of interlocking glyphs. Some sigils multitasked like variables in a math equation, making any tampering dangerously complex. The material was anything but mundane; a magical wood reinforced by a master craftsman's skills to deflect even Transcendent strikes. The door might as well have been ten meters of hardened steel.

Lvl Up: [Ideal Aether Perception] Lvl 57
META (Affinity) +3
META (Perception) +6

Esmée copied the blueprint into her grimoire and stashed it away. It would take her days—maybe even weeks—to decipher the puzzle. Solving it would take months more. Time she didn't have.

With a sigh, she retraced her steps to the upper level. Comparing the floor plans, she found the location of the room above her target. It was an unremarkable living room, with the exception of a heavy rug that she pushed into a corner. Proof of the manor's recent construction, the revealed stone had no enchantment other than the hardness conferred by the stonemason. This constituted an obvious security flaw.

"So much for subtlety."

Esmée summoned a spectral quill and etched a large circle on the floor, inscribing channelling and erosion runes along its arc. A minute later, the formation began using the aether in the stone to turn it into sand. The process would have taken hours if the princess hadn't been there to catalyze it.

Half an hour later, with time running short, part of the floor collapsed. Esmée performed a few divinatory rituals to assess the room's hazards, then jumped down.

Dozens of shelves were visible, each packed with potions meticulously crafted by the shaman over the centuries. Most were intended for sale or service to the clan. At the far end of the chamber, a locked cabinet held the most potent elixirs.

Ignoring the allure of Tier 4 potions, Esmée made a beeline for the most recent batches. A skill identified the brews as love philters. In a flash, her brain spun a dozen schemes. If Aydan fell for Jasmine, her brother's death was guaranteed one way or another—but it would also irritate Priam, and that was a bad idea. The High Marshal's apprentice was another tempting target, but picking a fight with a Tier 5 was suicide. Aydan wasn't the only one who would end up in a grave.

Eyes widening, Esmée grasped the Snaherts' plan and cursed. They want to use the Demiurge to annihilate the Aelbes. The serpent clan wasn't taking any chances with the tournament.

Pocketing a love philter to blackmail Ophis and his shaman, Esmée turned back to the task that had brought her here. Thirty seconds later, a paranoia potion disappeared into the folds of her robe. With it, Aydan's mind would become fertile ground for growing fear of their father.

Fear's a damn good motivator. My brother will outdo himself for the Empyreans if he thinks his life is on the line…

Her geass remained silent, and Esmée let out a sigh of relief. It was always tricky to predict how the curse would react.

She glanced around. The room held ten thousand other vials, but Esmée curbed her greed. Even if they found her, the Snaherts wouldn't hunt her down for two Tier 1 potions—not if they feared she would expose the love philter. But if she got too greedy… they might be less forgiving.

She was just about to cancel her ubiquity and stash her loot when her gaze drifted upward. According to the Snahert shaman, the Gu Trial was finishing its final maturation. Rohan's duel was the last of the day, and soon, the tribesmen would return to Elysium. After the banquet honoring the High Marshal, a select few would be inducted into one of the snake clan's oldest secrets. This year, the Snaherts had sold four seats—to Rohan, Priam, Aydan, and Alexandre.

Esmée glanced at her pocket watch, bit her lip, and made her way to the entrance hall.

It was a hybrid room. One of its sides was connected to the manor by a wall, while the other three were formed by tent canvases. Suspended between tradition and modernity, it was used by the shaman to receive her visitors without fully bringing them into her home.

Upon arrival, Esmée spotted twelve vats, each three meters tall. Every tank was filled with a viscous greenish fluid, where hundreds of centipedes, snakes, scorpions, spiders, and other exotic insects fought in a constant death match. Esmée grimaced as the idea of submerging herself in that nightmare made her skin crawl.

"All that for an ideal epic resistance…"

Even as she muttered, one vat caught her eye. It was quieter than the others. Indeed, every creature within had already perished—except for a massive scorpion.

[Spoiler]
[Infernal Gu Tamulus - Tier 3] - Its venom sets the blood of its victims ablaze, turning them into torches.
The last survivor of a Gu Trial, it remains deadly even to a Tier 4. Surviving its sting is an ideal prerequisite for the mythical version of [Poison Resistance].

Esmée narrowed her eyes: this year's Gu Trial was meant for Tier 0s. When the dozen candidates arrived, a veil would be drawn over the vats to protect the Snaherts' secrets. One of them would descend into the wrong vat… and never come out. Since the shaman wouldn't kill one of her own, it was obvious that one of the guests was the intended corpse.

"But who?"

Rohan was out of the question. Léo would have the shaman's head if his heir died that way. That left Priam, Aydan, and Alexandre.

It was possible the Snaherts had caught wind of the budding alliance between their rivals and the Empyreans. But if that were the case, two people would be marked for death.

"They're targeting Priam," Esmée realized.

It made sense. Leading four other Champions into the tournament, the First was a threat the tribes couldn't ignore. If he secured one of the High Marshal's promised land titles, the Snaherts' odds would plummet. On top of that, the economic pact with Oasis only mattered so long as the tribes lacked legal territory. After that, Priam would become a thorn in their side.

What better way for a snake to deal with competition than to eliminate it before it became a problem?

Nevertheless, it was unfair to slander the Snaherts without mentioning the Aelbes. Esmée knew that the feline tribe wouldn't sit around waiting for the tournament's outcome to take control of their fate. On the Champions' side, the Empyreans had already made their move. What about the others? Did Priam have his own agenda? And if so, what was it?

The Ring of Ubiquity began to heat up, dragging Esmée out of her overanalysis of the situation. Touching her swollen lip, she stared at the trapped vat.

The real question was: what should she do?

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