Chapter 266: Chapter 257: You can have it for today... Tomorrow, it’ll be mine

After visiting the Gaeserts and the Aelbes, Priam only needed to steal a few secrets from the Snaherts to complete his tour.

Whistling, he strolled into the tribe’s camp, surprised by the silence. Unlike the bustling Gaeserts or the feline Aelbes, the discreet Snaherts exuded a sly aura.

His good mood evaporated, Priam stopped whistling and made his way to Ophis’s place without asking for directions. The straight paths and the growing size of the tents provided all the clues he needed. At the camp's center, two shelters dominated the landscape. The first was red and black, the second green and silver. Dragon and serpent…

Ignoring the shaman Snahert’s tent, Priam approached Ophis’s. The entrance opened, and a forgettable young man with slumped shoulders emerged. Fortunately for Priam, his perfect memory quickly identified Vyphers, the young Snahert he had defeated while retrieving Seth’s skull at Osiris’s behest.

“Hey,” Priam greeted.

The loser looked up, flinched upon recognizing Priam, and then bolted, screaming.

“What the fuck?” Dumbfounded, Priam stood still for a moment. He had no intention of picking another fight with Ophis’s son. From his perspective, their last battle made them even as it had purified his draconic bloodline. The young master seemed to disagree. Well, he hasn’t gotten his bloodline back yet…

Shrugging, Priam entered the tent and found himself in a relatively small room. The decor was sparse: a few cushions scattered on the floor circled an intense brazier. Sharing a meal of raw meat, Ophis and a young woman watched the flames.

“Can I come in?”

The Snahert leader smiled and nodded. “Sna, meet Priam, the Lord of Oasis who refused my offer a few hours ago.”

The young woman’s cold eyes met Priam’s, forcing him to steady himself. Despite her youthful appearance, the creature before him was ancient and... cold.

“What brings you here?” Ophis continued, looking at Priam.

“Can I sit?”

His host didn’t respond, and Priam almost rolled his eyes. You’re too old to sulk, man.

Summoning a fake smile, Priam sat on a cloud of mist. “The fulcrum was a good item, but I have something more interesting for you.”

“I’m all ears.”

“The heart of a Tier 4 Skulc shaman.”

The room’s atmosphere froze... literally. Like his son, Ophis had the petrifying gaze of a basilisk. “Are you serious?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

Priam tried to reply but couldn’t, having to wait for the Snahert leader to regain his composure before moving.

“... An organ that concentrates a potent draconic bloodline, yes,” Priam resumed, irritated. He didn’t believe for a second that the Snahert leader had truly lost his temper for so long. But maybe it wasn’t just a threat. Maybe he did lose his temper for a moment. Makes me wonder how rare the heart is…

“Interesting,” Ophis said, glancing at Sna. The shaman likely had the gift of discerning truth, and Priam decided to play with half-truths. “In exchange for...?”

“The ideal upgrade for [Stealth]…”

“Deal.”

“… and access to your own source of draconic bloodline—a basilisk, if I’m not mistaken.”

Today, the Snaherts' draconic source, and tomorrow, the Skull Temple’s heart: Priam intended to have it both ways. But first, you’ll show me how to access the heart.

Before Ophis could respond, Sna leaned forward. “Why negotiate with him? We know where his base is.” Her voice was warm and hypnotic, yet still gave Priam goosebumps.

“Sna, he’s our ally!” Ophis frowned.

“An ally overstepping his bounds.”

Ophis clenched his fist, overacting his pity. “He doesn’t realize—”

Priam burst into laughter. The pressure from his Tribulations and the responsibility of saving his loved ones was weighing heavily on him. Just hours away from confronting Sumstreh, the good cop, bad cop tactic adopted by the two Tier 4s was so crude it was hilarious.

Seeing the astonished expressions of the two powerhouses, Priam’s laughter doubled.

“… Is something funny?”

“Your role-playing is comically bad,” Priam replied while sending a secret message to Eve. “What you consider the pinnacle of psychological tactics is common knowledge in my civilization.”

“So let me be blunt: a Tier 0 should know his place,” Ophis retorted.

“A Tier 4 should fear an immortal Champion.” Priam turned to Sna. “I am Death’s Obsession. Have you lost your hubris along with your shedding to think you can succeed where death has failed? Now, either accept my offer, or I’ll see if I get a good price for the draconic heart at the Auctions.”

Ophis remained silent for a few seconds before dropping the affable mask he had worn so far. “I believe you’ve guessed, but my shaman currently wears another’s skin thanks to [Molt]. Give me one reason not to have her possess one of your friends like a garment and take what’s yours.”

“I knew you were a pragmatic asshole,” Priam smiled. He had worn enough masks to recognize another adept. “To answer your question, I’m counting on nuclear deterrence. There are several H-bombs hidden in your camp.”

“My Domain detects nothing and it’s always active,” hissed the ancient serpent.

“Eve.”

A second later, Sna violently turned her head towards her tent. For her, a wooden sphere concealed by Eve’s clone’s power had just appeared on her table. It was enough to prove Priam could hide an object from her senses.

Ophis met Sna’s gaze and hissed. “I thought you came in peace.”

“If you want peace, prepare for war,” Priam quoted.

“Is that a threat?” Sna asked, unleashing her aura.

“What a stupid question,” Priam replied, undeterred. After enduring the aura of a god and a Fallen, the Tier 4 didn’t scare him. “Of course, it’s a threat.”

The torchlight reflecting off the fine scales of the Snaherts’ skin framed the tent’s entrance.

“Fine,” Ophis murmured after a minute of tense silence. “A drop of diluted royal basilisk blood and [Stealth] in exchange for the Skulc heart.”

“Deal,” Priam smiled. He knew he had just made enemies, but what did it matter? He would soon be the only one to remember.

You have gained the skill: [Petrification Resistance - Rare].

[Petrification Resistance] -A rare resistance that prevents certain powers from turning you to stone. One of its side effects will make you more resilient to shock, stupefaction, and any paralysis induced by a soul aura, a Supremacy, or a Concept.

Medusa had two ways to turn you hard. Now, she only has one.

CONST +3

The drop of basilisk blood didn’t awaken any new draconic powers. According to Ophis, Priam wouldn’t gain any new abilities until his bloodline purity exceeded one percent. Deep within, he felt that he was close.

Racing towards Oasis through the cursed woods, Priam focused on the tattoos covering his skin. Sna had used magical ink to draw intricate patterns meant to divert the attention of onlookers. She claimed he just needed to temporarily deceive the perception of a Tier 4 to acquire one of the prerequisites for [Stealth], or rather [Phantom].

One of the other prerequisites was mastering a particular movement technique his addon had already recorded. The third was consuming the raw heart of a Tier 2 chameleon. As the acrid, salty taste threatened to make him vomit, Priam kept reminding himself it was worth it.

“You’ll have to earn the last two prerequisites,” Ophis had said. “The first requires you to stalk a Noble of a higher rank than yours—adjusted with Soul Tier, so a Tier 1 Duke or a Tier 2 Marquess will do—for an hour without being detected. For the second, you must land a surprise blow on a monster three Soul Tiers above yours.”

Priam could almost taste his tenth ideal skill... and the Mythical Achievement that would come with it.

A few minutes later, the two Tier 4s and the Champion arrived at Oasis. Recognizing its Lord, the barrier let them pass. With a leap, the two Tier 4s jumped over the bio traps that were crushing corrupted creatures without pause. A hoplite almost stopped them until he saw Priam.

“Which way?” asked Ophis, perched on the crenellation of the rampart.

Priam pointed to the bone staircase descending into the ground near the river. The Skull Temple was an odd structure Kazuki had used to reach Micro II and survive his previous quadruple Tribulations.

The two Tier 4s flashed to the structure, and Priam followed after sending a silent signal to Hyshana, who was monitoring the situation. Potential enemies, H-bomb aware. The warrior was a professional and didn't let anything show.

“It’s an inheritance limited to Tier 1s,” declared Ophis as Priam approached.

“A mental parkour dungeon designed to help a crafter reach Micro II,” Sna clarified. “It would be useful to us.”

“I can give it to you if you want,” offered Priam. With the next time rewind, his promise had no consequence but wasn’t exactly a lie. “But aside from the Skulc Heart, I want the other rewards,” he added before the Snaherts could grow suspicious. If he seemed too agreeable, they’d suspect a trap.

“That’s an interesting proposal, but none of our Tier 1 crafters are close to Micro II.”

“And the warriors?”

“We already have ways to assist them… However, without a crawler to finish this dungeon, I’m afraid there’s only one way to access the rewards,” said Ophis.

“Which is?”

“To hack its runic core.”

Priam pretended to ponder. “You can do that without damaging it?”

Sna bared her teeth. “The shaman Skulc who created this artifact might be better than me, but she’s dead, and I’m alive. However, I can’t promise to leave the dungeon intact.”

“I could always repair it with Sun Points as long as it’s not completely destroyed,” Priam said. “But I want to see what you’re doing.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“We also didn’t plan for you to destroy my artifact,” countered Priam. “There are other rewards than the Skulc Heart; in exchange for a detailed explanation of the hack, I’ll give you an item equivalent in value to the heart.”

A lesson on runes from a Tier 4 would be as valuable to Priam as to Oasis's crafters and, thus, at least as precious as an ideal upgrade. Rose will love that.

Sna remained silent for a moment before turning to the structure. “I’ll explain; if you don’t understand, that’s your problem.”

Priam hid a smile. No different from a college professor who prefers research.

It didn’t matter. With his addon, Titles, Merits, and new ideal skill, [Runic Language], he was confident in his ability to keep up. His pride forbade failure.

“Any hacker must at least have [High Aether Perception].”

“I have the ideal upgrade thanks to [Ace].”

“[Aether Manipulation]?”

“High.”

The shaman blinked slowly before turning to the stairs. “First, we use our meta perception to find where the mechanism is hidden. Here, it’s behind this old Tier 5 bone,” she said, pointing to the first ivory step sinking into the ground. Priam frowned, seeing nothing, and was surprised when Sna struck the bone. A wave of aether escaped from a crack. Two more kicks, and half the step shattered, revealing a galaxy of tiny runes.

“This is what I call subtlety,” he muttered.

The Tier 4 didn’t bother to respond. “Without [Aether Perception] at Legendary rarity, it’s impossible to see through Tier 5 material, even degraded. That’s the point: no one can hack a ritual they can’t find. The second difficulty is identifying the runes concerning the rewards.”

The broken step revealed a green cloud with millions of interconnected runes, creating hundreds of rituals, each controlling an element of the Skull Temple. Finding the relevant ones was like searching for a line of uncommented code among thousands, without knowing what it looked like or its exact function. In a word, tedious.

The first task was understanding the overall code, and the [Polyglot] Merit helped Priam grasp the utility of different parts of the galaxy. When he pointed out their target to Sna five minutes later, she gave him a strange look before nodding.

“Now that we’ve found the ritual that sends the winner to the reward room, we need to modify it to open an entry here.”

The shaman began explaining the ritual's workings. Aided by [Runic Language], [Runic Hacker], and the Polyglot Merit, Priam absorbed the knowledge with ease. Within minutes, he felt confident enough to ask pointed questions and offer relevant suggestions on modifications.

“Here, we have an aether node that distributes the flow equally among several branches,” Sna pointed out. “It’s often used because if one rune fails, the parallel ones remain powered. If they were in series, destroying one rune would prevent aether from reaching the others.”

“That’s bad for us,” grumbled Priam. Seeing Sna nod, he continued. “These are traps. If any of these runes detect an unusual aether flow—if we tamper with anything—they’ll explode, blocking all access to the reward room.”

Like a serpent, Sna hissed her approval. “Which means we’ll have to erase all these security runes simultaneously before modifying the ritual to open a direct passage to the reward room.”

Priam frowned, pointing at the thousands of micro-runes floating above the bone stairs. “I doubt someone this meticulous about securing their creation would let us destroy these without retaliation. If we force-shutdown these runes, we risk a nasty surprise.”

“Your dungeon might never work again,” Sna agreed. “But you knew the risks.”

“I don’t care about the dungeon; the creator of this must have expected anyone tampering with its core mechanism to be after the rewards. I’m willing to bet that if these runes are destroyed, a secondary trap will destroy the rewards.”

“I see no other traps.”

“In this ritual, maybe, but there are hundreds. Who’s to say the Skulc didn’t hide a trap in the ritual commanding the Skull Temple’s Hall of Fame? Until we analyze all these millions of runes, we can’t be sure.”

“That would take weeks,” Ophis growled.

“We don’t have that time… but I have an idea.”

Ophis opened his mouth again, but a look from Sna silenced him.

“What do you propose?”

Priam’s skills seemed to have earned the shaman’s respect.

“Create a natural accident. We could build an aether bridge that goes from before to after the security rune—a shortcut for the aether to bypass it. With no energy flowing through them, the security runes would be inactive but not destroyed.”

The laws of electricity had inspired Priam. An electrical device stops working in water because the current diverted by the liquid no longer follows the intended path. He had already noticed that the aether behaved similarly to electrical energy.

Seeing Sna ponder, Ophis cleared his throat. “Even if the trapped runes aren’t destroyed, they won’t be powered, making them invisible to the artifact. How is that different from destroying them?”

Priam pointed to an area with a hundred runes. “Because this ritual inventories the runes using an energy field. The runes don’t need to be connected to be counted—and don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.”

While his parallel thought streams focused on the immediate problem, his addon had recorded the entire super ritual and started analyzing it. Despite the Tier 4s’ vastly superior computational abilities, Priam’s multitasking prowess gave him an edge over them.

Sna nodded. “You have convinced me. Let’s start.”

The rituals that composed the dungeon were cunningly intertwined, and Ophis had to admit he didn’t understand half of them. It wasn’t exactly shameful—his knowledge of runes was naturally inferior to that of a crafter like the Skulc shaman. The leader of the Snaherts was, first and foremost, a warrior and didn't intend to base the fulcrum of his internal world on a ritual.

Still, seeing the young Champion following his grandmother’s explanations with ease irked him. When Priam had offered two rarest items in exchange for an ideal upgrade, a drop of royal basilisk blood, and a lesson, Ophis had doubted his true objective. Now, seeing the alien prodigy effortlessly assimilate his grandmother’s teachings, the Snahert leader understood that this had been his primary goal all along.

Priam had the potential to become a top-tier Aetherist and was using his grandmother as a teacher.

"Get a grip, I can feel your murderous intent."

Ophis straightened slightly at the mental voice.

“Grandmother, he’s using you.”

“Without him, I would have failed to hack this dungeon.”

Ophis widened his eyes.

“He’s an alien Aetherist?”

“No, it’s worse than that. He’s a prodigy.”

Watching the young Homo Elysian soak up the shaman’s knowledge like a sponge, the Tier 4 remembered the report Vysharratjekto had given him upon returning from his mission.

“If we decide to kill the Champions, it must be done quickly. Afterward, it will be too late.”

Should I kill him? If yes, a crucial question remained.

How does one kill Death’s Obsession?

Lvl Up: [Runic Language] lvl 2, …, 7

META (Affinity) +18

Lvl Up: [Ideal Aether Perception] lvl 18

META (Affinity) +3

META (Perception) +6

Lvl Up: [High Aether Manipulation] lvl 9

META (Affinity) +3

META (Focus) +3

META (Endurance) +3

Redirecting certain currents of aether, slightly modifying the arrangement of runes, or rewriting others—this was a runic hacker’s work. Smiling, Priam used his aether to alter the complex ritual before him. Maybe it was his numerous advantages—Titles, Merits, ideal skills, and addon—but he found it easy. Almost natural.

When Sna had asked him to correct a rune modified by Ophis, Priam realized two things. First, the Snaherts’ leader didn’t possess [High Aether Manipulation].

Secondly, I’m more talented and much more passionate.

Using his mind and abilities to break into a dungeon composed of hundreds of intricate rituals entertained Priam. Ophis regarded the galaxy of floating runes like a lazy retiree peering inside a computer. Rather than marveling at the runes' possibilities to rewrite reality—or the billions of transistors in a processor—the Tier 4 Snahert preferred to stick to his martial prowess.

To Priam, magic was magic. Perhaps because he had lived a mundane life before the Tutorial, he refused to dismiss any path to the Zenith. Concepts, Supremacies, and mastery of the aether—he intended to climb every mountain.

“Now,” ordered Sna.

Priam provided a solid aether crystal to the tampered ritual, which buzzed to life. A door opened in mid-air, and he entered first, stepping into a small room. Engravings depicting the fall of a Skulc empire covered each wall, but Priam’s gaze was drawn to the pile of treasures haphazardly arranged before him. Under normal circumstances, the ritual would materialize only one reward at a time, but they had found a way to grab everything at once.

“The heart of a Tier 4 Skulc…” Ophis laughed as he entered the artificial space.

A bloody heart lay at the center of one engraving, embedded in the green chest of a female Skulc fleeing from a Necromoon horde. Priam’s draconic bloodline surged when his eyes landed on it, but he calmed it with a thought. You can have it for today... Tomorrow, it’ll be mine.

The idea of using the Snaherts to secure a draconic heart otherwise out of his reach nearly made him laugh. As soon as he rewound time, he would hack the Skull Temple for himself and his friends.

Various items imbued with bloodlines awaited him, and Priam smiled. With these and their own tips, his close allies would have a better chance of surviving their Tribulations. After Sna chose a [Crystallized Gorgon Tear], he pocketed the rest, pausing briefly at the two remaining blood drops—one from a phantom panther and the other from a sphinx.

“You should head back and secure your camp,” Priam declared as he exited the reward room.

Seeing Ophis raise an eyebrow, Priam smiled. “The distraction I promised you begins soon with a quadruple Tribulation.”

“Very soon,” corrected a voice from the branches of Log-a-rhythm. The warrior in mechanical armor landed like Superman a few meters from Priam before straightening up. Bearing the weight of millennia of Hoplite pride on his shoulders, Kazuki was holding his head high. “I’m ready.”

Ignoring the two Tier 4s, Priam stepped forward to shake his friend’s hand. Both knew the risks of death, but that had never stopped them before. Today, Priam would witness a new chapter of the Spear Virtuoso’s Odyssey.

And if the worst came to pass, he would force time to correct the Tribulations' mistake.

[8 hours 21 minutes before optimal activation of Back in Time.]

Status:

PHYSICAL:

Strength 755

Constitution 1 199 (+4)

Agility 897

Vitality 1 147

Perception 814

MENTAL:

Vivacity (D) 599

Dexterity 673

Memory 875

Willpower 1 168

Charisma 697

META:

Meta-affinity 898 (+30)

Meta-focus 423 (+3)

Meta-endurance 719 (+5)

Meta-perception (A) 433 (+8)

Meta-chance 274

Meta-authority 234

Potential: 12 469 (+20)

Tier 0

Sun points: 1 488 111 (+512)

[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED

[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.

Future Tribulations delayed until:

Time: 152 days 14 hours 12 minutes 47 seconds.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attributes > 900 / 1 attribute > 1 200

This arc is already complete on Patreon if you want to find out what happens next!

/ANovelConcept