Priam
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Chapter 299: The White Desert
🕑 Added 2024-11-12 11:44:34 +0000 UTC43 minutes late... damn!
Chapter 300 tomorrow; it's already written, but I won't have time to translate it today.
Enjoy!
PS: Priam Character Sheet (you can thanks the Discord guys! Come say hello.)
*
Deadly rain, tearing winds, and a hailstorm fierce enough to pulverize bone—this was the cocktail awaiting in the Deluge’s fourth zone. A brutal symphony that had nearly killed Priam less than an hour before. When he entered it a second time, he was ready and on guard. Among the flood of sensory data pouring in from his Mist Concept, the trajectory of an approaching object alerted him.
A chunk of ice, the size of his fist, was hurtling toward him. Just minutes ago, this very type of hailstone had slammed him back into the second zone, flinging him into roaring updrafts. But since then, Priam had changed.
Instead of dodging, Priam planted his feet and lowered his stance, then met the attack with a brutal headbutt. The collision between his forehead and the hailstone was explosive…for the projectile. It shattered into a cloud of glistening frost.
“You’re going to have a nasty bump,” Jasmine warned.
“I know.”
“That was stupid.”
“Not at all. I just showed the Deluge I’m ready to face it like a warrior.”
“It’s a storm. You’re trying to impress a storm? Ugh, boys…”
Priam shook his head. If Jasmine didn’t understand the thrill of smashing ice chunks with his skull for the price of a minor bump, that was her loss.
The rest of the fourth zone was relatively calm. After the boost that came with unsealing his constitution, neither the rain nor the wind were able to slow him, and only the occasional hailstones tossed by the storm posed a threat. Most simply bounced off his skin, discharging their kinetic energy in a futile attempt to shove him into the tumultuous waters below. The only real challenge was dodging the larger chunks of ice, but thanks to his Mist Concept, he saw them coming well in advance.
An hour later, Priam spotted a massive white shape through the rain and hail. Pressing forward, he soon stood before a colossal iceberg. It called for a Captain Obvious moment, which he dutifully delivered.
“The ocean’s frozen over.”
Despite his near immunity, the storm was far from a pleasant environment, and Priam eagerly continued his journey. Lighting a small flame beneath each of his fingers, he carved his own holds and scaled the ice sheet with the ease of an arctic primate. The opaque sky remained silent, not a rumble announcing punishment. Just like Mist, Pyro was permitted.
Fifty meters up, at the top of the icy cliff, Priam discovered a white curtain—a realm where the rain gave way to snow. The cold radiating from this new zone was so intense it disrupted his kinetic platforms. From here on out, he would have to rely on his own legs.
Fourth zone of the Deluge cleared. Valaryth’s Ocean’s reward: Myth Fragment.
Integrating with System…
Title won!
[The One Who Braved the Deluge - Silver] - The wrath of the heavens provoked the fury of the oceans, a force that trembled the earth. From the smallest lizard to the largest bird, all creatures knew fear, sensing the end had begun.
While all fled the torrential downpour, a hero walked against the flow. He wanted to see the heart of the cataclysm with his own eyes.
For his courage, his tale is told.
META (Perception) +10%
META (Authority) +10%
As frost clawed at his bare feet and the blizzard roared before him, Priam understood: the Deluge was taking the gloves off.
“If you want to bail, now’s the time,” he cautioned Jasmine as he glanced up at the piercing light breaking through the white clouds above them.
“Are you serious?”
“If I die in there, I doubt you’ll be able to escape.”
By slipping into the storm’s shadow, Jasmine could navigate the first three zones without trouble. In contrast, the ambient brightness of the fourth zone was her nemesis—as light scattering off the snow, each falling flake disrupting her shadows. To an assassin, it was a shifting maze with no beginning or end, whose alleys constantly shifted.
“Then don’t die,” was her only answer.
“It’s kind of my specialty.”
With those words, Priam ventured into the snowstorm. The first thing to hit him was the searing cold. The second was a spinning ice disk.
The ambush struck his left collarbone with the force of a guillotine. Without his impossible constitution and an ideal slashing resistance, Priam would have lost his arm—and his human heart. Instead, the icy blade shattered into a hundred fragments that were sucked back into the storm, leaving only a slight cut as evidence of its existence.
“I told you not to die,” Jasmine reminded him.
“I sensed it too late. My Mist sense isn’t working in this snowstorm.”
Without mist, his perception was severely compromised. The sub-freezing temperature ruled out any fog, and Domain became his sole reliable source of information—a three-meter sphere to spot every danger lurking in an ocean of ice.
While half his attention monitored the blizzard, the other half focused on his collarbone wound. Instead of healing, it was freezing, offering a breach for the cold to seep deeper into his body. Priam felt the essence of winter invading his body, slowing his pulse and even the flow of his aether. There’s a Concept at work here…
With the tip of his finger, he touched the frozen blood and called upon Pyro. A feeble flame flickered to life, struggling against the winter chill. Still, it managed to thaw his blood until it began to flow again. The vital liquid stimulated his regeneration, sealing the wound until the cut vanished.
Nodding to himself, Priam trudged on through the powdery snow. The fresh drifts reached up to his thighs, turning each step into a battle. He tried several times to fashion kinetic skis to speed up, but the enchanted cold eroded any fine creations. As he pondered a solution, a projectile darted into his Domain, and Priam ducked just in time to dodge another ice blade.
“I swear, the System’s screwing with me,” he muttered as he watched a lock of his hair get swept away by the wind.
“Hm?”
Priam kept slogging through the snow, advancing one painful step at a time.
“I have a Domain three times the radius of a typical Tier 0—and we’re talking about a genius who managed to gain this Supremacy before Tier 1. Yet, these icy guillotines carried by the wind are so damn fast that I can barely dodge them once detected… and you know I have high agility for Tier 0.”
“Your stats may be sky-high, but your dodging skills are trash,” the assassin pointed out.
“Fair point. Still, with an average Domain, it’d take agility over a thousand and an ideal epic dodging skill to survive these ice blades… not to mention the cold that’s literally freezing my balls off despite my insane constitution..
To protect his family jewels and his future offspring, Priam summoned a flame boxer. He scowled, picturing the author of his descriptions chuckling at the sight of him shielding his manhood.
“This place is hellish, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Jasmine admitted.
“I’m saying it takes nearly impossible stats for a Tier 0 just to survive here. The Cold Concept—or its local cousin—is affecting me despite my insane physique. I’d bet even an elite Tier 1 would struggle in this blizzard. The System’s difficulty level is complete bullshit. This isn’t just a Mythical quest.”
“Of course, it’s not. To me, it’s Seraphic.”
A flurry of icy guillotines cut the conversation short.
*
The theory was confirmed: the difficulty of a quest was calculated based on the abilities of its user… or users, for a shared quest. Jasmine might struggle to reach the heart of the Deluge, hence a more extreme rating? It’s also possible that she’d have trouble securing the core, whereas I have [Tribulation Hunter]…
Despite these musings, Priam remained vigilant. Crossing a vast field of snow while dodging ice blades was no easy feat, especially as his body was growing numb, battered by the biting cold.
He paused briefly to inspect his feet and grimaced. His toes were an almost fluorescent white—the telltale signs of frostbite. Cold could burn as dangerously as flames. It was worrying, given that his high vitality was supposed to protect him. If his body suffered despite this… The Concept behind this cold surpasses my physical resilience. In a way, it almost makes me feel human. Never thought I’d be chattering my teeth again...
The warrior briefly considered summoning a full Pyro armor but held off. Hypothermia was still a ways off thanks to his high vitality, and he could survive the loss of some extremities if need be. Moreover, if his flames melted the snow, he would soon be several meters below the surface—a sure way to dig his own frozen grave.
“Bored,” Jasmine yawned.
“Get out of my shadow; you’ll be less bored.”
“I hate the cold. Winter nights on Arkana’s streets rank among my worst memories.”
“...Want to talk about it?”
“Not much to say. I ran away once, thinking winter would be less bad than people. I was wrong—you can work people, but the cold doesn’t care about words.”
“They find you?”
“I went back when I started getting frostbite; didn’t want to lose my fingers. Yours, by the way, worry me.” Hearing her, Priam looked at his blistered hands and blew on them. “Don’t you have a resistance for this?”
“Not anymore. [Heat Resistance] was the first resistance I unlocked after the Tutorial,” Priam recalled. “Initially, it countered high temperatures, but I could’ve adapted it to cold. Never had the chance since my phoenix bloodline forced a spontaneous fusion with [Thermal Resistance]. Later, it evolved into [Fire Champion Physique], which suited me fine. After all, cold has limits; heat doesn't.”
A strong enough constitution could allow one to survive near-absolute zero as a body loses heat relatively slowly by radiation. Conduction accelerated the process in a fluid, but Priam had no desire to plunge into a bath of liquid nitrogen. Until now.
The reverse wasn’t true: diving into a star's core was a quick way to die.
“We know now that some Concepts can speed up the spread of cold.”
“And slow the development of a resistance,” Priam added, recalling his recent conversation with Esmée about penetrating skills. He observed his hands, frostbitten and battered. His fingers were so numb he barely felt them when he clenched his fist. The initial pain from the cold’s bite had gradually given way to numbness. “Cell mutation’s slowed down, but I feel like I’m close to getting another resistance,” he smiled.
*
Three hours later, Priam’s smile had faded. The wind howled in his ears as he struggled to orient himself in a white world. No two ice crystals were the same, but nothing looked more like a snowflake than another snowflake.
“Feels like you veered left,” Jasmine said.
“According to my add-on, I’m going straight.”
His subsystem was studying atmospheric aether for navigation.
“Did you know that without landmarks, people tend to walk in circles?”
“People often die that way in the desert,” Priam replied, closing an eyelid. For the thousandth time in an hour, a flake tried to kamikaze into his retina. It seemed trivial, but over time, an average human would likely have lost an eye.
The wind shifted, and Priam became alert. Straining his ears, he focused on his Domain. A second later, he ducked, avoiding an ice blade, then leaped to evade another. His left knee throbbed upon landing. Half an hour earlier, an attack had sliced through one of his ligaments, and the cold hampered his regeneration.
Priam turned to see the path he’d carved slowly vanishing under the falling snow. In a few minutes, there would be no trace of his passage, and with night approaching, navigating would soon be impossible. I need to rest.
As if answering his prayer, the white desert soon revealed a snowdrift. Approaching the wind-carved landmark, he melted a bit of snow and settled at the base of the mound. Sheltered from the worst of the blizzard, Priam sighed. This miserable weather reminded him of a mountain trip. When he was fourteen, he and his mother had ventured out in a snowstorm to pick up supplies. Foolish idea, but he hadn’t had a choice.
Ten minutes later, his mother had started to panic. Faced with death, her stern mask had cracked, and Priam had glimpsed the human beneath. He had guided her back to their chalet, though the return journey had taken almost half an hour. In a blizzard, familiar landmarks vanished. One could easily get lost, and in extreme cold, the danger was lethal.
It was true then, and it was true now. Priam looked at his frostbitten hands and cursed as he noted the worsening damage. His veins and arteries, constricted by the cold, were blocking proper blood flow to his tissues. Swelling spread across his frozen body, particularly beneath his fingernails. At a microscopic level, it was even worse. The blizzard forced micro-crystals of ice to form around and inside his cells, causing them to rupture.
“You should make a fire. You’re freezing to death.”
Priam shook his head. “Pyro’s suppressed by the Deluge Concept. It’s a hundred times harder to summon it here, and I don’t have unlimited willpower. If I push too hard, I’ll exhaust myself and fall asleep—for good.”
Of course, he would revive, but there was no guarantee that this zone was the last stage of the stalled High Tribulation.
“At least replenish your strength…”
Priam nodded. His constitution and vitality held back the worst of the climate, but at a cost. He needed fuel to power the powerful machine that was his body. Extending a frost-rimmed hand, he summoned Concepts Archipelago. On Blueberry’s advice, he had stashed a decent amount of food.
Reality remained intact before his hand.
“…and nothing’s happening,” Jasmine observed.
The Tribulation blocked his access to his inner world. Or maybe it was something else? That didn’t matter as much as the next question: what was he going to eat? Priam felt the strain on his body, knowing that this extraordinary physique needed a substantial amount of energy to function. Was he really going to die of hypothermia, lost in a snowy wasteland?
The thought sent a surge of fury through him, and he roared his defiance. “FUCK!”
“RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” replied the snowdrift.
The white mound rose, revealing the twisted cross between a yeti and a polar bear.
[Identification]
[Enraged Chenoo - Tier 2 - Viscount] - A rare creature, sharing ancestry with Wendigos. The Chenoo is a dormant bloodline in many humanoid creatures and occasionally awakens in cannibals.
Banished to the Deluge's ice plains, this monster prowls in search of prey. Its bloodline prevents it from starving to death, though the lack of nutrients drives it mad.
The souls of its victims are trapped within its flesh. The only way to free them is to digest them yourself. The dead will thank you for it.
Priam blinked, then grinned. “Looks like we just found dinner!”
*
Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 893 SEALED
Constitution 1 326
Agility 1 173
Vitality 1 143
Perception 858
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 599 SEALED
Dexterity 752
Memory 891 SEALED
Willpower 1 004
Charisma 648
META:
Meta-affinity 999
Meta-focus 554
Meta-endurance 896
Meta-perception 539 (+37)
Meta-chance 589
Meta-authority 343 (+28)
Potential: 17 913
Tier 0
Sun points: 143 444
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED
Concepts:
Breath (T0): 100% / Harmony
Fire (T0): 100% / Unity
Pyro (T1): 100% / Half-step Unity
Mist (T1): 100% / Symphony
Bloodlines:
Phoenix: 2%
Dragon: 1%
Rewards standing:
Fusion Token - Skill (Epic)
Evolution Token - Skill (Legendary)
Affinity Token - Tier 1 (30%)
Alien Concept fragment (7th Terror)
Talent Token - Upgrade (Seraph)
Revelation Token - Ideal Prerequisites (Epic)
Colosseum VIP Token
Reborn Token - Reset biological lifespan (Legendary)
[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 133 days 9 hours 51 minutes 4 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attributes > 900 / 3 attributes > 1 200 / 1 attribute > 1 500
*
Chapter 300 closes this alien Tribulation with a grand finale. It's been a while since Priam last died, right?
Comments
Ruin The Burned
I think Jasmine tagging along is fun. Doesn't bother me a bit.
Zaim İpek
good reminder!
M. Kazai
The Spirits are actually aldo tied to 2 Valaryth Quests: Invasion I - Release the soul of (?) natives possessing an alien Concept. (Quest chain) Reward: Alien Concept fragment Invasion I - Release the soul of (?) natives possessing an alien racial Talent. (Quest chain) Reward: Racial Talent (Complete)
Zaim İpek
That icy concept would fit nicely as part of his inner world.
Wanderer
Then he should educate it!
Ihsan Gunay
This was given by Valaryth so it’s understandable a fragmented universe doesn’t know the naming conventions!
Zaim İpek
So he is going to eat ghost meat? That's new. He should save some for blueberry to cook. It would probably give a few culinary levels. Do the spirits make it taste different? This is such a strange and interesting idea.
Aaron Hathaway
I like the banter. It's better than just internal dialogue
Dungeonborn
The type of fragment is probably alien to the concept system as a system reward. So it was converted into a equivalent viable system reward (probably?)
bcd051
I think the concept at play in the deluge is causing a lot of issues with regards to training and use of his phoenix bloodline. I think Jasmine being there preserves his humanity in a way that Sphinx also does, she helps ground him now. Also, I think with everything going on in the deluge, there's a chance he'd lose it a bit...and she saved his life.
bcd051
My suspicion is that the fragment is separate from the title.
Andrew
Thank you!
John
Priam can just use flames for energy right with his phoenix bloodline? And please let this be the last time jasmine follows priam around it takes away from the exitement when she constantly makes some cringe sexual joke or acts like som therapist for priam its awful. Some comedy is fine and all but i feel the tension thats supposed to be there with arnold and the necromoon both getting stronger and priam being forced to push on is just not there at all priams and all his friends attittudes feels so removed from the situation they are in. And priam is not even training it feels like he has not used that puzzle concept to train his aether or used his ressurection powers to train his resistences or even gone out to kill any draconic beings at all i dont understand how hes planning to get stronger when hes not using the only advantages he has it makes everyone else seem so weak when apparently even rose is as good as priam when it comes to aether somehow not to mention those who have been trained since birth and priam just somehow is better than them in less than a year without even training its being explained like priam and rose just has an innate talent for aether or something but like why have skills and tribulations and things like that when talent is going to be the most important factor in the end its makes everything seem trivial i would understand if they were from a strong race or something but they are from a tier 1 race and somehow has better talent than a phoenix prince? a tier 7 race it makes no sense
brennon Petersen
Tftc!
Derze
Wait…so the fragment got turned into a Title? Confusion
Wanderer
[The One Who Braved the Deluge - Silver] Missed opportunity to call it [He Who Braved the Deluge - Silver] smh
Custus
Thanks for the chapter!
