A wave of aether hit Rohan as he entered the antechamber of the meditation hall. He waited a few seconds for the airlock to saturate with energy before stepping into the room proper.
The wooden walls were covered with glowing runes, capturing and concentrating the aether of Elysium. A dim light illuminated the warrior sitting cross-legged in the center of the room. With eyes closed, the leader of the Aelbes seemed lifeless. A minute after Rohan’s entrance, a shockwave rippled through the air, making him grimace. His father's heartbeat was slow, but each beat was phenomenally powerful.
Five heartbeats later, the warrior exhaled and opened his eyes. With a gesture, he invited his son to sit opposite him.
“Your heart is becoming terrifying, Dad.”
Leo smiled faintly. “Not enough to bear a world... but I’m on the right path. Got any good news, son?”
Unlike the other Aelbes, father and son were training maniacs. Yet they never shirked their duties.
“A Fallen is on the island and has captured an important member of Oasis,” Rohan reported. “The lord and two other Champions are seeking the tribes' help to defeat it, and we agreed. I negotiated the ideal upgrade of [Dark Vision] in exchange for a fragment of the Fallen’s fulcrum.”
The Tier 4 shook his head. “Useless for me, but it’ll make a nice gift to win over a Tier 4... So, three rivals have allied?”
Rohan nodded. “I checked by provoking his jealousy. It's actually quite understandable, as they’ve only had their first Reunion. They have no reason to be enemies yet.”
“Did you test them?”
“Only the lord of Oasis. He’s not impressive with his spear, but he learns quickly. In a few months, he could become a formidable opponent with it, but I think martial arts aren’t his priority.”
“Oh?”
“According to Eleha’s report, he’s a versatile Ace. He prefers wielding his Concepts and skills over a weapon. I predict he’ll reach Spear Mastery II, but I doubt he’ll achieve Spear Mastery III.”
“Don’t forget he’s a newcomer. Once he realizes he might miss out on Ace III without a solid Mastery, he’ll change his mind,” Leo predicted. “Anything else?”
“He’s an intimidating tank even before tempering his body, but...” Rohan frowned. “During our duel, he spent his lifespan to overclock his regeneration.”
Some abilities made that possible but were usually used as a last resort, not for training.
“Strange. Did you wager anything?”
“We didn’t, which is why I’m confused. Nobody wastes lifespan like that unless they’re crazy or pseudo-immortal. Gryphe’s theory that he has a way to ensure his Nirvana seems increasingly credible…”
The Aelbes had considered other explanations, but they were all even more unlikely.
Father and son remained silent before Leo looked up at the ceiling. An instant later, he smiled, revealing predator’s fangs. “Gryphe just sent me the results of the genetic analysis she conducted on the cells left in Braato’s tent. The girl with him possesses [Ageless].”
Rohan’s eyes widened. Priam wasn’t wasting his lifespan; he had found a way to become pseudo-immortal.
“What are we going to do?”
Leo was silent for almost a minute before he spoke.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]Hundreds of glowing fireflies flitted inside the tent, banishing the darkness. Priam smiled as he reached out to one, surprised to find it intangible. Undetectable by Domain, [Ideal Aether Perception] solved the mystery: the fireflies were aether constructs.
Using his meta perception, he tried to observe the firefly's interior to understand its workings and was surprised when it exploded.
“You’re too young to steal my secrets, boy.” A voice rose from the back of the tent.
“Sorry, just curious,” Priam replied, shrugging.
“It’s not a cat who’s going to hold that against you,” cackled the shaman. “It’s good practice for aether proficiency, but that’s not why you’re here. Come closer.”
Priam navigated through piles of books, finding a black cat curled up on a large cushion floating a meter off the ground.
The cat and the Homo Elysium eyed each other for a moment before Priam cleared his throat. “I’m here for the ideal upgrade of [Dark Vision].”
“Bah! Damn Champions,” she spat.
“Excuse me?”
The cat started grooming itself as a voice echoed in Priam’s head.
“The fact I can take the form of a cat should impress you, as it marks a mid-level bloodline purity of over fifty percent. But since you’re ignorant, you didn’t even realize I was posing.”
Priam ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed. Was the shaman expecting a reaction from him?
“That’s... really impressive.”
The cat glared at him. “Not good with girls, are you?”
Who’s a girl, you old hag!
Seeing the feline’s eyes promising violence, Priam kept that thought to himself and chose a more diplomatic response. “Forgive me, I’m a bit intimidated talking to a Tier 4,” he lied.
Lvl Up: [Acting] lvl 6
CHAR +3
The shaman puffed up. “Understandable. As the bigger person, I shall forgive your mistakes.” Only Micro kept one of Priam’s forehead veins from bursting. “Let’s not waste time: do you already have an ocular skill?”
“[Broad-spectrum Vision],” Priam replied in English. “There’s no real equivalent in your language, but it lets me see invisible colors, like the first milestone of Perception.”
The cat stopped grooming to nod. “It’s equivalent to [Dark Vision]. Common rank?”
“Yeah, level eight.”
“That’ll make our job easier. Now, pay attention.” With a paw gesture, the cat conjured sixty aether spheres. Different runes inscribed on their surfaces created a light source within each. English words were projected onto the surface of the first eight spheres, changing color from infrared to rainbow hues and then ultraviolet.
With his skill and enhanced eyes, Priam read the words inside the first eight spheres. Letter, tribe, cat, tiger, ancestor, fish, sky, earth.
Looking at the ninth sphere, Priam saw a word but couldn’t read it. There are words in each sphere, but I can’t see them, he realized.
His eyes struggled to adjust to the frequent color changes, especially when the word’s letters didn’t diffuse the same wavelength. However, failure was not an option. The ninth word was difficult to decipher, but by focusing on his skill and spending a bit of Potential, it appeared. Island.
POT -3
Lvl Up: [Broad-spectrum Vision] lvl 9
PERC +1
Gryphe grunted approval. “If you reach the twentieth word, not only will you have unlocked three prerequisites, but you’ll also have brought your skill to level twenty. Now hurry.”
Receiving no response, she looked up and saw Priam fixated on the tenth sphere. Too focused on his task, he hadn’t even heard her.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]POT -107
Lvl Up: [Broad-spectrum Vision] lvl 10, …, 15
PERC +6
Using Potential had allowed Priam to quickly bring his skill to level fifteen, but the efficacy of the artificial epiphany was now less pronounced. The sixteenth sphere had a different mechanism, which frustrated him. Previously, Priam only needed to widen the spectrum of wavelengths he could see and get used to the power of his eyes. Now, he had to distinguish certain wavelengths among others.
Specifically, the letters were now composed of hundreds of points of different colors and sizes, on a background also made up of points. It reminded Priam of the Ishihara test, which detected most types of color blindness. He wasn’t color blind and had no problem distinguishing colors, but that only held true for the colors of the rainbow. When the test included infrared and ultraviolet, things got complicated.
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After spending a few minutes staring at a sphere without blinking, Priam sighed and rubbed his eyelids. The difficulty had spiked suddenly, and he suspected it had something to do with one of the prerequisites for the rare ideal upgrade. It was no longer enough to let the skill do the work; he now had to control it to succeed in the final levels.
A glance at Gryphe informed him that the cat was very busy licking her anus and couldn't care less about him. That suited him perfectly. Finding the solution without help is always better.
Priam turned back to the sphere and summoned Micro to try to control his eyes. After a moment's hesitation, he also opened the floodgates of his Potential. He had an advantage and wasn’t too shy to abuse it.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]POT -1099
Lvl Up: [Broad-spectrum Vision] lvl 16, 17, 18 ,19, 20
PERC +5
[Broad-spectrum Vision] has reached level 20, its maximum level as a common skill.
Yeah, baby!
“You must be rich to squander your Potential so easily.”
Priam turned to Gryphe, who had finally finished grooming her fur.
“I want to be ready before the assault on the Fallen.” After that, he would rewind time and no longer have the opportunity to acquire the ideal upgrade for [Dark Vision]. For him, Potential was a resource less rare than time.
“Bah, you think you’ll be in danger? We’re not going to lose.” The shaman had misunderstood the comment. “I may be a crafter, but I didn’t reach my old age by being weak. Though, I'd pay a lot to be young again…”
The old shaman let her sentence hang, and silence filled the tent.
… She’s waiting for a response from me? It feels like the start of a quest in a video game, but I have no idea how to help you, granny.
Seeing Priam’s lack of reaction, Gryphe growled before jumping onto her desk. “We'll talk about that later. Come closer, you still need two prerequisites for the ideal upgrade.”
Priam pulled up a chair and sat facing the cat. Tapping a claw on the wood, she made a large deck of cards appear.
“We're going to play Concentration, a round game with fifty pairs of identical cards. These hundred cards are placed face down on a table. In turns, we reveal two cards, and if they’re identical, we keep them. The goal is to have the most cards by the end.”
“Oh, Memory! I used to play that game as a kid, with animal cards.” Priam smiled nostalgically. It was a memory game where one had to remember the position of cards that different players revealed. As soon as a card was shown whose twin had already been found, one had to recall its position correctly to win the pair. Thanks to his excellent memory, the young and competitive Priam had often won against his family.
“Perfect,” said Gryphe. “However, there are two major differences: we’ll play in the dark, with the cards faintly glowing in the ultraviolet. In the second round, it will be in infrared, and then back to ultraviolet. If you play well, you should obtain the last two prerequisites within a few hundred defeats.”
Priam’s competitive spirit roared. I’m going to crush you, granny. “And the second difference?”
“Even if we find a pair, we don’t get another turn. The goal is for you to unlock your prerequisites, not to play a real game.”
Before Priam could agree, the fluorescent fireflies disappeared, plunging the room into darkness. The only patches of color were the infrared emitted by the heat of the cat and himself.
Tap, tap, tap…
A small noise caught Priam’s attention, and his Domain informed him that Gryphe was arranging the cards on the table. Each card glowed uniformly in ultraviolet.
“Your turn.”
Blind to most colors, Priam chose a random card and flipped it over. Nothing.
What?
The card in his hand was blank, utterly invisible to his eyes. When he tried to examine it more closely, Gryphe snatched it from him. “You only touch the cards to flip them.”
Frustrated, Priam focused on the card but saw nothing. [Broad-spectrum Vision] had reached the pinnacle of the common rank, and his eyes had evolved thanks to the first milestone of his Perception; yet, the card was black.
"New rule: we only have two seconds per turn."
That might seem short, but with their vivacity and memory, it was more than enough. Except when I can’t see the cards!
Priam flipped a second card, also blank. Maybe the light emitted is very faint?
Gryphe's turn came, and she flipped a card, then another. Under Priam’s blind eyes, she picked them up and placed them in front of her.
Priam frowned. The probability of getting a correct pair right away was one in ninety-nine. I can reasonably say she’s cheating. The young Champion looked up at the cat, who was patiently waiting her turn. Cheating so blatantly on the very first turn can only mean one thing: she wants me to know she’s cheating. That leaves two possibilities: either she’s using a method beyond my reach to show the gap between us, or she wants me to realize there’s a trick to it.
It didn’t take a great psychologist to see that Gryphe was a prideful being, but also a fair teacher. There’s a trick I’m not seeing—pun intended.
Reaching this conclusion in less than a tenth of a second, Priam used his perfect memory to replay the mental scene.
“Ah! The cards aren’t face down, are they?”
“Oh?” Gryphe seemed surprised. “Usually, it takes people several games to figure that out.”
Priam shrugged. "The cards are blank when I flip them because I’m looking at their backs. Conversely, they’re currently glowing because I see them from the right side. If I can’t distinguish anything, it’s because they’re painted to emit almost uniform ultraviolet light.”
“I can’t applaud in my cat form... But even if I had hands, I wouldn’t clap. However, you’re correct; the ultraviolet shades are very subtle. It’s like looking at a chameleon on a green leaf; if you don’t pay attention, you just see green. Tick-tock, you’re too slow; it’s my turn.”
Gryphe grabbed two more cards without bothering to flip them and placed them on her first pair.
Priam smiled as he looked at the game again. He couldn’t yet distinguish the subtle shades of ultraviolet, but it would come. He was on the right track.
With half his attention naturally focused, the other half [In the Zone], and actively using his add-on, Priam was determined to collect as many pairs as possible.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV84bDIHlfZscSCnj3OPB7g0RlKTfqtSDNcXEaanoglUO6qDTqp5Uumo3j4OGD_ZdIYffT40nkmKPbJRlo2SoYdkp-qCixEYS4sb9lwYHcTK55TzFZJKasmgHTeODrwRrq_FRemrCeDlTdGpHy2QoyQJb=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]Gryphe was triply annoyed. First, Priam had seen through her trick in the first round. She had nothing against smart people, but he made her entire clan look like idiots. Even Rohan, her little protégé, had only figured it out at the end of the fifteenth round.
Second, the result of the first game was bitter. She had collected thirty-eight pairs, and Priam had twelve. She had won, of course, but the Champion's speed of progression was terrifying. Not all pairs were equally simple, and he had managed to snag three of the most complex ones. At first, Gryphe thought it was a bluff—how could he have cheated in front of her?—but the young man had smiled at her as he described the cards. She was almost sure it was enough to meet one of the prerequisites needed for the ideal upgrade. In just one game!
The second game frustrated the shaman. This time, it was with infrared-emitting cards and face-down. She had only managed to grab one pair before Priam adapted. The game, partially based on luck, now had her trailing twelve to seven. Maybe I should cheat…
“Yeah!” Priam flipped a pair and let out a shout of joy that made Gryphe smile. If he had tried to taunt her, she would have cheated without remorse, but he smiled so naturally that she couldn't bring herself to crush him. “I love this game. Can I buy a deck somewhere?”
“In your dreams, maybe,” the shaman replied, invoking her luck before revealing a card whose pair she didn't know. Damn! “Do you realize my predecessors spent part of their lives creating these cards to facilitate getting the ideal upgrade for [Dark Vision]?”
“I didn't mean to be rude, sorry. Is it really that complicated?” he asked, winning a pair.
Gryphe sighed, flipping another orphan card. “An ideal upgrade allows you to obtain a legendary skill, even without the corresponding Concepts or Supremacies. It’s the cornerstone of many factions. Today, you'll get an ideal upgrade because hundreds of Tier 3s and Tier 4s have spent part of their lives exploring and studying the System. They had to collect dozens, if not hundreds, of prerequisites and figure out which ones were easily reproducible and safe to earn. These cards before you and the spheres you saw earlier are the fruits of multiple lifetimes of work. It all seems easy to you because you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“…I won’t forget that.”
Gryphe smiled as she quickly flipped another card whose pair she knew. “Too busy listening to my speech, you missed your turn,” she cackled.
The young man just smiled. “It's not a big deal; I already got the ideal upgrade.”
The statement left the old shaman flabbergasted. In two games?!
“…Monster.”
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ABLVV86ntzoD-HJqDVAP1s444IvMXkepEihhSPuBu0d47WxVUUFRguQ_8nYcMN9aBTM0At6gkJAg08bpBWOOTjFiD2hdRWzDPMxaTJPwXFhhfte2683qZMgu-ZEV_BMGNKexI5K87smBQhRzI3lno1TfgEkn=w1181-h295-s-no?authuser=0]Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 755
Constitution 1 195
Agility 897
Vitality 1 147
Perception 792 (+14)
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 599
Dexterity 673
Memory 864
Willpower 1 168
Charisma 697 (+5)
META:
Meta-affinity 829
Meta-focus 417
Meta-endurance 710
Meta-perception 346
Meta-chance 274
Meta-authority 228
Potential: 12 670 (-1 192)
Tier 0
Sun points: 1 487 224 (+399)
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED
[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 152 days 18 hours 37 minutes 55 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attributes > 900 / 1 attribute > 1 200