CCTnovel Chapter 298: Man Proposes, System Disposes
Chapter 298: Man Proposes, System Disposes
Valaryth Quest: Invasion I - Pseudo Alien Tribulation.
Retrieve the heart of the Tier 2 High Tribulation ‘Deluge’ for the System.
Reward: Rewards of a Triple Tribulation, plus validation of the following thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attributes > 900 / 1 attribute > 1,200
Difficulty: Mythic
“Best damn birthday gift ever!” Priam exclaimed. This reward would allow him to push his attributes even further before his next quintuple Tribulation. He would face them with the stats of a candidate who had completed seven Tribulations, not just four.
His shadow flinched. “It’s your birthday?!”
“Just like every year.”
“But I don’t have a gift!”
“No big deal.”
“Rose told me you give gifts to the people you love. I love you and want to give you a gift.”
The declaration was so sincere it took Priam off guard.
“Well... thanks.”
“I’ll tell you when I think of something. But why didn’t you tell us? Alain didn’t say anything, either...”
Priam laughed. “He always forgets. But he’s a great dad the rest of the year, so I let it slide. As for me...” He shrugged. “I didn’t see the point.”
“You mean, apart from throwing a party?”
“With all the dangers that threaten us, it’s a waste of time.”
Jasmine huffed, unimpressed. “That sounds like the kind of hyper-pragmatic logic I’d expect from Arnold, not you. If life can stop at any second, we should live it to the fullest!”
Priam respected her enthusiasm but followed a different creed.
“I get what you’re saying, but I’d hate to die because my enemies were training while I was out partying.”
Despite [He Who Eludes Death], Priam knew he wasn’t immortal. Any High Tier could snuff him out like a candle. If death was a possibility, his pride prevented him from accepting it without a fight.
“Not dying is surviving; a commendable goal, but very different from living.”
Priam shrugged. “I don’t have time for semantics.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I’m not letting you brush this off,” Jasmine pressed. “Do you even like the life you’re living?”
Her concern was genuine, and Priam didn’t want to shut her down. He gave the question real thought, scanning his surroundings. The storm howled in his ears, its lethal drops falling harmlessly on his skin. Here he was, facing nature’s fury, standing on equal footing. ṞÄNÔВËS
A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, I love it.”
“I'm sure it sounds metal in your head,” Jasmine shot back. “But don’t burn yourself out. When the warning signs show up, it’s already too late.”
The advice reminded Priam of his dark adolescence, and he took it seriously.
“I know. I’ll take a break once my Tribulations are done,” he promised.
“Mhm... I’ll hold you to that.”
A distant thunderclap sounded, and Priam focused on the trial ahead. Stretching out his body, he set off again. Two thin kinetic platforms hovered under his feet, letting him step through the sheet of rain into the third zone. The deadly downpour lashed at him uselessly, while the wind’s force multiplied, a crushing weight bearing down as if to drag him into the whirlpool below. But Priam bore the storm’s wrath with brute endurance, striding almost serenely toward the center of the Deluge.
The tempest raged around him. Heavy raindrops hitting the water’s surface created splashes, sending up clouds of mist at shoulder height. The sheer volume clouded his vision, but thanks to his Mist Concept, Priam could partially pierce the chaos.
At his tenth step, the wind shifted. Instead of pushing him down like a giant’s hand, it suddenly pulled him upward. Instantly, Priam used his kinetic mastery to anchor himself to the churning sea surface. Without it, he would have been swept up, carried by the gusts to hundreds of meters high, toward a grim fate.
The use of his kinetic skill displeased the Tribulation. The air charged with electrons, and Priam’s instincts screamed.
In a flash, he rode the mist, reappearing about twenty meters away. The thick, alien ambient aether limited his range.
Behind him, a lightning column struck the ocean. Priam only caught it out of the corner of his eye, but it was enough for the flash’s image to be imprinted on his retina. A vision of death. Then came the sound. The thunder shook his eardrums like the death knell, confronting Priam with his own mortality.
He was at the heart of the unholy fusion of a hurricane and a maelstrom of catastrophic proportions. Beneath him, a vortex capable of sucking an aircraft carrier into the depths, and above, a storm cloud ready to unleash bolts the size of skyscrapers.
Yet, Priam wore an uncontrollable smile.
Without his constitution, resistances, accelerated regeneration from [Three-headed Hydra], kinetic mastery, and Mist Concept, he would have been dead long ago. The only reason the calamity hadn't devoured him yet was that this Tribulation targeted his strengths rather than his weaknesses. Any other Tier 0 would have been vaporized by now, and if he didn’t respect this trial, Priam would join the wrong side of the statistics.
“You okay?” Jasmine’s worried voice broke through.
“Yeah.”
Turning back toward his goal, a focused Priam pressed forward.
The cyclone’s pattern soon became apparent. Every ten steps, the wind direction changed to destabilize the Tribulation candidate. Instead of brute-forcing through, Priam summoned his spectral scales. [Smooth Scales] provided friction resistance, forcing the air to slide over him. It wasn’t perfect, but it bought him enough time to hop through the mist a few times, reaching parts of the zone where the wind pinned him toward the ocean. Here, he was relatively safe.
After several minutes resting to restore his willpower—the resource that fueled his Concepts—Priam set off again. He moved from one safe zone to another, and after an hour, he reached a fourth wall of swirling blue and white. In this new zone, water and ice mingled to crush those not discouraged by the last trial. Deadly rain was now joined by hail, a storm capable of eroding a cliff in minutes.
Priam was harder than rock and pushed onward.
Third zone of the Deluge cleared. Valaryth’s Ocean’s reward: [Shear Resistance] x15...
Seal detected. Progression delayed.
Before he could survey his new surroundings, a hailstone the size of his head smashed into his shoulder with cannonball force. He was catapulted backward, flung from the fourth zone to the third, where a gust of wind hurled him skyward before he could react. The jaws of the Deluge had seized him and wouldn’t let go.
White of the lightning, gray of the rain, black of the storm, then white again. Colors spun before Priam’s eyes like a kaleidoscope, further blurring his bearings. Swallowed by the opaque cloud and tossed in every direction by the furious winds, he lost all sense of up and down. His speed prevented him from sensing his surroundings through his Mist Concept. As nausea climbed, he realized he couldn’t even rely on his kinetic mastery to get out of this one. Lost in the storm’s heart, he doubted he could dodge lightning without seeing it. All he could do was wait.
So, like a garment in a hellish washing machine, Priam waited.
Titus stepped into the second zone, his face set in a grim expression. His Storm Dominion kept the deadly rain from shredding him.
“You feel anything?” Gooru asked from his right. The old warrior faced the raindrops stoically as they crashed against his body. Between Valaryth’s rewards and Micro, his tempered physique was able to withstand the downpour head-on. On the other hand, his harmony with Storm was so low that he couldn’t hear it.
“The storm’s whispers are strange,” Titus muttered, frowning.
“What do you mean?”
“It hasn’t tasted blood today.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Unless the intruder survived the lightning.”
“You don’t think it has to do with you always walking around naked?”
Priam glanced down and realized his mist-woven clothes hadn’t survived the wrath of the lightning. His assets swung freely in the breeze. Jasmine might have a point. But if I put clothes on, then the System wins.
Refusing to lose any battle, Priam decided to stay nude until his quest was over.
As he stood up, Priam noticed he barely felt the raindrops running down his face. Each held the kinetic energy of a bullet, yet his resistance and constitution were now so high they were harmless.
“One step closer on the Path of the ultimate Tank. If the Deluge’s got nothing left, I think I’ve got this quest in the bag,” he grinned.
“Don’t jinx it. Plus, I thought most of your resistances’ progress was limited by your Tribulations?” Jasmine asked.
“I unlocked the seal on my constitution,” Priam admitted.
“WHAT?!”
“I—”
“You already weren’t sure you’d survive a quintuple Tribulation! A sextuple would kill you!”
Priam winced. “I’m not planning to face a sextuple if I can avoid it.”
“Explain. Now.”
“Read the quest description.”
“... Rewards of a Triple Tribulation, plus validation of the following three thresholds: 12 attributes > 300 / 6 attributes > 600 / 1 attribute > 1 200.” Jasmine’s thresholds were different from Priam’s, as their builds weren’t the same. “I don’t see where it says you can cancel your sixth Tribulation.”
“Yet that’s what I’m reading: the thresholds are targeted, and I think that’s a clue. Now that I’ve surpassed one of these thresholds, what happens if I complete the quest?” Priam asked.
“The threshold you just passed will be ‘validated.’” Jasmine paused. “You think it could retroactively affect the new Tribulation?”
“If the threshold that triggered the Tribulation no longer counts, then neither does the Tribulation.”
It was an elegant solution on the System’s part to give Priam the means to claim the heart of the Deluge.
“Are you sure?”
Priam mentally cleared his throat. “Nope. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have waited to unseal my constitution. Still, I’m certain the System would have phrased things differently if it didn’t want me to consider this.”
“Unless it’s setting you up.”
Priam shrugged, turning back toward the fourth zone. “Man proposes, System disposes.”
Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 893 SEALED
Constitution 1 326 (+127)
Agility 1 173 (+4)
Vitality 1 143 (+7)
Perception 858
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 599 SEALED
Dexterity 752
Memory 891 SEALED
Willpower 1 004
Charisma 648
META:
Meta-affinity 999
Meta-focus 554 (+3)
Meta-endurance 896 (+9)
Meta-perception 502
Meta-chance 589 (+33)
Meta-authority 315
Potential: 17 913 (+73)
Tier 0
Sun points: 143 444
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: PRIMED
Concepts:
Breath (T0): 100% / HarmonyFire (T0): 100% / UnityPyro (T1): 100% / Half-step UnityMist (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 TokenReborn Token - Reset biological lifespan (Legendary)
[Tribulation]: Six Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 133 days 14 hours 42 minutes 55 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 600 / 6 attributes > 900 / 3 attributes > 1 200 / 1 attribute > 1 500
Next arc already complete on Patreon if you want to find out what happens next!
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