A Novel Concept - A death a day, MC will live anyway!-Chapter 341: Three Pinches of Pragmatism and One of Dreams
A few minutes earlier.
Sphinx frowned, scanning the cavernous hideout before her. The necromancer’s lair seemed far emptier than it had been mere moments ago.
“Where’s my gift?” she asked in a lilting voice.
“Priam just received it.”
“The whole point was for him to know it came from me, you bag of bones!” the child growled. A karmic link sent her the mental equivalent of a poke, and Sphinx corrected herself. “Sorry, Moonie. From us.”
“I didn’t even get the chance to plant a curse bomb in the wyrm’s skull, so I’m not exactly thrilled either.” Seth attempted to sigh, but lacking lungs, he failed. “Oh well, I hope he enjoys the surprise.”
“So do I.”
The madman grinned. “Well, now that’s settled, it’s time to kill you. Nothing personal, but Osiris always wanted a feline plushie when he was a kid.”
“Do you even know how to stuff a corpse?”
“Behind every taxidermist is a failed necromancer,” Seth smirked. He spread his arms, as if to receive an ovation for his genius, and Sphinx ignored him as she had learned to do.
“I can think of at least one other place to hide a failed necromancer.”
“Oh? Where?”
The mythological beast yowled, growing to her full size. “Under twenty tons of very pissed-off sphinx.”
Clad in Knightmare, his trusted, mechanized armor, Kazuki fought alongside his wife and the elite warriors of humanity. The corrupted horde that had once seemed endless on the holographic maps was now thinning. The relentless resistance of the human defenders had taken its toll—but more than that, the battlefield had been shaped by the feats of their Champion. When two-thirds of the undead fell within a single minute, the troops’ morale skyrocketed.
Leaderless after Prometheus’s kill, pushed back by the capital’s force fields, and bombarded by mages, archers, marksmen, and siege engines, the corrupted were slowly being routed.
That didn’t make them any less dangerous.
Kazuki spotted a precarious situation and pushed off with his leading leg, using the ground as a springboard. A fraction of a second later, the earth beneath him erupted like a bomb had gone off, but the spearmaster was already gone.
Crossing hundreds of meters in mere seconds, he arrived just in time to interpose Dori between a pair of descending claws that carried the finality of an executioner’s blade. The force behind the strike was nothing compared to the raw attributes of the Warrior, who blocked it with ease.
With a sharp kick, Kazuki sent the abomination sprawling before ending its miserable existence by crushing its skull under his metal sabaton.
“Are you alright?” he asked in English, offering a hand to the young man he had just saved.
“I… Yeah. Thanks.” The stranger hesitated only a moment before accepting the help. You didn’t say no to a four-meter-tall mech suit. “Are you a Gundam?”
“I have no idea what that is,” Kazuki replied, slicing through a corrupted monster attempting to creep up behind him. “Be careful—no System quest is worth dying for.”
“Yeah. I guess. Thanks again dude.”
Kazuki turned back to what remained of the battlefield and resumed the hunt. Around him, humans fought to protect their own… and to reap the rewards of an event that had triggered just minutes ago.
Temporary Event: Defend the Capital!
The shadow of the Necromoon looms over Proxima.
A portion of the megafauna responsible for the continents’ isolation has been corrupted. More than a thousand humans have risen against this threat, choosing to defend their new homeland.
Such bravery deserves recognition.
An event has appeared in your zone!
Within it, you must abide by the event’s rules.
To exit the event, leave the zone or achieve victory.
Rule (Tier 0): Purge the influence of the Necromoon from your lands.
Feat:
Survive until the event ends.
Rewards:
Each kill or assist grants between 1 and 10 Potential points.
A Title will be awarded upon the purge’s completion.
Good luck!
Given those conditions, it was no surprise that every soldier was ready to fight. Kazuki had even spotted kids on the ramparts, loosing arrows at monsters a thousand times their weight. Others preferred to fetch water for exhausted fighters or clean their weapons. The System’s definition of an assist was broad.
Effortlessly dodging an Earl’s attack, Kazuki channeled his Aura into his weapon’s tip. When he slashed forward, the massive creature was bisected. The cutting wave continued, scything through a hundred more abominations in its wake.
Event: Defend the Capital!
Banishment of 127 corrupted (Tier 0) - Potential + 541
Cheers erupted behind him, and Kazuki grinned. Standing on the battlefield, defending people against an evil force, he felt right at home.
Arnold, Champion of the Var Elegis, sole Homunculus of the Eighth Generation, Administrator of the Empire’s AGI, and Elysian Prince, struggled to process his latest notification.
Announcement to Sector Hope:
Priam Azura withstood a quintuple Tribulation at Tier 0.
Final rank: Sector - year: 2
The First was no longer first. That title now belonged to him. Arnold had known this moment would come, but most of his simulations had projected the event much further into the future.
Still, the System’s truth blinked before him, and the Tyrant was not one to deny reality. As the factory around him continued crafting millions of robotic components, the homunculus integrated his primary vessel to devise new plans.
Was the First truly weaker than him? The nature of Tribulations made certainty impossible. Arnold himself would have failed the psychological aspect of his quintuple had he not received [Artificial Instinct] from his rival. Was it possible that the First’s weakness was more critical than his own? If so, did the Var Elegis have the means to exploit it? After all, if the First’s weakness was beyond the reach of the Tyrant’s weapons and Concepts, a battle would be futile.
It was also possible that the First was deliberately highlighting a potential weakness to lure in scavengers. That had been the story of their first encounter, and to this day, Arnold still didn’t understand how Priam Azura had survived. That ignorance demanded caution.
Even with quantum processors running at full capacity, it took nearly an hour for the Var Elegis to decide. I will stay my armies.
No sooner had he reached this conclusion than alarms blared.
Using Micro to direct his full mechanical body, Arnold headed for the exit of the world fragment he was exploiting. Walking through abandoned streets, he ignored the ruined houses that had yet to be recycled by his robots. Beneath his feet, glass crunched and a secondary process identified the source instantly.
His foot had just crushed a picture frame, destroying the family photo preserved inside. Three natives were visible on the black-and-white paper. A second process informed him: two of them were dead, while the last one rotted in a lab, awaiting experimentation. While the Var Elegis had no interest in preserving the culture of the fragment’s previous inhabitants, he was intrigued by the possibilities offered by their genome, retroviruses, and microbiota.
A rift stood at the center of the village’s former main square, and Arnold stepped through it into his primary laboratory. The aether’s density was the only confirmation he had returned to Elysium. Nothing remained of the landscape but a vast crater.
Looking up, Arnold detected a spiritual fluctuation equivalent to that of a Tier 4. Subtle deviations in its spectral hue suggested a failed Tier 5. Either a being who had faltered at the end of their High Tribulation… or a Fallen.
As a bolt of searing light struck down at him, Arnold raised a void black arm to block. The calamity-infused Concept within the attack melted the rock beneath his feet, but failed to make him budge.
[Attack of the Clones].
A thousand portals opened across the crater, each one unleashing a Gold clone wearing laser weaponry. The targeting systems were unerring, their mechanical precision locking onto the enemy without hesitation.
Beams of light and condensed energy clashed, unleashing a storm of destruction that left dozens of clone corpses in its wake.
Arnold leapt, ascending into the sky to meet his nameless adversary. His first strike dispersed the dust cloud that had shrouded the battlefield, unveiling the carnage below. The retaliation was instantaneous—a counterforce so powerful it transformed the very air between them into searing plasma. In the span of a heartbeat, a hundred exchanges of blows happened, each roaring louder than thunder and striking fiercer than lightning.
Having gauged each other, the two opponents separated.
“Sumstreh, the Fallen.”
“Arnold, the Tyrant,” came a disembodied voice, cold and impassive. The sky darkened, a reflection of the mid-Tier’s wrath, while the Tier 4 revealed itself at the heart of a single pillar of light. “This space is sealed for the next five minutes. You will not escape.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Any other being might have taken offense. Did the Fallen truly believe he could bring down a Prince in a mere five minutes? It remained to be seen who was the predator and who was the prey. Yet Arnold had no misplaced pride. What he possessed was a desire to complete the picture.
“Why this attack?”
“Because I am still powerless to kill Priam Azura. But I’ll think about it once I’m done with you.”
Obeying his artificial instinct, the Tyrant smiled. “You have spoken words that i would have said to you.”
[Time remaining on Proxima: 28 minutes]
“So?” Jasmine asked, watching Priam lost in thought.
He responded through the link between their add-ons—ensuring their conversation remained beyond the reach of eavesdroppers in the sector.
“Conquest is the opposite of freedom, and that’s… something I hold dear. I don’t want to be an oppressor.”
“It’s just the name of an Aura.”
“I think it’s more than that,” Priam replied. “We both know Aura is tied to Micro, which itself is connected to our Story. To cultivate it, I’d have to feed it actions aligned with conquest. When you look at me, do you see a conqueror?”
Jasmine studied her boss’s chiseled face and thought, not for the first time, that she wouldn’t mind being conquered by him. But Rose had advised her to be less crude if she wanted to get into the young man's heart.
“Well, you’ve never denied your nickname, Mister Juggernaut.”
“A man willing to do anything to chase his dreams, with an insatiable curiosity for the world and magic that no obstacle can stop—that’s me,” Priam grinned. “But I don’t stay to establish dominion. I’m an explorer, not a conqueror. Let’s leave that to Arnold and Prometheus.”
Jasmine tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, laughing. “My handsome poet doesn’t like being called a conqueror. Noted. Got a more pragmatic reason to reject it?”
“Yep. Conquest is a tool for punching down, killing swarms of weak foes, and Pyro already fills that role. What I need is something that punches up, not just another collection of powers.”
Priam had the opposite problem from Jasmine. His skill set was perfect for wiping out hordes of pests, but not for bringing down a single giant. The trouble was that his enemies belonged to the latter category.
“Good point, but… I’m gonna play devil’s advocate, okay? This new Title seems incompatible with your old one. You might lose your Aura by giving up [Horseman of the Apocalypse].”
“It’s tied to a Merit, and I don’t think you can lose those. Worst case, it’ll be like [Moon Earl] and the Merit will transfer to my new Title. It’ll still be an Aura, just a different one.”
“Fair enough, but you’d be giving up Conquest Aura—something that let you cut enemy attention when we infiltrated Dal Cal’s tower. If you’d taken the time to sit down and study that power, you might’ve found more ways to use it. That’s what I did with my Death Aura.”
“Point taken,” Priam admitted, frowning. “But I have a feeling that was more of an Aura ability than something unique to Conquest. Your Death Aura can’t do the same?”
Jasmine focused, attuning herself to her stealth abilities and instincts. Ever since she had slain the Arkanian leader, her intuition had sharpened. She felt Priam’s attention—his gaze on her, his awareness tracking her presence through his Domain.
Summoning her Death Aura, Jasmine severed the signals related to her presence. Priam blinked before continuing his inner monologue. He couldn’t see her anymore.
“Hey,” Jasmine snapped her fingers.
“What the—”Priam jolted nearly ten centimeters off the ground before scowling. “Jasmine?! Since when…?” He raised a hand, switching to mental communication. “Wait, I remember now. Holy shit, you’d have poked me with a knife and I wouldn’t have sensed shit.”
“I couldn’t. The more I interact with you, the shorter my invisibility lasts. That’s not even mentioning your instinct, which would've kicked in if I’d shown too much killing intent. Finally, you trust me. Without that, it wouldn’t have held for half a second.”
“Still, that’s terrifying. I guess that answers my question.”
“My Death Aura is probably better than yours at killing my enemies’ awareness,” Jasmine admitted. “But I bet Conquest has its own strengths.”
“So, like Concepts, Auras develop abilities in line with their nature…” Priam paused mid-sentence, and Jasmine smiled, watching him puzzle over the two phenomena. He eventually overcame his curiosity and went on. “Which brings me back to square one: I need to pick the Title that suits me best.”
Seeing the frustrated expression on Priam’s face, Jasmine resisted the urge to pull him into an embrace. Baby steps, she reminded herself.
“At least, we’ve made good progress. Any other concerns?”
Priam didn’t have to think long. “Another reason I’m leaning toward the new Title is that I barely invested in Conquest’s Merits. I didn’t want any rejection issues with Hecate’s New Moon.”
Trees of Merit
[Horseman of the Apocalypse - Legendary] - Tier 1: Eye of the Conqueror. It's hard to run away from a Conqueror.
Even with [Chimera], layering two ocular mutations seemed like a terrible idea.
“Not much to go on for Conquest,” Jasmine admitted. “You think the new Title has better synergy?”
“I have affinities with all the Ages, and each strengthens a part of my build instead of adding something redundant.” Priam paused. “Honestly, the first two are useless or dangerous. Gold might help extend my lifespan and grant Titles tied to longevity, but I’d rather take a page from your book. You got [Ageless] without that, and I think I can, too. Silver will be weaker than [Iconoclast], which I’ve already invested in. That leaves Bronze, Heroes, and Iron… I’m torn.”
“Liar.”
Priam looked up. Jasmine wore one of those charming smiles.
“I’m lying?”
“To yourself. You’ve already made your choice, but until the System hands down its divine confirmation, you’re afraid of being wrong.”
Priam let himself drift into a moment of introspection and came to the same conclusion as Jasmine.
“I guess a part of me resonates with overcoming impossible challenges, writing my own legend, and slaying mythical beasts. But I have so little information to go on.”
“You’re three parts pragmatism, and one part dream. Trust yourself.”
Hearing her say that, Priam realized she knew him better than anyone. Maybe even better than he knew himself.
Like only a woman in love could.
Today, Jasmine had placed her trust in him, and Priam decided to return the favor.
Mythical Title (Selection Required)
You have survived a Quintuple Tribulation, and two incompatible Myths fragments present themselves:
Title upgrade: [Horseman of the Apocalypse]
New Title: [The Five Ages of Man]
Possessing one of these Titles permanently excludes the other.
“[The Five Ages of Man].”
Title Lost:[Horseman of the Apocalypse]
New Title!
[The Five Ages of Man - Mythical] - The ancient Greeks pondered the cycle of life, believing their civilization declined with each passing generation. Two thousand years later, humanity began its conquest of space. Progress, like the Juggernaut, is relentless.
More than a legend, your name humbles prodigies. While others whisper about you, you name the era that will be yours:
Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes, Iron.
“... Heroes.”
Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 915
Constitution 1 653
Agility 1 256
Vitality 1 709
Perception 888
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 634
Dexterity 787
Memory 995
Willpower 1 221
Charisma 894
META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 110
Meta-focus 633
Meta-endurance 1 145
Meta-perception 558
Meta-chance 1 020
Meta-authority 579
Potential: 36 752
Tier 0
Sun points: 2 143 444
[He Who Eludes Death] charge: OFF. Reloaded in 16 hours 11 minutes 32 seconds.
Concepts:
Bloodlines:
Tempering:
Rewards standing:
[Tribulation]: Two Tribulations pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 29 days 18 hours 12 minutes 20 seconds.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 900 / 6 attributes > 1 200 / 1 attribute > 1 800
Next arc already complete on Patreon if you want to find out what happens next!
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