Braato turned to the homunculus with a nacing growl. “I grew up hearing stories of the Champions... It's not my usual thing to bully a Tier 0, but I suppose I can make an exception for a traitor.”
Throughout the interaction, Arnold never took his eyes off Priam. “A tank like you can’t defeat ,” he said without even glancing at the Tier 4.
Frustrated with how the day had gone, Braato bristled at the insult and charged at the homunculus with a roar. His muscles swelled, veins bulging across his forearms. Flesh collided with steel—and won.
Arnold stumbled back, clearly outclassed in raw physical strength. He countered with a powerful uppercut that landed squarely on the Tier 4’s chin. The opponent grinned.
“My masseur hits harder than that,” he said, headbutting the homunculus with a vicious crack.
Blow after blow drove Arnold backward, though they failed to bring him down completely, even after a minute. Seeing a Tier 0 hold his ground, Braato growled in frustration, his fists glowing with a brown aura. The next uppercut sent Arnold flying, crashing fifty ters away. A white aura surrounded him, and Priam recognized the signature of Conquest.
Braato charged forward as the homunculus teleported, defying even the suppression of a high-level Domain.
Arnold reappeared behind Priam, launching a sneak attack. The young warrior dodged and quickly tead up with Braato, flanking their foe. What began as a three-way brawl soon turned into a full-blown lee as other tribespeople noticed the fight. Within seconds, Arnold found himself outnumbered—first ten to one, then fifty to one.
The Tier 3s proved resilient, absorbing his physical blows while dealing damage in return. Arnold was soon forced to summon novas and lasers to defend himself. It might have been dangerous if Priam and Braato hadn’t instinctively decided to intercept the energy attacks. The tank couldn’t annihilate the Var Elegis Champion outright, but his skin was tough enough to shrug off the homunculus’s efforts. Finally, Arnold began to retreat.
Dodging arrows and blades with a roll, Arnold found himself unwittingly in the path of a spectral boar’s defense. The beast's tusk impaled him. Before anyone could capitalize on the opening, Arnold teleported to the far edge of the clearing. A gaping hole in his chest, the strongest of the rivals was looking mortal at last.
“Since their upgrade, my instincts have been screaming that showing you my true abilities is a bad idea,” the homunculus said to Priam, his gaze never leaving his rival. He dismissed the army of Tier 3s with contempt. “If I can’t reveal my skillset, then I have no choice but to rely on numbers.”
A stone appeared in Arnold’s hand, and Priam’s eyes widened as he recognized a hearthstone. A reward obtained during the Reunion, capable of connecting its user to a specific location.
Space collapsed and then stabilized as a portal opened, large enough to allow two elephants to pass through side by side.
“Can anyone close that thing?” Priam demanded.
“One of the shamans or Leo could,” Braato replied while barking orders to his subordinates.
“Fuck.”
As if in response to Priam’s frustration, a homunculus stepped through the portal. A dozen followed, and the flood showed no sign of stopping.
[Identification]
[Fourth-Generation Var Elegis Clone - Soulless] - A soulless clone based on Arnold NetSky, the Champion of the Var Elegis. Its body can tank Tier 2 attacks, and its offensive capabilities are even more formidable.
The lack of a soul prevents it from benefiting from the System, but this weakness is partially compensated when it serves as an avatar for a Var Elegis elite. The controller can channel so of their abilities through the clone.
Arnold thinks an army will overwhelm you. He’s wrong; it would take far fewer.
As the clones’ red eyes turned to match Arnold’s, Priam realized the battle was about to spiral out of control.
A Tier 3 fired an arrow at the portal, but a clone stepped in its path, sacrificing itself in an explosion. Imdiately, a dozen more raised their hands toward the archer. Before Priam could shout a warning, ten laser beams pierced the tribeswoman. She fell to her knees, her life force barely clinging to her. Growling, she knocked a dozen arrows in an instant and obliterated the homunculi.
By the ti that exchange ended, a hundred more clones had crossed through.
With a roar, the other warriors and huntresses charged into the fray. The ground shook, and shockwaves uprooted the trees at the forest’s edge. Alongside the Aelbes, Snaherts, and Gaeserts, Priam fought fiercely. Every strike of Prosse was lethal, but for every clone that fell, two more took its place. Ten seconds after the portal opened, a thousand clones had erged.
“Braato, the portal!” Priam shouted.
His voice was drowned out by the chaos. Glancing around, Priam caught sight of the Tier 4 at the edge of his vision. The Gaesert chief was doing what he did best: protecting his people. Transford into a massive boar, he used his body to shield the camp from the barrage of lasers. Most of the clone army had scattered, targeting the weaker tribe mbers to occupy Braato. Arnold was playing dirty, determined to win.
Out of the corner of his eye, Priam spotted his rival. The homunculus had lost an arm and sported a gaping wound in his solar plexus, but he was winning his gamble. In so areas, the locals were already falling back, overwheld by sheer numbers.
“Get out of the way!” Braato roared as the spirit of a colossal boar materialized before him. The spectral beast charged toward the portal, with hundreds of clones rushing to et it. They self-destructed in tactical nuclear explosions, eroding the construct. Ravaged by radiation, the spectral invocation crumbled just as it reached the portal.
Seeing another column of clones erging, Priam knew they couldn’t win by staying on the defensive. If that portal led to the Var Elegis howorld, millions—maybe billions—of clones were waiting to cross. Braato might survive in those conditions, but no one else would.
“I’ll handle it,” said a voice from his shadow.
Priam hesitated for a mont before nodding. “Together.”
Opening his mouth, Priam began to draw in the ambient aether. Arnold assud a defensive stance but made no move to stop him.
Three seconds later, the Breath was ready. Condensed by his draconic lung, amplified by [Breathless], and empowered by his Breath Concept affinity, the primordial energy focused into a singular, devastating point. The Tier 3s standing in front of Priam stepped aside while the clones assembled into a solid wall. No one dared interrupt him. As much as Arnold knew what was coming, he also knew Priam was inevitable.
The Smiling Juggernaut roared. The Breath detonated. The world ignited.
Spectral scales covered Priam’s skin as a column of fla shot toward the portal. Everything in its path—air, earth, tal—lted. Pyro, the flas inherited from a candidate for the Eighth Throne, annihilated the Var Elegis army, incinerating the clones.
As if Priam had opened the gates of hell, the world burned. Riding the wave of his own fire, he ignored Arnold’s Domain, overwhelming it with the absurd amount of aether fueling his flas. Appearing before the portal, Priam locked eyes with the Var Elegis before he was swallowed by his own shadow. Free from his rival, he started to systematically wipe out the clones.
The connection between Arnold and his army was severed by Jasmine’s shadows. Deprived of their Champion’s abilities, the homunculi were quickly dispatched by the Tier 3s. Sensing an opening, Braato planted himself in front of the portal, slaughtering each clone as it erged.
After ten brutal seconds, Priam collapsed onto a patch of grass that had miraculously survived the devastation. His aether, willpower, endurance, vitality, and lifespan were spent. He downed a potion handed to him by a Tier 3 and lay back to catch his breath. Around him, the warriors and huntresses readied their strongest attacks, prepared to strike down Arnold the mont he erged from the lingering shadow. Had they finally won?
The minutes dragged on, and Priam’s expression darkened. He was receiving no feedback from Jasmine’s sub-system and began to worry. Her mission had been to stall the homunculus for a few seconds—no more.
As the warriors began to talk among themselves, the Gaesert chief noticed Priam’s troubled look.
“Is sothing wrong?”
“... Jasmine should have released him by now.”
“She—”
The ground erupted in a geyser of shadow. A fraction of a second later, a hundred Tier 4-level attacks converged on Arnold’s silhouette. A white do appeared, intercepting the projectiles. Craters pockmarked the orb’s surface, giving it the appearance of a moon.
That power felt strangely familiar.
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Priam’s pupils vanished, and a monochro sphere materialized without his command. It expanded until it t Arnold’s lunar shield. At the point where the two celestial bodies touched, a window opened, and Arnold stared through it. The rest of the world seed frozen, as though the two rivals stood in another dinsion.
“Hecate New Moon,” Arnold guessed. “I suppose even among rivals, our relationship is special. As expected—”
“Where’s Jasmine?” Priam cut in.
“Dead.” Arnold’s lunar pupils glead as he offered an explanation. “The Full Moon is the nesis of shadows.”
Priam clenched his fists as he locked eyes with his opponent. That bastard had gotten a mythological mutation from the Colosseum's rewards, too... and he had chosen Hecate Full Moon.
Sothing shot through the air—a lifeless object hurled by the homunculus. Priam caught Jasmine’s dead body. She was beautiful, and if it weren’t for the gaping hole in her chest, she could have been mistaken for sleeping.
A surge of spiritual energy flooded Priam’s mind—his sub-system implanted in her. It allowed him to feel her final emotions.
“Jasmine…” he murmured, sensing her shock as she realized the Terminator could bypass her shadows. Then ca the anger—she had been furious with herself, replaying the promise she made to hold Arnold back, hating her own weakness.
Priam dropped to his knees as the pain overwheld him. Arnold had tortured her, trying to extract information about the First. It wasn’t just pride that kept her going—it was loyalty. Then, when all hope faded, it was courage that allowed her to trigger the Tribulations that ended her life.
Priam’s stomach churned as he felt her loneliness and despair as darkness swallowed her soul.
At the final mont, fear gave way to love. As her life ebbed away, one na lit her soul, pushing back the shadows of death one last ti.
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