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 exclaid. 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 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 sothing. 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 …” He shrugged. “I didn’t see the point.”
“You an, apart from throwing a party?”
“With all the dangers that threaten us, it’s a waste of ti.”
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 comndable goal, but very different from living.”
Priam shrugged. “I don’t have ti for semantics.”
“I don’t know what that ans, 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.
A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, I love it.”
“I'm sure it sounds tal 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 volu 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 ters high, toward a grim fate.
The use of his kinetic skill displeased the Tribulation. The air charged with electrons, and Priam’s instincts scread.
In a flash, he rode the mist, reappearing about twenty ters 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 ca 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 beca 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 ti to hop through the mist a few tis, 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 garnt in a hellish washing machine, Priam waited.
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