Chapter 452: The Terrors’ Hunting Season Begins

Make sure to read the 451 before this one!
453 coming later today. I need to sleep before translating it!

*

Toes playing in the sand, Priam gazed out at Valaryth’s ocean as he spoke. In turn, he and Esmée recounted their lives. Then the conversation drifted. When the star sank into the sea, it returned to the present.

“You can locate the Terrors?”

“All of them except the Second,” Esmée replied. “A Tier 1 Prince is almost the equivalent of a Tier 0 Monarch. My geas won’t let me draw her attention, even if the chances of it detecting my divination skills are low.”

“Low how?”

“Infinitesimal.”

Priam smiled. “What about the First?”

“A sleeping Tier 1 Queen. Unlike its younger sister, it doesn’t hide. But you already know where it is.”

“Let’s say I have a hunch.”

Driven by an enticing quest, the Juggernaut had braved the Deluge two months earlier. Taking the simplest route, he had found the heart of an aborted High Tribulation. Despite the cold, the cyclone, and the hail, traveling overland had been far easier than exploring the marine maelstrom. His instincts whispered that beneath the water lay the lair of a terrible monster, one that would find release when the Deluge finally dissipated. In a few months. Damn, no rest for the wicked…

“We won’t bother it for now.”

“Glad to see your race upgrade didn’t make you too arrogant.”

Priam shrugged. “I’ve already faced a Tier 1 Monarch. Even if I have no doubt the First Terror is far weaker, I also know when I’m completely outclassed.”

“A story you haven’t told me yet.”

Priam thought back to Thaal. Even the Administrator wanted nothing to do with Vertex. No matter how powerful a Tier 1 might be, a Tier 8 could erase them with a thought. Which meant he was afraid for another reason. His potential? His family? Something else?

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not here.”

Esmée gazed out over the ocean pensively before nodding.

“Later, then.” Her grimoire appeared at her feet, open to a double page displaying a topographical map. A red cross immediately caught his eyes. “The lair of the Sixth Terror. I can take you there whenever you want.”

Priam smiled as night fell. “Ever gone for a midnight swim?”

*

The Seventh Terror had nearly killed Priam during his first dive into Valaryth. As a Tier 1 Earl, it had been slumbering near a volcano that Priam had awakened a few months earlier to destroy her lair. For a time, he had even considered using its core as a trophy for his body tempering.

Its little sister was also hibernating in a pit.

In the darkness of the abyss, Priam navigated using [Echolocation]. Aside from these ultrasounds, the world was silent… except for his hearts pounding wildly. Despite his inhuman attributes, there was something terrifying about swimming in the depths. The aquatic environment triggered fear in the human reptilian brain, and for good reason: crushing pressure, forbidden oxygen, freezing cold, total darkness… One had to be insane to venture there willingly.

Yet Priam did not panic. His love for the ocean pushed back the worst of his thalassophobia. In his imagination, the sea tried to soothe him, its currents caressing his skin like a nymph’s fingers. At the same time, he repeated an injunction to steel his resolve.

I can destroy anything here. I am the predator.

When an obstacle appeared on his mental radar, Priam absorbed its kinetic energy to slow himself. The maneuver allowed him to avoid crashing into a submerged cliff. Kicking to remain stationary, he turned toward his companion and focused on the aether cable linking them.

“You’re scrying it in this direction?”

“Indeed. Either the Terror can swim through stone, or there’s a cave somewhere,” Esmée replied through the mental link.

Closing his eyes, Priam focused on [Kinetic Sovereignty]. Most of the time, he channeled it to fly or inject energy into his surroundings. A blunt application. [Echolocation] required far more finesse.

Connecting his legendary skill to his Domain, Priam created a pulse. The equivalent of a dolphin’s click. The theory was simple: bundle sound waves of different frequencies to obtain a detailed image of his environment thanks to the echoes.

The vibrations of [Kinetic Sovereignty] traveled rapidly through the water, bouncing off nearby obstacles before returning to their creator. [Echolocation] translated those echoes into a precise mental image. Priam grimaced.

“So?”

“Nothing. Echolocation works poorly beyond a hundred meters.”

“Hm. My divination skills are more effective on living beings than on the environment. Want to sweep along the cliff to find the entrance?”

Priam made a face.

“I really don’t feel like spending my night exploring square kilometers to find a hidden entrance.”

“Would the great Priam be feeling lazy?”

“Let’s say I prefer using my head rather than my legs. Let me try something.”

From his science classes, Priam knew that higher frequencies were rapidly absorbed by water. If he mostly used ultrasounds, it was for their precision. As effective as dolphins’ clicks, his own [Echolocation] could detect a metal marble at nearly seventy meters. Today, the range was more important than the resolution.

The first low-frequency pulses were a fiasco. It wasn’t enough to turn a dial to change the frequency of the waves produced by [Kinetic Sovereignty]. Priam tinkered with his legendary skill for several minutes before releasing a particular pulse.

Lvl Up: [Kinetic Sovereignty] lvl 8
PERC +9
META(Focus) +9
META (Perception) +9

The water vibrated around him, the wave escaping his senses before returning one, two, then three seconds later. Several mental images formed in his mind, growing more imprecise with distance.

Lvl Up: [Echolocation] lvl 28, 29

PERC +4
DEXT +2

Priam overlaid them using his add-on to obtain a relatively accurate map of the cliff.

Lvl Up: [Priam’s System] lvl 25

MEM +3

VIVA +3

META(Authority) + 3

“Serial level-ups… I missed that.”

“I hope you found the cave entrance, because I doubt a single monster in this ocean missed your scan.”

“I got it. One kilometer above us.”

“Perfect. Let’s clear out the vermin before facing the boss.”

Priam positioned himself in front of Esmée, using [Echolocation] to update his map. Soon, a red dot appeared. Then a second. The Juggernaut summoned an ice lance, twisted it, and hurled it like a torpedo. Two kilometers from him, one dot vanished. The next instant, ten more appeared. Then a hundred. Damn.

On land, his flames would have ravaged the arrogant fools; underwater, the Pyro Sage was at a disadvantage.

“Maybe we should surface?”

Sensing Esmée’s uncertainty, Priam frowned. Retreating from basic mobs was not his style, but he understood that the young Empyrean did not have his physical resistances. The princess could not even face a Tier 1 eel barehanded. The dragon in him balked at fleeing, but the human knew she would pay for any mistake.

“Head for the surface,” he ordered. “I’ll act as bait behind you.”

“Too late.”

Priam raised his head as his perception went haywire. The second milestone was as simple as it was useful: he could tell when he was being watched—as long as the observer’s perception wasn’t higher than two times his own. A gift some humans had possessed before the Tutorial, but which became absolute once the attribute exceeded a thousand.

Using his sonar skill, Priam confirmed that a gigantic mass was detaching itself from the wall a kilometer above. A being with far too many legs was leaving its lair.

The Sixth Terror was coming to meet its hunter.

Multiplying ice spears, Priam devoted half his consciousness to emulating a torpedo launcher. The other half searched for a solution to this mess. An answer to the question: how do I destroy thousands of enemies without Pyro?

He had barely begun to rack his brain when a jolt shook it. [Homo Elysian Inspiration] connected disparate memories, and an idea revealed itself to Priam in a cerebral rush.

The Juggernaut smiled.

[Kinetic Sovereignty].

Emptying his energy reserves into his sphere of authority, Priam projected a translucent cone in front of him. Traveling through water, the acoustic wave devoured a kilometer in under a second before slamming into the school of carnivorous creatures. This time, it was no echolocation: the sound struck the fish like a shockwave. 

[Priams’ System] measured two hundred seventy decibels—the equivalent of two hundred ten decibels in air; louder than a rocket at liftoff. A sound capable of melting concrete.

On the map, half the red dots stopped moving.

“What the—”

“Infrasound at just under one hundred Hertz. The resonant frequency of most eyeballs. At low intensity, the material vibrates. At high intensity, it shatters. Like when a singer makes crystal explode by hitting the right note.”

Esmée paused. “You can blind them at a distance?”

“I can do much better than that.”

Ignoring the beast descending upon them, Priam fired a series of ten cones at even lower frequencies. Between one and ten Hertz was the spectrum of the heart.

A second later, his add-on removed half the remaining red dots.

Then the first monsters arrived. To cover Esmée, Priam lit a fireball in his hand to draw the fishes in and fired his vibratory cones while varying the frequency. Under Pyro’s light, he watched different parts of the monsters explode, his add-on recording and highlighting the interesting frequencies. Before the display, [Homo Elysian Inspiration] triggered again.

I could inflict the same thing on myself. That would be perfect to level up [Sun Steel Body]. I’m just missing a resistance to traction…

Driven mad by the smell of blood, the last aquatic beasts continued their suicidal advance, but Priam had already forgotten them. Head tilted back, he stared at a titanic silhouette gliding thirty meters above him.

[Heroic Identification]
[Charybdis’ Descendant - Tier 1 - Earl] - The Sixth Ocean’s Terror. A marine decapod crustacean weighing over a thousand tons. Legend says Charybdis conceived it with a crab she later devoured with mayonnaise.
Its atrophied soul saved it from certain death during Valaryth’s fragmentation.
Concept trace detected: Hardness. 
Attributes: Physical (1 500), Mental (1 000), META (1 000)
Weakness:

• You

A mad scientist had grafted the head of a centipede onto the body of a spider crab. A thick layer of crustacean armor covered its legs and abdomen, while a smoldering red glow seeped from its maw.

The symptom of a Breath.

“Priam, we need to—”

“Stay behind me.”

Positioning himself in front of Esmée, Priam invoked his Juggernaut’s crown. The Prince stared down the Earl, deliberately provoking it. Drawing its wrath upon himself.

The Terror fired. The water boiled, and a cascade of burning, pressurized fluid slammed into Priam and the nearby cliff. In the first second, the rock was stripped clean, as if blasted by a pressure washer. Soon, the stone crumbled, eroded into sand, then into dust.

When the Terror closed its mouth, the seabed displayed a perfect tunnel of emptiness. A half-cylinder of the cliff had vanished as well. Nothing remained… except Priam.

Lvl Up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 32
CONST +7
META (Endurance) +2

The Juggernaut lowered the arm he had raised in front of his face and examined himself. The skin of his limb was gone up to the elbow, but the muscles were intact. In fact, the epidermis was already regenerating. He wove a mental bridge toward the creature.

“Second chance.”

The odds that the Terror spoke French were low, but the taunt was obvious. The spider crab opened its maw again to unleash a second Breath. Priam absorbed it just as easily as the first.

Lvl Up: [Shear Resistance] lvl 33
CONST +7
META (Endurance) +2

Raising his head, he perceived signs of severe fatigue in his opponent and coiled in on himself.

That all? My turn.

Not stupid enough to open his mouth underwater, Priam kicked off and slammed into the crustacean. His meta-authority contested the enemy’s meta-endurance and crushed it; [Kinetic Sovereignty] petrified the Terror.

Climbing up to a joint, Priam flexed his legendary skill. With a sound like tearing metal, the leg lost, exposing the flesh. As the Juggernaut helped himself, a smile lit up his face. Perhaps it was the partially draconic nature of his opponent, but his cells sang with every bite.

I’m bringing you back to Blueberry. And I’m claiming the heart for myself.

As he hauled himself toward the monster’s head, Priam remembered something his father used to say. “With crustaceans, everything is edible. Except the head.”

Flexing his kinetic proficiency, Priam absorbed the surrounding energy. Beneath his fingers, the creature remained frozen, while the water cooled within his Domain. After thirty seconds, once his kinetic reserves were full, he inverted [Kinetic Sovereignty] to decapitate his opponent.

The Terror resisted. Priam persisted.

Soon, his meridians heated under the deluge of aether coursing through them. The strain became so critical that he had to divert part of the energy into his blood. The first Merit of Bloodless transformed his veins and arteries into a second set of pathways. Priam congratulated himself for taking it as he felt ichor boil beneath the torrent of power. Teeth clenched, the Juggernaut increased the flow, pitting his kinetic reserves against the Terror’s constitution.

Lvl Up: [Adaptive Golden Meridians] lvl 41
META (Focus) +3
META (Endurance) +6

The contest dragged on. Locking eyes with the spider crab’s hateful gaze, Priam did not relent. Not even when the water brushing his skin began to quiver from the heat of his body.

Without warning, the head of the Sixth Terror spun once clockwise. Then three more times. The carapace burst into shards, muscle fibers tore apart, and nerves failed, sealing the decapitation.

Letting a marine current carry the skull away, Priam looked over the multi-ton creature and felt something swell within him.

Pride. How far he has come in a few months…

Then a spiritual wave passed. His add-on recognized a magical sonar, and the threat behind. Three more followed, one of them sending a chill down Priam’s spine.

Lvl Up: [Ciphered Record] lvl 18
MEM +6
META (Affinity) +6
META (Authority) +15

“I assume you’re not scrying me right now?”

“No. Her big sisters aren’t pleased,” Esmée said as she approached. “Let’s hide in the cave.”

“You don’t want to surface?”

“The Terror’s carapace was too tough to be natural. I sense an opportunity to temper my bones. And for you, your resistances.”

“You should’ve said so sooner.”

His draconic instinct sensing the rapid approach of the second Terror, Priam headed for the entrance of its lair.

Dragging the huge, decapitated corpse behind him.

*
Terror of Valaryth - the 6th