Chapter 450: Tier 3 Race!

Third one! Make sure to read the 448 and 449 before this one!

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“The difference between a Tier 2 race and a Tier 3 race is the support,” Osiris said. “Your genome can be considered near-perfect from a biological standpoint. Very little loss or corruption of information during cell division—meiosis and mitosis—great longevity, no monogenic diseases or pathological predispositions, increased resistance to infections, and a physique… What can I say?”

“Pleasant to look at?” Esmée offered.

“You want to take a bite out of him,” Jasmine agreed.

“Bah!” Osiris sulked. Jasmine cooed at him for a few seconds before he continued. “The problem is simple: the genome is optimised, but the structure carrying it isn’t.”

“I’ve got the best software I can run on my mediocre hardware,” Priam summarised. Seeing the others’ confusion, he tried another analogy. “A brilliant driver in an average car. If I want to improve, I need a better engine first.”

“Oh.” Esmée turned to Osiris. “A car is a mount.”

“Oh! Yes, exactly.” Osiris raised a hand, which flowed into the shape of a double helix. “DNA is the result of a compromise between stability and accessibility. Just good enough to protect information, it still allows a few mistakes: the creative chaos evolution needs. The double helix is easy to repair and nicely compact. Did you know you can fit two metres of DNA into a cell nucleus only a few micrometres wide?!”

“No, but I do know you can fit an impressive length of intestines inside a belly,” said Jasmine. “Once, I unrolled them to see and—”

Priam cleared his throat.

“Sorry.”

“No problem,” Osiris said with a smile. “Anyway: what was an elegant solution to evolution’s trials under the chemical constraints of your planet is now dead weight.”

“Priam doesn’t live under the same conditions anymore,” Esmée understood. “[Homo Elysian Obsession] grants better adaptation, and his increased vitality provides an endless energy source. So he can—and must—change structure.”

Osiris’s face lit up. “Exactly! Now, I’ve spent the last two weeks analysing the blood samples, and I’ve got three ideas to improve DNA.” He raised his second hand; it turned into a triple helix. “Redundant triple strand. Better proofreading, better stability, better resistance to mutations.” Eight small ladder rungs lit up. “DNA uses only four bases. I propose an eight-base system. The wider the alphabet, the fewer typos, and the more information you can store in the same volume. Perfect for packing a third racial Talent.” The helixes’ material vibrated. “We should also replace the backbone with proteins and more stable chemical elements…”

The lecture lasted more than two hours. Jasmine listened for roughly two minutes, and halfway through, Priam envied her. But he kept at it. If the idea came from Osiris, Priam had to understand it to put it in place. Besides, the only way to remain the primogenitor of his race was to do the work himself.

After a quick meal, Priam had to endure one last indignity: choosing the physical characteristics he wanted from the samples he had gathered. That meant standing in his underwear in the middle of the room while Osiris modified his body “just to be sure it works.”

With a smiling Jasmine and a blushing Esmée as spectators.

Physically, Priam changed very little, taking only the thicker cornea of the Valarythians to protect his eyes, and the perpetually immaculate tooth enamel of the elves. His shoulders broadened too, as Osiris gave him the Gaeserts’ frame. Priam’s bones were immensely resistant, but adding a millimetre in diameter increased the difficulty of cutting them all the same. Apart from those three tweaks, he stayed the same. Priam liked his appearance.

It was no surprise as the System had already improved his physique during his transformation into a high human to his own beauty standard.

Priam had far fewer qualms about changing internal things. The ophidian and feline joints of the Snaherts and Aelbes. The digestive system of his Nemesis’ son. The goblins’ olfactory receptors. The sand singers’ vocal cords. The nagas’ magnetic compass. The faes’ memorable scent. The adaptive pupils—hidden behind mist and storm—of the shapeshifters. Stryk-7’s nails. The bone composition of the corrupted necro elves—who would have guessed undead had evolved their skeleton to make it sturdier?

“I think we’re done,” Osiris said with a grin after eight hours of customisation. “This race is going to be a masterpiece!”

“And now?” Jasmine asked.

“Now comes the best part! I gather all the elements, encode them into a new genetic code, then compile them into an improved DNA!”

“...We really don’t have the same definition of fun,” the Shadow muttered.

Priam watched Osiris work for nearly thirty hours straight, his add-on recording every step, every question, every answer. The problems were many, and Priam wasn’t ashamed to admit most of them went over his head. Turning a genetic patchwork into an optimised genome, then encoding it in a new alphabet, was the work of a god.

Or an absolute genius.

Bent over his tree, surrounded by blood, bone, and mushrooms, Osiris was rewriting the work of billions of years of evolution while whistling. If Kazuki was the paragon of the spear, then the Duatien was his equal in biomancy. A talent so great the hoplites’ quantum processors stayed cold: the rare times their computing power could have been used, the teenager’s intuition found the solution first.

Ramanujan had dreamt of mathematics; Osiris made life real.

The result of his work was the draft of a microscopic cell that held the secret of Homo Elysian’s upgrade. Priam recorded the flawed blueprint before finally releasing the teenager.

“You can be proud of yourself.”

“I am,” Osiris yawned. “And the System agrees. I just received a Genesis Title.”

Priam grimaced. “Primogenitor?”

“No. Master of Evolution.” Osiris blinked. 

“Let’s go eat.”

Blueberry had prepared a vegetable salad with what he called crispy wings. Considering the bear had brought back wingless corpses, Priam was ready to bet they were fingers, but he had no proof. And he was afraid of the answer. His curiosity had limits.

“After all that, it’s just a flawed blueprint? Why flawed?” Jasmine asked at breakfast. Or was it dinner? Priam hadn’t slept in so long, and the permanent night only threw his body clock further off.

“To make sure I remain the race’s primogenitor, I want to be the first to create it,” Priam replied, serving himself a second helping of crispy-finger salad. “Now I just need to copy Osiris’s work while changing only what’s necessary to get an optimal and novel result.”

“You’re gaming the rules.”

“As long as it works.”

Kazuki let Priam access the hoplite machines he had used during the first upgrade. Priam pricked his finger on Promesse’s tip and drew a drop of ichor that rolled beneath the microscopes. Sna cast a weakness curse on it, preventing his constitution from resisting what would follow. Under his add-on’s guidance, nanorobots banished cells until only a single one remained.

Then the real work began: swapping certain proteins and nucleic acids. Altering the double-helix architecture into a triple. Creating four additional bases. Copying the genome using the expanded alphabet. Priam didn’t have Osiris’s skills, but the technology proved equal to the task. By late afternoon, he stared at a single cell beneath the microscope.

The source of his future race.

“All this work… for something so tiny,” he breathed, leaning back. To the naked eye, there was nothing to see. Yet his instinct trembled. One hundred trillion of these things made up his body.

Cradling the sample like his first Christmas gift, Priam retreated into Log-a-rhythm.

The System had handled the first upgrade of his race. The second had required a ritual. For the third, Priam intended to put Osiris’s masterpiece to the test.

He dropped his creation into a bath of vitalising sap. If the stem cell was viable, it would draw the energy it needed from the liquid and divide—

Within seconds, the sap’s emerald tint began to cloud with crimson. The cell multiplied at a frenetic pace. If Priam hadn’t been its creator, he might have been frightened.

“There should be enough…”

He plunged a hand into the biological liquid and invoked [Four Headed Hydra]. Once a day, the Title could regenerate an organ or a limb. Priam chose a rib.

Guided by incomprehensible magic, cells gathered until a white bone rested in Priam’s palm. He inspected it, then invoked Micro. The Supremacy muted his pain. He plunged a hand into his own torso and swapped one of his ribs for the new one.

After stripping, he lay down in the bath, closed his eyes, and resonated with his perception, Micro, and Domain.

Against his skin, the sap was almost hot. Ignoring the sensation, he focused on his new rib. Feeding on ambient energy, it was already at work, using its marrow to produce blood—not his current ichor, but the blood of his new race.

It flowed through his body, infiltrating his organs and replacing worn parts.

Outside him, the bath had turned entirely scarlet. Cells drifted. Some reached Priam’s skin and infiltrated his pores, spreading through his system and changing him piece by piece. Where a brain cell couldn’t make a fingertip, stem cells could generate any specialised cell.

Smiling, Priam felt himself moult. Normally, skin regenerated fully in two to four weeks. Here, the process took thirty seconds. Then came blood, fully recycled by his new rib in minutes instead of the usual four months. Then intestines, muscles, nerves…

As one race gave way to another, Priam stayed calm. The metamorphosis wasn’t painful, even if he wanted to scratch everywhere. To distract himself, he tracked through Micro the upgrade’s progress through his brain, thinking that months ago he would have been horrified by what he was doing.

If you replaced every cell in your body, were you still the same person?

It was just like the Ship of Theseus; no plank unchanged by the end of its voyage.

For Priam, the answer was simple: the soul mattered. The body was only a vessel. Besides, even in a normal human, cells changed over the course of a lifetime.

By the time he reached that conclusion, the itching had stopped. Priam rose and summoned a mirror of ice.

His reflection showed an immense, muscular man, slicked with blood and other foul-smelling substances. Log-a-rhythm drank up the bathwater as Priam stepped out. He opened a trickle of Potential, letting his soul synchronise with its new vessel, and the System acknowledged his feat.

Successfully created Tier 3 race.
Congratulations!

Would you like to choose a name?

“Homo Elysian.”

Why change the name? For now, that was what he was: the Primogenitor of a race that would keep evolving with him. Perhaps all the way to brushing against phoenixes and dragons.

[Homo Elysian - Tier 3] - Rooted in three universes. Inspired by evolution, dreamt by a prodigy, and realised by the Juggernaut, this race is the brilliant fusion of twenty others.
The solid bedrock that lets its members rise to impossible heights. Its virgin history confers it a pure aetheric code.

Characterized by sublime adaptation, intuition and inspiration, Homo Elysian benefits from the abilities of the races it integrates.

Racial Talents:

[Homo Elysian Obsession] - …
[Homo Elysian Predation] - …
[Homo Elysian Inspiration] - A plastic brain, proactive memory, and dazzling creativity: the triptych of a polymath. Your mind is an inexhaustible source of ideas and imagination.
The only disciplines in which Homo Elysian does not excel are those it does not know.

PHY +10
MEM +10

Would you like to choose a name for the Tier 2 variant?

“... Low Homo Elysian.”

System note:

For the moment, there is no known superior race for Homo Elysian.

The only Tier up possibilities are:

• Alteration of aetheric code.

• Bloodline atavisms.

Modification of Tribulation thresholds: To avoid unnecessarily restricting users whose race has the potential for rapid development, the System grants different Tribulation thresholds according to the race’s Tier.

Homo Elysian is a Tier 3 race. The new thresholds are now every 1(+3) hundred.

Tribulation Thresholds:
One attribute above 400 was detected at Tier 0.
Three attributes above 400 were detected at Tier 0.
Six attributes above 400 were detected at Tier 0.
Twelve attributes above 400 were detected at Tier 0.
One attribute above 800 was detected at Tier 0.
Three attributes above 800 were detected at Tier 0.
Six attributes above 800 were detected at Tier 0.
Twelve attributes above 800 were detected at Tier 0.
One attribute above 1 200 was detected at Tier 0.
Three attributes above 1 200 were detected at Tier 0.
Six attributes above 1 200 were detected at Tier 0.
One attribute above 1 600 was detected at Tier 0.
Three attributes above 1 600 were detected at Tier 0.
One attribute above 2 000 was detected at Tier 0.
One attribute above 2 400 was detected at Tier 0.

For a total of fifteen Tribulations.
The user has already withstood fourteen Tribulations at Tier 0.

[Tribulation]: One Tribulation pending.
Future Tribulations delayed until:
Time: 51 days 19 hours 40 minutes 55 seconds.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 6 attributes > 1 600 / 3 attributes > 2 000 / 1 attribute > 2 800

Titles upgrade!

 [Primogenitor - Legendary] becomes [Primogenitor - Mythic]

[Primogenitor - Mythic] - You pioneered a new Tier 3 race. It’s your job to keep improving it.

Your charisma doubles when you talk to a member of your own or your original races. You can convert some similar lifeforms to your race. You gain the ability to enrich your race through the spontaneous mutations of its members.
CHAR +40% > CHAR +50%

The first thing Priam did after leaving his tree was take a deep breath. Feel the wind on his skin. A physique that contained energy that felt infinite. The seals that had held his attributes finally inactive. His potential, free to express itself. His progress no longer asphyxiated, his path clear again.

Tribulations were no longer a sword of Damocles hanging over his head. Priam had only one itch: to grind his resistances until he could laugh in Aarthash’s face. 

His second action was getting dressed.

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Status: 

PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 281 (+14)
Constitution 2 771 (+76)
Agility 1 686 (+15)
Vitality 2 704 (+55)
Perception 1 034 (+22) 

MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 680 (+13)
Dexterity 1 048 (+30)
Memory 1 269 (+23)
Willpower 1 400 (+41)
Charisma 1 252 (+78)

META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 514
Meta-focus (P) 968 (+10)
Meta-endurance 1 844 (+47)
Meta-perception 1 015 (+16)
Meta-chance 837
Meta-authority 1 110 (+5) 

Potential: 42 651 (+39)
Tier 0

[Tribulation]: One Tribulation pending.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 6 attributes > 1 600 / 3 attributes > 2 000 / 1 attribute > 2 800

Time: 51 days 19 hours 40 minutes 55 seconds.

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ANC fanart. Priam, Promesse, Dragon and Phoenix.
Claire, from France, sent me an awesome birthday gift; I've got to show you.
Thanks a lot!

Author's Note:
According to some clever calculations I think are pretty accurate… the Tier Up is coming very soon. I’ve shown what I wanted from the Colosseum (even if Priam will swing back there, on screen, and offscreen), and I don’t want to drag things out in Valaryth, so we're going there faster than you might think!