Chapter 448: About Racial Talents

Sorry, I meant to post earlier, but between the holidays and a bout of food poisoning, it’s been a bit of a ride…

Happy New Year 2026, everyone, and we’re kicking things off with three big chapters!

*

Each of the Wandering Islands rested on an outrageously resilient bedrock. That little detail prevented the locals from settling disputes by punching a few holes in the ground and turning a scuffle into a multi-kilometer freefall. One unfortunate misstep wouldn’t be a problem because of the impact so much as because of the shadowy shapes that prowled just beneath the surface…

After many refinements, Log-a-rhythm’s powerful roots had managed to burrow into that bedrock and carve out two chambers. The deeper one housed Alain and Rose’s workshop. The other had once held the rift to Valaryth. Now that the Tal Quercus had absorbed it, Osiris had repurposed the space for his experiments.

Priam stepped into a dead-end cavern washed in ghost-blue light from luminous mushrooms. From floor to ceiling, every surface was carpeted with fungus whose brightness rose and fell from one second to the next, like the slow breathing of a sleeping monster.

Yielding to his curiosity, Priam brushed a fingertip over the cap of one mushroom; it folded in on itself like a crustacean. He studied his finger: a blue powder clung to his fingerprint. He licked it. The spores fizzed on his tongue.

“It tastes like that stuff you use for sour sodas and candy. You’ll have to share this with Blueberry, this would be insane in confectionery.”

“Without an epic resistance to poison, it’s toxic,” Osiris replied without turning.

“Shame,” Priam said. “For those who don’t follow the holy path of resistance.”

He joined the biomancer at the centre of the room. There, a shrub of flesh and bone grew out of a pool of blood. Far from revolting like something birthed by the Necromoon, the faux-vegetal looked like gore made art.

The Homo Elysian dropped into a squat and ran a hand along warm muscle and polished ivory all the way up a branch. At its tip, an iridescent berry protected a seed of blood. The same pattern repeated on sixteen other branches.

“It’s beautiful,” he admitted. “I’m guessing this has something to do with my racial upgrade?”

“With sequencing and assembling genetic codes,” Osiris confirmed. “The flesh-tree is an invention of my people, a way to preserve and catalogue biological tissues once they’re outside their native systems.” He pointed at the blood pearls. “Léo Aelbe, Ophis Snahert, Braato Gaesert, Ève the Fae, Taishi the Hoplite, an anonymous Valarythian warrior, Draashat’h—the corrupted consort of the Drakes—your Nemesis, Ymir the merchant, Trap the goblin, Bertomne the sand singer, elven blood taken from the property deed, Paakruc the naga, Stryk-7, Cursed Clock a.k.a. Charles, and finally, Béchar. Courtesy of Esmée.”

Priam facepalmed. In hindsight, it was painfully obvious, and he had nearly missed an interesting sample.

“I owe her one. And the rest?”

“Races from Tiers that are too high. Unreadable.” The teenager shrugged.

“If you couldn’t get anything out of them, nobody could,” Priam said with a grin, then focused on the tree. “You managed to sequence everything?”

“I went further. I stripped the blood of impurities, frills, and other useless proteins. Then I pre-cut the DNA into segments—racial Talents and physical traits we actually care about. Basically, these drops can’t do blood’s job anymore… but they make excellent display cases for genetic code. Perfect for building a new race.”

In other words, Osiris had turned the samples into puzzle pieces. All Priam had left to do was assemble them according to his vision of what his future race should be. The fun part, and the one that ensured he would remain its progenitor.

“You outdid yourself,” Priam said, genuine respect colouring his voice.

There was no doubt Osiris was a genius. So much in fact, that if there had been a single ounce of hostility in the boy, he would have had to be put down. The Juggernaut could accept dying at Arnold’s hands, but not being reshaped between a biomancer’s fingers.

Priam purged the grim thought and dragged himself back to the present.

“So, what do I do?”

Osiris pointed to the last branch, the only one he hadn’t named. It bore a different fruit. Larger than the others, it wasn’t sealed under a translucent film, but under a thicker shell. Priam’s thermal perception told him it was warmer than the rest of the tree. The phoenix inside him chirped.

This wasn’t another blood berry.

It was ichor. His ichor.

“Here, we don’t create a race from scratch, we improve yours. To that end, you’ll draw blood and inject it into that seed. The tree will fuse them violently, giving you a glimpse of what your third racial Talent could be at Tier 3.”

“So a Tier 3 race really does have a third racial Talent.”

“From what I’ve observed in the samples you brought, yes.” Osiris gestured at a few of the berries. “A perfectly optimised genetic code leaves enough room for—”

“Hold on,” Priam cut in, brows knit. “Homo Elysian already has a genome pushed to the absolute limit at Tier 2. I crammed the equivalent of hundreds of genetics textbooks just to make sure.”

He had even made the hoplites’ quantum processors sweat to run the numbers.

“With its current geometric basis, yes. But if DNA and its double helix are an elegant solution to the trials of evolution, they’re not the best solution. At least, not if you’re willing to ignore the energy costs.” Seeing Priam’s grimace, he laughed. “You thought you’d succeed easily where billions of years of evolution failed?”

“A man can dream.”

“There’s dreaming, and then there’s deluding yourself.” If Osiris didn’t have three lonely chin hairs fighting for their lives, Priam might have been pissed. “Where was I? Right. A perfectly optimised genetic code leaves enough room for a third set of micro-rune. A third racial Talent.” He tilted his head. “Do you know the difference between a general Talent and a racial Talent?”

The moment Priam had learned he only had seven general Talent slots, he had grilled his mentor about it.

“General Talents have a spiritual foundation. Racial Talents have a physical one. Concretely, they’re patterns in DNA—”

“In whatever biological macromolecule carries a living being’s genome,” Osiris corrected, flaunting his knowledge like any gifted teenager fishing for praise. “Plenty of extraterrestrial species aren’t DNA-based.”

He was irritating, yet Priam smiled. He remembered being that kid.

“You’re right.” He was the adult here. “Anyway: racial Talents are microscopic runes inscribed in the genetic code—natural, intrinsically tied to a race—that guide aether to create a passive boon. For example, a preternatural adaptation thanks to [Homo Elysian Obsession].” He hesitated. “Isn’t there a way to improve the ones I already have instead of getting a third?”

From Priam’s point of view, a qualitative upgrade beat a quantitative one.

Osiris shook his head. “Whether it’s skills or Talents, Legendary rank always demands something extra—Concept, Supremacy, or story. Genetic code alone can’t hold that. My theory is that it’s possible with aetheric code. You’ll have to wait until you upgrade your race into the mid Tiers.”

“Shame.”

Priam searched his memory for what else he knew about Talents. “You can also get racial Talents by slaughtering people, though that method caps at three slots. That’s how I got [Hoplite Warpath], but the exact mechanism still slips through my fingers.” He exhaled. “What I do know is that quantity and quality matter. Taishi was a Champion, and his death gave me the Talent outright.”

“Mmh. Arnold also received [Soul Duality] when he killed my brother.”

They both grimaced at the memory. Tragedy wasn’t too strong a word since the Talent was a shortcut to Domain. Without it the homunculus would have struggled to become an Ace.

Osiris forced a smile. “Back to the point. The tree of life will copy a racial Talent and paste it onto your genome—or rather, onto the genome of every cell inside that seed of blood.” He tapped the ichor seed. “Then you’ll absorb it, temporarily gain the Talent, and see whether it suits you. Questions?”

“Yes. When do we start?”

Guided by the young biomancer, Priam plucked a branch at random and drew it toward the main stem. The blood-seed at its tip touched the ichor pearl, and the two liquids mingled. In a thermal flash that singed Osiris’s hair, the genomes collided, producing a messy blend full of flaws… and power.

A thorn sprouted from the shrub’s trunk. Priam pricked his finger on it. A drop of altered blood seeped into his veins, and the Champion shivered. A new ability stirred within him.

At the edge of his awareness, he felt a galaxy of slaves waiting to obey. Every whim could be satisfied, one million beings yearning only to butcher his enemies and burn their worlds in the Mistress’s name. So many souls he could command. Flexing his new Talent and Breath, Priam siphoned the unlife of the nearest thousand from afar.

Lvl Up: [Fount of pseudo-Ichor] lvl 23
ERROR. VIT SEALED.

His veins lurched under the torrent of pseudo life-force. His hearts accelerated to process the energy, birthing a vast, intoxicating exultation. The Juggernaut wanted more, but an undead would never give as much as the living. His gaze slid to the child beside him and—

NO!

Priam felt cold ground under his backside. He blinked, staring at the stone ceiling. At a crimson star hanging in Elysium’s sky.

“Are you okay?” Osiris looked genuinely worried. “I’m sorry, it’s the first time I’ve grown this tree. My grandmother refused to teach me before I came of age, but I saw her do it once when I was three, and I thought I remembered enough to emulate it—”

“The tree works.” Priam got back up, shivering. “It was the sample. Draashat’h’s corrupted blood didn’t sit right. I think I’ll set her racial Talents aside.”

“...Either way, purple doesn’t suit you.”

Priam looked at his hands. His skin was ink-black—then grew paler with every second. A mirror of icy mist informed him his ears had sharpened too, and that all his limbs had grown.

Except one.

“The physical changes…”

“Are optional,” Osiris reassured him. “The tree grafts a race onto Homo Elysian to raise it to Tier 3, but the result is as temporary as it is crude. Once you’ve chosen your final Talent, we can build you whatever body you want, from a mix of any sample.”

Priam smiled. “Perfect.”

*

As the Sector’s capital, Gaia was a densely populated city where the price per square metre in poor districts bordered on indecency. After nearly a million years of gentrification, the plebs had been pushed down into the megaplanet’s deepest sublevels. Each floor closer to the surface was one more rung on the social ladder, so everyone tried to climb.

Everyone except the dwarves. They wanted to go down, fleeing the shallower caverns that differed little from the surface. Some caverns were vast enough to host billions, oceans, even a climate. An impossibility, but things only got weird when a Primordial’s will decided to bully the laws of physics.

If the poor lived buried, the rich lived under the stars. Up there, property prices were so delirious that even a lottery winner could only rent—at least when it came to ordinary lotteries. If Luc won his parlay, he would be able to buy himself a lovely flat in a posh district.

In this mad economy, only old families could own entire buildings. Nobody, not even a Demiurge, could compete with a clan that had existed for a thousand generations. In that respect, it’s not so different from Earth: better to be an heir than a worker.

As with everything, certain clans took the principle to the extreme. The Riuslings were a glaring example. In the business district, surrounded by skyscrapers, floating palaces, waterfalls of solid light, and the iceberg-visible edges of highways stretching beyond dimensions Luc could even perceive, sat a park. Like Central Park in New York, the Riusling Grove was a blot of green in the urban sprawl.

One about the size of a small country… and often empty of visitors. The drakes didn’t love trees so much as they loved making their neighbours jealous.

At the park’s centre lay a lake, and in the lake stood a tower. From its summit, Luc had an unobstructed view of a hundred enormous barges, each disgorging an unbroken stream of humans.

“It’s strange, seeing so many people who look like me,” he murmured.

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that,” a man said behind him.

Luc waved a hand. “You know what I mean. Not just humanoids—humans. Like us. And yet in the last few months, I’ve seen almost none. Our civilisation has been swallowed by Gaia. Diluted. I can’t quite believe humanity still exists.”

Mercury banished his holographic tablet and stepped up to the railing. “A lot of civilisations vanish. It’s a disgrace… but it won’t be our fate. With this influx, we should gain an edge on Proxima. Aarthash kept his word.”

“And Priam played his part,” Luc said, smiling.

The drake had promised to buy back the contracts of three million humans and send them to Proxima if Priam managed to defeat his phantom in the Colosseum. When the Riuslings had approached Olympus to subcontract the manoeuvre, Mercury had realised his Champion had succeeded where nobody expected him to.

Except Luc.

“Sometimes I wonder why the drake Prince made that bet,” Mercury mused.

“Envy.” Luc kept his tone light. “He couldn’t get rid of you-know-who’s image, so he pays someone else to do it for him. Or at least to scrub his own.”

Being warden of Wave 94 would have been a point of pride for most. For Aarthash, it was the scar of his failure. Not that Luc was stupid enough to say it out loud.

“But how can the Riusling be sure Priam will go after Wave 95?”

“Ego. I’m sure Priam has plenty of virtues, but no powerhouse is satisfied with a loss. Fighter… or merchant.”

Mercury only smiled.

“I’m going to check everything’s running smoothly,” Luc said.

Instead of turning toward the elevator, he jumped.

A hundred metres below, he conjured a series of aether discs under his feet to slow his fall. Only a single ripple kissed the water when he touched down.

Walking across the lake like a ninja, Luc reached the shore and blended into his people.

It took ten metres for him to resign himself to breathing through his mouth. Hollow faces, threadbare clothes, dirty skin, greasy hair, sharp body odours; every marker of questionable hygiene.

Striding among the former slaves in his gleaming armour, Luc clenched his jaw. Most of these wretches hadn’t been found far away. A few levels beneath the surface, there were countless factories and shops where working conditions sat right at the edge of legality.

Nobody cared.

When Luc had suggested buying some of them out, Lasha had stared at him as if he had grown a second head.

“They get what they deserve. That kind of job is for people who signed contracts without reading them, racked up debt, or committed crimes. You can’t save people from themselves.”

Luc wasn’t rubbing shoulders with the most elitist slice of humanity, but he believed in second chances. That was why he and his team had agreed to handle security for the event, free of charge.

A shadow swallowed the sun. Luc turned to see Aarthash Riusling standing behind him.

Fist to fist, the young man bowed from the waist.

“Young master Aarthash!”

“Mercenary Luc,” the drake said with a smile. “None of that between us. If Lasha thinks I’m mistreating her boyfriend, I’ll have trouble at our next sparring session.”

Tucking a blond lock behind his ear, Luc flashed a thousand-watt grin as he straightened. “My sympathies. With me, she holds back, and I still walk away bruised.”

The drake made a small gesture, and a pill appeared in his hand. Its mere presence released a wave of energy that healed every injury among the humans around them. Cheers erupted, yet nobody turned toward Luc or Aarthash. They stood in the middle of the crowd, but it was as if they didn’t exist.

“A trinket to help you recover from your next training session,” the drake said pleasantly.

Luc identified it at a glance. Brewing a stillborn world pill required the sacrifice of every plant on a planet in the earliest stages of life’s development. In return, the drug could grant biological immortality to a low Tier.

Not that Luc needed it.

“It’s far too precious—”

“Please,” Aarthash said lightly. “I’m sure the Administrator pays you better.”

News travelled fast.

“Actually, I negotiated a commission. And the right to accept a few ‘tokens of gratitude,’” Luc said, winking.

Aarthash burst out laughing. “You’ll go far. So, I heard about your parlay on Priam. Do you think he’ll beat the phoenix?”

“I think so.”

“Wanna bet?”

Luc smiled. “All-in.”

*