Priam

Chapter 201: A Rough Start

Added 2024-03-16 02:20:10 +0000 UTC

With this (fat) chapter, you should be able to guess a few things...

Back to Elysium in the next chapter (Sunday 17th). Enjoy!

PS: there's a map at the end.

PS2: discord(https://discord.gg/HQDDnwpFmS )

Priam stared at Victoire before nodding.

"As you wish."

With a knot in her stomach, the young woman forced herself to smile. It is for the best.

"What's the plan?" Victoire asked to change the subject.

"The Tutorial started an hour ago,” said Priam after checking his watch. “We have a week to find a portal—a short time. There are a hundred on Earth, too few to search randomly."

"The Tutorial is sponsored by someone," Victoire remembered. "We'll get our first reward in twenty-three hours. Could be the position of a portal."

"Possible, but it's an Impossible quest. I doubt they'll give us all the information so easily."

"Are we supposed to figure it out ourselves?"

"It's a possibility. The portals could be visible from afar, and their location is not necessarily random. The seven wonders of the world, some modern monuments, etc."

"I don't like that option. It relies too much on luck," grimaced Victoire.

"Me neither. I find it stupid: if we were in the middle of the ocean when we accepted this Tutorial, we wouldn't stand a chance."

"Maybe luck is an essential component of this Tutorial?"

"Possible. The beings behind all this are clearly alien. It would be presumptuous to think we understand their logic. However, there is another possibility." Priam raised his index finger. "The System has mechanics that resemble those of an RPG. We've received a quest, skills, and attributes. A specific action may unlock the location of the portals."

"What kind of actions?"

Priam grimaced. "The dangerous kind."

Victoire stifled a yawn as she followed Priam. The sun had barely risen, illuminating the empty roads. It felt like they were alone in the world. It was an illusion: terrifying screams had often awakened them during the night.

Priam raised his hand, and Victoire froze. The young man stopped and listened intently. In his other hand, he held a long stick. Its blackened tip had been hardened with a blowtorch. A hiking backpack and his grandfather's hunting rifle completed Priam's panoply. Far from being a weapon of war, its presence was nevertheless reassuring.

"Let's cross," Priam whispered.

Nodding, Victoire followed him. A dark spot caught her eye, and she paled. On her right, about thirty meters away, a dog lay in a pool of blood. The Labrador's body had been half-devoured. Victoire felt her stomach churn. Before she could vomit, Priam blocked her view.

"Don't look."

A few minutes later, they arrived at a sandy beach. In front of them, Arcachon Bay stretched peacefully. The water reflected the sky and the splendid colors of the sunrise. Less than two kilometers on their right, the entrance to the bay flowed into the ocean. On their left, several columns of smoke rose from the peninsula and the mainland. The dry, warm summer air combined with automobile and domestic accidents was wreaking havoc.

Priam placed his hiking backpack on the sand and unfolded an old map.

Victoire took the opportunity to open her own bag and grab one of the bottles she had brought. Priam had insisted on taking seven liters of water per person in addition to some food. A few medicines and clothes completed their possessions. Enough to last a week, but not too much to overload themselves.

"So?" she asked after taking a sip.

"There's an airfield on the other side of the bay, next to Arcachon. It's five kilometers inland," said Priam, pointing across the bay. "Eight kilometers from here as the crow flies."

Victoire grimaced. The portion of the bay in front of them was three kilometers wide. It was impossible to swim across for an untrained person. On the other side of the water, Victoire could see the Dune of Pilat—the highest in Europe.

"Are you sure you want to go there?"

Priam nodded as he folded his map. "We don't have a choice. We'll have to hurry when we’ll find out where the portal is. With a microlight, we could cover fifteen hundred kilometers without worrying about encountering a human driven mad... Or worse."

Victoire shivered at the thought of the creature that had disemboweled the Labrador.

"How do we cross?"

Priam pointed to the hundred or so boats waiting on the water, simply tethered to moorings. "We can take a motorboat and be there in half an hour. Or a sailboat, but then we'll depend on the wind."

Having grown up on the bay, Priam was a competent sailor.

"Do you have a motorboat license?"

"If the police catch us, I'll pay the fine."

Victoire chuckled. "Do you have a preference?"

"The sailboat is safe and quiet. The motorboat is fast and noisy. Let’s go with the former."

Victoire turned to the bay. The blue of the water, the yellow of the sand, the gray of the sky, and the green of the forest on the horizon created an enchanted and familiar landscape. Yet, for the first time, Victoire felt her stomach knot with fear. The deep water seemed to harbor nightmarish creatures.

"I'm scared," she confessed. "Can't we go around?"

Priam shook his head. "The bay isn't wide, but it extends far inland. Going around it on foot would take us a day or two, during which we'd be exposed on the beach."

"We could—"

A growl cut Victoire off as she turned around. Twenty meters behind them, a woman emerged from a thicket of brambles. The thorns had torn her body and T-shirt, revealing a battered physique. She was injured.

"Ma'am, don't come any closer," Priam warned, dropping his bag and rifle. He grabbed his stick while Victoire headed for the firearm. She had never hurt anyone, but the woman's wild and enraged appearance suggested that words alone wouldn't resolve this conflict.

"As a last resort," Priam said, seeing Victoire's initiative. "The noise will give away our position."

Victoire swallowed hard and grabbed the gun as the woman began to run.

"Ma'am!" Priam exclaimed.

Trying to raise the rifle, Victoire began to tremble. Her strength left her as the hostile woman advanced toward Priam. The prospect of hurting someone paralyzed her.

Everything happened in an instant. Priam crouched, placing the base of his improvised spear against the ground. Driven by her momentum and rage, the woman impaled herself on it. The hardened wooden stake pierced her chest, puncturing her heart.

The woman collapsed onto Priam, who groaned in shock. Victoire rushed forward as her boyfriend pushed the corpse away with a furious gesture. The dead woman lay motionless on her back. Her furious features relaxed as Priam got up, breathing heavily.

Shocked, Victoire opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She watched the corpse without moving. A noise snapped her out of her stupor: Priam was moving away. Covered in blood, he staggered toward the water.

"You—"

"Not now," he muttered before diving in.

Half an hour later, Victoire assisted in hoisting the sails of a small catamaran. Priam worked in silence, shirtless. He had buried his bloodied T-shirt in the sand.

"I'll steer to find the best wind angle. Could you handle the mainsail rigging?" asked Priam.

Victoire breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing his voice.

"Sorry for staying quiet," her boyfriend apologized. "I needed some time to think."

"I understand. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," he sighed, seeming exhausted. The Tutorial had started about ten hours ago, and he had already had to kill someone. "There's nothing to say. She was... You saw her. Or it."

The image of the woman's corpse flashed back into Victoire's mind, and she swallowed hard. The slit eyes, the violet blood, and the long nails didn't belong to a human. In her savagery, the woman would have slaughtered them.

"She was corrupted," Victoire replied. "You saved our lives when I couldn't pull the trigger."

Priam remained silent. The sound of the wind in the sails filled the silence before he spoke again.

"... I'm sorry," Priam murmured.

"About what?"

"You find yourself in a hostile world when you hate violence. All because the selfish person I am dreams of being free," Priam said through gritted teeth.

Victoire let go of the sail and approached Priam to take his hand.

"I chose this challenge because I wanted to stay with you, that's true," Victoire confessed. "But it's my decision. If I love you enough to follow you to hell, you can't do anything about it. You're selfish, and I'm a fool hopelessly in love."

Priam squeezed her hand. "You—"

Victoire interrupted him.

"You already have enough trouble managing your feelings without considering mine. You have plenty of qualities, my love, but your heart still eludes your mind. Besides, I don't know how you would survive without me."

Priam raised an eyebrow. "I'd be cold at night ?"

"You would have reached the airfield, and then what? You don't know how to pilot a motorlight."

The retort stunned Priam. "I… Well, I’d have learned from a book."

"You're a genius, my love, but you sometimes overestimate yourself,” smiled Victoire. “I'll handle the plane, and you'll handle the monsters. Now, tell me what's wrong."

Victoire knew Priam well enough to know there was a problem. Her boyfriend was never defeatist. One of the qualities that had stolen Victoire's heart was his determination. He was an icebreaker who cleared insurmountable obstacles using sharp logic and holistic intelligence.

"... When I killed the creature, I received a notification. The nearest portal is at the top of the Eiffel Tower."

Victoire's eyes widened. Paris was a city of over two million people in a very small area. How many corrupted humans were roaming the capital?

"How are we going to do this?" she asked after a short pause.

"I don't know. The thing on the beach impaled itself on my spear. If it had dodged, it would have torn out my throat with its teeth. I've seen enough zombie movies to know that firearms are a bad idea. Even if we trained for a week, our attributes would still be too weak to cross an ocean of monsters," Priam grimaced as he rummaged through his bag.

Pulling out a knife, he began to cut the rope at the front of the boat. At the other end, a concrete slab buried in the sand kept the boat in place.

"I've been thinking, but I can't find a solution," Priam sighed. Victoire realized that his eyes weren't afraid. They were fatalistic.

Priam was pragmatic enough to understand that they had almost no chance of surviving this Tutorial.

The wind blew in the right direction, propelling the catamaran toward the Dune of Pilat. With a firm hand on the helm, Priam steered the small sailboat. Beside him, Victoire remained silent, likely mulling over the information shared by the System.

Hidden Quest completed: Get your hands dirty.

You have purged the soul of a corrupted Rank I.

Reward: Intel
The nearest portal to you is atop the Eiffel Tower.

The quest provided not just one piece of intel, but three. Knowing the portal's location now only fueled Priam's determination to reach the airfield. Getting to Paris by any other means was out of the question.

The woman on the beach was a Rank I corrupted. This was either the most powerful or the weakest class of corrupted. Who am I kidding? Priam harbored no illusions: not all his enemies would impale themselves on sharp sticks.

The last clue he discerned was the existence of hidden objectives. Killing a higher-ranked corrupted was sure to offer another reward. Perhaps a starting point for a solution...

"We're almost there," said Victoire.

After an hour of sailing, the sailboat had crossed the bay smoothly and silently. A hundred meters ahead, the water gave way to sand. Just as a smile formed on Priam's face, the wind died. The sailboat halted, and he cursed. Was this a trap by the System? Without wind, oars, or an engine, they could remain stranded here for hours. So close, yet so far to the beach.

"What do we do?" asked Victoire.

"...We wait a bit."

Forty minutes later, the two lovers exchanged a glance.

"Damn. We'll swim," Priam sighed. They couldn't afford to wait here for hours. The boat was clearly visible from the beach, and the city behind it likely harbored a bunch of corrupted.

"The provisions?" Victoire asked.

Priam tossed a buoy into the sea and placed the bags and rifle on it. The balance was unstable, but the absence of wind and waves worked in their favor. Priam attached a rope to the buoy and wound the other end around his wrist.

"The water doesn't inspire confidence," Victoire whispered.

"Please, don't raise flags..."

The dark water that had welcomed him all his life suddenly seemed foreign.

Taking a deep breath, Priam smiled at Victoire and then dove in. Living by the ocean, he knew how to swim swiftly. It wouldn't take him more than fifteen seconds to reach the shore.

A few meters later, the System rewarded his impeccable front crawl.

You have gained the skill: [Swimming].

[Swimming] - Life evolved in water three billion years ago. Born of this extraordinary fluid, you return to it today. If not with grace, then with passion, at least.
Are you sure it's wise to read this message now?
STR +1

As Priam read the last sentence of the description, he felt something under his hand and hastily pulled back his arm. Too late.

Letting out a cry of pain, he stood up—his foot touched the ground! Looking at his hand, he almost vomited. His left ring finger was gone. A disturbance in the water caught his attention, and Priam felt his stomach knot. Despite the shallow water, he couldn't distinguish his legs.

"Priam?"

Behind him, Victoire was swimming closer. Something touched his right leg, and Priam recoiled, hitting the water with his valid hand.

"Swim!" Priam shouted before running after his girlfriend toward the shore. Water up to his hips, he hoped to scare off the aquatic creature and protect Victoire. A few seconds later, he joined Victoire on the beach, breathless and shocked.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes, but... Oh my god! My heart, your hand!" Victoire tore off her T-shirt to fashion a makeshift bandage.

Tired, Priam pulled weakly on the buoy's rope, retrieving their belongings.

Ten hours later, Priam felt his heart racing. His wound had stopped bleeding. He had found medical gauze in a pharmacy, and Victoire had cleaned it. Yet, he felt unwell. An extreme fatigue dulled his body and numbed his mind.

Deep down, Priam knew he wouldn't last a week. Perhaps not even the day. The wound was corrupted. That's Impossible difficulty for you.

Paradoxically, his condition had given him some perspective on the situation. The world was over. Nothing but an intervention from the System could save him. If he continued to be cautious, he would die—and with him, Victoire. As if I'd accept that.

"This is madness," his girlfriend murmured.

Priam blinked before grabbing the steering wheel to fight off vertigo. They were in the cabin of a delivery truck, atop a steep street. Five hundred meters away and over twenty meters below lay a stone-covered market.

"This is our only chance to catch up. We've worked for hours on this."

Using a ladder, Victoire had taped a phone five meters high. The phone's alarm would sound in a few seconds.

"This has to work," Priam muttered.

Too far to hear the shrill sound, he smiled when the first corrupted gathered at the bottom of the street. Emerging from buildings, narrow alleys, and sewers, the creatures clustered around the sound source. Some leaped to dislodge the phone— in vain. The alarm continued to blare, agitating the creatures.

A few seconds later, Priam's smile widened: a different monster was approaching from an adjacent alley. It towered over its kin in size and bulk, but Priam was sure it wasn't a corrupted rugby player.

It was a monster. His stomach twisted in fear as he beheld the horror half a kilometer away.

"What's that thing?" Victoire murmured, her voice trembling.

Priam's vision had never been impressive, and his contact lenses didn't allow him to see as clearly as his girlfriend.

"A human who chose Hard difficulty, I suppose—a Rank II. Is it different?"

"It has claws. Not long nails, but claws. I’m too far to be sure, but its skeletal structure looks strange."

The Rank I corrupted parted to let the Rank II pass, and Priam squinted. "They have a hierarchy."

"This is bad for us," Victoire murmured. "I hope the difference is physical and not mental."

Priam nodded. The stupid Rank I creatures hadn't even thought to throw something to dislodge the phone. The only advantage Priam and Victoire possessed over them was their intelligence and tools. If the corrupted became smarter, the difficulty would become... Impossible.

Too tired to worry about the future, Priam focused. Once the creature dug its claws into the stone wall, he released the handbrake, ignited a braid of firecracker fuses and jumped out of the truck with Victoire. Gravity pushed the vehicle downward, and it began to hurtle down the slope.

At the same time, the Rank II corrupted began to climb the wall toward the phone.

"Will it work?" Victoire asked, dragging Priam behind a low wall. It wasn't the time to be spotted.

Priam shrugged as he watched the truck gain speed. "We locked the steering wheel with the seat using several padlocks to keep it going straight. The truck is loaded, so it's heavy. It should have built up enough kinetic energy by the slope's end to cause serious damage. If that's not enough, we have one last surprise..."

Victoire didn't reply. Out of the corner of his eye, Priam saw her clasping her hands in prayer. He hesitated before shaking his head. Priam had always had respect for religions, but he wasn't a believer himself. Finding faith a few hours before his death seemed hypocritical. Though it's now or never.

As the truck reached the top of the wall, the Rank II plunged a claw into the phone and flung it to the ground. Satisfied, the monster leaped down. While about twenty Rank I creatures crowded around him, it turned toward the truck hurtling down the slope.

The creature's roar of anger made Priam grimace.

When the truck came within a hundred meters, the Rank Is rushed toward it. The Rank II hesitated.

Priam clenched his fists as the collision approached. The impact between flesh and bumper was brutal. Bits of bone and organs flew in all directions. The Rank II threw itself to the side, dodging the ram.

"Damn."

The next moment, the truck violently struck the stone building, turning several others corrupted into pulp.

Priam counted eight survivors, including the Rank II. Seeing the remains of the motionless truck, they drew closer.

"And boom," Priam smiled.

Maybe he had timed his fuse well, or perhaps the crash had ruptured some of the plastic containers. Either way, the lit fuse eventually touched the gasoline and dish soap mixture. The flammable liquid ignited instantly, increasing pressure in the trailer and causing an explosion.

The siphoning of hundreds of cars had not been in vain. The deflagration of thousands of liters of fuel was terrifying. A mushroom of fire rose into the air as Priam and Victoire winced at the noise.

The corrupted were blown backward, doused in flammable products. Screams rose before quickly subsiding.

Only when the sound of the notification echoed in his head did Priam unclench his fists.

Hidden Quest completed: Rising Star.

You have purged the soul of a corrupted Rank II.

Reward: Talent
[He Who Dreamed of his Death]

[He Who Dreamed of his Death - Unique] - You wake up at the beginning of the Tutorial in a start. You dreamed of an unsuccessful first attempt and a bloody ending. From this dreamlike experience, you only retain memories.
A beautiful death is a useful death.

Notes: