Leonidas ascended the inner stairwell from the arena floor to the stands while reading over his remaining System alerts, eyes steadily dancing across each one with calm attention to detail. He did not want to misread anything, and he had already paid the price for fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of his abilities on Elatra more than once—he had no intention of repeating that potentially fatal mistake with the System, especially not after how many close calls he’d already had due to his mana-induced recklessness.
Congratulations!
You are now [Level 11]!
Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Title]!
EPIC SLAYER
[Rarity]: Epic
[Description]: You have defeated a foe over Tier Two with your own strength, without being Tempered! As a result, you have proven yourself to be forged of far greater mettle than the vast majority of Cultivators on your System World!
[Effect 1]: 5% Lifesteal on Hit
Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Title]!
DEFIER OF HEAVEN
[Rarity]: Legendary
[Description]: By your own actions, whether intentional or not, you have achieved a legendary feat for someone of your Tier, and defied the oppressive power of a Divine being! As a result of this momentous achievement, you have unlocked the title [Defier of Heaven] and been granted its effects!
[Effect 1]: +1 Willpower per Level
[Effect 2]: +100% Willpower Attribute value when resisting Mind Control effects
Congratulations, you have unlocked your [Aspect]!
DUELIST
[Description]: Duelists are masters of single combat and unmatched titans in direct confrontation. While not incapable of larger engagements, duelists specialize in focused and direct assault to isolate and destroy a chosen target. While many [Aspect] variations possess similar or comparable abilities, none can match the domineering talent of a Duelist in a one-on-one contest.
[Aspect Effect 1]: +10% Agility
[Aspect Effect 2]: +10% Dexterity
Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Aspect Skill]!
HONOR DUEL
[Rarity]: Rare
[Description]: This skill permits Duelists to bring their [Aspect] to bear in its purest form. Duelists are never more lethal than in single combat, and this skill is the essential core of that tradition.
[Effect]: Compel a target to Duel you once per sunrise. The target must have a superior [Ambition] or be at least one Tier of power higher to refuse. If the target fails to refuse and does not Duel you, their attributes will be reduced by 15% until you end the [Honor Duel] or die. If you defeat your [Honor Duel] target before the next sunrise, you will gain an additional use of this Skill that lasts until consumed.
[Cost]: N/A
Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Aspect Skill]!
UNYIELDING PRIDE
[Rarity]: Rare
[Description]: Duelists refuse to surrender where their talents may yet bring them victory. A true Duelist does not countenance a dishonorable defeat and will not accept anything less than their utmost effort.
[Effect]: You may fight at full strength despite any wounds that are not instantly lethal for a period of 5 Minutes, once per sunrise.
[Cost]: N/A
Congratulations, you have evolved your [Class]!
ARCHON
[Rarity]: Epic
[Description]: Archons are one of the rarest and most venerated [Class] choices within the System Worlds Nexus, unique to the planet of [Altera]. Their legacy of martial supremacy and battlefield dominance is nearly unparalleled across the myriad worlds, and their unique Affinity, Archetype, Ambition, and Aspect requirements make them vanishingly rare. Archons are peerless Psi-Knights, capable of turning the tide of wars by their own effort.
[Special Effect]: +10% Psi Potency per Tier
[Affinity Skills]: Psikinetic Blade, Psikinetic Shield, Psikinetic Focus, Psionic Swordforce, Psionic Force, Psionic Siphon
[Archetype Skills]: Chivalric Charge, Coup de Force: Premier, Coup de Force: Deux
[Ambition Skills]: Archon’s Will, Oath of Fealty
[Aspect Skills]: Honor Duel, Unyielding Pride
Congratulations!
Your [Archon’s Psiblade] is ready to Evolve!
Congratulations!
Your [Archon’s Warplate] is ready to Evolve!
Leonidas swiped away the last screen with a shake of his head and let out a sigh of relief when no more appeared. Two level-ups after all was said and done, which meant 4 Attribute points, 1 Skill point, and a cumulative increase to several of his attributes across the board. If he added that on top of his new titles and their effects, as well as the use of his Aspect—the newfound smoothness and fluidity of his movement spoke to its benefits—and the pending evolution of his weapon and armor, his time in the Arena had been of tremendous benefit.
Ceruviel had promised him that he would grow stronger in life-or-death scenarios, and, as was becoming a pattern, the Archon had been correct. With his new Class on top of everything else, Leonidas felt unstoppable. He was well aware it would not be enough to stand against the Dawn-Lord or those of near or comparable power, not for some time at least.
“{Okay, no more suspense,}” he said in now-habitual Haelfennyr. “{Character Sheet!}”
He had barely started to look over his updated [Profile] when he began to realize how absolutely absurd he truly was for a First Tier Cultivator.
Name: Leonidas Achilles Romulus Paendrag
Age: 25 | Race: Human | Sex: Male
Core Name: Cataclysm Core | Core Stage: Formation
Class: Archon | Level: 11 | Rank: Initiate
Health: 290 (319) | Mana: (99) 222 | Stamina: 137 (150) | Psi: 124
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Affinity: Psi | Archetype: Knight | Aspect: Duelist | Ambition: Sovereign
STR: 34 | AGI: 24 (26) | DEX: 27 (29) | VIT: 29 | END: 36 | INT: 19 | WIL: 53 | CHA: 24
Psi Skills: Psikinetic Blade, Psikinetic Shield, Psikinetic Focus, Psionic Swordforce, Psionic Force, Psionic Siphon
Bonded Items: Archon’s Psiblade (100% Synergy) | Archon’s Warplate (100% Synergy)
Knight Skills: Chivalric Charge, Coup de Force: Premier, Coup de Force: Deux
Sovereign Skills: Archon’s Will, Oath of Fealty
Duelist Skills: Honor Duel, Unyielding Pride
Titles: Human Forerunner (U), Mana Sage (E), Epic Slayer (E), Defier of Heaven (L)
Traits: Cataclysm (T)
1,234 / 11,000 XP
4 Attribute Points
5 Skill Purchase Points
0 Skill Upgrade Points
0 Skill Evolution points
The burning desire to immediately invest his attribute points was almost impossible to resist, but resist he did. Ceruviel would know where best to begin during his transition through Initiate Tier, and while he was likely already far outstripping his peers, he remembered what had been said about the progression within the System. Each tier was cumulatively stronger than the one before. The difference between an Untempered and an Initiate may have been broachable, and his unique abilities may have given him the tools to defeat the Hydra—but if he faced a true Tier Two or even Tier Three powerhouse, he would probably be flattened no matter his boons.
It was a sobering thought, and one he held onto as he dismissed his [Profile].
Leonidas’ eyes tracked the progress he made within the Arena and noted the not-so-veiled hostility in the eyes of the various Dawnguard soldiers he passed as he walked. Uriel had commanded him to attend, and so none of them challenged him, but the ire and disdain in their gazes were unmitigated despite their lack of action. They detested him, not because of who he was, he presumed, but because of what he was.
A Terran. An anomaly. A problem.
The thought filled him with amusement, not concern.
Ceruviel had been honing him for precisely that purpose, and it had come together marvelously. His mentor, grouchy and caustic as she was, had proven as good as her word—and Leonidas had transcended from ‘curious ape’ to ‘threat’ in a single day of applying her hell-week of training. Whatever else the reproachable Archon may have been, he could not fault her teaching acumen, nor could he deny the fondness he felt toward her. The tempestuous Duchess had settled firmly into the position of a mentor in his mind, and he felt genuine loyalty toward her.
Not the loyalty of a servant to a master, but of one ally to another.
And, truthfully, of a cautious student to an unorthodox-but-effective teacher.
When his booted footsteps crossed the final threshold to the still-packed Arena stands, and he stepped out of the ascending rise from lamp-lit tunnel into still-shining daylight, Leonidas nearly stumbled. A roar erupted from the crowd when he reappeared, as if the mere act of ascending the path had been some sign of manifest destiny. His left hand reflexively tightened on his sword-hilt as memories of demonic armies screaming for his blood flitted through his mind unbidden, and he squashed it beneath the meditative discipline Ceruviel had taught him.
His trauma remained a problem, a burden he needed to resolve.
Battle seemed to work like an anaesthetic for it, as disturbing as that was, but it was only ever a temporary remedy. If he wanted to pursue his goals in his new life, he needed to leave his memories—of both Elatra and the people it contained—well and truly behind him. The Administrator had made it clear that Elatra had been a structured reality; real, but also contrived. It was both soothing and distressing in that it affirmed his experiences had not been imagined, but also confirmed that it had been a carefully orchestrated simulation more than a naturally occurring world.
Real people, false timeline. Not all that different from a classic 2000s movie trilogy with leather dusters that his parents had loved.
Leonidas slowly relaxed his grip on his [Archon’s Psiblade], taking an indulgent moment to absorb the volume of the crowd, and smiling despite himself at the riotous cheers—loudest from the multitudinous Terrans in attendance. His footsteps carried him forward, and he held himself there for a brief moment, savoring the adulation of his species. It was not a celebration, in the traditional sense, that a gladiator would receive. Those were primarily offered immediately following a satiated lust for blood or thirst for butchery, and that, he had already experienced.
No, this, this was the embrace of a people that had been bereft of hope.
This was the raucous awakening of the indomitable human spirit.
Leonidas lifted his left arm, sword in hand, and thrust it into the air in greeting to those who thundered their approval, and in return, the Terrans—his people—screamed back the only way they could.
“ACHILLES! ACHILLES! ACHILLES!”
His name resounded across the arena like a clarion call to battle, booming with a force and magnitude only true and unvarnished desperation could convey. They loved him, not as the man Leonidas Achilles, whom he was, but as the symbol of what they, humanity at large, could yet hope to achieve. Perhaps they lacked his Core, his Titles, his Alphas, and his unique experiences, but within them, he knew, was a single unifying capacity that all of them shared.
Humans could be beaten, trodden on, oppressed, and deprived.
But even if you broke their spirits, nothing could truly kill humanity’s soul.
His eyes roved over them slowly as he kept his blade suspended in the air, watching, remembering, burning the moment into his memory. If someone ever asked him where he began, if he ever lived long enough to tell someone of the exact moment he knew he would accept Ceruviel’s path for him without regret, it would be this one. This singular, glorious, tribulation-forged, and agony-earned moment when humanity roared its refusal to go gently into the good night to the sunlit skies of their homeworld.
He would not forget that beautiful moment of united humanity for as long as he lived.
* * * * *
Synthra stood in stoic silence within the Royal Box, ignoring the curious and desirous glances cast her way with as much calm, disinterested self-confidence as she could affect, given the day’s happenings. From unexpected to downright baffling, the cadence of events still left her mind reeling in shock at what had transpired. First, Achilles—Leonidas, she reminded herself again—had killed a Tier two Hydra. A lesser draconid species, not a true Dragon, but a draconid of the second Tier nonetheless. Then he had been subsumed in a pillar of energy so dense with System power it had almost hurt her to look at it.
Following that, a storm of such wrath and fury that it had dwarfed her grandmother’s epochal presence had vomited lightning powerful enough to threaten the reinforced barriers of the Arena. Then the Dusk-Lord had intervened to protect the citizenry, followed by the Dawn-Lord, and only together had they succeeded in driving away something so oppressive, domineering, and terrifying that she had been too afraid to blink.
When that… thing that entered her [Draconic Sight], Synthra had felt her soul shrivel with a primal terror that defied her attempts to define it.
Whatever it was, whatever it consisted of, was so outside the scope of her comprehension that the mere memory of it sent a shiver of primordial fear rolling down her spine. Synthra was the grandchild of a True Dragon, a Red Leviathan of Ninth Tier, and in that moment, all the fury and might of her bloodline had felt like an insignificant whisper against the maelstrom that was that presence.
Nobody else had seemed as affected, and when her surrogate aunt and her contemporary had noticed it, they had defied it: bonding the Dawn-Lord’s Hyperion Sunfire with the Dusk-Lord’s Psionic Dominion to thrust it back from whence it had come. What troubled her, however, was not that it existed alone—that was bad enough, of course—but that what she had witnessed was not the thing in true manifestation.
It was, in the simplest description, a mere intent—a sliver of consciousness dispatched to investigate what had caught its unfathomable attention.
And that realization terrified her more than anything else.
Nearby, the Princess-Royal was speaking intently to several nobles, gesturing with a rare show of animated intensity and performing what looked to be a mix of cajoling and commanding, speaking too softly for her to hear without clearly eavesdropping, but not softly enough that she could not register the vague tone of insistence and iron-willed command bleeding from Aylar’s indistinct words.
Her arrival and immediate impromptu strategy sessions with the Princess and Ceruviel had been brief, done through a mental link the Duchess herself had created—and while they had a plan, it was tenuous at best. Synthra still didn’t know what she thought of the Heroine-Queen’s daughter. Aylar was undoubtedly beautiful; tall, toned, and willowy in the way Haelfar valued when it came to archetypal beauty.
She was the perfect Elfmaiden, so different from Synthra’s own proportions.
The fact that she seemed as fiercely intent on helping Achilles as Ceruviel did only served to increase her positive traits, in Synthra’s eyes, but she was still uncertain about the Princess. Other than being informed she would be spending more time with Aylar in the future, and being given rapid instructions by Ceruviel and input from Aylar herself, Synthra had little experience with the Princess-Royal. She had only ever seen her from a distance, or at balls and events where her grandmother’s blood made their attendance an honor for the hosts.
It was not enough to honestly know a person, but something about Aylar seemed radiant, pure, even trustworthy—and Synthra’s draconic instincts told her she would be a powerful ally. She could also be a powerful enemy, but that was unlikely. Ceruviel seemed to trust Aylar, and if nothing else, Synthra trusted Ceruviel.
Speaking of Ceruviel…
Further away, the Duchess of Twilight and Duke of Morning stood in quiet discourse upon the balcony; the former seemingly impressing something upon the latter with a look of cold determination, while the golden-armored Knight endured the Archon’s inaudible words with a stoic immutability. Of all the souls that resided within Dawnhaven or its immediate surrounds, Synthra would have been willing to wager that only Uriel Aventus and her mother, Sinalthria, could withstand the Dusk-Lord’s verbal assault and not search for any excuse to flee.
Another shiver of memory filtered through her unbidden, and Synthra finally decided she’d had enough. Courage was one thing, bone-headed stubbornness was quite another, and she had no desire to address her newest nightmare with something so infantile as that. She would just need to speak to the city’s regents, and hope either Ceruviel or Uriel could offer an explanation that placated her nerves in a way which—
A sudden explosion of sound thundered across the arena, and Synthra felt herself stumble in surprise when it reached the Box. To her relief, she was not the only one who reacted as such, and it was to her immediate shame that she felt any relief in that at all. Curiosity quickly overrode her self-castigation, however, and with only a mild—thankfully—blush warming her cheeks, she hurried over to the balcony immediately to try to see what had happened.
She was not the only one, and when she intentionally stood next to Ceruviel, Aylar was beside her almost in the same moment.
Synthra blinked at the Princess-Royal, who gave her something amounting to a wry smile in return, and the pair of them looked out at the arena—joined by a flurry of courtiers and merchants doing the same.
She felt as much as knew that every pair of eyes discovered the source almost at the same time, and her own gaze settled onto Achilles, where he now stood below them, looking out over the crowd roaring in fanatical approval as he approached one of the railings overlooking the arena. The Terran Knight seemed better-recovered than Synthra could have hoped for, given the ordeal he’d suffered, and there was something right about seeing him there—receiving the adulation of a crowd primarily comprised of his people.
Mutters of disapproval rippled through the Box’s observers, and Synthra caught snippets of scandalized voices.
“{...utterly inappropriate…}”
“{...haughty little creature…}”
“{...tarrying when summoned by the Duke…}”
“{...nerve of some of these Terrans…}”
“{...thorough whipping would teach…}”
The fifth mutter was somewhat less subtle than the rest, and before Synthra could do more than narrow her eyes, a wave of pressure rippled out from beside her—from the Dusk-Lord herself. The same voice, somewhere nearby, let out a sound like they were being strangled, and then fell silent. Synthra dared a glance to her right, and on instinct, her [Draconic Sight] took in Ceruviel. The Duchess was a beacon of Psi, and beside her, the Dawn-Lord was like the sunrise made manifest. His golden-armored gauntlet settled subtly on Ceruviel’s right hand, which had curled into a fist, and abruptly the storm of psi subsided.
Uriel’s head shook, just slightly, and Ceruviel narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing.
The interaction happened in less than a second, and while that only mitigated some of the derisive speech, what came next silenced it completely. Leonidas lifted his sword in the air, and the deafening response felt like a physical thing, powerful enough that she heard more than one pair of nearby feet stumble.
“ACHILLES! ACHILLES! ACHILLES!”
The deafening chant was like the aftershock of an earthquake.
Around Synthra, the crowd in the box fell silent, as if unified in a single thought.
Leonidas had become a symbol to the natives of Terra, and symbols were dangerous.
Please comment on what you liked or with theories you have!
