Maximus' sword collided like a meteor with the monster’s skull. Such force was behind his diagonal cut that when it hit the monster’s skull its whole body not only split in two but the front half of it's body exploded into a red mist, the blow killing the ginormous level 310 millipede instantly.
However, before he could even take another breath, he sensed another titanic millipede, whose length far exceeded 100 metres and whose width was as great as a starship, scurrying towards him at great, almost unimaginable, speed. The tunnels that surrounded him made every movement echo endlessly producing a cacophony, alerting him to the thousands of creatures who would no doubt soon be swarming upon him.
In a split second, he turned on the balls of his heels and surged forward towards the titanic beast, his sword almost instantly finding purchase in the oncoming monster’s head as its unfathomably sharp blade easily penetrated the creature’s thick and tough armoured plates. With a flick of his wrist, the sword sliced upwards, cutting the monster’s brain in two, and bisecting the upper head’s armour plate. He smiled, then surged past the monster’s now dead body, towards the origin, towards the main hive of all the monsters, cutting down millipede after millipede as he approached. As more and more millipedes fell dead after being cut by his sword, the general zoned out to reflect on what it was that he was doing.
The general had to admit that he had been a little bit obsessed with clearing this particular dungeon ever since the first time he had cleared it many centuries ago. The million-millipede hell, as it was called by others, was his favourite dungeon in the whole multiverse. Something about spending weeks in a cavern slaughtering his way through endless numbers of colossal millipedes was somehow cathartic to the monstrously powerful general.
Of course, he had somewhat outgrown the challenging aspect of the dungeon, now being able to kill all the monsters, including the infamously powerful boss, with ease. And, soon enough he’d be too high level to even enter the dungeon, but as time passed, he cared less and less about the diminishing experience he received from the monsters and had just learned to enjoy the monotony of easy kills and pointless battles.
Though, a small part of him knew that he probably would have moved on to some new dungeon, however, there was something special about this one, other than it being nostalgic for him, and that was that this dungeon was a one-in-a-million in that it was an instanced dungeon. That meant that no matter how hard he tried, the general couldn’t receive communications from the emperor, which always helped him relax and reduce stress whenever that was necessary. The emperor only called when he wanted something, and usually, that meant a more stressful life for poor old Maximus.
However, even Maximus wouldn’t dare be late to an appointment with the old tyrant, so he knew he had to make this run of his favourite dungeon quick or else he’d find himself on the wrong end of the man’s talent for dishing out punishment. And, the old veteran very much did not want that, plus the reason for the meeting intrigued him.
The emperor said he had something very important they needed to discuss, which could only mean a few things were happening, either the old man had caved to the fussy nobles and was going to ask Maximus to retire. Or, the more irritating option, the old man had finally fed the Crown Prince enough precious treasures and given him enough skill books, that despite only being 9 years old, the boy would meet the incredibly high bar the general had set for anyone looking to become his apprentice to meet, and the emperor was going to hoist the boy onto him to train.
If it was the latter scenario he was walking into, then Maximus would have very little choice – a fact that irritated the monstrous man. He sucked at teaching, and he knew that the boy had very little talent when it came to warfare. So, the old general knew that if the crown prince became his apprentice, it would only lead to disaster and agony for both of them.
However, the emperor needed a worthy heir, and with no other children, the young crown prince was the only chance the emperor had at his legacy outlasting him. For the glorious empire and dynasty that he had built to pass the test of time.
Maximus was sympathetic to the emperor’s motivation, of course. He had helped the man build the great empire after all, and had benefited much from it. However, he knew deep down that he wasn’t the right teacher for the boy and that the emperor should focus his attention on siring more children until eventually one of his progeny was a worthy talent, and then Maximus would teach that kid in a heartbeat.
Alas, he was not the advisor to the emperor, and no one could truly say to control that monster’s actions, so he would just have to accept that this was the path the emperor had chosen and do his best to ensure that the plan didn’t fail if it truly was the plan.
It was as he resolved himself to this reality, that the whole cavern began shaking, and a blood-curdling, piercing screech echoed and intensified, building in both power and pitch before suddenly everything turned silent and all light that had once been in the cavern suddenly disappeared.
Maximus only smiled; it seemed the boss had finally woken up from its slumber, and it seemed angry. That was good. It would still be easy enough to kill, but at least being angry meant that it would put up a good fight. Well, as good a fight as a monster at only level 450 could put up he supposed. He laughed at his own absurd power and recalled fondly in his mind the first gruelling battle he had endured with the boss when he had been only half its level. He had barely survived that first run, and he'd been making up for that fact ever since. He then recalled the almost priceless look on the arrogant lad's face when he had emerged alive and well from the dungeon, and collected on his wage earnings.
Oh, the spirit wine he had enjoyed after winning that particular bet. Just recalling the taste of the exquisite wine alone was enough to get him pumped, and because of that, the general surged as fast as he could down the familiar cavern tunnels towards the main area, a big fat grin plastered on his face. “Hopefully this will be fun.”, he said aloud to himself.
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Arthur stood and pondered what to say to explain the whole situation to both the woman and Lucas, but before he could get out any words, the female soldier started speaking, “If you’re headed to the base, then you’ll need to follow me on foot as I’ll need to let you in, it’s a security measure, put in place for obvious reasons.”
Arthur nodded, then looked down at Lucas, whose usually quite calm expression was now the picture of nervousness. Both Arthur and the female soldier assumed it was because of the story about what happened to the Lieutenant, so ignored it for now as there wasn’t much that could be done to soothe the boy’s fears, the threat being very real.
The female pilot turned to her spaceship and waved her hand, which somehow had it seal the cockpit, take flight, and zoom off in the direction that it had first come from. Then, she turned around to face the two, and said, “Alright, let’s get to walking.”
Lucas and Arthur both nodded and the two started walking behind the humanoid female pilot, both harbouring a significant number of questions about the woman’s species, their curiosity almost palpable in their eyes. The pilot noticed this of course and chuckled, before saying, “I see you have many questions, but answers will have to wait until we are safely sat in the base. A lot of things will be explained there, we have a whole Native education program in fact that both of you can take. It’ll explain the basics of how the multi-verse functions, who the big players are, and what kind of things you’ll be expected to do before you become full citizens of Hergalexy.”
Arthur was relieved to hear he’d receive some long-sought-after information upon reaching the base, but he was a little uncertain as to why the woman couldn’t answer questions out in the forest. To Arthur’s mind, it was a little suspicious, but he kept those feelings to himself, not wanting to provoke the woman. He’d done enough intra-sapient fighting to last him for a lifetime and he wasn’t exactly sure that he’d win any engagement either.
However, the fact that the lieutenant may have been defeated and killed by the man from days earlier did raise several questions about this army’s personnel capabilities. Arthur had defeated the crazed man in only 2 blows, yet the lieutenant had been unable to defeat him. If he assumed the army personnel of the invading force were much stronger than regular humans, even after integration, then that meant either the man ambushed the lieutenant, or he had possessed some kind of trump card that he’d died too quickly to use on Arthur but had managed to use to bring down the lieutenant.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
But Arthur couldn’t quite discount the idea that the Grand Imperium’s army worked on the principle of quantity over quality, but he somehow doubted that, judging purely by the physique of the woman who walked in front of him.
Clearing his mind of such thoughts, he decided he had to confess to the killing of the crazed man in the forest. He walked a bit closer to the soldier, though not enough to spook her into thinking he was attacking her, and said, “Miss, I must confess that as I was travelling through the forest, a bloodthirsty man tried to viciously attack us, even going so far as to threaten to consume my young grandson, I… neutralised the man and have his body in my user inventory. I was thinking that it might be…”
The female soldier quickly turned and looked at him in the eyes, before ordering, “Show me.”
Arthur’s head tilted to point at Lucas, but the woman didn’t seem to care, and just kept looking at him expectantly. Arthur sighed, he’d rather not expose his grandson to another dead body, but he guessed he had been the one to bring it up, so it was his fault.
He relented, reached into his User Inventory, pulled the corpse out of it, and then laid it carefully onto the ground. Lucas’ eyes widened, as did the woman’s though her eyes were filled with recognition, whereas Lucas was full of fear and confusion
The pilot got to her knees beside the body and scanned it with her eyes, then she looked up at Arthur and nodded grimly before saying, “Well then Mr Goodman, though I am most definitely overstepping my authority here, I would like to thank you on behalf of the Grand Imperium nonetheless for seeing to it that this scum met his end.”
“You can tell that he is the killer by just looking at his body?” Arthur asked, curiously, feeling a little bit nervous that everything about someone could just be accessed or seen through the use of the system. If that were the case, then privacy just became his number one concern.
The woman shook her head before she let out a sigh and said slowly, “There is a system skill called Analysis, it allows users to analyse objects and learn basic information about them. Though it doesn’t work on living creatures, it can reveal the status of a dead creature/monster/man, and this body you brought me matches exactly what we had gathered about the murderer’s skillset and… deviant cultivation.”
Arthur nodded, though not understanding the final part of the woman’s words. However, before he could ask about it, the woman placed the man’s body in some kind of storage ring and began walking off again – a solemn look on her face.
It was clear that she didn’t want to answer any more questions, and her mood had not improved upon seeing the lieutenant’s killer dead, if anything she seemed far less amiable than she had only mere moments ago.
Arthur and Lucas followed behind her quietly, until about 30 minutes of walking later, the three arrived in front of a truly imposing metallic gate which had a myriad of different species of sapient guards guarding it - looking to be on very high alert.
One of the guards noticed the three approaching, especially the female pilot, and he greeted her with a salute, before then gesturing towards Arthur and Lucas, and saying something in a strange tongue that neither of them understood.
A few tense moments passed as each of the half dozen or so guards looked at the two with some amount of suspicion, and Arthur could even detect some hint of fear in one of the men's eyes. That had him wondering, just what had these men gone through or heard about to make them this frightened of an old man and his grandson. The whole thing seemed absurd to Arthur, to see battle-hardened warriors from a supposedly vast and powerful empire looking so weak and frightened.
The tension grew even more when the guard broke off from speaking to the female pilot and surged towards Arthur. The guard, who was large in both height and bulk, seemed to effortlessly cross the distance, and soon enough he had Arthur's throat in his hands. He began yelling in German-accented English, and what looked like tears began running down his cheeks, "You sold him out didn't you! Now you're here to collect the bounty money for my brother's killer! You filthy stinking backstabbing native! CONFESS TO YOUR CRIME!"
The guard began squeezing harder around the old man's throat. That was, until suddenly, an aura made entirely out of Qi erupted from the old man's body, and the shockwave from the expanding aura forced the man holding him up to release as he was sent flying back.
Arthur dropped to the floor coughing and wheezing, only barely able to make out the system prompt he had just received. Lucas rushed to his side, looking at the guard who had been sent flying backwards with unmitigated hate in his eyes.
You have taken the first step into the [Foundation]/Core forming realm!
Current Core Grade: [IV] - Quality: [Amazing]
Reward: +20 Spiritual Points
Arthur kept struggling to breathe now not only because of the guard's vicious seizing of his throat, but because it felt as though his Qi was running rampant in his chest. As he heaved for breath, his mind was slowly reigning in his Qi and his aura swiftly receded back into his body. Finally, when the last of his aura was under control, he could breathe easily.
However, when he raised his head, his eyes were met by the frightened look of all the Imperium's guards, this time even the female pilot seemed to look at him with fear present in her eyes.
The man who had assaulted him moments earlier was on his knees, tears streaming from his eyes, muttering, "How? Foundation realm already? That's impossible."
Arthur, with the aid of Lucas, managed to get back up onto his feet. He saw that this first interaction with the Grand Imperium of Hergalexy had not gone as well as he had wanted, but he understood their suspicion, and the man who had attacked him claimed that the lieutenant had been his brother, so he even understood the intensity of emotions on display.
He needed to settle this situation, resolve the dispute if you will. As soon as he thought that, a sudden idea formed in his head, as if a suggestion formed from pure instinct, but it seemed to have come from elsewhere, his skill perhaps? He would have to assume so, but as the idea seemed to be a good one, he decided not to question it too much.
He gestured towards his grandson, then at himself, before giving a sincere speech, "I fully understand why you are suspicious of me. However, you should know that this boy right here is the only family I have left, all my other children and grandchildren died in this horrific process of system integration, so trust me when I say that I know what the loss of someone important feels like. I feel your pain, in fact, that feeling of loss has been a constant underlying foundation of my new reality since the system arrived." He paused to let his words sink in before he continued, "I am not here to harm any of you, in fact, I travelled all the way here so that I could find a new life for me and my grandson out there in the multiverse, and nothing else." He paused and then swallowed before saying his final sentence, "I had no idea about any bounty, all I knew before I delivered the killing blow to that crazed man was that he wanted to harm my grandchild and that I couldn't allow."
The expression of fear seemed glued on the soldiers' faces for the next few seconds, but eventually, everything seemed to settle in their minds, and their expressions turned from fear to neutral and the man who had attacked Arthur just moments ago stood up onto his feet.
He wiped tears from his eyes with one of his 4 large furry hands, before he asked in a shaky and broken voice, "How are you alive but my brother is not?"
Arthur didn't reply. He couldn't. He was dealing with a grieving man. He also didn't need to, as soon enough a group of his fellow guards soon started helping him to calm down, talking him down in the same unknown foreign language from earlier.
The female pilot approached Arthur with a bit of a surprised look on her face, which suited her far better than the fearful look she had given him earlier. She gave a light bow before she began apologising, "I am sorry for the frightened look I gave you earlier. In truth, it is incredibly rare to see anyone, especially not a native only a week and a half into possessing a system, who has reached the Foundation realm of cultivation. So I reacted based on instinct, I truly meant no offence."
Arthur noticed that the tone she was using was far more respectful and reverent than previously, he guessed that her words were true which also meant being in the Foundation realm truly was quite a big deal. He sighed, not really wanting to somehow boost the ego of his already presumptuous Automatic Cultivation Perk, and he could only imagine that as he'd not stop growing at ridiculous speeds any time soon, the perk's ego would only grow bigger and bigger. He wouldn't put it past the upstart perk to initiate some kind of instant death sequence where he had to get so many stat points and invest them into his Spiritual stat before a certain amount of time elapsed otherwise he'd die.
Reminding himself that the woman in front of him had just spoken, he let a forgiving smile form on his face and he said in his best grandfather voice, "It's alright. Let's just say I've had quite an eventful week and a half."
Lucas looked up at his grandfather with some amazement, he too had felt the sheer power of the shockwave that had pulsed out from the man's body. Something in his stomach had started quivering, almost making him feel a little sick, but he had held on and managed not to vomit. However, as he listened to the words of this alien woman, he looked at his grandfather in a new light. He was everything that Lucas felt that he needed. The man was kind, warm, and strong. He was nothing like his father, and Lucas couldn't be more grateful to the man in this moment, even if he tried to be.
His young eyes were suddenly refocused elsewhere by the sound of metal chains being pulled, and he watched in awe as the massive gate doors began creaking open, slowly revealing a fraction of what hid behind the behemoth walls. Lucas couldn't believe his eyes as the crack between the gate's halves grew wider, as the first thing he could make out to be beyond the gate was a man, wearing nothing more than a simple t-shirt and jeans, flying. It was unbelievable.