Krysta
Krysta just stared at the man, mouth agape, not really sure how to respond as she’d never heard someone insult any god so brazenly. But then she started to laugh. “I've never heard my father and his brothers described that way.”
Dragon poop beetles. Thinking about it, that's probably what most people who first heard of the Heavenly Scarabs would think, but no one sane would ever say it out loud. They were powerful gods after all.
“Sorry if I was offensive.” The man sounded genuinely apologetic, so Krysta decided to forgive him.
She did, however, offer a recommendation. “I would advise never saying that type of thing again out loud. My father wouldn’t care much, but there are other powers who would kill you on the spot for such an offense.”
The man just nodded his head, likely a sign of acknowledgement in whatever culture he came from, and continued to watch her from the center of the meadow.
His aura was interesting, more stable than any she’d felt before from an F rank, even if nowhere close to being the most powerful, and she couldn’t get a reading on his emotions at all, even with her Aura stat likely well above double his.
“Your class has the Heavenly Spark keyword?”
The man nodded.
“And it’s Heroic grade?”
The man nodded again.
“You know whoever recommended that path to you was likely trying to cripple you, right?”
The man shook his head. “I highly doubt it.”
Krysta took several steps closer, traveling over 100 meters with each step. “Why?”
“Because I plan to become a god.” There was conviction in the man’s voice and Krysta was pretty sure he was smiling behind his black mask. “And I have no intention of crippling myself.”
“So, you chose the path yourself? Why?” There were quite a few geniuses in history who had tried to travel down the path of the Heavenly Spark. Those who chose a class relying on 36 Laws, however, mostly got stuck at F rank or, in some rare cases, E rank. There were just too many chances for bottlenecks.
The best to ever go down that Law path was Lord Kavon Kemizle, now a god known as the Law Master, who’d had access to the Twelve Element Primal Code from his mother, its creator, but his class path had been that of a sage, only requiring opposing Laws and not even the same Laws for every rank advancement, yet he’d abandoned the Law path of the Heavenly Spark at D rank, only relying on one Law of each element at C rank, and then even abandoning that so he could grow further.
It was a really, really foolish path to go down.
Instead of answering, the man asked her a question instead. “Why did you choose to become an Essence Void Mage?”
He seemed serious, so Krysta, who was only 23 years old, decided to give it some thought. “I have a really, really high affinity with space magic, allowing me to advance space Laws much faster than other Laws, and the only requirement for advancing in the Essence Void Mage line is comprehension of space Laws. Essence Void Mage was thus the only combat focused Legendary class I could choose at F rank where I wouldn’t have a bottleneck.”
“And do you enjoy space Laws and combat?”
Krysta just stared at him for a few seconds.
No one had ever asked her that before. Ever since her birth, it had just been expected by everyone around her that she would become an Essence Void Mage, and she’d just gone along without really thinking. It wasn’t like she disliked space Laws or combat training. It was fun to get better at something. But there was a reason she’d managed to advance her Law Egg of Cells up to a Law Larva despite not spending much time on it. She liked alchemy as well, especially when she did it with her mother.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I don’t dislike them.”
The man nodded again. “So, you decided your future path based on power and ease of advancement rather than on skills which would allow you to do what you love?”
“I guess.” Unconsciously, Krysta took several steps closer.
“I chose my path a bit differently.” There was excitement in the man’s almost orange eyes. “I like understanding the universe and then using that understanding to make things. So, I chose the path which would best help me do those.
“Is advancement more difficult than if I had focused on one subset of Laws? Yes. Am I more powerful at my rank than I would be otherwise? Also yes.” She was pretty sure the man with the sexy voice was smiling behind his mask. “But the most important part is that the extra affinity I get for all Laws allows me to grow my understanding of the universe more easily, and that is so much fun.”
The man’s aura changed slightly, and she realized he’d just had a breakthrough, seemingly in a fire element Law. Given the slight change she’d sensed from him earlier, that was two Laws he’d brought up to middle grade in just a few minutes.
The man was a genius, and she’d love to continue talking to him, but the plague which had been introduced into the subspace was draining her energy a bit too fast, her Void Clean Body racial ability requiring more and more of her resources to stay active. The masked man on the other hand didn’t seem affected at all, and she realized the rather terrifying disease which would almost certainly kill her before the time limit was up had been released by him.
“Sorry,” she said as she gathered mana to the staff in her right hand, ready to release a full powered use of her Spatial Slice skill from a little over 5 kilometers away. “The disease you released is a little too powerful, so I have to try to kill you.”
As she spoke, he didn’t stay still, running sideways on the meadow using random jagged motions to make himself harder to hit. At the same time, twelve needles flew out of the dark azure fingerless glove artifact on his left hand and started drawing lines of mana and psyforce in the air as two heroic grade weapons, a greatsword and a katana, flew toward her, empowered by his Telekinesis skill.
Just using the power of her aura, she cut off his connection to the two weapons and then created portals in front of them, causing them to end up behind her. Then she released her attack.
The spatial slice flew forward at a speed so fast five kilometers were gone in an instant, but the masked man still almost managed to dodge. Infused with the power of a middle grade spatial Law Larva, his three domain skills slowed the spatial slice slightly. The artifact on his left hand released some kind of suppression, making foreign Laws in the range of his aura less powerful, even affecting her Law Pupa ever so slightly. And, somehow, he seemed to know the spatial slice’s travel path as well as she did. Most important, however, he activated a one-time-use talisman he’d gotten from somewhere that completely removed air resistance, allowing his telekinetically empowered movement to be even faster than normal.
It wasn’t enough, however, and her spatial slice would have cut off his left leg, but the necklace he was wearing under his robe seemed to be some kind of talisman itself and it created a powerful shield which completely blocked her attack.
A tiny bit nervous about whatever the needles were doing, she decided to ignore them and instead attacked again with Spatial Slice, but this time something even more shocking than the necklace saved the masked man.
During her first attack, his domain skills had been infused with a spatial Law, seemingly the Law Larva of Multi-Dimensional Geometry, but it had only been middle grade so it didn’t have enough effect to allow him to dodge. This time, however, the masked man’s Law Larva of Multi-Dimensional Geometry advanced to high grade, and that extra power slowed her attack just enough for him to, with the help of another one-time-use talisman, escape her slice.
She then sent out a third attack, this time with three other spatial slices accompanying it so the masked man wouldn’t be able to dodge, but, at the same time, the runes the needles had been drawing were joined by five other runes through his Psychic Domain skill, forming a complex and powerful array.
The masked man seemingly had the Heroic grade Runescriber skill and, through the runes he’d created, she was hit by the full force of his effective Spirit while her spatial slices cut him into three pieces. His head and most of his upper torso, however, were sadly still intact.
Her Spirit, while not at his level, was also strong, and her mental fortitude was high, while her cultivation technique had been fully practiced up to the ninth level, but she still wasn’t able to activate a skill or one of her artifacts for a short instant and, during that very short timespan, she was hit by a trap.
Somehow, when he’d been killing the other cultivators, he’d left a D rank talisman to be powered by mana blocks and delayed its activation, likely through some complicated array. He also probably had a mechanism in place to correctly aim it and, like an idiot, she hadn’t moved since the start of their fight.
Coming from over 100 kilometers behind her, a powerful breath of fire, likely from a D rank talisman, hit her, the flames charring her body to ashes, and, before she fully succumbed, she saw the flames reach the masked man as well, realizing the talisman must have been set to aim at him, thus why he’d moved sideways to put her first in the line of fire.
Her soul projection died. And then she woke up in a void like during the start of the Trial Tower.
Congratulations!
Battle Royale III over. Calculating rewards.
You had the second most royale points.
No reward, but you may still participate in the next round.