Mila
“Aaaah!”
Mila could hear Aalam yelling even from tens of kilometers away, the elf’s axe cutting through more than just flesh and affecting the projection of Aalam’s soul as well, causing a lot more pain than normal. So, she quickly strengthened their bond and called to him. “Aalam, do you want me to commit suicide?”
Committing suicide would exit them both from the Trial Tower, stopping the elf from continuing to torture Aalam, and it was pretty much all Mila could do. She was completely outmatched by anyone who could even fight with Aalam, let alone the elf who’d overpowered him.
“Rank 1,025 isn’t high enough to get what we need.” Aalam’s mental voice was strained, almost like he was growling, and, for a second, Mila didn’t know what to do.
Rank in the Trial Tower was very important. The first ranked trial taker had first choice of resources, second got second, and so on, and there were a lot of unique resources in the list of trial rewards, such as the Twelve Element Primal Code cultivation technique, which the System would only sell one copy of every trial. Reaching the same stage in the trial, whoever had the most trial points would be considered the highest ranking, so, for this round, where only 1,024 cultivators could move on to the next, Mila would have rank 1,025 if she gave up, as she almost certainly already had more trial points than the rank one would have after winning.
Mila’s state of indecision, however, didn’t last for long. “Aalam, exaggerate your screaming. Assholes like this live for the feeling of control and he’ll hurt you less to prolong his pleasure.
“At the same time, use up your resources to make him use up his. Don’t stop struggling and make him succumb to the plague faster.
“Finally, use your Law Larva of Bonds to strengthen the bond between us further. I want to try something and, if it works, this asshole will feel pain.”
From sharing Aalam’s senses, Mila could tell the man was wasting energy fighting against the plague they’d released. Sadly, his method was slightly more efficient than Krysta’s had been and he had about the same resource reserves Krysta had. Given the nature of the plague, however, the resource drain from fighting against it would only increase, and the elf didn’t know that yet. So, if Aalam could waste his resources more now, the man, whose biggest weakness appeared to be Perception, would definitely die from the plague long before he could find Mila.
Aalam’s extra minds, less affected by the pain of his body, used his domains to create runes to try and attack the elf, but the elf just casually broke them with lightning every time. Then the man, whose effective Aura stat was seemingly almost three times that of Aalam’s and who’d practiced his cultivation technique to the seventh level, tried to suppress Aalam’s aura with his own so Aalam wouldn’t be able to send his resources out of his body to attack, but, even after five minutes, he wasn’t able to. Aalam’s aura, influenced by his 36 Laws, was just too stable.
During this time, however, Aalam lost three more toes and was in considerable pain, pretty much only able to hold on because he knew the pain wouldn’t last.
It was about that time when the exponential growth of the plague’s resource drain really started to kick in and, through Aalam’s senses, Mila could see the elf consider just ending Aalam’s life.
“This disease of yours is impressive. But, seeing as you aren’t affected, you must have the antidote.”
“No,” Aalam growled out, clenching his teeth so tightly some were cracking. “I only had the one dose.”
This was technically true and, given how much more powerful the elf’s Aura was, he could probably tell. Aalam had only held the dose of antidote he’d taken at the beginning of the trial while Mila had all the rest hidden in one of her spatial storage bags.
The elf smiled down at Aalam and raised his greataxe. “Well, that’s too bad. Even if your disease is powerful, I still have several minutes. Let’s see if I can’t cut off something a little more important.”
Aalam felt rather terrified, Mila able to sense it through their bond, and that was what she was waiting for. Having experimented for the last several minutes, she’d figured out how she could trigger a contract through Aalam’s aura instead of her own. Aalam just had to take some of her resources and, with the strength of their bond, creating a bond from herself to someone else with him as the intermediary was rather simple.
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Instead of making a contract with just the evil elf, however, she instead made one with both the elf and the System, a special type of contract only available in System hosted competitions like this one, a System guaranteed bet.
You have offered a bet to Trial Taker Reginald Vin.
Terms:
1. Whoever wins this Forest Combat stage of the Trial Tower Tournament will gain all the trial points of the loser.
2. Whoever wins this Forest Combat stage of the Trial Tower Tournament will gain all the System-bound assets of the loser
3. Torture is not allowed
The elf just looked down at Aalam and smiled. “So, you want me to end you earlier with this bribe.” He slowly pushed away the hood covering Aalam’s hair and cut off Aalam’s right ear, causing Aalam to scream yet again, but then he accepted the bet. “Fine.” The elf then lifted his axe above his head and the weapon started to be covered with the concentrated power of wind and lightning. “Do you have any last words?”
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Aalam had a last bit of fun, but the elf didn’t care, and the axe slammed into Aalam’s chest, causing him to slowly die.
The stage didn’t end with Aalam’s death, however, and, though Mila couldn’t see it, she was pretty sure Aalam’s choice to quote Star Wars had actually been a good idea, the man still probably not aware Aalam had only been a familiar.
* * *
Reginald
Reginald Vin looked down at the masked man and smiled as he saw the light go out from the bastard’s almost orange eyes. He didn’t care about the man’s identity, but the peasant had thought himself capable of advancing on the path of the Heavenly Spark, the path which had killed Reginald’s idiot of a father, and that pissed Reginald off.
If a genius like Reginald’s father couldn’t travel down the path of the Heavenly Spark, no one could, and the masked man needed to learn his place.
When the masked man died, however, no System message of congratulations appeared, and the disease was still ravaging through Reginald’s body. If nothing changed, he would be dead as well in less than two minutes.
Reginald thought back to the man’s last words. Then he thought about the skills he knew the masked man had—Heroic grade Telekinesis, Heroic grade Runescriber, Legendary grade Qi Domain, Legendary grade Mana Domain, Legendary grade Psychic Domain, and some kind of contract skill. He couldn’t have a skill which allowed him to revive from the dead or one that allowed his soul to live on so he could go take over another body, but it was possible the masked man had an artifact which would allow his soul to temporarily hide. That would go well with the disease the man had released.
Desperately, Reginald started taking off the artifacts from the man’s body, the plain black mask, the gaudy robe, the fingerless glove on the man’s left hand, but he couldn’t find anything. The fingerless left glove obviously had a sub-dimension inside it, which could hold the artifact maintaining the man’s soul, but the artifact was well made and Reginald didn’t have the skill to break it open.
Angered, Reginald stood up and looked down at the man’s beautiful face, taking in his dead almost orange eyes and his long nearly black blue hair. Then, with the last of his strength, Reginald slammed his axe down on the man’s face and fell to the ground.
The next thing he knew, he was waking up in the real world, System messages appearing in front of his eyes.
Trial Tower Tournament Round II has ended with your loss.
Then the next System messages made him almost want to cry.
In accordance with your bet with Trial Taker Shadow, all your trial points and System-bound assets have been transferred to Trial Taker Shadow.
You have lost 13,705,240,500 trial points.
Total Accumulated Trial Points: 0
You have lost 32 C rank universal credits.
You have lost 756 D rank universal credits.
You have lost 12,947 E rank universal credits.
You have lost 4,895,128 F rank universal credits.
You currently have no credits to your name.
Congratulations!
Your rank in the F rank Trial Tower is 2048.
“So, what rank did you get?” Reginald saw his grandfather’s excited gaze as the man stopped the combined spell he and 17 other family members had been using since the Trial Tower had begun, the one which had given Reginald a nearly 200% boost to all his stats. “Do you think you earned enough trial points to buy what the family needs?”
The Vin Clan was a huge A rank force with three different A ranks among its members, the royal family of the largest elven empire in the universe, but, due to his father, Reginald’s family within the clan wasn’t that well off. His father had taken out loans he hadn’t been able to pay back, dying of old age at E rank due to the stupid path he’d chosen, and the family was hoping to somewhat lower that debt by selling to the main line of the clan resources gained from the Trial Tower.
His grandfather, a powerful B rank, had been injured in war, but he’d chosen to agitate his wounds and lower his life expectancy to boost Reginald’s power, all in the hope he could get one unique resource offered by the System in this year’s Trial Tower, a resource called the Highgenion Flower, a special flower which, if eaten, could allow the body of an F rank cultivator to temporarily contain energies even the best E ranks normally couldn’t withstand, something needed for the seventeenth princess of the empire to successfully advance her race past F rank.
Had Reginald, like his father, had a royal line uniqueness, allowing him to multiply his power through owning Territory, his grandfather wouldn’t have had to sacrifice himself, yet Reginald hadn’t even managed to return with a single trial point and had even lost a good deal of money.
He was worse than his father, and that thought especially made him start to cry.