Mila
“Damn that spoiled entitled brat!”
A couple monkey-lizard things ran away from Mila, who’d been hunting in the forest near the soul well, but Mila didn’t care. She was just so pissed off.
The Trial Tower had finished about half an hour before and she now had to wait 15 days to get her chance to choose her rewards, as the 256 before her had the chance to choose first, with the duration of their exclusive times ranging from 3 hours for the top four to 1 hour for those who lost in the round of 256. Then she herself would get 1 hour of exclusive time as well.
To speed things up, however, the System allowed her and the other trial takers to see everything on the list of rewards they could afford, as well as when those items disappeared from the list because someone else bought them, so Mila’d spent the first half hour looking through the resources, and for that first half hour everything had looked good.
There were only three instances of the normal boon for gaining the rights to purchase teleportation permissions, the boon they needed to get back to Earth, and, according to Nana Xara, those were all likely to disappear as they were relatively cheap, only a little over 5 billion trial points, but there was a better version of the boon for a little under 9 trillion which no one was likely to take.
The second most important item on their list, the first 16 levels of the Twelve Element Primal Code, cost double that at nearly 18 trillion, so, other than them, probably only the winner or maybe second place would be able to take it.
Then, finally, there were multiple boons, raw materials, artifacts, and unique items in the hundreds of trillions range, the quadrillions range, and even a couple in the quintillions range, all of which Mila could choose at her leisure.
The ability to exchange trial points for resources would continue for six years until the start of the next F rank Trial Tower, and Mila was pretty sure she was the only one with over 32 trillion trial points, so she was the only one even able to see the most expensive items.
These super expensive resources had obviously been chosen with her and Aalam in mind, Aalam’s high Luck score likely helping quite a lot with the specificity of some of the unique items, but several of them required an important prerequisite, and that was Aalam getting to at least the fifth level of the Twelve Element Primal Code.
For example, one of the two resources costing over a quintillion trial points was a unique treasure called Primal Code Soul Washing Dew, which, according to the System provided description, would wash the soul of a cultivator who had practiced to at least the 5th level of the higher version of the Twelve Element Primal Code, the one requiring following the path of the Heavenly Spark.
It required the user to still have an F rank race for it to work, but it resulted in a permanent increase in affinity with all Laws. There wasn’t much more of a description than that, but Nana Xara had grown very, very excited when seeing it. Apparently, along with the other reward costing in the quintillion range, it might allow Aalam to advance his race to something of a higher level than he’d been planning, a race upgrade Mila would then get for free.
The problem was, after that first half hour, the only version of the Twelve Element Primal Code offered by the System as a reward for the Trial Tower had been taken, and, in its place, there was a message. “Mr. Shadow, I hope you’re doing well. I didn’t know how to contact you, so I figured I’d leave you a message here. I quite enjoyed our brief chat and would like to talk more, so please come to the Forest Cauldron’s main planet to see me. —Sincerely, Krysta La’Vordi.”
The other resource costing in the quintillion range was the almost dead body of a Mythical grade D rank monster called a Soul Carver, one with a bloodline at the Empyrean grade, the grade higher than Mythic, Soul Lord Prince. A Soul Carver had the ability to directly tamper with the souls of its victims, a set of racial talents Aalam definitely wanted, and with the System preserving the beast in a state just before its death, upon selecting the reward the beast would appear in front of Mila with just enough lifeforce for Aalam to use his Genetic Thief bloodline to extract the power of its race and bloodline.
This was an excellent opportunity, as this type of monster was exactly what Aalam wanted, but, to see the full benefits from the Trial Tower’s rewards, he’d need to make use of the Primal Code Soul Washing Dew before Mila summoned the monster.
Now, normally, this wouldn’t be the case. Aalam’s Genetic Thief bloodline wasn’t so weak that genetic power had to be stolen right before advancing, and, for most races and bloodlines, the stolen genetic power could last in a cultivator’s body for years, at higher ranks even millennia. But with the D rank Mythical grade monster, Aalam’s body in a normal state would explode instantly from absorbing its genetic power, let alone having it last.
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This could be fixed with a relatively cheap resource called a Highgenion Flower, a special flower which, if eaten, could allow the soul of an F rank cultivator to temporarily contain energies even the best E ranks normally couldn’t withstand, and there were three of them offered as a reward for the Trial Tower, with each costing almost 124 billion, a number most of those ranked above her couldn’t afford, so she was likely to get one.
Still, however, the Highgenion Flower wouldn’t allow Aalam to hold the power of the Mythical grade monster for more than a few minutes at most, so the order of operations of what Mila would have to choose was obvious.
First, once it was her turn, she had to take all the unique resources others lower ranked then her might be able to buy, such as the Highgenion Flower, quite a few raw materials Aalam would definitely be interested in, and a bunch of blueprints for artifacts which Aalam would love, as well as a race advancement resource for Roland.
Second, she’d have to take a common boon which cost only 1,728 trial points, one which would allow her, Aalam, and Isaiah to establish a System approved force.
Third, she would then take the more expensive version of the boon for gaining the rights to purchase teleportation permissions, one which would allow her to purchase permissions for her entire force instead of just for herself.
Fourth, she and Isaiah would use that permission to teleport themselves and Aalam, even if he was still unconscious, to Earth and quickly take it over in the name of the Heavenly Spark Soul King. An E rank planet like Earth would have enough energy to maximize Aalam’s Prince uniqueness, so this action would vastly increase Aalam’s effective Attunement and thus greatly speed up his advancement of Laws.
Fifth, with Earth in their possession, Mila would buy all the expensive resources in the list useful for people other than Aalam.
Sixth, and most difficult, Mila would need to figure out a way to gain access to at least the first five levels of the Twelve Element Primal Code before Aalam finished raising all his Laws to high grade.
How she was going to do this, she had no idea.
Then, seventh, Aalam would train the Twelve Element Primal Code up to the 5th level, or the 7th if they had time and Mila was able to gain access to levels 6 and 7 of the technique, and Mila would buy the Primal Code Soul Washing Dew and the nearly dead Soul Carver and the other resources Aalam could use for his racial advancement, allowing Aalam to advance his race by eating the soul fragment of the C rank Shadow Thief.
Finally, eighth, Mila would advance her race as well and they would train themselves up and enter into E rank, figuring out what they wanted to do after.
The last steps of course were all dependent on step six, Mila somehow gaining access to the Twelve Element Primal Code, and, given the ability to exchange trial points would disappear at the start of the next F rank Trial Tower in six years, she had a time limit of only about three or four years to get the cultivation technique to Aalam if they wanted their ideal racial evolutions, something that wouldn’t have been the case without the demigod blocking their path.
Mila spent the next fifteen days disguised in Eshna or hunting in its surroundings, working to improve the skill proficiencies of her three sensory skills and to improve her Law Larvae of The Reaper and The Courtesan. As she didn’t kill very much, she wasn’t able to advance the Law Larva of The Reaper, but her Law Larva of The Courtesan advanced to middle grade by the time the fifteen days were up and it was her turn to choose resources.
Taking everything she needed and placing it into the Left Hand of the Runescribe, she then summoned back Isaiah and they quickly traveled to the Interplanetary Teleportation Platform, Isaiah carrying the still unconscious Aalam.
“Is he okay?” Roland alone met them near the platform and he looked concerned when he saw Aalam unconscious.
“He’s just recovering from using an ability above his normal level of power during the Trial Tower.” Mila smiled at the now king of the entire planet. “He’ll be up and ripping off heads again in just a matter of days.”
Then she summoned an apple-sized fruit from the Left Hand of the Runescribe she was wearing and tossed it to Roland, who caught it easily. The fruit looked kind of like a large blueberry, only it seemed to be made of somehow solidified rainclouds instead of fruit matter, and it radiated a type of power, Mila able to notice Roland had an urge to bite into it, as did, to a lesser extent, Isaiah.
“Eat that,” she told the king. “Then, when you’re done, we’ll set off.”
Looking excited, Roland took a bite of the fruit, his face changing to look like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. Then he took another bite, and another, soon devouring the entire fruit whole.
Like with Isaiah’s racial advancement, eating the fruit didn’t meet the requirements for the normal racial advancement of a Human Skirmisher, Roland’s F rank race, but it didn’t matter. Over the next hour, after falling unconscious onto the wet ground next to the lake where the Interplanetary Teleportation Platform was located, Roland’s body changed, his hair falling out and his brown eyes changing to a deep sea blue. If what Mila judged was correct, his hair would turn blue as well and, more important, his affinity to water Laws would be much, much higher.
Isaiah, as Nana Xara had expected, gained an epiphany from watching the power of water change Roland, merging his new two Law Eggs he’d raised to peak grade together to form the Law Larva of Hydro Healing, a Law with a name which was far less impressive than his other Laws, but a powerful pragmatic Law nonetheless. It was just too bad Aalam was unconscious or he might have gained some advancements as well.
Mila then shook Roland awake and, as he bowed even more deeply than before, she and Isaiah got onto the Interplanetary Teleportation Platform and teleported away.