Diana

“You wanted to talk to me?” Diana gestured for Mr. Li to sit and he did.

They were in the Sydney penthouse apartment Diana had taken over once they’d figured out how to convert mana to electricity, specifically her sitting room. The ceiling was over four meters high and there were three couches arranged around a coffee table next to a set of large wall to ceiling windows showing the setting sun, Diana sitting on the couch to the right of the window while Mr. Li was on the couch to the left.

“You need to start worrying more about the other native forces.” Mr. Li, as usual when they were alone, was very blunt. “Other than the Psionics and the Ice Giants, the remaining invasion forces are all losing men too fast to last, so Earth’s forces are going to start competing with each other over who will be the planet’s sovereign.

“You will need to watch out for assassination attempts even more and, if you desire to become the planet’s lord, you’ll probably have to start politicking more than you have been, even given your own personal power. The African Army and the United Godless State, our two closest allies, are the forces most likely to scatter and factionalize when the invasion forces are gone, and, even if they were fully under your wing, you’d still have a weaker base than the Chinese Communist Party, not to mention the major families and their many talents.”

“Do you have any specific suggestions?” Diana felt a headache coming along. Wars and fighting against invasions she was by this point experienced with. But politics and backstabbing?

“Personally work to close some of the invasions the families are struggling against, showing the populace the difference in your power.” Mr. Li leaned back into his couch, trying to get as physically far away from her as possible, a mannerism Diana knew meant he was about to say something she wouldn’t like. “There is also always the option of forming a marriage alliance with one of the families.”

Diana’s aura flared, her immense mana reserves leaking slightly, causing the air to shake.

Mr. Li, having leaned back against his seat, unlike the first couple times Diana had lost her temper, didn’t have the mana inside his body shake to a completely disordered state, so it only took him a couple seconds to get his mana back in order.

When those two seconds were done, however, both Diana and he realized they were not alone.

“I would personally advise leaving romance and politics as separate.”

Both Diana and Mr. Li turned to the third couch to see a young woman sitting on it. She was blond, with bright blue eyes and the type of figure Diana could only dream of, wearing black leather armor which completely covered her arms, legs, and torso. On her left hand was a dark azure fingerless glove, and in her right hand she was holding what looked to be a half eaten donut.

“Who are—” Mr. Li began, pulling out a black sword from the spatial storage ring he wore on his left hand. But the woman didn’t let him finish, frowning at him and somehow lifting him into the air and turning him upside down. Then, as the woman turned to look at Diana, Mr. Li’s sword flew out of his hand, followed by his spatial storage ring, and both flew toward the woman’s upraised left hand, disappearing into the subspace of her glove artifact.

“Correct me if I’m wrong.” The woman, whose accent was somewhere between London English and standard American, gestured to Mr. Li with her donut. “But didn’t this old man help almost start nuclear Armageddon on this planet with such advice to one of his own family members?”

Diana took in the woman, who she was almost certain was her fellow apprentice given it had been three days since she’d set the beacon formation. So far, she could confirm the woman had a stealth skill of some kind and some version of the Telekinesis skill, but the most noticeable thing was the woman’s aura. Diana had the highest Aura stat of anyone on Earth, but she felt completely suppressed when in the presence of the woman in front of her.

Shadow has offered you the position of servant on behalf of the Heavenly Spark Soul King.

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Will you accept?

Yes/No

As Diana was confused by the sudden request, the woman explained. “You’re going to accept that in the near future, so I thought I’d send it to you now.” The woman, apparently named after the word shadow in Universal Standard, then turned her attention to the old man floating upside down. “As for you, accept the contract I sent you or I’ll start breaking things.”

Mr. Li turned his head to look at Diana and Diana, who’d gotten a lot better at dealing with surprises over the last year, calmly asked him, “What does your contract say?”

“That I’m forced to be honest for the next two hours or I’ll feel extreme pain.”

“Interesting.” Diana smiled at Mr. Li, rather enjoying the not quite shocked, not quite irate, tinge to his aura, even while his face was as controlled as ever. “Why don’t you accept?”

Mr. Li looked from the woman, to Diana, and then back, likely trying to figure out how they knew each other, but then Diana was pretty sure he accepted, as the woman started smiling.

“Alright then.” The woman turned Mr. Li right side up and placed him back on his couch. “There’s a game my teacher played with me when we first met called Five Questions, and she said she learned it from you, so you should know the rules.

“As you are much, much older than me, I’ll even let you ask first.”

The words five and questions were both in Universal Standard, while the woman had been speaking English the entire time, which made Diana think they were important, but the biggest hint was how Mr. Li’s aura trembled with rage when they were said.

“How did this teacher of yours learn of that game?” Mr. Li sounded as calm as ever, but Diana was still pretty sure he was furious, as his normally masterful control over his aura was allowing through hints of rage.

“My teacher was watching you during your tutorial. Apparently you went on a bit of a rampage of revenge and told someone about it while torturing them.” The woman put the rest of the donut in her mouth and chewed for a few seconds before swallowing. “Who did you kill while not on Earth?”

Mr. Li was outwardly calm, but his aura still wasn’t fully in control, which was very unlike him. “Zhang Tai-Chen, the trigger man; Huang Zhu-Tong, the corrupt Ministry of State Security official who ordered the hit; and Wang Hao-Ran, the man who bribed Huang Zhu-Tong to give the order.

“Who is this teacher of yours?”

“She has quite a few titles. The Mistress of Plagues. The Godslayer. That Woman Who Blackmailed All The Undead Of The Universe For A Hundred Million Years.” The woman smiled as she summoned what looked to be a cheeseburger from the subspace of her fingerless glove artifact and took a bite. Then, when she finished chewing, she continued. “The name you probably know her as is the Yin Yang Sage, ancestor to the human race of Earth. I just call her Nana Xara.”

The woman took another bite, seeming to quite enjoy it, probably not used to Earth food. Then she asked her next question. “Why did you train your granddaughter to be a spy from such a young age?”

Mr. Li just stared at her for several seconds and his aura became fully controlled again. “The old world wasn’t kind to women, especially pretty ones with foreign blood. I wanted her to be able to protect herself.” He looked up at the ceiling for a second then back at the woman. “After the deaths of my wife and son, I probably also got too invested in my job and treated my granddaughter more like a recruit than a little girl.”

Diana had already learned Mr. Li had been a wandering secret official throughout most of his granddaughter’s early childhood, going from town to town to city to search out corruption and report it to the state, and he’d brought Mila along, by the time she was five using her as an intelligence asset. At one point, a young Mila was even kidnapped by a human trafficking ring and her training had allowed her to escape on her own, the authorities then able to capture almost everyone.

“The Yin Yang Sage, is she a source of protection for you?”

The woman just stared at Mr. Li in turn, the cheeseburger returning to the subspace in her fingerless glove artifact. “Not really, at least in most cases. She’s been dead for over 2,000 years and doesn’t have a body. She’s a source of knowledge, however, and knowledge is power.”

The woman took a deep breath. “Why are you serving Diana Alvaro?”

Mr. Li turned to look at Diana, then back to the woman. His face and aura were both perfectly controlled, but Diana was pretty sure his eyes had been tearing up slightly, and that seemed odd. “You cared about her and her brother, yet he was already dead, so, with my old loyalties having been burnt, I wanted to do what I could to keep her safe.”

Diana looked over to the woman, whose face and aura were calm in the same way as Mr. Li’s, her mind racing, and she almost missed the question Mr. Li asked.

“How did you survive?”

“I didn’t.” The woman smiled, her face and body transforming into the form of Mr. Li’s granddaughter, only with bright pink irises and maybe an ever so slightly enlarged bust. “Have you been well, grandfather?”

“No.” Mr. Li’s aura was leaking again, but this time there wasn’t rage but a deep sadness, and the tears forming in his eyes started to fall. “If you died, how are you here?”

“Those of us who died within a month of the integration starting went into a different tutorial and were reborn as monsters. I managed to find a good partner and did rather well, enabling me to become a succubus instead of some kind of inhuman beast. Then, a few days ago, I got back to Earth through a rather complicated process.”

Mila’s eyes were also watering, but to a much lesser extent than Mr. Li’s. “Do you regret raising me that way?”

Mr. Li moved forward, over the coffee table, and wrapped his granddaughter in a hug, seemingly surprising her, but Diana was too distracted to really notice how shocked Mila appeared.

“Yes.”