Epecteos
Arriving on the home world of the young woman he now knew was named Mila, Epecteos almost immediately noticed three things. First, as Mila had promised, the world was E rank and had started its integration less than 2 years before. This meant, for the next 70 years, the ease of acquiring and advancing Laws would be equivalent to that of a B rank world, and that was huge, especially for someone like him who’d never been able to spend more than a year on even a C rank world in his entire life.
Second, from what he could sense of the city he’d arrived in, the world’s technology level was high for a newly integrated world, already having entered the information age before the integration and likely having already started to explore its own solar system. This was pretty rare, especially among worlds dominated by humans, as, despite being one of the most self-destructive races in the universe, humans that reached the information age generally had enough knowledge of science to stop any force which could be termed apocalyptic. The cases where they didn’t generally resulted from particularly stupid sub-variants of the race becoming dominant or deliberate manipulation to create an apocalypse style integration over a natural one.
For Earth, he was pretty sure it was the latter, as the third thing he noticed was the sheer number of cultivators. For most newly integrated worlds, the percentage of the population which became cultivators was only ever at max about 2%, yet in the entire city he’d arrived near, while there were quite a few G ranks, he hadn’t found a single individual who seemed like a non-cultivator. At the same time, the average talent level of the cultivators of the world seemed about that of a C or B rank force.
Epecteos’s detection skill, Swordsman’s senses, specialized in reading the danger level of others, and for F ranks he could generally get a good sense of their level, max stats, and the grade of their Laws.
For Laws especially the planet was amazing, over 30% of the cultivators he could sense, a population of millions, having at least a Law Egg less than two years after the start of their tutorial.
This then raised a few questions, however. From what he knew of Mila, she’d definitely qualify for admission into a B rank force like the Violet Mountain Sect, but so would over a dozen other people he could sense from the nearby city as well. So, unless she’d somehow been hiding her power from even his Heroic grade skill or she was far weaker than the other members of her faction, it was possible her faction’s grip over the planet was less secure than he’d been led to believe.
Fourth, and probably most impressive of all, however, the planet already had a soul net. Establishing such a large scale piece of infrastructure generally required quite a bit of capital as well as a crafter with E rank power to set it up, so the fact they had someone so capable already was telling.
That soul net attempted to connect to him immediately upon his arrival, and, when he logged in and created an account, he was informed his arrival had been expected through a telepathic voice and that he should remain in his position until someone arrived to get him.
Covering himself in the power of his Law Pupa of Shadow, he then waited on the completely unguarded artificial island on which the teleportation platform had been placed.
Until the end of the integration, no one but the Sovereign of the planet and those the sovereign approved of, such as himself, could make use of the platform, so having guards would have been pretty much pointless, and anyone who could possibly bypass the System protection to arrive anyway wasn’t someone even B rank guards could do anything against, let alone F ranks.
After about five minutes, he felt someone teleport onto a more local teleportation platform several kilometers inland and, as the power of the world’s Territory was flowing into them, he could tell it was the world’s sovereign, so he stepped onto the wind and almost instantly arrived to see a young human woman, somewhat on the shorter end, with long brown hair, brown eyes, and desert colored skin.
Epecteos had never seen a true core disciple of an A rank force, but, from what he’d heard, most of them never gained 6 different high grade Law Larvae during F rank, especially not within two years. And most probably didn’t have D rank effective Magic stats backed by what felt like almost a Titanic sized mana well, but was probably instead a mix of Colossal and Huge mana wells instead.
The woman radiated elementalized mana, showing she practiced a high grade cultivation technique, but also that her effective Magic stat was too high for her effective Soul stat to fully rein in her power with her current level of skill. While this meant she likely wasn’t able to make full use of her might, it also meant she had a lot of room to grow, even in F rank, which was amazing given the amount of power she already had.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“You’re Mr. Epecteos Ka’Dravone?” The woman smiled warmly at him and Epecteos realized her effective Aura stat was higher than his, which meant she had to have some way of generating free stats and thus had likely been able to raise her Attunement stat close to the same value, something he could only dream of.
“Yes.” Epecteos shook his head in assent, but then he noticed the woman looked confused and quickly realized that gesture might be different in her culture, so he stopped. “Yes. I’m Epecteos.”
“Alright.” The young sovereign summoned two spirits into her hands, neither of which he’d ever seen the likes of. One looked like a small winged mammal of some kind, maybe something humans would ride on, and felt like a mix of a flame, light, and life spirit, so he guessed it was a mythical yang spirit. The other looked like a two-headed wingless dragon and felt like a mix between water, darkness, and death spirits, so it was likely a yin spirit.
She then absorbed both of the spirits into her own body at the same time, something Epecteos would have thought impossible given how incompatible the two types of energies felt, and rose into the air with the power and speed of her yang spirit but the stealth effects of her yin spirit.
“Follow me.”
Epecteos stepped onto the wind to follow her, making use of his Law Pupa of Shadow to hide himself again, and he could tell from the woman looking around that she couldn’t see through his stealth at all even though he could easily see through hers, so he lowered the power of his Law until she could sense him again, giving her a bit of comfort.
Then the two of them flew out over the ocean and the woman continued talking. “So, Mila says you’re going to be our combat instructor, and my master thinks there’s a lot I could learn from you.”
“Your master?” Epecteos felt himself grow nervous. “You mean the Yin Yang Sage?”
“Yes.” The woman nodded at him as they flew and Epecteos realized that was likely the gesture in her culture for assent, explaining her earlier confusion. “Mila and I are her two apprentices, so she’s seen you through Mila’s senses and thinks you are impressive.
“According to her, your foundation is too weak, so you’ll almost certainly never make it past C rank, but your combat skills are such that you could probably win in a fight against most combat cultivators with twice your stats, and that’s apparently quite rare in the universe.”
The young woman frowned slightly. “She also says you might want to hide your level of skill better by not always having it incorporated into your movements. While constant training is definitely good, the element of surprise can make a huge difference, so you should try to hide it better when in new environments.”
Epecteos thought about that advice for a few seconds, understanding it was coming from an ancient powerhouse and not a young F rank, and he could see the value in it. Having maxed out his level a long, long time ago, he’d gotten used to traveling in his own domain or in other areas where everyone powerful enough to give him a challenge already knew of his skill, so he’d developed the habit of always incorporating his Laws, qi, magic, and psyforce into his movements, but that would give his level of skill away if he went to other areas in the future and it was something to be conscious of at least.
“Tell her ‘thank you’ for me.” Immediately after saying the words, Epecteos realized the Yin Yang Sage was likely watching, and had almost certainly heard him directly, so he clarified. “I mean, thank you, ma’am.”
The young woman smiled, likely having gone through the same thing before. “She says you’re welcome. And she also says we’re moving too slow and that she’s bored, so I should ask you to help us speed up.” The young woman pointed toward the east south-east. “We want to go that way and, at my current speed, it would take us about forty minutes.”
Epecteos wrapped the young woman with his Telekinesis skill and then infused his Law Pupa of Gust into his Elemental Steps movement skill, causing them to move forward considerably faster than the speed of sound. Then, less than a minute later, they arrived at what he assumed to be their destination, a large cargo boat of some kind floating in the middle of the ocean.
There was another local teleportation platform on top of the ship, along with three people seemingly waiting for them, a young woman and two young men, who all walked forward as they landed.
One of the young men was quite obviously the Heavenly Spark Soul King. He was large, about half a head taller than Epecteos, with dark blue hair and nearly orange eyes, wearing simple looking black clothing Epecteos was pretty sure was made up entirely of Epic grade artifacts, and on his left hand was a fingerless azure glove.
His total stats were by far the highest of the group, seemingly all maxed out and then boosted by a factor of slightly more than 3 if Epecteos’s senses were to be believed, and his aura felt like that from a minor dimension more than from a cultivator, his Laws almost forming their own natural order.
To his left was an even bigger young man, with pale skin, short lavender hair, and reptilian indigo eyes, likely the young balance dragon Epecteos was supposed to take on as an apprentice. Of the four, he had the least stats and the lowest grade Laws, despite having already advanced the rank of his race, but, from the way he was standing, he probably had the most combat experience of any of them and was likely the one best suited for Epecteos to teach.
Epecteos would have to have a couple bouts with the young man to truly gauge his level of talent, but just from what he was sensing he was quite happy.
Finally, though, and most surprising, he was pretty sure the young woman to the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s right was Mila, and she looked almost nothing like the various forms he’d been interacting with over the last few months other than her general body shape, having paler skin than he’d expected from her true form, dark hair, and unnaturally bright pink eyes.
Her stats were also much, much higher than he’d ever sensed from her before, her Aura stat especially, and Epecteos realized she’d managed to hide her true level of power from him as an F rank. She probably didn’t have the same level of combat potential as the planet’s sovereign or the dragon, but, of the four, he was almost certain she was the most dangerous.
There was a reason she was the one interacting with the outside world.