Mila
“So, you’ve been lying to us?” Mr. Haxor leaned forward into her personal space at the reveal of her true stats, a hint of anger in his voice.
“No.” Mila met his eyes and didn’t look away. “I just have a teacher who believes good learning experiences can’t come when everyone knows you’re under the protection of an A rank.”
“An A rank?” Mr. Haxor’s body quickly moved back. And Mila could see the gears spinning in his head. “Which A rank?”
“I’m not going to say.” Mila looked at the other C ranks in turn, pausing a second longer on Eminar Kelmin, who’d been unsubtly trying to take advantage of her for a few years. “I don’t hate any of you quite that much.
“Like everyone else, my master can only take two apprentices at once and they would rather I not be targeted by their A rank or higher enemies. So, my master specifically told me not to give their name out, as they would kill anyone who learned it.
“Do you still want to know?”
“Why did you join the Violet Mountain Sect?” Mr. Haxor didn’t show his fear on his face or in his aura, but, by the way he quickly glossed over his previous question, it seemed he was likely panicking slightly knowing what the Violet Mountain Lord had done.
“Practice and experience.” Mila shrugged. “Everyone knows who I am in my master’s force and they treat me differently as a result. The cultivation environment might be better, but having everyone fear you makes training in politics and the like much more difficult, and my master wants me to be a leader.”
“So you weren’t planning on anything like taking over the Violet Mountain Sect?”
“My master told me to do just that.” Mila smiled slightly. “But it’s not like my master asked me to assassinate you all. My master wanted me to rise through the ranks while playing politics and not show my full strength to make the process more challenging.”
Mila looked at them all individually again. “Would having an A rank talent as your next chief elder be a bad thing?”
“Curse you, Kalin,” one of the other C ranks muttered under his breath, fully audible to everyone in the room, and Mila was about to respond.
But then she suddenly felt Aalam and Isaiah again, meaning they were on the planet outside the blessed land, and she had no time.
She first tried to contact Isaiah, but her bond to him was blocked. She was only connected to him in the first place through her role as Aalam’s chamberlain, and Aalam could disable that connection at will. At the same time, Aalam was also blocking her ability to communicate with him as well, though he was sharing his senses with her as he and Isaiah stepped off the planet’s teleportation platform.
So, left without any other good option, Mila withdrew from the Violet Mountain Sect and started the process of declaring war.
As the president of the Black Lake Corporation, please confirm you would like to start a war with the Violet Mountain Sect.
After Epecteos wiped out the Netherwater’s Chosen Sect, the Consortium of the Red and Blue Flower had advanced to an E rank force, and this allowed Mila to change the name, so, to add an extra layer of obfuscation, she had. And this time she’d chosen a name which was close to being the same as a famous but not too famous force, providing an extra layer of confusion, as this name wouldn’t be permanent either.
The Black Lake Conglomerate was a large A rank undead trading firm which brokered deals between undead empires and forces of the living. The Black Lake Corporation, on the other hand, was a tiny E rank force about to start a war with the Violet Mountain Sect.
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A System Approved War has begun between the E rank force Black Lake Corporation and the B rank force Violet Mountain Sect.
War Initialization Conditions: Unprovoked attempted annihilation of unaffiliated civilians and then unprovoked murder of Black Lake Corporation member Epecteos Ka’Dravone by the Violet Mountain Sect
Beginning force comparison.
Black Lake Corporation
President: E rank
Vice Presidents: 2 E ranks
Members: 3 E ranks
Violet Mountain Sect
Chief Elder: B rank
Elders: 18 C ranks
Core Disciples: 893 D ranks, 432 E ranks, 24 F ranks
Inner Sect Disciples: 732 D ranks, 5,349 E ranks, 1,899 F ranks
Outer Sect Disciples: 57 D ranks, 374,893,560 E ranks, 37,429,185,028 F ranks
Due to the unprovoked acts of the Violet Mountain Sect, rewards increased to 100% of any killed cultivator’s credits in the case of victory for the Black Lake Corporation, plus a transfer of 50% of the Violet Mountain Sect’s assets, Territory, and System privileges. In the case of a complete victory for the Black Lake Corporation, transfer of assets, Territory, and System privileges will be increased to 100% and all the Violet Mountain Sect’s secrets will be revealed.
The elders in front of her all received the same System notification as well, as would Diana and Irena, the Black Lake Corporation’s two vice presidents, but Aalam and Isaiah, along with all the disciples of the Violet Mountain Sect, would not.
More important than who would receive the notification, however, was that the System message revealed the Violet Mountain Sect’s actions against Epecteos in very clear words, giving her something to work with to make up for not being able to set the full proper groundwork before initiating the war, something they’d all just felt her do.
“You killed him?” Mila changed the emotions on her face and in her aura to show extreme amounts of rage and sadness, her voice a low growl. Then she waited a second as the four C ranks in the room other than Mr. Haxor all showed expressions of puzzlement, followed by realization, followed by fear. “Why?”
Everyone was looking at Mr. Haxor, Mila glaring and the four C ranks showing clear expressions of shock and fear.
“I’m not sure.” Mr. Haxor looked at the other C ranks, a worried expression on his face. “The Violet Mountain Lord did it. And now he’s trapped on Epecteos Ka’Dravone’s former capital planet.”
“They managed to trap the Violet Mountain Lord?” Eminar Kelmin’s voice showed more fear in it than the man had likely felt in over ten thousand years.
“There was a monster lord who Mr. Ka’Dravone apparently served as a servant, the Heavenly Spark Soul King, and he took over the planet after Mr. Ka’Dravone’s death, left, and destroyed the teleportation platform behind him.”
“Why would the Violet Mountain Lord kill Epecteos?” Eminar Kelmin’s body was shaking.
“Do you even need to ask?” One of the other C ranks, the only one with any jinn blood, looked at Eminar as if the other man were an idiot. “The man’s a racist asshole who kills any jinn able to advance to C rank.”
“What can we do?” Nari Nivali, the death mage, turned to look at Mila, her expression almost begging.
“Why ask me?” Mila glared at all of them, her emotions continuing to show sadness and rage. “The Violet Mountain Sect killed Epecteos. Why should I care if any of you live or die?”
“If I’m going to die, you will as—” began the last remaining C rank, a male human fire element warrior.
“Shut up!” Mr. Haxor yelled at the warrior and then turned to Mila and bowed, Eminar Kelmin and Nari Nivali quickly copying his actions.
“We’re deeply sorry for the loss of your ancestor, Ms. Lin’Talic.” Mr. Haxor did sound sorry, and Mila’s combination of Third Eye Princess uniqueness and peak grade Law Larva of The Courtesan allowed her to tell he was being truthful, which made sense as he was obviously feeling fear at the aftermath. “But no one here was at fault. And we’re just looking for ways not to become collateral damage.”
Mr. Haxor had a skill which gave him the same ability as her combination of uniqueness and Law, allowing him to tell if anyone was lying, so he believed everything she’d said so far. After Epecteos’s death, Mila had asked Nana Xara to say a lot of things to her, so anything she said about her master giving her orders or the like was technically true.
Mila didn’t just have to tell the truth to fool the man, though.
“I don’t care.” In reality, she kind of did. There were people she’d met who she’d rather not die, such as her healing teacher Farrah, Xander Rogar, and the head cook for the core disciples, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to save them.
To Mr. Haxor, however, her lie would make him think there was hope, and that would keep him from doing something like forcing her to stop the war between their forces.
“The Violet Mountain Lord is going to die. He violated one of the unspoken rules of the universe, attacking a force led by someone with a much, much, much higher kill count than himself, and no A rank force would allow one of their D ranks to be killed by a random B rank for no reason. As for the rest of you? It depends on just how enraged the prince is.”
Mr. Haxor didn’t say anything for a few seconds, likely trying to figure out more information from what she’d ‘accidentally’ let slip. Then he rose to his feet, indicated the other C ranks to follow him, and left the room.
This left Mila alone, but she was pretty sure some of the people she was closer to in the sect would soon be visiting her. And this would allow her to buy more time until the chaos started, which would hopefully allow her to slip away.