Wolfram

“Alright. That’s enough.”

Wolfram Gan was exhausted. Not physically—as a max level C rank warrior, his Vitality was high enough exhaustion was nearly impossible. But spiritually, he was done.

“What? Why?” The apprentice the faction head had assigned him, Isaiah Kent, lowered his spear and shield, the many, many wounds on his body regenerating at a rate visible to the eye.

“Because, unlike you, I’m not insane. And I need a break.”

His new apprentice was a balance dragon in human form, looking like an extremely large pink-skinned human, not unlike Wolfram himself, but his apprentice had indigo reptilian eyes and short lavender hair, unlike Wolfram’s blue eyes and flaming red shoulder-length locks. More important, however, the youngster, while probably the most talented martial artist Wolfram had ever met, was an absolute training fanatic.

A young E rank, only a bit over 50, he was pretty much a baby, yet he had four complementary early grade Law Pupae perfect for combat. Over half his racial abilities were Fabled grade, including the absolutely incredible Power of Balance which raised all his stats other than Luck by 125%. And, due to some sort of overpowered bloodline, he didn’t have the slow cultivation speed one would expect from a monster, his cultivation instead faster than any other E rank in the Forest Cauldron, Princess Krysta included, which allowed him to eat pills at a rapid rate.

Since he’d started training the young man 6 years before, he’d had to lessen the soul shackles put on himself when they sparred nine times, and only two of those were to account for Isaiah’s stat growth, his apprentice’s Laws and martial skill advancing far faster than any E rank Wolfram had ever met.

In short, Isaiah was amazing.

But even with all that talent, he wasn’t satisfied. Almost every second of every day, Wolfram would find Isaiah training in some form or another, be that practicing his energy control with some of the tools used to train alchemists, sparring with other members of the guard force, or dragging Wolfram into fights which would literally last days.

The boy could fight all out for only about a minute, and, without his main berserking skill, he could only fight for several hours. But he had a Heroic grade Servant Knight skill along with a lord who seemingly had infinite resources, and a willingness to share them, so fighting Isaiah was like fighting an Undying.

It just never ended.

Wolfram had asked Isaiah why he trained so hard, and the youth always gave the same answer. His best friend was far more talented than him, and he didn’t want to be left behind if he could help it. Any more detailed questions and his apprentice usually couldn’t answer due to the nature of a contract he’d signed, so Wolfram had stopped trying to dig out more.

Summoning out a large high backed chair from the spatial storage ring on his left hand, Wolfram took a seat. “Isaiah, you have near infinite qi, mana, and psyforce from that lord of yours, making it nearly impossible to kill you. Are you really telling me your friend can compete with that?”

Isaiah just looked at him with a confused expression and Wolfram felt like he was missing something. “That lord is my best friend.”

Wolfram’s mouth dropped open, and, realizing he’d finally accidentally asked the right question, he took about ten seconds to process the various implications of the new facts he’d just learned.

Then he stood up, desummoned the chair, and lifted up his own spear and shield while loosening the training hall’s soul shackles by another two levels. “We should really train some more then.”

* * *

Irena

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“No. The Wimilox Galaxy Cluster isn’t a market you want to enter into for anything other than Territory.” Joma La’Vordi brushed a mossy green dreadlock over her shoulder as she took another sip of tea with her other hand, her yellow eyes flashing with amusement. “It’s higher level knowledge than you likely have access to, but that is part of the divine territory of Perival, one of the three merchant gods.

“He doesn’t have many temples in the region, and he doesn’t care who is in charge of the Territory, but if you perform the type of trade your force would want in his area, he will notice you. So the risk almost certainly isn’t worth it.”

“Thank you, Joma.” Irena, sitting across from the Alchemist of the Deep Woods for their now weekly teatime, bowed slightly, still a bit uncomfortable with how familiar the powerful A rank was with a weak little E rank like her. “As always, your insight has been incredibly helpful.”

The Alchemist of the Deep Woods put her cup down and smiled. “I’ll transmit all the market information I have to your granddaughter, free of charge. Just consider it an investment.

“Now, Mila, would you mind if I talked with your grandmother alone for a bit?”

“The data is being sent over now,” Mila, who Irena had been sharing her senses with, sent. “Have fun.”

Then with that, Mila broke off their connection, and, for the first time, Irena was truly alone with the Alchemist of the Deep Woods, an individual powerhouse over 10,000 times her age.

“What do you want to do with your life, Irena?” Joma asked as she picked up her teacup again. “I don’t expect you to change your role immediately or anything of the sort, but, by the standards of the universe, you are very young, and I’m wondering if you have any dreams of your own.”

Irena took a second to think before answering. “I rather like what I’m doing now. Back on Earth, I ran a company and led a clan, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the work. It was incredibly draining and I found it hard to balance what I needed to do for my employees and clan members with my role as a mother and wife, sacrificing the latter for the former.

“Now, I’m using those skills I had to learn, but I have enough free time to myself and I don’t have to make the big decisions. Also, everything I do in my job helps my granddaughter.”

Joma nodded, taking another sip of her tea, a blend which had apparently been widely available in the universe for billions of years. Then she placed her cup back down and looked at Irena with a more serious expression than Irena was used to on the woman. “You realize you are an A rank talent, right?”

“Yes.” Irena nodded, understanding from Joma’s expression that there was going to be more.

“Do you fully understand what that means?”

Irena thought for a second and decided to not just say ‘yes’. “It means I have a high chance of making it to A rank, right?”

“Technically, it means you have a one in twelve chance, so long as you are given the minimum amount of resources to allow your race to advance. A rank talents are ridiculously, ridiculously rare, yet Earth has half a dozen of them so far as I know. And I’m not including Diana, Aalam, your granddaughter, or the technically not from Earth Isaiah in that list, as, given their class choices, despite having more talent than the rest of you, they are technically B rank talents at best.

“Right now, any of Earth’s four main powerhouses can take on the entire rest of Earth alone, and, given the type of resources your force is aiming to gain access to, that is unlikely to change, but don’t just compare yourself to the four of them.

“In terms of raw talent, you yourself are higher than the best disciple in most A rank forces, and even many divine ones. But you don’t have access to the same level of resources as those disciples.”

“Would those extra resources help?” Irena, who had changed to look more like herself when she was in her twenties over the last six years, pretty with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, smiled at the much, much older woman. “I have access to Aalam as a lord.”

“True.” Joma chuckled. “And I’m not intending to tell you to leave your force. I just want to make sure you understand your own position. Even if Diana, Isaiah, Aalam, or Mila ever get stuck for a time, you likely won’t. And the auction coming up is a great place for your force to buy resources to help you advance faster in the future.

“Unlike the four of them, you don’t require the type of resources which could normally only be found by winning universal challenges, so you won’t need to wait for those challenges to happen to advance, and that might leave you temporarily the most powerful cultivator in your force during those periods, at least in appearance.

“What you want is thus very important, and it is a good thing to think about.”

“Oh.” As she started thinking more deeply on the topic, Irena began to frown. She hadn’t really considered the implications of her possibly advancing at a faster rate than Diana or Aalam, but the Alchemist of the Deep Woods was right.

“Also,” Joma added, taking another sip of tea, “if you don’t like the hard work of leading, think about who the head of your force is right now. Given the way genetics works when it comes to personality, I rather imagine your leader might be on the road to burning out. And, other than the Yin Yang Sage, it probably falls the most to you to keep that from happening.

“Having multiple minds can only do so much.”

Irena was quiet for several seconds more, thinking about Joma’s words. Then she bowed again slightly. “Thank you, Joma. I had the information in front of me, but I hadn’t thought in the right directions.”

“No problem.” Joma smiled. “I might be able to completely change my fate if Aalam can rise up to C rank, so any free help I can give your force I’m more than happy to pass on.”