Francis
“Okay.” Mr. Li, Ms. Li’s grandfather, spoke up in the stunned silence. “Mr. Alvaro is suitably awe inspiring. But can we go back to the matter of our continued survival? I don’t know about everyone else, but the idea of being on the enemy list for a whole bunch of gods seems terrifying.
“Am I missing something, or are we just going after a desperate chance of survival?”
Ms. Li looked at her grandfather for a few seconds, her face and aura unreadable, but then she smiled and turned to the supposedly C rank red-haired giant in the corner. “Mr. Gan, as an outsider with more experience than the rest of us, what do you think?”
“Hmm.” The red-haired giant took a couple seconds, possibly to parse the English everyone had been using. Then he started to answer in Universal Common, which everyone in the room understood. “I think you all are underestimating your population.
“For the past couple weeks, I’ve been looking through recordings of the ranking fights from your soul net and the average potential of your planet is rather frightening. From just a population of a few billion, you are able to create an entire army for the War of the Chosen where every single soldier is at least a C rank talent.
“I’m not sure if you fully understand, but that’s not something even most divine forces are able to do.
“Then there are your highest ranked combatants.
“For the past several years, I’ve been lucky enough to help train Krysta La’Vordi, widely considered in the universe as by far the most talented cultivator from your generation. She’s the child of one of the most famous gods, and possibly the most talented cultivator in the element of space of all time, yet I’ve seen her fight Isaiah 293 times.” The large man pointed at Isaiah Gale. “And she won a grand total of four of those bouts.”
The large man pointed at Ms. Li. “Then, when I came to Earth, I watched a match between Isaiah and Ms. Li here, and Isaiah was played with.
“According to what I hear, your dead leader is at the same level as these two, and she’ll hopefully come back even stronger than before. So that means you have at least three combatants who, if they reach A rank, will at minimum approach the same level as the Yin Yang Sage of the past, a woman known as the ‘godslayer’.
“Then, among the rest of your population, I’ve found at least half a dozen A rank talents. This means, so long as they are given the minimum amount of resources to allow their race to advance, they have a one in twelve chance of reaching A rank. Yet, given your soon to be A rank planet and everything your leader bought during the Universal Auction, they will have access to far, far more resources even if you make no further moves.
“In most A rank and divine forces, not even their best core disciple would have this level of talent, yet on Earth these are third tier combatants. Above them in the second tier are Isaiah, your fallen leader, and Ms. Li. And then there’s Aalam.
“As an E rank, he has already managed to personally kill a powerful B rank, crossing three ranks to fight, and, while that was a special case, continuing to have the ability to fight across two ranks as he advances won’t be that hard.
“If he manages to reach B rank, given everything else about your planet, Earth should be safe. If, however, Earth is found first, we all die.
“So it is the job of the rest of us to help lift him up.”
The large man paused for a second. “Also, it sounds to me like you haven’t fully grasped just how lucky you are.
“There are less than 72 A rank planets in our universe, yet your little force gets to completely dominate one of them, and it is ruled by someone like Aalam, whose very nature drastically boosts the affinities of everyone on the planet. Primal energy, natural resources, training environment, and racial affinities are the primary sources of bottlenecks in the universe, yet you all don’t have to worry about those, and you also have someone to make you pills and artifacts.
“There will be risks involved, and there will be huge amounts of danger in the future, but if you manage to pass through the trials, well, there is a reason I was perfectly willing to come join you instead of staying in my old A rank force. And there are many, many others who would do the same, even with the inherent risks.”
Ms. Li looked over everyone and then turned her gaze back to her grandfather. “Does that adequately answer your question?”
“Yes.” Mr. Li bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“Good. Then everyone but Mr. Davies and the PR team are dismissed.
“I need to talk to them about starting to build up faith energy for Diana before her revival.”
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* * *
After the meeting, Ms. Li asked Francis to join her and they moved to his office in the same building, an oversized room with a large desk and a seating area with two couches in front of a set of huge glass windows. There, they sat on the couches, and Ms. Li began. “You noticed the one time I lied, correct?”
Francis reached out his senses and made sure the isolation arrays set up around the office were intact, though he belatedly realized Ms. Li almost certainly wouldn’t have started the topic if they weren’t. “Yes.”
“Only about half of Earth is descended from the Yin Yang Sage’s husband, the other half descended from her through her children with other men before she met him. You, for example, as a white man, are very unlikely to be his descendant. This, however, has the possibility of creating a schism between members of Earth’s population, so it shouldn’t be known.
“Do you agree?”
“Yes.” Francis nodded. Then he asked something he felt was important. “I’m assuming the gods wouldn’t care that much and would just kill us all to be safe?”
“Most likely.” Ms. Li frowned. “Even the youngest god is old beyond our imaginations. To them, youngsters like us are probably nothing more than ants.”
Francis took a few seconds to absorb that, recontextualizing how he thought about gods in his mind. Then he asked something he’d been suspecting since the topic was originally brought up. “The uniqueness line which blocks divination, you awakened to it?”
Ms. Li nodded. “At the Fabled grade, the highest of everyone who’s done so on Earth. And this means, no matter what I do from now on, all the actions of everyone on Earth will be affected by my power at least a little, though, if I am not personally involved, it will only block active divination powers up to A rank, not those from gods.
“Still, it should cover most passive abilities, and, for us, it is a good thing. It will allow us to compete for resources we otherwise wouldn’t be able to access, and it will make it much, much harder for gods to find our agents. But it also means we can’t be quite as secret as we have been.
“So far, we’ve been dealing with matters on the E and D rank scale, at a level gods do not care about, but that will change in the future, and, if any god is regularly performing divination, it will be obvious in the aftermath when we were involved.
“We don’t have to worry about big system events like the War of the Chosen, the Trial Towers, and the C rank Universal Tournament as these aren’t things gods can divine the results of, given there are too many gods involved, and our interactions with a force like the Forest Cauldron will be protected for the same reason, but, in the near future, we will start interacting with A rank forces in ways that will get noticed, and we’ll need the ability to completely drop subsections of our external development without affecting the whole.
“Take the third eye uniqueness line for example, probably the most useful uniqueness line of those common on Earth. There are known resources to improve the grade of this line of uniquenesses, but they’re all dominated by forces directly under gods or by three extremely powerful A rank forces.
“If we could get our hands on some of these resources, however, the overall comprehensive power of Earth would significantly rise. So, after I reach D rank, I’m going to steal some. And we need to make sure other parts of our development aren’t affected when I do.”
Francis thought for a few seconds. If anyone was going to benefit from being able to improve the third eye uniqueness line directly, it would be Ms. Li herself, but she wasn’t wrong with what she was saying. Other than the Heavenly Spark Soul King, Ms. Li was their strongest powerhouse, and it was the job of a force to help improve the power of their strongest so their strongest could in turn protect them.
Granted, he was a bit more comfortable when Diana was in command, but she would have agreed with what Ms. Li was saying, so he decided to move on to another topic. “I noticed my wife is also on the list of those participating in the War of the Chosen. Isn’t that a bit unfair?
“I can understand myself and Silvia. We’re important administrative officials, so, even without combat power, we’re useful in a war. But my wife is just a therapist, and she has even less combat power than me.”
Francis took a deep breath. “So far, Earth is being run like a meritocracy, and, as the nominal head of the government, I don’t want to open myself and you up for claims of bias.”
“There is no bias.” Ms. Li shook her head. “Your wife is following the path of an empath, which is useful for her previous job, and there aren’t many on Earth who have similar classes. Of those that do, your wife is the most talented, has consumed the most resources from you using your own personal finances, and, most important, she is the only E rank at this time.
“Knowing oneself is extremely important for a cultivator at higher ranks, so I’m thinking of making bi-yearly therapy a requirement for everyone participating in the War of the Chosen. We’ll bring in some other therapists as well for those who want more than two sessions a year, but your wife is the only one qualified to actually participate in the War of the Chosen, so she was given a spot.”
“Oh.” Francis felt that was reasonable. But then he realized something else and he felt a bit worried. “Will you be participating in therapy as well?”
“Yes.” Ms. Li raised an eyebrow. “As well as Aalam and everyone else participating. Is that a problem?”
“Not necessarily.” Francis spoke slowly as he tried to analyze his own emotions. “I guess I just don’t know how I feel about my wife knowing secrets about my bosses and colleagues.
“I tell her about my work and, while she doesn’t include specifics, she tells me about hers. So it would be weird to have her have information I don’t about people I have to interact with.”
“Hmm.” Ms. Li seemed to give it some thought. “I can see that. Personally, I found the idea more comfortable because she was your wife, and I’ve grown to trust you, but you have a point. Maybe—”
Francis raised a hand and Ms. Li stopped. “Never mind, Ms. Li. A little discomfort on my end is fine. You, Mr. Alvaro, and Mr. Gale have just gone through something incredibly traumatic, not to mention what you’ve experienced before, and it is very healthy that you want to talk to someone.”
“Okay.” Ms. Li paused the conversation for a few seconds. “I’ve talked with Aalam and Isaiah, and we’re all okay with you knowing anything we tell your wife.”
“Thank you, but you really don’t need to go that far.” Francis felt a bit of warmth enter into his soul. “I’ll talk with her and see if she agrees.”
Ms. Li then left and Francis finally took the time to allow himself to feel sad, not having been able to yet process the fact Diana was gone and her child had been killed forever. Then he got up from his seat, used his Telekinesis skill to fly down from the building, and headed home.
It had already been a trying day, and the near future was going to be a lot of work.