Wolfram
Earth was a very unique planet.
First, as a future A rank world undergoing integration, while its training environment wasn’t yet at the A rank level, it was close, and, due to Mila’s purchases during the Universal Auction, it was going to be an A rank world with nine natural wonders, almost at the same level as the planets ruled by higher gods like the Divine Child. And this wasn’t even mentioning how the three other planets with life in Earth’s new solar system would all rise to B rank as well or the abundance of high rank minerals which they would be able to find on the system’s other celestial bodies.
Second, Earth’s level of talent was higher than any other newly integrated world he’d ever heard of.
Every single human on the planet was a cultivator, which was on its own ridiculous, but 70% of the population above the age of 18 had at least a single early grade Law Egg, which meant the average talent of the planet was at least E rank. Yes, 1 in 20,736 Earthlings had been born with a uniqueness, almost all at least at Rare grade, which was an incredibly high ratio. And, yes, something like 99% of Earth’s population had one of seven Legendary to Fabled grade bloodlines, most of which increased affinity to some subset of Laws. But the Law talent of the population was something Wolfram had never heard of.
Each new stage of a Law’s advancement was a doubling in power, but this also required a doubling of understanding, an interlocking section made up of twice the number of puzzle pieces in Aalam’s favored multi-dimensional puzzle analogy for Laws. And all of the new pieces were inherently ones a cultivator was less naturally gifted in understanding, thus why they weren’t included in the previous stages. As a result, each new stage of Law advancement usually took quite a bit over twice the amount of time to achieve as all previous stages put together.
Even with the advantage of their almost A rank planet, for there to be over 100 million cultivators with at least one early grade Law Larva out of a population of less than six billion, all still under the classification of young cultivators, was something Wolfram had never even imagined.
Aalam, when it came to Laws, was utterly amazing, but, when compared to those from his same planet, he only stuck out by about the same amount as most worlds’ most talented cultivators.
Finally, third, despite its talent and abundance of resources, Earth was somehow a highly functioning unified force.
Almost everyone on the planet said a prayer to their fallen leader, Aalam’s elder sister, before daily meals. While there was some dissent present, such as fear about Aalam having killed an entire force of over 36 billion people due to a single death, a majority seemed extremely aware of just how much they’d gained from their planet’s current leadership. And the amount of time the average Earthling spent effectively training for advancement was a whole lot higher than even a young force lacking in corruption like the Forest Cauldron.
Most impressive of all, however, was the lack of extreme social stratification and the fact Wolfram hadn’t heard of a single cultivator killing another over the entire time he’d been on the planet, not even for primal energy, something pretty much unheard of throughout the universe.
This third aspect especially had interested Wolfram, so he’d looked into it more, and he’d found what he thought were the three key reasons for Earth’s unity and drive.
First was isolation.
While almost no one on Earth had the right to post anything on the universal soul net, everyone able to connect to Earth’s local soul net could access the universal soul net with the same rights as Earth’s leadership, so they’d seen the bounties placed on every known Earthling’s head, as well as the general bounty on the entire population.
When the entire universe was against you, it was pretty easy to be unified.
Second was the abundance of resources.
With Mila having gathered almost all versions of the best cultivation techniques in the universe from the F rank Trial Tower, everyone on the planet, from the least talented F ranks all the way up to Earth’s leadership, had access to the best possible cultivation techniques for their use, with most lesser cultivation techniques not even in circulation.
Most of the Steel Swamp Blessed Land’s surface area had turned into a large farm for some kind of extremely fast-breeding monsters and, affected by the primal energy well which had formed as one of Earth’s new natural wonders, doubling Earth’s ambient primal energy, along with specialized arrays which guided half the planet’s ambient primal energy into the blessed land, the creatures usually only took about a year to rise to C rank and then complete their natural lifecycle by dying. The primal energy they’d stored in their bodies, having been transformed by their life energy into a state which could be used by cultivators, was then extracted using specialized machines in the blessed land to create primal energy stones, and the result was primal energy stones becoming so common on Earth that they had been made the planet’s standard currency.
This then left only resources for advancing stats, materials for race advancement, specialized tools for increasing the grade of racial abilities, and skill orbs as the main bottlenecks to power, but, with Mila’s purchases during the universal auction, the production abilities of a soon to be A rank planet, and Aalam and the Steel Swamp Blessed Land’s production capabilities, these were all quite common as well, albeit more controlled.
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Finally, the third and most important reason for Earth’s unity and drive was the power and personalities of Earth’s leadership.
While the difference in talent between Aalam and the population of Earth was comparable to the difference between the most talented cultivator of an average planet undergoing integration to the rest of their population, the difference between their levels of power was much, much greater. Aalam, by himself, could pretty easily kill everyone else on the planet, even while everyone was at the same rank. And the entire planet knew this, as there were multiple videos on Earth’s soul net of Aalam fighting the rest of Earth’s War of the Chosen army by himself and rather easily winning.
Meanwhile, the only two who could even compete with him were Isaiah and Mila, yet all three worked as a unit. So, even while it wasn’t explicitly stated, it was obvious to everyone with a brain that the three could easily enforce any policies they wanted, no matter how unpopular, so trying to fight against them was a lost cause.
At the same time, however, due to their personalities, none of the three wanted to rule, so they desired a system where they could be as hands off as possible and where the type of corruption which would cause them to have to get personally involved was nearly impossible. And, as a result, Earth had become about as true a meritocracy as you could find in the universe.
There were rewards from the government based on cultivation achievements, with social status and previous opportunities almost completely accounted for, so higher rewards would be given to those who made the same achievements with less, and the result was, unlike almost everywhere else in the universe, hard work combined with a reasonable level of talent was always rewarded.
This, complemented by how obviously hardworking the planet’s main powerhouses were, Aalam and Isaiah especially, resulted in almost the entire population putting in far more effort than they would have otherwise.
Granted, the lack of murder on the planet likely had more to do with the rules in the contract for becoming part of the United Federation of Planets, which every single person on the planet was forced to sign as soon as they were physically able, especially the rule which would cause a punishment of intense pain if someone tried to kill another member. And Mila’s absolute control over Earth’s local soul net effectively stopped any dissenting voices from gaining a wide audience.
But still, it was impressive that every single member of the United Federation of Planets was forced to sign the same contract, Mila, Aalam, and Isaiah included. And Wolfram also believed Aalam was being honest when he said he didn’t install any of the backdoor access pathways usually included in local soul nets maintained by a planet’s government, the monitoring and judgement of achievements all handled by the soul net itself.
“Okay.” Wolfram looked out at the 1,741 virtual men and women arranged in the training compound created within Earth’s soul net, most of their true bodies lying somewhere within the enlightenment zone in the real world but some outside doing other work. “You’ve been doing well in the War of the Chosen, about as well as could possibly be expected from you.
“But you’ve been up against normal armies until now, and this time you will be facing an army gods deliberately designed to take you down. There are two demigods leading them who only Aalam, Isaiah, and Mila might have a chance to beat. There are seven A rank talents who all specialize in combat and have been given the best resources. And every single soldier in their army has at least an Epic grade race with maximized stats and a divine Heroic grade class, sacrificing their future potential just to take you down.
“Most important of all, however, their average Luck will be so much higher than yours that most of your advantages will go away.” Wolfram clapped and the weapons and armor everyone was wearing, copies of what they had in the War of the Chosen, all disappeared, replaced by the most basic weapons and armor of the same types available from the room’s training program. “This will almost certainly include you losing access to your artifacts and being separated from each other by even more than the last several battles.
“So, for the next three months, as we are still going to try to have everyone survive until the end, we are going to focus on one thing and one thing only.” Wolfram clapped his hands again and several tens of thousands of hovering robots, of the type commonly used to train in dodging and defense, appeared around every soldier, commander, and Mila as well. “Cooperative dodging and defense.
“If even one of you loses, you all lose.”
Just as he said the words, Wolfram felt an aura of absolute control spread out to cover everyone, likely about to be combined with Telekinesis and the Law of Gravity to bring down every single robot, but he’d been prepared and he quickly kicked Aalam out of the training hall, sending him a message to go practice on his own.
Then, after watching everyone cooperatively defend quite well, he kicked out Mila and Isaiah as well. Mila was far too good at dodging, and Isaiah’s defense was too strong, allowing both of them to go on offense far too easily, greatly reducing the effects of the training on everyone else, not just those around them.
Besides, the three of them were Earth’s key combatants, so it was far more useful for them to have a single Law upgrade or any other type of advancement than to practice with everyone else.
In the War of the Chosen, it was their role to attack the enemy and keep themselves alive, while the goal of everyone else was to not hold them back.
“Sir, are we still going to rely on Lord Aalam, Ms. Li, and Isaiah to do all the main fighting?” Javier Garcia, black and white wings of energy behind his back, moved around the battlefield helping any section which looked like they might be in trouble, slashing through a few dozen robots with his sword at each spot, completely fulfilling his support role in the army even while talking. “With nine major threats and an army which is on average more powerful than our own, they might not be enough if we are forced to split up more.”
“True.” Wolfram felt a bit proud that the formerly arrogant Javier had taken to army training so well, making sure to speak in a respectful tone and keep up with the assignment even while asking a question. “But, given what we want to achieve, even if you end up facing someone of your same strength, if there are others around you, your primary goal will be to keep yourself and them alive. Only then should you try to take out the enemy.”
Wolfram clapped for a third time and nine of the robots, which had been attacking like all the others the entire time, turned purple, becoming significantly more powerful. Then each instantly killed a soldier near every commander other than Brom Karendesh, the coran fighting in the final battle something which was not going to happen unless the stage had some way for him to hide his identity.
“Let’s go again, everyone, and this time be aware enemy commanders might be hiding within the enemy’s ranks.”