Mila
Mila took a quick break and thought about whether what she was doing was right. Acting on her own internal wartime rules, she’d slaughtered a few thousand cultivators during the last several days, and it seemed like a good idea to quickly evaluate if she’d gone too far.
Her main goal was to get Aalam back to Earth to see his sister and, to do that, she needed a native to take over the planet so he could give them an access token to the Trial Tower, the only place she and Aalam could get a reward which would allow them to return home.
Roland was the best choice to be that native leader, especially from a moral point of view, so she didn’t feel any problems with that. The main issue was the invading cultivators wouldn’t just sit by and allow Roland to take over, even if she squashed them all and took away their ability to return home.
All the invasion forces she’d seen so far had also killed off the native cultivators, so they had chosen war over peaceful occupation. Maybe things would be different if the inheritance didn’t exist, but it very much seemed the invasion forces were going for a scorched earth policy and Mila, as someone on the side of the natives, couldn’t allow the dangerous variables that were the invasion force cultivators to stay alive.
It was dark, and it was messy, but that was war.
Maybe things would be different if invasion force cultivators were still alive after the war was won.
Mila debated for a bit whether to claim the Quill Clan’s Pillar of Conquest. If what she assumed was correct, she’d gain Legendary grade rewards from that action, but there were downsides as well. She was pretty sure that, at least until the Kingdom of Night’s forces were completely wiped out, the Amoranth Kingdom would follow the same strategy the Kingdom of Night had, blocking all the remaining Pillars of Conquest with Spacetime Sealing Scrolls, at least those not their own. Having the Gale Clan’s pillar taken over by a native would be shocking, but no one would link Silveea Night’s subordinate with the action unless they talked to Isaiah.
If she were to do the same to the Quill Clan, however, that link would automatically enter into people’s minds.
Due to her continued identity as Aalam’s chamberlain, the pillar she’d claimed from the Gale Clan had the area around it automatically claimed as part of the Territory of the Heavenly Spark Soul King, and Mila would much rather knowledge of that System generated title not leave Hira if she could help it.
Mila came to the conclusion claiming the pillar with the Amoranth Kingdom’s main army less than a day away would be a bad idea, so she decided to wait. The skills and artifacts she wanted the most wouldn’t be much help with what she needed to do in the short term, and she still had months in which to claim the rewards.
“Nana Xara, do you know the rules concerning the use of soul contracted slaves to kill people, specifically in relation to the gain of primal energy and the advancement of the Hunter of Sentients boon?” Mila asked as she started moving at speed to catch up to the army.
“Ooh. Interesting.” Nana Xara sounded like she was smiling. “If you get someone else to kill for you, so long as they make the decision, all the primal energy gained would go to them, so you can’t use a loophole there with your current abilities. For the Hunter of Sentients boon, however, things can be different. It’s how monsters like Brood Mothers advance their title.
“You would have to form a different type of contract, though, making them effectively half slaves, half familiars, and they couldn’t have a noble skill like Roland. But, on a world with low restrictions like Hira and given the strength of your contracts, the range would be quite large, about 289 kilometers, and each kill they perform would be worth about 75% of if you had killed them yourself.
“If you try to advance Aalam’s title instead, however, the range would be quite a bit longer given his Soul Lord skill and the strengthening provided to it by the effects of his class, increasing to around 13,847 kilometers.”
“Alright.” Mila felt herself start to grin in a way that certainly wasn’t healthy. “I have a plan then.”
* * *
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It took Mila only a few hours to catch up to the Amoranth Kingdom’s forces, as they were moving as a large group, and, through continuing with her disguise as a member of the Quill Clan, it was pretty easy to just walk in, even with her left forearm still missing.
By listening in on a few conversations during the march, it wasn’t difficult to learn what the army’s plan was. They were going to crush the Flare Clan. Then they would move on to the Gale Clan’s pillar and crush everyone there. Finally, they would move to the pillar of the Kingdom of Night’s royal family and crush their remaining forces as well.
Even with most of their leaders dead, they were supremely confident in the power of Prince Tomin, and, in Mila’s mind, that pride was rightfully placed. She’d only interacted with the man for 12 seconds, but he scared her. Like Isaiah Gale, he was significantly faster than her, but, in several ways, he was even more dangerous.
From his fighting style, it was obvious he followed one of the two main paths of the Amoranth Kingdom’s royal family, the path of the mana blade, and she’d learned from Silveea there were three different variations of that path for F rank cultivators. Given his speed, the way he attacked her as soon as she pulled out the grenades, and how he’d escaped from the tent before the actual blast, however, it was obvious which variation he followed.
His class was the Rare grade Peril Sword, a class that required the Legendary grade skill Danger Sense to learn, and that skill worked like Spider-Man’s Peter Tingle. She wasn’t positive what his other skills were, as he hadn’t used them, but that one Legendary grade skill meant it was nearly impossible for her to ambush him, and Mila’s build was not designed for fair fights.
Her goal for the next several days as the army moved toward the location of the Flare Clan’s Pillar of Conquest was thus simple. She would reduce the power of the army while gaining benefits for herself, and she would try to steal Prince Tomin’s storage ring, which most likely had the Left Hand of the Runescribe inside, if she found a chance.
To that end, the first thing she did was wait for nightfall. Then she sent four doppelgängers, hidden from normal senses by her use of her Law Egg of Obfuscation and from most detection skills which could penetrate her Law Egg by not having any mass, into the private tents of four of the alliance’s most powerful warriors, deliberately avoiding any mages or psychics.
None of the four occupants of the tents were asleep yet, but they all met her doppelgängers’ eyes, fell under the effects of Evil Eyes - Lust, and quickly agreed to a slave contract.
Terms:
1. You waive your rights to your freedom and enter into a slave master relationship with the master of the initiator of this contract
2. As a slave, you may not reveal any secrets about the initiator of this contract or your new master to anyone for any reason
3. As a slave, you may not take any actions with the intention to harm the initiator of this contract or your new master
4. As a slave, you must follow all the orders of the initiator of this contract or her master
Punishment:
Death
Do you accept?
Yes/No
As a master slave relationship was by no means balanced, especially the type Mila had designed, the rate of the soul burning death if they tried to violate the contract would be almost instantaneous, so they wouldn’t be able to reveal Aalam’s System generated title of Heavenly Spark Soul King, otherwise Mila wouldn’t have taken the risk.
“Your orders are simple,” Mila’s doppelgängers all said once the effects of Evil Eyes - Lust wore off. “Every day from now on, you have to secretly kill one cultivator from the forces of the Quill Clan, the Vol Clan, or the Amoranth Kingdom’s royal family. If you are found out, you must either kill everyone who learned of your actions within one hour, or kill yourself.”
She then performed the same actions thirty-three more times, until Aalam had a total of 136 murdering slaves, the max number of slaves he could have given his soul stat while already having Roland and her as a servant, and she also slightly modified Aalam’s bond with Roland so he could gain credit for Roland’s kills as well.
During the process, three individuals noticed her doppelgängers moving about the camp, but she snapped their necks while infusing Telekinesis with her Law Larva of The Reaper, leaving no karmic trails which could be tracked to her.
And this time she wasn’t worried about contract breakers in the army. Her contracts made use of a Legendary grade contract skill empowered by a Legendary grade racial ability and a Legendary grade class effect while, after leveling up several times, her base Soul stat was over 1,000. She doubted anyone on the planet could break her normal contracts, and these weren’t normal.
These 136 cultivators were enslaved by Aalam, and he had a Heroic grade noble skill empowered even further than her contract skill. Very, very few F ranks in the entire universe could break a slave contract created by her with Aalam as the master, let alone anyone on Hira. It was completely different from when she made the unanchored contracts she usually preferred.
Mila then acted like she was a scout heading out and quietly left the army, moving toward the Flare Clan, hoping to kill the last two generals herself before the forces of the Amoranth Kingdom arrived.
Given what she’d learned of Prince Tomin’s personality, she was no longer worried about the Left Hand of the Runescribe being sent back before Tomin himself left Hira, so she could afford to play a longer game, and, from a couple discreet questions to those she’d enslaved, she’d learned Tomin planned to block travel through all the world’s Pillars of Conquest using Spacetime Sealing Scrolls until after the opening of the inheritance, so she didn’t have to worry about any of the invaders escaping either.
When she was half way to the Flare Clan’s base, however, she felt a change in the strongest of her bonds connecting her to the center of the continent, and she stopped in place.
Something had changed with Aalam.