Mila
“What do you think the purpose and origin of the System are?” Aalam asked, seemingly getting more curious than angry upon hearing he couldn’t send a message to his sister.
Mila looked up at the ceiling of the soul well, contemplating just how odd the situation was. She’d just confessed and had it all blow up in her face, yet now she and Aalam were talking about the mysteries of the universe. Sure, it’s not like it was surprising. This was Aalam she was talking to. But it was weird.
“Personally, I think the purpose of the System seems to be to train up soldiers for war.” She looked back at Aalam. “Nana Xara’s biography mentioned gods invading from another dimension, several of whom she killed, and my current guess is the purpose of the System is to help train up pawns to help fight off these other dimensions.
“From what little information I have, gods seem to be ascended lower lifeforms like humans, so it is likely the gods of our universe have quite a few internal conflicts as well, and my guess is the System was set up by them to create a set of rules under which they allow each other to operate.
“They would need to make sure their internal conflicts don’t damage each other to the point they can’t fight off external threats, but they probably don’t want too many new gods to rise up either, especially ones not under their control, so it would make sense if the System is more designed to raise up powerful A ranks than gods.
“Again, though, this is just a guess.”
“Ugh.” Aalam audibly sighed. “Politics.”
Mila found herself smiling. “Otherwise the restrictions on things like cultivation techniques don’t make sense.”
Aalam looked up at the ceiling himself. “We’re just tiny little ants at the whims of a universe full of boots, aren’t we?”
Mila’s smile grew a little wider. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Ugh.” Aalam closed his eyes. “I can’t handle politics.”
“I know.” Mila couldn’t help but laugh slightly. “That’s why the insane version of you appointed a chamberlain, right?”
One of the things she loved most about Aalam was how he so easily accepted what he wasn’t good at. It wasn’t like he didn’t try to shore up his weaknesses, but he had no ego about someone being better than him at anything, so he had no problem letting other people fill in where their skillsets better matched.
And, in her experience, that was quite rare.
Aalam opened his eyes and glared at her. “But I can’t trust you.”
“Why?” Mila stopped smiling and just met his eyes, making sure not to accidentally activate Evil Eyes - Lust.
“Because you lied to me for the entire time I knew you,” Aalam almost growled.
“We already established I didn’t.” Mila kept her voice and face neutral.
“You—”
Aalam was about to say something, but Mila cut him off. “I get it, Aalam. I betrayed your trust. But let’s just talk facts. And, for arguments sake, let’s ignore all facts you only know through me.
“First, from the data you gained from China stealing from you, you should be aware I was raised by my grandfather and was never suspected of having loyalties to anyone other than him and the Chinese government. Second, Earth is undergoing an apocalypse style integration as we speak, so it is very unlikely the Chinese government will survive. As a result of these facts, where do you think my loyalties lie right now?”
Aalam continued to glare at her, but his expression became contemplative. “Just following the logic, I guess to yourself and maybe your grandfather.”
“Alright. That’s not fully correct, but it’s perfectly reasonable you don’t believe what I said earlier, so let’s just go with that.
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“If that is the case, why can’t you trust me?”
Aalam sighed and looked up at the ceiling again. “You’re a good liar with an expertise in manipulating people, and I don’t trust you because of those capabilities. Yet it is exactly those capabilities that I need.
“I’m probably letting my emotions sway my decision making.”
“Probably. But it is extremely, extremely reasonable. I am a hundred percent at fault. When I learned you were going to figure out I’d been spying on you, I should have talked with you instead of running away.”
Aalam’s glare changed to a look of derision and his aura became hard. “No, Mila, that’s not what you should have done. And, if what you said earlier was at all true, it’s not what you would have done.
“If you truly cared about me, you would have told me yourself.
“You know how to predict the way I’ll react to things better than I do, and, had you told me yourself, it wouldn’t have ended our relationship. Sure, I would have been angry for a few days, and sure, I would have stopped you from continuing to steal from me. But you didn’t do that, because you didn’t feel that way.”
Aalam took a deep breath, calming himself slightly. “Please stop lying to me, Mila.”
Congratulations!
You have advanced your peak grade Law Egg of Obfuscation into the Law Larva of Shadow.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Agility +24, Perception +24, Magic +16, Spirit +16, Soul +16
Congratulations!
You have advanced a Law Egg into a Law Larva.
Your soul is affected by your upgrading of Law.
All Stats +12
Congratulations!
You are the first native cultivator on Hira to form a Law Larva.
All Stats +36
Mila ignored the System notifications and instead tried to process what Aalam had just said. He was right. Had she truly cared like she thought she did, she would have told him, but she hadn’t. Sure, maybe things had changed after her death, but at the time she hadn’t cared enough about Aalam and had run as a result.
It hadn’t been because she was scared. It had been because she truly hadn’t been invested enough in her relationship to risk losing the other parts of her life, the parts she’d since learned were pointless.
Was she maybe overly invested in her relationship with Aalam since her revival due to it being the only thing left of her previous life? Was it maybe not due to her valuing the relationship itself?
Mila was about to go on a downward spiral, but she was stopped by what Aalam said next. “If you stop the lying, though, I agree to continuing to work together.
“Please tell me what’s happened since I fell into a coma. I seem to have missed a lot.”
Mila entered all five of her minds into work mode, stopping the downward spiral before it could fully start. Then she began giving a detailed description of everything that had happened since Aalam had left his Id state.
While one of her main minds focused on that, a second started analyzing everything she could have done differently, effectively using the story she was telling with one mind as a platform to train herself with another. One of her dumber minds kept Nana Xara from being able to listen in, while the other focused on maintaining her senses so no one could sneak up on her and Aalam. Finally, her last main mind tried analyzing the story she was telling through the lens of her Law Egg of The Tactician, comparing what she thought for herself with what her resonance with the Law suggested.
As she continued talking, however, her main minds kept not being able to fully focus, instead thinking back to when she was dying with a bullet through her chest and the events which led her there, so she kept having to rotate which mind was talking to Aalam.
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of The Tactician has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Base Stats +4, Soul +12
Through thinking about it, she was able to see many things she could have done to have not died back on Earth, and those realizations were enough to push her Law Egg forward, but they weren’t the main thing she was thinking about.
What had gone through her mind when she’d sat there dying? There was a sense of betrayal, of course, and she’d mostly dealt with that by this point, but there had also been a sense of relief.
She’d had split loyalties throughout the last five to six years of her life.
She’d believed in what she was doing, in her job as a spy, but she’d fallen for her mark. It wasn’t enough to choose him over the loyalty which had been ingrained in her since she was old enough to talk, but it was real.
Had she been just a normal young woman, she probably would have manipulated Aalam into proposing several years before he decided to do so on his own and she definitely would have said yes.
In this second life, she was choosing to put him first, and that choice made her happy. At the same time, however, it wasn’t just her choice to make, and she was trying to push Aalam too fast.
She’d betrayed him badly and, if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t deserve a second chance.
Aalam, however, was someone who might give her one, and she’d already set the right groundwork on which to build something stable, but she couldn’t push. She had to let Aalam make the decision.
Most important, however, and probably the hardest for her, she had to not manipulate him into it, otherwise it couldn’t be real.
Mila was feeling pretty good about her resolution, but then she realized something. Nana Xara was going to love this type of development where she would have to interact with Aalam without her normal manipulative filter, and that was going to be terrible.