Mila
“That Gale Clan is terrible.” Aalam, as was usually the case, was a good listener when interested in what someone was saying, and he’d been interested in her story, so he’d gotten invested. “That poor … mass-murdering adult who should know better.” Some of the heat left his voice.
Then he asked, “Why should I care at all about Isaiah Gale? Sure, he’s powerful and it sounds like his life has been terrible. But, given how many deaths were required for you to level up, wouldn’t he need even more primal energy, and doesn’t that mean he personally slaughtered a bunch of natives who never had a choice in any of this?”
“I mean, technically they were at war and he was ordered to do so.” Mila knew the argument wasn’t great as soon as it left her mouth, even if it would have totally worked on her less than a year before.
“Does that make it any better?”
This was one of the good things about talking through problems with Aalam. He could get swayed by emotions just like anyone, but usually not for very long, and this allowed him to see to the heart of issues extremely quickly.
For science and engineering problems, he could usually come up with an ideal solution himself, but for social problems his ideas were usually quite bad, as they were solutions which would only work if everyone operated the same way he did.
This didn’t take away from his ability to identify the heart of social issues, however, and he’d grown better and better at identifying them over the years.
“Yes, actually.” Mila started smiling as Aalam had allowed her to realize exactly what she’d been struggling with. “It does.
“What is it you’ve always said about things like the justice system and social welfare? The goal should be making a better future, not giving punishment for the past.
“My goal, for example, has been to get us back to Earth, and a stable Hira is required for that, so I’ve been killing members of the invasion forces who would not be a threat to me. A lot of these people are almost as innocent as the cultivators of Hira who they helped slaughter, going along with their clan’s goals just like the United States’ soldiers went along with your politicians whims.”
Mila could see Aalam frowning so she decided to avoid geopolitical related metaphors as she continued her explanation.
“But I’ve been killing them because their past actions make it seem likely they would be a future threat, not because of their past actions themselves. Isaiah is quite a bit more innocent than these cultivators, not in his actions but in his mentality. With a bit of work, and no lying or trickery, he could probably be convinced to become an asset rather than a hindrance. And he’s powerful enough to warrant the effort.”
Aalam continued frowning, but Mila could tell he was thinking and not angry about what she’d said.
“I don’t like the moral implications of killing thousands of people, no matter the reasoning.”
“You killed over a thousand people by blowing up the Capitol and through that action saved over a billion lives.” Mila had really been wanting to ask him about that, so, now that she was given a reasonable opening, she took the chance.
“Yeah, and that was stupid.” Aalam didn’t seem at all uncomfortable with the topic, and Mila internally breathed out a sigh of relief. “I was depressed and wanted to kill myself, so I found a halfway decent excuse.”
Mila’s entire body froze, but Aalam didn’t seem to notice and just continued. “Given the assets I had at the time, I probably could have gotten the same result without killing people.”
Mila took a deep breath and moved all the emotions which had her wanting to scream and cry onto one of her minds not in control of her body. “Do you think that possibility exists here?”
“No.” Aalam’s frown deepened. “And that is the problem.” He tucked a lock of dark blue hair behind his right ear. “It’s an odd situation.”
“No, it’s a natural one.”
Aalam focused on her more and Mila elaborated. “You grew up in the most powerful nation on Earth which had enjoyed an uncontested democratic system of law and order for hundreds of years before you were born. There were systems in place to make changes without physically fighting, even if they were sometimes hard.
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“And the main reason you could enjoy such a stable society was the existence of the major countries on our planet having sticks so big using them would cause an apocalypse, as this made wars and violence far less common than was natural for humanity. Yet still, in the poorer nations of Earth, there was violent competition over resources and death as a result.
“The natural state of humanity is violent competition, not peace, and it takes special circumstances for the latter to happen.”
Aalam looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, taking about half a minute. Then he looked back at her. “You make a good point.”
“Alright then.” Mila stood up from her position on the floor of the hallway and patted her thighs, mostly wanting to change the topic so she wouldn’t start to cry about the whole suicide thing. “We should make a plan then.
“For now, I think you should stay here and figure out how to absorb the energy from the soul well faster. At the same time, it would be super helpful if you could further master the Telekinesis and Advanced Multi-Mind skills as their shadows have proven incredibly helpful.”
“Where is the Amoranth army now?” Aalam asked, also standing, but not leaving the soul well.
“They seem to have gone to the Gale Clan and are now heading to the location of the Kingdom of Night’s royal family’s Pillar of Conquest in the far northeast. Given the rate they are moving, it should take them around seven to eight days to get there.”
Aalam looked contemplative for a few seconds and Mila realized he might have a different plan in mind. “I think we should both teleport to your platform and then you can run down to the location of the Quill and Flare clans to take over their Pillars of Conquest. You might have to kill a few people, but it shouldn’t take you very long.
“Meanwhile, I can take the platform and run to the Pillar of Conquest left by the main Life Tree Empire force. It should take me about the same time to get there as it would take you to finish up with those two clans, and I can practice with Telekinesis while carrying the platform. You can then teleport to my location and take that Pillar of Conquest as well before starting to run to the Kingdom of Night’s pillar. Then I can bring the platform back here and work on more quickly absorbing the power of this soul well.”
“I feel like I’m missing something. What is the reason for the rush?”
“My second uniqueness gives more bonus stats the larger my Territory, so increasing my Territory faster helps speed up my advancement of Laws, which is the key to increasing my absorption rate of the power of the soul well.”
“Oh.” It seemed the Prince uniqueness was a lot less overpowered than Nana Xara had thought, requiring Territory of a certain size to have the effect of tripling all of a cultivator’s stats, but Mila wasn’t that surprised. Nana Xara hadn’t had the uniqueness herself, and everyone she’d known who did was at least the master of an equivalent grade world, so she wouldn’t have known about the limitations. The relative weakness of Aalam’s aura compared to what it could be under the full effects of Prince wasn’t because he wasn’t tapping into his uniqueness’ power, but because the current size of his Territory didn’t increase his Aura stat by more than 100. “That’s good to know.”
Mila thought about it for a bit. Then she agreed. “Alright. Let’s do that. Learn the skills in the bag of holding I gave you earlier, then we’ll run over to the undead’s Pillar of Conquest and teleport from there. No need to risk the soul well by teleporting from here.”
* * *
A few minutes later she and Aalam arrived in the desert and she was incredibly uncomfortable.
In order to teleport, Aalam had to be extremely close to her, so she’d effectively been hugging him for the last twelve and a half seconds, and, as a result, she almost didn’t notice the ambush.
There were five of them in the cave, four Vol Clan members with icy blue hair and cold gray eyes holding spears and one man who was dressed similarly to the space mage general of the Amoranth Kingdom she’d killed.
The four Vol Clan members, one of whom she recognized from Omalia Gale’s documents as the leader of the entire Vol Clan force, stabbed their icy spears toward them, the cave incredibly cold from the Law Eggs each of them were using, and the space mage uselessly locked down space so they couldn’t teleport away, not aware they didn’t have the ability to do so.
Aalam froze in place, unable to react for a second, but Mila managed to save them both. Using Telekinesis in an extremely energy inefficient way, she pushed all the air in the cave between her and Aalam and their assailants towards their foes, knocking them back with the force.
Then she pulled the sword of the female undead general out of one of the bags of holding on her belt, activated Phantasmic Doppelgängers, and personally lunged for the Vol Clan leader while her doppelgängers attacked the other four.
Aalam unfroze and hit each of the five assailants with his new Epic grade Mental Spike skill, and that gave Mila the opening to easily stab the Vol Clan leader through the heart.
No longer in his Id state and up against elites, Aalam’s mental spike skill wasn’t deadly to any of their opponents, but they were affected by the peak grade Law Egg of Asphyxiation he’d imbued into the skill and it made them feel like they couldn’t breathe, allowing Mila to easily kill the other Vol Clan members as well.
Then she locked eyes with the space mage and used Evil Eyes - Lust, quickly turning him into Aalam’s slave.
“First,” she asked the man after the lust effect faded, “how did you track us here?”
“I was at the battle where you took out my senior brother. And, as I was able to arrive within minutes of your escape, I managed to catch the spatial signal used by your artifact through the interference of the explosions. Prince Tomin then had me get Nihail Vol and his men to try and find you.
“We arrived here three days ago, but your trail was cold, so we decided to wait to see if you would return.”
Mila turned to Aalam, who was breathing hard, and sent him a message over their bond. “And I got a complete kill of Vol Clan leadership as a result, which means we should be able to get Legendary grade rewards.”
Then she turned back to the space mage. “Does anyone else have the ability to track that platform if we move it?”
“Not in the Amoranth Kingdom’s forces.”
Mila’s smile widened. “Good. Now, finally, do you have some sort of teleportation ability?”