Tomin
Tomin fell back onto his bed and started to try and figure out where everything had gone wrong.
He’d known the assignment would be difficult. The Kingdom of Night had invested a lot, and the B rank forces of the Life Tree Empire and the undead could completely trample them both if they knew what Hira was worth. But his sister’s new boyfriend had given them all the information, and they had prepared.
The problem wasn’t with the intelligence. The inheritance existed and all signs pointed to it containing quite a few valuables. The Kindar Raiders abandoned their Pillar of Conquest, and the Kingdom of Night’s forces attempted to wipe out everyone else before the one year deadline, all as predicted.
Granted, the undead were nowhere to be seen and the Kingdom of Night’s forces started their assaults early, but they’d gone after the forces of the Life Tree Empire first and he’d successfully ambushed them.
He just hadn’t expected that woman who’d been working with Silveea Night.
The plan had been simple, wipe out all the forces of the Kingdom of Night after they eliminated everyone else, but keep Silveea Night and the three siblings of his sister’s boyfriend alive. He would have then gotten to play with Silveea for a year or two while fully conquering the world, and that would have been fun.
Instead, however, the young woman working under Silveea had indiscriminately killed everyone. She’d destroyed the Quill Clan’s leadership, ended the generals of the Vol Clan, and even killed the two strongest generals under him, the senior brother of the Void Academy and the senior sister of the Glamour Conservatory, all at once, taking out Silveea and all the Kingdom of Night’s leadership at the same time.
Ava Gale had only survived due to a one time use artifact, and she was a poor replacement for Silveea as she was far too willing to join him in his bed.
Tomin looked over to the greenish blond haired woman breathing hard next to him and then back up at the ceiling of his tent.
It was the woman whose arm he’d taken who was the source of all his problems. As far as his intelligence operatives could figure out, she’d teleported up to the desert about a day away from the inheritance site, somehow wiped out all the remaining members of the Gale Clan, and had then been chased to the sea by the man who by all reports was the strongest on the planet. Then she’d made her way down to the Quill Clan and wiped out everyone Tomin had left behind before sneaking into his own camp and doing something to more than fifty of his men, causing them to turn traitor and start killing people. Yet now she hadn’t been heard from for fifteen days.
Whoever she was, she was strong and crafty and his advisors were leaning toward her being a native or a monster, as the last two generals of the Flare Clan had apparently been assassinated a day before his forces arrived at their pillar. Given there were no reports from questioning the natives they’d captured at the start mentioning anyone like her, his advisors were leaning more toward monster. The area of the Gale Clan’s Pillar of Conquest was marked as being the Territory of the Heavenly Spark Soul King in Universal Standard rather than any of the local languages, and that sounded like a System generated monster title.
None of his advisors knew what the term Heavenly Spark represented, but the fact the monster had the word King in his name meant he had to be at least equivalent to a first grade talent of the Palazin Galaxy Cluster, and the fact he was working with the natives meant he was intelligent, likely a reborn soul from another apocalypse style integration.
King monsters, his advisors had explained, were usually born on a world alone, so it was possible the woman was that king, having some transformation ability to make himself look like a woman. Or maybe the woman was someone from the invasion forces who’d decided to work with Hira’s monster lord. Whatever the case, Tomin had to find her as she was too powerful to continue allowing to roam around and was the sole cause for most of his losses.
“Are the two of you done now?” Tomin was startled as he heard the voice and subconsciously reached for the sheets on the bed to cover himself instead of doing anything actually constructive, Ava Gale having much the same reaction. “You were going at it so hard I thought it rude to interrupt.”
As he summoned his sword out of his spatial storage ring and into his hand, he looked over at the dresser in the corner of the tent, about two meters from the bed, specifically at the young woman sitting on top of it, legs dangling from the side.
It was her, beautiful and young with dark hair and dark eyes. And her left arm seemed to have almost fully grown back, only quite a bit of muscle still missing.
Activating his Blink skill, he teleported next to her and sliced through her entire torso, but there was no feeling of connection as his blade went through her at the waist from left to right.
“So, I was wondering about something,” the woman continued, completely ignoring the fact he’d tried to kill her. “Who’s your source of information? The Gale Clan learned about the inheritance first from the Kindar Raiders. Then the Flare Clan learned about it from a Gale Clan traitor, while the Kingdom of Night’s forces saw what their subordinates were doing and invested accordingly.
“You, on the other hand, seem to have been able to predict most of the other forces’ actions, and that requires foreknowledge.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She looked from Tomin to Ava and then back to Tomin. “Raven Gale, huh?”
Tomin and Ava were both surprised and, given the strength of the aura of the woman in front of then, she had undoubtedly caught it.
“And it’s a partnership, the Gale Clan prince not in the deal against his will.” The woman smiled and something about her eyes changed ever so slightly, becoming sexier. “What did he ask you to do with Isaiah? Were you to protect him or sacrifice him on an altar?”
The woman’s smile grew brighter and, even though his Danger Sense wasn’t activating, Tomin realized he was under a charm effect, so he stabbed his own left arm slightly and looked away from the hologram toward the door of his tent. He’d just heard something else out there and he was starting to grow worried.
“So, let me get this straight.” The woman’s voice attracted his attention again as he felt lust building up inside him, whatever charm skill she was using still having an effect. “Raven Gale asked you to protect Isaiah, yet you decided to sacrifice the man instead.” Tomin looked at the woman again, or at least her illusionary clone, and saw as her smile grew even wider, the creepy expression somehow sexy. “No, you were ordered to do so. Interesting.”
Tomin overcame the charm effect for a second and Blinked himself out of the tent, only to find pandemonium. There were two mages who’d been blocking the sound of it from reaching him, but his army was destroying itself.
Over a hundred of his most powerful cultivators were slaughtering everyone else, quite a few of them looking like they were crying, and it had apparently been going on for a while, as almost no one was left.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The woman was beside him again, and he felt his lust continue to build when she looked at him, but his Danger Sense skill still hadn’t activated.
He tried to slice this version of her in half as well, but she was an illusion just like the last one and completely ignored his attempt.
“The control over someone else’s life and death, you must enjoy it as well.” The woman turned to look at the last of his army being killed by his own men. “There is a sense of power unlike increasing your own strength.”
“What do you want from me?” His danger sense hadn’t activated yet, meaning she didn’t intend to do him harm, or at least hadn’t yet initiated any type of action to hurt him.
“You took something from me and I want it back.”
The Mistress of Oaths and Deception has sent you a contract request.
Terms:
1. You return the glove artifact you took from the Mistress of Oaths and Deception along with everything which had been inside its subspace
2. You will take no actions to increase your level for your remaining stay on Hira
3. You will take no actions with the intention of harming the Mistress of Oaths and Deception or the Heavenly Spark Soul King
4. The Mistress of Oaths and Deception will take no actions with the intention to kill you or your lover
Punishment:
Death
Do you accept?
Yes/No
“You want that glove?” She’d been wearing the azure glove when he’d sliced her hand off, and it was definitely a high grade artifact, but it was only G rank. Still, his space mages hadn’t been able to break open its subspace with their early F rank strength, so it was likely quite valuable and probably had important contents.
Tomin thought about it for a second, his lust for the woman increasing due to whatever charm skill she was still using, and then he lightly stabbed his left arm again.
“What will you do if I say no?”
The woman smiled at him and his Danger Sense skill flared. “Everyone, please kill Prince Tomin.”
Twenty-three long range attacks were sent his way while everyone else charged at him, forcing Tomin to use Blink three times in short succession so he wouldn’t be hit.
“Alright everyone, you can stop.” The woman was gone from where she’d been standing and was now behind him, a sword held to his throat as he turned his head to look at her, but his Danger Sense skill gave him no warning, so she didn’t have the intention to kill him.
“Would you like to accept the contract, your highness?” The woman smiled at him, pleasantly this time, and, even with her charm skill still making him feel lustful thoughts, the expression was the scariest he’d seen on her so far. “Even though your ring is soul-locked like my glove, I have the ability to force open your artifact, so I don’t need you alive to get access to my belongings. But I would rather not waste my time.”
The woman raised her left hand and showed three fingers, the sword in her right not moving. “I’ll give you to the count of three.” Tomin’s Danger Sense skill flared. “One. Two.”
Tomin accepted the contract and the sense of danger immediately left. Then the woman disappeared from behind him, the sword gone as well.
He looked around and a new version of the woman was ten meters in front of him, walking out from behind his men. “The glove then, your highness.”
Warily Tomin took the glove, which he couldn’t fully identify, out of his spatial storage ring. Then he tossed it to her.
This woman must have been the real one, as she caught the glove, held it for a few seconds, and then put it on her left hand.
Immediately after she finished, though, Tomin felt a powerful Law from her, on the level of a Law Larva, and something changed in the bond created by the contract between them as his Danger Sense skill started to flare again.
“Alright, everyone, kill him.” The woman turned her back to him, but Tomin didn’t have the time to make use of such an opening, even if it was real, which it almost certainly wasn’t.
He used Blink several times, making his way back into his tent, where Ava was thankfully still alive and had managed to put on some pants. Without talking to her, he embraced her. Then he took a one time use token out of his spatial storage ring and activated it, the token randomly teleporting them somewhere within 300 or so kilometers, a small hill in the middle of a forest.
“Ava, how long do you think it would take you to break a contract where one side severed the contract using the power of Law?”
He took his own clothes out of his spatial storage ring and started to get dressed.
“Not long at all.” Ava held her right hand out and placed it on his chest, her breathing relaxing now that they weren’t in danger anymore. “That type of action would nearly destroy the contract unless a high grade Law of Severing was used.”
She started to frown. “But that seems to be the case here, and the original contract was strong.” The young woman shuddered slightly. “If one side’s connection point hadn’t been severed, I don’t think I could remove this contract at all. As it is, with my current strength and if I somehow managed to level up once every twelve days, it would probably take me over a third of a year to get you free from the terms.”