Mila
Using telekinesis, Aalam summoned all twelve golden flying needles from the Left Hand of the Runescribe he was wearing on his left hand. Then he took out all twelve contained elemental essences and placed them two thirds to the end of each needle, next to the orbs in each needle holding elemental power. Finally, he took out the twelve transparent Triforce Threads Mila’d taken as one of her Legendary grade rewards, each of which was about a centimeter thick and three meters long, and placed the end of each thread at the end of one of the needles.
All he had to do then was stop holding the Left Hand of the Runescribe back and each needle began glowing the colors Mila had started to associate with their element, green for life, gray for death, gold for time, etc. The energy of the contained essences were absorbed, along with most of the materials of the containment orbs, and the Triforce Threads started to be pulled into each needle, slowly disappearing as the material was integrated.
She stayed in the hallway so she wouldn’t absorb any of the unique energy in the soul well, but the Left Hand of the Runescribe wasn’t as polite, each needle absorbing enough energy to raise Aalam’s Soul stat by 12.
Previously, each needle was about a meter long, with one end pointy and sharp and the other flat. Around two thirds to the end, the golden material they were made from split and wrapped around a 10 cm diameter orb holding the needle’s elemental power source before coming together and straightening again.
Over the next four hours, however, the appearance of the needles changed. First, while the orbs holding elemental power grew much stronger, they also shrunk, only a single centimeter in diameter at the end. This allowed the golden material to not have to noticeably wrap around them anymore and the result was needles which were straight all the way down, the elemental orbs now hidden completely behind a thin layer of golden material. The needles also condensed slightly, shortening to become only 90 cm in length and the tips became sharper.
Internally, she was pretty sure the addition of the Triforce Threads would allow energy to flow much more easily, but Aalam would know more.
When the needles were done changing, it was then the turn of the artifact’s glove section. The leftover materials from the orbs which had contained the elemental essences flowed into the glove. Then energy from each needle, seemingly the excess power remaining from the contained essences, flowed through the telekinetic connections the needles had with the glove and began to power its upgrade. Over the next two hours, the glove section absorbed enough energy from the soul well to raise Aalam’s Soul stat by 108, and, while the azure fingerless glove didn’t change in appearance, something about it was altered on a fundamental level.
It didn’t feel like an artifact anymore, but just a glove, and the same could be said about the needles still hovering in the air.
Left Hand of the Runescribe (F-Legendary) [Growth]
A fingerless glove for the left hand of a humanoid made from processed Mutant Juvenile Vitalized Rollie-Pollie scales, this artifact contains a minor pocket dimension and a telekinetic connection to twelve flying needles within. Each flying needle is made from the processed scales of a Vitalized Rollie-Pollie Queen, effectively indestructible below C rank, and is designed to channel the power of one of the twelve elements. Through the use of an Orb of Devouring during its construction, the Left Hand of the Runescribe can devour other materials to improve itself and, through the use of a Token of Soulbinding, it gains more power through the Law advancements of its creator, the Heavenly Spark Soul King.
Through absorbing extra materials after its creation, it advanced from G to F rank and greatly increased the amount of energy which could be channeled through its needles while also becoming much better at containing its own energies, exceeding the threshold for becoming a Heroic grade artifact. Due to the will of the Heavenly Spark Soul King, however, its advancement in grade was delayed, so its true abilities at F rank have yet to be unlocked.
Effects: Minor Pocket Dimension, Telekinetic Connection, Conductivity, Enhanced Triforce Channeling, Runescriber Enhancement
Requirements: The Heavenly Spark Soul King or one of his servants
As he’d explained previously, Aalam was holding back the full advancement of the Left Hand of the Runescribe until all his Laws were Law Larvae, but just the upgrading of rank made a huge difference.
One, it was just plain cool. The new version of the needles were far sturdier than before, the fragile bits much, much more difficult to break. And that meant the needles could be used to stab people with more freedom, not to mention how much more energy Aalam would be able to channel through them, allowing him to write runes faster.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
It wasn’t obvious, but she was pretty sure with just this much of an improvement to his primary weapon, Aalam had become at least six times more dangerous.
Second, with the upgrade happening in the soul well, and with energies of all twelve elements exposed during the process, it was like they’d both been given a glimpse at the mysteries of the universe, an excellent catalyst to gaining the inspiration required to upgrade their Law Eggs into Law Larvae.
Mila’s Law Egg of Hologram advanced into the Law Larva of Illusion while she watched. So, as her Law Eggs of The Tactician and Calm had already merged into the Law Larva of The Tactician during her conquering of the Kingdom of Night’s Pillar of Conquest, she only had her Law Larva of The Courtesan left to gain before she could start practicing her cultivation technique.
Aalam, on the other hand, had benefitted far more. First, his Law Egg of Multi-Dimensional Geometry advanced to a Law Larva, then his Law Eggs of Order and Entropy, followed by his Law Egg of Temporal Relativity.
As each of these advancements boosted all his stats by 12 points, including Attunement, an absolute flood of Law advancements then followed. They included his Law Eggs of Plasma, Solid, Liquid, and Gas, as well as Inertia, Kinetic Energy, Matter, Ionic Conductivity, and Ionization. His Law Egg of Molecular Acceleration advanced into the Law Larva of Heat and his Law Egg of Molecular Deceleration advanced into the Law Larva of Cold. Then, finally, his Law Eggs of Ultraviolet and Infrared merged into the Law Larva of Electromagnetic Radiation and his Law Eggs of Ultraviolet Absorption and Infrared Absorption merged into the Law Larva of Electromagnetic Absorption.
In total, Aalam gained 17 Law Larvae in just under six hours and Mila felt it was unfair, her Law Larva of Shadow almost advancing to middle grade. Granted, Aalam’s Attunement stat was very high for his level and was boosted more than 100% by his Prince uniqueness given the size of his Territory after she’d taken the remaining Pillars of Conquest. And, granted, unlike her, Aalam was soulbound to the artifact being flooded with elemental energies. But Mila knew it was mainly just because Aalam was better than her when it came to Laws, the usual source of bottlenecks in the universe.
So, she resolved to work harder in order to keep up.
* * *
It was only about a week later that Mila managed to merge her Law Eggs of Rage and The Courtesan into the Law Larva of The Courtesan, having spent most of her time working as a matchmaker in the major city Roland was now operating out of.
Then she immediately ran to the soul well and sat down to meditate in the hallway, entering her mind into the cultivation legacy bound to her soul.
There she saw the old man again, the three-eyed elf, and this time, as he showed the first step of the mixed variant of Yin Yang Cosmology, she could follow it. His soulstructures and stats were a complete copy of hers, and she could sense inside his body even better than her own, so all she had to do was follow the same steps he was taking.
It was a slow process, but it was relatively easy. The first step of the cultivation technique, which seemed like it would take about five days if she didn’t take any time to sleep, was to move her resources through six specific patterns in her qi, mana, and psyforce channels, a different pattern for each of the six elements her Laws represented, and the normal bottlenecks were twofold, neither of which affected her.
First, she had to infuse her resources with Laws, which would normally be difficult for someone who’d just gained Law Eggs, but Mila already had Law Larvae, so that wasn’t an issue.
Second, any obstructions in her channels would slow down the rate at which she could cultivate and would have to be removed, but that also wasn’t an issue as Mila’s channels were wide and robust as well as entirely clean.
Her body was created with near perfect cultivation talent and Aalam had paid extra so its integration with her soul would be flawless.
According to Nana Xara, the soul of a cultivator effectively had two parts. The first part represented the intrinsic identity of the cultivator, holding her memories, personality, etc, while the second part was used for cultivation, holding the soulstructures and resource channels. The first part was independent from the cultivator’s body, but the second part was very much linked to the cultivator’s physical form, effectively a metaphysical representation of their anatomy.
When Mila and Aalam had been reborn as monsters, their cultivation talent, represented by their soulstructures, resource channels, and Law affinities, had changed, but their intrinsic natures had not. This was why, despite having effectively the same cultivation talent, Aalam was so much better than her at mastering Laws. He was naturally someone skilled in studying how the universe worked, and that hadn’t changed when he’d been reborn.
The first step of the mixed variant of Yin Yang Cosmology was to use her Laws to widen and strengthen all her resource channels, and, according to Nana Xara, the second step would do the same, but the third step, corresponding to high grade Law Eggs, would start the process of strengthening her soulstructures as well. It wouldn’t help to increase their size or the amount of resources they could hold, but it would instead help strengthen the quality of her resources, which was far more useful, even with her low resource usage build. By the end of the fourth step, corresponding to peak grade Law Eggs, the higher quality of her resources would allow her to cut the resource cost for her skills almost in half.
It was the fifth step, however, which Mila was truly looking forward to. That step would allow her to take six of her thirteen mana wells and start to elementalize the mana stored within them with her Laws, the different types of mana able to empower her skills with different effects.
But it was also at this point she would have to drop the resource moving technique she’d learned from the legacy of the Weaponsmaster and start to use the more complicated one which came with Yin Yang Cosmology. Just making that change would take one of her main minds weeks of work, and that was on top of how long each step of cultivation would take.
Mila almost audibly sighed at the sheer length of the process, and Nana Xara sent, “Cultivation is a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s important, so you have to do it.
“You finally have a little more respect for me, right?”