Mila
Mila was feeling a lot of emotions, but the biggest one was disgust. She didn’t consider herself a particularly moral person, and her powers, while incredibly useful, would make the way she fought unethical to many, but what the Shadow Thief’s soul fragment and the Kindar Raiders had planned was revolting even to her.
There weren’t a million native cultivators on the planet, so their plan was to capture and hold Isaiah, then either wait for the population on the planet to increase or, more likely, artificially increase the number of cultivators through blood sacrifice rituals to make beastmen. Whatever the case, given the numbers involved, they were planning on mass murdering children and adults alike, and effectively committing genocide on the entire planet.
Thankfully, however, their plan wasn’t going to work.
Ever since approaching the entrance to the inheritance where everyone was gathered, she’d been sharing her senses with Aalam. The extra senses provided by her third eye couldn’t be shared, but he knew what was happening and she’d been talking to him with one of her extra minds throughout her time in the inheritance.
So, when Holt and the other Kindar Raiders rushed out of the inheritance to surround Isaiah, they met four large rocks the size of dressers falling from the sky, and five of them were crushed.
Their shock gave Isaiah an extra quarter second to react when holt threw a large pinch of Dragon Subduing Powder at him, so he managed to dodge almost all of it, but a small amount still hit his foot and somehow entered into his body, causing him to almost instantly stumble and fall.
Holt tried to reach for another bit of powder, but Aalam had been watching everything with his Hunter’s Senses skill, which contained a weakened version of Hunter’s Sight, improving vision, and he’d been running closer at max speed the entire time.
Now close enough, he grabbed the pouch holding the Dragon Subduing Powder with Telekinesis and brought it towards him, storing it inside the Left Hand of the Runescribe, and, at the same time, he broke the necks of all the Kindar Raiders other than Holt, the leader having a high enough Aura stat to make grabbing his neck directly impossible.
Holt, however, wasn’t impervious to being stabbed, so Aalam used four of his minds to grab the weapons of the fallen Kindar Raiders and, the weapons moving at a speed normally impossible for an F rank to achieve, turned the Kindar Raiders’ leader into a red pincushion.
Then he finally got close, used Telekinesis to strip every corpse of their artifacts, and held out his left hand, pulling all the artifacts into the now noticeably different Left Hand of the Runescribe.
The fingerless glove was still made of azure scales, and it still emitted almost no feeling of power when examined, but the scales had darkened, and the glove was more perfectly fitted to Aalam’s hand, almost looking like it was part of him.
Aalam was still wearing the clothing they’d stolen from Morin Daal, a black pair of pants and a black T-shirt, and he still looked like a model, his dark blue hair shoulder length and silky, his amber eyes bright, and his skin and musculature flawless, but Mila couldn’t see him from an outsider’s perspective due to sharing his senses, and it was a little disappointing.
Instead of talking to or even checking on Isaiah, however, Aalam rushed into the inheritance and there he met three golems in the relatively enclosed hallway, which was only about three meters wide and tall. Instead of slowing, or even pulling out a weapon, however, Aalam just ran straight forward and, when two of the golems tried to attack him with their large swords, all the air in the hallway, along with the golems, were shoved into the walls, and Aalam just ran past.
Five needles appeared from out of the Left Hand of the Runescribe, all a darker golden color than before, and started drawing a complicated array around Aalam’s body. Then, a few seconds later, Aalam reached the barrier Mila had passed through after the first test and ran right through, the array around him somehow tricking the barrier into letting him by unimpeded, and then he immediately passed through the short distance portal behind it.
The three golems were right on his heels, but with only 1300 effective Agility, they weren’t as fast as Aalam, who had gained far more stats than Mila due to advancing so many Laws and his time in the soul well. Even if he wasn’t using Telekinesis to help boost his speed, which he was, he would still be faster than them.
While this was happening, Mila didn’t react, but, when she could hear Aalam tearing down the spiral staircase above her, she stood up and severed her bond with the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief using her Law Larva of The Reaper. Then, in the moment of confusion that caused the golems, she slipped past the two next to her and moved up the staircase, stopping twenty meters up where she and Aalam met.
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They both then stopped and focused on the five golems moving toward them, two from in front and three from behind, and only then did Aalam show what he’d figured out by using several separate Legendary sensing skills to take a closer look at the locations of weakness Mila had sent him. The other seven needles of the Left Hand of the Runescribe appeared, joining the five already out, and Aalam activated the new effect the artifact had gained when he’d fully advanced it to Heroic grade, Law Suppression.
In the range of Aalam’s aura, his 36 Laws became more prominent and the Laws of others became weaker, even Mila’s, but this was just the main effect. The suppression also slowed the resource flow speed of any active array formation in the area of effect, and that included the ones inside the golems.
The golems slowed down noticeably and Aalam was able to sense inside them with his Void Sense skill, the Spacetime Sensing skill he’d merged, and the Crafter’s Senses skill he’d learned from one of her Legendary grade skill orbs. This then allowed him to get the timing perfect and he stabbed two needles into each of the five golems, one to the upper left of where the T4 vertebra would be on a human and one to the lower right of the T10 vertebra.
All the golems stopped working, cut off from their power source, but were minimally damaged, and Aalam pulled each of them into the now larger subspace of the Left Hand of the Runescribe.
They both then rushed into the main chamber on the floor, where only Prince Tomin and Ava Gale were left, and, when the two other golems in the room tried to stop them, Aalam disabled and collected them as well. The speed of the Left Hand of the Runescribe’s needles was proportional to Aalam’s Spirit stat, which he’d managed to raise to maximum, and even Mila could barely follow them with her boosted perception, let alone the golems whose perception was average.
“Miss Shadow Thief,” Mila said as she walked toward the black orb, trying to keep her tone pleasant and respectful, “could we talk?”
“Sure.” The voice of the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief sounded cold. “Why are you and your mate blocking my revenge?”
With Mila’s perception, she could hear four other golems running down the hallways to the room, but most of her focus was on tracking the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief. According to Nana Xara, the orb in front of her wasn’t an artifact that could hold a soul fragment, but one a soul fragment could connect to to send out its will, so the soul fragment had to be deeper in the inheritance somewhere.
She sent this information to Aalam, and he replied back by sharing his senses of some magical array formations built into the room, two of which were defensive, three of which were offensive, and one of which looked like it might open a passage in the floor, likely leading deeper into the inheritance where five more golems should be found if the information she’d gained from Omalia about their estimated number was correct.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Mila said calmly, allowing her aura to show the slight anger she was feeling. “The Heavenly Spark Soul King saw enemies of ours leave the inheritance, so he killed them and robbed them, just like we’d planned before I entered.
“Had you consulted me instead of trapping me, I could have told you that would be the case.”
Mila smiled warmly. “And it’s not like the Kindar Raiders’ plan would have worked in the first place. The invasion forces were too focused on each other due to your inheritance, so they killed almost every native cultivator they found as well as each other.” Mila pointed at Ava and Prince Tomin. “It’s entirely possible those two, along with the half dragon, are the only members of the invasion forces still left alive.
“There aren’t enough sacrifices on the planet, let alone enough of a force to bring them to you. And the half dragon is strong and now knows about your powder.”
“Hmm.” The soul fragment of the Shadow thief sounded contemplative as the four golems Mila had been hearing entered into the room at a walk. “Gale Clan girl, is she speaking the truth?”
“Y-yes.” Ava was staring at Aalam, seemingly distracted by both his beauty and the strength he showed by easily dispatching the golems, but she turned back to the black orb. “We don’t know of any other members of the invasion forces who are still alive. A lot of native cultivators were slaughtered. And Isaiah was the strongest cultivator among the invasion forces.”
“Ms. Succubus, you and your mate could complete the ritual, correct?” the orb asked.
“Yes.” Mila nodded. “But we wouldn’t as there are no advantages for us to do so. In a couple weeks, the entire planet will become the Territory of the Heavenly Spark Soul King and that will allow us to leave this planet, which we will.
“We gained quite a lot of rewards during our tutorial and through conquering this planet, and one of those rewards was access to the treasures and knowledge of a dead A rank. Your treasures and knowledge would be a nice addition for us, but they aren’t necessary.”
“Interesting.” The voice of the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief changed, sounding more greedy than anything else, and then one of the offensive array formations in the room activated, a powerful aura emanating from the black orb, covering the entire inheritance.
Aalam fell to his knees. Prince Tomin and Ava fell unconscious, blood starting to flow out of Ava’s orifices. And Mila felt as if chains wrapped around her soul, her body falling limply to the ground.
“You have a lot of advantages for a tiny little F rank.” Mila heard the voice of the Shadow Thief’s soul fragment in her mind as the four golems in the room rushed at Aalam. “I’ll just take over your soul and have them for myself then.”
Successfully baited, the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief ignored Aalam as expected, aware advancing his classes would prove impossible, and quickly paid the price for aiming at an apprentice of the Yin Yang Sage.