Mila
“The Knight skill is a variant servant skill of the Soul, Humble, and Contract categories, similar to Mila’s Exemplary Chamberlain skill, though only Legendary in grade,” Aalam explained as he did something complicated to the Shadow Thief’s C rank spatial storage ring, the unlocking process taking quite a bit of mana to the point he was drawing on Mila’s reserves as well. “It provides the same type of long-distance telepathy with a master who has a Lord variant skill, albeit weaker, but it doesn’t allow for the sharing of resources. Instead, it has an empowering function when in the lord’s Territory, effectively a boosting skill.”
Aalam’s hands were both touching the ring on the Temporal Pedestal, but, as he was living, the pedestal had no effect on his body’s time.
“The different grades of the Knight skill are generally used to unlock knight line classes,” Aalam continued, at least one of his main minds still focusing on unlocking the ring. “So, that would be the line of classes Nana Xara would want Isaiah to unlock. The thing is, knight line classes are particularly known for balancing offensive, defensive, speed, and rejuvenation-based Laws, something that doesn’t make much sense for Isaiah, as his Laws are designed to boost only offense, defense, and speed, not rejuvenation.
“With his current class and Laws, I would think one of the Knight variant skills would provide better class choices, such as Spear Knight or Hell Knight. But that’s only if he doesn’t gain a rejuvenation-based Law.
“Given his race, however, such a Law would be nearly impossible to learn, even if we raised his Attunement stat up to its maximum. He was able to learn and raise his destruction Law so fast because his race gives him a ridiculously high affinity for it. From his bloodline, he has a high affinity for speed Laws as well. And his defensive Law comes almost purely from his own natural talent, his bloodline only providing a slight affinity for earth and metal element Laws. For rejuvenation-based Laws, however, his race makes his affinities so low he would need an Attunement stat in the tens of thousands just to gain a Law Egg.
“This is of course assuming his race stays the same.”
Mila felt as the spatial storage ring was fully unlocked, mostly because Aalam stopped draining her mana.
“Mila, you have the thinking encyclopedia of arcane knowledge in your head.” Aalam stepped back from the ring. “Why don’t you look at the ring’s contents?”
“Um, before that,” Isaiah said nervously, having obviously been worried by what Aalam had said right before running to the ring, “could we talk about the killing me thing?”
“Oh.” Aalam started answering and Mila debated whether she wanted to allow him to give an untactful answer, but then she quickly realized one, Isaiah would have to get used to Aalam eventually; two, she needed to let Aalam practice his social skills more, at least in low stakes situations, advising him after the fact instead of interrupting him; and three, Isaiah probably trusted Aalam more than her at the moment, so trying to stop Aalam from answering would be a bad idea.
“You tried to kill Mila a few times and I thought you’d be more of a hindrance than a help, so I voted for killing you.” Aalam smiled jovially, seeming to not be reading Isaiah’s body language at all. “Mila argued against, so I deferred to her.”
“And have you changed your mind?” Isaiah still radiated nervousness.
“Yeah.” Aalam nodded. “After I realized you aren’t a mass murdering lunatic. We already have one of those, and two is too many for a team.”
“I am not a lunatic.” Mila didn’t even turn to look at Aalam, but her aura allowed her to watch a big grin appear on his face, and she found herself smiling as well. “Also, we probably shouldn’t be joking about murder.”
“It’s called gallows humor, Mila, and it’s very important for staying sane.” Mila considered for a second that Aalam might quote actual science, but then he immediately disillusioned her of that idea. “Why do you think Spider-man was always quipping?”
“Spider-man?” Isaiah looked confused and Mila decided to clarify.
“A fictional character. A human with the powers of a spider demon.”
“Oh.” Spider demons being an actual thing, that made more sense to Isaiah than if she’d actually tried to explain the various origin myths, so she didn’t even bother.
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She did, however, turn her head to look at Aalam. “Should I actually check the ring now? Or do you have any other jokes you need to get out of your system?”
Aalam gave her a stern expression, but from his aura she knew he was going to make at least one more joke. “The larch.”
Isaiah looked at Aalam strangely and Mila decided to just ignore the both of them. Most people on Earth wouldn’t get that Monty Python reference, and it wasn’t worth her dignity to either respond or explain.
Instead, she reached her right hand through the zone of stopped time, not feeling anything, and touched the ring.
With one of her minds, she could see into the ring and know its contents, but the first thing that surprised her was the ring itself. It had enough space to store New York, not the city, but the entire state, and Mila was reminded yet again of how a nuclear bomb couldn’t kill a D rank monster on its own, even when the bomb was eaten.
Power levels in the universe were like those found in Dragon Ball Z or xianxia stories, not the traditional type of planet-bound fantasy tales where the most powerful people were only capable of destroying large cities in one blow at best.
C ranks in the real universe could blow up planets like walking Death Stars, and, while they were often the most powerful people in an entire galaxy, they were by no means rare.
Mana, however, made everything weird. A fully integrated planet was much harder to destroy for a C rank than one with no mana and, on a C rank planet, a C rank cultivator would have their destructive potential suppressed to the equivalent of an E rank cultivator on a planet like Hira.
This effect of high amounts of mana was also seen in the Shadow Thief’s personal storage ring. If someone was going to store materials without mana inside, they could fit all of Greece in there, but one object about the size of a basketball was taking up almost all of the ring’s spatial magic just to keep it inside.
The ring contained all the natural materials an alchemist could want, seemingly all the flora gained from the same place as the alchemy materials in the outside warehouse, but that only took up a tiny amount of space.
Other than those materials, which Nana Xara informed her could be purchased in almost every galaxy cluster in the universe—and were thus expensive but not rare—there were only eleven items or item sets stored in the ring which were what the Shadow Thief had likely considered her most valuable treasures.
First, there was the Shadow Thief’s personal weapon, a C rank Heroic grade dagger. Then there was the Shadow Thief’s personal armor, a set of dark gray clothing a lot like what Mila was currently wearing, only C rank and again Heroic grade. Both were potentially things Mila could wear if she ever made it to C rank, but they weren’t useful at the moment.
Next were five treasures helpful for advancing the grade of a human’s race, none of which were suitable for advancing from F to E rank, and all of which gave an added elemental affinity—the strongest two granting metal and lightning and the weaker three granting earth, metal, and light. They’d never be useful for the three of them, and they were too high rank for anyone on Hira to likely ever be able to use.
The final four items, however, they could start to make use of immediately.
The first was a small baby-sized humanoid skull made of a pure onyx-like material which was a type of treasure called an elemental dao guide.
Elemental dao guides were supposedly objects made by A ranks or higher and infused with the power of elemental Laws for the purpose of leading future generations to enlightenment. Unlike inheritances, they didn’t come with any Law guidance, cultivation techniques, or any information about paths to power. Instead, they exposed their creator’s understanding of Laws in their most raw form, making the Laws contained within much, much easier to grasp.
As a result, they were far more valuable than inheritances, but they did have one major flaw. They only exposed their creator’s Laws, not all the Laws in the universe, so it was very easy for a low rank cultivator to accidentally start following the Law path of the dao guide’s creator instead of the Law path which naturally suited themselves, and that would almost always result in bottlenecks.
This particular dao guide was for the darkness and death elements and, according to Nana Xara it was relatively weak, likely created by a weaker A rank or a particularly powerful B rank, but still Mila shouldn’t try to make use of it until her Law Larvae advanced to at least peak grade. Aalam, however, with all his other Laws to compare and contrast against, could use it right away without it affecting his personal path.
Second was a Mythic grade D rank artifact. It was pretty much useless, a device to artificially stimulate the formation of an egg in a planet-sized space roaming beast known as a Dread Leviathan, which Mila only knew because of an information orb which came with it, not because Nana Xara had ever heard of such a thing. And, upon discovering what it was, Nana Xara had said even a C rank would have to be a madwoman to ever try to use it, given how anyone who tried would likely be killed by the B rank beast. But it was still a Mythic grade artifact and Aalam could learn a lot from analyzing its construction.
Third, and most immediately useful, was a bathtub-sized container of a substance known as Foundation Establishment Soup. It was literally a type of soup, but one eaten by only the direct disciples of B rank forces or higher, and, if Aalam consumed it all, he’d likely be able to maximize all his base stats and gain a couple thousand free stat points on top with his Nascent Energy Converter racial ability.
The final item, however, which took up most of the spatial magic of the ring despite not being physically large, was probably more valuable than the entire rest of the inheritance by several orders of magnitude, and its theft was almost certainly the reason for the Shadow Thief’s death at the claws of the War Dragon King.