Olliandra sat in the clock tower, contemplating the final words of the Chosen as well as the entire conversation before it. His warning at the end was also pretty clear in intent: reconsider aligning yourself with Ell’Hakan. In fact, she should reconsider if she wanted to align their planet with anyone if she could avoid it. Olliandra felt like a conflict was definitely brewing, and having seen the power of the Viper’s Chosen, she didn’t want to fight against him. On the other hand, she also didn’t dare risk making the Chosen of Yip of Yore an outright enemy. This was a conflict far beyond what she or anyone else should get involved in, and her biggest hope was that they could watch it safely from the sidelines.
She also felt embarrassed she hadn’t realized he was the Chosen of the Malefic Viper when he introduced himself. In her defense, she hadn’t gone to see the Leaderboards even after finishing Nevermore. Only the space mage and a few others had decided to check it out, primarily to see if the Celestial Child – or Ell’Hakan, as it was perhaps more proper to call him – had achieved a good placement. Seeing those Leaderboards was mostly for vanity, after all, as she had never expected to meet anyone who would appear on it outside of Ell’Hakan.
After hearing the mention of emotional manipulation, she also felt a bit more suspicious than before as she looked at the space mage. ”You have attended several meetings with Yip of Yore’s Chosen present without me… can you lend any validity to him having a Bloodline capable of swaying emotions?”
The space mage, who had long been her most trusted comrade, looked deep in thought, seriously considering her question before answering: ”The fact I cannot outright deny it frightens me. Reflecting on my own impression of the Celestial Child, I do find myself questioning my own emotions on the matter. I cannot logically place why I felt such respect and reverence toward him. He is powerful, yes, but my own emotions do feel unnatural in retrospect. I cannot say for sure if this is due to some level of manipulation or if I simply acted irrationally, but I would veer on the side of caution.”
Olliandra was a bit taken aback by the response. She had honestly expected him to say that he hadn’t noticed anything and that the Chosen of the Malefic Viper was just trying to make them view Ell’Hakan more negatively due to his own personal bias. For quite a while, the mage had been a big fan of Ell’Hakan, talking about him being a great leader of the alliance and definitely the one to unite their galaxy under one banner.
However, now he looked full of doubt. Olliandra also admittedly believed Ell’Hakan would have been the one to unite them, but now she doubted that was going to happen… and if it did happen, it wouldn’t be through a peaceful expansion of the alliance and every planet choosing to align themselves with him willingly.
”What do you think our approach should be to these Chosen?” she chose to ask him.
”For now, we should address the Prima problems and claim the Planetary Core,” the space mage said. ”When it comes to the two Chosen… we are already considered part of the Celestial Child’s alliance on paper. Trying to at least probe what a relationship with the Chosen of the Malefic Viper would look like seems wise. Perhaps sending a delegation to this planet Earth could be considered. If it’s discovered and we are scrutinized by the rest of the alliance, we can always claim we did so because we were fearful of what would happen if we didn’t, or even excuse it as an attempt to gather information on a potential foe.”
”That strikes me as risky,” Olliandra responded. ”Trying to play both sides may result in us simply making both view us unfavorably. What’s more, if Ell’Hakan can truly manipulate emotions through a Bloodline, there is a big chance he can easily see through lies or deceit. I also would be cautious about trying to deceive the Viper’s Chosen and his faction… from what I heard, many talented individuals are aligned with him, some of which may discover any underhanded intentions.”
”Would it perhaps then be best to do nothing?” the space mage asked.
”No…” Olliandra shook her head. ”It’s unquestionable that the Chosen of the Malefic Viper saved our lives and our planet, while Ell’Hakan and his alliance did nothing, not even send a representative to hear us out. To not at least try to repay such a favor wouldn’t sit right with me. While it won’t be much, we will send a delegation to his planet and try to offer some token of our gratitude. If that ends up aligning us with him over Ell’Hakan… then so be it.”
Olliandra couldn’t help but think what would have happened if she hadn’t so stupidly chosen to release the Prima Guardian, which led to all this… and she genuinely couldn’t tell if this was a better outcome in the long run.
She also didn’t know who would win between the two Chosen. All she knew was that while Ell’Hakan and Lord Thayne were both considered peak geniuses of the multiverse… she had only seen one of them shatter her perception of what a C-grade would be capable of.
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Jake finally discovered the first of the special privileges granted by the otherwise entirely useless ring he’d been rewarded with while in the Prima Vessel. After he’d left the clock tower, he had headed back toward the teleporter that could eventually take him back to the inter-galaxy teleporter. However, he came to learn all of that wasn’t necessary when the ring suddenly gave him some instinctive knowledge when he considered getting back to Earth.
His ring turned out to have the ability to teleport him back to the Prima Vessel on Earth. It wasn’t some instant teleportation, but Jake had to channel energy into the item for a bit over five minutes as it slowly formed a teleportation circle beneath him before finally triggering and taking him home. While that wasn’t as convenient as instant teleportation and could even be slower than the ”official” way in some instances, it was still pretty damn neat, and it meant Jake didn’t risk getting stuck on a planet.
Anyway, that’s what Jake did, as he was whisked through space and returned to Earth again, not even a full day after he left in the first place. Appearing back in the room within the Prima Vessel, he startled some poor space mage he didn’t even recognize who was scribbling down some of the runes of the magic circle, likely at the behest of Arnold or someone else trying to figure out more about how these teleporters worked.
Jake gave the guy a quick nod before he headed off to quickly talk to Miranda about what had transpired on the planet he’d totally forgotten to even get the name of. As a pleasant surprise, a teleportation circle that had seen set up right outside the Prima Vessel, connecting it to the rest of the planet. He knew they had a bunch of quick-to-set-up circles ready, but it was still good to see they had placed one at the Vessel to make travel easier.
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While leaving the Prima Vessel, he saw Arnold busy in one of the rooms, with dozens of mages running around. He even saw Sandy inside a room, and he considered going in to say hello but decided not to. Again, he’d not even been gone for a day, and they looked very busy.
Arriving back in Haven shortly after, Jake made his way to Miranda who was back in her office, looking just as busy as Arnold. The perfect time for Jake to stop by and drop some information on her. When he entered the building, he got a few surprised gazes, and when he knocked and entered her office, she also looked up perplexed.
”I thought you had gone to assist some extremely desperate planet?” she asked, a bit confused.
”Oh, I did, and they were very desperate indeed. The World Leader decided she and her allies could totally take on the Prima Guardian on their own. Spoiler warning: they couldn’t. Ended up killing the Prima Guardian and talking a bit with the World Leader. Things went pretty well if I say so myself, and…”
Jake quickly gave an overview of what had happened and explained what he had talked about with Olliandra, as well as what he inferred about Ell’Hakan from their conversation. Miranda seemed pleased enough with how Jake handled things, though she did find his final comment a bit questionable, as threatening them wasn’t necessary in her eyes, though she doubted it had done much harm.
They also talked about Jake’s fuck-up when he introduced himself as Thayne – though Miranda did add that Jake really had no reason to try and hide his identity but should just flaunt it if he so wished. His identity as Jake Thayne, that is. When Jake expressed his surprise the World Leader hadn’t realized who he was earlier, considering the Leaderboards and all that, Miranda was far from as surprised.
”That is one thing you need to consider when you visit these other planets… so far, you’ve been used to interacting with individuals already familiar with the multiverse. People from Nevermore or large factions. Those blessed by gods who at least bestow some level of understanding upon their subjects. However, these are in the vast, vast minority in the multiverse. From here on out, chances are the ones you meet know nearly nothing besides what they potentially learned at Nevermore or second-hand from friends. Perhaps they only have some surface-level knowledge about twelve Primordials existing, but that’s it,” Miranda explained, Jake nodding along.
”I also noticed that the information they had seemed a bit… biased,” Jake added.
”Because much of it likely stems from Ell’Hakan or others in the alliance who were originally told by him. While I wouldn’t say it’s a safe assumption to make, I do think it’s very probable that the vast majority of multiversal knowledge these members of the Prima Guardian Alliance have is given by Ell’Hakan. I would expect most of what he’s given them to be true, but only to hide the half-truths and deceit more easily. Also, I will add that even if they haven’t been told lies by Ell’Hakan… it isn’t hard to believe that the Chosen of someone called the Malefic Viper isn’t the nicest guy and doesn’t have your best interest at heart. Let’s not pretend like The Viper is known as some altruistic being, so no one would expect his Chosen to be some hero.”
”Well, good, because I’m not,” Jake shrugged. ”I’m hunting down Prima Guardians purely out of selfishness. Potentially saving a few planets in the process is just a happy little coincidence.”
”Yeah, maybe don’t outright state that. At least let people be under the illusion you truly moved with intentions of saving them and that you genuinely care for the betterment of the galaxy,” Miranda sighed.
”I did call it a happy little coincidence,” Jake pointed out with a smile. ”If the choice is between killing two Prima Guardians, and killing one will save a bunch of people while killing the other won’t, I’ll go for the first one.”
”That’s good enough, I guess,” Miranda said. ”I would also just continue to call yourself Thayne or Lord Thayne or whatever. Just avoid introducing yourself as the Chosen of the Malefic Viper. Make it clear you are more than the rumors compel them to believe and that you are acting as the World Leader of Earth, not the Chosen of a Primordial. If they don’t connect the dots while you are there but only learn of your identity later… great. That will just confuse them and contradict what they’ve been fed by Ell’Hakan. If they do figure it out, do something similar to what you did here and have a calm discussion about Ell’Hakan if they initiate it. If not, no need to even talk about the guy.”
Jake nodded along, taking in her words. He still sucked at politics in his own eyes, so any advice he could get was more than welcome. There was one thing about this entire scenario that did make him question what he was currently doing, though. One Miranda’s question about helping out people sparked.
Why did they even need to be on good terms with the other planets of the galaxy in the first place? Why was it a problem if Ell’Hakan managed to claim the entire alliance for himself? Just because it made the other Chosen stronger? Even if that was the case, Jake genuinely believed Earth alone could face down the rest of the galaxy single-handedly.
Alright, In truth, he did know the answer. If they just let Ell’Hakan roam free, there was a good chance they would one day be put in a scenario where they would have to fight the rest of their galaxy. However, that wouldn’t benefit them in any way, either. In fact, all that would do was leave them with a barren galaxy with a bunch of ruined planets and potentially a lot of enemies, as there would definitely still be survivors from all those planets split across the multiverse. Then, there was also the fact it would help Ell’Hakan spread the story that the Chosen of the Malefic Viper was a maniac who destroyed his own galaxy, but Jake honestly didn’t care much about that anymore.
Either way, it would be better if Ell’Hakan just never managed to unite the galaxy. Jake also didn’t see much sense in just letting the guy do as he wanted if they could stop it. Plus, he and the others did genuinely want to hunt down Prima Guardians, so it wasn’t like they lost out by making a few friends and allies along the way.
As he had said to Miranda, if he had the choice, he would prefer to save as many planets across the galaxy as he could. Assuming it didn’t cause any harm to himself and those he cared about, that is.
After he and Miranda spoke a bit more, she sent Jake off once more to try and save more planets from their big bad Prima invasion. Before he left, Miranda had even given him a new message to paste into his applications to hopefully get a better acceptance rate. He wasn’t a big fan of how it read, but he could see how it would work better… even if it was kind of lying:
”High-level hunter seeking to assist in slaying Primas. Would prefer to operate alone. Spent the full duration in Nevermore and is confident in taking down Primas solo if necessary. No compensation is required, acting solely to increase rewards from the system event.”
Perhaps saying it was kind of lying wasn’t entirely correct either… Prima Guardians were technically Primas. The rest of it was also true. Alongside this small blurb, it also contained some other information and what looked like a letter of recommendation from Miranda. All in all, the message was a lot longer, far more so than Jake believed necessary… but if it helped him get to kill more Primas, then so be it. All he needed the message to do was bring him to the planet, not like they could forcibly remove him once he was there.
Getting back to the Prima Vessel once more, Jake headed inside and went straight to the teleporter and the big map showing all the available planets.
Jake quickly looked at the map as he saw it. All the usual flags for planets were there. Red for those fighting the Primas without the alliance, green for those who had already dealt with their Guardian – with the one he had just visited now marked green - and blue for those part of the Prima Alliance. However, now there was a new color.
One of the flags had turned gray. One of those that had been red before. When Jake focused on the flag, he saw what the color meant:
The first planet of the Milky Way had officially fallen to a Prima invasion.