The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns Chapter 297: Bond Levels

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Ding!

[Your Contracted Familiar: [Little Otherworldly Princess of the Acorn Kingdom: Pomelo] has Evolved into [Small Otherworldly Princess of the Acorn Kingdom: Pomelo]!]

[All of her Stats have increased. She has learned a new Ability.]

[Your Bond Level with her has increased from 50 to 60!]

[As your bond strengthens, your Familiar can become stronger as a result, and you will also be able to draw more of their power.] 

As we moved to test Pomelo’s strange abilities, I saw a new notification show up. I was about to just ignore it, but it had some interesting information in there. Bond Levels—it seemed that the stronger the Bond between me and my familiar, the more they could draw power from… from myself, I believe? But it also stated I could do the same with them. 

Which was strange for only a moment, until I realized that my contract with Kirby helped me further understand the Dao of the Void, which I am still progressing at a rather steady pace every day. This power might be the key to being able to defeat powerful foes at my level or beyond. Although the only ones that were comparable were the revived Venerable and that indestructible dark storm dragon, the real motivation for me to continue growing stronger is the existence of the Heavenly Will that is still attempting to reach me. 

Orion already comes from a future where the Heavenly Will managed to win, showing that eventually, he’ll be able to get here and destroy everything, while either killing me or taking me away. He would probably not kill me entirely, but devour me and attempt to assimilate me into his existence… I cannot even fathom what happened to that parallel self. 

But it is also strange… I had heard that I didn’t have any parallels between timelines, but I suppose it was more of just an unconfirmed theory than anything else. 

Well, whatever the case, I glanced at the list of Familiars. I was quite interested in the Bond Levels. Perhaps maximizing them would be the key to drawing their strange powers. Even the little Baby Fire Dragon could give me something interesting because of the uniqueness of his existence as a card. 

{Contracted Familiars}

[Primordial Voidling: Kirby: (Level: 4201) (Bond Level: 100/100)]

[Card Duel Summoned Monster: Baby Fire Dragon: Vulcan (Tier 5) (Bond Level: 100/100)]

[Small Otherworldly Princess of the Acorn Kingdom: Pomelo (Level: 1) (Bond Level: 60/100)] 

I see…

So Kirby and Vulcan are already at Max Bond!

I guess it makes sense—they’re simple-minded creatures and get happy easily as long as I fed them or pat them, right? Princess Pomelo is a bit more complicated. She’s a human being, or well, sort of a human being of some sort, right? At least from another world, maybe another dimension… or timeline. It’s nice enough that she trusts me this much, so I’m quite happy about that and… well, she’s not a pet either, but if I could benefit from this system, the better. 

I also noticed another thing: Kirby and Princess Pomelo have Levels, so they can Level Up through the System, interestingly enough. I don’t think they have a System Seed inside their soul, though; they can do this as a result of the contract connecting them to my own personal system. Meanwhile, Vulcan has no Levels but a Tier, mostly because he’s a Card Monster, and the laws of his existence as such seem to not be compatible with the Level System. Perhaps there could be a Dao behind his existence which Belphegor never grasped—aside from the Authority of Sloth, a Dao of Cards, or perhaps a Dao of Games? I might have to investigate further. 

As for Pomelo… I have no idea, so we’re going to see what she can do now. 

“Is this the place, Lady Bing Xue?” she asked with her cute little voice. 

“Yeah,” I nodded, as she stood in the middle of the little open area I had built inside my inner realm’s palace, which was actually also connected to the pagoda. “Alright then, princess, show what you can do.” 

“Um… I don’t know?” she asked. “I hoped you could guide me, Lady Bing Xue. I am clueless myself…” 

“Didn’t you create a cube before?” I wondered. 

“Ah, yes!” she nodded clumsily. “It just… appeared. Um, let me see.” 

She concentrated, spreading her little arms forward as her hands began glowing with bright golden light. 

FLASH! 

And then another cube appeared above her. I noticed that half of her internal energies were spent by doing that… I think she has Mana inside, and a little bit of the normal Ki everyone has. Though her Mana was certainly strange, ruled by different laws not of this dimension—probably she carries some power from her home dimension. 

The question-marked cube floated silently. As I walked towards it, touching it… the surface was slim and cold, and it didn’t seem to be anything extraordinary either. Analyzing its components, it was bricks—simple and normal stone—and yet the cube had a strange, rainbow-colored, sparkly essence inside. There was nothing solid inside, but when it was hit with enough force, the cube would turn brown and release this “magic sparkly thing,” turning it into an… object, I believe. Or something. 

“Let me see if I can do something myself first.” 

“Oh, okay.” 

I grabbed the cube and then pressed my hand against it. The cube, which was the size of a watermelon, began gaining cracks. 

Until… 

BOOOM! 

I crushed it with my bare hand. Pieces of brick exploded everywhere and then disappeared into sparkles of rainbow light. I tried catching the rainbow sparkling energy, but it dissipated before I could grab it. No item was produced. 

“E-Eh?! You shattered it with your bare hand?!” Princess Pomelo was flabbergasted. “Lady Bing Xue! What might!” 

“Oh, that was nothing,” I shrugged. “It was a pretty simple floating cube… it floated because of some sort of magical component inside, and this energy is also what creates an item.” 

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