Chapter 356: Edi’s Problem

Edi

Edi Tanorputra was frustrated.

Almost everyone he was close to had already become an A rank.

First had been Krysta La’Vordi and his master’s grandmother, Irena Krol. Then Nitya Chakrabarti and her husband, along with Javier Garcia. And this had been followed by so many others, including Edi’s own wife. By Aalam’s planet destroying laser, the only ones from his wife’s side of the family who hadn’t advanced to A rank were Edi’s own master, Lord Aalam, Lady Diana, and Lord Isaiah.

Of everyone in the upper echelons of the United Federation of Planet’s governing structure—other than the talents chosen for their administrative skills over their cultivation and those with divine classes from Edi’s master, Lord Aalam, and Lady Diana, who needed them to advance first—Edi was the only one who hadn’t yet advanced. Even cultivators taken in from outside, like Reginald, Brom, and Wolfram, were already A ranks.

At the same time, every biological family member of Edi’s had died of old age and Edi could feel people starting to look down at him.

He was the only apprentice of his master. He held a lot of political power. And he had received far more resources than most.

Yet, while five of his six Laws had advanced to the Law Dragon stage a long time ago, and could even advance further if he let them, his Law of Calm would not advance, having been stuck at the peak grade Law Scarab level for over half a million years now.

“Okay. There is definitely something weird going on.” Olivia, his wife, spoke up while looking at one of the monitors which covered the room in the current headquarters of the United Federation of Planets’ Department of Faith. Then she turned to look at her great-grandmother, Silvia Davies. “I think we should call over Mila.”

“What do you need from me?” Edi’s master, likely having been messaged on the soul net, arrived next to Silvia within the next second and looked at Olivia. Then her eyes focused on whatever Olivia had been looking at and a frown appeared on her face. “Report.”

“Over the last few hundred thousand years, I’ve been looking into the Law distribution and advancement bottlenecks of the United Federation of Planets and I haven’t seen any changes in the data.” Charts appeared on all of the screens in the room, showing the distribution of the main Law subcategories among the United Federation of Planets and the data on advancement bottlenecks for each Law.

As expected, given most of the United Federation of Planets’ population descended from the humans of Earth, Laws of the elements of fire, water, light, darkness, life, and death were the most common, followed by the elements of wind and earth. And, as was normal, the amount of people stuck at bottlenecks with most Laws were proportional to the population working on advancing said Laws.

“When I make adjustments based on tier, however, giving more weight to higher tier individuals, a slight pattern starts to emerge.”

The data on the screens changed, but the patterns were mostly the same for all of the charts. Two of the charts, however, the charts for fire element emotional Laws and water element emotional Laws, were different. The number of people with bottlenecks from water element emotional Laws was about 5% higher than average while the number of people with bottlenecks from fire element emotional Laws was about 5% lower.

“You’ll notice the changes with the fire and water element emotional Laws. But, given the numbers involved and how much weight is given to the most powerful cultivators, there isn’t necessarily true significance here.”

The screens changed again, this time showing a far larger change with both categories, water element emotional Laws showing 49% more bottlenecks than normal and fire element emotional Laws 49% less.

“When I adjust for fame instead of tier, however, there is certainly something going on.” The screens changed again and, instead of a 49% difference for both Law subcategories, the value was instead 83%. “And if I remove Uncle Aalam, the effect is even more apparent.”

Edi’s master looked over the data as Edi himself started to grow very, very worried. “What if time is taken into account?”

The screens changed again to show the effect Edi’s wife had found growing worse over the last 600 thousand years or so. “Whatever is happening is definitely getting worse.”

“Give me a few minutes.” As Edi accessed the soul net to start reading the same data he knew his master was, a part of him noticed his master’s eyes glazing over slightly, as they did whenever she gave her full focus to her partial divine role of the Prophet. Then, roughly eight minutes later, she said one word, “Crap.”

Edi’s master took a deep breath. “We don’t have quite enough data to be sure, but it looks like the change is correlated not with fame, but with faith energy accumulation. And it doesn’t just effect water and fire element emotional Laws, but other trends as well, as if every individual without a sublime level soul is having their souls slowly transformed, making them more angry and impulsive.” She turned to look at Edi, then at the other dozen or so people in the room. “And it seems to be affecting everyone.”

***

Mila

“Nothing works!” Mila pushed her fist up against the wall of the room in Babylon I where she and Aalam had been performing their latest experiment, studying the faith energy flowing into Mila’s grandmother, who still had only a strong soul, while Irena sat on a large runic array covered platform in front of them. “Even with Emperor’s Eyes of Analysis, Ruler’s Domain, and Soul Sight operating with all the boosts I can give myself, I still can’t sense anything.”

Given they were 90% sure whatever effect was happening to their population was based on faith energy, the expectation had been that if anyone would be able to find it it would be her, but she couldn’t. And Aalam, even in his fully boosted state, couldn’t sense anything either.

“If neither of you can find it, the effect must be very subtle, correct?” Irena, still able to maintain calm despite the effect Mila was looking for almost certainly having affected her more than all but a handful of members of the United Federation of Planets, asked, obviously trying to lead Mila into thinking in another direction. “If you can’t sense it with your power, maybe you could approach the problem from a different direction. Maybe figure out who could do such a thing and why they would.”

Mila waved her hand in anger, as if she were trying to swat away her grandmother’s words. “That much is obvious. To create such a wide ranging and subtle effect, whoever’s responsible’s mastery over faith energy would have to be even higher than my own, and there are only a few elder gods and maybe one or two gods who fit that requirement. Given the effect seems to mostly be a subtle personality shift to start favoring passion and anger over calm and tranquility, and that the most likely cause of the effect is some sort of faith energy based soul altering disease, the most likely candidate is then Elandra, the Elder Goddess of Emotions, who’s disappeared from the Prime Material.

“And her likely goal is equally as obvious. The undead, even undead elder gods, have weaker souls than their tier would usually represent. This effect, which for normal cultivators and monsters is almost certainly useless against anyone with a sublime soul level soul, i.e. the souls of any gods, would almost certainly work against every undead in existence. And the purpose is likely to make the undead elder gods take the risk of invading the Prime Material, giving her and maybe others a chance to backstab Primordius.

“The why isn’t the issue, the how is.

“All but a literal handful of our people are having their souls, their very personalities, modified in front of our eyes. But, so far, there is nothing we can do about it.”

“That’s not true.” Aalam reached out and gave her a hug. “There are things we can do.

“We can keep studying this effect. We can especially test if advancing a soul to the sublime soul level will get rid of the alterations. And we can eventually advance ourselves to A rank, which might let us do something about it.”

“Okay.” Irena took a deep breath, seeming to center herself. “Let me be the guinea pig then.

“Since faith energy accumulation seems to be the danger, work to halt the generation on everyone else and focus it all on me.”

***

Aalam — 73,256 years later

Aalam sensed as Irena’s accumulated faith energy finally hit a limit, infused into almost every part of her soul, and then he watched in fascination as it started naturally condensing toward her core. Slowly, over about five minutes, it kept shrinking down more and more until, finally, it turned into a mist that began to rotate around her core like a set of rings around a planet, and it changed color in his senses to be brown.

Over the next hour or so, her soul slowly transformed, rapidly increasing in quality, and then Irena became the first of Earth’s original population to become a goddess, in her case a goddess of the Guardian divine role.

But Aalam couldn’t sense anything else.

His wife, however, standing next to him in the rune covered room inside the Babylon I space station, had a look of excitement on her face, and, through the senses he shared with her, he watched as a pale mist started emanating off from Irena’s soul and rapidly dissipated over the course of a couple seconds.

Over the next several days of testing, they discovered that the negative soul altering effects they’d been able to see happening to Irena over the years were gone. But they still weren’t able to figure out how the soul plague worked, or even transmitted.