Chapter 347: Advancements, Frustrations, and Preparations

Primordius

Primordius looked down at his youngest daughter, one of his only two children still left alive, and decided not to kill her.

This didn’t mean, however, that he would let her get up from where she was bowing down in front of him while he sat on what used to be his eldest child’s throne. No. He’d let her keep kneeling there for maybe a million years.

Sure, the deaths of Halius, Lacarmus, Antonia, Gustavius, and the others were not her fault. And, sure, with the chaos caused by the Heavenly Spark Soul King, something’d happened and all the other elder gods of the Prime Material were nowhere to be found, allowing him to enter the multiverse’s largest universe completely unaccosted to start taking over Territory. But, still, he was angry.

And, at the moment, with the undead primed to pounce and Quandra and Arthur possibly both preparing to try and assassinate him, he couldn’t risk the energy expenditure to rip open connections to other universes to start hunting the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his wife down.

***

Mila

Absorbing the power of Zlar, the Master of Coin, after personally killing him with ranged attacks he couldn’t fully defend himself against, Mila smiled as she felt her core advance, the divine power of twelve gods perfectly matching her twelve divine role Laws transforming and growing her core's power to be temporarily stronger than even her husband’s.

Heavenly Spark Divine Shadow Core Formation: Increase the quality of all energy by one and a half ranks (up from one rank), raise affinity with all Laws by 700%, and increase resonance with the divine roles of a universe, allowing for the storage of external divine power.

More important, the absorbed divine power of the twelve gods spread out from her core and washed over her soul, bringing it ever closer to the boundary of the next soul quality level after sublime soul, accomplishing more for her soul in a day than would be expected from absorbing 50 trillion units of pure refined nascent energy through the use of her Soul of the Primal Elements inherent racial ability, a process which would take thousands of years.

Then, entering into a state of sudden enlightenment as her plan to transform her core finally came to fruition, Mila moved to the same universe where her husband was working on upgrading his Death Star-like space station and focused on her twelve divine role Laws, starting to raise them one by one.

***

Xara

Taking a deep breath, Xara felt as the accumulated faith energy in her soul finally hit a limit, infused into almost every part of her, and then she watched in fascination as it naturally started to condense 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 her senses to be a mix of blue, red, white, and green.

Then she felt her senses expand, especially her ability to sense the power and talents of others, and, looking at the young children in front of her, who all looked worried as she’d stopped mid sentence while being about to give suggestions on their future paths to power as part of her continued role of guiding the youth of the United Federation of Planets, she suddenly felt like one of the suggestions she’d been about to make was wrong. One of the talented children, who she’d been going to suggest become an administrator, she suddenly knew would almost certainly come to hate their job in a few hundred years, likely never even reaching C rank as a result. But the girl, even with the lower ranks almost certainly being more difficult, would be likely to succeed and enjoy life more as an artist.

Mila’s experiment had succeeded, and Xara had just reached the divine level through the use of mostly artificial faith, i.e. faith generated by the brainwashed souls of the United Federation of Planets’ enemies in Aalam’s afterlife. She was now a goddess of the Teacher divine role—a role that mixed the elements of water, fire, light, and life—and, with her success as an example, her apprentices and their spouses would no longer have to worry about forming their own divine roles, making the only limit to their achieving divinity their Laws and the resources they could gain access to.

***

Aalam

“Aalam, you dick!”

“Sorry,” Aalam quickly sent to his wife, genuinely feeling apologetic but still flying to the other universe where the giant death star like space station, which Diana had named Babylon I, was located. “But I just advanced my last Law and I got excited.”

There was quiet on the other end of their bond as Aalam made it to the space station, teleported inside, and activated the cultivation enhancement formation he’d made long ago, finally ready to start working on advancing his cultivation technique past the 18th level.

“And you couldn’t have waited two more minutes?”

Aalam thought about it for a microsecond, realized he was definitely in the wrong, and then tried to figure out what the right thing to do was. “Should I come back?”

There was an audible sigh over their bond as Mila’s emotions changed from anger tinged with embarrassment to resigned acceptance. “No. The moment’s gone.

“You owe me, though.”

“Yes. Of course.” Aalam started up the formation and sat in the middle of it, starting his first cultivation session in a long time. Then, feeling the need to reiterate something obvious, he sent, “I love you!”

“Love you too.”

Then it was only after about an hour that Aalam realized he should probably put on clothes.

***

Immortalia

Looking out at the utterly destroyed material universe Aalam and Mila had found during their explorations, Immortalia breathed in the fire and destruction. And, as an Apocalypse Phoenix, the essence of the universe felt good.

Destroyed by a massive ancient war between natives seemingly trillions of years before, there was nothing of order left in the universe—no stars, no planets, no life—just one huge apocalyptic storm.

But it didn’t need to stay that way.

The job of an Apocalypse Phoenix, the core of her being after fully accepting her new race, wasn’t to bathe in the stormy fires of destruction, nor to bring them about. It was to use the fire, use the destruction, use the death, to help facilitate the universe’s natural cycle, reawakening order and reigniting the spark of life. And, through the process, she would be able to refine her own Laws, maybe even advance one or two to the middle grade True Law level.

Whatever the case, it would be a fun long-term project, and, only when she was done, would she fully advance back to divinity.

***

Diana

“Finally!”

After thousands and thousands of years of spending half of every day inside Aalam’s divine syphoning array, catching up on sleep and working through the soul net that covered all her brother’s controlled universes, Diana had just felt something in her soul fundamentally shift, the effect larger than all her oaths put together, and it seemed she was finally ready.

Vanar had already gone through his own transformation thousands of years before, no longer able to absorb any power from the two formerly God rank swords, and now it was Diana’s turn.

Sure, she’d need to maximize her skills, probably raise her Laws a little more, and enhance her various racial abilities and uniquenesses—not to mention wait for Aalam to advance first so she’d be able to advance her bloodline—but, when all that was done, and she advanced to A rank, she was almost positive her soul quality would be higher than sublime.

“Isaiah,” she sent to her husband, “I’m finally finished. Let’s go out for dinner.”

***

Krysta

“What’s wrong?”

Arriving home, Krysta found Daevic looking out the large windows of their house, staring out at the ocean. And he seemed pensive, more so than usual.

“I learned today that my sister has never advanced past C rank, likely because the divine power from our aunt was cut off.”

Teleporting up behind him, Krysta wrapped her arms around her husband and joined him looking out the windows. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Daevic turned, hugged her back, and kissed her on the forehead. “Yeah. I probably should.”

Then he was quiet for a few seconds before continuing. “I think I want to go see her.”

There was a nervousness in his eyes and Krysta was pretty sure he was expecting her to tell him it was a bad idea.

She, however, didn’t think it was.

“She’s your twin. Of course you should see her. And, if she’s amenable to the idea, you should bring her back here.

“You previously thought you had more time, but, if she hasn’t been able to advance, you don’t.”

Krysta smiled slightly as Daevic’s eyes widened. “You don’t think it’s too dangerous?”

“Oh, you should definitely talk to Mila and Aalam first.” Krysta gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “But they’d probably be amenable to the idea. The only reason they didn’t kidnap your sister along with all your half-siblings in the past was because of her connection to the Lady of Hellwater, and that’s no longer an issue.”

Daevic picked her up and twirled her around. Then he kissed her again. “Thanks.”

As he was wont to do, seemingly a family trait, he then flew off, likely heading to go talk to his half brother and Mila immediately, and Krysta couldn’t help but roll her eyes.