Chapter 341: Chained

Mila

Perival had made contracts with many gods other than the Primordial Humans, but Mila hadn’t had time to break them all, not before she had to self destruct. At the same time, however, other than the Master of the Eternal Forge, the Lady of Hellwater, and the Lord of Twilight Flame, only one god who Perival had a contract with was important to their plan.

The Magician was one of seven gods outside the Primordial Humans faction to have taken over at least one of Aalam’s universes, and the larger of his two universes was one of eight that, if the portals to them all degraded back to A rank or lower, would cut off the most recently conquered of Aalam’s old universes along with the five universes he still controlled.

The children of the Primordial Sovereign had been motivated, and, with Mila manipulating things a bit behind the scenes, the other gods hadn’t had a problem with the Primordial Humans faction taking over most of the Territory, believing it was smart to let them take on more of the risk.

And, as a result, with Aalam using his control over natural energy to take over all the Territory previously owned by the God of War, the Master of the Eternal Forge, the Magician, and the captured Lady of Hellwater and Lord of Twilight Flame, Mila’s clones had been able to go to those universes and weaken the portals before the gods they’d trapped could flee.

Mainly due to a carefully planned strategy of hiding multiple trump cards, half of which were abilities that had never been heard of before, such as a phoenix god’s ability to slowly revive over trillions of years even after having their soul shattered and her and Aalam’s race’s ability to thrive in both material and elemental universes, they’d won, and now it was time to clean everything up and prepare for advancing to A rank before anything else could go wrong.

Or at least that would have been the case had the God of War not done such a number on them. Both Aalam and Immortalia wouldn’t be 100% for a week, and, even with the state of sudden enlightenment Mila’d entered at the completion of their plan, her soul damage wouldn’t be recovered for at least a year.

On the bright side, though, even with forty-five gods trapped and granted time and motivation to start working together more seriously, Mila’d have a new trump card prepared for Aalam by the time he was ready to fight, and they weren’t going to know what hit them.

***

Gustavius

It had been 53 trillion years since Gustavius had last been knocked unconscious, so, when he awoke and found himself trapped inside a glass box only big enough to hold his body, he didn’t react with the poise a god should have. He kicked, he screamed, and he tried to call on his power.

But nothing worked.

The box was made of some kind of crystal he couldn’t identify, seemingly A rank and purified by several dozen Laws, making it almost a divine rank material, while his arms and legs were shackled down by chains made from the same, to the point he could barely move. It was filled with some kind of colorless and odorless gas that seemed to drain away any power he called on. And there was a red-handled black and white sword stuck through the top of the box and into his heart, somehow living and on his side, yelling about how sacred and inviolate Gustavius was and how the Heavenly Spark Soul King should show more respect.

Then two meters to his left was another box of the same size and with the same gas, his twin sister chained up inside it. And, like with him, there was a sword stuck through the glass and into her heart, an inky blue blade with a grey handle, which was also somehow living and angry about how the Heavenly Spark Soul King was treating Antonia.

More important, however, in between the two of them lay the Draconic Spirit Queen, Gustavius able to recognize his niece’s ghostly body from her announcements from before he’d permanently lost System access, the point of a black and white spectral sword floating above where her heart would be.

The room around them was not large, roughly a five meter cube, and there were seemingly no entrances or exits of any kind, but, if Gustavius was correct, it was entirely made of an A rank material known as mana stone quintessence, one of the best materials in the multiverse for creating formations, and every part visible was covered in multidimensional lines of some sort of complex runic array, more lines almost certainly running through the walls and likely through the air as well.

Even with his experience, he couldn’t be certain what the array was doing, but, after listening to the two swords ramble on for another few hours and getting some context, it wasn’t difficult to make a guess.

His and his sister’s divine energies were being sucked up as fast as they could be regenerated. Then the array was funneling it through the weapons stabbed into their hearts and into the array proper where it was filtered and for some reason mixed before being funneled through the apparently monstrous blade hovering over the Draconic Spirit Queen and into her body and soul.

What she was doing with their power, he had no clue. What universe they were in, he had no idea. And the fate of the other members of the Primordial Humans, he had no way to know.

How long he and his sister were going to be kept alive, however? That much was obvious.

Once the Heavenly Spark Soul King was done making use of their energy, they’d be killed. And, given Gustavius felt about as weak as back when he’d been an E rank mortal, there was nothing he could do to change his fate.

***

Aalam

Even with his soul aching from overusing all his berserking abilities and the aftereffects of letting Nana Xara possess his body, Aalam could still do some crafting, making it easy to work on the finishing touches of the runic array for allowing Diana to absorb the powers of the Lady of Hellwater and the Lord of Twilight Flame, as well as for Vanar’s blade form to absorb the powers of Twilight Sun and Hellwater Moon. And the array was fascinating, especially the part allowing Vanar’s sword form to evolve at the expense of the two God rank longswords dropping down to become A rank weapons again, like the day they were forged by the Spirit Smith.

He’d been wrong and the two swords wouldn’t work with Diana, not to mention how annoying they were, so he had no compunctions about taking away their powers. As God rank weapon spirits, they’d keep their practical immortality, but, in Vanar’s hands, their power would finally have at least a little bit of use.

The method of forging Vanar as a half weapon spirit himself, however, was new, as was the method of extracting divine power in its raw form without using karmic bonds, so, to Aalam’s delight, after watching the process for a few days, either his second or third oath activated—he couldn’t tell which—and he entered into a state of sudden enlightenment.

The Laws he’d felt moving through his energy while the Yin Yang Sage possessed him instantly made a great deal more sense, and about half of his fire, water, light, darkness, life, and death Law Dragons advanced to peak grade over the next few hours.

At the same time, his soul injuries faded and the healing that would have taken days was over in just a few hours.

Moving from the material universe where he’d created the array formation for stealing divine power, Aalam traveled through two elemental universes to enter the Twelve Element Spirit Universe, and there he left his master and Mila’s main body.

Then, with his full speed minus any of his berserking powers, he moved through elemental universes to the universes he’d reclaimed from the gods that Mila hadn’t weakened the portals to and spent a few minutes weakening the portals to those universes as well, something he’d have to do later anyway. More important, however, he also used the Soul Signature Modification skill he’d learned from the Spirit Smith’s inheritance to change the nature of his soul signature in the universes, making it impossible for anyone to use the Love Turned To Hate, Blood Thicker Than Water Array to gain access to them again.

Without delay, he then moved to the universes Mila’d already half handled and used his Soul Signature Modification skill on all of them as well before waiting for his wife’s four clones in the universes to come join him, which they did a couple minutes later before combining into one body in front of him.

“About how long do you think?” he asked as she moved up to him.

“Probably a day or two more.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Even with our absolute control inside your divine soul laboratory, modifying the soul of such a powerful god is still hard.”

“Alright.”

As Mila again split up her body, the better to move to different universes and send out illusionary doppelgängers to spy on what the gods were doing, Aalam summoned out the Twelve Element Pagoda he’d used to raise his elemental bodies after reincarnating and got to work making some last minute modifications.

He hadn’t planned to have so many peak grade Law Dragons by this point, nor access to middle grade True Laws when using the tower for its new purpose, and, under the state of sudden enlightenment, he had so many ideas.