Chapter 338: Possession

Xara

Aalam’s afterlife was a much nicer place than the System space Xara had been living in since her death.

First, it was far, far larger, basically a universe of its own, filled with numerous sub-dimensions all designed by groups of the dead, each with multiple planets. And, due to Aalam not having much interest in corralling most of the resident population, there was so much variety. One dimension she’d visited was filled with planets shaped like statues of Aalam, Mila, and Diana, the residents taking the mission of generating faith energy for the United Federation of Planets’ leaders very seriously. Another contained planets completely covered in stadiums, where all the sub-dimension’s residents and visitors played various sports every day. And then there was Diana’s favorite, a universe completely filled with shrimp.

Xara understood the reference, but she felt it was a complete waste of the afterlife’s energy to have an entire sub-dimension for just a joke.

Second, there were other people to interact with.

Being far older than anyone who wasn’t an enemy god and not wanting to waste emotional attachment on souls of the already departed, Xara hadn’t made any new friends, but it was interesting seeing how her descendants and the other followers of her apprentices seemed to generally venerate and fear her in equal measure.

Becoming known as the Mistress of Plagues, it seemed, wasn’t great for a woman’s reputation, even if people grew up learning the paths to power from her own teachings.

The people Xara was most interested in, however, were not her deceased descendants, but the enemies whose souls Mila and Aalam had managed to capture. Eight gods—every god the two had killed whose power Mila had not absorbed—the fragment of an undead god, 47 A ranks, 538 B ranks, 637 million or so C ranks, and even more lesser mortals who’d been on the A rank planet hosting the Endless Battlefield as well.

They were all located in a sub-dimension in the afterlife with only one planet, and all of them spent their every afterlife moment worshiping a giant statue of herself, one which depicted her in her youth with her bright blue eyes and curly red hair. And their worship was genuine, their high rank, even with having lost over 98% of their power after their deaths, quickly helping her generate the amount of faith energy she’d need to become a god through the power of faith herself, something which was terrifying.

Her more successful apprentice had somehow modified all their memories to think humanity’s God of War had killed them, even their karmic linkages having been altered, and they thought the only way to get revenge was to help her gather faith energy. Even more terrifying, somehow their personalities had been altered, so none of them were the types to ever take breaks.

It was a test to see if faith energy created by altered souls of the dead could be used for deific ascension and it was a little disturbing.

If Xara hadn’t long ago realized just how dangerous her second apprentice was becoming, vowing never to go against her unless something utterly drastic occurred, she would have made such a vow to herself again.

Her original plan with her apprentices was to possibly possess one of them if it seemed impossible for either to become a god, as it would be nice to have a body again for a while, but, by this point, she didn’t think she’d be able to possess either—the qualities of their souls far higher than her own—so it was a moot point.

But then she sensed Mila’s clone being caught by the God of War and emotions of worry and anger suddenly dominated her soul. That old bastard was going to kill one of hers, someone she’d put all her heart and soul into raising, and she wanted nothing more than to rip him apart.

“Revenge for the Fallen.”

In front of her eyes, the color of all but three of the former enemies kowtowing toward her statue started to fade away, Aalam sacrificing their souls to empower his skills and increase the quality of his energy, and, given the quality of the souls sacrificed, the empowerment was at least twice as strong as when he’d last used the skill

“Soul Armor Filigree.”

A third of Aalam’s erupting qi, mana, and psyforce entered into the signature skill of his afterlife ruler class, a tremor going through the entirety of his soulstructure afterlife as he drew on its power to empower his Soul Lord Law King Battle Armor racial ability, doubling all his stats at the expense of a large amount of soul strain.

He would only be able to keep it up for a little more than 10 minutes, and there would be a required period of recuperation afterward, but divine level fights generally didn’t last anywhere near that long unless one side decided to flee, so it wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

“Karmic Retribution.”

The three remaining enemy souls, the God of War’s three divine children, began to glow purple and gold, Aalam’s new Divine grade curse skill preparing to sacrifice them with his first attack to place a powerful bloodline curse on the god holding his wife.

The particular pattern he was preparing, however, felt a bit weird as Xara watched his actions through his bond with Mila. Karmic Retribution was a skill designed to empower another skill, but, in all Aalam’s practicing Xara had observed, he always used it to empower an externalized runic array created via his Runescriber skill to then empower one of his combat skills instead of empowering the skill directly. This allowed him to change the nature of the curse created by Karmic Retribution and, more important, to infuse even more of his Laws into the final result. But this time the runic array he’d prepared for some reason didn’t have any Laws infused and, if Xara knew her runes, which, as a sage, she did, the runes were designed to only take Laws of the fire, water, light, darkness, life, and death elements, specifically the early grade True Law level Laws she herself possessed.

And that meant…

“Possession.”

Adapted from the skill the Spirit Smith had used to give his artifacts living souls, Possession was a skill which allowed a soul from Aalam’s afterlife to temporarily take control of a willing life form or inhabit an object, one he sometimes used to let recently deceased souls of his followers who died of random accidents say goodbye to their loved ones or allow fallen scientists to give final lessons from the bodies of golems, but the skill also had immense untapped battle potential.

With the souls of brainwashed gods under his control, he could have one of them take over a weapon, or even his body, to make use of their trillions of years of combat experience and even use their Laws through his skills, making up for his biggest weakness.

The difference between Law Dragon stage Laws and True Law stage Laws was literally the difference between mortal and divine. Even with 30 high grade and 6 peak grade Law Dragons, Aalam was still at a disadvantage against the early grade True Laws of gods, and Possession could cover for that weakness so long as he trusted whoever he let possess him.

And, in this case, he had used the skill on Xara.

Suddenly, without time to prepare, Xara had full control over Aalam’s body along with most of his skills, and the power was intoxicating.

His thirteen minds were still there, using his energy to start creating runic arrays and control the God rank artifacts he’d inherited from the Spirit Smith, but Xara was in the driver’s seat. She had control, and, if she wanted to, she could fight for ownership of Aalam’s body and soul.

And it was tempting.

She’d lived for over a hundred million years, been an A rank for most of that time, and even managed to kill thirteen gods, but she’d never felt such power. Aalam’s skills, even though he was B rank, were all more powerful than any of her own from when she’d been alive, his classes far more powerful as well. And his race and bloodline were of a higher quality, his weakest racial ability better than her best had been. Finally, his cultivation foundation put everyone else in the multiverse to shame.

Sure, if she took over his body, she’d never be able to become a god, not having the right level of natural talent herself to advance his remaining thirty Laws to peak grade before advancing to A rank, a requirement for advancing his race to Supreme grade. And, sure, both her apprentices would probably try to kill her, leaving her with no allies whatsoever. But the power, the feeling of invincibility—even if it wasn’t enough against those who’d want her dead—it was almost addictive.

Advancing on the God of War who held her favorite apprentice, however, she was reminded of just how much she hated tragedies. Romance and action had always been what she enjoyed, the type of stories which usually had happy endings, and there would be no happy ending to the story she’d been watching if either Aalam or Mila died.

Also, screw the gods.

She wasn’t just Xara Valin, the Yin Yang Sage, a woman who wanted revenge for the destruction of her family. She was Nana Xara, the annoying yet lovable matriarch of the United Federation of Planets. And both her identities shared one clear goal.

She was going to protect her descendants, and she was going to rain down destruction on anyone who stood in her way.