Chapter 281: Two Sides of the Same Coin (Patreon)

Uvandra

“…The terms of your surrenders are set. And you all have 5,184 years before everyone in your forces are completely annihilated.”

In the capital city on an average E rank planet in one of the less populated galaxy clusters of the universe, Uvandra of Dova finished watching the highlight compilation of the Universal Tournament finals on the soul net for the seventeenth time.

The only child of the two most talented individuals from an F rank planet which had completed the 72 years of safety provided by its so called peaceful integration five years before, she was still only a G rank, and she was a slave despite the talent she’d shown, but things had recently changed and it didn’t seem her masters had noticed.

Access to the System has been sealed for everyone from the Flamespire Pavilion and System enforced bounties have been placed on every member’s head.

As a slave of the Flamespire Pavilion, you may now leave the force at any time.

Would you like to leave?

Yes/No

When the Lord of Twilight Flame had attacked the Heavenly Spark Soul King, every member of every force under the Primordial Humans—even ones like the Flamespire Pavilion, a subordinate force to a subordinate force to a subordinate force of one of the weaker human empires—gained a bounty on their heads and lost access to System privileges. And, as such, they had no idea their slaves could now turn on them with almost no repercussions, the contract she at least had agreed to five years before inherently reliant on the fact she was in the position of being one of the Flamespire Pavilion’s slaves.

Only 23, Uvandra already had middle grade Law Eggs of the darkness, life, and space elements, specializing in stealth, disguise, and moving quickly, and she’d been training over the last four years to become a assassin for the Pavilion.

That training, however, hadn’t been pleasant, and Uvandra wouldn’t mind at all if the entire pavilion became a spire of fire just like its name.

Still, up until she’d read more about Li Mila after accepting the System’s offer and gaining access to the universal soul net for the first time in her life—learning about the woman while researching just why the Flamespire Pavilion had lost their System privileges—she hadn’t known what to do.

With that woman’s life story as an example, however, Uvandra had made a plan, and this was the night she’d be putting it into action.

Baroy the Poisoner, an E rank elder of the force, had always been interested in her but had been blocked by her other two teachers from taking her as his own due to her clever tactic of gaining the interest of the third son of the Pavilion Master. This night, however, her other two masters had war discussions with the Pavilion Master, so Uvandra was clear to sneak her way into the man’s chambers and let him have his way with her, getting him to show her his prized poison collection in the process.

Like he’d been warned not to do many times before, he fell asleep after the act without putting the protections around his collection back up, and, with her stealth skills making sure he wouldn’t wake up, Uvandra snuck out of the room with the true prize of his collection, an actual Epic grade C rank poison called Kiss of the Eternal Rest.

Not wasting any time, she then snuck into the Pavilion’s kitchen, using her disguise skill and an outfit she’d prepared before to act like a maid sent by one of the Pavilion’s other E rank elders, and, as this was the one night each year when the main cook would be working to create a large cauldron of Foundation Establishment Soup for the entire force, the identity worked perfectly. With the skills she’d been taught, she ‘accidentally’ caused some pans to drop, distracting everyone in the kitchen, and then she stealthily poured half the bottle of poison into the soup.

Finally, she returned to Baroy, put the remaining poison—diluted with water so it would be difficult to notice it had been used—back, and allowed herself to be the man’s playtoy again in the morning.

Three days later, when the poison, ingested by every true member of the Pavilion the day after her act, finally showed its effects, Uvandra received notifications for each of their deaths, gaining the bounty on each of their heads. And, when the Pavilion Master, the only D rank in their force and the one who fought back against the poison the longest, finally died, she gained an even further bonus, a reward for destroying an entire D rank force by herself as a G rank.

What excited Uvandra most, however, was not the specialized race advancement crystal she’d gained from the System as a reward which would allow her to advance her Rare grade race all the way to Legendary, but the D rank ‘Havadim Imperium’ gauntlet artifact she’d known to be hidden in the Pavilion Master’s spatial storage ring, a ring which she’d stolen before anyone else.

She would kill more of the Primordial Humans’ forces, gain more benefits, and rise up to D rank. Then, after becoming someone who could be valued, she would accept the blood oath from the artifact created by her hero’s husband and join the United Federation of Planets.

* * *

Ryan

Through one of the many videos of the slaughter posted to the soul net, Ryan Marinello Ca watched his mother, a powerful A rank cultivator; his father, a B rank of extreme talent; and his entire clan be cut down for the fifth time, able to access the System again due to having joined the Endless Battle against the undead.

His mother, with the last of her strength, had torn open a portal through space to one of the planets ruled over directly by one of the Primordial Human gods, Eberon of the Temporal Waters, hoping the force under the alchemist god would take him in or at least find him a good place to train, and the alchemist god—after meeting with him personally to yell at him, make him sick with the power of an almost fully active divine aura, and complain about the Lord of Twilight Flame—had done so, sending him to the Endless Battle so he could ‘get some combat experience’.

His mother, as an external elder of Sunrise Valley, had had a bounty on her head far too high for her level of strength, and the wolves had come for her. The two other A ranks in their galaxy cluster, who she’d always been in a three way competition with and who hated each other’s guts, had put their hatred for each other aside and teamed up to destroy her and her family, and they had done so in the most brutal way possible, the Lord of Twilight Flame doing nothing to stop them even though the entire situation was, at least according to Eberon of the Temporal Waters, entirely his fault.

Only an F rank, Ryan had been excited while watching the Universal Tournament with his parents, amazed when the C rank monster had killed that C rank demigod and then the demigod’s A rank father, a man even more powerful than his own mother. But then the other A ranks, his mother’s seniors, had attacked the monster and the System message had popped up informing him of his sudden lack of System privileges and the new bounty on his head before cutting off the feed of the tournament.

At the time, he couldn’t access his status, he couldn’t receive quests or access the soul net, and, if he wanted to advance, he’d have had to go back to the old fashioned way of doing things without the advanced information and extra energy the System provided, which had been terrifying.

But then, just a few days later his world had ended.

Now he hated that so called Heavenly Spark Soul King, hated that Li Mila and their entire force, hated Eberon of the Temporal Waters, hated the Primordial Humans in general, and especially hated the Lord of Twilight Flame.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think these individuals’ lives would ever be within his reach, however, so, every day when he trained, every day when he fought against the mindless monsters the necromancers on the other side of that absolutely humongous portal—reportedly 500 kilometers wide—sent to attack the Prime Material, he didn’t think about them, but about the two A ranks who’d personally killed his family. He imagined himself growing powerful enough to personally rip their heads from their bodies and then stuff them up their assholes, and this made him feel just a little bit better.

“Who’s to say you couldn’t gain your revenge on the gods and those two C ranks as well?”

Five days after he joined the war front, on a particularly dangerous day when two A rank undead monstrosities traveled through the portal and five A ranks from the army were forced to act together to kill them, Ryan heard a voice in his head after making it back to his own bunk, one he shared with seven other young men roughly his own age.

The voice sounded old, husky and dry, like Ryan would expect from a body left to rot yet somehow still able to move, and he had a good guess as to what was happening, his heart starting to beat faster.

“What are you offering? And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?” he thought, guessing whatever being was talking directly into his mind would be able to hear him.

“Ha.” The being speaking into his mind started to laugh and continued to do so for a good five seconds before stopping. “I offer knowledge, Ryan Marinello Ca. Knowledge, resources, and, most important, the favor of the divine, specifically the favor of Nastorix, the Lord of Five Universes, second among the seven undead elder gods.

“As to who I am? I am a soul fragment of Var Quon, God of the River of Oaths, and, if you will have me, I would like to be your teacher.”

“And what would you want in return, My Lord?” Ryan, almost quivering with excitement, still made sure to be polite. The power he’d sensed when the soul fragment, now seemingly attached to his soul, had spoken the second divine name had been almost at the level he’d felt from Eberon of the Temporal Waters, even while not anywhere close to complete, and this indicated this Var Quon was strong, likely not lying about his identity.

“Obedience and drive.” The soul fragment laughed again, a sound Ryan was starting to appreciate more and more. “I will train you hard to help achieve our mutual goals, and, in return, you will act as you see fit when you’ve grown in power.”

Ryan was about to agree immediately, but then he took a few seconds to think. The undead god was right. Their enemies were the same, so there was nothing to stop them from working together in harmony. But the undead had a reputation for the types of deals they made, and it wasn’t at all good.

Thinking about it a bit more, however, the Heavenly Spark Soul King had had a similar type of reputation before proving beyond a shadow of Ryan’s doubt that the Primordial Humans faction had made the entire thing up, so who was to say they hadn’t done the same thing with other enemies like Lord Var Quon.

Without any more hesitation, Ryan thought, “In that case, I agree to take you as my master.”

The laughter started again, somehow even more pleasant to hear, and then Lord Var Quon started Ryan’s first lesson. “Before anything else, let me teach you how to help hide my presence from detection before my own power fades after seven sunrises. Then we’ll start discussing your possible paths to power using the knowledge I have of your universe’s System and cultivation techniques.”