Chapter 295: Soul Test (Patreon)

Aalam

Aalam was very, very irritated.

Most of the judges were biased, something which became incredibly obvious once Aalam figured out how to interface with and read the data from the large screen artifact they were using to monitor and vote on the various challenges.

Giantslayer, the small poisonous spacetime knife; Thunder Crusher, the large lightning infused spacetime warhammer; and Thread Guider, the unassuming spacetime threading needle, seemed to be angry at the other artifacts given the way they moved and the energy they emitted, but they were ranking everyone in the tournament objectively, putting him first in all but the two challenges which were entirely dependent on pure physical smithing skill, where he didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the top ten. Then came Truthfinder, a pair of spacetime element glasses, and Endless Seal, a spacetime stamp, who seemed to have decided not to be biased against him but instead for his suspected cousin, always raising her rank one higher than it should be, often ending up with her being first and him second, but sometimes still leaving him first. It was the final four, however—Twilight Sun and Hellwater Moon, two divine swords obviously created for the Lord of Twilight Flame and the Lady of Hellwater, and the Kiminary Armor and Vazifor Spear, the still slightly damaged personal artifacts of a long dead god—who were really being blatant, putting him utterly last no matter what he did and thereby making sure he couldn’t gain any points at all. From what his master had told him, for the first two it was likely due to his enmity with the Primordial Humans while for the latter two it was pure racism against monsters.

Whatever the case, Aalam didn’t have a very good impression of any of the final six.

And there was nothing much he could do about it. Trapped in the contained 12-meter-cube subspace, he could escape into the larger spatial plane it was contained in if he wanted to, and then to anywhere else in the large spatially multilayered demiplane which formed the Spirit Smith’s former residence, but there were obviously going to be defensive installations in place and all the other potential inheritors were too far away from him to do anything to them without moving.

So, he was stuck.

Most vexing of all, however, the challenges for the Spirit Smith’s inheritance were taking way too long. Even after the 36 day wait for the inheritance competition to start, the first 105 challenges had taken a total of 43 days, including boring things like waiting for the G and F ranks to sleep, waiting for the other potential inheritors to spend hours finishing tasks which had taken him only a few seconds, and waiting while the nine artifact judges argued.

Things changed, however, as the 106th trial started.

Challenge CVI

Soul Foundation

Directions: Stand still and allow the foundation of your soul to be tested, making use of no skills or abilities to protect yourself

Grading Criteria: The strength of your soul foundation in relation to your rank

Something reached out to him, presumably the hidden artifact that governed the many subspaces and ran the trials—Aalam’s guess a powerful divine rank mansion core like his own Jeeves in the Steel Swamp Blessed Land—and he didn’t try to resist as it teleported him to one of the four large subspaces in a different spatial plane than he and his master had been in, one where all the other potential inheritors had apparently been teleported as well.

He found it hard to focus on the humans, however, or even the makeup of the completely flat black polished stone which covered the floor, walls, and ceiling of the large circular subspace, and this was due to the giant skeleton at the subspace’s center.

Given the shape of its wings, claws, and large open jaw, it was obviously the skeleton of a dragon, specifically one of the three highest tier dragons, a Divine Dragon, its bones made up of some kind of pure divine golden metal, but it wasn’t the dragon’s shape, or even the divine aura it was still giving off many trillions of years after its death, which had Aalam spellbound. It was its size.

Easily a million kilometers in length, almost as big as Earth’s old sun, Aalam now fully understood why the elder god had been called the Radiant Behemoth back when it was alive. Its path of Laws had been the path of star, and it had been unreasonably, ridiculously huge.

Standing in front of the skeleton’s giant mouth, about 30,000 kilometers away, Aalam tasked one of his minds to pay attention to what was going on around him while his other eleven minds—minus the one doing sneaky things—studied the skeleton, trying to take this chance to raise another of his Laws up to the Law Dragon stage.

The B rank potential inheritors were all in a horizontal line in front of him, about 14,000 kilometers closer to the skeleton’s mouth, while the C rank potential inheritors were all in a horizontal line with him, all exactly the same distance from the skeleton. The D rank cultivators, including Aalam’s suspected cousin, were then roughly 3,000 kilometers further back, the E rank cultivators 2,000 kilometers back from them, and the F rank cultivators 1,500 kilometers even further behind. Finally, the three G rank cultivators were roughly 500 kilometers back from there.

More important to Aalam, however, even without his Territory boosting his stats by a factor of six, the radius of the absolute control domain from his Ruler’s Domain skill was a little less than 7,200 kilometers, enough to cover all his competitors other than the B ranks.

Before he could really learn anything from the Laws held in the bones, however, part of the polished black stone beneath his feet rose into the air, raising him a couple meters off the ground, and started to move him slowly forward—the same thing also happening to all the other potential inheritors as well.

The System prompt had said this would be a challenge of testing the foundation of their souls, and it seemed the plan was to get a good approximate measurement based on how close they could get to the bones without having to put up a serious effort.

And, yet again, it was going to take ages.

***

Kalli

Being in the presence of the dead elder god put a great deal of pressure on Kalli’s soul, like being constantly roared at by a dragon, the roar growing ever more intense as the platform she was standing on moved her closer and closer, but, given how far away she and the other D rank potential inheritors were from the beast’s skeleton, it was nothing compared to being within the aura of the Heavenly Spark Soul King.

The monster god, even with all his obvious former strength, had passed away trillions of years ago, so his suppression had no thought behind it, not at all dangerous unless she got too close, something she wouldn’t do herself and the challenge wouldn’t force on her. But the Heavenly Spark Soul King? Being within his aura felt like when she’d been in the presence of her father or any of his siblings. If the abnormally handsome man had wanted to risk the wrath of the divine artifacts to kill her or any of the other potential inheritors, there was nothing any of them could do to stop him, nor anything the divine artifacts could do either.

Yet, for some reason, he’d done nothing, even though the divine artifacts were obviously biased against him and twisting the rules of the competition after talking to her and several of her seniors.

It was terrifying, and it felt so nice when her platform grew close enough to the dead elder god that the constant dragon roar grew strong enough to overpower what she was feeling from the living monster. And then, to make things even better, her platform rapidly moved backward to where the E ranks had originally started, the second to last to do so, while the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s continued to move forward.

It seemed yet again he would deserve first place and she, the child of a forging god and someone who’d lived in slowed time for billions of years just to compete in this competition, would deserve second but instead get first.

“Can we make this platform move faster?” A wave of mana spread out to cover the entire subspace with the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s words, his mana voice sounding annoyed but not loud. “I have better places to be than participating in this slow ass test.”

“The rules of the test have been set for 45 trillion years and will not change.” One of the divine artifacts, a pair of glasses, appeared floating above the dragon elder god’s skeletal head and replied to the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s words, but, instead of getting angry, Kalli watched as the man just started laughing.

“Well, that is so typically me.” Kalli felt as the man turned to look at her before turning back to the glasses. “Perfect rules, and engineering which lasts almost forever, but completely messing up the emotional factor.”

It took over a day for the platform the Heavenly Spark Soul King was on to reach close enough to the elder god’s skull to actually affect the man, the C rank able to get within 800 kilometers of the skeleton, well beyond what Kalli suspected would be the normal A rank starting position, and only then did the 106th challenge end.

Challenge CVI over!

Your rank was 1st.

12 points gained.

Current Inheritor Points: 1,392

If nothing changed, she was almost certainly going to win, but, still, she felt nervous.