Chapter 298: Deal with the Divine Artifacts (Patreon)

Mila

After Aalam’s main body sent the Twelve Element Pagoda, the A rank artifact which had been her last purchase at the Universal Auction but which she hadn’t redeemed for over five thousand years, into the Heavenly Soul Universe, the portal lost the energy necessary for sending A ranks or A rank artifacts through, and Aalam, along with the three divine artifacts he’d brought along to help, quickly returned to Earth’s universal teleportation platform and fled back to the Spirit Smith’s demiplane.

Then Aalam’s combined space and time elements clone, which had been strengthening the portal from the Heavenly Soul Universe side, did some complicated science thing Mila didn’t fully understand and the stable portal to Earth weakened, the energy which would normally maintain it fed back into the Heavenly Soul Universe. And, from then on, unless Aalam or someone else on the Heavenly Soul Universe side made a change, the portal would only allow D ranks or weaker to travel through, C ranks like them having to find other ways back to the Prime Material if they didn’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of resources.

Aalam’s clone, having a schedule to keep, then teleported to the new temporary portal to the Prime Material he’d entered the Heavenly Soul Universe from to go join his main body, his third class and being the master of the Heavenly Soul Universe allowing him to know the locations of all such portals, and, at the same time, Mila teleported over to the battlefield around the temporary portal the Primal Humans had found first.

As had always been the plan for after getting the Twelve Element Pagoda into the Heavenly Soul Universe, Mila then tossed an incredibly high power matter/antimatter bomb through the portal, setting it off on the other side, and, over the next couple minutes, the portal, which never would have been open for so long without the now destroyed formation on the other side, completely collapsed.

“Thank you for your help, Krysta.” Mila smiled at the demigoddess as the other woman looked at her with an expression she didn’t need to use mind reading to know meant ‘you could have done that the entire time?’. “The A rank artifact we needed to get into the Heavenly Soul Universe has now been transferred and we’ve found a safer place for your mom than bringing her in as well, so we no longer have any need for these portals to be open.”

Krysta took a second, a war of emotions obviously going on in her head which Mila decided not to look into, and then the demigoddess seemed to settle on excitement, asking, “Can I see her?”

“In a bit.” Mila forced the natural smile expressing her own excitement off her face as her Oath of the Magnificent Bastard triggered again, placing her into another state of sudden enlightenment, and instead made her face and aura appear stern and businesslike. “Aalam hasn’t fully received the inheritance of the Spirit Smith yet, so it will probably be a few months before he can bring our C ranks into the Spirit Smith’s hidden demiplane as a location for further training. But you’ll be part of the first batch when he can.”

“What’s the holdup?” Isaiah, having taken a second to transform his armor back into normal clothing and desummon his arms for the first time in 82 days, joined their mana-based conversation. “I would have thought Aalam would have found receiving the inheritance of one of his truesoul’s past lives easy.”

“The Spirit Smith left the judging of the inheritance competition to nine divine artifacts, only three of which didn’t cheat during the competition.” Mila sighed thinking about just how stupid the man must have been, in all the same ways as her husband. “Two didn’t like how we are ‘destabilizing the safety of the Prime Material’; two were biased toward the Primordial Humans, having been specifically made for the Lady of Hellwater and the Lord of Twilight Flame; and the last two were racist against monsters.

“After tricking the divine artifacts into helping all his competitors commit suicide, thus not breaking any of the competition’s rules, the damn things still wouldn’t give him the inheritance, so he had to make a deal with them.”

“What type of deal?” From the resigned acceptance in Krysta’s aura, it seemed she was ready for what Mila was about to say.

“He has to show he can do more for the wars against other universes than the Primordial Humans in the long run, and, to prove that, he has to capture four universes from either the Demons or the Undead. Only then will he receive the Spirit Smith’s inheritance.”

“Oh.” Isaiah nodded. “That doesn’t sound that hard.”

“Yeah.” Mila shrugged as Krysta looked like she was about to scream at them. “We were going to do that anyway to raise the United Federation of Planet’s possible member count, so it isn’t that big of a deal.”

***

Aalam

As Aalam—with his full power minus his water and earth element clones to make his soul signature different—entered through a stabilized temporary portal to one of the smaller universes of the Demons, he yet again telepathically communicated with his wife to tell her just how awesome she was, a habit he’d gotten into whenever she did something he found particularly impressive.

And this time she’d outdone herself.

Even before he’d gotten out of the demiplane and reinitiated contact, she’d managed to go through the data she’d stolen from his uncle, all while defending the Heavenly Soul Universe even while undergoing a long state of sudden enlightenment, and found all the small universes connected to the Prime Material which had no stable portals able to allow through B ranks or above, be it to the Prime Material or other universes, and then she’d figured out the best ways to sneak into all of them.

To get Truthfinder and Endless Seal enough on his side to gain the five to four vote needed to allow the huge non-sentient divine artifact controlling the Spirit Smith’s demiplane to formally recognize him as its master, Aalam had offered to take over three universes of the Undead or Demons within 144 years, something he’d thought probably wouldn’t be that difficult, and this had given him a five to four vote lifting some of the restrictions of the demiplane, allowing him to come and go as he pleased and, more important, to have his bonds not blocked while inside.

Then, with his bonds reconnected, he’d learned just who was guarding Earth, someone he likely wouldn’t be able to kill on his own, and just how easy it would be to sneak into most of the universes guarded by the Primordial Humans given how many cultivators were constantly enlisting in the inter-universe wars to gain back access to the System, so he’d changed the deal to require one extra universe in exchange for Endless Seal’s, Giantslayer’s, and Thread Guider’s help in taking the man out.

And now it was time to start making payments.

In the middle of empty space on the edge of a Demon controlled small universe, Aalam, disguised as a D rank among a couple hundred other D ranks and five C ranks from the Primordial Humans’ forces, exited a portal to find a floating metal fortress housing five B rank demons, 30 C ranks, and hundreds of D ranks, coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but most having four limbs and a head, with chitinous armor and a generally black color scheme.

The demons were a race which had completely taken over their original universe, one a size smaller than the Prime Material and dominated by the elements of fire and darkness. And they had been shaped by the nature of their universe, becoming a group of berserking hoarders.

As a whole, demons worked a lot like monsters from the Prime Material, accumulating primal energy naturally without the need to kill, but this didn’t make them peaceful. Every single demon was born with a racial ability which worked like Isaiah’s Slaughter King uniqueness, allowing them to accumulate raw nascent energy from dead souls, especially ones they killed themselves, and this made rampant murder just as common as in the Prime Material if not more so.

Their gods also worked a bit differently, pretty much forced to gain faith energy through resonance with what humans from the Prime Material would consider sins, as these sins, especially wrath and greed, were what most demons worshipped.

More important to Aalam, however, the average demon was generally even more of an ass than the average human, so he would feel even less regret if he were forced to slaughter billions of them.

Entering into stealth and escaping from the battlefield, Aalam polymorphed himself into a demon and started teleporting around the small universe to do a bit of scouting.

As shown in the data Mila had stolen from his uncle, the universe was not a material one, its elemental makeup leaning toward fire and wind, and, as a result, there were no planets and no real stars either, gravity not working in the same way.

Unlike in the Prime Material, where mana naturally accumulated around planets, especially planets with life, the mana in this universe accumulated in random regions where clusters of dispersed matter just happened to be close together, forming the necessary conditions to form the special type of fiery spatial spirt monsters named by the Primordial Humans’ forces as astral spirits, and this had given the universe its name, the Astral Spirit Universe.

It was all very, very weird, and Aalam found it endlessly fascinating, the new experience helping him to slightly advance several of his Laws.