Chapter 314: Territory Expansion (Patreon)

K’Thi’Ca

K’Thi’Ca was nervous as she completed her deal with the devil, placing down the final of the ghostly woman’s magic disks on the last planet from the list she’d been given. Then she felt as the entire universe fundamentally changed.

“Thank you.”

Turning around quickly, K’Thi’Ca twisted the upper five segments of her twelve-segmented body and saw the devil again, hovering in the air behind her and looking like one of K’Thi’Ca’s many offspring, chitinous armor covering a tubular eight segmented body. Only she was ghostly and transparent.

“As promised, here is your reward.”

Timespace magic weaker than K’Thi’Ca’s own activated and there was suddenly a semi-transparent blue orb in front of K’Thi’Ca which K’Thi’Ca didn’t know what to do with.

“Rule your universe well.”

The devil then disappeared and K’Thi’Ca was left to figure out how the blue orb worked, it taking her a few hours to learn she just had to put her own mana into the orb to read the information promised, the requirements to advance beyond mortality.

***

Alpha

Alpha had dealt with emissaries from other planes of existence before, but he’d never accepted any of their deals.

For one, they generally represented someone stronger than him, and, as the ruler of an entire universe, worshipped by all living beings, this made him uncomfortable. Two, they always wanted part of the faith energy created by his subjects, the most valuable resource he possessed. And, three,  they always needed him to increase the power of the portals which connected his universe to theirs, making it much easier for them to invade and maybe kill him in the future.

Given they only ever offered information which would help his citizenry, and not anything which would help increase his own power, there was never a good reason to agree.

The emissary from the so called Heavenly Spark Soul King, however, was different. First, she represented someone at core formation stage, someone extremely powerful for sure, at least judging by what the man could do for him, but not someone more powerful than Alpha himself. Second, while she said the Heavenly Spark Soul King would enjoy it if he helped the man gather faith energy, it wasn’t a requirement. And, third, she gave the information other forces had always put up for offer, such as the formalized steps of material universe cultivation and the requirements for divine ascension, upfront.

She just wanted her lord to have the Territory effects of Alpha’s universe, a part of material universe cultivation Alpha himself couldn’t use, and, in exchange, the Law study effects of all of Alpha’s people would automatically rise.

Given she’d also shown respect—and looked like a proper moon devouring beast like Alpha himself—Alpha had agreed.

And now, with his universe’s Territory fully merged with the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s power, even Alpha was finding many of the Laws he’d long abandoned for being too difficult to practice suddenly far easier to sense.

This deal, unlike any of the others, actually had a high chance of advancing Alpha’s own powers.

***

Darrell

Darrell Ma’Coran started laughing out loud as his soul began to shackle itself, looking at his two long-time competitors on the screens in front of him on the wall of the bridge of his capital starship, both of whom’s souls were becoming restricted as well.

They’d been tricked, their lack of civil communication with each other causing all three of them to agree to the same deal to spread the Territory of a being called the Heavenly Spark Soul King throughout their universe in exchange for the knowledge of how to transcend mortality. And, given the natures of his two competitors, it was likely they too had thought to break said deal as soon as the other two were eliminated, just like him.

Instead, as soon as the entire universe was fully the Territory of the Heavenly Spark Soul King, the man’s emissary had somehow broken their contract in such a way it was like Darrell and the other two had broken the contracts instead, and they were now suffering the consequences.

Through the screens, Darrell watched as his two competitors both had their heads cut off by the emissary’s clones, and then the clones disappeared from the screens as his competitors’ capital ships blew up.

Darrell then couldn’t do anything as his heart was stabbed by one of the prisoners he’d kept on the ship, the wife of one of his Soul Transformation stage generals he often kept nearby to pleasure him when he was bored, and, as he bled out, her husband, a man he’d often ridiculed for being too honorable, walked onto the bridge, casually tossed him from his throne, and took his seat.

“You know,” his general said calmly, not even looking at him, “if you weren’t always treating everyone else like pawns, Ms. Li might have made you the same deal she made me instead of treating you like you treated everyone else.”

As his energy leaked out of his body, Darrell Ma’Coran, the last emperor of the Galactic Federation, was forced to watch as the man who’d taken his throne gave a long hug to his slave, saying something inane about reuniting the woman with their daughter, and only several hours later did he finally die.

***

Mila

One universe ruled over by an incredibly powerful A rank centipede and its trillions of descendants, another ruled by a giant planet eating wolf who’d advanced to divinity via faith generated purely from fear, and a third which had mistakenly advanced its technology far faster than cultivation, resulting in a battle between technomancers who had no chance of ever ascending. These were the three large universes Mila had managed to conquer, putting the total universe count under her husband’s rule at 147, 3 large, 18 medium, and 126 small, completely maximizing the size of his Territory at C rank.

For universes, each named size increase was larger than the previous, with medium sized universes only around 12 times bigger than small universes and large universes 144 times bigger than medium. Then the same pattern held all the way up to the only known titanic sized universe, the Prime Material, which was roughly 1,283,918,464,548,864 times larger than a small sized universe like the Heavenly Soul Universe, so Aalam was still really, really far from being able to take all of their home universe as his Territory, but, compared to many of the gods and A ranks he was competing with, he had many unique advantages.

First and foremost, Aalam was only C rank, despite his stats and energy quality.

To maintain control over a multi-universal Territory, portals between a universe and the universe where the ruler was had to be at least of the same rank as the ruler. For someone like the Primordial Sovereign, this meant the portals between his universes had to be at the Elder God rank, but, for Aalam, they only had to be C rank.

Elder God rank portals were incredibly rare, most preexisting portals enhanced by elder gods to connect their own universes. C rank portals, on the other hand, were common, the second lowest rank of any portal which could become stable and relatively permanent without intervention.

As such, while Aalam’s grandfather could not spread the beneficial effects which came from him owning a Territory until after his forces had fully conquered a universe and strengthened a portal to his already existing network, Aalam could do so easily, and this made peaceful conquest so much easier as Mila could show off the beneficial effects from Aalam’s Territory to a universe’s existing powers, beneficial effects which could even help gods.

This then highlighted Aalam’s second major advantage, the Territory effects he granted were about as good as they came.

The Primordial Sovereign, for example, didn’t grant an increased affinity to any Laws for those living in his Territory. Sure, he did grant a massive increase in passive regeneration, an almost immunity to non-magical diseases, and even a noticeable increase to lifespan, but nothing to help with cultivation beyond the standard massive increase to qi, mana, and psyforce regeneration granted by his rank. For any true cultivation help, a cultivator would have to take him as their god, not their lord, and, even then, the boosts to affinity were not even, the boost to the lightning element much stronger, with six of the twelve elements not boosted at all. Meanwhile, just living on a planet in Aalam’s Territory automatically doubled any cultivator or monster’s affinities with all Laws.

Granted, as he was only C rank, this affinity increase would be less than 100% for most gods and some A ranks given their higher natural affinities, and, as they wanted to hide their conquering of so many universes from their enemies, Aalam was using the new skill he’d gained from the Spirit Smith’s inheritance to alter his soul signature and thus the benefits he provided to his Territories, but, even then, an affinity boost to important Laws was always useful.

Smiling to herself, Mila’s main body teleported to the center of the Heavenly Soul Universe and looked up at the massive twelve-floored pagoda floating in front of her, her sensory domain focused on Aalam’s twelve elemental clones, one on each floor.

They’d all reached C rank hundreds of years before and, with Aalam’s ridiculous boosts to mastering skills and each clone’s ability to take the powerful single element energy created on one of the Twelve Element Pagoda’s floors for use in rapid cultivation, enabling them to quickly maximize their stats with natural resources and external nascent energy, her husband was almost ready to absorb them and start the next stage of their plans.