Chapter 316: B Rank (Patreon)

Mila

Aalam had changed their base race away from the soul lord line to a hybrid of the soul lord line and the elemental line while also giving them a new modifier, semi-divine, from absorbing a small part of the genetic power remaining in the bones of the Radiant Behemoth, and this granted them different inherent racial abilities than they would have awakened otherwise.

Soul Lord Law King Battle Armor (Divine): Increase the foundational value of all stats other than Soul and Luck by 33% of your effective Soul stat.

Instead of Soul Lord King Battle Armor, which would have increased their base stats other than Soul by 50% of their effective Soul stats, Soul Lord Law King Battle Armor extended their previous armors’ boosts to their Aura and Attunement stats, an absolutely amazing trade given just how valuable those two stats were once divine power entered the equation and just how useless a higher boost was when their souls could barely handle 33%.

Primal Heart (Divine): Exceptionally increase the normal flow rate of your qi, mana, and psyforce while remarkably increasing their burst potential and ability to break down impurities.

While not the same as increasing the quality of their energy, when combined with the quality increase from their cores, the Primal Heart racial ability alone increased their combat power by at least 25%, and that was pretty amazing.

Elemental Law Form (Divine): Freely switch between material and elemental forms at will, with elemental forms embodying any combination of the twelve elements.

Elementals could freely move through elemental universes while material bodies could not, so this one inherent racial ability would allow her and Aalam to conquer a whole different category of universes than anyone else from the Prime Material, but this was just the most obvious benefit from Elemental Law Form. The true cheat-like nature of the ability was how it made their souls more like those of elementals, far more changeable than souls linked to material bodies and able to hold different kinds of energy outside of their soulstructures for a long time.

The biggest issue with advancing to B rank was how dropping back down in rank was nearly impossible without extremely powerful reincarnation abilities like Aalam’s new teacher. And this meant advancing to A or God rank often ended up trapping a cultivator or monster to only a single universe or a few controlled by someone of their same power or higher. With Elemental Law Form, however, she and Aalam would be able to create semi-stable clones without any soulstructures so long as Aalam modified his Thirteen Life Legion skill slightly, and, as a result, these clones could be whatever rank they wanted.

It wouldn’t be very useful now, with them only B rank and Aalam able to form a skill which would allow them to travel through C rank portals. But for the future, when they were A ranks or Gods? It was game changing.

Heavenly Spark Essence Conversion (Divine): Convert any energy inside your soul into the same type of energy aligned to any element or mix of elements, be the energy mana, qi, psyforce, or even nascent energy.

Both of their basic soulstructures—core containers, mana wells, and mental forges—were all aligned to a single one of the twelve elements or all twelve elements at once, so creating effects that mixed only a subset of the twelve elements required a lot of energy control. With Heavenly Spark Essence Conversion, however, they could convert energy in transit to their skills to any subset of their elements they wanted and this was especially useful for their clones.

Most of their skills were optimized for use with heavenly spark energy, a balanced mixture of all twelve elements, but their clones all had single element cores, only able to create energy of that one type, and this made the clones weaker.

With Heavenly Spark Essence Conversion, however, they could modify the energy used by their skills to be any elemental alignment they wanted and, even more impressive, they could modify the soulstructures used by their clones to naturally generate energy of any element so long as they kept the clone’s single element core stable.

Soul of the Primal Elements (Divine): You may increase the inherent quality of your soul using elementally unaligned pure refined nascent energy.

Aalam’s already existing Nascent/Primal Energy Constructor racial ability allowed him to convert primal energy, gained from killing any lifeform or just by existing for monsters, to nascent energy, an ability shared by Mila thanks to one of Aalam’s boons, and, with only a little work and a slight use of the Heavenly Spark Essence Conversion inherent racial ability, they could refine the nascent energy to be perfectly elementally unaligned, so gaining the fuel for Soul of the Primal Elements was incredibly simple. And this would allow them to slowly increase the quality of their souls over several tens of thousands of years to eventually reach a level higher than sublime soul during their next advancement, something never before seen in the Prime Material and an achievement which would hopefully make advancing to divinity much, much easier.

Also, given the inherent racial ability was Divine grade, there were no limitations on the effect whatsoever, and, with Primal Heart, the process would speed up by more than three times.

Power of Divinity (Divine): Increase all stats by a multiplier of up to 6 after all other effectiveness calculations, depending on the number, power, and religious fervor of your followers.

Finally, Power of Divinity was the main racial ability of Divine Dragons, widely considered at the same level as Aalam’s Power of Order and Isaiah’s Power of Chaos for a reason. And this reason was it was absolutely amazing, granting one of the basic abilities of all gods to mortals, the equivalent of Aalam’s old Emperor uniqueness—now advanced to God—but based on religion instead of Territory.

Also, just as Aalam’s uniqueness gave him better control over natural energy, Power of Divinity gave both her and Aalam more control over faith energy, and this was especially useful for her husband, who didn’t have a uniqueness or class to do the same.

Genetic Adaptor (Divine)

You are a citizen of the multiverse, and any genetic power you find is yours

Effects:

You may steal the genetic power, from both race and bloodline, of any being who has died but whose soul is yet to pass on and use that power to enhance yourself

Exceptionally decrease all soul burden, both from high stat effectiveness and different dimensional Laws

Aalam’s bloodline, enhanced by the bloodlines of his clones—all of which he’d advanced to Empyrean grade over the years—and resources from the Spirit Smith and his new teacher, was effectively an advanced combination of his original bloodline and those of his clones, giving him the ability to absorb genetic power at will while also significantly lowering any strain on his soul, enabling his ridiculous combination of material and Law based races to actually be stable.

The second effect also, when combined with other effects of the same type, increased the power of his Soul Lord Law King Battle Armor inherent racial ability, Aalam having calculated that, even if he maximized his stats at B rank, he’d be able to gain the full effect of the racial ability, his soul able to sustain the metaphysically heavy armor at all times.

Dimensional Consort (Divine)

You are your master’s partner, in body as well as soul, and in every universe

Effects:

After entering into a master servant bond with a master of the same race and rank as you, if that master ever changes his or her race when advancing, you may change to the same race when advancing as well, even if you don’t meet the requirements

Remarkably increase the benefits of dual cultivation with anyone of your same race

If your master is also your spouse, exceptionally increase the strength of the bond between the two of you

Exceptionally decrease all soul burden, both from high stat effectiveness and different dimensional Laws

Mila’s bloodline, an advancement made using both Aalam’s extra energy and several valuable resources they’d found in the Spirit Smith’s inheritance and stollen from universes other than the Prime Material, was a combination of her original bloodline and the lowering soul strain effect from Aalam’s clones, making it so she’d be able to get the full effects of her Soul Lord Law Queen Battle Armor as well.

And, finally, both she and Aalam, with two new racial ability choices from advancing and two replacement ability choices from Primal Heart and Soul Lord Law King/Queen Battle Armor becoming inherent racial abilities, had four new racial abilities as well, all of which were incredibly useful.

Personal Storage (Divine): Gain a unique small size extradimensional soulstructure for storing non-living objects, hidden from all sensing effects.

Personal Storage would allow Aalam to place his artifacts inside his soul to hide them from any universe, and this included hiding the metaphysical weight such items had.

Inside a universe, this meant the cost to teleport him would only be as much as a normal B rank instead of a god so long as all of his God rank weapons were hidden inside the storage, and only as much as a normal C rank once he mastered one of the skills he'd found in the Spirit Smith’s inheritance. And, more important, this meant he could enter into B and later C rank portals between universes with his divine artifacts hidden as well, something the artifact he’d been using to lower the metaphysical weight of his B rank artifacts to C rank would never have been able to accomplish.

Concentrated Primal Energy Well (Divine): Gain a unique small size soulstructure for gathering and processing primal energy, making your soul far more efficient at gathering ambient primal energy than any normal monster.

The Heavenly Spark Soul King race, as a humanoid monster race, wasn’t very good at passively absorbing ambient primal energy compared to other Divine grade monster races, only about equivalent to the most specialized Mythic grade races, not even Empyrean grade, but, with the addition of Concentrated Primal Energy Well, especially after Aalam used his Nascent/Primal Energy Constructor racial ability’s power to increase its size at the cost of nascent energy, he’d probably be the best in the Prime Material at passive absorption of primal energy even while only a B rank.

Concentrated Soulbound Afterlife (Divine): Gain a unique small size soulstructure for holding the followers of your deceased believers and the deceased believers of any divinities in your pantheon who designate this soulstructure as their followers’ afterlife. You gain extra faith energy from souls inside who believe in you and can influence their reincarnation.

Compact Soulbound Totem (Divine): Gain a unique small size soulstructure for gathering and processing faith energy. You have improved control over all faith energy processed.

Finally, for Aalam, there were two racial abilities which were of lines only available starting at Divine grade, both of which also gave him new soulstructures.

Concentrated Soulbound Afterlife gave him a soulstructure which, even before Aalam increased its size, could already hold all the souls of every other member of the United Federation of Planets at once, the advantages of a B rank soulstructure, and, combined with his existing Ascended Soul Laboratory soulstructure, it would allow him to gather the souls of all his deceased believers in any universe he was living in—along with the deceased believers of Mila and any other member of the United Federation of Planets—strip them of all the power they no longer had any use for, leaving excellent raw ingredients for alchemy, and then provide them a good afterlife to live in before their souls eventually began to dissipate.

It wouldn’t help him personally all that much, but, for gaining faith energy and gathering resources for his subordinates, there wasn’t really any other racial ability better, not to mention how it would unlock an extremely rare class path Immortalia had recommended and how it would provide a backup for Nana Xara’s soul in case the gods decided to no longer let the System maintain her soul.

Compact Soulbound Totem, on the other hand, a racial ability Mila also awakened, meant Aalam, even without a shadow line uniqueness, now had enough control over faith energy to be dangerous, and Mila was excited to start training him in the energy type’s uses.

Mila’s other three new racial abilities, on the other hand, didn’t provide any new soulstructures, just strengthening things she was already good at.

Divinity Savant (Divine): Exceptionally increase the power of divine category skills.

Platinum Soul (Divine): Increase the effectiveness of the Soul stat by 500%.

Cultivation Furnace (Divine): Exceptionally increase the benefits of dual cultivation.

Divinity Savant would boost her main non-shadowed skills. Platinum Soul, combined with her Power of Order and Soul Lord Law Queen Battle Armor racial abilities, would massively boost all of her stats other than Luck. And Cultivation Furnace, due to one of the effects of her first class which gave her part of the benefits of dual cultivation with her husband at all times, would massively boost her effective attunement stat, even when she wasn’t having fun with her husband.

And all these new powers for both of them were before they truly transitioned to B rank, a process they started almost instantly after they were safely in one of Aalam’s large-sized material universes.