Chapter 278: Plan Review (Patreon)

Mila

The main plan had truly started with the auction at the Inexhaustible Heat Auction House, where Mila’s fake identity as the auctioneer, one her fire element aligned clone had taken over after she’d kidnapped the original and forced her to live in the Heavenly Soul Universe, had enabled her to use her Karmic Eyes skill to manipulate the audience, allowing those B ranks she wanted dead to buy the resources she needed, including Isaiah’s brother. At the same time, when Yorick Strong put his items up for sale, she’d used some subtle memory manipulation on the man to have him put Krysta La’Vordi in a position where she couldn’t interfere with their rescuing of Raven and where Mila would have a good excuse to meet the woman to get the required information necessary to eventually rescue Aalam’s master.

At the same time, with Nana Xara’s advice and Aalam’s crafting abilities, they’d made many fake artifacts from the Havadim Imperium where swearing loyalty to Diana with a blood oath was required instead of the Imperium’s god, binding those who made the oaths to the United Federation of Planets and inherently strengthening Diana’s association in the Prime Material with divinity, creating subtle magical effects which would prove useful for Diana’s rebirth, the auction a good chance to specifically target quite a few individuals.

This alone had been a lot of effort. But then there was helping to create all the fictional identities for all the United Federation of Planet’s members who could reach C rank, manipulating things so Aalam’s unrecognized siblings who weren’t utter monsters would gain one of the artifacts, and abusing their force’s right to purchase teleportation permissions from around the universe and free teleportation from the System to find and steal the hidden resources of many dead C, B, and A ranks, along with quite a few alive ones as well.

While using multiple clones to travel around, she and Aalam had also found many talented but unaligned C ranks to kidnap and make part of the Za’Lord’s Guard—named after a force of pixies who defended the main character in one of Diana’s favorite book series. And this included Vanar Tedros, who had made parts of the plan so much easier.

The most risky parts, however, had been the three important identities Mila’d had three clones assume.

The first was Twilight Illusionist Ren Kimbal of Sunrise Valley, one of the training partners of Daevic Stormborn and someone who could scout out the A rank planet the Lord of Twilight Flame shared with his twin sister. Sure, given the Laws the man specialized in, Mila’d had to combine her light, darkness, metal, and lightning element clones together to take on his identity, but, after killing him, taking over his life, and personally meeting the Lord of Twilight Flame, the Lady of Hellwater, and the Master of the Eternal Forge, Mila had confirmed the disguise skills used by her clones could fool even gods. And, with the identity of Ren Kimbal, it wasn’t difficult to get an accurate reading of Daevic’s strength for when Isaiah would fight him in the finals, understand the defenses behind the Lord of Twilight Flame’s vault, and set up a situation where the Lord of Twilight Flame would break the System’s rules by killing the clone—something which would only take her a few years to recover from with the resources they’d already prepared—making him much more likely to attack Aalam.

Second was Samaela Vondar, a minor servant serving in Sunrise Valley’s headquarters and Mila’s earth element clone, who she mostly used to listen in on the discussions of Sunrise Valley’s higher ups, the Lord of Twilight Flame included, but who also carried Mila’s wedding ring starting from right before the finals of the Universal Tournament. When the Lord of Twilight Flame attacked Aalam, Aalam used the chance to absorb the man’s aura into the Left Hand of the Runescribe and Mila’s clone had then released that aura from the wedding ring, allowing her to enter into the Lord of Twilight Flame’s vault unimpeded. Then, when Aalam activated rule 283 of the C rank Universal Tournament to forcibly teleport everyone who was part of the United Federation of Planets in the Prime Material back to the Heavenly Soul Universe, Mila’s clone had used her rights as an elder of the United Federation of Planets to delay her teleportation, copied all the information orbs stored in the vault, and then quietly teleported away without leaving any evidence behind.

Finally, third, Mila’s most difficult identity was Sword Saint Milan, the future high priestess of elven goddess War Dance Koraline. Like Aalam’s control of natural energy had grown to a ridiculous level, so had Mila’s control over faith energy, and this allowed her to start forming a set of never before seen C rank cores based around her main central Heavenly Spark Divine Shadow Core, which, even in an incomplete state, allowed her to store external divine power, enabling her to fake even divine classes.

With this identity, she’d tricked Aalam’s aunts and uncles into truly thinking the United Federation of Planets wouldn’t gain half the points from the C rank Universal Tournament, and, almost as important, she’d made a deal with the force under War Dance Koraline’s main lawyer to receive one boon within his power if she made it to the top four of the C rank Universal Tournament, a deal which, despite her faked identity throwing War Dance Koraline completely under a bus, he’d already gone through with, canceling his force’s contract with the Alchemist of the Deep Woods at her request, the man likely thinking War Dance Koraline was truly on the United Federation of Planet’s side.

At the same time, War Dance Koraline, the mother of the dead elven god who’d originally triggered the annihilation of Nana Xara’s family and who’d repeatedly tried to kill Nana Xara on numerous occasions, was in hot water with the Primordial Humans and possibly other factions of gods as well, something Mila felt rather good about.

A few of Mila’s other clones had done important work as well, kicking out several competitors early and joining the same tournament areas as Raven to make sure Isaiah’s brother at least made it to the finals, but Mila hadn’t tried to use them to gain the United Federation of Planets more points. First, her necessary four identities only allowed her 3 extra clones. Second, they weren’t needed. And, finally, third, it was much more beneficial for Mila and Aalam if no one else knew about their clone skill.

Aalam had assumed twelve identities with his clones for the Universal Tournament, and, other than the clone pretending to be Mila’s cousin Thomas, most didn’t gain much fame, losing in the fifth or sixth round of the finals. Five of the other clones then merged with the Thomas clone back in the Steel Swamp Blessed Land to allow the clone to fully fake Thomas’s Yin Yang Cosmology and later control Daevic’s placing to make him fight Isaiah after having Isaiah cripple Mila’s Ren Kimbal clone. Then, when that was done, all the clones merged back into his main body so he’d have his full strength when Isaiah successfully threw the fight and charmed Daevic into attacking again.

Nial Gilim, the Master of Spacetime, had been crippled quite badly, to the point he shouldn’t have gotten past the first round of the first section of the Universal Tournament, with several people not of his force being aware of it, so, when Aalam took over his identity after Mila kidnapped the man and forced him to live out the rest of his days in the Heavenly Soul Universe with a new connection to the System, the odds against him winning the entire Universal Tournament had been as bad as the System offered for anyone, 1 to 1,728.

Mila of course had bet as much as she could afford, roughly fifteen billion A rank universal credits, on him winning, and now she had an extra twenty six trillion A rank credits to play with in the future.

At the same time, however, before Mila could review other successful parts of her and Aalam’s actions at the Universal Tournament, her doppelgänger could see the temporary portal from the Heavenly Soul Universe to the Prime Material strengthening to the point it would soon allow B ranks through, the Primordial Humans almost certainly spending a ridiculous amount of resources so they could send B ranks through, B ranks who would be more than a match for the many B rank golems Aalam had made from C rank materials. And, if a B rank escaped from the area of the portal long enough to find the Heavenly Soul Universe’s main portal to Earth, exposing Earth’s location, there was a good chance everyone in the Heavenly Soul Universe would die if Aalam couldn’t return in time to save them.

“Iz,” Mila’s doppelgänger asked Isaiah, who was floating in space next to her, “do you think it might have been a bad idea to provoke the Primordial Humans quite so much?”

“Did we have any other choice?” Isaiah smiled as his Draconic Bloodforged Living Armor clothing changed into its true combat mode, becoming a set of golden-green full-body plate armor engraved with intricate purple runes. Then he summoned out his normally black and gray Chaos Dragon Shield and Chaos Dragon Spear, changing them to their true combat modes as well, both becoming dark blood red with thick intricate black runes covering about a third of their surface area. “Aalam’s family was going to attack us no matter what.”

“But they might not have thrown quite so many resources at us so fast.” Mila looked at the portal through her doppelgänger’s eyes, watching as a B rank entered and the portal’s energy lessened, the silver-haired old-looking human male, someone Mila recognized, immediately trying to teleport away.

His name was Horatio Hovimar, and he was a member of the Infernal Sea, the force under the Lady of Hellwater. He was near death, not having the qualifications to reach A rank, but his combat abilities were high and he was someone with strong enough defensive and movement powers that even a thousand golems wouldn’t be able to stop him.

More important, however, he specialized in the space element, so he would have a much easier time finding the permanent portal to Earth than other B ranks if he was able to escape.

His teleport wasn’t effective due to the spatial barrier maintained by the 300 golems surrounding the portal, Mila not having deployed all of them due to a lack of spare energy cores, but this didn’t stop the man and he immediately tried to flee through speed alone.