NOVEL NEXT Chapter 215: Something Very, Very Bad
Diana
Life, up until her mother appeared, was good. Superhuman vitality and endurance made pregnancy far simpler than pre-integration and, while Isaiah only coming back to Earth a couple times a week wasn’t ideal, she was pretty sure he was planning on proposing on her birthday, and she was going to say yes.
Even with Aalam’s reoccurring nightmares after going supervillain on the Violet Mountain Sect, this was probably the best time in her life when it came to family, at least since her father died when she was young.
But seeing her mother, who’d abandoned them just after Aalam was born, alive, healthy, and apparently a powerful goddess, well, that brought back some extreme emotions.
And, when Nana Xara started talking to her and Mila through their bonds, in an unnaturally calm voice, those extreme emotions all quickly turned to fear.
“Diana, run as fast as you can to the Steel Swamp Blessed Land and get to an area which blocks off bonds.” In the auction space, Nana Xara stood up, holding her body up with her cane, and calmly looked at Bellessia. “Mila, make your way back to Earth as quickly as possible. And get Aalam, Isaiah, and Irena back there as well. You are likely about to lose the support of the Alchemist of the Deep Woods. And you need to move Earth as quickly as possible.”
Diana was stunned for a full three seconds, but then, as quickly as she could, she rose from the exam chair where she’d been getting an ultrasound—startling the doctor and nurse in the room—and smashed through the window with pure strength. Then she summoned her pegasus-shaped yang spirit, merged with it, and flew as fast as she could toward the nearest teleportation platform.
Before she could even make it a kilometer, however, she started to feel pain all over her body, as if every single cell was burning, and her control over her power almost immediately failed, the merge with her yang spirit cancelling, causing the spirit to flow back into her soul.
She started falling, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
As a powerful E rank, falling from such a height wasn’t deadly, and it barely even hurt, but there she was, sprawled on the roof of an office building outside Boston, wearing only a loose hospital gown, and she couldn’t move.
Thankfully, her spirits could operate autonomously, and after the shock they all quickly exited her soul, so she wasn’t completely helpless. But still, it felt like she was dying, as if her entire body was alternately on fire and buried in ice, and her baby, her and Isaiah’s little girl, was already gone.
* * *
Mila
Watching through Diana’s senses as she was cursed to death was terrifying, and it almost didn’t register to Mila that the baby was already dead.
Given she had seven minds, however, she was able to at least attempt to make sure things didn’t get worse.
While three of her minds were going crazy with panic, including the one that had just left Joma’s auction space, the other four quickly got to work as soon as Nana Xara had given her orders. One controlled her body to race through the planet she’d been scouting, rushing back to the teleportation platform, focusing on speed and nothing else. And, at the same time, the other three lied to Diana’s brother, her boyfriend, and Mila’s own grandmother, telling them there were complications with Diana’s pregnancy so they should rush back to Earth, even reminding Aalam to ask his master to transfer over the System rights to the items from the Divine Child’s faction as soon as she got them as he might need to stay on Earth for a while.
Aalam hadn’t noticed yet, as he had several hundred servant bonds by this point, but Mila felt it immediately as the bond between her and Diana grew weaker and weaker. Diana was going to die, and none of them could get back in time.
“Well, aren’t you mother of the era?” In the auction space’s private room, Nana Xara frowned at Bellessia. “Even by your family’s standards, this is cold.”
“We couldn’t have Alashan reborn as a primordial and allow him to live.” Bellessia’s voice was calm and composed, not manic and gleeful, not angry and hysteric, the only strong emotion present in her voice and bearing a large dose of pride. “And if he couldn’t live, why not take you down with him?”
“Hmm.” Nana Xara nodded once as she placed both her hands on her cane in front of her. “So Aalam has the same truesoul as Alashan. That isn’t very surprising.
“But I don’t understand why that means you’d have to kill him.”
“You’re an A rank.” Bellessia smiled slightly. “You don’t understand the workings of fate.”
“Ah.” Nana Xara smiled back, pretending to be completely unperturbed. “He would have killed you all, or at least have had the power to do so.”
Truesouls were only the genetic component of souls. They had a lot to do with cultivation talent and personality, but not much else. They didn’t maintain karma. They didn’t maintain memories. And they didn’t maintain any type of power. Nothing gained from a previous life would transfer over.
But several forces in the universe tracked the reincarnation of particularly talented truesouls, so it wasn’t surprising the human ancestors faction of gods was one of them, nor their ability to tell in advance to what mother a truesoul would be reborn.
From what Mila had learned, gods in general were good at looking into the workings of fate, and it very much seemed Diana and Aalam’s mother had looked into the fate of Earth, figured out how many apprentices Nana Xara could take, and then somehow birthed that many children on Earth, planning even before getting pregnant to kill them via a bloodline curse at the end of the Universal Auction, likely so she could watch Nana Xara’s reaction.
Nana Xara’s soul could only be reborn if she accepted an apprentice at G rank who then rose to become a god. And, given her deal with the System, she only had two chances to take apprentices, so this was effectively a way to permanently kill her.
Mila, however, had the Shadow Princess uniqueness, which made her resistant to karma and divinations, so her interactions with Aalam before the integration of Earth, which had almost certainly contributed to him awakening to the Id uniqueness rather than whatever he would have awakened to without her interference, completely messed up Bellessia’s planning, causing Aalam to commit suicide and Nana Xara to not take him on as an apprentice even when he was going to be reborn as a monster.
Due to Mila’s existence, Bellessia had made a mistake, so she was only able to kill Diana and her soon to be born daughter, and said daughter’s existence possibly contributed to Bellessia’s confusion in thinking Aalam was dead as well depending on how the bloodline curse worked, so Nana Xara had only lost one of her apprentices.
But, depending on what Bellessia’s plans for Earth were, and the fact Aalam’s suicide was public knowledge, her mistake would soon be discovered, and that was going to put them all in a ridiculous amount of danger, especially Mila, as those with shadow line uniquenesses, in particular high grade ones like hers, were generally hunted down and killed by gods.
“So Diana was what, just an extra nail in my coffin?” Nana Xara’s voice remained calm, as if she was discussing groceries, not the death of her best hope to continue to live.
“I’m a goddess of marriage and motherhood, Xara.” Bellessia, who looked much younger than Nana Xara despite being over a couple dozen billion years old, smirked slightly. “Unlike most gods, I can have as many children as I want.
“And I’ve already watched over a hundred of my children die. So what’s one more?”
Seeing Nana Xara’s complete lack of reaction, however, Bellessia frowned. “But why do you seem so nonchalant about the loss of your only chance to live?”
“Should I scream and shout at you?” This time it was Nana Xara’s turn to smirk, though Mila was pretty sure she was acting so as to get under Bellessia’s skin. “Raising a G rank all the way up to godhood was always going to be a long shot, so I accepted I was going to die a long, long time ago.
“You don’t have to worry about me. My death won’t be as pathetic as your husband’s.”
“You.” At the mention of her husband, Bellessia showed anger for the first time. “Avon’s death wasn’t pathetic.”
“He died from one of my plagues, Bellessia. It was painful, he was screaming to the end, and he was covered in his own filth.” Nana Xara actually laughed, though it was noticeably different than any time she had done so since Mila’d met her, sounding far less jovial, and far more evil. “You can trust me on this. I was there.”
Bellessia scowled at her. “And now you’re going to die as well.”
“I’m already dead, Bellessia.” Nana Xara continued smirking. “I died over 1,728 years ago. And now I’m just waiting for my soul to dissipate.”
Nana Xara laughed again. “Yet you went so far as to murder your own children just to keep me here. I guess I should be honored.”
“There were other concerns as well.” Bellessia glared at Nana Xara, almost all of her calm gone. “Killing you was just a happy side effect.”
“Ah.” Nana Xara nodded. “The last two books of Camoran the Spirit Smith. I’m not sure what your family wants from that inheritance, but you don’t have to worry too much. You won’t be getting it.”
Bellessia’s eyes grew wide, and Mila, not fully knowing the goddess, was still over 95% sure Nana Xara had guessed right about what Bellessia’s true plan had been, though Mila herself was missing a few pieces of information to truly understand. “The books, you did something with them?”
“Of course.” Nana Xara nodded. “They’re hot commodities only someone like Aalam could gain access to, but they’re not that useful in and of themselves while it seemed your force wanted them from the way your father just bid on the 108th book. The Lady of Laws put out a bounty and Aalam gave up his books for a high price just a few dozen minutes before you started your curse.”
Mila quickly did a search through the soul net and discovered the bounty was true. One of the gods under the Lady of Laws had offered a 35,831,808 A rank universal credit bounty for any puzzle book which was not completely solved. And, from her face, it seemed Bellessia had done the same search as well.
If the Lady of Laws gained access to one of the books, she could just never allow the puzzles inside to be solved, and that would almost certainly derail the plans of the human ancestor faction.
“If that’s all, Bellessia, I’ll go off to my own private soul space and wait to die.” Nana Xara bowed slightly, and then her soul disappeared from the auction space, returning to her own private area from which she usually spent most of her time spying on Mila and Diana.
“Mila, hurry up. She’s almost certainly heading to Earth herself or has already sent someone.” Nana Xara sounded far, far more worried than the calm tone she’d used with Bellessia. “You need to move fast or everyone on Earth is going to die.”
