NOVEL NEXT Chapter 221: Who Rules the World I
Francis
Francis Davies, the President of Earth, felt something was wrong as he waited for the next meeting of Earth’s congress to start in their usual location in the large conference room on the top floor of a New York City skyscraper.
The source wasn’t the usual attendees, the dozens of leaders of Earth’s administrative departments and the heads of Earth’s political factions. Nor was it from the two giant bronze-scaled lizard men sitting next to his daughter, Silvia having spent the last three days helping Brom Karendesh and his assistant get settled on Earth. Instead, it was because of the planet’s greatest powers, the true leaders of the United Federation of Planets.
Isaiah Gale’s lavender hair had grown out to shoulder length and was as unkempt as his rather considerable beard, hanging down to cover his indigo reptilian eyes. For a new father, this would not have been weird, but his and Diana’s baby should have only arrived about a month before, not enough time for his appearance to grow quite so disheveled.
Then there was Irena, the blonde woman looking far younger than her actual age of over 100. She had taken over all of Diana’s responsibilities while the sovereign of Earth was on leave, and what little she’d had to do over the last six months she’d handled admirably, especially the reaction to the teleportation of Earth and relocation of several populations for the implantation of world treasures which would help terraform the planet.
For Francis, it had actually been quite nice to temporarily have a boss who actually carried herself with the manner and poise one would expect from a leader.
But for this meeting? Irena had spent the last several minutes not sitting at her seat at the table, but up against the room’s wall with someone who appeared to be only a G rank, pointing out and introducing everyone in attendance in an exceedingly casual manner.
Sure, the young man, with his shoulder-length dark blue hair, almost orange eyes, and nearly flawless physique, was exceedingly handsome. Even Francis could tell that from just a glance—he didn’t need the constant reminder of almost all the women in the room, his daughter included, continuously sneaking glances—but despite the interested look on the man’s face, his aura showed complete apathy to what Irena was saying, and it made her look desperate.
The worst thing, however, was that when the true head of Earth arrived, followed by a huge human man Francis had never seen and what looked like an honest to goodness elf from the Lord of the Rings, she didn’t find an unobtrusive seat conveniently far away from her grandfather like she usually did. Instead, Li Mila sat at the head of the table, Diana’s normal seat, and it seemed she would be the one leading the meeting she had asked him to call.
The human man behind her, a Northern European-looking giant with long messy red hair and a huge beard, moved to a corner of the room with the lithe blonde elf, and Ms. Li looked around at the attendees, causing everyone in the room to stop talking, except, Francis noted, the handsome youth next to Irena, who was asking about the decorum at meetings, decorum which he was obviously breaking.
“Alright, let’s start this much overdue talk.”
Ms. Li was about to begin, but then Nitya Chakrabarti, who’d been staying out of politics since the founding of the United Federation of Planets, spending most of her time in Earth’s skies to better master the element of wind, raised her hand, her aura showing nervousness as she looked from the handsome man next to Irena and then back to Ms. Li. “It seems whatever you have to say is important. But shouldn’t we wait for Diana?”
“No.” Ms. Li shook her head. “About six months ago, just before I teleported Earth to this new solar system, Diana and her unborn daughter were killed by a bloodline curse from her mother, human goddess of marriage and motherhood Bellessia, so she won’t be joining us for at least several thousand years.”
At Ms. Li’s casual sounding words, everyone in the room just stared at her, everyone but the two she’d entered with, Isaiah, Irena, and the handsome youth.
Then Francis belatedly realized Ms. Li was waiting for questions, so he asked one. “You say Diana will be joining us in several thousand years, but that she was killed. Could you explain how that’s possible?”
“Diana was murdered, her body destroyed and her soul horribly scarred by the effects of a powerful curse, but we managed to save her soul before it dissipated, fully intact but with barely a scrap of its power.” Ms. Li’s voice and manner were completely calm, as if their sovereign’s murder wasn’t a big deal, and her performance was working, Francis at least feeling far calmer at the news than he normally would have. “She’s currently in suspended animation inside a specialized time slowed section of the Steel Swamp Blessed Land, and we already have a plan for her revival, though it will take 5,836 years until that plan can be brought to fruition.
“Until then, she’s still the sovereign of Earth as far as the System and the karmic magic of bonds is concerned, and she’s still the direct lord of several of you, her brother having given her a G rank version of her lord skill and subsidizing it with his own power.”
Ms. Li looked out over everyone, waiting for several seconds to allow everything she’d just said to sink in. Then she continued. “The most important thing for everyone here, however, is not Diana’s death, but the extreme complications for Earth’s future that her murder will cause.
“The goddess Bellessia came to Earth before the integration and had two children for a reason. She knew her two children were going to turn into the most talented cultivators on the planet, especially the younger one, and the Yin Yang Sage, whose only condition for revival is to have one of two apprentices she could choose at G rank reach all the way to godhood, would choose the two. Then she would kill her children and end her enmity with the woman who had killed her husband.
“But she messed up, not expecting her son to awaken to a berserker uniqueness and then commit suicide, causing the Yin Yang Sage to lose interest, thus our current advantageous position of not all being dead.
“Through the observational abilities of the Yin Yang Sage over Earth’s former position, we’ve been able to confirm that, just a minute after I moved the planet, an A rank by the name of Taravan, the leader of one of the universe’s largest human empires, arrived at our former location.
“His goal was most likely twofold.” Two books appeared hovering over her right hand, both bound in gray covers with green lines flowing over them in patterns that didn’t seem to be text. “First, he was to retrieve these, Camoran’s 93rd and 97th Puzzle Books, two of 108 keys to opening the inheritance of Camoran the Spirit Smith, an individual who, back when he was alive, inherited the wealth of three fallen gods and, arguably more impressive, Runemaster Alashan. It seems the Human Ancestors Faction, or at least the family and subordinates of the Primordial Sovereign, Bellessia’s father and one of the five most powerful beings in the universe, needs something from inside and have already collected and solved the puzzles in 105 of the other books long ago.
“It was only during the end of the Universal Auction that the last book was auctioned off, with the Primordial Sovereign paying an exorbitant amount for it, confirming through complicated inheritance rules that the remaining two books had been taken as rewards from the System and entered into our hands. This is why it was only six months ago, right after the auction, that Diana was killed, instead of when we were even weaker.
“But you all don’t need to worry about this part. Whether the Heavenly Spark Soul King manages to steal this inheritance out from under the nose of the Human Ancestor Faction in the future or not, it doesn’t really concern you. As his subordinates, you’ll benefit if he does, but you have no way to help, so it is probably better to not worry about it.
“Instead, if you want to worry, it should be about the second reason Taravan headed to Earth, and that is to kill every single one of us.”
Ms. Li paused again for a few seconds, allowing for the immensity of what she’d just said to truly sink in. Then she continued. “The reason the Yin Yang Sage killed Bellessia’s husband was because he, along with four other gods from four other factions, worked together to kill her own husband, an A rank known as the Trickster. And they killed him because he had unknowingly awakened to a power which threatened the gods, a power which, with the Trickster being a common ancestor of all humans on Earth, everyone in this room has the possibility of awakening at any time.”
