NOVEL NEXT Chapter 234: Li vs Stormborn
Mila
Like Aalam, Mila had learned two new skills since Diana’s death. First there was Advanced Angel’s Release, a powerful contract breaking skill which became more effective the more unbalanced a contract was, i.e. the more one party would want to break it. The skill wasn’t that useful for her given her uniqueness would already allow her to break almost any contract, but it was a required skill for her build and she could use it to break contracts entered into by other people as well, so it would have its uses in the future. More important for the War of the Chosen, however, was her second skill, Holy Eyes - Chastity, Charity, Patience.
It was the counterpart to her evil eyes skill—Evil Eyes - Lust, Greed, Wrath—and it operated pretty much the same way, only it was angelic instead of diabolic. Like with her evil eyes skill, it worked based on eye contact, with distance not making a difference, and its effect was based on her Spirit stat, though it could be powered by psyforce, mana, or qi. The initial effect was instant, and the charm grew stronger the longer eye contact was maintained.
The main differences were that the charm state was classified as a blessing rather than a curse, which was generally harder to cleanse, and, instead of promoting lust, greed, or wrath in her target, it would promote their opposites. Also, it would make the wielder’s eyes a light sky blue instead of pink, or in her case provide a sky blue ring around her already pink irises. But there was no reason to reveal her power to everyone she interacted with, so she’d used her Trickster’s Guise skill to keep her eyes pink.
Most important, however, like her evil eyes skill, her Third Eye Princess uniqueness made it so she could initiate the effect so long as her opponent was looking at anywhere her aura covered, not just her eyes, and this made it so much more useful.
Take what she’d done to Daevic Stormborn for example. Having known they’d be facing each other in the finals, Mila had done her research on the man and discovered he was an arrogant ass who appeared to want to prove himself the best. So, when he entered into her battlefield, she’d used all her doppelgängers, hidden under the effects of stealth below the sand, to spread out her aura all over the battlefield and instantly started using her evil eyes skill to boost his lust for battle. Normally, he’d be able to notice she was doing this. Krysta already knew Mila had this ability, so Mila gave it good odds Daevic’s mother knew by this point even if Krysta had only told her father and uncles. And, in that case, Daevic would know as well. But, as she was also using her holy eyes skill to boost his patience at the same time, the prideful idiot thought he was fighting against that lust by waiting instead of going crazy trying to find her, allowing her ever more control over his emotions as time passed, something which was important as she stood absolutely no chance against him in a fair fight.
Sure, with her having raised both the mixed version of Yin Yang Cosmology and the weakened version of Twelve Element Primal Code to level 11, her resources were all half a grade higher than Daevic’s, whose cultivation technique was at the same level as Yin Yang Cosmology. And, sure, her skills were all Heroic or Fabled grade, while his were only Legendary. But his race, bloodline, and uniquenesses were all of a higher grade than hers and much more suited for combat, so his effective stats dwarfed hers by a rather large margin.
With him being an idiot and hovering in the sky with his spirits fully manifested, however, he was using more of his mana and qi than he was recovering, while she had a practically infinite supply from Aalam, so she had no issue waiting.
After Isaiah and the rest established their dominance in the forest battlefield, the enemy tried sending some of their commanders into the desert battlefield to help Daevic, but the two skills she was still shadowing from Aalam were Elevated Multi-Mind and Telekinesis, while she had full access to Aalam’s sensory domain through their bond, allowing her to see all the battlefields. So, with one of her doppelgängers buried in the sand underneath the exit portal every time an enemy entered, the commanders were all met with three flying swords to their faces and, unable to find her, were quickly killed even with Daevic trying to help them.
Then, while Silvia began sending the weakest members of Earth’s army into the hellscape battlefield, where Aalam could easily protect them, the enemy started sending their remaining members into the other two battlefields with the city and glacier environments, no new conflicts starting for nearly half a day.
When there were only three combatants left on both sides, Mila then activated a mechanism buried deep in the sand, and Isaiah and Aalam did the same in their respective battlefields.
With the mechanisms activated, Aalam used the life mana from the forest battlefield to empower the fire mana from the hellscape battlefield to then empower the earth mana in the desert battlefield, causing an elemental effect Mila could almost feel, the concentration of earth mana in the desert battlefield becoming almost suffocating.
Then that earth mana was released into the glacier battlefield and gravity there increased by such a large margin that all the members of the Primordial Humans’ army were squashed into paste in a matter of seconds.
With no enemies alive in that battlefield, Silvia, under Mila’s direction, then had Anton Smith enter into the glacier battlefield and set up his Fabled grade sniper rifle to point at the enemy exit. The Primordial Humans sent out a crafter priestess to try and face him, and that priestess instantly had her head blown off in a burst of black flame.
Silvia then joined Anton in the glacier battlefield and another priestess was sent in, this one also losing her head pretty much instantly, leaving Reginald the only member of Earth’s army who hadn’t yet been deployed.
Silvia, with Aalam’s direction, then managed to quickly activate the mechanism hidden under the glacier battlefield, and this allowed Aalam to empower the life mana in the forest battlefield with the water mana of the glacier battlefield to then empower the fire mana in the hellscape battlefield, using that power to raise the temperature in the city battlefield to such a high degree for several seconds that all the enemies there burned to death.
Waiting the maximum amount of time possible, Reginald then entered the city battlefield, the air there very uncomfortable but his law armor enough to protect him, ready to fight the enemy’s last soldier, but that last soldier didn’t seem to know what to do, not choosing a battlefield in time, and he ended up in the hellscape battlefield where Aalam immediately slashed him to death with a telekinetically controlled sword.
This then left Earth in control of four battlefields, with only the desert battlefield still contested, and Mila stopped influencing Daevic Stormborn to be patient. She briefly thought about influencing him to be charitable instead but, given his personality, she was pretty sure that wouldn’t work, so she instead settled on a different direction.
* * *
Daevic
Daevic was furious.
Everyone else had died, with the heretics almost certainly taking over the other four battlefields, and he had done nothing. He’d failed to protect any of the other commanders who entered the battlefield, purposefully not trying very hard to save them as he stupidly didn’t want the help. And he’d just been wasting his qi and mana by having his spirits out and floating in the air—for almost half a day.
The enemy general had done something to him, boosted his lust for battle, maybe his pride, and he’d fallen for it. He’d been charmed for nearly half a day and hadn’t even realized it, not even bothering to search for the mechanism which allowed his opponent to use the power of the desert battlefield to slaughter his own army, something that would have been so easy!
Angry, he merged his nine serpent storm spirits into a nine headed hydra and had it dig into the ground.
And there it found her, right in the first place he dug.
Daevic had the hydra spirit rush at the woman, moving down into the ground himself as he drew his sword. But, when the hydra hit her, she faded out of existence, like she’d never been there, and all that was left was some kind of spatial storage ring.
Spatial magic activated, letting out something from the ring, and then there was a huge explosion.
Daevic’s armor took most of the damage for him, losing about 10% of its stored power, but the woman hadn’t been aiming for him.
She’d been targeting his spirits, and Daevic had just let her annihilate all nine at once.
He wouldn’t be able to summon them again for another several hours and, more important, almost all his mana disappeared with them, making his incredibly high Magic stat, the largest contributor to his combat power, pretty much useless.
“What is with your family and rage issues?”
Daevic turned around to find the woman standing behind him, only about two meters away, but he immediately realized it was a doppelgänger.
“Still, you’re far less impressive than your little brother.”
Even knowing it was a doppelgänger, Daevic slashed through it with his blade, activating his Thunder Strike skill, and, unexpectedly, he hit something, another spatial storage ring.
The ring released some kind of metal which felt incredibly wrong to Daevic’s Electrostatic Detection skill, and it somehow merged with his sword, causing another explosion right in front of him.
Almost all the rest of the stored power in his armor was used up, and his sword was broken, both the hilt and the tip of the blade falling onto the sand. But the middle of the blade was just gone, somehow part of his weapon having been completely annihilated.
“You see, when your brother gets angry, he doesn’t lose his smarts, just his conscience.” Another doppelgänger appeared behind Daevic and he turned around and blasted it with a fist full of electrified qi.
“He does things like annihilate a force of several dozen billion just to kill the man who triggered his rage.” Another doppelgänger appeared in front of Daevic and he kicked it with a qi infused strike, destroying it.
“He becomes more dangerous.” A fourth doppelgänger appeared behind Daevic. But this time, when he tried to attack it, seven flying swords appeared out of the ground and stabbed at his armor, hitting with enough force to drain the last of the armor’s stored energy. Then another flying sword appeared out of a spatial storage ring which had been inside the doppelgänger and punctured his armor, piercing about a centimeter into his chest.
“You just become stupid.” A fifth doppelgänger appeared to his right and Daevic was about to attack it when he suddenly felt the mana in the battlefield change, an abundance of life mana completely dominating the ever present earth mana of the desert battlefield.
Daevic still destroyed the doppelgänger, but then, several seconds later, he felt trillions upon trillions of bacteria cells enter through the hole in his armor and eat his body alive in a matter of seconds.
The next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes in his bedroom in his father’s castle and his father, a large man with darker skin than his own and bright azure hair and eyes, was looking down at him with a frown on his face, Amalia standing by the man’s side looking nervous.
“Please tell me you at least won in your battlefield and didn’t lead your force to a complete and utter defeat.” Thunderstrike Taravan looked angry and, no longer charmed, Daevic felt a very different emotion than just a few moments before.
He wasn’t angry. He was scared. And his father was about to beat him.
