NOVEL NEXT Chapter 36: Hira
Mila
The planet Hira was a little smaller than Earth, with slightly weaker gravity, though Mila’s much higher stats made the difference pretty much negligible, and the planet’s rotation speed and orbit around its star were very close to Earth’s, days about fifteen minutes longer and years shorter by about three days.
Mostly water, with one large continent, its weather patterns were similar to earth as well, the continent having rainforests near the equator, deserts further north and south, and then plains and forests for a large section before desert again, followed by tundra.
For about four hundred years before the integration started, the world was entirely ruled by one empire, but it was a declining one. There was a relatively large noble class making up about 1% of the world’s population, mostly of the race of the original island country off the continent’s east coast which had conquered the world. About sixty percent of the populace were slaves, of the type where freedom for even their children was impossible, and, as a result, there was a big military to keep them in check. Finally, there were commoners, better off than the slaves, but nowhere near as well off as the nobles.
Their technology level was around that of the Roman Empire or China’s Han Dynasty, able to create impressive feats of engineering, but lacking things like dynamite and guns, and their lacking knowledge of medicine meant Aalam could probably wipe them all out with about half a night’s work and a year for his diseases to spread.
Their knowledge of magic, however, was not nonexistent like Earth’s. From one of the cultivators who’d tried to challenge her, Mila’d learned of a cave in the northwest of the continent where there was what the cultivator now recognized as an inheritance from a dead power.
That dead power didn’t seem to have been a very good person, though, as the magic released was that of blood sorcery, using the souls of sacrificed victims to empower a cultivator or cast curses. A faction of rebels in the empire gained access to this magic and, with mana levels slowly rising before the full on integration, they’d cast a curse and killed the emperor five years before the integration fully started.
That emperor had been a hedonistic pig who did no one any good, so there was no mourning for his loss, but his death started authority in the empire shifting. A group of five generals in control of the military tried to place themselves in power, forcing Crown Prince Roland, who was only fourteen at the time, to flee. Then they engaged the princess, Uliana, a twelve-year-old girl, to one of the generals’ sons.
The last five years hadn’t been great for the populace of the planet, the generals and the rebels fighting. The generals had moved their many men around the continent and not worried much about supply lines, taking from the local populace wherever they went, causing local famines all over the empire. Meanwhile, the rebels sacrificed hundreds of thousands in their effort to fight back, empowering their men with transformation magic, effectively turning themselves into a different, half-monstrous race of humans.
When the tutorial finally happened, however, things changed. Those with the talent to become cultivators all vanished from the planet and were brought to a subspace somewhere where things proceeded in a very similar way as in Mila and Aalam’s tutorial, only with everyone using their actual bodies instead of soulforms.
Roland and his sister had met up again, the rules of the tutorial not allowing the generals’ faction to stop them, and the two of them, especially Roland, excelled. In the tutorial at least, Roland had shifted the minds of a great deal of the independent cultivators into thinking he, the rightful ruler according to the empire’s laws, would actually be good at the job. And, through the connections he made in that separate space, he’d set the foundation for a third major faction on the planet, one built around him.
As for why there were humans on the planet in the first place, no one she talked to knew, but Mila suspected the story was similar to that of Earth, a powerhouse or large organization seeding the planet in preparation for its future integration. The seeding just hadn’t included the best talents from B rank, A rank, and divine level organizations, leaving the overall talent level far lower than Earth.
“So,” Mila asked Roland after he helped convince everyone else in the room to agree to the same type of restrictive contract as he had, only ones which didn’t involve them becoming magically bound slaves, “what are your goals?”
Roland watched her as she retook her seat, the Twin Dragons returning to earring form, as if he couldn’t understand the question, quite obviously not trusting her in the least. “I want to take over Hira and make life better for its people.”
From his aura, he was actually telling the truth, and Mila couldn’t help but smile. Such youth and naiveté. “Okay, we’ll help make that happen, then.”
“What?”
Mila deliberately raised one of her eyebrows. “You weren’t listening, were you? The so called Heavenly Spark Soul King and I—” She paused. “Actually, let’s come up with better names. You can refer to me as Shadow and the so called Heavenly Spark Soul King as Guardian.
“Well,” she continued, “Guardian and I are after power so we can get back home and protect our loved ones. We were reborn as monsters, however, and we don’t get the same nice treatment by the System as you do.
“You might be able to get off world before your planet’s integration is done. All you need to do is conquer the entire planet, but we don’t have permission to do that ourselves. And, unlike you, we don’t gain any benefits from fighting off invasions.
“Why do you think I am going to set you up as Guardian’s slave when I just made restrictive contracts with every other cultivator I’ve met?”
Roland looked thoughtful for a few seconds and Mila confirmed she wasn’t dealing with an idiot, which was good. “The quest to kill you marked you as the Heav—Guardian’s—chamberlain, which means he has a lord line skill and you do not, and lord line skills only allow for a limited number of servants or slaves. So, one reason would be that you don’t see my colleagues as worth your limited number of spots, even though you’d be able to take any rewards they’d gain from quests. And this means you might not want my rewards either, and instead be after my authority over the planet if I manage to conquer it, including the off world teleportation platform which will appear.”
Mila nodded, which in Hiralian culture meant acceptance. “Mostly correct, but it sounds like you are missing something very important.” She activated her Law Egg of Hologram to make three other versions of herself appear around the room, one behind each of his companions. Then she used an application of aura from the Weaponsmaster’s legacy to project her voice from each of those holograms. “The benefits in this relationship are very much flowing in the opposite direction you think they are.”
Mila had the three holograms fade. “Were you able to see through which was my real body?”
From Roland’s expression, she could see the answer was no. “Well the leaders of each of your planet’s twelve invasion forces would have easily spotted I didn’t move from my chair, as would quite a few of their subordinates.
“What you are going through is called an apocalypse style integration for a reason, and it’s not just because you brought it on yourselves by nearly destroying your own planet. I did well in my own tutorial and got access to more information than you seem to have. For an F rank world like Hira, natives like you have only successfully protected their planet in less than 1% of cases.”
She stood up and walked closer to him. “Do you understand what that means?”
A look of horrified realization appeared on Roland’s face and he took several seconds to think. “We’ve been overestimating ourselves.” He seemed to calm down a bit as he put together more of the implications. “If things were to follow the normal pathway, the twelve invasion forces wouldn’t care much about us and instead fight among themselves to see who conquers us.
“But your goals are different than that of the invasion forces. You don’t have an organization behind you, so you don’t want to conquer us and strip us of our resources. Instead, you want us to be your organization.”
“Correct.” Mila transformed the Twin Dragons into its Lord’s Seal form, a stamp with the image of a twelve-pointed multicolor star surrounding what looked like an actual star, and pressed it to the prince’s forehead. “You also don’t understand the implications of a G rank monster having the terms King and Heavenly Spark in a System generated name. There’s a reason I entered into a servant contract with him when given the choice.”
“Aalam,” Mila sent over her bond with the bastard, “I’ve captured the technical ruler of the entire planet and forced him to accept a slave contract from you. I’ve got the Lord’s Seal up against him right now and have it activated so you can initiate the slave contract over our bond. In the short run, he should be able to claim the local Territory. And, in the long run, with our help, the entire planet.”
Mila felt the contract being sent over their bond and could feel it as Roland accepted.
“Is there anything you need from me,” Aalam asked.
“No. I’ll work on getting us more land and resources. You focus on improving yourself. I’d like to get to F rank as soon as possible.”
Aalam didn’t respond, but that was normal for him so Mila wasn’t offended.
She transformed the Twin Dragons back into earrings form and then took a couple steps away from Roland. “This is the seat of power of the city and you should have a Token of Sanctuary. Let’s start the process of claiming our first Territory.”
Roland reached into one of the pockets of his pants and took out what looked like a golden coin, around 5 cm in diameter. Then he activated it and it slowly faded from existence.
You have claimed the first Territory on Hira.
All stats +6
As Roland was now Aalam’s slave and Mila was Aalam’s chamberlain, she could see Roland’s System messages.
What would you like to name your Territory?
She could also highjack his choices, such as choosing the name of his Territory herself, but she didn’t see a need to do so, allowing him to make the selection as he would have without her interference.
You have selected the name New Raphaiya for your Territory.
Raphaiya was the surname of the royal family and also the name of the empire’s capital in the eastern part of the continent, so the name New Raphaiya didn’t make it absolutely obvious who the Territory’s leader was, but it gave a pretty big hint. It probably wouldn’t cause too many problems in the short term, however, and would be a decent name in the long term as well, so Mila didn’t have any problems with it.
New Raphaiya (50 km^2)
The Territory of Lord Roland Raphaiya, taking up a large chunk of the Forest of the Ashen Mistress.
Lord: Roland Raphaiya
Overlord: Heavenly Spark Soul King
Benefits to humanoid population:
Qi, Mana, and Psyforce regeneration +6.25%
Qi, Mana, and Psyforce regeneration +6.25% further when in the rain
Affinity for all Laws +6.25%
It didn’t seem like they could hide Aalam being Roland’s overlord, and that last benefit about affinity for all Laws Mila knew to be extremely, extremely rare in the universe, making it something the invasion forces would notice, so Mila would have to make sure none of them got the chance to report about it off world.
