NOVEL NEXT Chapter 38: Arrogance
Aalam
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Molecular Deceleration has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Toughness +4, Perception +8, Magic +24, Soul +12
Toughness is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +4
Perception is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +8
Magic is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +24
Soul is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +12
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Multi-Dimensional Geometry has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Perception +24, Spirit +16, Soul +8
Perception is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +24
Magic is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +16
Soul is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Converter ability activated.
Free stats +8
His goals with his Law Eggs completed, Aalam started chasing the woman again, but this time, as he didn’t have to waste concentration trying to enhance his Laws, he used the extra time to prepare an attack. From his glove, he summoned five of his needles, the ones representing the elements of fire, water, light, darkness, and space. Then, as he continued to run after the woman he could still hear, he began inscribing a five rune array anchored in space about a meter in front of his chest.
On his right side, in front of his outstretched right hand, he used the needles of water and darkness to create two runes which together formed a subarray which would function a lot like the Dungeons and Dragons spell Cone of Cold, decreasing temperature in an expanding 45 degree zone in front of it. However, instead of dispersing the resulting heat from the spell to the surroundings like a refrigerator, the subarray instead absorbed the energy into a secondary rune made mostly of dark element energy and stored it for future use.
Then, on his left side, in front of his outstretched left hand, he used the needles of fire and light to create a subarray which functioned effectively opposite to the first one, the main rune increasing temperature instead of decreasing while the secondary rune was designed to take in extra energy from an outside source rather than just qi and mana.
Finally, the single extra rune in the middle, located between the two subarrays, which he created using the needles of light and space, served as a bridge. The energy absorbed by the subarray of cold would instantly be transferred to the subarray of heat, basically doubling the array’s energy efficiency.
Most important to the power of the array, however, was the nature of the runes he chose to use. They sacrificed a bit of power, and were far more complicated than the runes he’d used in his attack against the zombies, but they were runes which fed off of environmental mana to create their effects, the resources of the creator just used as a primer, and the elements needed for the runes were in abundance in the local environment, so the resulting energy would be far more abundant than a G rank could normally use.
The array then also benefitted greatly from Aalam’s Law Eggs of Molecular Deceleration, Molecular Acceleration, Infrared Absorption, Infrared, Energy Storage, Energy Transfer, Vacuum, and Multi-Dimensional Geometry as he used them all one at a time while setting the component runes up. This allowed him to get around his inability to use more than one Law in a single attack without the power of his Law Egg of Rage, which wasn’t usable for careful delicate work. And, as a result, his array was far more powerful than anything a G rank could normally achieve.
Aalam ran after the woman for a few minutes, plenty of time to create his runes, but then, after about two and a half kilometers, he noticed the environmental mana start to shift. The abundant life element mana in the air began to be replaced by death element mana and the abundant trees and other foliage began to look more and more rotted.
The trees then disappeared almost completely and Aalam found himself standing on a small hill above what he assumed to be the undead base camp.
It wasn’t that nice. No gothic castles, no bone-based architecture. Instead, there were about a dozen stone huts based around a wide ten meter tall pillar and the stone huts weren’t even nice ones. The stone pillar on the other hand was quite interesting. It was covered in time and space runes of a type much, much more complicated than anything Aalam had yet seen, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t something the undead had made.
In the information about apocalypse style integrations he’d learned from Nana Xara, invading forces all entered the world undergoing the integration through an object called a Pillar of Conquest. It was the center hub of the invading force’s Territory and their only connection back to where they came from.
Planets undergoing apocalypse style integrations were hidden from the rest of the universe for seventy-two years by the System, so, if the Pillar of Conquest of a force was lost or damaged, no member of that force would be able to contact home for seventy-two years without somehow getting off planet first.
For the natives, taking over Pillars of Conquest would help expand their own territories; count as defeating an invasion, giving large rewards; and stop the force on the other side of the pillar from spending more resources to send further forces through.
Sadly, monsters like him couldn’t do much with a Pillar of Conquest, but that was what native slaves were for and, by extension, why Mila was so useful.
Around the pillar and huts were a couple hundred undead. From a quick look, only about half were converted natives, the zombies still looking mostly alive, while the rest were mostly scaled lizard men, low grade zombies brought from another world to act as workers in the early stages of the invasion.
There were also about a dozen walking skeletons, a slightly higher grade race than zombies; a half dozen large two-headed black dogs called Shadow Wolves, the traditional mounts of the Nightwalkers; and two other Nightwalkers besides the woman he’d been chasing.
The woman was talking to another of the Nightwalkers next to the six Shadow Wolves near the edge of the small town, with three of the skeletons near them as well, so Aalam pointed his right hand toward them and let loose. A cone of cold burst out from in front of him, freezing about a dozen zombies before reaching his main targets. Then it continued on even beyond them, freezing even more zombies.
Heat energy flowed into the subarray’s secondary rune and was quickly transferred over to the subarray controlled by his left hand. Then that rune started throwing out fire like a flamethrower and he moved it back and forth, setting every zombie on the left side alight.
There were still about a hundred zombies, nine skeletons, and a male Nightwalker behind the huts he couldn’t reach and Aalam realized he hadn’t accounted for their sheer numbers. Sure, empowered by the environmental mana, his runes had the power of a peak F rank spell, but they were still draining his own resources and he was dealing with several hundred F ranks while also wasting power heating and cooling the air. After just a bit over a dozen seconds, he couldn’t keep the runes up any longer and they all collapsed.
Then three of the skeletons and the Nightwalker he hadn’t hit all started throwing bolts of energy at him and Aalam realized he hadn’t thought about how to defend himself from ranged attacks.
Dropping to the ground, he summoned three of his needles and, as about a hundred zombies and skeletons started running toward him through the heated or cooled air, he used all three of his minds to control the creation of another powerful three rune array, this one of the type he belatedly realized he should have gone with first.
Undead had a rather major weakness. They weren’t truly living creatures, but more like flesh-based automatons with partially repaired souls. So, while their core containers and mana wells were fine, those soul structures not affected much by death, their mental forges were incredibly fragile, and this made them weak against spirit attacks, what Aalam was currently best at.
The first rune he drew was a water-based psychic attack rune he infused with the power of his Law Egg of Calm, while the second was a fire-based rune of the same type infused with the power of his Law Egg of Rage. By themselves they were designed to respectively calm and enrage a crowd, but, when under the effects of the array’s third rune, a death element rune empowered by his Law Egg of Entropy, those effects were twisted and the fragile artificial souls of the zombies and skeletons were ripped apart as the two opposing emotions battled for supremacy in their already fragile mental forges.
The attack would have had no effect on a crowd of humans beyond maybe causing a few mild headaches, but to the undead forces it was an annihilation spell way beyond the ice and fire runes he’d started with. Every single zombie and skeleton left died and the only enemy remaining was that one Nightwalker.
Or, at least that should have been the case. As Aalam stood up, he noticed two of the Shadow Wolves and the other two Nightwalkers were missing, no longer frozen into their starting positions as before.
Then he felt pain.
The two two-headed wolves had teleported into his shadow behind him and were now biting him, each grabbing one arm and one leg in one of their mouths, their teeth digging in enough to nearly crack his bones. And, putting Aalam in an even worse situation, they’d brought the two Nightwalkers with them.
Both Nightwalkers walked around to his front and the woman he’d originally chased stabbed her ice and death empowered sword into his right kidney, causing him so much pain he nearly blacked out.
The other Nightwalker, a male wearing full plate armor, even over his hands and feet, then pressed his right gauntlet to Aalam’s chest, doing something Aalam couldn’t understand, and Aalam suddenly couldn’t move a muscle, his connection with his flying needles also broken, causing the three he had out to fall to the ground.
Then the third Nightwalker, a man holding a staff and dressed in a black robe, walked up and placed the tip of his wooden staff on Aalam’s forehead. He muttered to himself and Aalam felt a binding of some type wrap around his main Mental Forge, causing a kind of compulsion in him he couldn’t understand.
The three then talked to each other in a language he didn’t know, so he used one of his subminds to send the conversation to Mila for translation.
As their conversation finished and the mage looking one started running to the north, however, Mila didn’t provide a full translation like he wanted.
“You lost to the invasion’s three generals, not even their leader,” she sent, sounding almost as angry as when they’d first arrived. “They are going to question you while that other one goes to get their boss.
“Try not to anger them so much that they kill you.”
