NOVEL NEXT Chapter 48: Berserking’s End
Mila
Mila felt more nervous than when she’d been kidnapped as a child.
Aalam’s berserker state had faded. After committing suicide, killing hundreds of his fellow humans, and being reborn as a literal monster, he was back to normal. And Mila had no idea how he would react.
First, he tried to vomit, but, as he’d never eaten anything in his new body, nothing came out. Next, he started crying, holding his face in his hands, but Mila didn’t have the courage to hug him. And then he fell unconscious, falling to the floor.
“Uhm.” For a couple seconds, Mila didn’t know what to do, but then she walked up to him and moved him onto the bed previously used by the Abyssal Soul Collector, curling up his body slightly so he would fit.
Then she touched the artifact on his left hand and accessed the sub-dimension inside, pulling out some of the beastmens’ clothes to make the bed more comfortable, and, after that, she moved out into the hall so she wouldn’t absorb any more of the room’s energy herself and just sat down to wait.
Twelve hours later, however, during which time almost all her minds were distracted, he still hadn’t woken up, so Mila decided to ask Nana Xara. “Do you have any idea what is happening?”
“I have a guess.” Nana Xara’s voice sounded serious and that was almost never a good sign. “Aalam has been in the berserker state of his uniqueness for a bit over five months. I don’t have any data on the aftereffects of Id’s berserker state, but the general rule for berserking powers is the stronger and longer the effects the stronger and longer the aftereffects.”
Mila took a deep breath. “So, do you think we’re talking permanent damage, a long period of weakness, or is he just going to be unconscious for a long time?”
“Best guess?” Nana Xara sounded contemplative. “He’s going to be unconscious for a while. Uniquenesses are intrinsic to a soul, so they can’t really have aftereffects which are impossible to recover from. Worst case would be the loss of some stats, most likely Soul. Given Aalam’s race, though, which has greatly helped to strengthen his soulstructures, that shouldn’t be an issue.
“Finally, berserker powers which increase the Spirit stat generally don’t have a period of weakness. They instead just cause unconsciousness until the overloaded Mental Forges are fully healed.”
“How long are we talking?”
“No idea. Generally, I would guess three times as long as he was in the state, but your boyfriend has five Mental Forges instead of the usual one, which could either help or hurt, and he’s sleeping in a soul well, which will definitely help.”
Mila took a couple minutes to think. She could just wait and let everything on the planet happen without interference, dealing with the aftermath later. Or she could do what she had planned, go work on conquering, as she hadn’t actually expected Aalam to help much anyway.
More important, however, she was worried about what would happen if he woke up and she wasn’t around, even with their ability to communicate over long distance. And she was even more worried about the case where someone found him. The illusion formation over the cave entrance was good enough no one would find it by accident, and it had enough power to run for the next two years, so it wasn’t like there was a more safe place to move him, but there was nothing which would notify her and there were no actual defenses.
“Nana Xara, do you have any advice on what I should do now?”
“Yeah.” From her tone, Mila could tell Nana Xara was smiling, and that helped her calm down. “You’re worried about leaving Aalam alone but you’re also worried about not going out and eventually being hunted down for not growing as fast, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, that’s what artifact rewards are for.” Nana Xara’s tone was still jovial and Mila felt her breathing, which had previously been a little rapid, go back to normal. “Defensive formations, alarm formations, teleportation formations, they’re all available as System rewards.
“You just advanced to F rank, so normally, as your master, I would be able to give you one artifact of your rank, one skill of your rank, and one cultivation technique, but sadly I can’t right now. With Aalam asleep, he can’t allow you to use one of the skill slots of your second class to learn one of your illusion skills and I can’t physically send you a skill orb nor an artifact, since you are not on Earth where my soul is linked to the universe.
“Given you only have three skill slots available, I would highly advise learning and then merging your illusion skills, with me only later granting you a skill directly over our bond. But, if you so desire, you could instead learn my skill first and then wait for Aalam to wake up to learn the last illusion skill. Either way, though, I’ll give the artifact to Diana.” Nana Xara sounded quite pleased to have the extra artifact go to Diana instead, and Mila didn’t quite know how to feel about that, but she didn’t really mind. If she was going to leave by herself while Aalam slept, she was going to take the Left Hand of the Runescribe with her anyway.
“My advice is to just go do what you were going to do anyway. Before you start getting rewards, you need to be able to fake yourself as a human, and that will require raising your Law Eggs of Bonds, Severing, The Healer, and The Reaper to peak grade and then fusing them into Law Larvae of The Healer and The Reaper.
“You’re not like Aalam. Staying still and cultivating doesn’t really suit you. You need to go use your Laws if you are going to get better at them.”
Mila was about to ask about how to make sure Aalam wouldn’t die of starvation, but she was rather unnerved by something Nana Xara had just said, so she instead went off topic. “Law Larvae?”
“What did you think a Law Egg would evolve into?” Nana Xara sounded surprised, and Mila kind of felt like an idiot for never really considering the question before.
“I don’t know. A Law chick? A Law Hatchling?”
“Oh, right.” Nana Xara sounded like she’d just realized something. “Before the integration, Earth hadn’t had a new outsider brought in for over 2,000 years. While a lot of your myths and stories are based on facts, you’ve lost some of the important ones, like the Heavenly Scarabs.
“You know how in your country there is a myth about carp becoming dragons after swimming up a heavenly river and jumping through a gate at the top of a waterfall?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that myth is true, and there was a scarab beetle monster which tried to do the same thing. But it died during its transformation into a dragon. Before its death, however, it laid twelve eggs, and those eggs hatched into larvae and grew up feeding on the feces of the various dragons in the valley beyond the gate.
“One of the larvae liked feeding on the excrement of space dragons, one on the excrement of time dragons, and so on, and eventually all twelve beetles grew into extremely powerful A rank monsters. No one in the universe more talented than them in their respective Laws other than gods. Then, after a hundred million years, they all ascended to divinity themselves, becoming the followers of the Divine Child.”
“When talking about Laws, everyone in the know in the universe would talk about the Heavenly Scarabs as well. So, the names of the stages of Law comprehension just naturally started following the Heavenly Scarabs’ development cycle.”
Mila took a few seconds, but it didn’t sound like Nana Xara was joking. The stages of Laws were named after the life stages of beetles and the origin was heavenly creatures who grew powerful through eating poop.
Mila decided to just move on.
“How can I make sure Aalam doesn’t starve to death?”
“Oh. That’s easy.” Mila could almost imagine Nana Xara waving her hand dismissively. “Eating souls doesn’t require movement like eating physical food. He’ll automatically eat when he’s hungry if you send him souls, and things will be even easier given his new Soul Storage. Just make sure enough souls are sent over and you won’t have any problems, no different than if he was awake.”
“Good,” Mila said out loud. “One major problem down.”
Then she sent over, “Are you sure I’ll be able to form the Law Larvae in a reasonable time frame? You seem far more sure than I do.”
“Advancing to F rank by itself more than doubles affinities with all Laws, as your soul grows better able to communicate with the universe.” Nana Xara laughed. “And, while Law affinities are unique to each individual, race is the largest factor, and your race, as a strong soul variant, enhances all affinities more than most Legendary grade races enhance the ones they’re best at. This means your base affinities with your Laws have likely gone up by a factor of around 6 compared to when you were in the tutorial.
“Combined with your new +125% affinity with all Laws and +68.75% Attunement effectiveness? You even have legacy guidance of the highest grade for the Laws in question. If you don’t improve at a rapid rate, I’m dropping you as my apprentice.”
Mila tried creating an illusion with her Law Egg of Hologram and was surprised to find it significantly easier than before. She wouldn’t say it was 13 times easier. But double? Definitely.
There was more to creating skill-like effects without skills than just Law mastery and it seemed she was now hitting a different bottleneck than before.
Interesting.
Mila walked into the room and moved Aalam back onto the throne. Then she used the sword form of the Twin Dragons to carve a bed into the ground that was actually his size.
She then took the Left hand of the Runescribe off his left hand and put it on hers, the Legendary grade artifact shrinking slightly to fit her, and took out more articles of clothing to put down under Aalam so he wouldn’t be quite as sore from not moving if he really did sleep for a few months.
Then she walked out of the room, picked up the 3 skill orbs for her new skills from where she’d left them in the hallway, and learned them.
Illusion Steps (F-Epic) Magic, Movement, Illusion
Your steps are quick and hard to see
Second Self (F-Epic) Magic, Clone, Illusion
Which of you is real, which is illusory
Blur (F-Epic) Magic, Disguise, Illusion
Your outline a blur, you are hard to identify
Mila then took out the Epic grade Orb of Skill Combination and activated it, the gas inside, much denser than the G rank variant, smoothly entering into her body. Then, without a look back so she wouldn’t rethink her decision, she started using her new Illusion Steps skill to exit the cavern and headed toward the southwest, guided by the light of Hira’s two moons.
