NOVEL NEXT Chapter 52: Level 5
Mila
It took the rebel leader about two weeks after being given the seal to get every single cultivator in the region under a contract. And this was no simple feat as it required Mila to generate 100 plus contracts per minute near the end.
The visible feedback response she’d added to allow the leader to see when cultivators accepted the contracts had increased the mana expenditure for creating the contracts by nearly 25%, and sending the energy through the seal was not without cost, so, while the seal could thankfully create contracts for anyone within 10 meters, allowing for more efficient batch generation of contracts, Mila had been forced to eat half the souls stored in Aalam’s Soul Storage to account for the resource drain.
Thankfully, her Law Egg of Bonds had advanced to peak grade during that time, or she would have needed to eat even more souls.
The leader, as dictators were want to do, then summoned most of the enslaved cultivators in the region to one single field outside his main city, where there was an elevated platform he could speak from, and started to give a speech.
“Thank you all for coming. Together, we will make history. Together, we will change this world. Together, we will—”
Mila decided the speech was just going to be a waste of time, so, with the power of her Law Egg of Obfuscation poured into her Blur skill, she ran up onto the stage, pulled an axe out from the Left Hand of the Runescribe’s subspace, and severed the leader’s head from his shoulders.
The Blur skill obfuscated her form as if it were covered in smoke, making it nearly impossible to predict her movements from seeing how her muscles and resources moved, but its usual purpose was to help a cultivator disguise their identity, something Mila didn’t really need. With her peak grade Law Egg of Obfuscation empowering it along with her enhancement of disguise skills, however, it was a good substitute for a stealth skill until she could actually get one, leaving her almost invisible.
The leader was only level 2, having not spent much time hunting, and he was a mage with low perception and no detection skills, so it was easy to get behind him. A few people in the crowd noticed, but only one reacted, and he was too late to do anything.
“Alright,” Mila looked out over the crowd, who were all so shocked no one had moved yet, and deactivated blur so they could all see her plain disguised appearance. “He enjoyed the sound of his voice way too much.
“I’ll instead be brief.
“If you are a beastman, if you have raped someone and enjoyed it, or if you have murdered someone for a petty reason, please kill yourself.” Her voice was enhanced with a basic qi effect, so everyone heard her. No one who met the criteria actually committed suicide, however, so they all had their souls crushed about six seconds after she finished talking.
All the beastmen and about a fourth of the humans died just like that, falling limply to the ground, and a whole bunch of primal energy entered into Mila, about 90% of what she would have gained from killing each person individually. Altogether, it was the primal energy from a little more than 15,000 G rank beastmen, about 3,000 F rank beastmen, and a little less than 5,000 F rank humans, yet it only brought her up to level 5.
Gathering primal energy was tough.
“Okay,” Mila continued a few seconds later, “now that the cleanup is done, a few orders for the rest of you. One, you are now citizens of New Raphaiya, the Territory of Prince Roland Raphaiya. Two, you all must follow all orders of Roland Raphaiya and his party members, unless they would have you rape someone or murder a child under the age of 16.
“If they order you to do either of those things, you have my permission to kill them.
“Three, you can’t run away. Do not leave this region unless given permission by Roland Raphaiya or his party members, though you can expand out for hunting purposes so long as you return within a few days each time.
“Finally, I do consider what has happened here a secret, and you all have already agreed to the contract, so you will all die if you reveal how I killed this idiot to anyone I don’t give you explicit permission to tell.” She kicked the leader’s corpse. “And I haven’t yet given you permission to tell anyone.”
Mila reached down and picked up the disguised Twin Dragons, pretending to put it in the pocket of her dress with her left hand but actually putting it into the Left Hand of the Runescribe’s subspace.
“Thank you, everyone. That will be all.”
Mila then looked at the several notifications she’d just received.
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of The Reaper has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Base Stats +4, Soul +12
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Severing has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Base Stats +4, Soul +12
You have leveled up from level 1 to level 5
Strength +52
Agility +60
Endurance +68
Toughness +52
Vitality +60
Perception +80
Magic +112
Spirit +136
Soul +216
Aura +16
Attunement +12
Luck +0
Your total Sentient Kill Count for F rank has gone up:
15,432 G rank
8,137 F rank
Your Hunter of Sentients Boon has increased to Hunter of Sentients XIV
Hunter of Sentients XIV: Increase the effectiveness of all base stats by 7%
Then Mila reactivated Blur and disappeared from almost everyone’s senses before running to the former leader’s prison. There were quite a few injured decent people there, so she could practice with her Law Egg of the Healer, most of her minds already focusing on merging her peak grade Law Egg of the Healer with her peak grade Law Egg of Bonds.
First, though, she had to get rid of the guards, the only 16 enslaved beastmen who hadn’t been invited to the speech. Instead of giving them orders, however, Mila practiced with her skills.
She used Illusion Steps to move around them, Second Self to create illusory clones of her disguised self for confusion purposes, and Blur so they couldn’t predict her movements even if they could see through her clones to find the real her. While having them confused, she then killed each one with the spear form of the Twin Dragons empowered by Artifact Enhancement and her Law Egg of The Reaper.
With her stats greatly increased from leveling up and her Hunter of Sentients boon advancing, it wasn’t too difficult.
Mila then used the keys from one of the guards' waists to free the most injured prisoner and started working on healing him.
Several of the other prisoners tried to talk to her, but she raised a hand, indicating she needed to concentrate, and, as they were mostly exhausted, that alone stopped them.
A few minutes later, a large group of cultivators from the speech came, seemingly with the intention of freeing the prisoners, and she quickly gave out orders. “I’m going to continue working here, healing everyone until they are all okay. Some of you, go get food for everyone here. The others, don’t allow any of these prisoners to leave until they sign the basic contract of New Raphaiya.”
She sent the same basic contract every cultivator of New Raphaiya had signed to the several hundred injured prisoners and then started healing only those who’d signed. She gave permission for those enslaved cultivators to talk about what had happened to the injured cultivators and soon every single injured cultivator signed the basic contract.
After that, she gave an order to a couple of the enslaved cultivators to go find and then bring to her the best group of scouts who knew the way to Eshna and soon a group of four came to see her. She told them to go find Roland Raphaiya in Eshna and tell him Shadow would like to see him to talk about his new domain, granting them permission to tell him and his party everything that had happened.
Mila kept working on healing, taking continuous small steps toward advancing her Law Egg of The Healer, and about seven hours later she sensed Roland enter into the room. “Well, you’ve been busy,” he said.
Mila didn’t look up from her patient, but one of her minds focused its attention on Roland. “I’m going to work on healing these people for the next few days and then I’ll be moving on to the next location I told you about. If you need me while I’m here, feel free to ask questions, but I would suggest finding those with governing experience, ideally the commoners who actually did most of the work rather than the nobles who gave orders, and asking them instead.”
There was something strange about Roland’s aura. It had grown slightly more powerful, his Law Egg of Rain seemingly having advanced to middle grade, but he seemed unsure about something, as if he wanted to ask a question but didn’t feel it was appropriate.
“Out with it, Roland.”
“Are you okay?”
Mila looked up at him at that, even as one of her main minds continued to work on helping her patient, her face showing slight confusion.
“You seem more serious than normal.” Roland put one of his hands behind his head, obviously uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I just kind of expected you to be a bit more jovial.”
Mila just stared at him for a few seconds. “I did just kill over 20,000 people, Roland. That’s not nothing to me.”
“Oh.” Roland suddenly looked ashamed and his aura allowed her to know the emotion was genuine. “I’ll leave you to helping people then.”
Roland left and Mila started wasting an entire main mind thinking about her own emotions.
The truth was, she hadn’t felt any different before and after her mass slaughter. Killing those people hadn’t made her feel a thing, not sadness, not pride, and that wasn’t normal for her.
Usually, she would have felt a whole lot of excitement for the plan having worked so well and a bit of loss for having it highlight yet again how many bad people there were in the universe. But not this time.
“Nana Xara,” she sent over their bond, “is there something wrong with me?”
