NOVEL NEXT Chapter 55: A Special Kind of Suicide
Mila
“So, how do I trick the System into thinking I’m a native?” Mila sent over her connection to Nana Xara after she stopped blocking it.
“I’m not sure. But I think I’m only going to talk to Diana for a while.” There was a slight pause. Then Nana Xara asked, “Are those trees different than the ones before.”
“Yeah.” Mila smiled, Nana Xara able to feel her expression over the bond. “I killed the general and now I’m heading northwest again.”
There was a longer pause. “You blocked me from being able to see a cool assassination, while at the same time limiting your own power to do so?” Nana Xara sounded really annoyed and it made Mila so, so happy.
“You hid information from me affecting my very state of existence.”
“But what does that have to do with me seeing cool assassinations?”
Mila continued smiling. “It’s the only thing I can do to you which doesn’t really hurt me.”
“That’s so petty,” Nana Xara complained. “Do you have any idea how boring it is to be stuck in a System generated mental space? The internet on Earth stopped working as soon as the integration started and my monitoring link to the planet disappeared after the tutorial.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t hold back information in the future.”
“And it’s not like you offer much more than cool assassinations.” Nana Xara continued, seemingly completely ignoring Mila’s point. “You’re a literal incarnation of lust, yet you go all slasher movie villain to get your food rather than providing anything in the way of sexy times. Diana has two hot guys pursuing her, yet doesn’t realize it. It’s like a teen romance show over there. But your side is all sadness and sorrow.”
“Well, you could help me and then go back to her.”
“And your fighting style isn’t that interesting to watch. Quick kills with an overpowered artifact and contracts with those weaker than you to convert enemies to allies. There is no flash at all. When Diana fights, her spirits lay waste to an area.” Nana Xara continued ignoring her, so Mila just stopped talking and waited, the silence lasting about ten minutes.
“Ah, you’re no fun.”
“I believe we’ve already established that.”
If Nana Xara had wanted to make things difficult for her, it would have been different. Someone millions of years old would most certainly have developed incredible patience. But that wasn’t the point. Nana Xara wanted to have fun and now both parties had to agree for that to work, so Mila was able to make some ground rules.
“Alright.” Nana Xara gave in. “First, find your bond with the System.”
It took Mila a lot longer than she’d expected. Her bond with the System wasn’t like her bond with Aalam or Nana Xara. There wasn’t a direct connection as a result of a defined relationship and, more important, there wasn’t an obvious location.
All her other bonds could be visualized as ropes, the various types of connections she had with the other person threads wrapped together into one bond leading directly to the other person. But the System seemed to be everywhere, so that analogy didn’t work.
Aalam would talk about multi-dimensional geometry or something and would probably find understanding the way karma worked relatively easy if he had her abilities. But she wasn’t him. She thought more visually and it took her almost half an hour to adjust her mental model to be able to find her bond with the System. And her new model didn’t include any directionality, completely losing the ability to use bonds to track the locations of others, so she likely wouldn’t use it much in the future.
“Alright. Done.”
“Harder than you thought, right?” Nana Xara sounded like she was having fun again. “Next you need to pour the power of your Law Larva of The Healer into the bond to see its component parts. Like with me, there will be a connection in that bond used to track you, but there will also be another part that connects you to your stored records. There are quite a few other components as well, helping with things like sending you energy or physical rewards from quests, giving you access to your status, and helping simplify upgrades to your race, class, et cetera.
“You will need to find a location where no other lifeforms with primal energy are within 106 meters so the System can’t monitor you through its bonds with other beings. Then you will have to sever the connection allowing the System to monitor you using the power of your Law Larva of The Reaper and, after 3 seconds but before 5, sever the component leading to your stored records.”
“This should make the System think you have died and, when the System finds you again, only your information from before the integration of Earth will remain, so the System will view you as a human, not a monster. And, as it will be finding you on Hira, it will recognize you as a native of Hira instead of Earth. In addition, if you manage to accept the quest for killing yourself before the second severing, you will get some decent rewards.”
Mila had about 6,000 km to travel to get to the cave holding the inheritance the rebels had found, which would take her about 5 days if she didn’t stop to rest at all. And a large portion of that travel would be running through the sand of a desert, where there wouldn’t be many lifeforms.
A few days later, after practicing severing specific components of her bonds with most of those she’d healed, Mila found a good spot in the middle of nowhere using her Life Death Detection skill and severed the first connection of her bond with the System. Then, three seconds later, as the connection started to be reestablished, the System message for her and Aalam’s subjugation quest showed up.
You have entered the area of a quest.
Hunt Down Hira’s Monster Lord (F-Legendary)
Accomplish the following:
- Either kill or permanently subjugate the monster lord Heavenly Spark Soul King
- Either kill or permanently subjugate the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s chamberlain, the Mistress of Oaths and Deception
You may share this quest with a party of up to 144, but a Party Leader must be selected.
Party Leader Rewards for Ending the Threat of the Heavenly Spark Soul King:
One choice of F rank skill orb up to Legendary grade
One choice of F rank artifact up to Legendary grade
Individual Rewards for Ending the Threat of the Heavenly Spark Soul King:
All stats +6
Party Leader Rewards for Ending the Threat of the Mistress of Oaths and Deception:
One choice of F rank skill orb up to Epic grade
One choice of F rank artifact up to Epic grade
Individual Rewards for Ending the Threat of the Mistress of Oaths and Deception:
All stats +3
Do you accept?
Yes/No
She quickly accepted the quest. Then she severed the second connection.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, but then a system message popped up giving her rewards.
You have solo killed the Mistress of Oaths and Deception!
Rewards for Ending the Threat of the Mistress of Oaths and Deception are slightly increased.
All stats +6
You may choose two F rank skill orbs and two F rank artifacts from the following lists
As expected, she felt no different and there was only one noticeable change to her status—her money had all transferred to Aalam upon her ‘death’—so she just transferred it back and dealt with the results of the quest.
For the artifact rewards, she chose two parts of a multipart array. The first part was a 3 meter wide platform she’d have to set down somewhere, which contained the main functions of the array and would actively devour the mana in a kilometer radius of where it was placed. Then the second was a token she could carry around with her, which was magically connected to the platform. By pouring a large amount of her mana into the token, she could trigger the power of the platform and have it teleport her to it as long as she was within 7,367 kilometers.
Eshna, and thus the soul well Aalam was in, was within 100 kilometers of the center of the continent, so, if she placed a platform there, she could teleport back from anywhere she could get to. And there were four other platforms available in the list, so she’d be able to get them as well and set up a personal teleportation network around the continent if she so desired.
Next, for her two skill orbs, she chose Spatial Sense (F-Epic) and Temporal Sense (F-Epic). Along with two rare skills she could get later, they could be combined into Spacetime Sensing (F-Legendary), a skill Aalam would need for the insane Heroic grade skill he was obviously going for.
“Is there any good way to get Legendary grade skills?” Mila sent to Nana Xara. “It would be a lot more useful for what Aalam wants.”
“For the quests to destroy an invasion, you need 100% completion percentage with no one escaping and you have to solo kill all three generals as well as the invasion leader.” Nana Xara seemed quite happy, likely a result of Mila successfully changing her status to that of a native. “Had you let Roland kill the three generals as well, he would have gotten Legendary grade rewards.”
Mila thought about it for a bit. That 100% completion was the hardest part. Roland had only managed because he’d been the first to find the undead other than those the invasion had killed and turned into zombies, as Aalam and Mila hadn’t counted. But if any native managed to kill any member of the invasion force and stay alive, Mila’s chance at a Legendary skill orb and artifact would be gone.
And this wasn’t even considering how difficult the invasion forces would be to deal with.
The undead were a special case. They’d only brought in the minimum 144 cultivators, filling most of their number up with zombies, and this was because they’d planned to convert natives to make up for their numbers.
There was only so much an invasion force was allowed to bring to a world and the undead had spent most of their quota on the powerful array now protecting Aalam.
The other forces would have a lot more manpower and their numbers wouldn’t be filled with G rank zombies, but full F rank cultivators.
“Things aren’t quite as bad as you’re thinking,” Nana Xara assured her. “Hira is an F++ rank world, so there are probably a couple B rank forces like the undead of the Palazin Galaxy Cluster, though they wouldn’t have sent their best. The C and D rank forces, however, would.
“Invasion forces have a quest to keep the completion percentage against them as low as possible, so they’d try to kill anyone who killed any of theirs. So, if you manage to eliminate all 11 of the other invasion forces, chances are you could manage a Legendary grade skill and artifact pair or two.”
