NOVEL NEXT Chapter 63: Coming to Terms with Death
Mila
Congratulations!
Your Law Egg of Rage has advanced to peak grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Spirit +32, Soul +16
Mila stripped Omalia and threw both her body and artifacts into the subspace of the Left Hand of the Runescribe, a subspace she distractedly noted was at this point half full.
Isaiah’s situation reminded her too much of her life on Earth, and rage, which she hadn’t realized she’d been unconsciously keeping in check, seemed ready to boil over.
“Aaahhhh!!!!” Mila stood up and screamed out loud. Then, instead of making a plan or moving away from the place where space mages might be able to track her, she sat back down and leaned her back against the wall, starting to cry.
Nana Xara waited several minutes and, when she did speak, her voice was more neutral than normal, less jovial. “Do you want to talk about it?”
It took Mila a few minutes to answer, but she finally did so. “Yes.” Then, however, it took a few more minutes for her to actually start talking. “Was my entire life up until I died pointless?”
“That all depends on how you value a life?” Mila could almost imagine Nana Xara smiling. “If you value your life by the number of lives you took, you’re better than most on Earth. If you value your life by the number of lives you saved, you did ridiculously well. But, if you value your life based on how happy and content you were at the end, you kind of sucked.”
Mila snorted. “Right, I kind of forgot I was indirectly responsible for saving over a billion people.” Then she paused for a second. “But who values their lives based on the number of people they killed?”
“Monsters mostly.” Nana Xara’s voice was completely cheerful again. “Like succubi.”
Mila thought about her current circumstances and then couldn’t help but laugh. “My existence hasn’t been normal, has it?”
“Even by the standards of apocalypse style integrations, no.”
Tears were still flowing down Mila’s cheeks, but their production had slowed. “I worked so hard, did everything they asked of me, sacrificed my happiness for the ‘greater good’, yet as soon as I was a liability they killed me.”
Once she started, Mila found it hard to stop. “I began training from as early as I can remember. Instead of playing with dolls and stuffed animals, I played with knives and guns. Instead of making friends when my grandfather moved us to the city, I practiced manipulating people and stealing things. When I was a teenager, instead of hanging out with friends and dating boys, I went to Africa, slept with men more than twice my age, and engineered coups.”
“I bloody spied on the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with from the moment we met.”
Mila took a deep breath. “I did this for my country. I sacrificed because I thought it was right. To make the world a better place. To make my grandfather proud.
“Yet as soon as my continued existence was no longer an asset, I was disposed of. I wasn’t moved to a desk job. I wasn’t asked to retire. I was just killed.”
Nana Xara fell silent for a good minute, giving Mila some needed time. Then she asked, “Do you know Wang Hao-Ran?”
“The Minister of Traffic Control?” Mila couldn’t figure out why Nana Xara would mention such a relatively unimportant official. “Not really? Why?”
“It turns out he was embezzling money using his position and France found out. His information was in the leaked data from Aalam’s trojan virus.
“He knew he was going to go down for it, so he pulled some strings to have you killed out of anger.”
Mila didn’t know how to react. Was her death being the result of a petty man’s petty revenge better or worse than her entire government being corrupt and her work throughout her life being pointless? Sadly, she wasn’t sure.
“I had no relation to him and he killed me anyway.” Mila spoke out loud, looking up at the ceiling of the cave.
“That’s how the universe works. Things aren’t always a big conspiracy. Sometimes you’re hit and you can’t see it coming, only understanding why after the fact.” Nana Xara sounded cheerful again. “That’s why power is so important. If you’re powerful enough, even if they try to hit you you can survive and hit right back.”
“What happened to Wang Hao-Ran?” Mila felt the rage which had mostly been replaced by sadness return.
“How should I say this?” Nana Xara sounded contemplative. “Your grandfather isn’t a very nice person.”
“Ah.” Mila felt her body relax slightly. Whatever she would have done to the man, he’d suffered much, much worse, so she didn’t have to worry about him getting away with things due to the apocalypse.
They were both silent for a bit, Nana Xara giving Mila time to fully calm down. Then, about fifteen minutes after killing Omalia, Mila stood up, brought out a shirt taken from Omalia’s tent, and wiped her eyes.
“From what I know, the quests for invasion forces involve keeping their Pillar of Conquest and own members safe for the first year and only then can they gain quests to start conquering each other,” Mila sent. “What happens if they start trying to fight before then?”
Nana Xara chuckled. “Before the first year is up, they would be like you back when you were considered a monster. They can’t take the pillars themselves and, so long as a native with any percentage of contribution takes the pillar before the year is up, the quest will be finished.”
“Okay.” Mila spoke out loud and smiled in the type of way Omalia would have found unnerving. “The plan is simple then. Sneak into the forces of the Kingdom of Night’s shaky alliance, try to help direct things so none of the opponents escape back through their pillars, and personally kill as many leaders and generals as possible.”
Law Egg gained - The Tactician
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
All Base Stats +1, Soul + 3
“Ooh.” Nana Xara sounded excited. “Interesting.”
Mila’s minds had been distracted for a while and then all focused intensely on one thing, resulting in her gaining a new Law Egg, and Nana Xara seemed to think it was a good one.
“It’s another divine role Law. Is it related to the water element?” Mila asked.
“Yeah.” Nana Xara sounded proud, but Mila was pretty sure it had to do with her gaining another divine role Law and not from her correctly guessing the role’s aligned element. “It is one of the four battlefield roles of the base elements. The Messenger for wind, The Guardian for earth, The Berserker for fire, and The Tactician for water.
“And for you it is definitely one of the best paths.
“Your second uniqueness allows you to interact with divine role Laws in a different way than most. Your Law Larva of The Healer grants you an extra sense allowing you to know the health condition of anyone you focus on. Your Law Larva of The Reaper shows you the specific weaknesses on the bodies of your opponents.
“What type of sense, then, would the Law Larva of The Tactician give, a role specialized in personal combat technique and the moving of forces on a battlefield?”
Mila started to smile more genuinely as she left the cave and began running back toward the inheritance. “I see what you mean.” Combat guidance? Morale sense? Whatever the new sense would be, it would likely be quite a bit more useful than whatever she’d get from the Law Larva of Tranquility she was originally going for.
Mila set one of her main minds to focus on her remaining two unmastered Epic grade skills and another to start using Trickster’s Guise with qi to change her face to better implement the plan she’d started to form in her head. Her third main mind, however, continued to talk with Nana Xara. “For the continuation of balance in my cultivation, won’t I need to get another divine role Law for the fire element? I don’t want to follow the path of a berserker.”
“That’s no problem.” Nana Xara still sounded excited. “You’re perfectly suited for the most famous of the fire element divine role Laws, the Law of The Courtesan.”
Mila inwardly groaned, but Nana Xara wasn’t wrong. She’d spent most of her life training for that type of role, and it certainly aligned with her race and class paths.
Then, as she thought about it more, it actually started to appeal to her.
She sent one of her minds into the Twin Dragons and began to read up on the information of The Courtesan Law contained in the legacy she’d received from the Healer’s Token.
The divine role of The Courtesan wasn’t just to inspire lust. It was to inspire passion of all kinds, kind of like a mix of the nine Muses and Aphrodite from Greek Mythology.
As a result, it was also about observing people, figuring out what they were good at and what they would enjoy, and Mila guessed the sense she might gain from it could be far more useful than those from the Laws of The Healer, The Reaper, or The Tactician.
It would also greatly help with empowering charm skills, probably more effective than the Law of Passion she’d been aiming for. And that would be extremely useful seeing as both her remaining Epic grade skills had increased noticeably in mastery in just the last ten minutes, her good cry seeming to have cleansed her soul slightly.
Before she arrived back at the inheritance site, she’d be able to merge her illusion skills and that would then allow her to gain the charm skill and cultivation technique Nana Xara had prepared for her.
