Chapter 128: Chapter 128: The Alchemist of the Deep Woods

Mila

After guiding Aalam to his new home on the Greek island of Zakynthos, where he set up a formation she’d bought from the Trial Tower’s rewards to keep out any unwanted visitors from the enlightenment zone, Isaiah got to go hunt monsters in the Pacific while Mila was forced to do something a lot less pleasant. She had to lie to her oldest friend.

The requirements for the Legendary version of the Devil’s Contract skill at G rank had been one free skill slot, the Soul stat at 36 or higher, the ability to learn diabolical soul contract skills, and, most importantly, having spend 6 of the last 12 years lying to those closest to you every day. When advancing to F rank, the skill had only increased in rank, not grade, so there hadn't been any issue. The only requirement that changed from the G rank version of Devil’s Contract to the F rank version was the Soul stat needing to be at least 432 instead of 36, yet class advancements voided the requirements for stats to be above certain values, so it hadn’t been an issue.

When she advanced to E rank, however, she would have to meet the requirements for advancing the skill to the Heroic grade Advanced Devil’s Contract, and that skill required her to have spent at least 12 of the last 16 years lying to those closest to her every day instead of 6 of the last 12, and she wasn’t quite there yet, having spent several months each year when she was a teenager with her grandfather.

Thankfully, closest in this case didn’t mean emotionally close, but who she interacted with the most, and anyone she spoke to over a bond, such as Nana Xara, for some reason didn’t count.

“I’m sorry for deceiving you.” She, Diana, and Nitya were in Diana’s penthouse home in Sydney, in the same room where she’d reunited with her grandfather, her and Nitya on opposite couches with Diana on the couch in-between.

“Well, thank you for that.”

Mila actually wasn't sorry, at least for her actions. She’d made friends with Nitya when they'd been assigned as roommates in college and that friendship had been genuine. Nitya had never known Mila was a trained spy and assassin, and Mila had never verbally lied to Nitya about it. The requirements for Devil’s Contract counted lies of omission, but Mila herself didn’t, so she felt no guilt.

Also, unlike with Aalam, she'd never stolen from Nitya, only Nitya's company. When Nitya had once left her work computer unattended in Aalam and Mila's apartment, Mila had gone in and found where Nitya had saved some of her company’s most valuable passwords in a file called Passwords, but she hadn’t given them to her handler until he asked for her to steal them from Nitya on her next visit over 8 months later, so the only reason anyone ever figured out she’d stolen anything was from Aalam’s trojan posting everything her handler had written down to the internet.

Mila was sorry about Nitya’s feelings getting hurt, but her friend had made it way too easy, so if she actually said the apology she’d mean, it would hurt Nitya’s feelings and make working together in the future more difficult.

The lie was thus much easier.

* * *

Krysta

Krysta was walking through the garden of her mother’s estate, silver translucent hair flowing in the slight breeze as she looked at the millions of varieties of plants, about a third of which were flowering, and she felt peaceful.

Four days before, she'd advanced her race, and now she was spending a few weeks to get used to it before advancing her class. While there were no outward differences, she already felt so much stronger, able to sense so much more from the life energy present in the garden than she had before her advancement, her affinity with the life element Laws much higher than previously even though her race didn’t specialize in it.

“Oh, so here you are.” Her mother, mossy green dreadlocks tied up behind her back, walked out of the main alchemy building of the complex, a large structure made out of a single huge tree of life which rose to a height of over 2 kilometers, with a trunk diameter to match.

Krysta hadn’t seen her since she’d had her inspiration after hearing about the Heavenly Spark crafter called Shadow, but there was already a new pill listed for sale on the Forest Cauldron’s universal soul net site, one which would greatly boost a cultivator’s effective Perception within a limited area, so it seemed her mother had been successful.

“Congratulations on your advancement, Krysta.” Her mother took a single step and crossed the 800 meters which had been between them. “Is there anything you would like to eat to celebrate?”

Krysta thought for a second. Then her black eyes lit up. “Life Dragon Bone Soup?”

Her mother started laughing. “Life Dragon Bone Soup it is.” Krysta couldn’t sense it, but she knew her mother had contacted the high kitchens to order the dish. And, given the nature of the cooking process, it would be ready in about six hours.

“So, I noticed you provided very few resources to the organization.” Her mother smiled at her. “What did you end up spending your trial points on, dear?”

“Oh.” Krysta grew excited and she took the multi-colored orb holding the first 16 levels of the Twelve Element Primal Code out from her spatial ring and held it up for her mother to see. “This.”

Her mother had a surprised look on her face. Then it changed to one of disappointment and maybe resignation. “Dear, why did you buy a copy of a cultivation technique the organization already has, and to a much lower level than the organization’s copy as well.”

Krysta began to realize she might have done something bad, so most of her excitement left her. “I wanted to leave a message for that Shadow, asking him to come here. I was going to give this orb to him.”

Her mother actually put a hand over her face. “Dear, two things. One, in order to see the message you left, this Shadow must have had enough points to be able to purchase the cultivation technique himself, which is doubtful given he lost in the fourth round of the tournament section and you yourself could barely buy it. Second, the man didn't even want to show his face. Even if he were able to see your message, there is no way he would be willing to come here, so you effectively just blocked his path.”

“He was almost certainly able to gain enough points. The plague he used against me was powerful, and he could almost certainly make a much better plague targeted towards the undead in Trial VII.” Krysta defended herself at least partially.

“That’s worse, dear.” Her mother lowered the hand which had been over her face and looked at her seriously. “You seem to like this boy, and he sounds talented so I’m not going to immediately disapprove. But you made a big mistake here and he probably hates you right now.”

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Krysta started to feel fear and her mother placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Let me see if I can at least patch it up slightly.” She then took the orb holding the Twelve Element Primal Code from out of Krysta’s hands and the orb soon disappeared. "There, if he's talented enough to be able to use it, he will be able to get it.”

* * *

Mila

“Damn that stupid girl!” Mila shouted out loud suddenly in Chinese and Diana and Nitya both looked at her, Nitya thankfully unable to understand, so Mila quickly spoke in English. “Sorry, I just got a System notification about someone in the Smith clan doing something stupid. I have to go.”

At the same time, she spoke telepathically with Diana. “I really do have to go talk to the Smith clan, cleaning up the mess some of their members made by creating alliance contracts with members of the Daybreak Empire, but that was already planned. I just got a System message showing the space scarab’s daughter realized her mistake and then made an even bigger one.”

Mila looked again at the quest which had popped up in front of her eyes.

 

The Alchemist of the Deep Woods has offered a quest to all the trial takers from the latest F rank Trial Tower who earned more than 17,832,200,896,512 trial points.

 

Follow the Path of the Heavenly Spark (Heroic)

 

Accomplish the following:

1. Raise 3 Law Larvae from each of the 12 elements to high grade within 72 years

 

Rewards: The first 16 levels of the Twelve Element Primal Code

 

Do you accept?

Yes/No

 

If Aalam had been a normal trial taker, this would have solved all of their problems, but Aalam had entered the Trial Tower as a familiar, so he couldn’t accept the quest, and Mila had no chance of being able to complete it on her own.

Likely, Krysta’s mother had realized what a stupid action her daughter had taken and was trying to rectify it, but Mila’s own actions of hiding the fact Aalam was a familiar were now biting her in the ass.

Exiting Diana’s penthouse suite, Mila summoned the Twin Dragons from out of her spatial storage ring in spear form and just stabbed the assassin waiting by the elevator instead of trying to question him. Assassins had become too common since she and Diana had returned to Sydney and Mila was too frustrated to deal with this one, so she just left him there with half his life so someone else could deal with questioning him.

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