Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Soul Lord Battle Armor

Mila

It took 53 hours for Aalam to wake up and again he didn’t look much different. His dark blue hair had all fallen out just like the last time he’d advanced his race, but hair of a half shade darker had already grown in. His amber, almost orange, eyes were a bit more subdued, appearing somehow more inhuman yet more natural at the same time. And, again, the biggest difference was in his aura.

Previously, due to his Prince uniqueness, he’d had by far the highest Aura stat of anyone on Earth and, due to his 36 Laws, he’d had by far the most stable aura regardless of Aura stat, his emotions under normal conditions impossible to read even for those with double his effective Aura.

And training in the Twelve Element Primal Code had only solidified his aura more.

This solidity of his aura, however, in Mila’s mind, had always been a weakness. Anyone who interacted with him and had some understanding of Laws could easily tell how special he was. His aura broadcasted to anyone nearby that he was following the path of the Heavenly Spark and had raised 36 Laws to high grade Law Larvae. And then there were the effects of being an incubus prince. Any woman who was near him, or any gay man, without fail had their lust slowly increased and the effects were quite obvious to anyone wary of such a thing.

With his race advancement, however, Mila couldn’t sense his aura at all.

It was there. Standing near him as he slept, she could feel the lust inducing effects strengthening in real time. But, for the life of her, even with Sensory Domain at 100% mastery, she couldn’t connect him to the effects she was obviously feeling. He seemed like nothing more than a very, very handsome mortal, or maybe a powerhouse actively restraining his aura.

It was almost like his aura was perfectly integrated with the surrounding atmosphere and, as she tried to suppress it with her own as a test, it quickly became obvious that was the case.

Her heart starting to beat a little faster, Mila realized the effects of a sublime soul were not only limited to much higher affinities, but would also greatly increase a cultivator’s capabilities in stealth and disguise as well, capabilities she would later be able to make use of much more easily than Aalam. Hell, when she advanced to E rank she’d probably be able to easily hide herself as either an F or D rank, something normally not possible due to the inherent differences in the quality of resources exposed in a cultivator’s aura.

“Aalam has achieved something insane again, hasn’t he?” Diana commented from Mila’s side and Mila couldn’t help but agree, nodding in response.

 

Congratulations!

Your Law Larva of Shadow has advanced to high grade.

 

Your soul is affected by your understanding of Law.

Agility +96, Perception +96, Magic +64, Spirit +64, Soul +64

 

With this upgrade, Mila only had her Law Larva of The Reaper yet to improve. She hadn’t had much chance to train with either her Laws of Shadow or Illusion during her time in the Violet Mountain Sect, but she’d managed to improve her Law Larvae of The Healer, The Courtesan, and the Tactician while there. Then she’d managed to raise her Law Larva of Illusion about a year after she’d returned to Earth.

She just wasn’t as talented as Aalam or Diana, the latter of whom had already raised all six of her Law Larvae to peak grade, and she wasn’t like Isaiah, who could focus on training indefinitely even when not seeing improvement.

She’d spent most of her time disguised among the various powers on Earth, rooting out dissent while her other minds focused on learning minute details about the various forces of the universe in ever more galaxy clusters, Epecteos having taken the initiative to get many, many detailed reports from the elves in the Vin Clan royal family as part of his ask for trading them a Highgenion Flower, and she hadn’t put enough time into training.

“You’re kind of amazing, Mila.”

Mila was shocked out of her self recrimination by Diana’s words and looked at the shorter woman, as did Isaiah and Epecteos, who were standing to either side of them, Isaiah on Diana’s right and Epecteos on Mila’s left.

“The resources you’ve given us access to are astounding. Thanks to your initial work before I became sovereign and your undercover work over the last three years, the political situation on Earth is already stable, with the cultivators growing at a steady rate, ready to help increase our power in the near future. And you even managed to get Aalam the Twelve Element Primal Code and find us all an extremely capable combat instructor.” Diana nodded slightly to Epecteos before turning her big brown eyes back to Mila. “Congratulations on being able to advance to what looks like an insanely strong race in the near future. You totally deserve it.”

Mila felt her emotions lighten at the comment as she thought back to how Nana Xara had managed to stay humble even until she hit A rank. Like Nana Xara, she was surrounded by people far more talented than herself, and humility was a good thing, but belittling her own accomplishments wasn’t. She’d done a lot of good work and it was okay to acknowledge that. She wouldn’t be where she was without Aalam and Diana, but they wouldn’t be where they were without her either.

She couldn’t slack off, but she didn’t need to keep comparing herself to Aalam in the areas where he seemed to be one of the best in the entire universe, especially when the areas she was good at complimented him and allowed him to focus on just what he needed to improve himself.

“Yes!!!!”

As Mila was coming to a relatively profound realization about herself, Epecteos screamed to the heavens, his qi and mana shaking the very air with his excitement, and they all turned to look at him.

Mila, however, had the presence of mind to check Epecteos’s System messages through her role as Aalam’s chamberlain and immediately had her guess confirmed. Not only had Epecteos’s Law Pupa of Iron advanced to middle grade, his Law Pupa of Void Slice had as well.

With Aalam’s race advancing in both grade and rank, his base affinities had risen greatly as well, to the point the affinities of his Heroic grade E rank race were actually higher than Epecteos’s Uncommon grade C rank race. This meant the extra 25% boost to Epecteos’s affinities from his Personal Servant of the Heavenly Spark Soul King boon was now boosting Epecteos’s affinities based on Epecteos’s own affinities instead of Aalam’s, and this rise in affinity had finally allowed Epecteos to break through his bottlenecks in two of his three remaining non-middle grade Law Pupae.

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“Congratulations Epecteos,” Mila was the first to say. “How close are you to advancing with your Temporal Flux Law?”

“Quite close.” Epecteos was almost jumping up and down as he watched Aalam sleeping on the beach. “I should be able to raise it to middle grade within the next hundred years or so.”

He turned and gave Isaiah a huge hug while smiling at Mila and Diana. “I’m going to be able to reach C rank. Thank you all. Thank you.”

As Epecteos’s infectious excitement pervaded their little group, Aalam woke up, sat up from the beach, and looked at them all, tilting his head slightly in confusion. Then he seemed to get what was happening, having the same level of access to Epecteos’s System messages as Mila, and a smile spread on his face.

Instead of joining them in their celebration, however, Aalam started the process of choosing his two new racial abilities.

 

Awakening your fourth racial ability as a Sublime Soul Incubus Emperor (E-Heroic).

Please choose from the following three selections.

 

1. Master of Thought (Heroic): Markedly increase the power of psychic category skills.
2. Emperor’s Aura (Fabled): Increase the effectiveness of the Aura stat by 100%.
3. Monster Prince (Fabled): Increase the max stats of your race by 25%

 

Aalam, being Aalam, of course chose Monster Prince. And his choice made perfect sense to Mila, who did a little quick math. With his Prince uniqueness, his Monster Prince racial ability, and Id active, as all three were multiplicative with each other rather than additive, he’d be able to boost his effective Spirit stat by more than 45 times in his own Territory if he maxed the stat, and that was ridiculous.

 

Awakening your fifth racial ability as a Sublime Soul Incubus Emperor (E-Heroic).

Please choose from the following three selections.

 

1. Master of Creation (Heroic): Markedly increase the power of crafting category skills.
2. Advanced Swordsman (Fabled): Increase the effectiveness of all physical stats by 50% when wielding a sword.
3. Minor Soul Lord Battle Armor (Fabled): Increase the base value of all physical stats by 25% of your effective Soul stat.

 

The Soul Lord Battle Armor line of racial abilities was one of the main reasons Aalam had chosen to pursue the Soul Lord racial line. For one, it raised stats in the same way as his Prince uniqueness, not boosting effectiveness but the base value of the stat instead, so any further boost to the effectiveness of any of his physical stats would apply to the boost from the Minor Soul Lord Battle Armor racial ability as well. Given Aalam already had the Prince uniqueness, this wasn’t that advantageous, but his Soul stat was always going to be way higher than any of his physical stats, so, while the math wouldn’t add up to the Minor Soul Lord Battle Armor providing a larger boost to physical stats than Isaiah’s Power of Balance could have, it was still far better than Advanced Swordsman. And this was true even if Aalam had actually been someone whose main fighting style was swordplay, which it very much was not.

Boosting his two crafting skills would also be good, but they were already doubly boosted by his main class and would be boosted further when his classes advanced so they weren’t his bottleneck for creating better artifacts. The added Perception from Minor Soul Lord Battle Armor would actually probably be more helpful for his crafting.

Finally, and almost certainly most important to Aalam, Minor Soul Lord Battle Armor’s advancements would eventually have it being stronger than the advancements of Power of Balance.

So of course Aalam took it.

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