Chapter 688: Revenge

Although the elven tribe leaders had mentally prepared themselves already that Elven Empress Harloys likely wasn’t actually dead, her reappearance still truly shocked them.

Elven Empress Harloys appeared together with a dozen additional clones of herself. She greeted the elven tribe leaders, and immediately began to work on her uncompleted political tasks.

There were 13 exactly identical Elven Empresses now. Some worked on political documents, some were in discussion with the elven tribe leaders, some were planning major events, and there was even one who was helping with basic construction. The Elven Empress’s work efficiency was instantly increased to 1300%. All witnesses were astonished.

It was common knowledge in this world that existences could have clones and/or incarnations. Gods and demons would often have such abilities, leaving behind their true body safely in their Divine Kingdom or in the lower planes while an incarnation or clone would stir up trouble in the mortal plane. If the incarnation was slain, then no matter—there would only be a small loss. Mages also had spells such as Elemental Clone, Mana Illusion, and so on.

However, others would normally have limits on how many clones or incarnations they could control at once. It was common for a clone’s power level to be less than half of the true body’s. Weaker clones might even only have 10% of the true body’s power (not counting dimensional restrictions). But even if you were able to create a more powerful clone, it would take talent to control your clone with great accuracy and exquisiteness. If you wanted to have extremely precise control over your clone, it was common for the true body to need to be in a state of deep sleep.

Although having more clones would seemingly raise efficiency, in actuality, there was still only one mind controlling every single clone. This meant that it would be almost impossible for normal individuals to have many different clones all performing vastly different tasks.

Yet, Harloys had evidently made some sort of breakthrough in this field. Not only were most of her clones performing completely different tasks, several of the clones were even holding conversations with others simultaneously without a single problem. It was as if the 13 clones were actually 13 separate individuals.

As for the previous assassination attempt? Or what exactly had happened to the Elven Empress whose body had exploded into slimes? Harloys offered no explanations, and since she was the highest-ranking ruler of all elves, there was indeed no need for her to explain it to anyone.

All she did was use her actions to inform everyone that yes, she had indeed died before, but that she had also surpassed the limits of death already. Killing her wouldn’t be that easy. This message would be more than enough to cow most schemers who had evil intentions.

“You want to assassinate me? You’re welcome to try.”

An undying ruler would probably make the ruler’s potential successor go insane, but since the elven internal situation was incredibly unstable right now, having an undying ruler would actually serve to unite the elves. As long as the Elven Empress behaved reasonably, the new Elven Empire wouldn’t collapse.

At first, I had thought that Harloys was only acting, but when I discovered that she truly had multiplied her work efficiency by more than 10 times over, even I was truly shocked.

Her incredible ability to multitask was something that even I didn’t understand. When I asked her about it…

“Cough, cough, I actually just discovered myself to have this new ability as well. I wasn’t trying to scare others on purpose. Even I didn’t realize that I could use so many clones this well.”

“Theoretically speaking, this should be impossible. You’ve already… broken past the limits of the Creator Goddesses? Is this your personal path to becoming an Undead Emperor?”

My question wasn’t answered, as she responded with only “Take a guess.” But, the more she tried to casually write it off, the more I felt that my inference had been on the mark because it would always be quite difficult to explain clearly how one leveled up to become an Undead Emperor.

From a certain standpoint, ever since Harloys started following me, although she had constantly fallen in pitfalls, I also had treated her well as she would always overeat… Ahem, I meant that she had made massive progress in the area of undead magic. My Seven Original Sins, knowledge gained from Conservation’s mana conservation principle and artificially created bones, Aso’s knowledge and research on negative energy corrosion, Sandro’s knowledge of magic buffs and debuffs, and so on had all massively benefited Harloys. Apart from Sandro’s knowledge, which was just extra knowledge on the side, the other Undead Emperors’ knowledge was all their own complete knowledge systems, filled with practical experience. These all counted as complete inheritances.

However, it wouldn’t be so simple for one to become an Undead Emperor even with an Undead Emperor’s inheritance. Us Undead Emperors’ knowledge and memories were combinations of our own talents and experiences, creating paths suitable for us alone.

To give a real-world example, even if you as a reader were personally given the full Olympics-level physical training and experience of such high-level competitions, you probably wouldn’t have the talent necessary for such high-level exercise, nor would you have the physical body required for competing in such competitions. So, you wouldn’t be able to compete in the Olympics even with all that given to you.

Breaking past the limits set by the Creator Goddesses wasn’t something achievable through hard work alone. You would need an explosive increase in your physical body’s quality, talents, and life experience combined, a definite as well as a coincidence with influence from countless factors. Perhaps Harloys’ current physical body was the foundational reason for her breakthrough.

I shook my head. Since it was difficult to explain, there was no need for me to search for the answer. But, unless we truly tried, it would be impossible to know the limits. It would be impossible for Harloys to make her next breakthrough until I achieved Level 4 first.

“…We need to hurry. We’ve lost out on so much this time.”

In this assassination incident, without regards to the political effects, at least Harloys hadn’t lost out. Even though she was one of the main assassination targets, she had actually gained a chance to further improve her standing and authority. I was the one who lost out on so much.

In order to dodge Sirar’s dagger powered by revenge, I had sacrificed my SemiGod Equipment, Guardian of Yongye. That armor had been an actual part of my physical body as well, which meant that I had done the equivalent of self-destructing a part of my physical body… and once a person was crippled, becoming permanently un-crippled again would be quite difficult.

I had lost a large majority of my dragon bloodline through that self-destruction. I had no evil vampiric methods available to me for recovering lost flesh and blood, which meant that I could only wait for myself to heal naturally. The time required for that would be… Perhaps I should learn from Little Red and try century-long naps?

Dragon bloodlines’ power would require time to improve. Once this power was lost, it was also only time that could recover the lost power.

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Of course, I didn’t regret what I had done one bit. After all, if Sirar’s weapon had managed to actually stab me, I wouldn’t have been worrying about long naps anymore, but rather permanent naps.

“I need to hurry and achieve my own breakthrough.”

This wasn’t even at the level of determination anymore. This was an absolute that needed to occur. Although I didn’t have a single official title in the Mist Alliance currently, my existence was absolutely necessary in order to keep the balance between various species and scare them into not stirring up trouble. As long as I was around, nothing unexpected would occur with the Xiluo Empire or Underground Faction, and if I died, there wasn’t a single person in the entire Mist Alliance who could fill my role.

This fact had probably been understood by my enemies already. When I was escorting the elven caravan, that had been the first time that my current location was obvious as I typically concealed information about my whereabouts and current actions. Not only that, I was in an obviously weakened state back then after casting the Ice Aeon forbidden spell. Assassins had constantly been after my life ever since then. I doubted that they were all enemies of mine from the past, especially since I didn’t recognize most of my assassins.

As for my enemies, sending so many assassins after me fruitlessly still had benefits for them. At the very least, all of my aces would be revealed. My personal combat strength, special abilities, and natural talents would all be discovered. This would be the information gained from trying to assassinate me.

Although Sirar’s assassination attempt seemed to be his own independent action, it was actually an exquisitely planned attack after gaining countless amounts of information on me. The most obvious evidence for this was how he was the enemy that I would be most ill-suited to face.

My always impenetrable defenses would be completely useless in front of his mega-buffed dagger of revenge. My strengths in melee combat would be neutralized since Sirar was a Level 4 individual who was just as skilled. Not to mention, his attack was an unexpected ambush. The likely success rate of his assassination attempt against me was frightening to think about. Moreover, I highly doubted that the Holy Church and my other enemies would be satisfied with merely frightening me. Now that the dimensional limitations had all been lifted, it was likely that I might even meet with a True God’s personal attempt to assassinate me!

I absolutely needed to make a breakthrough. I absolutely needed to achieve the next power level. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the times, and I would get killed without even realizing how. And right now, time was of the essence. I couldn’t afford to get killed off and have to wait so many years to power up again after being reborn.

But before any of that, I needed to properly consider how I should repay all those who showed so much “concern” for my well-being.

The effects of the assassination incident weren’t dispersed so easily. Or, perhaps I should say that the assassination incident’s influence had only just began to spread.

I was considered an “invisible person” in the Mist Alliance government. However, Harloys was the new Elven Empress of the new Northlands Elven Empire. She was the ruler of all elves. Her royal authority would be even more venerated due to the fact that all of the Elven Gods had just perished.

Her political level and status within the Mist Alliance would be far above that of any country’s ruler. Even an arrogant king would need to maintain appropriate respect in front of the ruler of all elves.

Trying to assassinate Harloys was the equivalent of a direct slap in the face. If we added some propaganda, this would be more than enough reason for the Mist Alliance and Holy Church to turn on each other.

However, since the Holy War was right before us, a direct fight against the Holy Church was something unacceptable to both them and us.

This was why the Holy Church didn’t use its own personnel, but instead sent out elves to attack us. They also blamed all of this on the moon elf kingdoms. So rather than the Holy Church having masterminded this assassination plot, it nominally became the elves’ own grudges against me that caused these assassination attempts.

Of course, if the Mist Alliance truly wanted to investigate, these were only shabby excuses that anyone could see through. However, the Holy Church knew quite well that the Mist Alliance didn’t want to directly turn on the Holy Church right now, so all they needed to do was give an excuse for everyone on the surface.

Although the Mist Alliance couldn’t take official revenge, I could take my own private revenge that would definitely cause the Holy Church much pain… Right now, my mind was filled with ideas on how to make the Holy Church suffer as much as possible.

Lure an entire angel squadron into becoming fallen? Have a Holy Church worshipping country convert to the Church of Law? Reveal scandals about the Pope and the Cardinals? Or use all of the above?

Actually, blaming all of this on the moon elves might not even be a bad thing. Since nobody else was going to say the truth, then it would all become the moon elves’ fault. In that case, it would become quite reasonable no matter what the Mist Alliance did to the moon elves.

Originally, I would have needed to find an excuse for the major slaughter and cleansing I intended to do to the moon elf kingdoms, but now, the Holy Church had voluntarily given me such an excellent excuse. It would be foolish of me to not enjoy this opportunity to get rid of the most troublesome moon elf elders…

This was a common pitiful fate of a small faction stuck between two far more powerful factions. The small faction wouldn’t be able to control their own fate, and could only be cannon fodder or a chess piece, meeting a pathetic and even laughable death in the end.

“…Stop thinking about such useless things. Why don’t you first think about how to recover your combat strength? Do you really think that you can escape from a second Sirar?”

My silly cat, who had become my 24-hour bodyguard, made a snarky comment at me. I could only smile bitterly in response.

Of course I would want to recover my combat strength. I hated such a feeling of weakness. However, I hadn’t recovered even one-third of my mana yet, and my stamina was completely used up once again due to the attempted assassination against me. Now, it would take me even longer to recover.

“…Actually, I have a method to help you swiftly recover your mana. Perhaps it will even help you to achieve Level 4,” Harloys said as she looked at the rather close volcano. I could also guess at what she was referring to.

“Elemental war? If there was any other choice, I really wouldn’t want to get involved in something as messy as this.”

“Stop spouting rubbish. Go and organize your magic textbooks. I have some high-level ice magic spell formulas that you should copy down. You’ll be needing them for what’s coming next.”