Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 330: Absent Autocrat and Unenthusiastic Executive
🕑 Added 2024-11-03 13:42:12 +0000 UTCAalam
The God of War was utterly terrifying.
Even with a ten second head start and having everything planned out so the god would chase him but not be able to catch up, his clone had still been caught.
The man’s reaction time, the way he used his six True Law level Laws to stabilize spacetime to boost his own speed and slow Aalam’s, the effortless way he almost instantly sealed the power of Aalam’s clone, it all surpassed what Aalam had expected.
His master’s use of energy and Laws had been the best Aalam had ever seen, but he was pretty sure the God of War was a half step more skilled, and Aalam’s main body couldn’t stop shaking at how close he’d just come to death.
The plan had been simple. The United Federation of Planets needed more Territory and worshippers, required more resources, and deeply desired the mass slaughter of their people to be something other parties would want to avoid. So, they’d made sure the Primordial Humans would completely lose System access by killing all the undead in the Prime Material, and then they’d cursed the leaders of any forces under the Primordial Humans who hadn’t surrendered by the agreed upon date, causing many of their successors, who wanted to live, to surrender soon after, and the result had been about what they’d expected.
The Primordial Humans, with their best combat forces all tied down—the Primordial Sovereign protecting his original universe, the God of War blocking the undead from entering the Prime Material, the Lady of Hellwater and the Lord of Twilight Flame trapped in the Heavenly Soul Universe, and the Master of the Eternal Forge, the Princess of Revelry, and three combat gods invading the United Federation of Planet’s abandoned universes—had sent one of their only remaining combat gods, the God of War’s only living son, to kill off everyone who’d surrendered. Then, using the premade formations Mila had hid on all of the Primordial Humans’ planets—all of which activated in the face of extinction level events and none of which would have worked had the Lady of Hellwater, the Primordial Humans’ afterlife goddess, actually been in the Prime Material—the United Federation of Planets had absconded with all the souls of the dead.
These souls had then entered into Aalam’s soulstructure afterlife, which was in his main body just outside a temporary portal from the Prime Material to one of his universes the Primordial Humans hadn’t yet invaded, and they allowed Aalam to start using his Revenge of the Fallen skill, his clones immediately getting to work.
One of Aalam’s clones, the one the God of War later forced to self-destruct, had used its peak A rank energy to create about twenty traps on the planet Mila was over 90% sure the god the Primordial Humans sent would move to once he realized the souls weren’t traveling to the Primordial Humans’ afterlife, hiding Aalam’s true divine level energy when all his clones were in the same body. And, when the Huntsman did arrive, Mila created illusory doppelgängers of herself using her Phantasmic Doppelgängers skill with Aalam’s clone as the base—the level of their bond long allowing them to cast skills through the bodies of the other—and disguised them to scare the god into stepping into one of the traps.
Aalam’s clone had then killed the man, sent the divine corpse and the primordial energy from the kill back to his main body, and then started to flee with enough of a head start they believed the God of War would be able to sense him but wouldn’t be able to catch up if he arrived to investigate.
And arrive the God of War did, removing the main protection around the Primordial Humans’ non-combat gods and two gods who’d yet to have mastered divine level Laws, leaving only the God of War’s youngest divine daughter as the one god who was actually good at fighting. And this allowed another of Aalam’s clones to teleport there and kill all of them other than Bellessia, who he was saving for his sister.
By leaving Bellessia alive, they hid the fact they knew about the Love Turned To Hate, Blood Thicker Than Water Array. By using the abundant power available from his Revenge of the Fallen skill, they hadn’t revealed the true rank of his energy. And, by not taking the chance of forcibly breaking the bonds between the Huntsman and the other gods they were targeting to make things easier, they’d hidden Mila’s ability to steal the identities and divine power of gods.
But still, Aalam had lost a clone, one containing all of his wind, light, and time element soulstructures, and having a fifth of his soul completely destroyed like that had really, really hurt.
Combining his clones and then traveling along with Mila, whose main body had stayed with his, through a few elemental universes—one made of pure abstract fire and lightning populated by long living strings of electric flame and another of pure elemental darkness, populated by hidden spirits of shadow—they arrived at the new home universe of the United Federation of Planets, the Twelve Element Spirit Universe, a large size universe connected to no other material universes but instead to twelve medium-sized elemental universes, one of each element.
And there they teleported to their penthouse condo and started making use of their gathered primal energy.
“I am a ruler, and I protect my people, attempting to make sure they are healthy and live under fair rules,” Aalam began, the primal energy in his soul quickly starting to transform. “But I hate administrative work, and I have no desire to rule in a day to day fashion, so I will always get someone else to do that part of the job for me.”
It took about a minute, but then the primal energy finished transforming and Aalam had his fifth oath.
Oath of the Absent Autocrat
You are the ultimate ruler of a large Territory, and you care about your subjects, but you dislike dealing with people and the minutia of governance, so you empower others to do that for you
Benefits:
Exceptionally increase the power of noble category skills
Exceptionally increase control over your Territory
Grant 12.5% of your Territory control to those you allow to govern for you, up to your base Soul stat divided by 12^6, currently 255
Benefits to the citizens of Territories you control increased by 50%
Limitations:
Personally dealing with the management of your Territory when the task could be better handled by a subordinate will temporarily shackle your soul, the more time you spend the worse the shackles and the longer they will last
Then it was Mila’s turn, and she began to speak the words of her fourth oath out loud.
“I don’t like to lead, but I will take charge if there is something I want to change.
“I can’t help myself.
“But I would much rather someone else do the work for me, so I find capable subordinates and support them so they don’t need me to interfere.”
It then took about the same amount of time for her oath to form.
Oath of the Unenthusiastic Executive
You don’t like being the top executive in a force, or even an executive at all if you can help it, but you can’t help but take charge or meddle if you see something which can be improved
Benefits:
Increase the effectiveness of the Vitality, Spirit, and Aura stats by 500%
Seriously increase the efficiency of granting power to others
Seriously increase the efficiency of gaining power from others
Limitations:
If you see something you want to change in a force you have a controlling interest in and don’t attempt to change it, your soul will be shackled, the stronger your urge to make the change the stronger the shackles and the longer they will last
Aalam’s oath would improve most of his skills at B rank, and all of his skills once he advanced to A rank given how he was transforming all his not inherently noble category skills to also use natural energy, and it would also give him more control over his Territory, allowing him to more easily modify his Territory effects while also increasing the power of his minor omniscience and omnipotence when within universes he controlled.
More important, however, it also boosted the power of his Territory effects and gave part of his Territory control, including his minor omniscience and omnipotence, to those they put in charge of managing his Territory, a benefit Mila could use to keep competent leaders in power for longer as it would make advancing their ranks and thus their lifespans much easier, minor omniscience and omnipotence extremely helpful for stabilizing breakthroughs.
Mila’s oath then similarly also increased her ability to empower others to do her bidding, increasing the power of Vanar, Uvandra, and the three other priests Mila had recently chosen by quite a bit while lowering the amount of energy she had to expend to keep up the priesthoods of the gods whose identities she’d taken, all without any cost to herself. And it also helped her accumulate faith energy more efficiently as well.
With their new oaths formed, they then used some of the remaining primal energy to level up, but not by much as leveling didn’t provide many benefits with their stats already maxed out, so most of the primal energy instead went to others in the United Federation of Planets to form their own oaths.
“I’m badly injured, which will delay the rest of our plans.” Aalam sat down on the room’s main couch, dragging Mila down to sit next to him. “And, to heal faster, the best thing for me will be to craft and study the universe, which, from experience, will definitely distract me.
“Before that happens, however, given you are not currently having an epiphany from the success of your latest plan, I think we should have that talk you’ve been planning to delay.”
It wasn’t obvious on her face, and her aura, as usual, didn’t show a thing, but, through their bond, Aalam could sense his wife’s panic. And she quickly started talking. “Or, instead, we could start interrogating the souls of the gods we killed, and the fragment of an undead god’s soul which was apparently attached to one of the army members. That would be fun, right? We could finally understand the undead better.”
In response, however, Aalam just smiled and closed off her connection to his Soul Laboratory and Soulbound Afterlife soulstructures, where the souls in question were trapped under his complete control.
“Mila, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.” Aalam hugged his wife, whispering the words softly into her ear. “But I do think it would be healthy to do so.”
Comments
андрей ткач
Thanks for the chapter!
андрей ткач
lol
nugitoBambino
Love it! Yeah, your reasoning makes perfect sense. I'm now sorta curious on the base mechisms behind underlords that this seems to improve, but that's an aside lol :)
nugitoBambino
Ah gotcha! My headcanon was that enlightenment is a sliding scale / has ranks and stacking those chances would create an OP level of enlightenment, so I utilized it frequently in theory-crafting. But yeah, if it's a binary state then it makes sense to limit those. Might I suggest a replacement of "[X-Modifier] increase the connection between you and those that rule in your name" - makes sense thematically for this oath that Aalam would get a boost to empowering his 'system' which would involve putting the right people in charge in many cases. re: Mila's Oath. Yes! I didn't spend as much time obsessing over this one but on the first read last week my intuition liked it, and my opinion hasn't changed looking at it more closely now. I think there are interesting constraints on it as Mila would technically be considered the one with a controlling interest in organizations where she's using her trickster abilities to replace a dead leader, and balancing the need to meddle and improve while maintaining her disguise I think is quite interesting for her (even if that only remains a theoretical idea instead of a plot point). From a 'muchkin gamer' perspective it's not a fantastic oath given that constraint being at odds with her Trickster role, but that's what makes me like it narratively: it feels true to Mila even if the oath isn't the exact perfect one she would have wanted herself to get (which harkens back to when we first learned about oaths and the choice to not tell most youngsters to keep them uninfluenced). With Aalam, I'm much less concerned about the oaths being 'too perfect' for his build in terms of contraints, because it can be read as Aalam having an 'intrinsic character trait' of optimization (a combination of his 'god-touched' mentality, and traits we saw early novel in the novel) and him generally being pretty in-tune with himself as a well self-actualized individual. It's also already a major plot point that Aalam's intrinsic nature is something that isn't particularly contradictory or problematic (with his Oath of the Villain's Clean Vengeance now in place) as we saw in his Id states, so giving him pretty light constraints, or things that are natural for him to do regardless, makes sense to me. Whereas, for Mila, we've seen a lot of personal contradiction (which is completely normal but is relevant here), and her oaths containing things that she doesn't love, but she would agree are deeply true to her character, works quite well for me.
Thirteen Life Legion
Okay. I updated the oath to more what I think it should be. (And also moved the stat bonuses to Aalam's Oath of the Acceptant God Touched.) Aalam likes systems, but that's actually more of a Mila thing than a him thing. When it comes to ruling, Aalam, in my mind at least, is more hands off than that. He puts someone in charge he trusts, monitors that person a bit to know if he should replace them, and otherwise is almost completely hands off. A big part of how he rules, however, is being available to fix problems only he can. Need a new magical AI to help run and monitor a universe, the manager of said universe can ask Aalam to make one. Don't want people killing each other in a universe for primal energy, ask Aalam to come up with an alternative and receive the plans for a primal energy farm capable of producing enough primal energy stones that they can act as the universe's currency. Aalam has a huge influence on his Territory, but it is less about automation and more about invention.
Thirteen Life Legion
The word absolute is definitely wrong. It should probably be ultimate instead. And you make a good point on how Aalam actually operates. (This is also my least favorite of Aalam's oaths.) And, I will admit, your oath here is probably better. Let me think for a bit and come up with something better, probably leaning into your design. I just don't want to have another oath that gives him enlightenment chances. Too many of those are kind of useless. Does Mila's seem good to you?
nugitoBambino
Ok, I've been thinking about this on and off all week, and I gotta say I don't love Aalam's oath here. I don't disagree with any of the individual pieces as they pertain to Aalam (he neither wants to lead but is ultimately responsible for a bunch of land/people and is the strongest territory-owner ever seen for his rank), but taken together they seem a bit weird to him. I.e. the limitations for this 'absent autocrat oath' include an inability to 'give up absolute power' which makes it sound like he can't give any power up to 'under lords' like Diana, and 'spend time dealing with people' seems like he just decided to abdicate responsibility to not deal with it. I'm sure that's not how it's intended, but it's how it reads to me and feels counter-intuitive to making a big realization about yourself to power the oath, as these aspects of Aalam feel rather superficial. I brainstormed a couple of ideas on the train this week, and here is an alternate I think could work better: "oath of the systematic sovereign: You are the ultimate leader of a large territory and desire to see it well run, but you handle systems and automation far better than people and minutia and you know it. Benefits: (I) boost noble skills (ii) increase territory control (iii) successfully implementing automated systems that make your territory run more efficiently without your oversight has a slight chance to cause enlightenment. Limitations: dealing with people or situations repeatedly in regards to your territory when you could have developed a systemic approach to handle the problem will shackle your soul." Mind you, I don't think this is the only Oath or kind of oath that would deal with Aalam / offer noble category bonuses. Hell, I came up with a whole headcanon of like 4 noble-category oaths and the use of the spirit smith skill to create city spirits (my commute is like an hour each way on the train and I got way too into this on Wednesday morning lmao). But primarily, I would love to see the oaths used as a vehicle for character development since that's what they seem to be lore-wise, and what we've already seen from "acceptant god-touched" and where Mila's arc seems to be heading. "Absent Autocrat" feels like Aalam has chosen to settle as a mid-to-low-end leader instead of leveraging his unique advantages to manage his territory in a way that works for him.
Anonymonous
The only thing Mila fears is an honest discussion of her feelings. It's oath worthy at this point
