Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 188: Inheritance
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 23:50:45 +0000 UTCAalam
Getting to look at the inside of the blessed land with his own eyes, Aalam felt it was beautiful. Every point on the hemisphere, not including the ground, was linked to a different point, so looking up you could see the ground and looking out across the horizon you could see the entire blessed land over and over and over again, the entire area spatially closed off.
To Aalam, however, it was obvious the space wasn’t a hemisphere, but a sphere in full. It was just that the other half was underground.
The land above the ground had the same area as Hong Kong, half covered by skyscrapers and the other half by a huge colorless translucent crystal mountain and a large lake, so the area underground was almost certainly large, yet the Violet Mountain Sect could only access maybe 15% of it, which meant there might be more to the blessed land than everyone thought.
Coolest of all, however, to Aalam at least, was the blessed land’s lighting. The main source of light in the dimension was some sort of glowing kilometer-wide sphere at the center of the crystal mountain, so everything looked like it was under a blacklight instead of what he was used to on Earth.
Congratulations!
Your Law Pupa of Electromagnetic Radiation has advanced to middle grade.
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Magic +1536, Spirit +768, Soul +768
Spirit is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Constructor ability activated.
Free stats +768
Soul is already at maximum.
Nascent Energy Constructor ability activated.
Free stats +768
With his curse having already killed almost everyone on the planet, including quite a few C ranks, and his formations dragging their souls to a short distance from him, Aalam had been able to absorb over 70% of the primal energy from everyone who’d died. And this, while also earning him a high level Hunter of Sentients boon, had raised his level to the maximum for E rank, greatly increasing his stats.
As for all the excess primal energy, quite a bit had gone into the forging of the 1.5 meter double-bladed violet sword on his back, but most of it was somehow still within his soul, at all times slowly dissipating. But, at the rate it was leaving him, it wouldn’t be fully gone for another 500 years or so.
Ignoring all the dead bodies, Aalam used Telekinesis to fly toward the crystal mountain, landing at its base. Then, taking out a key Mila’d stolen from the same safe in the Violet Mountain Lord’s residence as the violet titanium quintessence, a dull bronze orb, he held it up before the mountain and a large passageway opened up, big enough for twenty humans to walk through at once.
Walking down the passage, he arrived at a large room lit by the violet light shining down through the crystal ceiling and, judging from the crystal chair on the raised dais, it was probably some kind of throne room. Aalam, however, wasn’t that interested in the room itself as Mila had already learned about it by spying on some elders with her sensory domain.
Instead, he was intrigued by the fact there were three exits to the room other than the one he came in—one behind the throne, one to the left of the hall, and one to the right—when from what Mila learned there should have only been two, the ones to the right and left.
The one to the left was supposed to lead to the blessed land’s inheritance site, which the Violet Mountain Sect hadn’t allowed anyone to access for over several million years, while the one to the right was to a special time-sealed storage chamber where the Violet Mountain Sect stored its most valuable perishable natural treasures, such as fruits for racial upgrades and the like.
The one behind the throne, however, was blocked not by a door but by more of the crystal which made up the walls of the rest of the room, and Aalam was only able to find it through the use of his Sensory Domain, so it was likely no member of the Violet Mountain Sect had ever found its existence.
Without thinking about it much more, Aalam headed to the left, walking down a slightly curving hallway for a little over half a kilometer. And there he arrived at a much smaller octagonal room with a meter high crystal pillar in the center and a crystal orb on top, which he placed his left hand on, pouring in his qi, mana, and psyforce.
“What are you? God or E rank?”
To his right, seemingly walking directly out of the crystal walls, appeared a rather large beast, at least four meters tall. It looked kind of like a wolf, only it had antlers like an elk, its face was wide, and its front limbs were more like a gorilla’s, opposable thumbs and all.
To Aalam’s senses, it was obviously a hologram of some kind, but he was pretty sure the creature was more than just an illusion, likely the projection of the blessed land’s main AI.
“Why would you think I’m a god?”
“You have no aura.” The creature walked around him, acting like it was taking a better look when in truth the mechanisms hidden behind the room’s walls were scanning him more closely. “Faking an aura is relatively easy. But retracting it to the point of having others judge you as G rank? I’ve never seen anyone other than gods with that ability.”
“Interesting.” Aalam nodded slightly. Having a sublime soul race was supposedly extremely rare, so it made sense even this AI who’d met gods had never seen someone like him. “I’m just an E rank.”
“Monster or cultivator?”
“Monster.”
“Prove it.” The AI’s voice was neutral. “Place a drop of your blood on the sphere.”
Lifting up his left hand from the orb Aalam made a little cut on the tip of his left index finger with the help of his qi and let a single drop of blood fall onto the sphere.
“It seems you weren’t lying. Incubus Emperor variant, E rank, Heroic grade.” The giant hologram nodded. “You barely meet the requirements for the highest inheritance.”
A system message then popped up in front of Aalam’s face.
Please choose which level of Steel Swamp Sorin’s inheritance you would like to challenge.
Your options are as follows:
Basic [Combat]
Elite (Only available to monsters) [Combat]
Core (Only available to middle grade or higher monsters) [Combat]
Full (Only available to high grade monsters) [Artificing, Combat]
Aalam immediately chose to attempt to receive the full inheritance and the AI opened its mouth slightly, showing its teeth in what could either be a grin or some kind of threatening gesture. Aalam couldn’t really tell.
“Alright then.” The AI waved its hand and the nearly indestructible crystal material of the mountain flowed like water, opening up a large hallway to the right, and Aalam followed the AI in.
After about a hundred meters, they arrived in another room, and it reminded Aalam of the rooms for the golem challenges inside the Shadow Thief’s inheritance, perfectly circular with a roughly 600 meter radius and a concave ceiling 70 meters tall at the center and 50 meters at the edges. Only, instead of stone, the room was made of crystal. And, instead of a human-sized stone golem wearing stone armor and holding a stone sword, the golem inside the room was about four meters tall with metal armor and a metal sword.
“This golem is designed to fight against D ranks,” the AI explained from beside him. “If you can survive against it for two minutes, you will have passed the first challenge of my master’s inheritance.”
The huge golem moved toward Aalam at a speed that was about the same as his own and Aalam decided to take the chance to test out the new blade he’d made. So, he drew Epecteos’s Vengeance from his back and swung it up with all his might, meeting the golem’s descending blade.
Sadly, however, it wasn’t a good test. Epecteos’s Vengeance cut through the golem’s blade like butter, and then it cut the golem in half, right through the main core in the golem’s chest.
Disappointed, Aalam telekinetically returned Epecteos’s Vengeance to its straps on his back and turned to the AI, who was staring at the sword.
“Where did you find such a weapon?” There was wonder in the AI’s voice as the destroyed golem disappeared, seemingly having been teleported away, but then it shook its head and its next words sounded serious. “Using such a powerful artifact is against the spirit of the test. For this exam, any artifact beyond Legendary grade has to be one you created yourself.”
Aalam felt confused. “But I did make this weapon myself.”
The AI’s large pupils expanded slightly. “Do you have a way of proving that?”
“No.”
“Then try again without using the sword.”
Another identical golem appeared and launched a blow at Aalam, but Aalam didn’t find it weird. This was a challenge for the inheritance of an artificer god, and its purpose was for him to show off his skills to the AI, who would judge him, yet, even if he had made the blade himself, using Epecteos’s Vengeance in the challenge didn’t show anything.
So this time Aalam decided to truly show off a little. As the golem didn’t have any aura, it couldn’t block Aalam’s Telekinesis skill from moving its insides, and Aalam could see the golem’s entire structure using his sensory domain.
Due to his study of Alashan’s Book of Runes, it was easy to understand the arrays of the golem’s power distribution, even if the arrays making up its main processor were far, far more complicated, so Aalam just temporarily blocked the energy flowing through one array near the golem’s core and the golem dropped to the ground, completely unmoving.
“How did you—” The AI’s eyes grew even wider, but then its voice turned stern again. “You used your artificing knowledge to disable the golem. This is good, and shows great skill. But this is a test of combat, so please fight as you normally would against a cultivator or another monster.”
The disabled golem disappeared and another golem appeared in its place, moving to attack Aalam, but this time Aalam was growing annoyed, so he glared at the AI. Then, when the golem was about to hit his head with its blade, Aalam exerted a little bit of his will and the golem stopped moving, rose into the air, and was crushed from all sides, its four meter stone and metallic form smushed into a roughly half meter sphere in under a second, which then fell onto the room’s floor.
The AI’s eyes were nearly all pupil by this point, something someone from Earth other than Aalam would have almost certainly found disturbing. Then it muttered something to itself in a language Aalam had never heard before, but which Mila, who was watching everything through his shared senses, was able to translate as “Master, after so many trillions of years, I might have finally found you a successor.”
