Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 133: A Gift From a C Rank
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 23:26:00 +0000 UTCBothil
“So, is there anyone promising in this backwater?” the emissary from the Hewin Kingdom asked, not even bothering to look at Bothil and instead disinterestedly gazing out over the crowd which had gathered in Toril’s largest arena, waiting for the final round of recruitment testing.
“Yes, Lord.” Bothil made sure to bow deeply as he brought drinks for the emissary and the Violet Mountain Sect’s recruiter. “Mr. Epecteos has recently taken an apprentice, a descendent of his and a prostitute he slept with a couple hundred years ago, and she is particularly talented, having passed the seventh mark.”
Every six years, before the arrival of the recruiters from the Violet Mountain Sect and the various other forces the Violet Mountain Sect allowed to exist in the Carium Galaxy Cluster, tests for F rank youths under the age of 30 were performed through the soul net shared between planet Toril and Lord Epecteos’s five F rank worlds, standardized tests performed by the proprietary software of the Violet Mountain Sect.
These tests consisted of a couple monster encounters, fighting both solo and in groups, as well as a couple war scenarios against simulations of other cultivators. The Violet Mountain Sect had no interest in non-combat cultivators from the outside, so the tests were fully focused on evaluating the youths’ abilities when it came to fighting.
From these tests, a total of nine marks were possible, but gaining each subsequent mark was exponentially more difficult, and six marks was the cut off to be considered for an outer sect disciple position in the Violet Mountain Sect. Seven marks would allow a cultivator to become an outer sect disciple able to live in the Violet Mountain Blessed Land. And eight marks meant a cultivator could become an inner sect disciple and thus be given far more resources.
Finally, the exalted nine marks meant a cultivator could become a core disciple of the Violet Mountain sect, possibly even rising to C rank in the future.
During Bothil’s two hundred year tenure on planet Toril, he’d only seen one young cultivator receive 6 marks, but Lord Epecteos’s great-granddaughter was far, far more impressive.
“The apprentice of a D rank and only capable of getting seven marks.” The emissary from the Hewin Kingdom, an E rank human man with pale skin, red hair, and green eyes scoffed as he looked over at Bothil, his opulent green robes shimmering from the sun shining down onto the open arena’s seating.
“That can't be right.” The Violet Mountain Sect’s recruiter, a human with the same coloration and rank as the emissary, but with less gaudy clothing, sounded puzzled. “While he’s an unaligned D rank, Epecteos Ka’Dravone is, as far as I know, as strong or stronger than the most powerful D ranks of my sect. Even if it was his own descendant, any disciple he’d be willing to take on should be capable of at least eight marks.”
“Epecteos is old,” the emissary from the Hewin Kingdom interjected before Bothil could speak. “He’s going to die in a few hundred years at most, so why not train his most talented descendant, even if their talent is low.”
“Ah, yes.” The recruiter nodded, as if the emissary’s flawed logic made perfect sense and Bothil felt troubled.
If he said what he’d been planning now, both men would look foolish, but if he didn’t say anything, they would notice within the next hour anyway and it would be even worse.
“Ms. Ka’Dravone is a utility cultivator.”
“It’s a completely useless act and Epecteos is getting senile if he thinks—” the emissary continued, speaking over Bothil and not listening to what he was saying at all, but then he stopped as a black and purple hand suddenly wrapped around his throat.
“Bothil,” Lord Epecteos asked, having appeared from stealth to effortlessly lift the emissary, who’d been sitting in the seat normally reserved for the lord in the arena’s lord’s box, into the air by his throat. “Would there be any repercussions if I killed Kalin’s emissary?”
Kalin Hewin was one of the eighteen elders of the Violet Mountain Sect and the king of the Hewin Kingdom, so almost everyone in the Carium Galaxy Cluster would respectfully refer to him as King Hewin, but Lord Epecteos didn’t like the man, and he was personally powerful, so he never saw the need to be respectful, even in public.
“Not to you, My Lord, but there might be negative effects for Ms. Sarra.”
“The girl eats souls. What if I considered the soul of this brat a gift from Kalin for my descendant joining his Violet Mountain Sect as a core disciple?” Lord Epecteos looked at the recruiter from the Violet Mountain Sect and then back at Bothil. “I imagine even an idiot of an E rank would still be tastier than the monsters she normally snacks on.”
Bothil had to think for a few seconds, as the case had never really come up before. “That might be acceptable, My Lord, but it still might cause enmity.”
“Excuse me, Lord Epecteos.” The recruiter from the Violet Mountain Sect sounded as respectful to the powerful D rank currently asphyxiating the Hewin Kingdom’s emissary as Bothil had when talking to him. “Did I correctly hear from your butler that your descendant achieved seven marks as a utility cultivator?”
“Yes.” Epecteos sat down in his seat while still slowly choking the Hewin Kingdom’s emissary to death with his right hand, a large smile on his face. “My great-granddaughter has the Uncommon grade class Lawyer, a third of her skills specialized for making contracts, and her subspecialty is healing magic. She is my blood, however, so she already has two Law Larvae.”
“Tw-Two Law Larvae?”
Bothil risked looking up and he could see the shock on the recruiter’s face. For someone who started with an Uncommon grade class at F rank, only a high grade Law Egg was required to advance to E rank, while advancing to D rank would only need a middle grade Law Larva. Ms. Sarra, as an F rank, was just half a step away from qualifying for her D rank class, and that was, as far as Bothil knew, rare even for core disciples of the Violet Mountain Sect.
“And she’s a healer as well?”
“Her second Law Larva specializes in healing, so I had Bothil go out and get her the Triforce Healing skill.” Lord Epecteos laughed. “As for her fighting skills, she got to level 33 on her own while lost in the forests of Torem. I only had a few months to polish them before your recruitment event started, but she still performed adequately.”
The Violet Mountain Sect recruiter looked down at the arena floor, where seventeen young cultivators were standing in a line, all those who had earned at least five marks in the soul net testing. “Which one is she?”
“The pretty one who looks like me.”
Lord Epecteos’s words were misleading and Bothil could see the Violet Mountain Sect recruiter looking confused, so he pointed at Ms. Sarra, a young woman who looked almost nothing like Epecteos.
She was average height for a woman, with long legs and a lithe yet shapely figure, extremely pretty. Three quarters human, her skin was one of the paler human shades with patterns of light brown covering her entire body, and she had long forest green hair flowing down to the middle of her back, ten horns about half the size of a full jinn’s pointing out from between her curls. Probably the most attractive thing about her, however, at least to Bothil’s judgement, were her large amber eyes.
“Wow.” Looking at Ms. Sarra, the recruiter only had that to say, which, over the last couple months she’d been staying with Lord Epecteos, Bothil had come to find was the normal reaction.
He wasn’t positive, but, from several clues he’d received, he was pretty sure Ms. Sarra had awakened to a Succubus line bloodline, so she had that effect on most men.
“You said she eats souls?” The Violet Mountain Sect recruiter turned to look at Epecteos as the first individual from the group on the arena floor started to demonstrate his power, fighting against a monster equivalent to the one he’d beaten one on one in the soul net.
“Yes.” Epecteos’s face grew slightly somber. “She nearly died when going hunting to kill a beast to advance her race to F rank.” He then smiled again. “But in exchange for not dying she awoke to a powerful bloodline, which allowed her to awaken a racial ability when she actually did advance the rank of her race. And it is a really good one, allowing her to permanently increase her Soul stat by regularly consuming souls.”
Lord Epecteos then casually squeezed the throat of the Hewin Kingdom’s emissary a bit tighter, breaking the man’s neck, and summoned out a small ornate bone and iron box from his spatial storage ring, capturing the man’s soul inside. “She’s yet to taste the soul of an E rank cultivator, though.
“I really must thank Kalin for his gift.”
