Immortalia

  “Can we stop now?”

  Immortalia, floating in the air of the B rank planet in her human form—correctly looking like a goddess with her long red and black hair, golden eyes, and the skin tone and figure she’d copied from studying Mila—glanced down at Silvia Davies, a psyforce non-combat specialist and the physically weakest of the United Federation of Planets' now 557 B ranks. Then she looked at the other B ranks on the field and the several extreme C rank talents, all of whom were running through a rather fun obstacle course she’d designed while wearing specialized armors she’d had Aalam make, armors that would randomly electrocute their wearers unless they perfectly moved their energies through the armors’ rapidly moving channels.

  It was a fun exercise she’d designed back when she was training her daughter, and she’d been having her new apprentice and his subordinates go through it for the last few weeks without any rest.

  Aalam, being the insanely talented individual he was, had taken to the training like a fish to water, not slowed down by his divine level armor at all until he’d modified its difficulty to the point Immortalia judged most newly ascended gods would be constantly on the floor, but this wasn’t that surprising given he had a Divine grade adept class that helped him with energy control. And Mila’s similar ease was not surprising given her main class allowed her to share his class’s effects.

  No, the true shocks to Immortalia were Aalam’s head knight, his sister, and most of the cultivators who were descended from those born on Earth.

  The head knight was a special case, his energy control combined with an ease with weapons and movement none of the others shared, but it was obvious his true talent was physical movement, not energy control, so it was impressive he was able to keep up with the Earthlings, as they all seemed to be energy control savants.

  The Earthlings only made up a little more than 10% of the United Federation of Planets’ B ranks, most coming from those Aalam had tricked into becoming his sister’s bloodsworn during the C rank Universal Tournament, and a good 20% of those bloodsworn were demigods, yet it was the Earthlings, all of whom were younger than 10,368 years, who had the best energy control of the group. And Diana Alvaro, the effectively youngest of everyone she was training and not yet B rank, was particularly impressive, somehow managing to control the mana from 72 Colossal size mana wells.

  “No.” Immortalia pointed at Vanar Tedros, still C rank as his race advancement was dependent on Diana’s, who, in his polymorphed human form, was trying to climb out of the lava almost every one of her current students had fallen into at some point in the last few weeks, a process made difficult by being repeatedly electrocuted by power he could not block. Immortalia had asked Aalam to turn up the man’s armor’s difficulty to a level befitting his much higher age compared to most of her other students, expecting him to complain, but he was instead impressing her with his work ethic. “If he’s not giving up, why would you?”

  “Because he’s a stubborn warrior and I’m an administrator.” The woman ran off, saying the words under her breath even as she continued the training, and Immortalia just smiled.

  She didn’t know how many, but, so long as they weren’t slaughtered, there would definitely be gods rising up from this batch, and Silvia Davies, as one of the few to already have an early grade Law Dragon level Law, just four grades lower than the True Law level required for becoming a god through the Law path, was definitely one of the top candidates, having a much higher chance than Immortalia’s apprentice or the other three who had stupidly chosen to maximize the power of their classes, requiring them to maximize the power of everything else as well to achieve immortality.

  Still, compared to her now long-dead son-in-law, the only monster to ever advance using the method her apprentice was attempting, they were more than on the right track, so she was pretty excited.

  “Aalam, raise your wife’s armor’s difficulty level by two.”

  As she watched her apprentice quickly comply, and Mila’s main body fall off the 10 cm wide beam she’d been running over into the lava below, she couldn’t help but smile.

  Her apprentice’s power was growing, and his level of control over faith energy was already approaching her own thanks to his fifth class, but his wife’s power, with her extreme control over faith energy that exceeded even Aalam’s control over natural energy, his own specialty, by quite a bit, was growing fast to close the gap between them, especially with the woman’s plan to advance her cultivation cores using the divine power of twelve specific gods they were already planning on killing.

  So, to widen that gap again further and keep her apprentice in the dominant position in terms of raw might in his relationship, something he desperately needed in order to keep such a woman if Immortalia’s experience was anything to go by, she’d have to help him make full use of the first effect of his fifth class, teaching him some of her true secret knowledge.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Afterlife Ruler (B-Divine)

  The master of a soulbound afterlife and a king of souls

  Effects:

  Seriously increase your control over all effects of your soulbound afterlife

  Increase the grade of any soul lord armor line racial ability by one grade so long as it is Divine grade or lower

  Greatly increase control over faith energy

  Skill slots:

  6

  May not learn skills of the following categories:

  NA

  Stat bonuses per level:

  No longer relevant

  Requirements:

  3 peak grade Law Scarabs of the life, death, space, and time elements, has a race with maximum stats equivalent to or above the maximum stats of a Supreme grade race, has maximized all stats while at C rank, has increased stat effectiveness of all stats by at least 1500%, has a soul lord king variant race, has a Divine grade soulbound afterlife racial ability, has the Power of Divinity (Divine) racial ability, has control over faith energy

  Almost every pantheon of gods had an afterlife, a hidden minor dimension where souls of believers could be stored after the deaths of their bodies, and the main reasons for this were obvious. Only truesouls reincarnated, leaving behind all the power a soul contained upon the soul’s dissipation, so an afterlife was a means to recover a good chunk of the natural resources and nascent energy used by the souls it housed. And unbound souls could also continue to generate faith energy, so keeping the souls of believers from dissipating for a longer period of time was useful to maintain a stable source of the energy required for maximizing divine power.

  There was an additional hidden benefit of controlling an afterlife, however, one Aalam especially would be able to make use of with his afterlife being an internal soulstructure instead of an external dimension, and that was just how much easier souls without bodies were to analyze.

  Aalam had already made use of this effect a bit with his soul laboratory soulstructure, studying the construction and operations of the souls of those he’d killed, but an afterlife worked slightly different. While a soul laboratory was designed to help analyze the construction and energies of a soul, an afterlife was designed to keep all souls inside it connected to whatever universe the afterlife was attached to, making it far easier to study the Laws of all souls inside. And this, for someone like her apprentice, was an absolute goldmine, which is why she’d highly recommended the class when he’d brought up its existence.

  “Is there a reason you’re working them so hard?” Floating down from space, Joma La’Vordi, the only A rank in the United Federation of Planets, stopped right next to Immortalia, her eyes especially focused on her daughter struggling on the obstacle course down below, Immortalia having raised the difficulty for the young woman to the same level as the most advanced of the core Earthlings not benefiting from Aalam’s adept class, resulting in the demigoddess struggling quite a bit.

  “At higher ranks, noticeable power increases become slower to achieve, making it easier to slack off, so outward motivating factors are often needed if one wants to raise a goddess.” Immortalia disappeared in a flash of fire and lightning, reappearing next to Aalam who was carefully moving between some rather sharp bladed deathtraps on his 61,362nd lap. “Aalam, I need the remaining A rank armor.”

  Not missing a beat, Aalam teleported the armor from his personal storage space into her outstretched hand, the benefit of having extra minds, and Immortalia realized things had become too easy for him again.

  “Up two levels for yourself, Aalam.”

  Then, as Aalam complied and his head was almost cut off by a spinning saw blade, Immortalia appeared back next to Joma, holding out the armor to the young A rank.

  “Speaking of people growing lazy, put this on and go join them down below. Just because your energy control is good as an alchemist, it doesn’t mean you can’t get better.”

  The Alchemist of the Deep Woods seemed to consider not following her orders for a second, so Immortalia covered the woman with her aura, one filled with the power of chaos and six True Laws thanks to her new B rank race’s racial abilities and rather extreme affinities for her main elements, allowing her to return her Laws to almost their peak, and the young alchemist quickly thought better of her indecision.

  Refocusing on all the children down below, especially Vanar Tedros, Diana Alvaro, Isaiah Kent, Li Mila, and her own apprentice, all of whom—with their talents, hard work, and overpowered racial abilities—had the potential to permanently surpass her in the future, Immortalia realized she needed more training of her own.

  Raising two new Laws to the divine level and upgrading her race were things she’d already done, the former billions of years ago, and it was unlikely she could get much better at anything to do with energy or movement control at her age, but, as Aalam and Mila had shown, resources could be just as important. Advancing Aalam’s Power of Order racial ability, for example, had more than doubled most of her apprentice’s stats, greatly speeding up his other types of training and raising the bar of where he would start to hit bottlenecks.

  So, maybe it would be a good idea for her to delay advancing to A rank for a bit?

  With the resources Mila had conned out of the Primordial Humans, especially the pure refined nascent energy that could allow a monster to quickly maximize her stats without thousands of years of breaking down impurities from normal treasures, Immortalia could reach A rank in a couple decades, far, far faster than anyone down below, but she, like her apprentice, also had a Divine grade advancement of the Genetic Thief bloodline, so there might be a better race advancement than the one she was planning for.

  “Hmm.” Immortalia thought to herself. “Maybe I should ask the kids to see if they have any ideas.”