Gustavius

  Gustavius and his twin finished putting their energy into the formation built around the portal on Earth, an expensive Yin Yang Portal Expansion Array built around the much cheaper, at least in materials, Love Turned To Hate, Blood Thicker Than Water Array prefilled with their sister’s energy, and the B rank portal to the Heavenly Soul Universe rapidly expanded to God rank.

  The two of them then rushed in and saw the God rank golem that had beaten back the A ranks they had tried to send through previously.

  Before they could attack the golem, however, the artifact executed what must have been a preprogrammed direction, rushing through the portal they’d just entered from, and, only a few milliseconds later, the portal began to rapidly decrease in power.

  How exactly the golem had destroyed their array formations, Gustavius wasn’t sure. What he was sure of, however, was that he and his sister had fallen for a trap, so he readied himself to be attacked.

  For the next fifteen minutes, however, no attacks came, and anger started to grow in Gustavius’s heart. Then, when a quick fly around the universe revealed there were no humans or other intelligent races living anywhere, as they had expected would most likely be the case, he allowed his anger to rise to the surface and blew up a couple solar systems in his rage.

  The United Federation of Planets had apparently abandoned the Heavenly Soul Universe a long time before, and then they’d used it to trap the two of them as the golem had forced their family to send gods in to check.

  Sure, it wouldn’t take long for one of them to conquer the entire Small size universe. They were children of Primordius, experts in natural energy and noble category skills. But, without outside interference, it would take hundreds of years for them to increase the power of the portal to Earth to a level they could travel through it, and even longer if there was any active interference.

  * * *

  Kavon

  “…So, we have decided to stop paying the System to keep hiding Earth and won’t be joining the competition to try and reclaim it.”

  Kavon Kemizle, the Law Master, smiled slightly as he finished watching the public System announcement given by the reincarnated elder sister of the Heavenly Spark Soul King.

  One of his mother’s follower gods with the Watcher divine role had seen a recording of the Lady of Hellwater and the Lord of Twilight Flame being trapped in the Heavenly Soul Universe, a golem coming out of the portal on the planet right after they went through and self-destructing in an incredibly contained way to destroy their followers and the formations they’d set up without damaging the planet. So, it was pretty obvious what the United Federation of Planets was planning.

  And it was going to work.

  He at least would be joining the fun on Earth, helping his faction to fight for the incredibly valuable planet, and, if anyone other than the Primordial Humans won, they wouldn’t do anything to help the two trapped gods escape.

  Meanwhile, given the large bounties on every member of the Primordial Humans Faction’s heads, they couldn’t risk fighting for the planet unless the God of War joined in or the Primordial Sovereign returned from his original universe, but that would open them up to attacks from the Undead.

  * * *

  Mila

  The Courtesan, The Tactician, the Guardian, The Messenger, The Ruler, The Smith, The Actor, The Merchant, The Healer, The Reaper, The Watcher, and The Prophet, these were the twelve divine roles Mila was aiming for, and for each she had at least a peak grade Law Scarab of the corresponding divine role Law as well as a corresponding skill.

  More important, however, for each she also had a target, a god for the United Federation of Planets to kill so she could absorb their divine power and take over their faith energy generation.

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  For The Merchant divine role, Perival, the man most central to the Prime Material’s inexhaustible slave trade. For The Tactician divine role, Carina, the last remaining of the gods who’d slaughtered Nana Xara’s family. Et cetera, et cetera.

  Carina especially, with half the resources Mila’d managed to earn in her Perival disguise, was the one she was most looking forward to. But the United Federation of Planets had a treaty with the Lady of Laws’ faction, and, more important, Carina was a powerful and intelligent fighter, not someone they should risk trying to kill until they had more experience.

  To that end, taking advantage of the chaos caused by Earth’s reveal to the wider Prime Material, the United Federation of Planets had three targets to take down before the deadline for the Primordial Humans’ subfactions’ surrender timeline was over.

  First was King Selrah, an independent god with The Ruler divine role and a master of the Law of Lightning, a petty tyrant who’d committed genocide a couple times, forcibly broke up couples to add women to his harem several million times, and repeatedly raised powerful bird monsters to A rank just to take all their feathers and then kill them. The last part especially angered Immortalia, and, while the goddess wasn’t exactly the most saintly being in the universe, Mila also disliked the casual cruelty and felt the Prime Material would be better off without the god in it.

  Second was Bellatrix La’Vore, The Mistress of Glitz and Glamour, an elven goddess with The Actor divine role and a mastery of the light element. She was nowhere near as bad as Selrah, only having had several million people killed for petty reasons during her lifetime. But she owned and ran the largest media empire in the Prime Material, and she’d been suppressing the United Federation of Planets' latest announcements.

  Finally, third, there was Ralphon Tari, a human god of The Smith divine role with mastery over the metal element. He actually wasn’t that bad of a person, at least as far as gods went, and he wasn’t even part of the Primordial Humans faction, but, owing a debt to the Master of the Eternal Forge, he’d joined the Primordial Humans for the war between them and the United Federation of Planets, so it was his bad luck he had the necessary divine role and Law mastery for what Mila needed.

  If Mila was going to increase the power of her cultivation cores, she needed balance and purity of elements, and this meant all the gods she absorbed had to be of about the same level of power, with only one divine role and a divine level Law of the divine role’s corresponding element.

  Perival, for example, was a master of the darkness element along with having the divine role of The Merchant, and Carina was a master of the water element along with having the divine role of The Tactician.

  This type of god, having advanced to divinity through both the path of faith and the path of Laws, albeit with the weakest form of each, was the most common type in the Prime Material, so for most of her divine roles she had more than one choice. But this also meant she couldn’t absorb the power of most of the gods the United Federation of Planets considered their main enemies, all the children of Primordius for example having advanced to divinity with at least three Laws and a combination of divine roles.

  It did mean, however, that the gods most important for them to target were also the gods they had the best chance of killing quietly, with even the System not realizing their deaths due to the help of the Endless Seal, and this was important.

  Moving toward their goals before their enemies could confirm they’d reached the point of being able to slay gods was key to other factions not getting involved too early and ruining their plans.

  And it was also key for her gaining the power necessary to help get the very specific resources Aalam would need for advancing to A rank the way he wanted to.

  * * *

  Ralphon

  Ralphon panicked as he found himself in a foreign universe, a sealing artifact blocking him from being able to access the System or flee, and the universe itself seemingly trying to kill him. Then his contract with Perival broke, with him somehow gaining the punishment, and he realized he was affected by multiple diseases, one of which somehow had six divine level Laws in its makeup.

  Before he could do anything, five more of his contracts broke, lowering his power even more, and then the Heavenly Spark Soul King was in front of him, radiating an Aura stat at least an entire order of magnitude greater than the average god, and the next thing he knew part of his right leg was gone with a single swing of the incredibly sharp and poisonous knife in the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s right hand.

  Curse energy started to affect him, as well as various kinds of suppression arrays, as the poison also took effect, and, with only five more swipes of the weapon, he was dead.

  He hadn’t even had time to try and figure out just how the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s stats had grown so high so fast.

  * * *

  Aalam

  Aalam looked down at their latest victim, the fourth god they’d quietly killed, as he raised his hand and was high-fived by his wife. Then he looked over at Immortalia, who was watching as Mila absorbed the god’s power.

  His master was still B rank, just like him, with maximized stats from all the purified nascent energy they’d received from Mila’s deal with the Primordial Humans—the resource the most important of everything they’d traded for despite the Master of the Eternal Forge having been led to think otherwise—and Aalam was pretty sure she’d annihilate him in a fair fight.

  Granted, he’d never fight fair if he could help it. He wasn’t an idiot. But it did go to show the true power scale they were dealing with.

  Not having her boosts to her stats from faith energy or even her Laws infusing her aura, his master was a few levels weaker than she’d been at her peak, even if she was stronger now than she’d been as an A rank before her original ascension, and in the past there had been other gods who exceeded her might, especially the God of War under Aalam’s grandfather and the Silent Shadow, the teacher of the Lady of Laws.

  And it had been 45 billion years since then, with old gods having fallen and new gods risen, so there were likely now other gods who’d reached a similar level of power as well.

  In short, while Aalam and Mila could now kill gods, there was a lot of work to do before the United Federation of Planets could be considered safe.