LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 18: Rage
Mila
Law Egg gained - Rage
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
Spirit +8, Soul +4
Mila was about to attack the Rollie-Pollie, an uncharacteristically stupid decision, but Aalam screamed at her through their telepathic connection. “Open the door!”
Using the telekinesis skill from his headband, he took out two grenades from the bags of holding on his chest and a mana fruit from the Epic bag of holding on his waist. Then he unpinned the grenades, stuffed them into the fruit, and tossed it at the Rollie-Pollie who’d crushed his legs, unrolled and shaking its head after running at full speed into the wall.
Mila ran, unconsciously using her new Law to increase her speed. Then, as she started to open the western door, the Rollie-Pollie ate the grenade filled fruit and Aalam launched himself through the still opening door with telekinesis.
She pressed the close button and then rolled in after him, the last thing she saw the Rollie-Pollie rolling itself back up into a ball as the door fully closed behind her. Aalam then grabbed her with telekinesis as well and threw the both of them to the other side of the room, where they landed unceremoniously next to the wall.
Instead of speaking, or doing anything about his still bleeding and absolutely crushed legs, Aalam pulled out the Twelve Element Shield and activated it. Then he activated a second barrier from a pendant he was wearing, an artifact he’d gotten from the auction house, before finally falling unconscious.
Mila only then realized what had likely been inside the fruit Aalam had thrown into the room with the Rollie-Pollies and, after activating her own pendant artifact, creating a third barrier around them, she spent a few seconds panicking.
That wasn’t useful, however, so Mila forced herself to calm down, using the power of the Law Egg of Calm to bring herself back under control, and then she started to worry about something she actually had control over, how to save Aalam’s life.
His body would recover in full after the challenge, so all she had to do was keep him alive. Thus, instead of trying to fix his crushed legs, she decided to go with a simpler option. She took off his pants and then used his belt to make an extremely tight tourniquet on his upper left thigh, making sure not to remove his boxers so things wouldn’t be awkward. Then she used her own belt on his upper right thigh.
Only after this did she pull out a previously useless sword one of the other trial takers had brought in to the second Nightmare challenge, one that required a fire element Law Egg to turn into a flaming sword for no practical effect other than to look cool. With her new Law Egg of Rage, however, technically of the fire element, she could activate it, and, while still useless in combat, the flaming sword did have a use in field medicine.
She used it to slowly cut off Aalam’s legs so the flame of the blade could cauterize the resulting wounds. Then she released the tourniquets and placed her hands over his lower belly, above his lower dantian, and sent her qi into him, using her weaker but almost as abundant qi to move his qi through his body, focusing on empowering his bone marrow to make more blood, and, a couple minutes later, he seemed stable.
Law Egg gained - The Healer
Your soul is affected by your understanding of Laws.
All Base Stats +1, Soul + 3
Mila took a second to try and figure out what a Law called The Healer meant, and then another to realize ‘base stats’ meant all stats other than Aura, Attunement, and Luck, but then she realized it had been almost three minutes since Aalam had thrown the fruit she had assumed contained the nuclear bomb, yet the world hadn’t shaken at all.
Five minutes later and still nothing happened.
Then the world shivered, but it only felt like a minor earthquake, and that seemed wrong.
Three more minutes passed and nothing changed.
Then the door into the room buckled and a golden ball flew in, crashed through a tree, and slammed into a wall.
Mila pulled out a Void Bomb, but then she noticed the D rank Rollie-Pollie wasn’t moving and watched as it uncurled, lying there on its back. There was blood coming out of its mouth, and its stomach seemed unnaturally sunken in, but Mila didn’t move to confirm her suspicions.
The Twelve Element Shield’s barrier effect blocked against bacteria, so Mila just waited.
Aalam woke up an hour and a half later, and Mila fed him a vitality fruit, and then another. Then they both took antidotes for Creeping Death and Last Breath, which had been in all the grenades Aalam had tossed first, and only then did Mila finally ask her question. “Was your nuclear bomb in the first fruit you threw?”
“Yeah.” Aalam nodded, also looking at the D rank Rollie-Pollie.
“And did that thing eat the bomb?”
“I think so.” Aalam looked almost as shocked as she felt. “I threw the fruit right in front of it.”
“Yet it still managed to make its way through two magically empowered metal doors.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And only then succumb to lots and lots of poison.”
“Yep.”
“How?”
“D rank Toughness seems to be a lot more impressive than we thought.”
“If it could so easily take down the doors to the other fruit, why didn’t it do so earlier?”
Aalam looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “It was really dumb. That E rank who destroyed my legs almost went down from my Mental Spike, so their Spirit and Soul are both quite weak for their rank. And, with the doors sealed, there was nothing to attract their attention.”
“Huh.” Mila took a deep breath and continued channeling her Law Egg of Calm into her mind. “I’ll go start the looting process then. Anything you need?”
“No.” Aalam looked down at his missing legs, then back up at Mila, a large smile on his face. “Thanks for saving my life, though, Mila.”
Mila just stared at him for a few seconds, and she couldn’t help but smile back. “No problem.”
She first walked over to the room with the vitality fruits, whose door had also been blown through by the D rank’s rolling charge, even more impressively.
The Rollie-Pollie outside appeared to have boiled due to a double dose of Aalam’s Heat Death and then ultimately died to Creeping Death. The eleven inside, however, had it even worse. They’d received an overdose of Last Breath and hadn’t been able to breathe for over an hour.
There were no vitality fruit which were ripe, or which would ripen before the challenge was over, but she did find 23 ripe Jem-Hadari Mana Fruit and 18 mental fruit in the other two rooms. The true reward of the first level, however, was not the fruit. It was the bodies of the Rollie-Pollies.
There were over a hundred juvenile Rollie-Pollies Aalam had killed, including one special mutant with dark azure scales, and, unlike the insectoids, each had a crystallization of power in their bodies called a monster core. The E and D rank Rollie-Pollies all had one as well, and they were apparently very useful in alchemy and artifact creation.
The other valuable part of the Rollie-Pollies were their scales, and Mila spent the rest of the time in the challenge skinning all the beasts and pulling out their cores, the D rank especially taking forever.
The Yin Yang Sage has offered to take you in as an official inheriting disciple.
Do you accept?
Yes/No
With only a few minutes left in the challenge, and all their loot already evenly split between them back in their temporary base in the air filtration control room, Mila considered. Without Nana Xara, Aalam at least wouldn’t have survived the challenge. For one, she wouldn’t have had enough control over her qi to help trigger his healing. More important, however, without the old woman purposefully pushing her buttons for the last month, she wouldn’t have had enough insights to gain the Law Egg of Rage and thus have the ability to cauterize Aalam’s wounds, though it was debatable whether that had been intentional.
An individual, however, couldn’t take a new official master until she had reached the same level of power as her previous master, her previous master gave up the relationship, or her previous master ceased to exist, and Nana Xara was guaranteed life until everyone in both of Earth’s tutorials died, so normally Mila would be stuck with the woman until she herself became a god, or at least one of the most powerful A ranks.
But Mila had the Shadow Princess uniqueness, which provided resistance against enforced karmic bonds of up to the divine level, and, as far as Mila knew, almost all contract magic in the universe, including things like teacher disciple contracts, were created through enforced karmic bonds.
Nana Xara had never said it explicitly, but, if Mila wanted to, she could sever her relationship with the woman at any time.
In short, there was almost nothing to lose by accepting and a lot to gain. The only thing holding Mila back was her pride.
You have become the second official inheriting disciple of the Yin Yang Sage.
You may receive personalized quests from your master at any time, with rewards based on difficulty.
Rewards from any system quest may include choices of up to one grade higher from your master.
Her accepting was right on time, as the challenge was over and it was time for the rewards.
Challenge over. Calculating rewards.
Base Trial Points: 144
4 Vitalized Insectoids Killed
Base Trial Points + 4
128 kilograms of Solar Iron retrieved
Base Trial Points + 128
64 kilograms of Lunar Iron retrieved
Base Trial Points + 64
32 kilograms of Eclipse Iron retrieved
Base Trial Points + 128
All hidden recipes found
Base Trial Points + 128
Fully explored all areas
Base Trial Points + 256
Rolling Death cleared in second place
Base Trial Points X 4
Rolling Death cleared with no damage
Trial Points X 6
Rolling Death cleared with no surviving monsters
Total Trial Points X 4
Rolling Death cleared with total Luck 72 or higher
Total Trial Points X 2
Trial Points for Li Mila: +163,584
All stats +6
1 Legendary free building coupon
1 Orb of Skill Combination (G-Epic)
You may choose one skill, one artifact, and one System boon from the following lists
The first two lists were the same as the ones at the end of the previous challenge, but each also had one extra choice. In the skills list there was one Legendary skill, Devil’s Contract, which was obviously from Nana Xara. It allowed the user to create powerful soulbinding contracts between two or more parties, allowed those contracts to have hidden clauses so long as those entering into the contract were told hidden clauses existed, and it would be greatly enhanced by her racial ability, Fairy Law, so it was obviously intended for her.
The Legendary choice in the artifact list, however, seemed designed for Aalam. It was called an Orb of Devouring and, when used in the creation of an artifact, that artifact would have the ability to grow by eating new materials and feeding on the power of enhanced Laws.
Mila had been planning on getting an Orb of Skill Combination (G-Epic) for her artifact choice, but it was given for free so she didn’t have to.
Thus Mila immediately chose both the Legendary options.
The choices for System boon, on the other hand, didn’t have an option from Nana Xara, and there were only four options in total. She could enhance the grade of a skill, which was useless for her as a Legendary skill couldn’t be enhanced at G rank. She could remove a skill from her class, which she didn’t want. And she could enhance the grade of an ability, useless for the same reason as the first boon. Finally, she could gain +3 to all stats.
With no other choice, she went with the last one, but it felt like a waste.
Then she and Aalam, along with all the larger artifacts Aalam was holding onto with telekinesis, were teleported out of the challenge and back into Aalam’s crafting room. And there, in a seat in the corner, was Nana Xara, wearing a wide grin and slow clapping.
