Mila
It took almost a minute for Nana Xara’s laughter to stop, and Mila felt a little self conscious as Aalam looked on in confusion.
“Alright. Time to upgrade your weapon.” Nana Xara finally stopped laughing and made a gesture, Legacy of the Weaponsmaster flowing off of the ground and into a silver orb above her right hand. Then she gestured with her left hand and the glowing blue monster core and bucket of slime flesh by the door flew over to hover over her right as well.
A gray token, about 7 cm in diameter with a carved scythe on both sides, then faded into existence above her left hand while twelve orbs, each about 10 cm in diameter and glowing with the defining color of one of the twelve elements, appeared on the floor in front of Aalam.
The token then burst into gas, forming a small cloud of gray mist, and Legacy of the Weaponsmaster, the monster core, and the slime flesh, including the bucket, floated into the mist, all seeming to somehow breakdown and disappear.
30 seconds passed and Mila noticed Aalam watching with interest, so she figured something was happening she couldn’t sense herself, and then the mist condensed, forming a small 3 cm diameter orb which flew over to her, hovered right in front of her forehead, and initiated a bond.
A nameless artifact would like to form a bond with you.
Do you accept?
Yes/No
“Yes.”
Upon accepting, she felt a bond as strong as between her and Aalam form between her and the orb. Then the orb began to flash black, followed by white. Then it turned blue, then red, and then shifted to green before finally changing back to gray.
The orb then split itself in two and the pieces flew to her ears, transforming into earrings which she felt wrap around the sides of her earlobes, up the back of her ears, and then up over the tops to pop out in front.
Nana Xara summoned a mirror from somewhere to show her and Mila could see the artifact had copied her favorite earrings from when she’d been alive, looking like a pair of silvery gray eastern dragons wrapped around her ears.
Aalam had built the originals in his lab for her twenty-fourth birthday and the students at the school where she worked loved them, so she’d ended up wearing them far more than she’d originally expected. She’d left them behind along with everything else she owned when she ran away, however, and she hadn’t realized until she saw this new pair just how much she’d missed them.
A few tears starting to form in her eyes, she looked at the artifact’s status.
Twin Dragons of Lord Alvaro’s Favored (G-Legendary) [Growth]
A legacy artifact formed by a Reaper’s Token from the flesh of an Invincible Slime, Formless Silver, and the emotions of Lord Aalam Alvaro’s chamberlain. Due to the chamberlain’s desires, the Twin Dragons can only be used by Lord Aalam Alvaro or one of his servants and has multiple effects, including the ability to absorb the legacy information of other legacy artifacts, the ability to transform into multiple forms, and the ability to store unused nascent energy.
Current Legacies: The path of Illusions from a random D rank, the path of The Reaper from the Origin of Death
Possible forms: Twin Dragon earrings (weight greatly reduced), Twin Pistols, Longsword, Spear, Shield, Reaper’s Gown
Effects: Legacy Eater, Transformation, Nascent Energy Storage, Conductivity
Requirements: Lord Aalam Alvaro or one of his servants
The tears almost immediately stopped and she looked over at Nana Xara. “What?”
Nana Xara raised a hand and the floor of the room moved Mila over to her, where she raised a hand and touched the dragon on Mila’s right ear. Then the old woman started to grin and spoke via telepathy. “The Reaper’s token scans your emotions to form the artifact you truly desire, not the one you want.” She looked over at Aalam and then back to Mila. “So, should we start training seriously or should I explain more out loud?”
“Let’s train.” Mila was very quick to respond.
“Alright then. First, a little demonstration.” Nana Xara waved her hand and the chair she was in moved to the edge of the room, opposite the doorway. Then she waved her other hand and the floor under Aalam and Mila moved, pushing them to face each other in the center of the room. “I’ve used my authority to change the nature of your soulform bodies while you are in this room. When your body dies here, it will be instantly revived.”
This statement answered a lot of questions Mila had about the tutorial. They were souls, so she’d been wondering if anything here was real or if it was all a simulation, and it seemed it was the latter. It also explained why they could only take one artifact out.
The System was trying to save on cost.
From what she’d gathered so far, power was mostly housed in the soul, not the body, so the power they had now was all real, just nothing around them. Though she did wonder if it might be hard to gain higher Laws in such an environment. Maybe that was why Aalam had immediately aimed for breadth rather than going all in on one Law for quick power.
“Now, murder each other. Or, in Aalam’s case, at least try to.”
Aalam immediately attacked, and he was fast, but he still had pretty much zero combat skills. He had never trained in martial arts back when they were alive and, since entering into the tutorial, he’d focused almost entirely on crafting and learning Laws. His control over his resources was good, but, compared to Mila, who’d focused on that aspect, he was sloppy.
Had they fought six hours before, it might have been different, but, with all the free stats she’d been able to use, Mila now had a minimum base stat of 85, and she was used to fighting people stronger than she was.
She dodged his lunge effortlessly, then the next, and then the next one. Then, when he tried to attack her for the fourth time, she punched him in the throat with all her strength. He went down. And Nana Xara just watched for twenty seconds as he writhed on the floor, unable to breathe.
“Okay. That is probably enough.” Nana Xara waved her hand and Aalam’s throat instantly healed.
Then he stood up, looked at Mila with an expression of awe on his face, and looked down at his hands. “I guess I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“No. No you don’t.” Nana Xara stood up from her seat and walked over. “You spent all your time in the tutorial so far on other things. And Mila was trained to fight since she was four. No matter what you do until the next challenge, you’d never be able to beat her and, honestly, it would be a waste of her time for you to try.
“But I wanted you to feel that.
“Your current build has pretty much no combat ability, but I can see what you’re going for. At F rank, you will most likely get a Heroic grade telekinesis skill, and that, combined with Runescriber, will be your main form of combat. If anyone gets close to you, though, or finds a way to counter your telekinesis, you will be screwed, so you should still learn to fight. And this is especially true given you have the Multi-Mind skill.
“Imagine fighting like a warrior with one mind while another inscribes runes into the air for a finisher and yet another uses telekinesis to keep anyone else trying to interfere away.”
Aalam looked excited and Mila was pretty sure both of Nana Xara’s goals had been achieved. He’d been distracted from asking about her artifact, the status of which he could not see through their bond, and he would almost certainly say yes to what she was about to ask.
“From what I can tell, your only remaining goal before the third challenge is to finish creating your personal artifact. If that is true, how about splitting your time between that and training here? Say, six hours in your lab and eighteen hours here each day?”
Aalam thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Getting combat training now was part of the plan, but I realize I’m far more behind than I thought.” He bowed to Nana Xara. “Thank you for your advice and future training.”
“No problem.” Nana Xara waved her hand dismissively. “Now go work on your design like you want to. Just be back here in six hours.”
Aalam immediately ran to grab the primal stones from the ground and then was almost out the door when Nana Xara yelled at him. “And make sure to send one of your puppets to use your free building coupon to get one of the crafting halls!”
Aalam ran out of the room and Nana Xara then started laughing again. “I can see why you love that man.” She turned to look at Mila. “He has no inhibition, yet he still thanks people politely.
“His instincts are to be nice. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
Mila decided it was best not to engage, so she instead asked something she’d been wondering since Aalam raised his racial ability to Legendary, boosting his Soul and Attunement stats by 12.5% and his affinity with all Laws by 25%. “What is affinity?”
“Oh, you’re no fun. Ms. Chamberlain.” Nana Xara smiled as Mila began to glare at her, but then she actually answered the question. “Higher Attunement makes you closer to the Laws, allowing you to learn them more easily, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use them well. Affinity, on the other hand, affects both aspects. The higher your affinity with a Law, the easier you will find advancing in that Law, but also the easier you’ll find using the Law.
“You, for example, have a very high natural affinity for the Law of Obfuscation, with your affinity for your other Laws slightly lower, at least from what I’ve seen. There isn’t really a good test and I could be wrong.
“You might just have a huge inferiority complex toward your boyfriend.”
Mila glared at her teacher but decided to again just ignore the provocation. “So, affinity is mostly based on one’s individual talent?”
“No.” Nana Xara shook her head while still smiling. “Affinity is mostly based on race, followed by bloodline, and only then natural talent. One of the advantages of the monster tutorial is that, without a true race or bloodline, it becomes much easier to know what you’re naturally good at, which will become more important at higher ranks.”
Mila took a couple seconds to think about this, finding it somewhat interesting she didn’t seem naturally inclined toward anything offensive, but then she quickly came to the conclusion this likely had far more to do with the state she’d been in since being killed, unsure of her purpose, than a lack of actual inclination. She just hadn’t truly tried to kill anyone since the start of the tutorial, at least not in the way she would normally go about doing so.
“Heavenly Spark Pure Soul is a Legendary grade ability just like Aalam’s other two choices, but it was obviously stronger than the other two, essentially the second one with an added affinity boost. Why are the grades the same?”
“Who knows.” Nana Xara shrugged. “An Attunement boost by the same percentage is obviously better than a boost to Soul while an affinity boost to all elements is way better than an affinity boost to one specific Law, but the System values them the same when it comes to assigning grades. It probably has something to do with intrinsic limits in the way the universe works, but I don’t fully understand myself.
“A 12.5% increase in any stat and a 25% increase affinity for any subset of Laws is also valued the same, but that makes more sense to me as affinity isn’t as valuable as stat effectiveness in most cases.
“In common parlance, the Heavenly Spark Pure Soul ability would be considered a half grade better than Pure Soul, effectively a Legendary grade ability with an Epic grade ability merged in, and half grade higher abilities like that are extremely rare.
“For that one, Aalam had to gain three middle grade Law Eggs from each of the twelve elements, something I’ve only ever heard of a handful of cultivators doing at G rank throughout the entire history of the universe.
“So, don’t aim for half grade higher abilities, Mila. You’re not talented enough. Almost no one is.”
Thirteen_Life_Legion
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thirteenlifelegion
Vote for SotSK on TopWebFiction! http://topwebfiction.com/listings/shadow-of-the-soul-king/
And a special thank you to Shadow of the Soul King's patrons, who get to read the latest chapters as they are written and edited.
If you are unable to support Shadow of the Soul King monetarily but are enjoying the story, please like, comment, and add Shadow of the Soul King to your reader list to help more readers see the story. It will be much appreciated, especially comments. As an author, feedback is always of value.
Also, any mentions on social media would be awesome. Let's see if we can get that thief who posted the first 25 chapters of the story to webnovel.com off the first page of a 'Shadow of the Soul King' google search.
Mila
It took almost a minute for Nana Xara’s laughter to stop, and Mila felt a little self conscious as Aalam looked on in confusion.
“Alright. Time to upgrade your weapon.” Nana Xara finally stopped laughing and made a gesture, Legacy of the Weaponsmaster flowing off of the ground and into a silver orb above her right hand. Then she gestured with her left hand and the glowing blue monster core and bucket of slime flesh by the door flew over to hover over her right as well.
A gray token, about 7 cm in diameter with a carved scythe on both sides, then faded into existence above her left hand while twelve orbs, each about 10 cm in diameter and glowing with the defining color of one of the twelve elements, appeared on the floor in front of Aalam.
The token then burst into gas, forming a small cloud of gray mist, and Legacy of the Weaponsmaster, the monster core, and the slime flesh, including the bucket, floated into the mist, all seeming to somehow breakdown and disappear.
30 seconds passed and Mila noticed Aalam watching with interest, so she figured something was happening she couldn’t sense herself, and then the mist condensed, forming a small 3 cm diameter orb which flew over to her, hovered right in front of her forehead, and initiated a bond.
A nameless artifact would like to form a bond with you.
Do you accept?
Yes/No
“Yes.”
Upon accepting, she felt a bond as strong as between her and Aalam form between her and the orb. Then the orb began to flash black, followed by white. Then it turned blue, then red, and then shifted to green before finally changing back to gray.
The orb then split itself in two and the pieces flew to her ears, transforming into earrings which she felt wrap around the sides of her earlobes, up the back of her ears, and then up over the tops to pop out in front.
Nana Xara summoned a mirror from somewhere to show her and Mila could see the artifact had copied her favorite earrings from when she’d been alive, looking like a pair of silvery gray eastern dragons wrapped around her ears.
Aalam had built the originals in his lab for her twenty-fourth birthday and the students at the school where she worked loved them, so she’d ended up wearing them far more than she’d originally expected. She’d left them behind along with everything else she owned when she ran away, however, and she hadn’t realized until she saw this new pair just how much she’d missed them.
A few tears starting to form in her eyes, she looked at the artifact’s status.
Twin Dragons of Lord Alvaro’s Favored (G-Legendary) [Growth]
A legacy artifact formed by a Reaper’s Token from the flesh of an Invincible Slime, Formless Silver, and the emotions of Lord Aalam Alvaro’s chamberlain. Due to the chamberlain’s desires, the Twin Dragons can only be used by Lord Aalam Alvaro or one of his servants and has multiple effects, including the ability to absorb the legacy information of other legacy artifacts, the ability to transform into multiple forms, and the ability to store unused nascent energy.
Current Legacies: The path of Illusions from a random D rank, the path of The Reaper from the Origin of Death
Possible forms: Twin Dragon earrings (weight greatly reduced), Twin Pistols, Longsword, Spear, Shield, Reaper’s Gown
Effects: Legacy Eater, Transformation, Nascent Energy Storage, Conductivity
Requirements: Lord Aalam Alvaro or one of his servants
The tears almost immediately stopped and she looked over at Nana Xara. “What?”
Nana Xara raised a hand and the floor of the room moved Mila over to her, where she raised a hand and touched the dragon on Mila’s right ear. Then the old woman started to grin and spoke via telepathy. “The Reaper’s token scans your emotions to form the artifact you truly desire, not the one you want.” She looked over at Aalam and then back to Mila. “So, should we start training seriously or should I explain more out loud?”
“Let’s train.” Mila was very quick to respond.
“Alright then. First, a little demonstration.” Nana Xara waved her hand and the chair she was in moved to the edge of the room, opposite the doorway. Then she waved her other hand and the floor under Aalam and Mila moved, pushing them to face each other in the center of the room. “I’ve used my authority to change the nature of your soulform bodies while you are in this room. When your body dies here, it will be instantly revived.”
This statement answered a lot of questions Mila had about the tutorial. They were souls, so she’d been wondering if anything here was real or if it was all a simulation, and it seemed it was the latter. It also explained why they could only take one artifact out.
The System was trying to save on cost.
From what she’d gathered so far, power was mostly housed in the soul, not the body, so the power they had now was all real, just nothing around them. Though she did wonder if it might be hard to gain higher Laws in such an environment. Maybe that was why Aalam had immediately aimed for breadth rather than going all in on one Law for quick power.
“Now, murder each other. Or, in Aalam’s case, at least try to.”
Aalam immediately attacked, and he was fast, but he still had pretty much zero combat skills. He had never trained in martial arts back when they were alive and, since entering into the tutorial, he’d focused almost entirely on crafting and learning Laws. His control over his resources was good, but, compared to Mila, who’d focused on that aspect, he was sloppy.
Had they fought six hours before, it might have been different, but, with all the free stats she’d been able to use, Mila now had a minimum base stat of 85, and she was used to fighting people stronger than she was.
She dodged his lunge effortlessly, then the next, and then the next one. Then, when he tried to attack her for the fourth time, she punched him in the throat with all her strength. He went down. And Nana Xara just watched for twenty seconds as he writhed on the floor, unable to breathe.
“Okay. That is probably enough.” Nana Xara waved her hand and Aalam’s throat instantly healed.
Then he stood up, looked at Mila with an expression of awe on his face, and looked down at his hands. “I guess I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“No. No you don’t.” Nana Xara stood up from her seat and walked over. “You spent all your time in the tutorial so far on other things. And Mila was trained to fight since she was four. No matter what you do until the next challenge, you’d never be able to beat her and, honestly, it would be a waste of her time for you to try.
“But I wanted you to feel that.
“Your current build has pretty much no combat ability, but I can see what you’re going for. At F rank, you will most likely get a Heroic grade telekinesis skill, and that, combined with Runescriber, will be your main form of combat. If anyone gets close to you, though, or finds a way to counter your telekinesis, you will be screwed, so you should still learn to fight. And this is especially true given you have the Multi-Mind skill.
“Imagine fighting like a warrior with one mind while another inscribes runes into the air for a finisher and yet another uses telekinesis to keep anyone else trying to interfere away.”
Aalam looked excited and Mila was pretty sure both of Nana Xara’s goals had been achieved. He’d been distracted from asking about her artifact, the status of which he could not see through their bond, and he would almost certainly say yes to what she was about to ask.
“From what I can tell, your only remaining goal before the third challenge is to finish creating your personal artifact. If that is true, how about splitting your time between that and training here? Say, six hours in your lab and eighteen hours here each day?”
Aalam thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Getting combat training now was part of the plan, but I realize I’m far more behind than I thought.” He bowed to Nana Xara. “Thank you for your advice and future training.”
“No problem.” Nana Xara waved her hand dismissively. “Now go work on your design like you want to. Just be back here in six hours.”
Aalam immediately ran to grab the primal stones from the ground and then was almost out the door when Nana Xara yelled at him. “And make sure to send one of your puppets to use your free building coupon to get one of the crafting halls!”
Aalam ran out of the room and Nana Xara then started laughing again. “I can see why you love that man.” She turned to look at Mila. “He has no inhibition, yet he still thanks people politely.
“His instincts are to be nice. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
Mila decided it was best not to engage, so she instead asked something she’d been wondering since Aalam raised his racial ability to Legendary, boosting his Soul and Attunement stats by 12.5% and his affinity with all Laws by 25%. “What is affinity?”
“Oh, you’re no fun. Ms. Chamberlain.” Nana Xara smiled as Mila began to glare at her, but then she actually answered the question. “Higher Attunement makes you closer to the Laws, allowing you to learn them more easily, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use them well. Affinity, on the other hand, affects both aspects. The higher your affinity with a Law, the easier you will find advancing in that Law, but also the easier you’ll find using the Law.
“You, for example, have a very high natural affinity for the Law of Obfuscation, with your affinity for your other Laws slightly lower, at least from what I’ve seen. There isn’t really a good test and I could be wrong.
“You might just have a huge inferiority complex toward your boyfriend.”
Mila glared at her teacher but decided to again just ignore the provocation. “So, affinity is mostly based on one’s individual talent?”
“No.” Nana Xara shook her head while still smiling. “Affinity is mostly based on race, followed by bloodline, and only then natural talent. One of the advantages of the monster tutorial is that, without a true race or bloodline, it becomes much easier to know what you’re naturally good at, which will become more important at higher ranks.”
Mila took a couple seconds to think about this, finding it somewhat interesting she didn’t seem naturally inclined toward anything offensive, but then she quickly came to the conclusion this likely had far more to do with the state she’d been in since being killed, unsure of her purpose, than a lack of actual inclination. She just hadn’t truly tried to kill anyone since the start of the tutorial, at least not in the way she would normally go about doing so.
“Heavenly Spark Pure Soul is a Legendary grade ability just like Aalam’s other two choices, but it was obviously stronger than the other two, essentially the second one with an added affinity boost. Why are the grades the same?”
“Who knows.” Nana Xara shrugged. “An Attunement boost by the same percentage is obviously better than a boost to Soul while an affinity boost to all elements is way better than an affinity boost to one specific Law, but the System values them the same when it comes to assigning grades. It probably has something to do with intrinsic limits in the way the universe works, but I don’t fully understand myself.
“A 12.5% increase in any stat and a 25% increase affinity for any subset of Laws is also valued the same, but that makes more sense to me as affinity isn’t as valuable as stat effectiveness in most cases.
“In common parlance, the Heavenly Spark Pure Soul ability would be considered a half grade better than Pure Soul, effectively a Legendary grade ability with an Epic grade ability merged in, and half grade higher abilities like that are extremely rare.
“For that one, Aalam had to gain three middle grade Law Eggs from each of the twelve elements, something I’ve only ever heard of a handful of cultivators doing at G rank throughout the entire history of the universe.
“So, don’t aim for half grade higher abilities, Mila. You’re not talented enough. Almost no one is.”
Thirteen_Life_Legion
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thirteenlifelegion
Vote for SotSK on TopWebFiction! http://topwebfiction.com/listings/shadow-of-the-soul-king/
And a special thank you to Shadow of the Soul King's patrons, who get to read the latest chapters as they are written and edited.
If you are unable to support Shadow of the Soul King monetarily but are enjoying the story, please like, comment, and add Shadow of the Soul King to your reader list to help more readers see the story. It will be much appreciated, especially comments. As an author, feedback is always of value.
Also, any mentions on social media would be awesome. Let's see if we can get that thief who posted the first 25 chapters of the story to webnovel.com off the first page of a 'Shadow of the Soul King' google search.
