Mila
The inside of the inheritance wasn’t that large, at least the top part, but it branched. After the first room with the orb containing the ritual to turn humans into beastmen there was another room which flashed red every time a cultivator passed through.
With the Noble’s Sight skill Mila had learned and mastered, along with her Laws and third eye, she was able to see karmic threads attach to every cultivator who entered, linking them to something down below, likely the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief, but she wasn’t worried. There was no power to the threads, no contracts, and Mila was pretty sure it was just an indicator of how they would be monitored and tested while within the inheritance.
Beyond that room then were eight different paths, all long and leading down to different directions. They weren’t far enough away Mila couldn’t maintain her Phantasmic Doppelgängers, but all her senses were blocked for any of the paths she or her doppelgängers didn’t travel through themselves, so she dissipated and then recreated the doppelgänger which had been talking to Isaiah and had it follow Prince Tomin’s group.
She herself was in a group with no one she recognized while her other three doppelgängers followed two random groups and the one with the leader of the Kindar Raiders in it.
With her Phantasmic Doppelgängers skill having advanced quite a bit, she could now make a total of nine doppelgängers, but she only had five minds so she generally only made four if she wanted them to do anything remotely complex. The range of the doppelgängers had also increased quite a bit, however, and that was helpful.
Moving through the long stone hallways, each path ramped downwards by about a hundred meters and then opened up into a large round chamber, reminding Mila a lot of the soulspace room where the first challenge of her tutorial had taken place, only much larger. Each was made of stone and perfectly circular with a roughly 600 meter radius and a concave ceiling 70 meters tall at the center and 50 meters at the edges. Only, instead of a couple hundred other humans, there was a single human sized golem standing in the middle of the room and, instead of a glowing rune made of fire providing light and hinting at the purpose of the room on the ceiling, there was a large orb glowing with green and blue light.
In each room, the golems, who all looked to be wearing stone armor and held large two-handed swords, turned their glowing purple eyes to the cultivators at the entrance to their rooms. Then a System notification showed up in front of Mila’s eyes, and likely those of all the other cultivators in the inheritance as well.
The Soul Fragment of the Shadow Thief has offered you a quest.
Prove Your Worth I (F-Legendary)
You must accomplish the following:
Fight one on one against a weakened E rank golem for 96 seconds Keep the Soul Fragment of the Shadow Thief’s interest Not dieRewards: You may continue deeper into the inheritance
Do you accept?
Yes/No
Mila accepted along with most of the other cultivators, and, in each room, she watched the golem take one hand off its blade and point at a cultivator, in most cases a native. Then it made a ‘come here’ gesture and everyone realized that cultivator was up first.
In each room, the cultivator chosen stepped forward and there was a gong-like sound emanating from the entire room. Then the golem moved, about as fast as a cultivator with 500 or so effective agility and, in every room, the golem’s large sword hit the cultivator with what looked to be about 750 effective strength, the cultivator instantly dying and blood splattering the floor and wall.
A good portion of the cultivators in each room Mila was watching then tried to flee, but the golem in each room moved far faster than before, with what looked like an effective agility of around 1300, and two thirds of the fleeing cultivators died. The ones who hadn’t accepted the quest, however, and the clone Mila had sent out of one of the rooms, managed to leave.
Mila’s clone followed further and watched as those who hadn’t accepted the quest left the inheritance, Isaiah allowing them to pass, and she only killed five of them, the five who were obviously not natives, breaking their necks with telekinesis from the entrance. Then the clone nodded to Isaiah, who didn’t seem all that surprised, and headed back into one of the testing chambers she hadn’t seen yet.
There were about sixty people left in each testing chamber and the following hour or so wasn’t pretty. The golems all called up a second challenger and the results weren’t much different than before. Then, after a 28 second break, another cultivator took the challenge and died, then another, and then another.
A few people tried to run away again while others were challenging the golems, but they were quickly killed, the golem speeding up to chase them before returning to the challenge fight, its effective stats again lowered.
There was an obvious pattern to the order in which the cultivators were challenged, each subsequent cultivator able to survive a little longer. And, by the time there were only a dozen or so people left in each testing room, cultivators started to pass.
It was pretty obvious the golems were choosing people in order of perceived strength and it was also pretty obvious most of those who remained were members of the Kindar Raiders.
It wasn’t that the Raiders were particularly strong, most seeming to have only uncommon grade skills, but they were all agility-based cultivators with high levels, and they all had at least one movement skill.
It appeared they’d had more information about the inheritance than they’d given out, and they all seemed to have spent the entirety of the last year out in the wilderness fighting the beasts which had transformed into monsters to level up.
Ava Gale also passed, her class based around wind Laws and agility, and Prince Tomin somehow seemed even higher leveled than her, likely having hunted like crazy once Ava’d finally managed to remove the contract restricting him. He passed quite easily as well, being the only cultivator Mila saw do any damage to the golem, leaving a small superficial cut on the golem’s shoulder armor, and, when he was done, it was the turn of the Kindar Raider’s leader in another testing chamber.
That young man showed off strength which was somewhere between Ava Gale and Prince Tomin, but his fighting style was more reminiscent of the Shadow Wolves the undead had brought than anyone else. He teleported from shadow to shadow as he fought and he seemed to have a high grade Law Egg of the shadow path, though Mila could tell it wasn’t the Law Egg of Obfuscation.
He, Tomin, and the other cultivators left in the rooms with her clones were quickly able to identify who she was due to the golems not targeting her, and, when the golems were done with the examinations, they all quickly moved through the doorway which opened up on the other side of their chambers, a doorway with a forcefield her clones could not pass through, so she lost sight of them.
Then, as it was finally her turn, Mila dissipated all four of her clones. The group she had joined had more Kindar Raiders cultivators than most, so, being the last one to get a turn, she was several minutes behind Prince Tomin and the Kindar Raiders’ leader.
The golem attacked her with its large sword, but she easily dodged without using any skills. She might not be an agility-based cultivator, specializing more in Spirit and Soul, but she’d grown to level 14 and she’d monopolized the rewards for ending eleven of the twelve invasions. Her base agility was already two thirds of the way to one thousand, so she could just dance around the golem when it restricted its stats, not even having to follow the optimal movement paths she could now see thanks to her Law Larva of The Tactician’s interaction with her Third Eye Princess uniqueness.
At the same time, she was also able to confirm something about her uniqueness’s interaction with her Law Larva of The Reaper. Previously, she’d confirmed her weakness sight could show her the weaknesses of monsters, which had already proven useful, but now it seemed it worked on golems as well, and she was pretty sure she would be able to destroy the golem in front of her if it kept its stats restricted, though she didn’t try.
She did, however, send all the information she’d gathered about the golems to Aalam, who was waiting several kilometers out from the inheritance in case anything went wrong.
Then, when she was nearly done with her test, one of the other cultivators in her group who’d passed, who she was pretty sure was a member of the Kindar Raiders, held his hand out at her and, for about half a second, she was unable to move. She managed to pretty easily pull herself back with Telekinesis to save her life, and then she returned the favor by grabbing that cultivator with Telekinesis as well, pushing him right into the path of the golem’s swinging blade.
Nothing happened to her for interfering with another cultivator, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he’d attacked her first or if the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief just didn’t care, so she didn’t risk killing or enslaving any of the other cultivators still in the room, most of whom were now looking at her with fear plain on their faces.
After her test was done, she got another System notification showing she’d passed the quest, and, after leaving an illusionary clone behind, she and the other survivors in her group entered into the door on the other side of the room and Mila realized she couldn’t sense back into the previous part of the inheritance site at all, the clone immediately dissipating. From the slight shift in the directions of her bonds with Aalam and Roland, it seemed she’d moved further down into the ground than she’d expected, and the range of Phantasmic Doppelgängers just wasn’t long enough.
Thirteen_Life_Legion
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Mila
The inside of the inheritance wasn’t that large, at least the top part, but it branched. After the first room with the orb containing the ritual to turn humans into beastmen there was another room which flashed red every time a cultivator passed through.
With the Noble’s Sight skill Mila had learned and mastered, along with her Laws and third eye, she was able to see karmic threads attach to every cultivator who entered, linking them to something down below, likely the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief, but she wasn’t worried. There was no power to the threads, no contracts, and Mila was pretty sure it was just an indicator of how they would be monitored and tested while within the inheritance.
Beyond that room then were eight different paths, all long and leading down to different directions. They weren’t far enough away Mila couldn’t maintain her Phantasmic Doppelgängers, but all her senses were blocked for any of the paths she or her doppelgängers didn’t travel through themselves, so she dissipated and then recreated the doppelgänger which had been talking to Isaiah and had it follow Prince Tomin’s group.
She herself was in a group with no one she recognized while her other three doppelgängers followed two random groups and the one with the leader of the Kindar Raiders in it.
With her Phantasmic Doppelgängers skill having advanced quite a bit, she could now make a total of nine doppelgängers, but she only had five minds so she generally only made four if she wanted them to do anything remotely complex. The range of the doppelgängers had also increased quite a bit, however, and that was helpful.
Moving through the long stone hallways, each path ramped downwards by about a hundred meters and then opened up into a large round chamber, reminding Mila a lot of the soulspace room where the first challenge of her tutorial had taken place, only much larger. Each was made of stone and perfectly circular with a roughly 600 meter radius and a concave ceiling 70 meters tall at the center and 50 meters at the edges. Only, instead of a couple hundred other humans, there was a single human sized golem standing in the middle of the room and, instead of a glowing rune made of fire providing light and hinting at the purpose of the room on the ceiling, there was a large orb glowing with green and blue light.
In each room, the golems, who all looked to be wearing stone armor and held large two-handed swords, turned their glowing purple eyes to the cultivators at the entrance to their rooms. Then a System notification showed up in front of Mila’s eyes, and likely those of all the other cultivators in the inheritance as well.
The Soul Fragment of the Shadow Thief has offered you a quest.
Prove Your Worth I (F-Legendary)
You must accomplish the following:
Fight one on one against a weakened E rank golem for 96 seconds Keep the Soul Fragment of the Shadow Thief’s interest Not dieRewards: You may continue deeper into the inheritance
Do you accept?
Yes/No
Mila accepted along with most of the other cultivators, and, in each room, she watched the golem take one hand off its blade and point at a cultivator, in most cases a native. Then it made a ‘come here’ gesture and everyone realized that cultivator was up first.
In each room, the cultivator chosen stepped forward and there was a gong-like sound emanating from the entire room. Then the golem moved, about as fast as a cultivator with 500 or so effective agility and, in every room, the golem’s large sword hit the cultivator with what looked to be about 750 effective strength, the cultivator instantly dying and blood splattering the floor and wall.
A good portion of the cultivators in each room Mila was watching then tried to flee, but the golem in each room moved far faster than before, with what looked like an effective agility of around 1300, and two thirds of the fleeing cultivators died. The ones who hadn’t accepted the quest, however, and the clone Mila had sent out of one of the rooms, managed to leave.
Mila’s clone followed further and watched as those who hadn’t accepted the quest left the inheritance, Isaiah allowing them to pass, and she only killed five of them, the five who were obviously not natives, breaking their necks with telekinesis from the entrance. Then the clone nodded to Isaiah, who didn’t seem all that surprised, and headed back into one of the testing chambers she hadn’t seen yet.
There were about sixty people left in each testing chamber and the following hour or so wasn’t pretty. The golems all called up a second challenger and the results weren’t much different than before. Then, after a 28 second break, another cultivator took the challenge and died, then another, and then another.
A few people tried to run away again while others were challenging the golems, but they were quickly killed, the golem speeding up to chase them before returning to the challenge fight, its effective stats again lowered.
There was an obvious pattern to the order in which the cultivators were challenged, each subsequent cultivator able to survive a little longer. And, by the time there were only a dozen or so people left in each testing room, cultivators started to pass.
It was pretty obvious the golems were choosing people in order of perceived strength and it was also pretty obvious most of those who remained were members of the Kindar Raiders.
It wasn’t that the Raiders were particularly strong, most seeming to have only uncommon grade skills, but they were all agility-based cultivators with high levels, and they all had at least one movement skill.
It appeared they’d had more information about the inheritance than they’d given out, and they all seemed to have spent the entirety of the last year out in the wilderness fighting the beasts which had transformed into monsters to level up.
Ava Gale also passed, her class based around wind Laws and agility, and Prince Tomin somehow seemed even higher leveled than her, likely having hunted like crazy once Ava’d finally managed to remove the contract restricting him. He passed quite easily as well, being the only cultivator Mila saw do any damage to the golem, leaving a small superficial cut on the golem’s shoulder armor, and, when he was done, it was the turn of the Kindar Raider’s leader in another testing chamber.
That young man showed off strength which was somewhere between Ava Gale and Prince Tomin, but his fighting style was more reminiscent of the Shadow Wolves the undead had brought than anyone else. He teleported from shadow to shadow as he fought and he seemed to have a high grade Law Egg of the shadow path, though Mila could tell it wasn’t the Law Egg of Obfuscation.
He, Tomin, and the other cultivators left in the rooms with her clones were quickly able to identify who she was due to the golems not targeting her, and, when the golems were done with the examinations, they all quickly moved through the doorway which opened up on the other side of their chambers, a doorway with a forcefield her clones could not pass through, so she lost sight of them.
Then, as it was finally her turn, Mila dissipated all four of her clones. The group she had joined had more Kindar Raiders cultivators than most, so, being the last one to get a turn, she was several minutes behind Prince Tomin and the Kindar Raiders’ leader.
The golem attacked her with its large sword, but she easily dodged without using any skills. She might not be an agility-based cultivator, specializing more in Spirit and Soul, but she’d grown to level 14 and she’d monopolized the rewards for ending eleven of the twelve invasions. Her base agility was already two thirds of the way to one thousand, so she could just dance around the golem when it restricted its stats, not even having to follow the optimal movement paths she could now see thanks to her Law Larva of The Tactician’s interaction with her Third Eye Princess uniqueness.
At the same time, she was also able to confirm something about her uniqueness’s interaction with her Law Larva of The Reaper. Previously, she’d confirmed her weakness sight could show her the weaknesses of monsters, which had already proven useful, but now it seemed it worked on golems as well, and she was pretty sure she would be able to destroy the golem in front of her if it kept its stats restricted, though she didn’t try.
She did, however, send all the information she’d gathered about the golems to Aalam, who was waiting several kilometers out from the inheritance in case anything went wrong.
Then, when she was nearly done with her test, one of the other cultivators in her group who’d passed, who she was pretty sure was a member of the Kindar Raiders, held his hand out at her and, for about half a second, she was unable to move. She managed to pretty easily pull herself back with Telekinesis to save her life, and then she returned the favor by grabbing that cultivator with Telekinesis as well, pushing him right into the path of the golem’s swinging blade.
Nothing happened to her for interfering with another cultivator, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he’d attacked her first or if the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief just didn’t care, so she didn’t risk killing or enslaving any of the other cultivators still in the room, most of whom were now looking at her with fear plain on their faces.
After her test was done, she got another System notification showing she’d passed the quest, and, after leaving an illusionary clone behind, she and the other survivors in her group entered into the door on the other side of the room and Mila realized she couldn’t sense back into the previous part of the inheritance site at all, the clone immediately dissipating. From the slight shift in the directions of her bonds with Aalam and Roland, it seemed she’d moved further down into the ground than she’d expected, and the range of Phantasmic Doppelgängers just wasn’t long enough.
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.
