Perival - 103 Years Ago

  As he usually did every hundred years or so, Perival was traveling around the universe looking for things to buy in local markets, minding his own business and using the same System controlled public teleportation platforms as everyone else. It was relaxing. And it had been billions of years since anything had gone wrong.

  This time, however, something weird happened. His teleportation from one C rank world to another on the edge of the Prime Material wasn’t instant, taking up almost two full seconds, and, the next thing he knew, he’d somehow crossed a universal barrier and was in the middle of empty space in a new universe.

  Judging by where he’d originally teleported from, the time of the teleportation, and the slightly higher concentration of lightning and metal element mana, this new universe was probably the Large size material universe that had drifted close to that section of the Prime Material within the last few tens of millions of years, the one dominated by technology that he’d been led to believe no one had yet managed to conquer. And it was not good that he’d ended up there.

  Three things happened at once when he arrived. First, the universe, ruled over by someone, immediately started to suppress his power with its full might. Second, eight of the nine contracts he’d formed with mortals in the Prime Material suddenly broke, somehow with his own soul interpreting the break as his fault. And, third, four divine artifacts suddenly appeared and started trying to kill him, a seal of some kind blocking off the area, an obviously poisoned knife flying in to try and stab him, joined by some kind of spacetime knitting needle, and a large hammer chasing after him to try and bonk him on the head.

  He’d been kidnapped, trapped, and someone was trying to kill him.

  That someone, the Heavenly Spark Soul King, enemy of the Primordial Humans and someone Perival had had no interactions with previously, then appeared outside the seal and his energy traveled through the barrier, showing him as somehow the master of all four divine artifacts, and he began forming a complicated set of runes quicker than Perival believed he’d be able to escape.

  As a merchant god, with a corresponding merchant god divine role, Perival was one of the best in the Prime Material when dealing with contracts, so he was able to stop the odd contract breaking power attempting to trick his soul into inflicting soul shackles on itself, but it wasted almost a quarter of his faith energy reserves and, more important, it cost him time.

  And, in those few milliseconds, the Heavenly Spark Soul King somehow managed to close the universe’s connection to the Prime Material, cutting off all of Perival’s sources of faith and thereby reducing his stats by far more than the soul shackles would have.

  At the same time, before he realized what it was trying to do, the divine sealing artifact was no longer just sealing him into one area but it had also sealed his spatial storage artifacts, making him unable to pull out his armor and weapon.

  The Heavenly Spark Soul King’s runic array then finished, somehow boosting the power of the universe’s suppression in a randomized manner, at times providing no boost at all, at others doubling the suppression, and most of the time randomly enhancing the suppression by an amount in-between, making dodging the divine artifacts trying to stab, pierce, or smash him even harder. And, before he could fully get his bearings, twelve other God rank artifacts appeared, all shields, all seemingly bottom of the barrel in terms of artifact quality, but the Heavenly Spark Soul King wasn’t using them to attempt to block God rank attacks but to get in Perival’s way, and, for that, they were more than enough.

  As Perival noticed he was already affected by several dozen types of magical diseases, a few of which even seemed to be trying to eat his accumulated faith energy, the Heavenly Spark Soul King began creating another complicated runic array and Perival messed up slightly as he realized what the array the Heavenly Spark Soul King was writing was about to do, the needle artifact passing through his right arm.

  This mistake, which slowed him fractionally, allowed one of the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s shields to get in the right place, forcing Perival to make a larger movement than he would have otherwise, and this let the quick flying knife nick his left pinky toe, Perival again regretting his inability to access his armor, which would have included shoes.

  True God rank poison entered into his system, much stronger than whatever diseases the Heavenly Spark Soul King had affected him with already, and Perival quickly made the choice to use his energy to sever the toe instead of letting the poison spread.

  Then things just went downhill from there.

  First, while he was forced away, one of the shields flew down and pushed his toe to the edge of the barrier sealing the area, where it passed through the barrier and into the hands of the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s wife who’d just arrived.

  Second, the Heavenly Spark Soul King’s next array activated, changing the local rules of the universe so that carbon, one of the building block atoms of living lifeforms, had reduced bond strength with other atoms, something that would make any normal lifeform inside the area just fall apart.

  Perival was able to fight against the effect, but it took some of his attention away from dodging, and the needle managed to pierce him again, this time through his left ear. This again allowed a shield to get in his way, and this then again allowed the knife to nick him, this time cutting his right leg, which he quickly cut off and regrew.

  At this moment, however, he realized one of the diseases he’d been infected with was a lot more dangerous than he’d originally thought, and it wasn’t one of the more obvious infections trying to eat away at his faith energy. Instead, it was a disease somehow hidden in time, not allowing him to notice it until it was almost too late.

  Made from divine level fire, wind, lightning, life, death, and time element Laws, it released a Law energy far weaker than his own, but made from a higher mastery of Laws combined with the power of chaos, directly into his body’s cells, attempting to shake his Law energy to the point his auric armor would fall apart.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The metaphysical armor created by the transformation of a god’s aura from ascending to divinity via the power of Laws, auric armor’s most practical use was how it boosted a god’s base stats, i.e. all stats other than Aura, Attunement, and Luck, by a third of their effective Aura stat before their own effectiveness calculations. And, for Perival, losing it would lower his effective stats by a bit over 60%.

  He thus had to focus on keeping his auric armor stable, and this is exactly when the Mistress of Oaths and Deception used his severed toe’s bond with his main body to inject him with a powerful curse, one seemingly attached to the large purple bastard sword in her left hand.

  For a split second, all of Perival’s contracts attempted to punish him as if he were the one to break the terms, and it took almost all his focus to stop this from happening.

  His auric armor collapsed, the needle and knife managed to stab him through the liver and heart respectively, and the hammer, much slower moving but far more destructive, hit him in the head, completely blowing up his brain.

  He’d managed to not die from the Mistress of Oaths and Deception’s curse, but his combat power was destroyed, and it took the Heavenly Spark Soul King and his divine artifacts only a few more minutes to completely deplete his lifeforce.

  * * *

  Mila - 103 Years Ago

  “That was a lot harder than we expected,” Mila sent to Aalam as she absorbed the primal energy of the dead god, the next part of their plan requiring her to raise her stats and abilities a lot more quickly than him.

  “Yeah.” Aalam began looking through Perival’s belongings. “It’s good we went all out.”

  Secretly taking over a wide swath of Territory in the Prime Material where portals to the Technomancy Universe could open and then spending a lot of resources and a bunch of Aalam’s energy to quickly expand a temporary B rank portal to God rank for the second it would take to connect to the System network and teleport Perival to their own turf, all so Perival would be under heavy suppression; both coming with no backup clones so they could make full use of their cultivation core formations, allowing Aalam to have true God rank energy; and utilizing every divine artifact usable in a fight they had, while being especially lucky to have the Endless Seal when Perival didn’t immediately take out his own divine artifacts. Without any of these, the fight would have been much, much harder. And they’d also been incredibly lucky to have a former goddess on their side, one who in her prime had been far stronger than Perival, who could modify one of Aalam’s biological weapons to actually be useful at the divine level through the use of divine level Laws even though she was currently also only a B rank.

  And this was just to go up against one of the weakest gods in the Prime Material when it came to combat.

  Still, the rewards were excellent.

  “I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a thief, I'm a stunner, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, and I do not feel ashamed.” Mila smiled as she sensed amusement from her husband. “Also, I really like that Meredith Brooks song.

  “On a more serious note, however, while I’m a thief, I have rules. I’ll do whatever is necessary to take what I need if the person who owns it is an ass, albeit with as little death and destruction as possible, but, from good people to my sense of morality, I’ll find some other way to get resources they own.”

  About 1% of the primal energy from Perival’s death transformed into an alternative form of energy and was absorbed by her soul, Mila’s soul feeling really good as she formed her second oath.

  Oath of the Classy Cat-Burglar

  You are a thief, but you have rules about the methods you use and who you steal from

  Benefits:

  Exceptionally increase the power of stealth and charm category skills

  Increase the effectiveness of the Agility and Perception stats by 500%

  Limitations:

  Stealing from those who don’t go against your own morals will shackle your soul, the better the person the worse the shackles and the longer they last

  Then she teleported through another portal to the Prime Material that had formed after Aalam stopped blocking the two universes’ connection, reaching empty space in the middle of nowhere, and started to make use of the rest of the primal energy on an alternative method of forming oaths that Immortalia had taught to Aalam, using the way one was viewed by others to create an oath instead of the more widely known and more effective method of empowering a personal realization about oneself.

  Unlike the normal path, forming oaths this way barely helped with soul purity, to the point of being almost negligible, not helping at all for meeting the requirements for A rank, and it cost a lot more primal energy, but it did come with two major advantages. First, oaths made through the method came with no limitations, which was great, and, second, because of the lack of limitations, a cultivator or monster could go for whatever effects she was qualified for, so long as the effects were related to how other people thought of her.

  And the way the most powerful cultivators in the Prime Material viewed Mila in particular provided for at least one very amazing set of effects.

  Oath of the God Eater

  All gods fear you and want you dead, and for good reason

  Benefits:

  Greatly increase control over faith energy

  If you permanently absorb the powers of a dead god, you can gain faith energy in their place

  Limitations:

  NA

  When combined with her new fifth class, her Oath of the God Eater would help her create a rather terrifying personal path to power.

  Pantheon Priest (B-Divine)

  You serve some gods and steal power from others, completely at your own discretion

  Effects:

  You may permanently absorb divine power if the corresponding god does not stop you

  Exceptionally decrease the interference from using different varieties of divine power at the same time

  Exceptionally increase authority over the noticeability of divine power you control

  Skill slots:

  8

  May not learn skills of the following categories:

  NA

  Stat bonuses per level:

  Mila no longer cared

  Requirements:

  4 high grade divine role category Law Scarabs or more, has the ability to store external divine power, has control over faith energy, has the Fairy Law (Empyrean) racial ability, has the Divinity Savant (Empyrean) racial ability or a higher grade advancement, has multiple cultivation cores, has more than one divine category skill created without the help of a god, has used the divine power of more than one god

  Smiling to herself as her third ‘oath’ fully formed, Mila then teleported back to the Technomancy Universe, split off her darkness element clone to enter into the Endless Seal’s closed off area where Perival’s corpse was still hidden, and watched as it began to take on the god’s identity using her Skinwalker Queen uniqueness. Then she raised the right hand of her main body palm outward and received a high five from her husband.

  For those of you with Kindle Unlimited, or anyone who wants to pay for the story, please, please review the story on Amazon. As I've posted the start of this story there, having Amazon's algorithm recommend this story to new readers is the main way I can attract new readership.

  Should I edit my status pages and the System messages about upgraded racial abilities and skills to italicize the changes compared to the last shown version? And should I edit the words after the status pages to highly more explicitly what was upgraded?