Mila

  “Come on, just a little bit of romance. You’ve been married over ten thousand years, and I’ve never even seen a kiss.” Nana Xara, as she was wont to do whenever Mila wasn’t blocking her, started to complain again. “I’m so bored, and living in your husband’s afterlife has lost me access to all System controlled media!”

  Mila, however, as she was wont to do, completely ignored her master.

  They’d moved Nana Xara’s soul as soon as the afterlife was ready, understanding it was likely for the three most powerful gods of the Prime Material to work together to revoke their System access if they showed off their ability to kill gods, and that Nana Xara would likely not be safe as a result. Then, as expected, they’d been proven right.

  “Nana Xara, did your oaths decrease in power after you made them?” From what Mila knew, her teacher had been a very different person when she was a B rank compared to the care-free and somewhat lacking in sanity plague master she’d been by the time Mila’d met her, even originally somehow completely lacking the sin of pride, so she couldn’t imagine any oaths the woman would have made that wouldn’t constantly soul-shackle her.

  “Oh, thinking about your last two oaths are we?” From her master’s somewhat giddy yet not too giddy tone, Mila knew she’d actually get information and not just more joking. “Well, you are right to think my oaths were a problem for me.

  “I had to reforge a few of them a couple times, which cost quite a bit of primal energy. But, unlike you and Aalam, the grade of my race wasn’t ridiculous and the quality of my soul was only at the strong soul level, so it wasn’t that difficult after killing many A ranks and a few gods.”

  “You’re saying I could form oaths I don’t like and then fix them with a lot of primal energy after advancing to A rank?”

  “If you’re willing to suffer through millennia of absolute torturous pain to your soul, sure.”

  And there it was. Her master had suffered in her life far worse than Mila ever had, only ever temporarily having someone to truly rely on, and the woman had lost so much that she’d been willing to reforge herself and change her core being to have a chance to get revenge and protect her legacy.

  Mila turned her head so her eyes and not just her sensory domain could take in the sight of her husband making modifications to the giant Death Star inspired mobile space station he’d originally started creating as a joke for Diana’s 100th rebirth day. After a little over 80 years, he’d finally achieved his third round of sudden enlightenment from something to do with the station’s energy reactor, meaning his soul would finally fully recover in a few days, so it was about time for their vacation to finish.

  “We should watch out for injuries more the higher our ranks.” Mila shook her head slightly and dragged her focus away from her shirtless husband. “Soul injuries are starting to take longer and longer to recover.”

  “I don’t know.” Nana Xara sent a picture of an insanely complicated runic skill array over their bond, one she was apparently practicing creating inside Aalam’s afterlife. “Personally, I rather enjoy it whenever your husband faces setbacks. He always comes up with the most interesting ideas. And, unlike you, he likes to share them.”

  Mila took a closer look at the skill array, again thankful she hadn’t followed her teacher’s class path as she, unlike Nana Xara and Aalam, would not have been able to advance by constantly inventing new ways to use magic.

  Having a sage as a teacher and an even more advanced sage as a husband, however, she’d learned way more than she’d ever wanted to know about multidimensional runic arrays, so she was pretty sure the rune in front of her was a heavily modified version of the skill rune associated with the Phoenix Rebirth racial ability, i.e. the main skill of most classes with a requirement of having a phoenix variant race. And there also seemed to be a lot of principals of Aalam’s eldest brother’s Thunderstrike Rebirth skill mixed in as well, the skill seemingly a mix of the legacies of the two hardest to kill gods from the Prime Material, Aalam’s grandfather and his master, modified to suit Aalam’s own race and Laws.

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  “This doesn’t look finished to me,” Mila commented after studying the array for several minutes. “And it will likely require a new racial ability Aalam doesn’t have.”

  “Correct.” There was a large dose of pride in Nana Xara’s voice, for herself, not Mila, and Mila again found it hard to believe her teacher had ever been the epitome of humility. “You and Aalam won’t be able to use this beauty until you reach A rank, but oh how much more dangerous you will be when you do.”

  “Well, for now, instead of sending clones we are perfectly willing to let die, we’ll have to settle for godslaying the old fashioned way.”

  Smiling, Mila sent a message to Diana, Immortalia, and Francis Davies and then teleported herself to the large meeting chamber that had been set up on their new home universe’s main B rank planet, where she took her seat at the head of the room’s large wooden table and waited for everyone else to arrive.

  Located on the top floor of a skyscraper, next to the ocean in a hidden cove, the view out of the 360 degree glass windows was lovely, the sea to one side and mountains to the other, and the table that dominated the room could sit 24 people.

  “So, you’ve finally decided to get off your ass and actually do some work?” Krysta La’Vordi, her long silver semi-translucent hair braided and hanging down her back, was the first to arrive, her fully black eyes showing mirth as she took one of the table’s middle seats, Diana likely having called the woman as she was currently acting as the representative for the members of the United Federation of Planets not descended from those born on Earth in high level meetings.

  “Oh, come on, Krysta, where do you think most of our intelligence about the Prime Material comes from?” Silvia Davies, her long brown hair in the exact same style as Krysta’s, appeared in the room next—someone having teleported her over—and sat down directly to Mila’s left as she was the United Federation of Planets’ acting head. “Even while on vacation, Mila’s been working four times as hard as you.”

  “My apologies, Empress.” Krysta smiled as she bowed slightly, showing more formality as more heads of departments arrived, it no longer prudent to just have fun.

  “Apology not accepted, Ms. La’Vordi.” Mila smiled as everyone who was arriving looked at her, many of their auras growing nervous. “As punishment, I’ll need 112 liters of your blood.”

  Krysta just stared at her for a few seconds, as did everyone else who’d arrived so far, and Mila saw when what she was implying clicked in almost everyone’s minds.

  “They didn’t?” Krysta’s aura and face both showed disappointment.

  “They did.” Mila nodded as Diana appeared next to her and took the seat to her right, Mila noticing Diana’s long indigo hair was also braided in the same style as about half the women in the room. “Your father and uncles are included among the gods invading the United Federation of Planets’ abandoned universes.

  “For your sake, we’ll try not to kill them, but having your blood and that of your mother’s, so Aalam can create a reproduction of your father’s blood for use in curses, would make things easier for us.”

  Krysta, face and emotions becoming more serious, brought her right fist to her heart. “No problem.”

  Then Mila turned to the other end of the table where Aalam’s master, in her red and black haired and golden eyed human form, had just appeared in a flash of subdued fire and lightning, the woman having recently advanced to A rank after absorbing the genetic power of six high grade elementals of her main elements, and Mila noted that her hair was also braided in the same style, a style Mila belatedly realized actually appeared on most of the woman’s humanoid-form iconography from back when she’d been worshipped by more than just monsters 45 billion years ago.

  “Lady Immortalia, will you be ready to hunt with us in a couple days?”

  A big smile appeared on the former goddess’s face. “Sure.”

  “Alright then.” Mila looked over all the faces of the heads of the United Federation of Planets' various departments and other key individuals. “Thank you everyone for managing the United Federation of Planets while my husband and I took a break to focus on healing and increasing our combat power.

  “My husband is now almost fully recovered from his injuries, so it is about time to start operation God Season.

  “Over the next several days, those of us here will be sharing all information we know about all known divine forces in the multiverse, not just those from the Prime Material, and make a plan for how to set the board to gain maximum benefits from our trump cards.

  “Our main goal is not culling the number of gods in the multiverse, or getting revenge, but gaining resources, including those infused into the souls of gods and extractable upon their deaths, so, at least at the start, we need to be as sneaky as possible. And we need to choose our targets wisely.”