60. Ruthlessness

  Nadia felt her power cross the threshold of the mythril path and she smiled. She looked nothing like the vessel had only a few weeks ago, prior to claiming it. Her hair had gone white, but her beauty had only increased to preternatural levels. The world of the nexus shook as she greedily pulled for more and more power, siphoning off of the lands. She waited until she began receiving the negative feedback from the nexus before she stopped, then paused her cultivation to consolidate her gains.

  She knew that she had just killed a few million people. Not directly, of course, but the famine and plagues that would result from the siphoning of the Qi into her body would devastate the worlds connected to this nexus. It was worth it, for it meant that she was now midway through the mythril path.

  She had six more nexuses to draw from, but it would only take two to reach the limit of what she could contain within this vessel.

  It would shorten the vessel’s life considerably to contain so much power, but she had two spares, and her descendants were busy being bred to create more. It was so frustrating being limited by blood relations for this magic to work, but fortunately her own children had been blessed by their proximity to her, and so they had had many children of their own, even though most of them had failed to reach the golden path.

  It was a frustrating bottleneck, the golden path, but cultivation was what it was.

  Those female descendants of hers who achieved the golden path were cultivated to the diamond rapidly before being informed of their fate. The men, on the other hand, were likewise raised to the diamond or the platinum while given as many women as they desired. That they would never know their children’s fate was a minor matter as far as they were concerned. They were living blessed lives.

  And all it had taken was stepping on the necks of their brothers and sisters to get there.

  Yet for some reason, only one in one hundred of her male heirs’ offspring became viable vessels for her magnificence. It was frustrating.

  She frowned as she thought of the vessel that had been lost. She had foolishly sent it to the tower of Majeesha, thinking that she could reclaim it at her leisure when it came of age. Instead, it had passed beyond her power.

  She didn’t like that the enemy had access to a child of her pure bloodline. If they realized what they had, then there were magics that could be used to create a bloodline resonance that would weaken the entire family. Nadia’s core self wouldn’t be effected, but the children of the foundation realm would wither and die.

  It was what she would do, if her role in this cat and mouse game with the enemy was reversed. But for whatever reason, the enemy’s method of claiming new bodies was not limited to blood relations. Most of the lives that she had ended had been spirit beasts! And then there was that monstrous green-skinned race that she had put an end to, she recalled. The multiverse was better off without freaks like that.

  She scowled. There was an attendant nearby, and out of annoyance she tested her cultivation upon the diamond path woman. The innocent attendant burst into flames, dying screaming. Nadia tsked. It would take more to grow accustomed to her power in this new vessel, but she supposed it would be better to spend a week or two growing accustomed to the mythril path before ascending further.

  She called for a new attendant. A moment later, a diamond path man appeared, his face solemn. “You called, my lady?”

  “Put together a disposable force from the dregs of the army,” she said. “I need to test my growth.”

  “Of course,” the attendant said. He looked to the ashes where his wife’s body had been cremated, then stepped away to obey the great lady’s commands.

  A force of six diamond ranked generals were given great weapons. They were given command of a hundred golden ranked soldiers themselves, and each of those soldiers a force of a thousand silver ranks. They were equipped with weapons great and powerful.

  And Nadia killed them all.

  Slowly, as she tested her powers.

  She let ten percent live, should they have proven themselves particularly brave or talented.

  But mostly, she simply toyed with them, flexing her powers in new and creative ways that they could not counter.

  Satisfied, she sent the survivors back to the army and returned to her cultivation. She was displeased when she found that she could not draw the next nexus dry before she hit a bottleneck in her vessel’s cultivation.

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  Frustrated, she carefully evaluated the vessel’s cultivation. Ah, there it was. A lingering connection to the body’s original soul. With a thought, she severed it.

  She was pleased that her cultivation proceeded apace afterwards, but frowned when she saw that a surprising amount of her natural Qi was becoming Yin aligned. She sighed in frustration.

  That meant that she had at most ten years before this corpse was as useless as the last.

  She would have to deal with the enemy within that time limit.

  ~~~~~~~

  Thaseus reviewed the Dios family’s unit, holding the papers before him as the petitioner spoke. He sighed. While the Dios family had risen with him as he had ascended to diamond rank, and due to his status as one of the Peach Blossoms, the fact remained that they would never reach the stranglehold that they had once believed themselves capable of.

  Most of his cousins were stuck at the bottleneck between silver and gold. With his coaching, a few had managed to succeed in crossing over into gold, but the rate was only slightly impressive. Compared to the other clans in the Ker’tath region, they were a minor clan once more. Compared to the global scale that he was forced to think on now, with the waygates connecting the continents and major cities together, his family wasn’t even a footnote.

  Since the Dios clan’s fall at the end of the first tournament of Mer’cah, the only thing that they had produced that was exceptional was him.

  And Thaseus could take no pride in it. He debated for a moment simply cutting the clan out of his life completely. He could acknowledge them as his past, but not his destination.

  But when he reflected on himself, on his path, that didn’t feel right either.

  He loved his family. That was one of the conclusions that he’d come to. He hated what they had been, but he loved them all the same. And they had proven themselves during the war against the undead to be able to raise themselves above petty politics and fight for the greater good. They had proven themselves during the Battle That Never Happened.

  His own father had died in that battle, as had his uncle, his sister, and many of his cousins. While they were still troubled by that fact, Thaseus had made it known that he was extremely proud of those who had suffered this particular wound to the soul, giving them each whatever he could to ease their suffering and advance their cultivation as a reward.

  While many of those who hadn’t fought in the combat pointed out that ‘it had never really happened’ and that there were no consequences, the veterans of that battle remembered the conflict vividly. And those who had died – so many defenders had died – recalled their time in the afterlife with surprising clarity.

  It was a private journey, but they each had enough similarities that they could compare notes. Thaseus himself had experienced this phenomena six times during his training with Little Bug and the other disciples.

  He had never expected that Little Bug could cause reversion on a global scale, however. He was forced to once more re-estimate the limits of his master and lord’s power.

  “Patriarch?” his sister asked, calling him back to himself. He was sitting in the family compound, the same one that had been razed by Tornolai six years ago.

  “Sorry, I drifted off for a moment. What you were saying simply could not hold my attention,” he said to one of his younger cousins.

  The silver-ranked boy—fifteen years old and still of the opinion that advancing into silver at that age means something in this new world—bristled at the insult. “I was saying that you should teach me the North Star Guiding Formation. If I am to lead a unit in the army, then it only makes sense that—”

  “The fact that you believe that you are fit to lead the North Star Guiding Formation proves that you are not worthy of inheriting it at all,” Thaseus said. “Who do you think that the North Star is in the formation of the Peach Blossoms?”

  “You, of course. Or is it Hien Ro?” the boy said. He said the second with a slight sneer.

  “It is Little Bug himself. The Worldfather. When he took command of the formation he performed his first great miracle. He made the world shine so bright that it force the heavens to acknowledge this world once more and turn its gaze back upon us. I was part of this miracle, and yet I am humbled by his mastery and how he used the power I lent him. When you think of leading a formation like the North Star Guiding Formation, you think of dominating. But that is not what I experienced that night at all. He was as ruthless with himself as he was with us, and we were willing to give him everything, our very lives, because we felt his conviction. If you were to inherit this technique, you would find that you were completely incapable of both utilizing it to its maximum effect and retaining your ego.”

  “Are you saying my ego is a problem?” the boy said, his pride inflating.

  “Yes. Now begone or I will deflate it for you.”

  The boy bristled, but eventually departed. Thaseus sat back on his throne, waiting for the next issue to be presented.

  Another young man stepped into the room. He bowed politely to the patriarch, then immediately began arguing that he should inherit the North Star Guiding Formation.

  Thaseus tried to listen. He really tried. But he’d heard all of these same arguments already, including from the previous petitioner. He zoned out, wondering what the other disciples were up to.

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