"I finally did it," said Pearl as she looked at the crystal burning in front of her, a deeply exhausted expression on her face.
How many years had it been since they arrived in Joro? She wasn’t quite sure, but it had been a few decades. She had entirely given up hope of achieving Cliff’s most recent demand because she had not even reached the second level of the Earth Immortal realm, let alone the Heaven Immortal realm.
In fact, after all these decades, she had finally achieved sufficient mastery over magma flames to be able to manipulate the associated laws to work inflammable objects. Now, she could use anything she wished as fuel for her fire.
Although this seemed pathetically simple, it had taken her all these years of effort to learn how to manipulate laws enough to be able to do that. This was in the context of the fact that she had only focused on that one, single law all this time, and had not bothered with other laws at all. Only then could she achieve as much.
Cliff seemed genuinely confused at her slow progress, at least as far as she could tell. However, when she talked to other immortals, her speed seemed terrific. Many of them took a century or two before gaining control of a single law, and went thousands of years before they could effectively use the law for combat. To use only a couple of decades for that seemed like she was going incredibly fast.
She would have almost believed that Cliff’s expectations were unreal, if only it weren’t for her ancestor, Karev. During this time, not only had he mastered five laws, he had even learned to use a simple Lawcraft.
Of course, that Lawcraft was something Pearl redeemed from Cliff for her ancestor. Cliff had then come up with an ingenious way to send the information to Karev without arousing suspicion, making Karev think that he had an epiphany on his own.
Compared to him, her progress was nonexistent. Still, even he was slow by Cliff’s standards, and no amount of redeemed help could change the fundamental flaw of how slow she learned.
In comparison, River was doing very well these days. In fact, River and Karev had become the main fighting force of their group. Karev had amazing talent, and River didn’t need to learn law manipulation in the way that they did. In fact, he had a limited number of abilities he could learn, and all he could do was improve them.
There were other, secret paladin arts which could increase the number of abilities River could display, but even Cliff himself did not know them. The few that he had learned were through the inheritance that Karev had.
Since they had reached a new realm, they could naturally take the inheritance again. Since they were going again, Lex tested his theory that the inheritence might be related to the Temple of Fasting by employing the Masterless technique.
It worked. The place seemed to respond to the presence of the technique, and he was granted entry, though the reward for the test seemed less significant somehow. He simply got ahold of some valuable resources in the form of other inks similar to Silver Ink. It wasn’t like he was complaining - that was exactly what he needed.
The past few decades, Lex had not only improved his necklace by a large amount, he had begun to use the ink he’d gotten to begin to inscribe some basic functions into the necklace itself. Since the most important thing for the necklace, at the moment, was having an infinite energy source, he approached the issue from a few angles.
The first was by manufacturing the trait into the necklace, allowing it to absorb energy from the Void. However, using the ink, he wanted to add more features into the necklace, such as absorbing energy from any law that touched the necklace. He also wanted to strengthen the space within the necklace to an absurd extent.
Fortunately, he was adept in the laws of space, not to mention in treasure forging, so that was a very easily accomplished task for him.
While he did all of these things, he paid close attention to River, Pearl, Karev, and even the rest of the universe. The situation in the Joro realm was chaotic, but everyday the human race was making some progress.
The Alliance was a mixed bag, mainly because of how many different races were a part of it. When they focused on their task, though, then they could really deliver. Almost on a weekly basis, they could hear stories of discovered legacies and gained opportunities.
Once, even someone they personally knew gained a tremendous opportunity left behind by a longdead human immortal, and reached the Heaven Immortal realm in less than ten years!
The war to suppress the humans was being fought, but because most of the pressure was on the Angels, the humans had found themselves a short time span within which they could try to gain whatever advantage they could.
As a result, the human race’s position on the Cosmic Ascendance Spectrum rose nearly every few weeks.
This was something that genuinely impressed Lex to the point where he even considered trying to search for these legacies himself. But these things could not be sought out, they could only be discovered coincidentally, or if someone resonated with them. If it was easy to find them, then these legacies would have been discovered long ago.
No one actually knew how to find them, they were just doing their best and hoping for a reaction. These three realms were apparently realms that the human race used to control once upon a time, which is why the chances of legacies existing here was the highest. For all anyone knew, the greatest legacies were hidden elsewhere.
From time to time, stories would emerge of someone or the other who managed to gain a tremendous opportunity, and then gained the Humanoid Alliance’s protection.
One such story was of some guy who called himself Grand Conqueror who was operating in the Geb realm. Apparently, he had discovered a legacy belonging to one of the original human kings. More specifically, he had discovered the legacy of King Khalid, who was known as the greatest human general to have ever lived.
It was said that the Humanoid Alliance had taken him into the alliance, protecting him and nurturing him as one of the potential key figures for the revival of humanity itself.
There were many other prominent examples, and it was even said that many other races were getting involved in this. For example, the Henali were also apparently playing a big role in this.
They had brought many humans over, and were focused mainly on the Tyranum realm. It was said that instead of focusing on the legacy of the original kings, the Henali were searching for the legacy of the Sephore family.
If that was the case, Lex was sure that Jotun, and his other ancestors had come to that realm, not to mention Alexander and the rest. He wondered if the Henali had tried to recruit some of the Inn workers into participating.
Maybe if Z showed up, he would be able to find the legacy of Zarek.
But, as far as Lex was concerned, there was no need for them to stand out like that. What they lacked were not legacies, but time. As long as they laid low and kept cultivating within the Inn, they’d all reach the peak anyway.
He was also using this time to get the young couple to find him more resources, while he himself was planning for what to do. His time with them would come to an end, and at that point he’d need to move on his own. He couldn’t keep staying with them because the Earth Immortal area had very limited resources that he needed. He would have to go to higher levels to find what he needed.
It was during this time that he was planning for the future that the coin he’d received from Karev’s legacy began to tremble. It was pointing towards something, as if it had been activated by something.
Lex paused, and then considered this coin. He had been unable to discern anything of value from it at all, but his instincts had told him that it was important to him. Now that it had gone from an inert to active state, he could even sense a strange aura from it.
For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, the aura felt oddly similar to the Axis Eternum of the Origin realm - or at least the ticket given to him by the Governor of the Origin realm. The ticket had read Glaticus Necropolis, and apparently had the aura of the Origin realms Axis Eternum.
Since the aura from this coin was oddly similar to that, did that mean it was related to the Axis Eternum of the Joro realm? How interesting.
If that was the case...
Cliff appeared in front of Pearl after a long, long time and gave her an all too familiar look.
"Are you interested in a special quest? Who knows, this one might even solve all your recent problems."