Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 367: The Challenges of Crossing Ranks
🕑 Added 2025-07-13 13:09:08 +0000 UTCDiana
As she and Isaiah took out their anger at her mother by using the woman as a training tool, it really started to hit home just how difficult it was to cross ranks to fight at higher levels.
Their Laws were almost at the same grade as her mother’s, Diana with two True Laws compared to Bellessia’s three, with Isaiah’s four Laws all almost at that stage. Diana’s energy was more than a match for her mother’s due to her extremely powerful 72 Truename Spirits Yin Yang Core, while Isaiah’s powerful draconic body and chaos energy allowed him to almost match them. And this wasn’t even taking into account how their souls were a grade higher than Bellessia’s, how their racial abilities were almost all ridiculous, and how they each had thirteen uniquenesses, almost all at the Supreme grade, matching the goddess. Yet they still had to fight together to have the advantage against her.
Sure, Bellessia was many, many billions of years old, allowing her to have combat and energy control experience well beyond either of theirs. And, sure, she was one of the more talented gods from the Prime Material, the daughter of possibly the most powerful elder god in the multiverse. But Bellessia didn’t even have a combat class.
Her guardian spirits were not from a summoner class like Diana’s, but from a farming class. And her second class was a scientist/crafting class based around biological modifications. Her classes were designed around allowing mortals to eat better and produce healthier children, not kill things.
When it came to combat, Bellessia was the weakest of all her siblings. Yet Aalam and Mila had managed to personally kill the others when they’d been B ranks.
And this just showed how ridiculous her brother and Mila were, Aalam especially.
When it came to bloodlines, races, racial abilities, and uniquenesses, Diana could fully match them, and Isaiah was close. But there were four aspects to Aalam that allowed him and his wife to become far, far more powerful.
First, Aalam was a perfect match for the Sage class, one of only three known lines of classes which increased the number of classes a cultivator or monster could have, while most in the multiverse—Diana included—were not a match for any. And he was able to bring his Sage class to a grade no one in the Prime Material had ever reached, allowing him to have six classes as an A rank while no one else even had three. And Mila, with that ridiculous class brought about by her bloodline, was able to copy the effect.
Second, Aalam was better at Laws than everyone. Whether it was because his truesoul was special somehow, or, more likely, that his mental model of Laws was more complete, it didn’t matter. He had enough talent with Laws to fully master a cultivation technique no one else in history had ever come close to finishing, and this in turn had maximized the effects of his cultivation. His accupoint opening provided more stat growth than anyone in history, his cultivation core formation provided the ridiculous effect of increasing the quality of his energy by two ranks, and his Law energy made everyone else’s look pale in comparison.
The quality of his Laws also improved other aspects of his power as well. His classes were of a higher inherent quality. His race could match the power of Diana’s own even without being effectively two races in one. And, in his hands, any skill that allowed for multiple separate Laws to be used in its execution became far, far more powerful.
Third, Aalam leaned more toward order category Laws than anyone else even close to his kill record.
Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Order category Laws, by their very nature, were broad of focus, useful for multiple applications, but not ideal for any, so they generally weren’t the best in combat. And this would be a detriment for any combatant.
Combine 36 order category Laws with the Power of Order racial ability, however, and you had an absolutely ridiculous effect that by far made up for those Laws not having ideal combat applications.
Finally, fourth, Aalam had inherited Primordius’s control over natural energy, something none of the other living descendants of the elder god had managed.
This, more than anything, initially had to do with luck, Aalam being in a berserking state with the Legendary grade Lord skill as his latest skill while getting his second uniqueness had allowed him to awaken to a high grade royal line uniqueness before his new body was even formed. And then him being the lord of everyone else basically made it impossible for her or any of their siblings to awaken to a royal line uniqueness without foregoing the benefits of being able to share his racial abilities as his subordinates.
Still, no one else could have capitalized on that uniqueness like Aalam, what with his third class, ridiculous stats, and ungodly energy control.
And his control over natural energy provided a lot of power.
Natural energy at that level of control could be used like Law energy and faith energy to empower skills, making his skills about 50% more powerful than what was possible for other junior divinities like her and Mila. He, unlike anyone else but possibly Primordius, could take over universes in a matter of minutes under ideal circumstances, such as Mila killing the previous owner, taking over their identity, and then handing him the rights. And, most important when facing their grandfather, he could fight to take Territory power from others, especially when they weren’t present.
Sure, both Diana and Mila could now take away the power of faith energy from even most gods with relative ease with their Supreme grade shadow line uniquenesses, but it was entirely possible Aalam would be able to do the same after becoming a god or an elder god, while Diana was pretty sure neither she nor Mila would ever have anywhere close to his control over natural energy.
And Mila, as Aalam’s wife, could benefit from Aalam’s ridiculousness far more than anyone else. Dual cultivation was a thing. And Mila’s talents, with her natural control over bonds and the sharing of energy, allowed her to take advantage of Aalam’s power more than anyone else could.
This isn’t to say Mila herself wasn’t powerful, however. The woman was utterly absurd and, while she could have easily survived and thrived without Aalam, Diana knew her brother would have been long dead a dozen times over without Mila. There was a reason that, out of everyone on Earth, Nana Xara had taken in Mila as her second apprentice. But, without Aalam, she would have been at the same level as Diana or other extreme talents of the Prime Material, not the future empress of all creation.
With Aalam, Mila was terrifying. And, with Mila, Aalam wasn’t dead and had gained the time and resources to grow.
Even to this day, it was debatable who was benefiting more from who on a daily basis. Dual cultivation was a two way reward after all, and Mila was far more active when it came to faith energy management and preparing the resources they’d eventually need for their ascension.
Whatever the case, however, as Diana combined with all 72 of her spirits and punched her mother in the face, nearly blowing the goddess’s jaw off, she was still wondering if it was enough.
Elder gods, by their very nature as the beings who’d reached the highest known rank in the multiverse, were all extreme talents themselves, so the differences between Aalam and Mila’s utterly extreme level of talent and theirs was a lot lower than when fighting against lower ranks. And, from what she’d heard, Primordius, Arthur, and Elandra were extreme talents even by elder god standard.
For Primordius and Arthur they could wait, bide their time, and become more powerful, but, for Elandra, if they lost her, it was unlikely they’d be able to find her again within the next several billion or trillion years, let alone the few hundred million Edi and some of the other members of the United Federation of Planets could survive under Aalam’s field of extremely slowed down time.
Externally induced reincarnation like Aalam had done for her, her brother-in-law, and Vanar was impossible for those who’d reached B rank like Edi, and, without being a phoenix and a goddess presiding over the concept of rebirth, self reincarnation like Immortalia’s was even more of a dream.
They needed Elandra’s knowledge of the soul plague the woman had released, and their chance to get it had come earlier than was ideal.
Uniquenesses could be maximized easily with a transcendent level soul, levels could be gained rapidly with enough primal energy, and stats could be maximized almost immediately with enough pure refined nascent energy. Then skills could be mastered quickly with control over a universe. But Laws, even with utterly extreme talent and completely broken racial ability combinations, took time to master; faith energy, even with control over hundreds of universes, took time to gather; and artifact spirits, even those formed at the very beginning of an artifact’s creation like with Mila’s Twin Dragons of the Divine Empress and Aalam’s Left Hand of the Runescribe, took time to grow into their full power.
Even with all of Mila’s planning and tactics, and even with Aalam’s ridiculous inventions like the Universal Undeath Cleansing Chain Lightning, Diana was worried for them.
In a straight up fight, neither of them were a match for any of the elder gods, and extreme attacks from Primordius, Arthur, or Elandra probably had the ability to follow their karmic bonds with their clones to wipe them completely out of existence.
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Thirteen Life Legion
As many have probably noticed, Shadow of the Soul King has entered into the climax of what will be its last arc, and will probably be finished within the next few months. The plan then, at least for now, is for me to immediately start posting my next story here for your enjoyment. That story then will either be Supreme Stealthy Summoner Squirrel, a litrpg about a youth who gets the option to reincarnate into a death game and chooses to do so as a squirrel, with a magic system partly inspired by The Land and Chrysalis, or, much more likely, Emperor of Soul Beasts, a xianxia style story inspired by a mix of Name of the Wind, Bleach, and Pokemon, the story of a man's rise to power as told from the point of view of his wife. The first chapters of both stories have been written, and will be edited and posted today for your enjoyment. Please tell me what you think!
