“This place really is shabby compared to Bobby’s planet,” Carmen muttered as she walked through the small city with Sven, the City Leader of the place. She had just returned to Earth only about an hour ago, and in all honesty, she didn’t really wanna be there. At least she had one person she actually liked around, as on her other side walking with them was Pam, the City Leader of the town Carmen had claimed the Pylon of Civilization to create once upon a time.
“We are effectively just an outpost here on this planet, so we can’t lean too hard into the ways of Valhal unless we want to scare visitors off,” Sven said, shaking his head.
“See, I would argue the opposite. We would have way more visitors if it was more like over there,” Carmen insisted.
“Most people don’t like getting drop-kicked by other customers while out shopping,” Pam said, shaking her head.
“Why not? Seems like a fair way to decide who gets the last item,” Carmen shrugged with a toothy smile. “But I guess I get your point. Still, we should make it more like Valhal for them to really get the culture so people can see if it’ll be a fit for them. That way, we will at least avoid them feeling too out of water while visiting actual Valhal territory.”
“That is the plan, but it will take some time, and for now, we are still working on properly reestablishing a connection with other surrounding City Leaders,” Sven explained. “Our ploy of acting as if we are fully on the side of Yip of Yore lost us a lot of allies and had many show apprehension about even approaching us, and while they are all coming back now, these things take time, and we need to establish a lot of contracts... this time with far better terms for us.”
Carmen just nodded along, not really caring much as she looked at Pam. “Damn was it a good choice to make you the City Leader so you can deal with all that shit.”
“It’s not like I’m really dealing with it either,” Pam sighed. “There’s more competent people handling that. Who would have thought that thoughtlessly giving the City Leader position to the one person you knew wouldn’t necessarily get you a competent leader?”
“Hey, it worked out for Jake,” Carmen argued.
“Miranda wasn’t a boxing coach but someone with at least some level of managerial experience. Plus, she actually cares about being a leader while I just misappropriate funds to make the gym I actually spend my time running better,” Pam said shamelessly.“Funnily enough, that seems more in line with the Valhal culture than Sven and his contracts,” Carmen semi-joked. She was totally on board with Pam’s actions as the gym had actually turned out quite nice based on the last time she visited.
Sven just shook his head and didn’t argue or comment as the three of them headed toward the main office where they would be having a meeting with a bunch of all the City Leaders Leaders who were affiliated with Valhal.
During all the scheming and all that bullshit, Valhal had indeed taken a hit to their presence on Earth, but they hadn’t actually lost control of any cities. They had pulled back and lost some citizens, sure, but no one had dared move too aggressively toward a faction known for being fighting fanatics. Now they were ready to make a full comeback as it was now clear to all that they had been on the “right” side all along and that there was a strong bond between the World Leader and their faction.
Miranda had also sent out clear communication that Valhal had been in on the Malefic Viper’s plan and all his scheming, leading to an instant resurgence of their reputation on Earth. The top brass of Valhal naturally jumped at the opportunity to better establish themselves on a planet that had quickly become an important strategic location in the ninety-third universe.
Earth was a planet where so many talents who were sure to make a big name for themselves in the future hailed from. To make it even more important in Valhal’s eyes, a lot of these individuals were humans. Jake, Jake’s brother, herself, Maria, the Augur, Sword Saint, Arnold, and even people like William and Miranda. There were so many extraordinary individuals from Earth alone, so why wouldn’t Valhal want to establish themselves there?
It wasn’t a stretch to believe more talented people would also be born in the future, and even now, the average fighter was a lot stronger than the average on other planets. The average level was also surprisingly high, and from the looks of it, people just kept progressing, meeting walls far later than expected, truly hammering home the absolutely overflowing Records of the planet.
Every large faction knew this and wanted a presence if they could, which was naturally part of the reason many had sent people to “help” Earth during Jake’s Chosen ceremony.
In truth, Carmen didn’t care much about all the politics. She would leave that for the people who knew what they were doing and actually gave a shit. All she cared about was not being ostracized on her own planet and having freedom of movement, and as things were looking, she would have that and more.
The same couldn’t be said about some other factions. Many of the faction outposts established by the immigrants from other factions were heavily limited in influence, with them being granted their own little “countries” being in the talks. From how Sven put it, every faction would essentially end up with their own passports and territory, with Valhal looking like it would have a top-tier passport, only below those officially part of Jake’s faction and equal to the Court of Shadows.
Speaking of the Court of Shadows, Carmen could only imagine they were happy with how they’d hedged their bets so far. Same for the Golden Road Emperium – the merchant faction Sultan and most of the other big merchants of Earth now belonged to. They had backed Jake or at least stayed neutral from the very beginning and were now reaping the profits for their belief.
Meanwhile, the Holy Church had to be kicking themselves for being such assholes. If only they didn’t have such a hate boner for the Risen and vampires, they would definitely also have had their own country at the end of everything, but now it looked as if they would be lucky if they managed to get a single building to use as an embassy.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Especially after what was about to happen. Because, just before Carmen entered the meeting with all of the City Leaders from Valhal, she got a message sent by Miranda on account of Jake. One that made her smile from ear to ear.
“It’s with great sadness I inform you two that I’ve been called for something more important. The World Leader requires my presence,” Carmen said, not even trying to hide how happy she was to have the perfect excuse to bail on what would no doubt be an incredibly boring few hours of sitting in a meeting she didn’t care about in the first place.
“Oh?” Pam said, flashing a teasing smile. “Running off to your boyfriend, now are you?”
“Piss off,” Carmen said, waving off the older woman.
“The higher-ups definitely wouldn’t complain if-“
“Yeah, no, not interested, and it’s not gonna happen,” Carmen cut off Sven. “Anywho, I’m off.”
“Well, if you just decided to get a-“
“Sven, I’m going to tear your arms off and make you eat them if you finish that sentence,” Carmen said, not at all joking.
The warrior shut up as Carmen turned around and quickly left the office building, having successfully escaped the boring political meeting.
When Jake spoke to Miranda when he returned to Earth after killing Ell’Hakan, she had mentioned that Arnold was back in his workshop and didn’t particularly want to be disturbed – something he had kind of forgotten, but in his defense, it felt like years ago he’d been told even if it was not even a day ago to everyone else. Luckily, she reminded Jake as he contacted her on the way to Arnold, asking her to get in touch with Carmen as he had to ask her about his upcoming Holy Church trip, and he didn’t even know if she was even on the planet currently.
Jake naturally respected the scientist and thus didn’t barge in but actually used the main entrance without hiding his presence. He entered the massive dome-shaped structure and was soon met by the receptionist or assistant or whatever she was. Jake didn’t know her name or anything about her really, but she had worked there for many years. It was understandable why Arnold liked having her around, though.
She clearly didn’t care much about getting to know Jake either and gladly had him sit and wait for twenty minutes after she informed Arnold Jake was there. Something he did without complaint as he made good use of any downtime he had by closing his eyes and playing around in his Soulspace a bit.
After he was given the go-ahead, Jake entered the workshop and headed down to where he saw Arnold through his sphere. The scientist was busy as always, working on some weird tech Jake didn’t even bother trying to understand.
“Hey Arnold, I hope I’m not disturbing you too much,” Jake said as he walked in, the scientist not even turning to look at him.
“What do you need?” he just asked, knowing Jake so well.
“The thing is, my bow is feeling a bit under the weather, and I’m about to go invade the main planet of the biggest faction in the multiverse in our galaxy, and it would really suck if I couldn’t even shoot arrows at them if they decided to be dicks during my visit,” Jake said with a smile.
“I’m not a bowyer,” Arnold simply said with a deadpan tone.
“I know, I know, but you’re still my best hope of getting anything halfway useful,” Jake said. Okay, he did have a few more options, but he did believe that there was a good chance Arnold had something lying around.
Arnold finally turned around, having finished tinkering with the weird motherboard-looking thing on the table, as he regarded Jake. “I don’t have any bows and have never had the intention to make one. According to all calculations, a bow would lead to a lesser output in all scenarios compared to other methods.”
“Hey, don’t go flaming bows,” Jake said, crossing his arms.
“Bows require physical exertion. It’s a waste of energy to make a construct wield a bow and not simply install a more efficient propulsion device should I wish to shoot physical projectiles,” Arnold answered, his words a bit offensive to Jake’s sensibilities even if he understood.
It probably did make more sense for Arnold just to make a railgun or some shit, having everything run off magic rather than make a robot capable of shooting with a bow. It was a glaring weakness in Arnold’s Path, but no one could be perfect, and Jake could only accept the scientist’s shortcomings.
“So you don’t have anything?” Jake asked, a bit disappointed.
“No bows, no,” Arnold shook his head. “I’m also not ready to provide you with any more upgrades in other areas. Other projects have fallen behind due to recent events, leading to unintended delays I have yet to make up for.”
“Alright... alright,” Jake sighed, wondering what he should do now. Maybe he should go look for some merchants and try to get a good bow from them? It definitely sucked that their universe was still locked out of the rest of the multiverse due to the system event, as if not, he could have gone somewhere with actually skilled crafters that could either help him get a new bow or preferably help upgrade his old one.
As things were, Jake was simply too ahead of the curve for their small galaxy to have what he needed, and there was no way he was going to find a skilled bowyer capable of-
“Why have you not sought out Maria from the Crimson Flame?” Arnold suddenly asked.
“... oh yeah, she was totally a bowyer, wasn’t she?” Jake muttered to himself, having totally forgotten what her profession was. In his mind, she always just registered as the one other enlightened person on the planet who knew bows were the best weapon. It did make sense she also knew how to make them, and he did have a bow made by her for a while.
“She is,” Arnold nodded, not really having caught that Jake’s question was rhetorical.
“Thanks for reminding me,” Jake smiled, giving Arnold a thumbs up. “I knew it was a good idea to go here first. Ah, but one last thing... out of curiosity, how many mythical skills do you have by now?”
“Six,” the scientist responded without hesitation, making Jake’s eyes open wide.
“How the fuck have you tied me?” he blurted out before he quickly remembered something. “One of them is a skill you got from your Blessing from Oras, right?”
“Correct,” the man confirmed, making Jake breathe out a sigh of relief because that one totally didn’t count, and if it did, Jake would also be able to count his divine skill.
“I’m still winning, then,” Jake said triumphantly with a big smile.
“I was unaware any form of competition took place,” Arnold responded with his usual tone.
“Not an official one, but if it did, I would have won it,” Jake still claimed victory nevertheless. “Anyway, thanks for the tip, and I’ll let you get back to your work. Ah, but one thing, I may need your help a bit later. I plan on heading to the main planet controlled by the Holy Church and would like to also keep at least one person in backup while I’m there in case I need support.”
“Very well,” Arnold nodded, not asking for any details or complaining about Jake giving him more work.
With that, he left and also said goodbye to the personal assistant on the way out. As he left, he couldn’t help but once more think about just how scarily talented Arnold was. The guy didn’t have a First Sage to teach him, and he also got the feeling Oras wasn’t the most hands-on Patron, so he had more or less made all his insane progress on his own.
Just happy he’s on my side, Jake thought, also reminding himself to bring the scientist more stuff to experiment with. Best to stay on his good side lest Jake wanted to deal with orbital bombardment beams and void lasers shooting from a few galaxies away in the future.
Outside of Arnold’s workshop, Jake decided to enter stealth as Jake continued his quest for a bow, with his first task being to find where the hell Maria was currently at so she could hopefully lend him a hand... or, better yet, an entire bow.