Despite being caught red-handed – or taloned, in Sylphie’s case – the two showed no remorse after having once more stolen Jake’s bananas. He was seriously beginning to consider if he needed to create an actual defensive barrier to keep them safe at this point. Alas, at least the musa was still growing after Jake had added the soil from that time mage guy in Nevermore City. It would probably grow faster if it didn’t have its bananas stolen all the time, but Jake didn’t have much recourse if he wasn’t even ready to start a war with Valhal over the Great Banana Incident.
In all seriousness, getting a chance to sit down and relax in his lodge was nice after everything that had just gone down, and the sense of catharsis was overwhelming. Jake enjoyed himself as he heard all about Sylphie’s adventures with her parents and whatever mischief she’d been up to.
Mystie and Hawkie weren’t around very often anymore, but were exploring parts of the planet people on Earth rarely ever visited. One had to remember that the vast majority of the planet was still unclaimed wildlife, with quite a few areas filled with even mid to high-tier C-grades being located.
This was still more than good enough for the two early-tier C-grade hawks, who were progressing fast and should probably head to Nevermore at some point. However, the little green hawk was already beyond finding any opponents who stood a chance against her on the planet. She was in the same camp as most other pinnacle figures on Earth, and by now, Jake really didn’t feel like there was much to hunt... well, anywhere, really.
Alright, there was still one chance to find stuff that would give Jake experience: dungeons. However, these dungeons were few and far between, with not a single one identified yet with peak C-grade monsters within, much less B-grades.
The same was true for all the planets in their alliance. Earth actually had very high level wildlife compared to them, with only a couple matching or slightly surpassing Earth, primarily on account of being larger.
Hopefully, some dungeons Jake found worth visiting would be located as Miranda slowly put a full claim on the entire galaxy, but he didn’t have his hopes up. That meant if Jake really wanted to fight something worth fighting, he would have to head beyond the planets with sentient life and seek out less-than-hospitable places. The Moon was an option, but Jake didn’t feel ready to take down the ghost there quite yet.
Perhaps it was time to visit Mars soon... or maybe Venus or Mercury. Venus was closer if the orbit was just right, so maybe going there would be worth it, but Jake wasn’t sure it was a trip he wanted to make alone.
Anyway, after Sylphie was done telling tall tales about the grand foes she faced with her parents – faced in this instance mainly being Sylphie just watching as she was too strong to really take part – Carmen let out a reluctant sigh.
“I would really love to stay, but I’m pretty sure I will have people yelling at me if I don’t return soon. There’s bound to be quite some waves going through the galaxy now that all worthwhile opposition to the rule of Supreme Overlord Thayne has been defeated,” Carmen said jokingly.“My first edict shall be the banning of calling me a Supreme Overlord,” Jake joked back. “Followed by hefty fines for any banana thieves.”
“Ree?” Sylphie asked with a tilted head.
“Yes, that includes you. You have to ask permi-“
“Wait, don’t you have a minimum age? Little Sylphie is still a minor. How can she be considered responsible?” Carmen shot back as she hugged the bird, who looked at Jake with the most pitiful eyes.
“We were in Nevermore for fifty years,” Jake said with a blank expression.
“Those weren’t real years,” Carmen waved him off. “If they were, it would mean you’re older than your parents now, and if you think about that just a little, wouldn’t that be fucking weird? Way easier to just not count those years and keep yourself sane.”
Jake was silent for a moment before sighing. “See, this is why I shouldn’t be the one making laws.”
“Amen to that,” Carmen chuckled. “Anyway, as I said, I’ll be off. I do plan on returning again in not that long, but with how everything is, I honestly don’t have a timeline.”
“You go have fun,” Jake waved off the Runemaiden. “I will contact you if I get up to something interesting you may want to take part in. Probably off-planet exploration or something like that.”
“You better give me a call,” she smiled before walking out the door and shooting into the sky... after stealing yet another banana on the way, and the cheeky smile on her face when she did it only made matters worse.
“Ree?” Sylphie asked with a tilted head.
“You’ve had enough already,” Jake said decisively, denying the poor hawk any more snacks for now. With Carmen gone, Jake considered what he should be doing next, and honestly... there was a lot to do.
Sylphie seemingly realized Jake was gonna be boring and start working, so she decided to head off and see if Arnold wanted to play. Apparently, the scientist had discussed working with her to better optimize pneumatic systems or something like that, and with a promise of plenty of snacks, the little hawk had instantly gotten interested.
Arnold had truly figured out how to entice powerful beasts to help him with his experiments... you just had to feed them.
Alone in the lodge, Jake headed down to his lab. He wasn’t planning on doing any alchemy quite yet, at least not the traditional kind. Instead, he decided to do a proper check-in on something he’d only occasionally glanced at over the last many years while also infusing some arcane energy here and there.
Jake took out his Cradle of Soul’s Kindling – the mythical reward he’d received from defeating Minaga back in Nevermore. The urn-like item looked the same as usual, and it was only when Jake placed his hands on it and immersed his mind that he could get a proper picture of what was going on with the mythical item.
Within, he saw the vast world with Soulflames of hundreds of affinities everywhere. They had naturally been split into certain domains dependent on the kind of mana found there, with the biggest domain still being one of pure fire. In fact, the four biggest domains were the four elements – water, fire, wind, and earth. This was only to be expected, as they were the most dominant elements in the multiverse by far and hence also had the most Soulflames affiliated with them.
Fire-affinity Soulflames were unsurprisingly the most common, with the second most common being earth. Earth had a lot of innate life energy, meaning many regular potion alchemists wanted it, and those who dealt with growing or working with plants loved a good earth affinity Soulflame.
The basic elemental ones were also pretty damn good, as they were easily upgraded and altered. A water affinity Soulflame was easily turned into an ice affinity one, as an example. If Jake had to do a rough estimate, then more than ninety-five percent of all alchemists with Soulflames had one of the four elemental ones or a slight offshoot of one. As a side note here, most Holy Church alchemists, for example, who used holy magic simply altered a basic elemental one with the holy affinity, making holy fire Soulflames or something like that.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
As for the remaining five or so percent... they had the rarer ones. Dark and light-affinity Soulflames were very rare but often didn’t offer many benefits when it came to regular alchemy, while something like space or even time-affinity Soulflames were unbelievably rare and incredibly useful. But they were still far from the rarest.
No, the rarest Soulflames were by far those that were one of a kind... Arcane Soulflames. Which was exactly what Jake was trying to make. The biggest challenge with these Soulflames was to actually make one, though.
Soulflames couldn’t be created or crafted purposefully. The most one could do was create an environment to make them more likely to appear. That was exactly what the Cradle did, and it was by far Jake’s best opportunity to get an Arcane Soulflame.
As a reminder, Soulflames had the rarities of elementary, low-tier, mid-tier, high-tier, pinnacle-tier, and Supreme Soulflames, with Jake naturally going for either a pinnacle or Supreme Soulflame. Getting anything less would be such a waste of the mythical item, as once a Soulflame was extracted, the Cradle would break.
When Jake looked within the Cradle, he didn’t find any pinnacle or even Supreme Soulflames anywhere. Not among any of the affinities. The best Soulflames in there right now were all high-tier, and to Jake’s pleasant surprise, one of them was an Arcane Soulflame.
To make matters better, while the four largest regions were those of the four elements, the fifth largest was the arcane domain. Jake’s constant infusions of energy had borne fruit, and the arcane region was clearly still expanding. It couldn’t expand too much, though.
Because the way the Soulflames grew was by consuming one another, and Jake had realized a while ago that his Arcane affinity preferred to devour other affinities. This was definitely out of the ordinary, as other Soulflames tended to either consume their own kind or affinities they countered. Again, going back to the elemental ones, water consumed fire, earth consumed water, and so on and so forth.
So seeing Jake’s Arcane Soulflames consume nearly entirely other kinds of Soulflames was a bit weird, but Jake didn’t question it. He knew his affinity was kind of odd in that the best counter to Jake’s own destructive mana was his stable mana.
Jake kept watching the Cradle for a while as the Soulflames slowly moved about within, occasionally bumping into one another, at which point one would consume the other, though sometimes both also just dispersed into nothingness. This entire Soulflames business really was pure gambling, but Jake had definitely increased his odds significantly with the Cradle.
He still wasn’t confident he would ever create a Supreme Soulflame, but hopefully, he could at least get a pinnacle one. He had theorized a while ago that the Cradle couldn’t even make Supreme Soulflames by default. Instead, one could only be born when extracted. This theory mainly hinged on the part of the description of the Cradle that read:
“Only a single Soulflame can truly be born from the Cradle, the item getting destroyed upon extraction as all others become fuel for the chosen one.”
This could only be interpreted as the extracted Soulflame getting a good boost along the way when extracted. Seeing as his Arcane affinity liked to consume all other Soulflames, he felt even more confident he only needed a pinnacle-tier one.
Looking at the Cradle one more time, he looked at the high-tier Arcane Soulflame and gave it a mental cheer.
You got this, buddy!
When he did this, he felt as if the Soulflame started to move slightly faster as it approached another affinity’s domain... but seeing as Soulflames weren’t even living beings or had any kind of mind or will, he quickly wrote it off as coincidental or perhaps just wishful thinking.
Shaking his head, Jake infused some more arcane energy to continue expanding the domain before he emerged from the Cradle. Progress was definitely being made, and soon enough, Jake was confident he would have a great Soulflame.
As for what he would even use the Soulflame for?
Well... stuff. He would figure it out.
Moving on.
Putting away the Cradle to continue doing its thing, Jake checked on a few other things he’d neglected. After doing a round, he finally took his time to properly rejuvenate after his recent battle. While Jake wouldn’t say he had been very pressured, he had consumed a lot of resources due to his liberal use of Pride and arcane bombardments.
Besides, Jake wanted to meditate. When he closed his eyes and reopened them within the Soulspace, he was greeted with the world he’d created and was instantly put in a better mood. Landing in the colorful forest, Jake went toward the small wooden building he’d constructed to house the tome left by the First Sage.
Going inside, he didn’t wait to start reading the book that he knew he had no chance to properly understand, even if he spent the next thousand years just sitting there. Still, he wanted to, at the very least, get some gains and work toward upgrading his meditate skill.
He wouldn’t be able to read the book for too long before he would begin to feel mental exhaustion, so he also planned on having some alchemy sessions in between these head-ache inducing reading sessions.
With the upgrade to Sagacity, there were a few things he wanted to try, including maybe looking into learning the basics of creating some stuff he’d never bothered to learn before. All to shore up his foundation a bit... because now, with Ell’Hakan dealt with and the Milky Way stabilized for the most part, Jake had to think about what came next:
The push toward B-grade.
And while he hadn’t exactly written down a checklist of things he wanted to get done before evolving, there was one thing he really wanted to do while still in C-grade. The idea had wormed its way into his mind a good while ago, and he simply couldn’t let it go. Ever since he’d learned they existed, he had a childish wish to fight one, and now, before his evolution, he wanted to do what many would call foolishly arrogant and incredibly stupid...
Hunt down a True Dragon.
As Jake was busy doing his thing, the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy was naturally also busy. Many of Ell’Hakan’s allied forces were still fighting even as Iludar met his end and the Holy Church surrendered, but facing the Sword Saint and the army he led across the galaxy, they didn’t stand a chance.
When news of Iludar’s demise and what had happened between the Holy Church and the Chosen of the Malefic Viper spread, the morale of the remaining enemies reached an all-time low. Miranda and the Sword Saint, along with all their other allies, did all they could to spread these massive pieces of news to destabilize the leadership structures of their enemies and lead to internal conflicts, and boy, did it work.
Revolutions happened left and right as those with actual power clashed with those in leadership positions. The warriors and generals knew they faced inevitable death if they kept fighting, but the World Leaders and other politicians knew they, too, would face death even if they surrendered. When these two finally clashed, it wasn’t hard to figure out who won.
This resulted in the Sword Saint and his forces often arriving on planets that had already surrendered. That, or they noticed someone they expected to be an enemy suddenly open up their planets for all others to teleport there.
When the first of the otherwise steadfast opposition fell, it was like a house of cards. Nobody had any idea who to cut teleportation off from, and even if they tried, there were often some traitors who had seen the writing on the wall and invited Earth’s forces.
During all this, the Holy Church also pulled back all remaining members they had spread out across the galaxy and gathered on a select few planets awaiting evacuation. Tension was high, and Miranda made sure to send people to not only monitor everything but also very clearly communicate who the winners of this conflict had been, leaving nothing up to interpretation or the Holy Church’s spin.
Preparations for what would come after the Prima Guardian event concluded also began. All the teleporters linking the galaxy together were granted by the system for the event, and even Arnold’s teleporter and those like it relied on the Prima Vessels. While it wasn’t completely confirmed all these teleporters would stop working when the event ended, that was the assumption Miranda went with.
With that in mind, some form of communication system was still required. Luckily, many magical rituals allowing long-range communication did exist. Still, even so, Miranda wanted something more reliable, and Arnold was happy to provide it. The scientist had access to far more resources now, as he not only had Earth to procure from, meaning he could speed up production even more than before. With further promises from Miranda, he began creating what would effectively be an intergalactic phone service powered by void magic. And he was just one of many working on the preparations for what would come next.
All in all, there were a lot of things to consider and a lot of matters to deal with, but there was a generally positive outlook in the Milky Way Galaxy now that all the fighting had died down, and with the Prima Guardians dead, most believed no more system-created threats hung over their heads. With peace being found, the politics really began to pick up as ambitious politicians began to try and seize whatever influence they could, and even if no one was clear yet how the final leadership structure of the galaxy would look like in the end, one thing was certain:
Earth would be at the center of everything... and naturally, so would their World – soon to be Galactic - Leader, Jake Thayne.