As things in the Milky Way Galaxy calmed down, the exact opposite was happening around it.
All across the ninety-third universe, the Prima Guardian event was only now starting to really pick up in pace. As the thousand-day deadline till all the Prima Guardians would be released grew closer, the local leaders and fighters were under more pressure. They needed to kill as many Primas as possible to ensure the Guardians weren’t too powerful when released, and even then, there was a lot of uncertainty if they could even kill the boss.
A few galaxies got lucky and had certain planets where powerful elites emerged, capable of slaying the Prima Guardian by manually having the World Leader release it prematurely. These elites could then help out other planets that had chosen to take part in the Prima Guardian Alliance. Often, this help came at a price, though.
These planets with actual power began to suppress and expand across their galaxies to gain more power, using the system event as nothing more than a vehicle to spread their influence. Often, several such forces appeared in the same galaxy, and with the event only lasting a measly thousand days, it was far from enough for one definitive leader to emerge in the majority of galaxies.
Of course, there were massive standouts. The Milky Way Galaxy barely needed to be mentioned, as everyone knew it was at the top of the list for anomalies. They were the first galaxy to slay every Prima Guardian, and by a fair margin, too. Again, not a surprise to anyone.
It had been the galaxy with the two top individuals on the Nevermore Leaderboards, after all. If they weren’t the first to clear the event, who else could be? The Milky Way was far from being the only galaxy to kill all the Prima Guardians before the event would naturally conclude, though. They were just the first ones to do so.
The second galaxy to kill every Prima Guardian was one of the smallest galaxies in the universe. It had only a couple of hundred planets with enlightened on it, and due to the appearance of a single warrior who killed every single Prima Guardian by himself, the entire galaxy was blessed with taking second place. What’s more, this warrior did it expecting nothing. He had an absolutely stellar reputation, which was also why everyone was willing to put their trust in him. The man was not even a World Leader himself or a contender for anything related to the system event.
No, he was merely a humble wanderer. At least that’s what he called himself, though many would recognize him as the Eastbound Monk, number seven on the Nevermore 93rd Universe Leaderboard.
Third place in the universe was taken not due to any individual but the combined efforts of a galaxy steeped in death energy that the Risen had quickly taken control of. The rest of the top ten spots for galaxies were also claimed by the major factions of the multiverse, and while they all had standout geniuses, the primary reasons for their victories were their unity and the absence of internal conflicts.Nearly all of the top Nevermore contenders native to the ninety-third universe also had their galaxies rank in the top one hundred to clear the system event. Of course, there were some absent, and some who wouldn’t even appear on the list at all.
Facing the Prima Guardian was an event for the enlightened races of a galaxy, but that left out a lot of people. In fact, the majority weren’t even part of the enlightened races, so what happened to them?
Well, the monsters had their own event. This isn’t to say that monsters couldn’t also benefit from the event of the enlightened races if they were on a planet with enlightened natives, but what would happen if they were from planets with no enlightened presence at all?
That’s where they had their entirely separate event and competed against one another. Their objectives were a lot simpler than fighting a Prima Guardian or anything like that. They were simply given the task of being the first to claim the World Core.
This would, of course, be a bit too easy, so the system threw some challenges their way in the form of powerful monsters created to defend the core. Many of the subterranean monsters even got quests and objectives to defend the core, the system actively spurring competition and confrontation between the powerful wildlife of all these planets, intending to have one monster stand at the pinnacle.
In this event, known figures such as Wintermaul and Lopas both utterly dominated, the two of them having already fully conquered their planet in the first place. What’s more, once they had already claimed their own World Cores, the system allowed them to continue competing to increase their rewards by challenging other monsters in the galaxy that had also claimed their World Core, to not only find the pinnacle of each planet, but the pinnacle of the entire galaxy.
These events for monsters took place side-by-side in all the galaxies with enlightened races also in them, but also in many of the galaxies where no enlightened resided at all. There were unknown requirements for what made planets eligible, but in general, a certain size and solid diversity of monsters seemed to be required. The event naturally also only included those in C-grade and not the more powerful galaxies where it would be hard to find any creatures below B-grade.
This competition between monsters naturally also took place in the Milky Way Galaxy. Nobody really knew this, but even if they did, the competition between monsters was mostly inconsequential for them. In fact, the monsters of the Milky Way probably had to be happy that Jake wasn’t aware of their little event... because if he had been, he would have just viewed their leaderboards as a to-hunt list.
Luckily for them, there didn’t appear to be any plans from the system to force further confrontations as the months quickly passed. Soon, hundreds of galaxies completed the event every day, an incredibly slow pace considering the sheer size of the universe.
It was understandable once one factored in that the only way for a galaxy to fully clear the event was for every Prima Guardian to be dead. This meant just a single planet that hadn’t been part of the alliance could block the galaxy’s completion, assuming the others there didn’t construct a teleporter like the one Arnold had made.
Many planets also fell to the Prima Guardians or even just regular Primas during this time. This was only to be expected, and the majority of these weaker planets ended up seeking refuge under the banners of those more powerful, making the event have a pretty respectable clearance rate. Even if only a few percent of planets fell, that would still be billions of worlds lost.
Not that anyone focused on the losers.
As the end of the system event grew closer and closer, the many World Leaders who would soon find themselves being referred to as Galactic Leaders – or at least contenders for that title - began to consider what would come next.
To these leaders or future leaders of their galaxies, they were expected to receive some level of influence over their local Seat of the Exalted Prima. However, they also all knew this was only a prelude. The many Seats of the Exalted Prima that could be found in all the galaxies taking part in the event weren’t all World Wonders. They were all merely parts of one... and a ticket to compete for the real thing.
To claim a World Wonder was something no faction would give up on. A World Wonder was like an irreplaceable treasure, and while some of them weren’t that useful compared to others, all still held immense value simply on account of their uniqueness and rarity. From the looks of it, if the Trial of Myriad Paths was any indication, this World Wonder would likely hold immense value. If one could be sure of one thing, it was that if something in the multiverse held value, it would be fought for.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It wasn’t even that all the soon-to-be Galactic Leaders necessarily wanted to claim this World Wonder for themselves despite being named Administrators of their local Seats. They knew only the true peak factions had the power to control one, but if they should gain ownership, couldn’t they simply sell it or get offered some high position?
Considering all the qualifiers to be an Administrator of the Seat of the Exalted Prima, it shouldn’t be the kind of title that could be stolen simply by killing someone. That meant all the Administrators were valuable assets now, as they were the only ones who even had a chance to fight for the true World Wonder.
Of course, before the true battle for the World Wonder could begin, not only did the current system event have to end, but the Administrators also had to reach B-grade for their Administrator’s Seals to work, allowing them to teleport to their local Seats.
It was bound to be a tough competition when the time came... but there was no doubt that one galaxy was already ahead of the rest. With the Milky Way Seat of the Exalted Prima being the top-ranked Seat within the entire universe, no one could ignore it. Especially not when one considered who its primary Administrator was.
No one looked forward to competing with the Chosen of the Malefic Viper. He was the peak of the all-time Nevermore Leaderboards, after all. When news of Ell’Hakan’s and Yip of Yore’s deaths spread when the galaxies established contact with the rest of the multiverse, their hopes of victory only fell further. It didn’t help when many also learned that not only had Ell’Hakan been slain, but his entire world had met its end at the hands of the Malefic One’s Chosen.
With Yip’s death, the Malefic Viper had also shown he was truly worthy of his Primordial title. Perhaps more frightening was that the Viper wasn’t only known for his power but also his guile. In retrospect, many realized that the Viper had set Yip up from the beginning and manipulated the entire multiverse, only to reveal his true power when the time was right.
They could only begin to imagine what kind of elaborate schemes and plots they would encounter when battling his Chosen. After all, wasn’t it only natural to expect that the Chosen of one of the greatest schemers of the multiverse would also be a mastermind of machinations himself?
--
“Did you at least learn anything?” Hank asked as he directed the earth mage to properly stuff the hole and make it look like it had never been there.
“That I shouldn’t play with explosives when living in a glass bubble,” Jake said, a bit embarrassed.
“I really hope you didn’t just learn that today,” Hank said in a deadpan tone as Haven’s chief of construction probably wondered why he even had to be called for this kind of repair job.
“Well, I certainly learned what NOT to do today,” Jake said a bit sheepishly as he waited for his underground alchemy lab to be fixed. While it was a bit embarrassing, sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the name of science.
Jake had made a lot of progress over the last many months, which had led to this situation. Skipping back a bit, after he finished dealing with the Holy Church, Jake had pretty much retreated to his alchemy lab, only coming out occasionally whenever he had visitors or had to deal with anything that couldn’t wait. He did have to attend quite a few things with Miranda as she and all the politically savvy folk were hard at work, but truthfully, he tried to hide away in his underground lab as much as possible.
The vast majority of his time was spent either doing alchemy or meditating and reading the meditation tome left by the First Sage. As planned, Jake had begun to research branches of alchemy he’d never really explored before, and after some consideration, he’d landed on making poison mist – or, as it was better known, poison gas.
While he had his Wings of the Malefic Viper skill that was capable of burning his blood and turning that into mist, the effect really wasn’t that impressive anymore, primarily because Jake had never worked on upgrading that aspect of the skill. One of the reasons he hadn’t been able to upgrade it was probably also due to his lack of understanding when it came to poison mist, so learning more about it was definitely a good idea.
Anyway, Jake had made good progress. At first, he considered using the classical method of creating poison powder that could then be burned to release poison gas, but he quickly abandoned that and simplified the process.
Not to say that making poison gas was simple. It wasn’t just to boil a liquid poison, as all that would create was fumes, and while these fumes were toxic for sure, they weren’t really anything that could be used to deal any damage to anyone. They were just a byproduct.
No, Jake needed to create liquid poison designed to be turned into gas. It took a while and some studying, during which he sadly had to read things not authored by the First Sage, but in the end, he managed to create a pretty decent death-affinity poison gas.
Well, it wasn’t super usable yet. Still, Jake was happy with what he had, considering he hadn’t been working on creating poison gasses for long. Plus, he was only doing alchemy part-time with the majority of his day spent studying the art of meditation.
Anyhow, his latest creation had been the start of his current construction woes.
[Rotbreath Poison Gas (Uncommon)] – With every breath, life shall wane. Mixing potent death affinity toxins, a powerful poison gas has been concocted. This poison is primarily inflicted through breathing but can penetrate the bodies of any living beings in contact with it for too long. If inflicted, it will spread through the body and cause necrotic damage to any tissue it inflicts, causing flesh to rot. Wounds caused by necrotic poison are extremely difficult to heal.
This poison gas was good enough for Jake to consider something else important: his delivery method. Right now, Jake created the gas and purposefully compressed and contained it in regular poison flasks. At least he tried to. Jake learned that if compressed enough, the poison would turn back into a liquid, which Jake didn’t want, as even when it expanded again, it would take a bit to turn into poison gas.
Also, it kept breaking the flasks as they weren’t meant to house highly compressed gasses. Jake considered commissioning ones capable of handling the pressure until he realized that the flasks breaking wasn’t a problem; it was a feature. All he had to do was apply a bit of his personal touch:
Stable arcane mana.
That ended up working out great, and while it did mean the poison gas flasks had a limited lifespan as his stable arcane mana would slowly degrade with time, he figured it should be fine. For the record, Jake still had to put the poison gas in bottles. If he didn’t, the system wouldn’t recognize them as items, which would make him lose out on a bunch of bonuses.
So, the way he used his arcane mana was to fully coat the bottles on the outside. He would then pour in the gas and cover the top of the bottle. Despite the pressure being strong enough to make the bottle explode, Jake’s stable arcane mana would keep it together.
This finally leads to how Jake ended up blowing a hole through the glass bubble in his underground lab, the explosion big enough to blow a hole all the way to the surface. The problem with his exploding poison gas bottles wasn’t that they exploded, but that they didn’t explode enough.
Jake wanted to spread the poison gas faster, so he had the brilliant idea to create poison gas bombs. To make every bomb as effective as possible, Jake tried to pack as much poison gas as possible into every bottle. To ensure nothing dispersed, he tended to funnel the gas into the flasks while still in his cauldron.
Everything was looking so good until Jake had one more brilliant idea. Usually, the way he made his flasks explode was to make the stable arcane mana disperse, thus making the pressure shatter the bottle, but what if Jake instead turned the stable arcane energy into pure destruction and exploded it?
Even better, what if he mixed in a bit of destructive arcane mana with the poison gas itself to make it not lose any potency when mixing with the arcane mana during the explosion?
Well... it had kind of worked?
Granted, it had also resulted in a massive beam of pure destructive arcane energy shooting up from the lid of the cauldron, giving everyone in Haven something to look at when they saw the tall, thin beam of pinkish purple pierce the sky for a few seconds. Jake had even been so smart as to do it in the middle of the night to make more people see. He didn’t really fault himself for that one, though, as who the hell even kept track of day and night anymore?
“Do try to be more mindful,” Hank said in a slightly scolding tone, the construction manager being one of the few “normal” people in Haven who still spoke to Jake like a normal person. “This time, you got lucky, but what if the angle had been bad? You could have hit the city, and I hope I don’t need to tell you why that could have been bad.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jake sighed. “I think I’ll need to look into having some more defensive formations placed around the lab. Maybe we can even discuss strengthening the construction a bit?”
“Or, even better, you can stop doing reckless alchemy experiments,” Hank said as he looked at the Chosen of the Malefic Viper.
Jake didn’t even answer, and after a few seconds, Hank just sighed.
“I’ll have some people look at ways to reinforce and strengthen the lab’s walls... maybe put in some shielding here and there.”