Aalam

  “Why do my subordinates say I’m evil?”

  From the emotions he was feeling over their bond, Aalam could tell Mila was actually frustrated, so he should probably treat the question like a trap, but he couldn’t help himself but answer. “You do generally manipulate almost everyone around you.”

  Golden eyes glared at him, and the dress, which had previously disappeared from his wife’s body, leaving her in just her underwear, reappeared, meaning the playtime that was about to start was over before it even began. “It’s always for their own betterment.”

  Aalam knew it was stupid, but he decided to dig himself deeper. “Is it really, though? Often your manipulations seem to result in others doing work you would otherwise have to do.”

  The glare intensified and Aalam decided it was probably time to get dressed himself, so he did, in an instant, teleporting his clothes back onto his body.

  “I’m training myself, running infiltration missions in the Prime Material, pretending to be four different gods, and leading the monitoring of our warfront with the Primordial Humans. These are all things only I can do, and I’m stretched thin.”

  “Of course. And being overworked is a very good reason for getting others to do part of your work for you.” Aalam moved to hug his wife and, while she continued glaring at him, she let him. “But have you ever thought about, I don’t know, telling your subordinates what you just said and asking them to pick up the slack? Not being killed is generally a good motivating factor.”

  “I tried that once. It didn’t turn out well.”

  Aalam felt confused. “When? What was the result?”

  “Back when we were E ranks and Diana had just died.” Aalam felt Mila’s anger intensify. “I got an aunt.”

  Aalam paused for a good five seconds, thinking about what to say, effectively a lifetime with a God rank Spirit stat, and couldn’t think of anything great. “Have you thought of trying again, maybe not with subordinates younger than a thousand?”

  Mila’s eyes grew wide, like she’d just realized something, excitement building in her mind. “Right.” And then she kissed him, pushing him back onto the bed. “More fun first. Then I talk to my subordinates. Then we kill another god.”

  And Aalam wisely didn’t say anything else.

  * * *

  Edi

  Edi wasn’t sure what his master was planning, but, whatever it was, he was pretty sure it was going to be terrifying.

  “…And that’s all the things I have to work on, so I need you all to help with everything else on my plate.”

  “Aunty, I don’t think we can do that.” Thomas Garcia, his master’s cousin, the man whose identity one of Lord Aalam’s clones had used during the Universal Tournament, and the cultivator with the largest metaphorical balls Edi had ever seen, spoke up as everyone else in the large meeting room was quiet. “There are a lot of things only you can do.”

  And then the brave man, Edi’s soon to be father-in-law, started listing them out with his fingers. “We can’t make sure Lord Aalam stays focused on productive tasks instead of getting distracted by new engineering ideas. We can’t keep Mom’s ego from going out of control. And we definitely can’t keep Lord Aalam’s marriage bed—”

  Evelyn Li-Davies, Thomas’s mother who was sitting to his left, forcibly pushed her son’s head into the table to stop him from continuing and then bowed her head toward Edi’s master, whose glare toward Thomas had been intensifying.

  Then, for the next few seconds, almost everyone was deathly quiet, the only sound Lord Aalam and Lady Diana’s laughter.

  When Edi’s master turned her glare on them, however, they quickly stopped.

  “Um, Mila, are you being serious.” Sally Davies, Francis Davies’ wife, had a hopeful but nervous expression on her face, the same emotions present in her aura. “Are you actually asking for help?”

  Edi’s master looked over everyone, the entire leadership circle of the United Federation of Planets, and her expression grew colder. “Does everyone think everything I do is part of a manipulation of some kind?”

  “Yes.” Lady Diana couldn’t help but start laughing again and the cold look Edi’s master’s sent her could freeze stars. “In this type of official context, of course we do, because we’ve never once seen you do otherwise.”

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  “I can be sincere.”

  “To Aalam, yeah.” Lady Diana indicated her brother with her right hand. “And when you’re just hanging out, sure.

  “But you always default to subtle manipulation, and while most of us can’t see it happening in the moment, it becomes pretty obvious in retrospect.

  “I think we can be excused for being a bit thrown by you being so direct for once.”

  “It’s not just once.” Edi’s master looked around the room, an annoyed expression on her face, and then she closed her eyes and waited three seconds before opening them again, her face and expression more neutral. “I’m trying to change the way I deal with all of you.”

  “Finally!” Everyone turned to look at Sally Davies, who’d thrown both her hands into the air. “What finally got through to you and made you want to change?”

  “Aalam.” Edi’s master’s face remained completely neutral, and her aura was impossible to read, so likely only her husband, with whom she had an incredibly powerful magical bond, knew what she was actually feeling. “He pointed out that, when I am dealing with intelligent and competent people like all of you, the simplest way to get you to do what I want is to just tell you the facts as you would almost certainly agree with my conclusions.”

  “Wait. That’s all it took?” Extreme annoyance and exasperation entered into Sally’s voice and aura. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for ten thousand years!”

  “Yeah.” Edi’s master waved over Sally’s body with her left hand. “But your whole magical build, even more so than mine, is based around manipulating people.”

  “I was never trying to manipulate you!”

  Edi’s master, face still neutral, looked around the room. “A show of hands please for everyone who thinks they’ve been manipulated by Sally Davies.”

  Everyone’s hands went up, even Sally’s husband, and Edi felt almost all the tension leave the room.

  Francis Davies’ aura, however, showed a bit of fear as his wife turned to glare at him. “Francis!”

  “Mom.” Silvia Davies, who was sitting on Sally’s other side, reached over and put her right hand on her mother’s left. “Just like with Mila, we know your manipulations are for our own good, and, unlike Mila, we know you’re not trying to manipulate us, but guide us.” She shuddered slightly as Edi’s master turned to glare at her, but she still finished what she wanted to say. “The term, however, still fits.”

  Edi’s master looked like she was about to say something, but she was stopped by Lord Aalam putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Well, I think that’s enough for this meeting.” Lord Aalam smiled at everyone. “This, while very productive, has been hard on my wife, so we’re going to go commit murder so she feels better.”

  And, with that, both he and Edi’s master disappeared, the teleportation so subtle no one in the room but likely Immortalia, and maybe Krysta, were able to feel it.

  * * *

  Mila

  “Why would you end it like that?” Mila asked over their bond as her wind element clone, who was disguised as the Primordial Humans’ Wind Runner, stabbed Giantslayer into the goddess’s father’s heart, Mila having attracted the Divine Bulwark to enter one of Aalam’s universes on his own by manipulating him with some of her other clones using all she knew about him from reading his daughter’s memories.

  “I don’t know.” Aalam set up the Endless Seal’s barrier around the god as Mila’s clone teleported away, setting up several suppressive runic arrays while sending Thunder Crusher and Thread Guider inside to harass the dying man, Giantslayer’s poison and several dozen diseases, including the one made with Immortalia’s help, already affecting the god. “It seemed funny.”

  “Some of them are going to take what you said literally.” While breaking every contract with the Divine Bulwark she had access to, Mila also used some of the blood she’d collected while stabbing the Divine Bulwark along with her husband’s energy to activate their new Cursed Pyramid artifact hidden in her Personal Storage soulstructure, placing a powerful curse on the god, one quite a bit stronger than the curses she’d been using previously.

  “Are any of them really that stupid?” More of Aalam’s runic arrays started to activate, adding to the suppression of the universe the god was fighting, and the fight was basically over.

  While the Divine Bulwark was far stronger in combat than any of the other gods they’d killed up to that point, both she and Aalam were significantly stronger, and Giantslayer to the heart, powered by pure life, death, time, and space element Law infused triforce at the divine level, was the best reusable opening move they had.

  “Yes.” Even while pouring more energy into cursing the man and fighting with his control over faith energy, Mila turned her main body to look at her husband—her wind element clone still pretending to be the Wind Runner, looking sad at her own father’s demise. “Edi, probably, and anyone else who internally thinks of you as Lord Aalam or the Heavenly Spark Soul King.”

  “So,” Aalam said as he teleported into the barrier and cut through the god from head to groin with his impossibly sharp A rank sword, finally killing the man, “you’re saying I should joke around more so they stop having such reverence toward me?”

  He grinned at her as she teleported to the body and began absorbing the Divine Bulwark’s energy, using the god’s soul as skin for a new disguise for her earth element clone.

  “You have a point.”

  “Of course I do. I’m over ten thousand years old. My EQ has risen a lot.” Aalam’s expression looked proud, but, from their bond, and from his lack of acting skill, it was obvious he was just happy, barely any arrogance present in his emotions. Then, however, his emotions and face grew more serious. “Joking aside, though, Mila, I think we need to watch out for how we’re being affected by power.

  “I didn’t really realize it until just now, but everyone, even those who interact with us the most, are putting us up on a pedestal. And that can get dangerous.

  “If our end goal is to become immortal, I’d much rather be surrounded by friends than subordinates.”

  Mila took a few seconds to think about her husband’s words.

  He was right. Her defense mechanism of turning herself into a mysterious manipulator and his general habit of being by himself or with just her, Diana, and Isaiah, were separating them from the United Federation of Planets’ upper echelon.

  Also, she didn’t like how little she felt about killing the Divine Bulwark.

  Sure, they were at war, and, sure, the man didn’t have a perfectly clean record—no one could become a god without doing at least some morally questionable acts. But, as far as gods went, he and his daughter were almost certainly better than someone like Immortalia, who’d tricked countless mortals into giving up their lives and bodies to her while trying to regain her divinity, and Mila should have felt bad about killing them. But she didn’t. And that level of callousness was a bit scary.