Looking at the screen showing Aki crawling out of the pile of fire worms that had been completly drained of their energy, Hades wondered if the fucker even needed the pillars of dust filled with energy from the bonus rewards since he was clearly capable of forming his own separated energy reservoir from the necromantic rituals he seemed to love performing on whatever he threw at him.
The bugs 10 levels above him weren't even a challenge anymore, but he feared what would happen if he allowed him to go to murder the ones 15 or 20 levels above him.
He'd probably not use their mind broken carcasses as reservoirs with regeneration he constantly drained until their ultimate demise as he trained his attributes, but it'd been only 72 fucking hours in total since he entered soldier stage, yet he was nearing it's peak already!
"Darling, do you think I can tell him he won't be able to come here so easily the moment he reaches spirit realm?" Asked the pale God towards the woman sitting on his lap and trying to convince him to take an actual break.
"I think he knows." She smiled and snuggled a bit closer.
*****
"Why are you staring at nothing like that? It's creepy." Said the local fae while bumbling through her work. She'd done it for millenia, but she'd been eons without it, and it was specially frustrating to finally get an upgrade from those old fashioned scrolls Hades preferred and still be doing it slower than before.
"I'm passing through my affinities and their bonuses again. I need to think of a way to maximize my power and energy while keeping myself at the peak of the mortal realm. I do have an idea, but it just isn't the time. It'd be better if I found a way to hold myself back while still growing. You have any cursed items? My gravity augmenters aren't helping as much now that i get used to the change more easily." He complained, having already maxed out his crafting for his current energy effectiveness and infused all his martial arts with diferent energy tipes, the former needing more energy even through the buffs aquired and the later receiving several sub-skills that augmented his use by percentage base of certain actions, like increased armor penetration or a stacking buff for speed while he kicked his oponent.
"I do, but i'm not supposed to give it to you." She coldly said without turning around.
"What, really? Even just a drop of the water of wails would be great! A drop of blood from a jailer would be perfect though, do you think you can get one of those?" He smiled and hugged the red head from behind imediatly.
"Of course not idiot, I can't get you one of those before you have one yourself. You think any other competitor has scriptures from fucking lunatics that somehow went to hell and back? Just you knowing those exist is already impressive, so calm the fuck down and get off." She grumbled and he complied, taking off to get both of them some coffee and reading some novels on his phone while making her company.
*****
"And that's the rhombus of history over earth and it's magical bullshit." Finished Aki, Minthy having grudgingly moved to another seat so that the present people might hear the lesson more confortably. Considering all present bar Elisabeth seemed to have a spliting headache, it was the least he could provide.
"I want to say this is utter bullshit, but it actually explains and collaborates with a lot of shit scollars say." Complained Elliot, Ben's sister.
"Wait, does that mean that there's a christian god and a judaic god both going by the word itself or that they don't give a shit about the people making holy wars in their names?" Asked Ben, who was still processing the absurdness Aki had told them.
"There's only one, but wars, specially the holy ones, generate a lot of mental power, so they simply don't give a shit." Aki nodded.
To summarize what he'd just explained to his close associates, friend and friend's sister, there are a lot of gods, earth isn't that advanced in the grand scale of things, humans are great batteries and worshipping is one sure way to get energy out of them. A lot of pantheons fought for the newly found spots where human life seemed to blossom and even laid foundations to the misshapen lumps that were the soul system, ecosystem, eliptic orb, so on so forth. In the end, the freakshow of mish mashed figures over Asia and 'God' with his angels survived with the power in hands.
"What about space? You just said something about new spots of human life, that means there should be life somewhere else, then why can't we see it?" Melissa demanded.
"Translating for someone that isn't a nerd, we're basically inside a force camp produced by a series of floating satellites used to capture the energy released by all reactions inside the space of our solar system. They can manipulate any kind of data they want and even confuse certain ships or non-tripulated projects trying to leave. We're bassically fancy hamsters running on a ball until we learn enough to get to the nearest resource post that would make a diference in our technological jump. From the legal point of things." He put out. "By the way, the apocalipse isn't exactly an apocalipse as much as a natural fenomenom that will change the resources naturally avaible on earth, so we became accesible as pawn for higher powers. You could say i'm a representant of a middle sized company, so i have privileges most others on earth don't. Like knowledge." Aki deepened his explanation before helping put down the immediate effects of an existential crisis. It is surprising what people will do when they notice their fears about their own insignificancy are correct, but it is, while very boring, also very easy to break them out of it with nihilism.
*****
*Sigh*
"Set course towards space warp site number 33, self designation 'Earth'. Said the ship captain.
"Acnoleged. Initializing self destruction. 5..." Said the mechanical voice of the ship.
"Calculate the schematics for a ship specific dildo while you do that." She calmly said towards her assistant Ai. The banter was practically automatic at this point.
"Exceptionally low morale detected. Commencing super hot and caring program, human version. What happened babe?" Asked the now male and sweet as ambrosia voice of the Ai.
"It's nothing. Just the boredom and cringiness from being basically worshipped when contacting the last 32 planets. I know they needed someone at core formation minimum to do this but it just doesn't sit well with me. There's so much I could be doing instead. Half these people won't even try to actually do something to save their own home world and the half that do can barely do anything!" *Bang* She said and hit the not so active console with some strength. "I know it's racist, but isn't there a more humane way to help these tier 1 planets?" She complained, knowing full well of the waste of resources it'd be. Even if they'd scavenged the whole new cluster it'd still just barely give any profit, which would overall not be all a bad thing considering other gains, but the sheer amount of personal that was needed for both such operations and their continuity would need huge support. Much bigger than someone on her level could pull, nevermind the implications of trying to convince a universal civilization to get involved when the cluster wouldn't even spawn inside their own territories, which wasn't possible thanks to all the stabilizers they had around nor something that would cause problems for the people already living in the affected worlds in case of stabilizers failure, considering even on said theoretical happening they'd even get fucking insurance so the cluster could be turned into a farm for it's resources without any locals trying to stop the government.
"I just hope the next chosen is easier to deal with. The less assholish supreme rulers i have to deal with the better." Grumbled the galatical emisary, wondering if she should go for a walk on the ship, read a book or furiously mastubate. The wonders of long and lonely space travel bought such questionings to the mind quite constantly.
*****
"There there, you can always meet something even bigger later, so why care?" Aki conforted his very much drunk friend over the facts he'd just learned before the intoxicant stopped working on his body and he went back to a harder to manipulate mindset.
"You're right. I have my job and home at the gang, i have my sister, as long as i try hard enough i will be able to protect that which i love and..." *Tuck* Ben fell over as he completly passed out of emotional exaustion and the drug he'd been given finally kicking in.
"I'll be going to the middle of nowhere for a bit of a mission, so see you girls later. Remenber, two weeks for the changes to start and two months and a half for everything to practically blow up." Aki criptcally said before leaving normally.
His speed as he rushed to the landing site was anything but normal though. Ussing all his buffs and taking out his sword out for further bonusses, multiplicative if you are wondering, because blood and arcane magic actually changes the current body attributes for a determined time. He'd already reached the stats of someone at the beggining of knight rank, nevermind that the more he ran the faster he got because of the time, wind and pressure buffs acumulating as he ussed them or simply by the existence of his presence.
Getting there, Aki noticed he was the third to reach the seemingly random place on a desert on Texas. The two old man thought it strange a soldier rank has broken the sound barrier and gotten here, but there was little time for questions and more and more sonic booms reached the place.
By the time around eighty or so cultivators had reached the place, a dome suddenly sprang around them, alerting most of them. There was, however, no time at all to run. The moment the sphere was formed, no one inside had the hability to break it.
"Something very wrong is happening." Said the masked old man who had been first in reaching the place.
Looking outside the dome, it could be seem that all those heading towards it had suddenly stopped completly. Not out of any normal reason, time itself seemed to have been stopped as the visible waves their charges produced were also stopped.
"There were still some who couldn't make it even with ten minutes of alert, this is really a backwards planet." *sigh*
Said the woman who had not been there a moment ago. Aki simply nodded and helplessly smiled at her.
Much like himself, she was quite plain for a cultivator, meaning that even by earth's standards she'd simply be beautiful in a 'girl next door' way, which was a fairly big surprise to everyone there for two obvious reasons. One, she was clearly a human even though they all knew that there wasn't anyone this strong on the planet, and two, the ugliest person there had cursed wounds, birth defects or were decreptively old, all of which would be unsoulvable before they got their second rebirth after breaking to the next realm, but even they would be handsome men that could make panties drop with their gaze after such oportunities.
No one wanted to comment on that second part though.
"Welcome to planet earth miss. This is currently the best this world can offer, but rest assured, panic and caos can make people grow like crazy." Aki lightly bowed, surprising yet again all present.
"I pressume you are this world's champion. It doesn't look like you are their leader yet, but do try to keep murderous conquest for other times, your world is already going to suffer enough as is." She nodded to him and turned to look around, seeing only that nobody else seemed eager to take the place of the youth in front of her. "Could you tell me how the current world works in relation to cultivation, in your own words." She asked.
"I'm not much of a leader, so I don't know if I even could. The current world has some hundreds of countries, but it should not take much to make the greater economies and territories kneel or appoint a leading representative after the first changes. Of which, I need to point out, cultivation is considered as a fairy tail of sorts by more than 90% of the population, so there will be great unrest, but if we enslave all high level crime bosses there should be no problem leaving the people to their own fates after I open up my own school to show the way of the mage." Aki explained, greatly shocking the woman.
"I get the crime problem, but how the fuck do you not have the mage path around and why would you even hide cultivation from the masses?" She seemed personally offended by the mere thought of it.
"Because humans are assholes." Aki instinctively answered, making everyone frown at least a bit. "Some people thought it would be good to make it an exclusive thing, the thought kept going and nowadays even if you appear in front of cameras and explain everything you would be called madmen and suppressed until you could be killed. As for the mage path, it was probably hunted down to the point that it is a legend even to the cultivator community, so i really doubt anyone present has any clue why it dissappeared. " Aki explained, and everytime he was sincere she seemed to bite a lemon. It reached a point that the moment she noticed he'd finished and all sensor on her told her everyone around thought this man was right, she started spouting a stream of curses that would make all people over the Americas blush because of grammatical incompetence they didn't even know they had.