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Chapter 958: Black Flag

Jake had never seen it himself as he hadn’t elected to join the Prima Guardian Alliance, but if a planet that had earlier voted to join the alliance started the system event without the World Leader on the planet, they would no longer be considered part of it. The teleportation circle would stop working, and they would not be able to get any help.

Rejoining the alliance was easy enough. The World Leader just had to return. Without them acting as Key Holders, the event simply couldn’t function normally… but some World Leaders didn’t care. They had abandoned their planets for good and looked to greener pastures elsewhere in the multiverse, leaving all those who once put their trust in them for dead.

That, or the entire planet had been evacuated… though this didn’t really happen. Teleporting that many people to another universe or even another planet was just way too expensive and not worth it. An evacuation would only mean bringing along those of ”value.”

Those with high levels or with high potential, family members of these people, individuals with certain unique skills or abilities, people with relations to divine figures… but the common man? The median citizen? They would be left to face a Prima invasion all on their lonesome, utterly chanceless.

To clarify, this scenario was very rare. Most World Leaders wouldn’t abandon their planets, as it would ruin their Paths, and even more didn’t have the possibility of leaving in the first place. Those with the means of escape, more often than not, had responsibilities or divine factions expecting them to stay and secure the planet for them.

Plus, the event was designed to be beatable for the vast majority of planets. The system wasn’t known to doom worlds that, at the very least, tried their best to fight back. This isn’t to say many of these worlds wouldn’t fall… but they would have at least stood a chance.

As an example, Olliandra’s planet would have easily handled the event had she not idiotically released the Prima Guardian as soon as possible, making them face the strongest version their planet could ever see. If they had just killed Primas for a year or two before freeing the Prima Guardian, they would not only have grown stronger, but the Guardian would have weakened.

Luckily, most World Leaders were wiser and less drunk on success than Olliandra and approached the event carefully. Planets with divine influence seeped into their culture, and leadership had a far higher success rate, too. Plus, they had more wisdom granted by their gods telling them not to be idiots and take dumb chances.

In the ninety-third universe, there were nearly innumerable galaxies, more planets than anyone knew, and countless conflicts taking place between different factions… yet it wasn’t hard to find the one galaxy that most gods and factions generally paid the most attention to. With two Chosen of peak-level gods, it was only to be expected that something exciting was bound to happen, and truly, the Milky Way Galaxy did quickly prove itself a massive outlier, not only due to these two Chosen but a third anomaly nobody knew about:

The entity simply known as ”I.”

Jake had a rather unique perspective on this system event in that he found it somewhat counterintuitive by design. Most system events would naturally grow harder with time, but this one was quite the opposite. For every day that passed since it began, it only got easier. The Primas all seemed unable to progress or gain any levels, while the Prima Guardians only got weaker due to the event’s design. Shit, just sitting around or hiding in a hole without killing any Primas would make the boss weaker once it naturally broke out, as per the description of the event:

“The Prima Guardian will be sealed within the Prima Vessel for the first 1000 days after arrival. Each day that passes, the Prima Guardian shall break one of the chains sealing it, expending some of its power to regain its freedom…”

And then were was, of course, the second section that Jake and everyone had been actively taking much advantage of:

“…Defend, attack, and hunt down every Prima, knowing that every slain Prima empowers the remaining seals on the Prima Guardian, forcing it to expend even more energy to regain its freedom, thus making it weaker once fully unsealed…”

Despite what it said about having to break the chains, they had discovered slaying Primas before manually freeing the Prima Guardian also contributed to it coming out weakened. Why it worked exactly like that, Jake didn’t know, and honestly, he wasn’t going to look for logic when it came to stuff like those chains.

While the chains did seem to physically exist, they were as much metaphysical seals, seeped in system-fuckery, as they were actual constraints. All Jake knew was that the Prima Guardians got weaker with every passing day, no matter what, and killing a Prima would make the Guardian weaker still.

This did result in the last three months of Jake’s life being a lot more boring than he’d hoped. The Prima Guardians just got easier and easier to kill, with most of his time spent just traveling around getting to the Prima Vessels with a slow World Leader.

Now, there was actually a way to make this process faster, as Jake learned something after his fourth planet visit. Something that would certainly help contribute to people being afraid of another World Leader who had already killed their own Prima Guardian visiting.

Jake learned that another feature of his special ring was the ability to absorb the keys from other World Leaders. In other words, he had the option of killing other World Leaders if he so desired and stealing their key. Usually, when a World Leader died during the event, the key would simply go to the Prima Guardian, even if the Guardian didn’t kill the World Leader personally.

When this knowledge began to spread across the communication channels of the Prima Guardian Alliance, everyone got a lot more reluctant to invite other World Leaders to their planets out of fear. Jake also heard a few instances of Ell’Hakan killing World Leaders and taking their keys, though it didn’t seem to cause many issues for him, as his alliance of sycophants would let him do anything.

One would think that this revelation caused a lot of problems for Jake and his ability to find planets willing to have him visit, but that was far from the case.

Kindroth was a godsend when it came to handling the members of the system-made Prima Guardian Alliance. As the Voice of the One and leader of such a massive civilization, his word held a lot of sway, and as a member of the alliance for years, he had earned plenty of respect and possessed many allies. When the mercenaries and their planets began to also echo the elf’s words, Jake had more planets than he had time to visit. Sure, inviting him was a risk, but so was getting slaughtered by Primas, and having someone kill the Prima Guardian for you to weaken all the regular Primas and allow the local wildlife to also fight back against the invasion was quite an attractive prospect.

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Jake also wasn’t alone in helping out hunt down Primas for the alliance Kindroth had gained them access to. When the Sword Saint soon returned with a dead Guardian under his belt, Kindroth was initially skeptical until he learned the Sword Saint was also one of the top ten people of their universe. He was downright flabbergasted when he also met Vesperia, Sylphie, and the Fallen King, who’d stopped by before heading to their next planet. When he later learned about all the others like Arnold… yeah, the guy didn’t hold back.

”How in the fuck did you manage to gather a planet of freaks like this? No, why does the system even allow this to happen? Shit, when I imagine if I’d chosen to really go hard on the neutrality stance and risked having to face you and your freaky group… yeah, this is straight-up unfair,” the elf had complained loudly while it was just the two of them, much to Jake’s amusement.

Jake couldn’t really say anything, though, as the situation was absurd. He could also give the guy who’d helped facilitate Jake clearing forty-three Prima Guardians in three months a bit of leeway, and from the looks of it, things were only speeding up.

Through Kindroth\'s efforts, the planets he had yet to get to began to actively prepare for Jake to head there, with the elf sending help to make that happen. They placed teleportation circles closer to the Prima Vessels and – annoyingly so – supported them in killing more Primas.

Okay, Jake shouldn’t complain about them killing Primas, as that had to be done no matter what and to help reduce losses, but it just sucked for the released boss to get even weaker. It was bad enough that even the Sword Saint commented on the decreased difficulty.

All together, Earth had killed over a hundred Prima Guardians by now, and that wasn’t counting those from the Holy Church who had left to help their faction and didn’t return to Earth to check in or anything. It did count the planets Vesperia had visited with the others, the one handled by Casper and the Risen, and Caleb and Maria’s efforts.

Things were definitely going well… but as expected, something unexpected had to happen.

Right at this very moment, Jake wasn’t in a rush to head off to kill more Prima Guardians. After he returned to the Prima Vessel on Earth to check in with Arnold and the teleporter the scientist was working on, he was promptly called to the map by the Sword Saint, who’d returned not that much earlier.

Looking at it, the map had changed a lot since three months ago. So many planets were green now, having replaced the blue colors of before. When it came to the red ones, Jake wasn’t even sure any of them had been cleared outside of their own, though he was certain at least some of them had. A few of them had definitely fallen, though.

But that wasn’t why Jake had been called to the map.

A new color had shown up on the map of the galaxy. They had seen green flags for cleared planets, red for those handling the event alone, blue for those who’d joined the system-made Prima Guardian Alliance, and finally, gray for the planets that had fallen to the invasion. Now, there was one more: black.

He was joined by the Sword Saint as the two of them looked at it, the old man asking with narrowed eyes. ”How did this even happen?”

”I’m not sure,” Jake said, shaking his head. ”But I’m pretty sure it was green before, so…”

Frowning, the old man looked certain that the true answer wouldn’t be something he liked.

The criteria for a planet turning black was something Jake wasn’t sure could happen, and he certainly saw no reason why it would. A planet turning gray on the map meant the Prima Guardian had killed the World Leader and claimed the Planetary Pylon, while green meant the World Leader had killed the Guardian and claimed the planet…

Black meant no one had claimed the Pylon.

That no one would ever claim it… because it signified the destruction of the Planetary Core.

As for what planet it had happened on? The planet cleared first alongside Jake and Ell’Hakan’s, done by the creature known as ”I.”

Miranda went over all the daily reports, of which there were honestly far too many due to recent happenings. She had to be quick, too, as she had several meetings lined up, courtesy of Jake and his pals, who’d been way too busy.

When they killed Prima Guardians and ”saved” all these planets, the local World Leader’s response was almost comically predictable. Every single time, a delegation would apply to visit Earth within a day or two, and Miranda naturally saw no cause to ever reject these. In fact, she welcomed them.

One part was definitely because it would actively hamper the efforts of Ell’Hakan and the story he was telling of uniting the galaxy under his influence and definitely also because it would give them potentially valuable allies should the conflict escalate further.

Secondly… this was really great for her Path. Miranda had gotten so many levels and learned a lot over these last few months. Having to deal with so many different cultures, World Leaders, and people of high political skill and standing was a constant challenge that repeatly pushed her forward.

There was one person who pushed her more than anyone else, though.

Miranda had met a lot of different World Leaders and political figures, both on Earth and when she went to the Order. Within her dream skill granted by the Witches of the Verdant Lagoon, she also had many encounters… yet the most frightening political figure she had encountered thus far was the elf she had a meeting with in a few minutes.

She was painfully aware that the only reason things were going so well during this event wasn’t due to her own political prowess but the skills of the one known as the Voice of the One. At first, based on Jake’s description, she had expected a conman who’d hoodwinked his planet into thinking he was some semi-divine figure through lies and manipulation. It was not a good first impression.

However, when she met him, reality soon struck her. Miranda had believed herself pretty adept at dealing with other World Leaders and political figures of high influence, yet after her first meeting with Kindroth, Miranda felt she had a long way to go.

Uniting an entire planet with over a hundred billion citizens into a homogenous, well-functioning society was not a fluke. His ability to invoke trust in over two hundred World Leaders, making them allow Jake and others to teleport to their planets also wasn’t luck. He was good, to the level of it being intimidating.

In the eyes of many, Miranda was the ”leader” of this budding alliance, with Jake as the figurehead. But reality felt different, as Kindroth held a far more central position. He was the one the other World Leaders trusted and followed. He was the one they showed loyalty toward. Sure, they were afraid of and almost seemed to revere people like Jake and the Sword Saint, but Kindroth ended up with much of the credit for their achievements as he was the one who introduced them as Prima Guardian slayers.

But… it wasn’t like Miranda could really say anything. He always made sure to refer these World Leaders to her, and whenever they met, he was very respectful and made it clear he did view her as someone with a higher position in the hierarchy than him. Yet the lingering feeling she was slowly being replaced couldn’t help but sneak up on her… at least until the meeting they had that day, as the elf entered the office right as she was done with her paperwork.

After a bit of small talk and discussing recent events, such as Arnold reporting he believed a special teleporter to reach all the planets was soon ready, Kindroth seemed to turn a bit more serious as he looked her in the eye.

”I want you to know I am no cause for concern,” the elf said with a comforting smile. ”And becoming one would be a foolish endeavor. You have the trust of the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and his comrades, making your position unshakeable. Right now, it may not seem that way, but this situation is only temporary. History will not speak of me as anything but the person who assisted the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and his Court Witch in achieving their goals, and that is the position I am comfortable with. I have no ambitions of reaching for a position I do not belong in. Besides, who else could possibly deal with the Chosen of the Malefic Viper as well as you? If it was me, I would actively feel my lifespan reducing with every report of his most recent shenanigans.”

His words were exactly why Miranda found the elf frightening, because she found them genuinely comforting. Kindroth always seemed to know what to say and how to act around people. From Jake, she learned the guy was ”pretty chill” and relaxed. He didn’t realize this was part of what Kindroth could do. The elf had realized Jake wasn’t a person who liked others being overly respectful, but preferred casualness, so he acted casual around Jake. His level of insight wasn’t something a skill could grant; it was pure talent. So was his level of guts to stand up to Jake during their first encounter. That wasn’t some act… though Miranda did suspect it was perhaps a gamble. One few would have dared to attempt.

Looking back at Kindroth, Miranda returned his smile. ”Jake can indeed be a handful to deal with, but such is life. Thank you for your words, and I hope we can both continue carrying out our roles well. I look forward to learning from your continued exemplary performance.”

”I shall do my utmost,” Kindroth said as he stood up and bowed before saying their goodbyes, Miranda staring after the elf while he left.

Even if she remained cautious around the guy… she couldn’t argue he was an incredibly valuable asset to their cause and she understood why he had been perhaps the top person in the universe that Ell’Hakan had been clamoring to get on his side.