Chapter 138: Sharing Benefits
’But before that, I should check and see if I met the requirement of evolving my SS-rank talent to SSS-rank.’
Aidan pulled up the readout right there in the dark, blood still drying on his jaw.
*****
[Power Bond: SS-rank → SSS-rank]
[Requirement 1: Sufficient accumulated growth. Met.]
[Requirement 2: A heart fully open. Unmet.]
*****
"Figures." He let out a short, humorless breath. "Confirming what I already knew about Hina and satiating curiosity wasn’t the same as actually opening anything."
[Jovan: Closure and openness aren’t the same operation. You closed a door. You didn’t open one.]
"Yeah, yeah." Aidan pocketed the thought along with everything else he wasn’t ready to look at directly. "One thing at a time."
...
Days blurred together after that, the whole camp settling into a rhythm built entirely around the pale, pulsing container at its center.
Solenne trained until her spirit lances stopped missing their mark, then trained past that point out of pure stubbornness, until the day her whole frame lit up gold and the readout above her finally clicked over.
[Solenne: Legendary-10 → Divine-1.]
Beatrix followed two days later, Tidereave Current answering her call with a speed that hadn’t existed a week earlier, water and lightning both bending to her will in the same breath.
[Beatrix: Legendary-10 → Divine-1.]
The summons climbed at different paces after that. Finn, already comfortably settled at Final-Stage Divine-rank alongside Jovan, didn’t gain much from the liquid at all beyond an excuse to declare himself superior to everyone still catching up, which he did loudly and often.
Cameron’s case was different from the rest, and everyone at camp knew better than to treat it the same way. His true strength had never belonged anywhere near Divine-rank, and it never would inside a small realm like this one.
Not without the world itself moving to erase him for the presumption. Origin Tomb had been the rare exception, not the rule.
What the liquid actually did was let him sit more comfortably at the ceiling he was already forced to keep himself beneath, peak Divine-rank instead of merely adequate Divine-rank.
The difference amounted to a leash worn loosely instead of one that chafed. He accepted the improvement with his usual understated calm, a single satisfied nod, and nothing more said about it.
Anrita’s readings sharpened until she could track threats from kilometers out without visibly straining.
Tom, despite loudly insisting the liquid did nothing for a Vaelith Threadseer, quietly hit peak Divine-rank sometime during the second week and pretended he hadn’t.
Even Arthur, already freshly Divine-rank from the necropolis, found new depth in it, his fire burning hotter and more controlled with every passing day.
"We’re building an army out of a war crime," Beatrix said one evening, watching the whole camp glow faintly under accumulated power.
"We’re building a very well-fed army out of a war crime," Aidan corrected, mouth full.
Solenne, sprawled nearby with her eyes closed, didn’t even open them to add her own commentary. "I’d feel worse about it if the bodies weren’t already dead when we found them."
"There’s the spirit."
...
The intruder arrived on the second day, and Anrita’s surface formations caught him before he’d taken ten steps onto the ridge.
Divine-rank, dressed in the same dark, functional robes as the base’s dead commander, clearly sent to check on an operation that had gone silent.
Aidan had him bound and seated within the hour, Veyron looming close enough to make cooperation feel like the only reasonable option.
"Who sent you."
The man’s jaw stayed shut.
"Let me guess." Aidan leaned back. "Supreme Leader Voshak."
Something flickered behind the man’s eyes, confirmation he clearly hadn’t meant to give.
"I’ll ask this once." Aidan’s voice stayed level. "What is Voshak actually planning?"
The man’s mouth opened, some answer half-formed behind his teeth.
His eyes went red first. Then blood, all at once, from every opening his body had, the exact same silent execution the commander had suffered days earlier.
He was dead before he finished falling out of the chair.
"Same trigger." Aidan exhaled slowly, more resigned than surprised this time. "Voshak’s got a leash on every one of them."
[Anrita: I still cannot identify the mechanism. My apologies, my lord.]
"Stop apologizing for it." Aidan waved a hand. "Just means we need to move faster than he expects."
...
Before the second raid, Aidan decided he needed something new entirely.
Domains sat exclusively at Divine-rank and above, a privilege the necropolis and everything after had finally earned him the right to actually claim.
*****
[Domain: A Divine-rank exclusive manifestation of will made physical space. Within an active domain, technique costs are reduced significantly, and overall combat capability increases across the board. When two domains clash, the domain that suppresses the other retains the greater share of benefit for its user.]
*****
He spent a full day comprehending his own, sitting cross-legged at the edge of camp while the rest of the crew gave him a wide, respectful berth.
It arrived quietly, in the end, less an explosion of insight and more a door that had simply always been unlocked, waiting for him to notice.
Cold and shadow bled outward from him the moment he opened his eyes again, a domain built from exactly the aspects that had carried him through every fight since the trial, settling over the ridge like a held breath.
The temperature dropped a full degree across the entire camp before anyone said a word about it.
"I can feel that from here," Beatrix called out, arms wrapped around herself.
"There it is." He rolled his shoulders, feeling the whole camp’s power answer faintly to the new pressure in the air. "Alright. Now we’re actually ready."
...
The new arrivals came within the hour, exactly as summoned.
Ordun’s enforcers first, weathered and grim as ever, nodding respectfully as they filed past the container without needing to be told what it was for.
Isolde beside them, golden light already humming faintly under her skin, healer’s instincts clearly cataloguing the whole camp’s condition on sight. Jiran a step behind, quiet and watchful, the way he always was before he decided whether a place deserved his trust.
And last, walking in without an escort of any kind, Vyra Ashgrove.
She moved like someone who’d never once needed backup and had stopped bothering to pretend otherwise, dark hair loose around sharp, confident features, a presence that filled the space around her without seeming to try.
Aidan met her personally at the ridge’s edge, arms crossed.
"So you came alone." He studied her for a long moment. "Didn’t think I might have plotted something to trap and kill you?"
"Even if you did." Vyra’s smile arrived easy and entirely unbothered. "You think I don’t have means to save myself, or escape, if it came to that?"
She stopped a few feet away, close enough that the confidence in her posture read as genuine rather than performed.
"But I think you’re smart." Her eyes held his, steady, something openly appraising in the look. "And I think you know I’m smart too."
"There’s more benefit in us working together than as enemies. There’s a vaster world out there, bigger threats than either of us has fully faced yet. We’re nowhere close to the power of the Transcendent Players living in the Major Realms."
Aidan’s eyes narrowed slightly, more intrigued than he’d expected to be. "Bold, for someone who just walked into an enemy’s camp unarmed."
"I’m not unarmed." Her grin sharpened, something warm and deliberate threading underneath it. "I’m just polite about it."
"Fair enough." He turned toward camp, gesturing for her to follow. "Let’s see if you’re as smart as you claim, then."
"Oh, I already know I am." She fell into step beside him, close enough that it read as a choice rather than an accident. "The real question is whether you’re smart enough to notice."
...
He gathered everyone at the edge of the container an hour later, the full weight of what he was about to say settling heavy in his chest.
"What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this ridge." Aidan looked around the circle, meeting each set of eyes in turn. "This location, this liquid, all of it belongs to something bigger than a rogue operation."
He laid it out plainly. Voshak. The bodies. The Galactic Empire’s dead being refined into fuel for something the Alliance hadn’t even noticed growing inside its own walls.
Ordun’s expression darkened with every sentence, the old enforcer’s jaw tightening until it looked carved from stone.
"An old monster, hiding this deep, this long." He shook his head slowly. "And no one saw it coming."
"We see it now." Aidan gestured at the container, at the whole camp humming with borrowed strength. "Which means we use it, before he realizes we have."
Isolde nodded once, grave and certain. Jiran’s hand found the hilt of his blade without seeming to notice he’d done it.
Vyra watched Aidan the entire time he spoke, something calculating and warm both sitting behind her eyes at once.
"Well." She broke the silence first, voice light despite the weight of everything just laid on the table. "Sounds like I picked an interesting week to accept an invitation."