Book 6 Chapter 10.1 - World as the Enemy
Unknown as to whether it was just a coincidence, when the sky brightened again, a small crack suddenly opened up between the clouds of radiation. A streak of morning sunlight shone down diagonally like a massive spotlight, illuminating Vibimore City's suzerain manor. Before the suzerain manor's imposing french window, Su's green pupil suddenly contracted, his long and thin eyebrow frowning ever so slightly.
He didn't like sunlight, at the very least, he didn't like this sunlight. The sunlight that shot through the clouds of radiation was burning hot, the powerful rays not only harmful to the human body, it also vaguely expressed some type of hostility. Hostility hidden within sunlight? This sounded inconceivable, but Su could clearly sense what hid within the blinding sunlight's depths. That was a collection of many harmful rays, their composition and fluctuating frequencies originally not holding any meaning, but after they passed through Su's green eye, an indistinct will was restored through some type of mysterious method.
It was destruction. It wished to completely destroy Su, thoroughly disintegrate every cell, every gene.
The crack in the clouds of radiation was like an enormous eye, currently coldly watching Su. Meanwhile, Su was staring right at it. Even though from their size or scope, the two weren't on the same order of magnitude, their loftiness was instead equally matched.
Just like other parts of this world, this sunlight was quite fleeting, the sky becoming dark soon afterwards. As he watched the quickly shifting clouds, Su suddenly felt the urge to laugh. What was that competition with the sun just now? If it was in the past, Su would have definitely casually mocked himself, and then throw everything aside. However now, he couldn't laugh at all, coldness surfacing from the innermost depths of his consciousness, constantly reminding him that the things he attached such great importance to in the past were actually all without any meaning. Before the eternity of time, they were as brittle as soap bubbles in the wind. Meanwhile, the hostility he felt from the sunlight just now wasn't completely an illusion. It was a bit similar to the hostility Su felt from this world, but it also wasn't exactly the same.
Aside from this world, could it be that the sun also bore hostility against Su? This sounded like a bad joke. Wasn't the sun a part of this world? However, his intuition told him that this was quite close to the truth.
If it was in the past, Su would release a light sigh, and then continue doing what he had to do. However now, he released a light hmph, and then continued doing his own things.
Su turned around, and then sat down on the high back chair, coldly staring at his new underlings who were divided into two rows. There was no light turned on in the room, and because of the large area, it appeared a bit dark. The poor lightning made Su look like a black silhouette, only that gemstone-like green radiance flickering about in the darkness, making them shiver inwardly.
Before Su stood six suzerains and twenty four assistants. In just this one night alone, there were three assistants who died from injuries that were too severe. To be more precise, it was because their constitution was too weak, unable to endure the seventh level ability Su granted them and dying as a result. Meanwhile, the ones standing before Su were already twenty-four seventh level assistants. In the past, seven levels was the basic standard for a suzerain.
However, the newly risen assistants still felt some fear when they looked at the six suzerains. This wasn't just because of the accumulation of past experiences, but also because of a difference in strength. Even though they reached the standard of a suzerain, they still only barely made the cut. Moreover, the seventh level abilities they obtained were of all different types, from all five great ability domains. These were abilities Su granted based on their individual constitution and characteristics. Meanwhile, the six suzerains were different, the highest level ability, if not the Combat Domain, then it was the Magic Domain, purely slaughtering machines. For these assistants, the road to the throne of becoming a suzerain definitely didn't lack killing, fighting, coldness, and craftiness. Otherwise, they wouldn't make it to the end.
In summary, the core of Sun Empire's system was the high regard for abilities and lineage, while lineage signified higher potential, and the chance of obtaining more powerful abilities. That was why ultimately, it was still abilities that were above all else. In addition, the people here didn't care much about whether the levels of ability were higher or lower, but rather if one's individual strength was great, and due to the overall lower level of science and technology, Combat and Magic Domain ability users' statuses were higher than that of other ability users.
This was a country where the one with the tougher fists had the last say. It was even more wild and savage than the Blood Parliament, without the slightest bit of cover up.
The rise in assistants' abilities didn't come without a cost. Each time Su infused a particle carrying a seventh level ability, he would use up ten of his own evolutionary points. After raising the abilities of twenty seven assistants, the evolutionary points Su had gathered from a night for fighting were practically all used up. However, the return was great. Now, Su had two eighth level and twenty-eight seventh level underlings. This type of army could sweep through Sun Empire's entire northern border!
After twenty-four assistants were raised to seven levels, the suzerains' leftover resentment clearly lessened considerably, even though they didn't have much resentment left before Su to begin with. If twenty-four assistants attacked them together, it would be hard for even half of the six suzerains to escape. Moreover, including Kebile, at least half of the suzerain looked at Su with passionate eyes. They personally watched as little creatures filled with solutions of different colors emerged from the tip of Su's finger, separated, and then entered the body of an assistant. What followed was the generation of an ability in under an hour. Meanwhile, the deaths of three assistants during the process of generating an ability, this, in the eyes of everyone here, was a loss that couldn't be more normal. If they were comparing the mortality rates, then the top quality formulations Sun Empire provided had much higher mortality rates.
Since Su could produce more than ten seventh level abilities, then there was definitely a chance that he could produce eighth level abilities. Meanwhile, as for the reason why Su didn't raise the suzerains' abilities, the shrewd suzerains naturally understood. The first was to keep them in check, the second was that they still hadn't done any meritorious deeds. Meanwhile, for these suzerains who had long reached the end of their potential, Su's most fatal temptation was that the abilities he created could break through the limitations of talent! Even if they only obtained another ability of the same level as their current highest, it would still increase their fighting strength by several fold!
Those who could become suzerains were mostly madmen who would pay any price to obtain more abilities. They saw how different Su was, even more so understood that Su was definitely not an ordinary human, so what? Those core figures in Sun Empire's true higher level, how many of them were normal humans? As long as they could obtained higher level abilities, even if Su really was a devil that crawled out from hell, they were still willing to turn the entire world into hell!