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A huge room with a bunch of light blue skin women scantly dressed opens up and all the eyes are on me, next a wave of magic tries to smash into me.
"Wait!" I call out as I shield myself, their magic although not as strong as mine with only a few being demon emperor rank, the ones with gold eyes are emperor if I remember correctly and I see six.
"Attack!" one of the golden-eyed ones orders and the few who were gob-smacked at my entrance dropped the glowing crystals they had in their hands and started attacking.
"Don't attack!" I raise a wall of earth Infront of me to stop the few projectiles hurled my way, most of their magic is a debuff that I haven't ever encountered and is proving to be annoying.
"Trespasser you must vacate the premise if you do not wish to continue the conflict!" I shake my head as I continue to try to dispel whatever weird debuff is making me feel sluggish, it's similar to when I speed up my perception of time with Agares.
"Or, We try to solve this with dialogue like adults." Silence fills the massive cavern as it seems they just now realized I understand them. In the original story, they were pretty shocked when Chen Rui could talk with them and they both understood each other, which lead him to try to inherit the buried city down here. the city is a crafted kingdom that the alchemist used instead of cultivating a natural kingdom, kind of like implants in a way.
"You can understand us?" A golden-eyed blue head pops up from beside the wall I rose, and with a nod, she walks from around the wall. Whoever it was that designed these lamp spirits outfits needs a bonking. They cover the bottom of their face with a silk-looking veil leaving the eyes up exposed. A very skimpy belly dancer-like outfit covers their body, might as well be bare at this point with the transparency of it.
"Yes, I can speak to most intelligent species." A different golden-eyed lamp spirit walks around and from what I can see they seem to all have a few differences that give each a unique vibe.
"Do you think he can take the test?" The second whispers to the first and I don't react to make them think I can hear them. Though it should be obvious with how I was able to tank the majority of their debuffs and still block their projectiles that I am not weak.
"Maybe." She replies before taking a step forward. "What are you here for stranger?"
I smile as I have been sensing around and have located a door with a human body-shaped hole in the front of it. This door should be the door that leads to the trials and one of the lamp spirits has to enter it and start the trial. I think that the spirit in question dies but they can be revived like the androids from Nier automata. So long as their Lamp is in good shape they can come back with some resources, all of which were easy to get except a few for the more advanced species inside the kingdom.
"I came to investigate the massive underground city I detected and I wasn't expecting anyone to be living outside of it like beggars." The second lamp spirit reels back like I struck her.
"We are not beggars!" I drop the wall and look at the different blue-skinned women who are all standing around awkwardly with a few machines that seemed to be processing crystals into cubes that faintly glow. Time to abuse my knowledge of the plot.
Holding out my hand a cube from across the room appears on my hand causing the spirits to tense up. I scan it more in-depth and even use all-seeing eyes on it and determine they are just harvesting the energy that condenses in the crystals to create these cubes which run their lamps. Kind of like they are taking oil and making it into gas so it can fuel them, the difference between the crystal they are loading into the hoppers and what comes out is massive. Either the machine is losing effectiveness in converting the crystals or the crystals aren't a good source for conversion.
"So you can convert the crystals into this cube which powers you in some way, but the difference in the crystals and the cubes are pretty big. And that's with the crystals already being weak in comparison to some different materials I have studied. I would say you are barely scrapping by at best," They should have around a hundred gold eye lamps with like thirty of them being broken from multiple deaths, but only a handful are active proving the lack of power.
"What of it?!" A black-eyed lamp girl speaks up, she crosses her arms and glares angrily.
"I can help you that's what of it, I will provide you a steady supply of high-energy materials for your loyalty." I pull out a fruit of temptation and toss it to one beside a conversion machine and after getting confirmation from a golden-eyed one she puts it in the machine and a moment later multiple bright light cubes come out. Hopefully, this is enough to qualify for the test, No clue if I can force one into the hole in the door.
The first one to speak up steps forward but soon hesitates and looks back at the other Lamp girls. She turns back with some resolve after a few nods at her.
"If you can pass a test that our leader left behind before dying then we will follow any command." I act as if I didn't already know this and try my best to look surprised.
"What kind of test?" she shakes her head.
"I can't tell you that, I can only tell you it will be very difficult and even a threat to someone of your power." The test was basically a full dive Video game like sword art online, at least that's what I took from it. except it's your soul inside of the test and it affects your cultivation and body's strength somehow. Once it was over the soul left in the city tried to invade the body of Chen Rui but his system ate it and empowered him with it, pretty overpowered if you ask me.
But I am relying on the Mask to prevent soul takeover, the armor artifact would be better since it prevents invasion overall but the mask can prevent the wearer's soul from being directly controlled. Given it is still a risk, but I am confident in getting through it, worst case scenario he completely overpowers me in an instant. But since Chen Ru was able to resist him with less power than I currently have I doubt that he is a super old soul on its last legs.
The mask was able to prevent a peak false god from controlling someone and this is a kingdomized soul that is at least hundreds of thousands of years old that has been wasting away. On top of that his cultivation is from the lamp spirit dual cultivation act that basically steals their cultivation to empower himself and can be considered weak by kingdom standards.
And the last thing that makes me the most confident is that the way he tried to take over completely was to try and burn out Chen Rui's soul by just flooding it with an abundance of power. All I got to say to that is, Thank you for the help.
"Ok, I will take your test." She nods and three of the gold eye lamps guide me to the door through different passages.
----
"Once I enter this slot the door will open and you will have to enter fast because I can't keep it open for long." I nod and she approaches the door and looks one last time at the other two who followed and then walks in.
I equip the mask as I enter the door as fast as possible, just in case they think something is suspicious about the mask, and try to close the door.
A bright light blinds me and I feel a bit weightless and feel like I am being transported in a very rough manner but I don't resist it.
----
Opening my eyes I spot a few ugly creatures of demon king-level power coming toward me, with a quick check I feel my demonic energy and realize this place isn't restricting my unique devil powers. A bug has been discovered but I don't care in the slightest as I burn away the oncoming beats, this is my first real look at the Abyss creatures and they make my skin crawl.
Double the amount spawn Infront of me and I burn them away as well, seems it is time to put in some grinding.
----
- Catherine's POV -
"This is the thirteenth round about complaints received just today, a lot of people are complaining about you marrying an unknown." I snort, these people are going in a roundabout way of challenging my decision on this matter. If even one of them challenged my marriage more directly I would just make a quick example of him or her. "There is a quick way to solve this and it would ease the worry of the public as well." I look over at Tara.
"Allowing challengers? it would be an insult, but it would save a lot of paper at least." I burn the stack of papers. There is some merit to the idea at least, we could demand they put something on the line if they wish to challenge. It would also be a good way to make Nova more influential, demonstrating that he isn't just a puppet husband of some sort.
"It would quite all the doubters if he just beat a few people's faces in on the stage before you married." It would.
"I will see how he feels about it, he will be married to me anyway so he won't be a hidden figure so there is no reason to hide all his power." I think he would agree as well, I will call him later and talk about it.
----
- Nova POV -
"This would be much cooler if there was boss music." A giant flaming figure with a whip in hand tries to hit me as I dodge around all her blows easily enough.
The minions that are being spawned on my side seem to be planning to bomb the boss but I send a few spears of evil light through it and it falls over dead. The minions look over exasperated as I just shrug.
And then it hits me with the force of a building coming down on top of me, This is it. Like a river spirit energy swirls around me and tries to infiltrate.
The spirit energy is an entirely different energy source than my soul or body use and it seems to not be able to enter easily. With a great amount of focused effort on its part, an imprint of some sort appears in my mind which concerns me greatly. But when I feel in complete control I calm down and realize I am about to dine and dash on this guy. The energy which is the soul of the kingdom alchemist stops pressing down, if I had to guess he wasn't expecting this.
The mask on my real face activates, an ability I have yet to use, Devour. It can only be used once every seven days and as the mouth on the mask opens and the spirit energy gets drawn into it I feel empowered. The spirit energy is becoming demonic energy as the artifact seems to be pulling the spirit energy directly into the altar in the temple of sin.
"That's unlucky buddy." The spirit energy tries to pull back but the mask is like a hungry hippo and munches chunks off it, soon it is entirely devoured and the mask's mouth slams shut. My demonic energy seems to have increased but I have no way to check exactly how much until I am back around Catherine, she is a good baseline to test off.
This imprint is my new keycard to control the city and its automated functions, and it apparently could kick-start the process of getting to kingdom rank.