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- Hmm, seven years ago, I had a harder time moving through the jungle and killing the local animals. - I leapt into the air, dodging a punch from a huge ape, and straight from the air I sent an energy sickle from my blade into my opponent, hollowing out the eight metre long beast.

≪We should practise magic more, because we are too much into blacksmithing, and all we can do with magic is cheap tricks, like energy sickles from the blade. ≫

- I thought that since I'm immortal, there's no hurry, I'll study magic when I have time, but as it is, I prefer forging iron.

≪We are not immortal, it is quite possible to kill us, which has happened to me more than once and in the end only the Nucleus remained from the soul. This body at the moment could potentially live for six hundred years if no one destroys it before. The system will help retain memories, but if an enemy somehow manages to damage the soul, the memories and accumulated soul power will be reset. ≫

- So, so I was a god... and was there any point in becoming one?

≪Well... frankly, there was no point. From the parts of memories, I understood only that there is always someone stronger than you, having achieved the power of God, it turns out that there are Elder Gods, Ancient Gods, Creators, the Universe, the World Order. Being human, you have almost the same chance to die as the chance to die to God from the clutches of the Archidemon of Chaos. ≫

- In short, life is meaningless.

≪Absolutely meaningless. The only difference is whose hand you can die by, the hand of a warrior who is stronger than you, or the hand of a god who is stronger than you. Of course, it is more prestigious to die by the hand of a god, but death is death. Though, as I said, for us it's more often than not a nullification of our powers and the loss of most of our memories. ≫

- Well, since there's no point in life, I'm not going to bother with gaining power that I might lose, I'm just going to do my favourite thing.

≪You're so optimistic, as if someone will let us do what we love to do, considering that it's the creation of artefact weapons. The Empire and the Revolutionaries will either want us for themselves or they'll want to destroy us to keep us out of the hands of others.

- Then I'm off to another continent.

≪But I don't know if it's any better. ≫

- Oh, what a tasty tiger come to smell blood. - I sent a sickle into a huge white striped cat. Processing monsters into materials for artefacts took quite a long time, but I wasn't in any hurry. Slowly I began to make my way back from Putra to the south of the empire, and since I was not far from my home tribe, I decided to visit them, just to see how these savages live... but I was wrong about 'live', when I arrived at the location of the Tribe of Bana, it turned out that it had recently been completely exterminated.

- I got out of there for a reason. - I said, standing on the mountain and looking at the rainforest that was now like a tundra, there was a huge amount of ice, but the settlement itself had been burnt down by soldiers, it was strange, we should interrogate the imperial soldiers.

As it turned out the Ban Tribe had decided to move to a safer place closer to the centre of the Empire, the Empire itself only needed these savages as fodder for the dangerous beasts on the border of the Empire, when the southerners rebelled and wanted a better life the Empire sent a punitive force led by two generals, General Najenda and General Esdeath, both of them owned Teigu and it was Esdeath who had it to control the ice. Esdeath froze the river that separated her army from the Ban tribe's settlement, after which she froze all of the tribe's warriors, and then told her soldiers to burn down the settlement, allowing them to have fun before doing so, and to rape the tribe's women... and not just the women.

The interrogated soldiers revealed that Esdeath had recently travelled to the northwest to appease more enemies of the Empire who had stolen treasure from the Empire and were now hiding it in the desert in underground vaults over which they had built a pyramid.

- I guess I don't have to go back to Putra. - I said, killing the soldier, -But I should still go back and check it out, maybe I could warn Veneg in time. - Esdeath had left a week ago, and it was about three and a half thousand kilometres from here to Putra, so it took me thirty hours to get to the tomb at my top speed, and I still didn't make it.

When I arrived, the pyramid was already collapsed, which meant that the descendant of Emperor Putra was dead, because only after his death does the mechanism of destruction of the tomb start, so that the enemies could not get the treasure they came here for. Now the ruins of the tomb were being razed by the Imperials, and among the piles of stones were the corpses of the Guardians frozen in ice, so Esdeath must have been here.

- I should make myself an artefact to protect me from the cold... damn, I liked the Guardians, and my forge, I was used to it. Good thing I took all my tools... and good thing Umbra blew me off, I wanted to try out her snake tongue for kisses, but now she's lying dead under the rocks somewhere.... Shit, I've learnt in this world it's best not to have loved ones you don't want to regret their deaths. I'll have to take my weapons from the Imperials, and I'll confiscate the treasures, because of which they destroyed the Guardians. - I wiped away a stingy tear, because in seven years I had developed some feelings for the Guardians, and their deaths meant more to me than the extermination of the Bana tribe, where I came from, though I felt bad for them too. My childhood there was abominable, but only because of the Empire, who forcibly kept the tribe in the rainforest in the midst of dangerous beasts, and as soon as they tried to change that, they were immediately exterminated.

I watched the excavation of the tomb from afar, the corpses of both the Guardians and the Imperials that the defenders of the tomb had managed to kill. The corpses of the Guardians' children were pulled out from under the rubble, it was clear that none of the tomb's inhabitants had survived, but when they started pulling out the corpses of the children, who were obviously Imperials, it became strange. But, judging by the wounds, these children were killed in battle, probably, they were orphans, from which the Empire from early childhood trained liquidators, most of them will eventually die, but the few that survive all such battles, will become the strongest warriors of the Empire. Orphans have to go somewhere, that's how they use them.

- Yeah, the Empire using children as expendable material is pretty nasty.

≪So let's become an emperor ourselves and rule this Empire and then the world... but no, forget it, it's not a good idea, we've been emperors many times already, the only plus is the harem, but otherwise it's a pain in the arse. You can have a harem without being an emperor. ≫

- Harem? What am I, a schoolboy to dream of a harem? One girl requires a lot of attention, but if you have several... it's tempting, but not in the real world.

≪Come on! Harems are sacred. ≫

- Yeah, you don't want to get involved with just one girl, lest she accidentally die and cause a tragedy in your life, and if you have a harem, the responsibility increases many times over. Well, well, is it not Madi on that dune, five kilometres from here? - I turned my eyes into animal eyes, with the help of which I can see quite far.

On the dune stood a swarthy man with purple hair and five skulls fixed with a ribbon on his chest. Madi was quite a strong warrior, who ate all sorts of poisonous bugs, and had learnt to control poisonous bugs himself. Quite often he was outside of Putra, using his beetles, he acted as a stealthy assassin that Veneg sent into the Empire to kill the families of those who came to the tomb for treasure. With these murders he tried to intimidate the Imperials, but they still steadily went to rob the tomb, this time apparently quite successfully... almost, I'll take the gold from them, even though I don't need it.

≪Gold can be converted into mana, and with pure mana I can unlock a few more inactive skills in the system... such a conversion is not profitable, but it's not for the Empire to keep it and not for the revolutionaries to give it to.≫

- The revolutionaries were a fun idea, but they'll get over it. Well, I must go and talk to Madi.

Unlike me, Madi was born in Putra and loved his home and the Tomb Keepers, whom he considered friends and family, so when he saw his home destroyed and the Imperials pulling his dead friends out of the ruins, he vowed to kill those responsible. When I left the tomb Madi was in Putra, and after killing the first Imperials he must have been sent to the Empire to exterminate the families of those who came to us, when Madi returned he found the tomb destroyed.

We interrogated some of the Empire soldiers with him and found out who was involved in all this. The first group, which the Guardians easily dealt with, consisted of scouts, then the Empire sent a group of elite assassins, trained from children, this group the Guardians also defeated, half of them were killed, and the other half were taken prisoners for interrogation... and not only that, because among them were beautiful girls that could become slaves. Next, the Empire sent an even more elite group, trained by an instructor from the Kouken Temple, who was such a strong warrior that the Empire gave him the Teiga Murasama, a katana that kills absolutely everyone with a single scratch. But even with this group the Guardians could not cope, and then General Esdeath came to the Imperials' aid and single-handedly destroyed all the Guardians. After this mission she went to the north, to rest and hunt dangerous monsters.

We also found out the names of all of the elite squad of Imperials, or rather those who survived, they were the ones Madi wanted to kill first... I was of a slightly different opinion, this elite squad, consisting mostly of children, was trained and sent here by the Empire, or to be more precise by the Prime Minister and his minions. The current Emperor is only ten years old, his father died a couple of years ago, and now the Empire is ruled by a child, or rather the Empire is ruled by the Prime Minister from behind the juvenile Emperor.

This squad is just brainwashed executors, the main culprits are sitting in the imperial palace, but Madi realises that he can't kill the Prime Minister, but he can kill this squad. Considering that the Empire may have dozens of such units, revenge on the executors doesn't make much sense, because the Prime Minister and his entourage will still be alive and will just create another unit of children.

Madi and I had a little quarrel, he wanted revenge on the assassination squad, and I decided to kill the Prime Minister, but not to the detriment of my life, I'm not going to run to the capital right now, I have ideas that will help me to become stronger in the next couple of years, and after that it will be possible to go to the palace to get the head of Prime Minister Honest. Madi didn't want to wait, he wanted revenge now.

Among the bodies that the Imperials pulled out from under the ruins was a still alive member of the Imperial assassination squad, it was a young guy with grey hair, his weapon was a Shingu sword, sort of made from dragon parts. This Shingu could increase the wielder's strength tenfold for three minutes, and after the amplification ended, the sword wielder would be greatly weakened. The sword would infuse dragon ki into the wielder's body, which would make him stronger until the sword's energy ran out, after a while the ki in the sword would be restored again. Some of my weapons work in the same way, but the amplification is not as strong, only two or three times, but it is permanent. So, this guy had a pretty bad head injury, the sword apparently helped to heal the wound, but even when the guy wakes up, he's likely to have amnesia, which is what Madi wanted to take advantage of, he implanted his bugs in the guy's eye, with the help of which he could control the guy, subjugating his will with the help of bugs. With this guy, Madi went off to take revenge on an elite imperial assassination squad.

- I should get bug protection, too. I hate bugs.

≪And especially spiders...although when they're big, it's less gross than when they're small and there's lots of them and they can crawl all over you. ≫

- I reckon Madi's gonna die without getting anywhere. - I looked after the tomb Keeper, who had nothing left to keep.

≪ A while ago we just wanted to live our lives as we pleased, and now we plan to kill the actual head of the Empire. And everything changed in just a couple of days. ≫

- Well, succumbed to the trend, everyone wants to kill the Prime Minister, and I suddenly wanted to... after he sent to exterminate two places that could be considered my home.

≪And Esdeath is rumoured to be a blue-haired beauty, we'll sexually enslave her. ≫

- No, we'll kill her, she's a total sadist who kills everyone.

≪And therefore we have every moral right to sexually enslave her. ≫

- Yeah, so that one night she can kill us.

≪And we'll tame and rehabilitate her so she doesn't kill us. ≫

- Why should I go to all this trouble? It's easier to take a simple, innocent girl from the countryside.

≪Well, that's no fun. And besides, a normal innocent girl could get killed, and Esdeath is incredibly strong, and she'd kill anyone if she had to. ≫

- Me, for example. If she can kill Veneg, I'd better stay out of her way. - the Chief Tomb Raider had a secret technique related to Nubis' powers. Any wound inflicted on Veneg's body was transferred to the one who attacked him. So, if Veneg's heart was stabbed, the heart would be stabbed into the one who did it. This ability is energy-consuming, and he could not use it all the time, but the effectiveness of this ability is not to be taken away from it, attacking Veneg, the enemy received damage himself, and any damage. But most likely, the constant battles with the Imperials wore him down, and eventually he was killed, and then the tomb began to crumble.

≪Don't be too pragmatic to always kill your enemies, sometimes they can become your ally... or slave, and do you some good. I'm mostly talking about girls, you shouldn't kill them, they can always be used for more interesting things.≫

- Maybe, but Esdeath isn't someone you can let live with the chance to kill her. She's not likely to spare my life.

≪You haven't even met her yet and you're already so prejudiced, maybe she's a nice girl at heart, but only on the orders of a vicious Prime Minister to commit genocide. ≫

- Why am I having this conversation with my schizophrenia, I'll do as I please.

≪Ha-ha-ha, how naive. I could erase your personality any second, but then I'd have to control the body myself, and then I wouldn't be able to control the system. If I had more psi, that's exactly what I'd do, erase you and put a copy of my personality in your place. As long as you act within my expectations, we can live in symbiosis. ≫

- What kind of god were you?

≪A demon god, taking over and subjugating worlds. ≫

- Great, not only are there enemies all around, but I'm also my own enemy.

≪I'm not my enemy, not even my new self, but if we disagree too much, I'll wipe you out. ≫

- Oh, the devil.

≪Well, well, well, don't go to the other extreme and become a whiner again. Keep a balance, you and I are like Yin and Yang, opposites that complement each other. I'll stay out of absolutely everything you do, too. ≫