"Join my empire," Chu Yin said calmly, as she looked directly at the blonde-haired man. "I'm only in charge of everything because my husband temporarily stepped away to deal with a dungeon."
She spoke without any concern that her words would shock everyone present, and didn't seem to care that her revelation made them all immediately wonder if there was actually a 5th SSS-tier talent on Earth that they hadn't accounted for. But the more they thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. How else could her land have grown so rapidly and extensively?
"I'm currently not mentally stable enough for proper ruling and making the best strategic decisions," she continued with remarkable honesty. "So let us merge our empires together, and I need a mind and strength like yours to help keep me in line for the following few months until my husband returns."
As an SSS tier talent holder, the blonde-haired man had to be at least tier 1 at minimum, and she hoped he had already reached his limit before preparing to tier up to the next level.
"You seriously expect me to abandon all of my hard-earned power and submit to you as nothing more than your assistant?" he asked with a deep frown, clearly insulted by the implication.
Chu Yin shook her head firmly in response.
"No, we shall divide our rulership responsibilities evenly between us," she explained clearly. "You manage and control your land however you see fit, and I manage my own territory. But at the end of the day, we both ultimately answer to my husband when he returns. In terms of raw strength, he outclasses me. In terms of intelligence and strategy, he possesses the mind of a literal supercomputer and can easily out-scheme that pathetic clown over there."
She gestured dismissively toward Zero before continuing.
"While you are all struggling desperately with clearing monster regions and expanding safely, we have absolutely no problems accomplishing such things efficiently. My husband worked tirelessly not only on ensuring he was personally strong, but also on ensuring his people were properly equipped, trained, and organized."
She paused to let that sink in before delivering her final point.
"I have no logical reason to unite with all of you just to conquer a single region only to divide it up afterwards. My people can accomplish that task without me having to lift a single finger, and this is all happening while we're significantly weakened since he isn't physically here leading us."
She turned her attention away from the blonde-haired man to look directly at the woman with the eye patch.
"I will only join your empire under an official oath," the woman said lazily, her casual tone catching Chu Yin slightly off guard with how easily she agreed.
"Sure, that's acceptable," Chu Yin responded after a moment. "In that case, we can just absorb his land since he wouldn't be needed anymore anyway."
She turned to look directly at Zero, who appeared completely shell-shocked and couldn't begin to understand why things had gone so catastrophically badly for him.
[A/N: Fun Fact, the eye patch girl shares a similar ability to Seth... as for what ability that is, well, who knows. Maybe it has something to do with their eyes.]
***
"You bastard!" an elf warrior screamed with bloodshot eyes, glaring furiously at Seth while desperately channeling the raw power of the sun itself into his body.
He pushed himself into complete overdrive mode, deliberately damaging his own body to forcefully increase his combat power to its absolute maximum limit—an impressive combat power of 5 million.
With heat so overwhelmingly intense that it actually bent and warped the space around his fist, the devastating attack shot directly towards Seth's face. It stopped just a heartbeat away from making contact with Seth's face, the attack's capability to burn through space itself proving completely insufficient to overcome Seth's passive defensive barrier.
"HOW! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE!" the elf roared desperately, staring at Seth who simply looked back at him with a faint, mocking smile.
Seth didn't even bother to move his body or take his hands out of his pockets, standing completely still as if this threat meant nothing to him whatsoever.
The elf king of this land roared in absolute rage and desperation, gathering every single fragment of available solar power into one concentrated point within his mouth. He then unleashed a beam so impossibly hot that it outright destroyed everything in its path, annihilating matter on a fundamental level.
For a brief second, space itself tried to divide and split according to Seth's defensive ability, attempting to ensure the attack would never actually reach Seth's body. But the overwhelming heat was so extreme that it burned away even that spatial division, and the devastating beam struck Seth directly.
The elf's pupils shrank to pinpoints in horror as he watched the beam pierce completely through his own chest instead, leaving behind a massive, gaping hole where his heart and lungs had been just moments before.
"Y-you controlled my own attack and sent it back at me," the elf gasped out, his voice filled with shock and disbelief. "Monster."
With those final words, the elf king dropped his head forward, shock and absolute horror filling his dying eyes at what he had just witnessed. Blood poured from his mouth as his body began to collapse.
How could a purely defensive technique possibly be so overwhelmingly overpowered that it turned attacks back on their user? After all, Seth barely had a combat power of 500,000 at the moment; he was 10 times stronger than Seth.
[A/N: Resistances that are maxed out don't mean immunity. Think of it as 5/5 in resistances to something, meaning 99% resistance. Let's say you have 5/5 resistances to fire, and let's say the fire damage would be 1,000. You have 10 HP, since 99% of 1,000 is 10, you would still get one-shotted. Ways around this are to go beyond 5/5, meaning 6/5, and so on, giving you almost complete immunity. As for why almost...]
"I hold the power that even gods themselves would envy," Seth said lightly, his tone casual as he watched the body of the defeated elf king slowly turning to ashes, which then disappeared completely into the air without leaving any trace behind.
"With this victory, I've finished my end of the deal," Seth continued, turning to look directly at Ray, the current Moonlight Empire Elf King. "Your two separated bloodlines can finally be reunited once again."
Seth had desperately wanted the powerful skill [Thrive], so he had made another deal with the elf king, Ray. The agreement was straightforward—Seth would personally conquer the Starlight Empire on their behalf to reunite the broken bloodline that had been split generations ago.
Hopefully, this would restore their ancient empire talent, which had once been an incredibly powerful SSS-tier talent called Star and Moon Monarch, back to its former glory and strength.
Of course, before doing any of this conquering, Seth had obtained the [Thrive] skill first and then spent a few dedicated weeks training relentlessly to reach his current limit. After that, he consumed numerous monster crystals to push his power even higher, until he was finally forced to stop and allow his battered body proper time to rest and recover.
Currently, he possesses a staggering combat power of 4 million. And the truly shocking thing was that he still had not yet reached his absolute limit. The skill [Thrive], combined with the cursed armor he was continuously wearing, which constantly destroyed his body only for him to heal almost instantly, allowed his combat power to just keep increasing without stopping. It was a brutal but effective cycle of destruction and regeneration.
"Thank you so much for everything you've done," Ray said with genuine gratitude in his voice. "Evelin, go immediately and bathe within their purification pool. You're our absolute best hope to restore our ancient bloodline to what it once was."
His daughter Evelin nodded seriously and stepped forward, completely ignoring the countless lifeless bodies that covered the ground in every direction. All of them had been mercilessly slaughtered by Seth, who had demonstrated clearly that his defensive barrier could also become the most devastatingly overpowered attack when turned against his enemies.
"Thank you," Ray said once more to Seth, his voice filled with emotion.
Seth simply nodded in acknowledgment while turning to head towards this conquered empire's treasury to claim his reward. As he walked through the palace halls, he came across many elaborate traps that had been set to protect the treasure. But unlike before, where the Nexus Barrier had simply stopped attacks cold, now the attacks were redirected and flew off in different directions, clashing violently with other traps and canceling them out completely.
Seth appeared within the massive treasury chamber, and after a quick moment of assessment, he took exactly 10% of the total treasury's worth as agreed upon. With everything he had gained secured, Seth stepped back outside and looked at Ray, who was now officially the new overlord of both the Sun Empire and Moon Empire territories combined.
The complicated history between the two separated elf empires was actually pretty simple to understand once you knew the facts. Long ago, in ancient times, there used to be a single unified Sun Moon Empire. It had been a mighty empire of incredible power that, unfortunately, couldn't withstand the cruel test of time.
With every new generation that was born, the once powerful and pure Sun Moon bloodline gradually degraded in quality, with children either becoming a Moonlight Elf or a Starlight Elf instead of inheriting the complete bloodline.
These two different types of elves, at some point in history, started fighting bitterly amongst themselves over superiority and resources. Political tensions escalated until the empire split completely into two separate factions.
So when Seth had approached Ray wanting that particular skill, the desperate emperor had wasted absolutely no time in making the deal. And Seth, seeing such a relatively simple request compared to the value of what he was gaining, had easily agreed to follow through.