Flamebone Region. Within an upstairs, private room in a restaurant.
“Enough. Unless we call for you, no need to enter.” Linley instructed.
“Yes, sir.”
The waiter carried the platter out of the room, shutting the door on the way out.
“Boss, hurry up and bring out those documents and those scryer recordings.” Bebe immediately urged. After acquiring the materials, Linley and Bebe had yet to carefully inspect them, as there had been no suitable place to read them. After all, they couldn’t just start flipping through them on the streets, right? “Don’t be impatient.” Linley laughed. With a thought, he made the large chest materialize, and it hovered above the table.
Linley moved the three dishes and the wine on the table to one side, then placed the thick stack of materials onto the table.
“So many.” Bebe stretched his hand out, grabbing the documents.
“Let’s not waste time. Bebe, you and I will each take half. Let’s all do a quick read-through of these documents and see which Tartarus Lord is suitable to be our target.” Linley said. While speaking, Linley began to flip through a large pile of documents, first reviewing the ones related to the rules of challenging the Lords of Tartarus.
If he was going to challenge a Lord, it would be very important for him to know the rules.
While reading, Bebe suddenly looked towards Linley and asked, “Boss, should you go challenge, or should I?”
Linley lifted his head to look at Bebe, then laughed. “Bebe, not just anyone can go challenge a Lord of Tartarus. The prerequisite is that you have to be a victor of a hundred battles in the arena, winning ten consecutive battles each day for ten days. Bebe…do you think you will find it easy to win ten battles in a row?”
“Of course. With my innate divine ability, ‘Godeater’, I refuse to believe anyone will be a match for me.” Bebe said confidently.
“What if you didn’t have access to the innate divine ability?” Linley laughed while asking.
Bebe was speechless.
If he didn’t have the innate divine ability ‘Godeater’, he, Bebe, simply had tough defense, but in terms of offense, the only thing he had to rely on was a godspark weapon. He would be able to use it to defeat ordinary Highgods, but not a single person who dared to participate in the Bloodbath Arena would be a weakling; weaklings would simply be going to their deaths. It would indeed be hard for Bebe to win.
“I…but I DO have my innate divine ability. Boss, your hypothetical is meaningless.” Bebe argued.
Linley wiped the smile from his face, then said solemnly, “Bebe, if you want to rely on your innate divine ability to win a hundred battles in a row, then first of all, your soul is only able to use it twice in succession; for the remaining battles, you’d have to rely on using amethysts and Golden Soul-Pearls to replenish your spiritual energy. It will be very taxing. And secondly!”
Bebe raised an eyebrow.
Linley continued, “Secondly, we are going to go challenge a Lord of Tartarus. Thus, it’s best if we don’t reveal our trump cards right away. Bebe, think about it. When you are at the Bloodbath Arena, if you reveal your innate divine ability, then…the Lord of Tartarus would definitely learn of it as well. By then, he would definitely come up with a way to deal with your ability!”
“Deal with my ability?” Bebe was stunned. “What sort of method could he come up with?”
“Preemptively kill you.” Linley said with a calm laugh.
“I’m not afraid.” Bebe said.
“If he isn’t confident in being able to kill you, perhaps that Lord of Tartarus would secretly leave the island, and then publicly say that he has gone out on an important matter. He would let you wait for a thousand years or ten thousand years. Are you able to wait that long?” Linley asked him. “My understanding is that challenges…can be deferred by up to ten thousand years.” Linley just saw this in the rules.
Bebe was speechless.
Indeed, issuing a challenge to a Lord of Tartarus wasn’t something which could be carried out immediately.
If the Lord of Tartarus wasn’t even in the Netherworld, even if you challenged him…you’d have to wait for him to return and receive word of the challenge before you could fight.
“Bebe, we can’t waste any time!” Linley said solemnly.
“Oh.” Bebe said helplessly.
If Bebe were to fight, what Linley feared was…the Lord of Tartarus, upon seeing Bebe use his innate divine ability, ‘Godeater’, would be so terrified that he wouldn’t even dare to fight, and would secretly slip away. This was actually quite normal. If a person knew that he had no chance of winning but still went to fight, that would be tantamount to suicide.
But just admitting defeat was very humiliating.
Thus, quite a few Lords of Tartarus would choose…to secretly slip away and delay by ten thousand years.
If he didn’t accept the challenge within ten thousand years, then the position of Tartarus Lord would immediately be transferred to the challenger.
This was a method by which the challenger would receive the position of Tartarus Lord, and the former incumbent would also be able to save a bit of face. Logically speaking, this was a win-win proposal, but to Linley, it was not, because he had to seize every minute of time so that he could enter the Planar Wars. The Planar Wars, however, only had eight hundred years remaining. He wasn’t able to wait that long!
“Right.” Bebe nodded slightly.
“Bebe, when I attack, I am capable of completely hiding my power. For example, if I don’t Dragonform and don’t use my innate divine ability! But of course, I still have to show one thing off slightly; my Blackstone Space! But I’ll weaken even the gravitational power of my Blackstone Space. It will be more than enough against those Five Star Fiends, Six Star Fiends, and Seven Star Fiends.” Linley said with a calm laugh.
He would lower the power of the Blackstone Space to the level at which it was at when he was just a God.
Linley’s full-force Blackstone Space was something which ordinary Seven Star Fiends might just barely be able to resist, even if they went all out, resulting in them being slaughtered at will.
If he only exerted a tenth of the power of the Blackstone Space, that was already enough as far as Linley was concerned.
“Just by showing a bit of my power, I’ll be strong enough to win a hundred consecutive battles. I trust the Lord of Tartarus wouldn’t be afraid to fight me just because I revealed a little bit of power. By then, when the time comes, I’ll use all my strength. Bebe, what you need to do is carefully look through the materials and see who amongst them has a supreme technique that is perfectly countered by me.” Linley said.
Bebe laughed and said, “Heh heh, Boss, you want to win in a back-handed way, eh? Fine, I’ll take a look and see whose strengths are countered by you.”
Linley began to carefully flip through the materials as well.