"What? No prince here too?"
The golden mountain of the legends shook violently as a man kicked in frustration.
This was the seclusion grounds of a genius prince, one of the few bestowed with a number.
The 363rd prince.
A powerful high rank 1 in just a few thousand years, he's garnered a great reputation during his ascent.
With exquisite control over gravity, he was touted as the top ten in the sub-rank by many.
As with all ranked princes and princesses, he was given the sliver shard once he passed the ranking trial.
"Sliver shard…" Varian clenched his fists and looked down at the golden island floating in the chaotic inner space with a frustrated expression.
This was his fourth hunt of the ranked princes this week and like the first three, this too ended in failure, not because he was weak and got defeated, but because he didn't even find the target!
"How am I supposed to get any shards if they all just disappear?"
The island twisted naturally as powerful space-time currents swept the region.
Varian allowed himself to be swayed away by the winds, too immersed in deciding his next step to care.
Just a week ago, the 31st family meeting finalized this plan.
The reason for his reckless entry into Jai Empire was naturally his status.
[Dragon: 45/100 (+5)
Titan: 45/100 (+5)
Phoenix: 45/100 (+5)
Order: 45/100 (+5)
Chaos: 45/100 (+5)
Space: 21/100 (+1)
Time: 21/100 (+1)]
He had grown considerably stronger in a week, making as much progress that geniuses would need thousands of years for.
But the disparity between the sliver assisted and sliverless paths continued to widen.
[Now you know how useful I am. Come, come thank me. Or better, how about you make a statue of me and kiss my fee—]
"Shut up." Varian grumbled in frustration but he knew Logos was right.
Even if progressing in divine ranks was perhaps the most known secret, he could now understand and appreciate why that simple usage drew so many powerhouses crazy for the slivers.
If even his talent got so much boost through the slivers, he could only imagine how a typical genius would be affected.
That's precisely why the Space-Time paths were his biggest worry.
[One more thing you're not giving enough importance to. If you have to defeat him, you have to understands his strengths—his paths. Even if you're not as good as him, you should get good enough to exploit any weakness he exhibits.]
"Why are you speaking so much sense now?" Varian rubbed the back of his head as he was blasted out into the outer world by the space storm, gliding past blackholes and diving through dying stars.
It's still bearable now. He had no idea what it'd be like once he reached rank 2.
So the solution that the family meeting produced was sliver shards.
Just like how Keman and Yami produced mini-slivers from life and death slivers, God Emperor also produced reduced versions of slivers long long ago—sliver shards—they were less useful for fighting but they were incredibly helpful for training purposes.
And he created thousands of them, all for the usage of divine rankers.
Any prince who would pass the ranking trial would be granted a sliver shard. The better the performance, the more shards they would be rewarded with.
Lacking space-time slivers and with no opportunity to snatch them before his destined battle with the God Emperor, Varian could only compensate his deficiency with the sliver shards.
The family council initially opposed him taking this ridiculous risk.
'I am living on borrowed time. The God Emperor intervened with my fate before I even knew awakened. I don't know when he'll decide to cut me off. I have to move and I have to move fast.'
Even though it was a bitter pill to swallow, none of them obstructed him anymore.
Heck, even Sia didn't become overly clingy or nagged to tag along. She just asked him to spend the remaining time with them properly.
As a non-negotiable, she said she'd bear his child if he didn't return for a thousand more years.
The others…also said the same thing.
[The System honestly doesn't know what to say. Commend your wives for growing used to your thousand year disappearance antics or criticize them for using this opportunity to bear your child only to leave them behind and pursue a crazy revenge for you?]
"That's why I don't want my children to be fatherless. Their mothers will only focus on revenge. It'll be a terrible childhood."
The hunt continued.
Fifth. Sixth. Seventh.
To Varian's utter disappointment and confusion, all of them were missing.
Since killing any high profile princes was practically a call for the intelligence agencies to hunt him down, he'd been only looking for the low-profile princes who were in long seclusions all alone.
Now it seemed that the information was outdated.
But weren't seclusions supposed to happen in one place for several hundred years atleast?
"Should I go for others? Their location should be upto date."
After all, not all princes go to seclusion alone.
Seclusion didn't strictly mean closing your eyes and focusing on your divine path until you broke the bottleneck.
Some would take their partners. Others, their friends. A significant number of princes would take their loyal guards for security during critical periods.
These were unfortunately the majority.
No matter how well he made it, killing a whole bunch of people was more risky than killing a lone prince no one saw for a few hundred years.
But if he had no other choice.
"I want power, power and power." Varian muttered.
[Then hunt down the shards.]
Varian rolled his eyes. "Do you think I came here to grill chicken on a dying star? I'm on my fucking way to the eigth candidate already! He better not be mysteriously missing like the on besefore him! This guy is the last solo man in this region."
Unfortunately, even the eighth was missing.
[My condolences, host.]
"Did you screw up my luc—eh?"
Varian took out a glowing crystal with a surprised expression and tapped on it.
A hologram popped up but before the form even solidified, an anxious voice rang. "Brother-in-law! Change your plan!"