Chapter 14 — The Necklace of Death, the Coiled Dragon Ring

Tsunade drew a deep breath, fighting to settle her emotions, and the waves of her bosom surged and fell with the effort.

"Two questions."

She held up two slender, ivory fingers. "First: once we have entered into a covenant with the Lord God, what will we be required to do?"

"Second: what are the true conditions for resurrecting a person? And what price must be paid?"

Jiraiya, whose days were otherwise spent drinking, writing novels, and drooling over the exchange list, finally proved at this moment that he had some value in existing.

He answered at once: "To resurrect an ordinary person requires only 1,000 reward points and a B-rank Gem of Destiny."

"The stronger the person being resurrected, the more reward points it costs—but the number of Gems of Destiny required does not increase."

Orochimaru's serpent-tongue flicked once around the corner of his mouth, and a wild, wicked, bewitching smile surfaced on his face as he took up the thread. "As for what we are required to do? To speak truthfully, we do not know either. But so far, I have already taken on two missions."

"The first was to drive Jiraiya to despair."

A pallid finger tapped the Toad Sage's great bald head, and Orochimaru said with flat certainty, "The final result: he became a Reincarnator."

"And the second mission is to recruit you."

Hearing this, Tsunade's embroidered brows knitted tight, the red mark at the center of her brow vivid as blood.

To change another's fate?

Or rather, to find more followers of the Lord God?

No—Orochimaru and Jiraiya could not be called followers. They should be called "Reincarnators." It seemed that the mysterious, unfathomable Lord God had no need of anyone's faith.

Were His recruitment criteria, then, simply ninja of long-established fame and strength?

Seen in that light...

Tsunade decided she had no reason to refuse.

The instant that thought took shape, a string of characters woven of drifting light appeared before her eyes.

"Do you wish to resurrect your kin and your lost love?"

"Yes / No."

She glanced instinctively at the two beside her, found them both waiting for her answer, and saw that neither had noticed the screen of light before her. So she said softly, "Yes."

At that same moment, Orochimaru and Jiraiya received the notification that the mission was complete.

"Reincarnators 001/002 have completed the mission and obtained 650 reward points."

Orochimaru promptly converted every last reward point into research materials and specimens, then abandoned the two of them—abandoned this gambling paradise he had built solely to complete the mission—and burrowed headlong into his laboratory.

The Lord God's gold and jewels were cheap enough, after all.

Take gold: one reward point bought a cubic meter of it, and many ordinary alloy materials sold for more than gold. Every Reincarnator who grasped the value of reward points promptly acquired the buff of "regarding money as dung."

Jiraiya pawed through the exchange list in an agony of indecision.

He was no mad scientist like Orochimaru. There were many things he wished to exchange for and could not afford; and the things he could afford, he either disdained, or could not bear to spend on.

"Might I ask—how does one obtain reward points and B-rank Gems of Destiny?" Tsunade was nothing if not practical.

"Reward points may be obtained by completing missions and by disassembling extraordinary objects that carry the power of destiny. B-rank Gems of Destiny may only be obtained by undertaking special missions, or by greatly altering the fate of a specific person."

A mechanical, utterly emotionless prompt sounded at Tsunade's ear: "Your allotment of questions for this week has been exhausted. Should you have further doubts, please reserve them until next week."

Tsunade was struck dumb for a moment, and her hand rose instinctively to grasp the necklace at her breast.

In that instant, countless threads of light bloomed before her eyes, leaping and twisting like musical notes, then condensing into words.

[The First's Necklace: a relic of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama. It contains within it a seal of Hashirama's chakra, made to restrain the Nine-Tails, and embodies a portion of the Hokage's fortune. One not favored by destiny who bears this object shall suffer its backlash, meeting misfortune and death. May be converted into 1,200 reward points.]

"Favored by destiny... so that is how it is..."

Tsunade smiled a bleak smile.

She had given this necklace to Nawaki, and Nawaki had died. She had given it to Dan, and Dan too had died a wretched death.

"Why keep it any longer? Better to convert it into reward points."

...

"Deducting the 1,200 spent, that is the total resource points banked this time."

Wang Xu pressed his fingertips together and stroked lightly at the First's Necklace newly come into his hand. "Counting the previous surplus, that makes the total points."

One step closer to the goal.

When a Reincarnator found an extraordinary object containing the power of destiny and was willing to convert it, the proceeds were split fifty-fifty with Wang Xu.

It would hardly do to be too ruthless here. After all, if some Reincarnator one day got his hands on Arthas's Frostmourne, gleefully sold it for a thousand-odd reward points, then turned around to find Frostmourne listed in the exchange at over ten thousand...

Where would the Lord God's face be then?!

To scrape a living across the endless planes, one still had to mind one's table manners somewhat.

This time, however, Wang Chenzhou had taken the ordinary route. He had simply paid the stipulated 1,200 points and gotten the First's Necklace—worth some 2,400 reward points—into his hands.

A little modification, and once he returned to Earth it would serve nicely as a gift.

"Without a storage item in hand, one does feel a touch... less imposing..."

By storage items, Wang Xu meant the sort of portable space that went by names like Sumeru Mustard Seed, Storage Ring, or Qiankun Pouch.

The sealing scrolls the ninja commonly used were, first, fiddly and troublesome, and second, bore far too distinctive a stylistic stamp; he had little desire to use them.

"Sixty-one thousand-odd resource points. I'll take this thousand-odd remainder and settle the matter..."

At a thought from Wang Xu, he meant to exchange for a spatial ring.

His eye had fallen on a ring called "Na," and he rather liked it.

But the auxiliary program now offered a more constructive suggestion, and he withdrew his original notion.

"There's even an operation like that?"

Following the auxiliary program's prompting, Wang Xu spent his thousand reward points in separate portions.

Eight hundred of them he converted into a thing called a "Spatial Dao Talisman"—outwardly a sphere the size of an infant's palm, wreathed in black radiance, as though even light falling upon it would be twisted and swallowed within.

The other two hundred he converted into a fine carrier metal for spatial force, a rare specialty of the xianxia worlds known as "Qiong Lan Gold."

Wang Xu's "insight," "aptitude," and "bone foundation" had by now all reached the pinnacle of the human race; merely drawing the Spatial Dao Talisman into his body took him barely a minute before he had grasped and comprehended the laws of space.

Telekinesis wrapped, shook, compressed, ground, and polished the Qiong Lan Gold, while at the same time embedding the imprint of the Spatial Dao Talisman's aura within it.

Moments later, a ring of pale gold, exquisite beyond compare, its band shaped as a dragon's devouring maw, sat upon the little finger of Wang Xu's left hand.

"Roughly a hundred square meters of goods can be stored inside; living beings cannot be thrown in."

On the whole, Wang Xu was quite satisfied with this self-made spatial ring.

After all, spending 1,000 resource points to exchange directly for a similar item would buy a capacity of ten cubic meters at the very most.