Darius Supreme

Darius brought his thoughts to bear. Currently, his mind was wandering, and this was not advisable. He felt himself becoming a bit scatter-brained ever since he met Vena and acquired the True Supreme System.

Darius could only sigh with lament at this. No matter how flawed and annoying Caesar was, it was true that he was customized the best to fit Darius. He pushed Darius into pits and forced him to break his limits in order to survive and go farther.

Now, he had power and everything he needed to become stronger without the necessary pressure. He could do things at his leisure and not feel like he was being watched by a callous Goddess and her annoying AI.

But the lack of pressure also caused him to relax and feel like he was not working hard enough.

Of course, these thoughts were just Darius being willful. He did not plan to act on them and put unnecessary pressure on himself nor did he crave to go back to that period of hardship.

He was not a person who liked to torture himself or suffer.

Gravitas was still empty, having Miranda's machines clear up the land, rubble and corpses. Darius wanted that land to return to its blank slate and then he could terraform it to his wishes.

One good thing was that with the destruction of all the Ether Refineries and the death of so many living beings, the mana density of Gravitas had shot up to its peak but lacked around 0.3% of its total quality.

Darius had many thoughts and ideas for who to put on that continent. The best ones were dwarves to engineer with mana/ether, a mechano-insect hybrid race that could subsist off anything while being a merger the two most fearsome apocalypses, slimes that could morph and evolve, a psionic race like the Duergar as well as a limitless race like the Saiyans from fiction.

However, he had stopped and thought of something crucial.

What was Vena's intention when creating such a rule for Gravitas? Even though she could, she made it clear that she was someone who enjoyed the process and so did not check the outcome ahead of time.

Then it was likely that she did not know what would become of the land when she created its laws. So, what exactly did she envision when she created it, or what had inspired her to choose such a thing?

How could Darius access that information? Well, he could just buy it from the System Shop since he could not contact Vena directly. While she was likely more than willing to divulge this information and even give him pointers, one look at Vena and you could tell she was not one who liked to be disturbed.

She was that kind of person who rarely replied her messages and when she did, they were one-word answers.

Darius also did not want to bother her and expire his goodwill in her eyes. Right now, she was feeling guilty and apologetic towards him for his treatment at the hands of Caesar and he planned to save that feeling.

If he continually relied on her, that feeling would soon evaporate and she would feel she had paid him back enough. Anything after that would slowly turn into irritation and annoyance.

However, if he never contacted her or relied on her and continued to excel, that feeling of guilt would only deepen and expand, to the point where she would always feel awkward before him, like she had failed him deeply.

After all, he was to be her general and the way she spoke, there would be a coming war of some sort when he became a Supreme.

Since a Supreme was the minimum power needed to be useful to her, it likely meant that the people he would be pitted against had similar power or higher, so he could not just dominate like he did on Faust.

As a general, he would certainly hope that he had a lenient commander-in-chief, otherwise one wrong deployment and he would enjoy his second time in the afterlife.

Vena's foes might have the same power as her, and they certainly would not allow her to resurrect him. What was the point of fighting a war when both sides would just endlessly resurrect their troops?

They might as well use that energy to sit down and talk.

Going back to the initial point, which was better? A commander-in-chief who was partial to you because of emotions or a commander-in-chief who was mostly neutral towards you?

This also wasn't helped by the fact that Vena made mention of a 'Jax' fellow who seemed to be her first successful attempt. The excitement in which she spoke about him alone told a lot.

Darius, as the likely second, would never replace the position her first had in her heart.

As such, he had to seek advantages where he could. If he could use an acquirable and 'grindable' resource like True Coins to do it, then he would.

Darius then opened the System Shop and then typed in what he was looking for. He received a prompt from the system as well as a price for the information he wanted to buy.

It only cost 5 True Coins, which made Darius relax. It seemed like the True Supreme System was able to gauge Vena's intention towards him and judged that buying this information was of little consequence to the Goddess.

His balance of 35,950 True Coins dropped to 35,945 in the end and he received a single prompt.

[Vena created the rules of Gravitas to match a game she played from Earth-335797458. It was a Japanese Visual Novel called Aselia the Eternal.]

Darius was slightly amused. He then purchased through the System Shop the full knowledge of that game's story and lore.

This cost another 5 True Coins, bringing the total down to 35,940.

Once Darius opened his eyes and ratified the knowledge he received, his eyes flashed and he was thoroughly intrigued.

It seemed that Vena did not make Gravitas the way it was without a purpose, only that things had been skewed by the reincarnator who came there!