The First Store System

“One more territory to go,” Aakesh muttered and took a step forward in the direction of the new territory, with Clara silently following him.

The next moment, Aakesh set foot on the last territory he needed to conquer before reaching the central ruler.

The environment inside the territory was entirely different from the previous domains Aakesh had passed. A snowstorm was raging as Aakesh almost sunk half into snow spread across the ground.

Clara shuddered from cold as she felt a chill seeping into her bones.

The cold had no effect on Aakesh, so he felt no issues and took another step forward while half his body was sunk inside the snow.

Since this was the second last territory in Aakesh’s journey to find the central ruler, the ruler here was also the servant. And from what he had learned from the previous ruler, the ruler of this domain was much stronger than the four other servants combined. It was only second to the central ruler in strength.

In the last four territories where the ruler came running to meet Aakesh right after Aakesh entered, and here, despite it being around several minutes since Aakesh appeared, the ruler was nowhere to be seen.

Aakesh was traveling on foot as Carla was unable to fly here due to the cold temperature. Even walking felt like a challenging task to her. If not for Aakesh helping her diffuse the cold, she would’ve already given up and had gotten frozen and died.

Aakesh even gave Clara the suggestion of escaping since Clara had already completed the purpose for which Aakesh wanted her. It was only due to Clara’s help without complaining even once in the past decades that Aakesh gave Clara the suggestion and didn’t tell her what to do.

Clara refused straight away. She had requested her father to go with Aakesh because she was bored, but now after spending more than three decades with Aakesh, she felt romantically drawn toward him. Since it was the first time she was traveling with the opposite gender, Aakesh’s absolute victories over his opponent made her feelings for him even more intense.

Unfortunately or fortunately for her, Clara neither had the courage to confess her feelings nor did she even think for a moment that Aakesh had the same feelings for her.

During the last decades she had spent with Aakesh, there was not even a single occurrence where Aakesh had shown any interest in conversation with her. He would stay silent all the time, and it was only her that was the speaker.

Since Clara didn’t know that Aakesh wasn’t from this part of the world, she believed Aakesh’s purpose in meeting the central ruler was not only to learn knowledge but also that Aakesh had imperialistic ambitions. Now that she had come this far with Aakesh, she didn’t want to escape. She desired to travel more and wanted to see Aakesh succeeding in conquering everything in this world.

Aakesh didn’t suggest it again, seeing the firm refusal of Clara, and he continued traveling in search of the ruler since the ruler still hadn’t appeared in front of him.

Aakesh then ignored Clara and only helped her when the cold became extreme for her.

While Aakesh was traveling with the snow’s height increasing, there was a creature, seated on a throne adorned with expensive jewels spanning over millions of miles, was looking at every movement of Aakesh from the moment Aakesh had appeared in the spider’s territory.

“Do I fight him, master?” A creature kneeling with its face kissing the supposed master’s feet asked respectfully.

The kneeling figure was none other than the ruler Aakesh had been searching for for the last few minutes, while the supposed master was none other than the central ruler.

“There is no need. Let the being come to us,” The creature seated on the throne playfully responded.

“We are going to have other guests also,” The creature further added as it could see Autumn coming toward this territory.

Time flew by.

“How much more time would it take?” Lily asked, comfortably seated on Autumn, jumping space.

The central rulers also had restrictions on them when they entered new territories. But they were strong enough to bypass those reactions without even losing a sweat unless they were in the primary territory of another central ruler, so Autumn was still able to do space jumps despite leaving her territory behind.

“Three more days,” Autumn answered as she was still very far from the destined territory.

Lily didn’t ask anything after getting an answer and fell silent.

It had been more than an hour since Aakesh entered the territory, and the ruler was still nowhere to be found.

The snow spread on the ground had already reached Aakesh’s shoulder, making his journey more challenging.

The situation for Clara had turned worse around six hours ago, and she lost consciousness. Since Clara had helped Aakesh so much in the past decades, he couldn’t leave her here and let her die. From that moment, Aakesh had been carrying Clara.

Time flew by.

The snow started touching Aakesh’s head, so it became a pressing issue, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

To solve the issue, Aakesh used his all-purpose skill, Apocalyptic Blast.

Since he was immune to the skill, he created a Counter Shield around Clara and started bombarding the area using dark energy balls.

The snow started clearing out, and the journey became less challenging for Aakesh, but at the same time, it became slow since even at his strongest here, the skill only had a range of 100 meters.

More time flew by.

“Master, why’s another ruler coming here?” The creature kneeling in front of the throne asked, as in the screen playing, it could see a central ruler about to reach here.

“We would get all the answers when she reaches here,” A playful voice rang in the area as the giant creature seated on the throne responded.

The kneeling creature nodded and fell silent. Its eyes then fell on the feet of its master.

***

“Seni… senior,” Carla muttered as she finally regained consciousness.

Hearing Carla’s voice Aakesh stopped in his steps and put her down.

It has been more than three days since Aakesh entered here and was still searching for the ruler.