(Rimuru POV)
"WHAT THE HECK?!" I was in my office, sharing a lunch with Shion and Shuna, when I suddenly felt Aether pulse with… something that I couldn't quite name. Whatever it was, it was massively significant. It shook me straight down to my soul.
"What's wrong?"
"What's the matter, Lord Rimuru?" The girls asked, almost as confused as I was, while I asked Isis what exactly had happened.
What Isis told me was… insane, Completely insane.
Apparently, Risa had used a special approach to extend Aether directly to Milim, despite the fact that she didn't have much 'soul compatibility' with us right now.
Which made sense. Despite how close Risa and Milim were, creating a Soul Connection was rather difficult by nature. You needed a true connection on the literal level of the soul. It couldn't be done by simply 'being close', or Thought Communicating a lot. It had to do with spiritrons and information particles. Not even Isis fully understood the requirements.
But Risa had created a way, using multiple Ultimate skills, to completely offset those requirements, connecting Aether to Milim. She'd needed naught but Milim's own permission, easily granted.
The thing that I'd felt before was Aether connecting to Milim.
Milim's soul was powerful. As powerful as Veldora's, maybe even more so. And honestly, Aether could only barely handle Veldora, even though his soul was perfectly 'in tune' with my own due to the special nature of our bond.
In fact, it couldn't handle his Ultimate Skill, Set, Lord of Destruction. Veldora had numerous Pact safeguards in place to ensure that he didn't damage the Soul Corridor between us, or Risa and I, who were closest to him, soul-wise, and he still had to be crazy careful when he used it. It would bust straight through the nearly impenetrable corridor that connected us, not destroying it, but severely damaging it. That made energy leak between us like a sieve, which could theoretically give all of Tempest a severe case of magicule poisoning, though I'd instantly handle it before that happened, were that to somehow happen.
But Milim's case was completely different from Veldora's. Her soul wasn't just strong, it was also nearly incompatible with the Aether network. In order to simply establish the corridor, she needed a massive Pact Contract, hundreds of restrictions beefing the connection, making the Aether connection just strong enough to work with her.
Which basically meant that it came with quite a few caveats, beyond the normal stuff.
We couldn't transfer power through the corridor. Only small trace amounts, so the rest of us didn't suddenly gain access to Milim's massive magicule reserves, and likewise, she couldn't access Veldora's massive supply, either. If she overexerted herself, she wouldn't be able to near-instantly replenish herself with Veldora's magic like we could, and she couldn't use Isis as a personal Google Search engine, either, like most of Tempest technically could, though it only answered the members of my cabinet that actually knew about it, anyway.
In fact, even if we wanted to, we couldn't pass any of our skills to Milim for temporary usage. Nor could we do anything more than the barest assessment of her skills. One of the main requirements of the pact contract was that we couldn't even use her skill data to replicate her skills, at least until Aether and Horus settled a bit, and we could update the connection to get rid of some of the more restrictive clauses. That particular clause was so massively important that I was almost certain that I'd need to evolve again before I could get rid of it.
Now, all of Aether's core abilities being blocked may have made the connection to Milim seem useless for both sides, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
For Tempest's side, it was borderline useless. I could tell where Milim was and instantly contact her long before now.
But for Milim, it must have been a massive, unexpected boon. Not even I could've expected what that simple connection had done for her.
You see, while we couldn't replicate Milim's skills within ourselves, and not only due to that one clause, but also because of how powerful her crazy Ultimate Skill was, with permission, Isis could reorganize Milim's own skills, using her energy and our own data.
Trusting Milim, I immediately gave Isis permission to try. A few seconds later, it reported back that it'd gotten permission and completed the skill redistribution.
The results were insane.
Basically, Milim's original skills were a bunch of common and Extra Skills, such as Thought Communication and Spatial Motion. Those were backed by her Unique Skill, Milim Eye. Then, she had a terrifying Ultimate Skill called 'Sataniel, Lord of Wrath'.
Sataniel basically generated magicules infinitely by colliding her own, generating a strange, higher-evolved, insanely dense type of energy that was then broken down into more magicules. With it, she could theoretically increase her power up to her physical limits and keep it there, no matter how much she actually used.
But only in theory. In reality, Sataniel's second subskill massively blunted its power. It was called 'Stampede'. Basically, the more Milim used the skill, the more she'd lose herself in anger. Using it to its full potential would turn her into a raging monster capable of destroying large countries (or smaller planets) with power that made it obvious why she was called the Demon Lord of Absurdity.
In that state, her EP was higher than Veldora's. A battle between those two at full power would literally be apocalyptic.
Even with it only on 1-5% blast, Milim's EP was still higher than mine, which was already ludicrous.
Anyways, Isis had basically combined some of the data from some of Risa and my Ultimate Skills to evolve Sataniel, absorbing Milim's 'Milim Eye' into it, along with about 5% of Milim's EP as fuel.
In the end, the 'Stampede' aspect of Sataniel was divested, turning it into Ra, Lord of the Stars. A skill on an entirely different level.
Ra had three basic sub-skills: Stardust Creation, Magicule Breeding, and Draconic Sense.
In other words, Milim's only maximum was now what her physical and spiritual bodies could control. Not only would it not affect her mind at all anymore, but her broken Milim Eye senses had even gotten a notch stronger.
Which meant that she could now turn me and Risa into paste without expending almost any effort at all, and probably bring her EP somewhere around 200 million without any real problems. Horrifyingly impressive.