“So what exactly are we looking for down here?” Arson rolled his eyes at the queen's question. He was honestly tired of answering the endless tirade of inquiries that came from her and her guards.
“A crypt of your ancestor,” said Arson simply.
“This entire place is a crypt,” responded the queen. Arson sighed heavily and was rewarded, with silence. She quickly had begun to learn how reticent he was to communicate casually, and decided to push as far as she could to learn from him what she could, anything she could, but no further if he seemed annoyed or frustrated.
Arson smiled as he heard the growing sound of a turbine in the back of his mind. He picked up his pace within the underground stone tunnels and emerged into a large open space. The area was filled with treasure from floor to ceiling and was lit in all directions by a massive portal at the center of the treasure trove.
“Ha, looks like my job here is done,” said Arson before he turned to the dropped jawed Amorra.
He vanished, only to be drawn into another series trial. These trials shifted Arson’s expectations for the rest of the runic skyscraper as it became harder and harder for Arson to breathe.
By his 3701st trial, Arson found himself in the midst of a battlefield and a mana-induced asthma attack. His system was being flooded with so much mana, that without a further refinement of his own breathing technique’s skill level, he realized he may die. It was then in the moment before he collapsed in the middle of a blood bath, that he devoted his entire mind to his breathing technique for the first time.
Arson blacked out before he fell face first into a nearby pile of dismembered body parts. Luckily for him he fell when he did, or he may have been beheaded by one of the many runic savages he battled amongst. The men and women may have been from a far more primitive time than Arson’s own, but their skill in combat was far beyond even some of the cultivators Arson knew personally and these people were mortals. Which spoke to Arson.
He nearly suffocated in the few breaths it took to regulate the mana in his system, but then it occurred.
A pop like pressure behind an ear drum thrummed through Arson’s entire being. Arson hadn’t realized he had had a headache until the tension eased in a flood of expelled pressure.
An explosion of power pushed everything close to Arson out and away from his body. He rose from the ground like a drowning man breaking through the surface of the ocean’s depths.
“What the sparks!” said Arson as he looked around the eye of the storm of chaos his mana’s explosion had created. The more he cycled his breaths, the more the fog cleared from his mind. Arson didn’t know how long he’d been in a state of harm, but he would never again split his attention or fold his mind within any of the skyscrapers within Endless, not that Arson felt he would ever again sign up for something Endless had to offer.
Arson returned to the battle and the search for a rune apparently being used in a sacrificial ritual.
Not yet used to the change in the flow of mana through his body, Arson stuck to using the first martial style of the Omni. For the first time since he entered the trials, he felt the full return of his regenerative abilities, something he’d wished for countless number of instances when he helped rebuild Amorra’s city.
Regardless, he was afraid to lose his senses again, as he hadn’t even been able to tell that he’d reached a pain threshold he couldn’t manage mentally. So he used only his body, no skills, no constructs, no runes.
It took Arson days to find what he was tasked to find. What took his breath away was not the rune when he found it, but where the rune was located.
For days the men and women around him seemed to kill one another by the thousands. Not for honor, or nation, but for the pure sport of contest and killing. Arson thought it had all been senseless murder and violence, until he found it.
A pyramid of bodies grew at the center of a field. An armored set of winged women flew from all over the battlefield and dropped the bodies of the dead underneath what Arson assumed to be some sort of runic Godling.
A giant eyeball made of light and heat spun with the body of a miniature sun. The rune he looked for, the creature’s literal iris. The symbol for the sun’s rage flickered like golden flaked diamonds in the view of Arson’s overlay. Yet no matter how many times he memorized the symbol from a distance, nothing changed. The trial continued and so did the violence around him.
“Am I supposed to fight that thing, there’s no sparking way I’d live through something like that as I am now. Did I miss a difficulty increase notification or something?” said Arson. He knew he was bad about checking his notifications, but shouldn’t have missed anything too important over the past thousand or so trials.
The scene twisted his stomach and made him miss home even more. It wasn’t until the fog began to clear from his mind near the beginning of his current trial that Arson realized he had been slowly losing his mind within the Runic skyscraper. Thousands of problems to be solved back to back without end, had originally seemed like a small matter to Arson, but now after he’d grown three entire season cycles within the skyscraper, he felt completely differently.
“What if this takes you longer than four season cycles to complete…” The words sank into his chest as he fought tears. His emotions shifted from sad to angry, then desperate after he took in the sight of the giant eye in the sky again.
He thought of his friends, then he thought of Jade. They’d had many conversations in the short time he’d been in her care, but what he remembered the most were the stories his mother told him about her childhood.
She hadn’t been born with magic, or even as a cultivator. She’d had to fight without a single ounce of immortal power, against the mighty. Yet here Arson was, scared to face danger, when he’d seemingly been given the world.
“No, this isn’t my limit,” said Arson. He dropped free of the tree canopy he’d hidden within and wiped his tears.
“I may be an ant compared to a god, but I’d rather be stepped on during my attempt to overcome great adversity than quit before I ever gave it my all,” said Arson aloud. He clenched his fist and summoned Jack and the Twin Living Hand constructs to orbit around him as he charged.
“Spark it!”
Arson ran forward at a speed that caused the automatic triggering of his slowed perception ability. He hadn’t felt the effects of slowed time, since he’d left Maelstrom and the sensation was absolutely exhilarating for Arson.
The first of the winged women dove toward Arson as he rapidly approached the eye in the sky. He was impressed by the two-handed sword she unsheathed from her back. The giant blade she held glimmered in the light cast by the eye’s light behind her.
In slow motion he watched as she lifted the weapon above her head, completely ready to bisect Arson. Jack and the Twin constructs, took away the woman’s opportunity completely.
The silent constructs wrapped around the woman Arson’s overlay had dubbed a Valkyrie. Jack managed to grab the woman by a single wrist and the weapon's extended handle. While the Twin constructs grabbed her by the ankle.
All of the valkyrie’s momentum was stolen in an instant, a breath before she managed to swing. Without a pause in his stride, Arson jumped and spartan-kicked the woman in the head. All before he used her like a spring board.
Arson was airborne and passed his first enemy only to almost collide with a new opponent. The winged woman was almost able to dodge him, but he managed to have one of his constructs attach itself to her ankle. Since he didn’t want to fall, or waste energy or mana by having to fly himself. Arson anchored himself to his Living Hand construct, by the use of a combined magnetism and gravity set of runes.
He had never used his constructs in this manner before and was agitated with himself at the potential adaptations of his abilities that he may have overlooked in his journeys thus far.
The valkyrie looked back to see a magical hand on its leg. It didn’t notice Arson’s presence at first, but then did a double take in his direction.
From the valkyrie’s perspective, Arson seemed to be in nearly perfect pursuit of her. The rune Arson used made it seem as if he was able to keep up with her speed by drafting off of the pocket of air made by her massive armored body while it cut through the air, but Arson actually was being dragged bodily.
The rune on his outstretched palm made it feel like a rope was tied to his wrist, and attached to the wrist of the construct that clamped down on the armored leg of the Valkyrie. The woman didn’t understand how he kept up, so she sped up. Which nearly managed to dislocate Arson’s arm from the socket.
“I refuse to lose another arm,” yelled Arson as he increased the gravitational effect of the rune he used.
Carter looked through his astral projection. The god had many of his constructs across reality, and often used the giant eyes to oversee his many projects.
He’d lately been consumed with interest on many of the sights his manifestations viewed. The eyes often took on personalities of their own, and one he’d grown more fond of recently, had set its sight on a boy.
A slightly familiar boy that Carter swore he’d seen before. Had he bestowed a flicker of his own light, or maybe even a technique? Carter couldn’t truly tell what kind of power the boy held, as his soul was cluttered with almost a dozen half formed skills, abilities, as well as soul techniques. He felt the young boy either was his kin, or had maybe been blessed by one of his disciples at the very least.
“Do you think he is trying to stop the ritual,” asked Carter to his Living Construct.
“I don’t believe he can, not that I am certain of his current intentions, he seems to want to get closer to me, but I don’t know why as of yet,” responded Affinity. Carter grumbled to himself and even found himself lost in laughter.
“I’ve never seen valkyries struggle with an opponent that couldn’t fly before, are those hands he is using Living Constructs,” asked Carter while he watched Arson flip acrobatically through the flying warriors.
Arson used the chaos of his entrance and had begun to anchor himself to a new valkyrie every time he was caught attached to a previous one. The warriors were vastly more powerful, but regardless Arson seemed fearless during his interactions with the tribe of Godling women.
He dodged the grasp of one valkyrie, by letting go completely from his current target. Carter celebrated internally at the smile the boy wore as he screamed in excitement.
Arson dove with three of the warriors on his heels. Two of which almost grabbed him by his feet. But before his capture could be managed, his white Living Construct, latched onto the shoulder of another unaware valkyrie that flew in a completely different direction.
Arson was yanked upward as if he’d pulled the string to a rocket assisted parachute. He roared with laughter as the shocked warriors watched in frustration while he whipped pass the rest of his pursuers.
It was then that Carter began to take a true interest in Arson. A gravitational rune manifested itself in the palm of his free hand and the boy shifted gravity in a perpetual circle pattern in the air behind himself.
To the trained eye, the struggles that the valkyries faced once the rune was triggered was understandable. The women’s wings folded when they shouldn’t; turned the wrong directions, and even flapped out of sync under the effects of Arson’s rune.
“Are you sure he isn’t going to manage to interrupt your ritual, Affinity?”
“I have your daughter coming to neutralize him, and with what he’s shown so far, he could most likely have stopped the ritual if that was his true intent, but we shall see,” said Affinity.
Arson felt as if his heart wanted to beat free of his chest. He’d almost been grabbed a dozen or more times, and wondered if he was going to be forced to fly due to the many valkyries he’d attracted.
It didn’t take long for the cries of their sisters to draw the attention of whoever he was attached too anymore, and by that point Arson wondered if he’d wasted time and could have made it to the rune already.
Arson closed his eyes, took a deep breath and dissolved his anchor rune. Wind ripped passed his face as he fell and Arson smiled even before he opened his eyes and filled his body with the needed mana to fly for the first time in years.
The sound barrier was broken an instant after Arson managed to turn around in the air and face his pursuers. The golden white mana rippled behind Arson as it exited his pores. His surrounding’s blurred even under the effects of his slowed perception, and the warriors moved in slow motion to Arson as he streaked effortlessly into the crowd.
He still maintained the gravitational rune in his offhand, which only aided both in the chaos and confusion, but the actions of Jack and the Twins as well.
His living constructs, punched, deflected, and countered a flurry of body parts and weaponry as Arson flew through the crowd.
When he burst free of the rear of the group, he paused long enough to put his goal directly in sight. Long enough to fill his body with even more mana. Long enough to be grabbed by the neck and choked by what seemed to be an angel with six wings and a scythe that may have been taller than she was.
Arson gaped at the white haired woman, and she only smiled back at him. He couldn’t help but look down at the sound of armor as it collided with the ground and other armored bodies below him, but only for a breath.
“Are you here to ruin my father’s ritual?” The woman rose slowly higher into the air, closer to the Eye, and Arson scrunched his face in confusion.
“Your dad is a massive eyeball that makes civilizations slaughter themselves? Sparks, I thought my life was weird,” squeezed out Arson through the chokehold.
“Ha, you're funny, this is a prison planet child, these people slaughter each other for the chance to leave the planet. Believe it or not, some make it to prison planets with quality of living standards higher than some high societies, my father merely owns this planet and is gathering enough sacrifices for one of his children to ascend, think more opportunistic than devious,” said the woman.
“Yeah, that sounds like something a reasonable person would say,” responded Arson. He didn’t know why he was being sarcastic, but bet his choices were directly linked to fear and nervousness. He felt the strength in the woman’s grasp and sensed innately that she could separate his head from his shoulders with a simple closed fist.
“You must be as young as you seem to joke in the face of death. Luckily for you I don’t have time to waste. Unluckily for you, I don’t have time to waste. Why are you here, child?” said the woman with a quick shake that made Arson’s whole body flap around.
“Ouch!” said Arson as he spit out blood.
“You made me bite my tongue,” said Arson with a wheeze and chuckle. He tried to distract the woman with anything he could while the woman continued to rise higher into the air.
“I don’t know, Father, I think we should just kill 'im,” said the woman with a look over her shoulder and toward the center of the eye in the sky. Arson took it all in as they came to a stop just before the creature in the sky. The moment his eyes took in the rune at the center of the Living Construct’s iris, his life changed.
Arson’s family rune was inscribed there, surrounded by a cyclone of runes that changed rapidly. Even without understanding, Arson anchored himself to the power held there, and the turbine sound that signaled his next teleportation grew in the back of his mind.
The white gold light filled his vision and stole his entire consciousness from the root of his being and began to spread the energy it consisted of across tremendous distances.
He felt his mind stretch to its limits and beyond. Through a series of visions Arson saw flickers of lives being lived across a vast portion of creation in what felt like to him was only a single moment.
If Arson could have laughed he would have, as the emotions of creation and destruction rushed through his being and forced him to see existences he never would have otherwise. In the moment before he vanished he felt as if he’d seen a beautiful portrait of a star, formed from trillions of smaller paintings. Paintings that his mind would never forget.
The moment Arson vanished Carter smiled to himself. The smile the boy wore before he’d gone was filled with blood and excitement. An excitement that Carter knew well himself.
“I wonder what you shall explore next ,child?”