“The Elevated Council has unanimously voted, Tyrant Ardwin Fellblade. You shall not be granted access to #!*@#$*$
The rejection resounded throughout the cathedral, the building itself seeming to have acknowledged the words spoken by a man in his “forties”, as mortals would call it. His voice was strong as it delivered a rejection. An extremely painful rejection that Ardwin took personally. Very personally
“I advise you, Head Councillor, to hold another vote. There must be some mistake. After all, do you truly intend to deny me? After all my…accomplishments? My memory is not what it used to be, but I believe that the Kingdom of Hestia denied me access to this very council, yet here I stand.”
Ardwin remained hopeful. The Elevated Council was not composed of idiots after all. Surely, they would see reason and change their vote.
“Tyrant Fellblade, you are aware that that is not possible. The Elevated Council never has and never will change its stance once made. It is absolute. You will not gain access to #!*@#$*$.”
Ah. That is…unfortunate. How novel.
For the first time in millennia, Ardwin faced an immovable obstacle, one that he would not be able to brute force his way through. The very Mana binding him to this realm, he could feel it shuddering and clamping on to him more permanently. He watched his Root system, the lifeblood of his Domain harden and go from simple Anchors to steel chains binding him to this Realm. The Realm and he were fused in some fashion. It stifled him. It annoyed him. It made him utterly FURIOUS.
Ardwin looked up from his perusal of the now permanent Mana bindings and stared intensely into the rainbow-hued iris of the Head Councillor. Ardwin’s loose hold on his Mana was starting to slip and he had the perfect target in front of him.
“You have made a mistake, Councillors,” Ardwin stated dispassionately.
Instantly, the atmosphere changed. The semi-circular table at the head of the cathedral disappeared as the Councillors all stood up, recognizing his threat for what it was. The temperature had dropped precipitously, and along with it, the humidity. Ardwin coldly watched as the Head Councillor’s tongue left the confines of its mouth to moisten his chapped lips. That same accursed tongue had delivered words that had utterly humiliated him. A rejection that was unbreakable. He did not see why the Councillor should keep his tongue.
After all, why would a skeleton need a tongue?
Shocked gasps escaped from the members of the Elevated Council as time…flowed. It whizzed past at a dizzying rate for the Head Councillor, his body ageing rapidly until it could age no more. Then it no longer aged, but degraded until all that was left was bleached bone. Ardwin gazed on in the now skeletal state of the Head Councillor with immense satisfaction. It wasn’t enough, however. The world should know never to stand in his way again. A skeleton was too much of a mercy.
In a final, spiteful gesture, he kept the Chronosphere up until the bones returned to their original state, that of dust.
Dust to dust indeed
While this occurred, Ardwin had placed their Domains in a different Chronosphere, an inverse to balance out the one the Head Councillor was in. To further reduce the cost of his Technique, each of the Chronospheres only shut down their Mana. Their bodies were handled by the sheer pressure of his Domain, which they could not counteract without Mana of their own.
An elegant improvement that allowed the Head Councillor to feel every second of his slow march towards death as his friends and colleagues could only helplessly watch on. The sheer impotence the Councillors must have felt…it was intoxicating.
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. Even after the optimizations mentioned and many thousands unmentioned, the Mana cost for his actions was still absurd. Centuries of stored-up Mana drained out of him at a rapid pace. He needed to cover his escape, lest his temporary weakness be exploited once the Chronospheres came to an end.
Reaching towards the parts vital to the Councillors’ consciousness, he forcibly added them to the Chronosphere. Ardwin grimaced at the additional cost. It was within acceptable range, but now the remaining duration he had left was best measured in milliseconds. Taking advantage of his Tyrant constitution, he sprinted away at mind-numbing speeds, desperately trying to escape the sensory range of his temporary captives as he burnt the last of his Mana. The landscape was barely more than a blur of green and brown as Ardwin left the secretive forest where the church was located.
As he sprinted, Ardwin glimpsed the beginning of a sharp incline. He knew that if he tried to look for its peak, he would need to tilt his head vertically upwards before he caught sight of the first lip of the mountain.
Ardwin sighed with relief once he saw that the Imperial Blazer, tucked under a nook inside the very Ascension Mountain that he had just tried to gain permission to climb, was untouched.
He knew that the Councillors would likely deny him his right to ascend, but hope made fools of even the mightiest Empyreans. He wasn’t fool enough to not have an escape plan, however.
The vehicle was a work of art, radiating a sheen that would be pleasing to witness across any wavelength you observed it from. As with all things that excelled in a single area, the Blazer was a simple affair, a sleek teardrop built entirely for speed and stealth. All it required was an obscene amount of Mana. He quickly climbed into the pod, lifting the canopy and entered the austere cockpit. The control panel present at the head of the teardrop-like structure was ivory white and contained a single, red button.
Antiquated. Well, there is no accounting for taste
Pressing the button, he took off at speeds far greater than the one he had previously maintained and finally released his hold on the Chronospheres. The vacuum-like pull on his Mana finally petered out, but he was still running on essentially empty. Ardwin had accounted for this and had heavily overcharged the batteries of the Blazar. It would wreak havoc on the power systems. A small price to pay for his life.
As the hours passed by, Ardwin went over his plans. The fall of the Head Councillor would cause massive waves across the Realm. It would trigger the largest manhunt in history, with multiple apex-level Cultivators coming after him. Ardwin shivered in anticipation.
The monumental event would have only a few appropriate responses, making them easy to predict.
The High Court will set a bounty on me of about 10 million Empys per my calculations of their liquid assets. That means Salas, Bianca, and Po will finally be motivated to get off their asses and start mobilizing their resources. I’m sure they predicted that a fallout would occur between the council and me after consulting with Devi. Since I killed that bitch of a Seer 450 years ago, and since no one else has achieved the same level of Oracular Philosophy, the timing will be assuredly off for their reactions. With the records of their movements I got from Hestia, thank Time for their justified paranoia, their actions moving forward should be…
While the Blazar zipped past innumerable environments, Ardwin had estimated and re-estimated trillions of possibilities. He had to account for the tiny deviations from his original plan, such as the rate of Mana being pulled out of him a hair faster than expected.
Since his very survival hinged on his ability to predict his opponent’s actions, even an extra millisecond of keeping the Councillors frozen could lead to potentially vast changes. Having gone through all the information again, however, it seemed that all was within safe thresholds.
Wrapping up his thoughts, Ardwin stood up and looked out the Blazar, noticing the gradual change from the Tundra-like environment he had come from to the harsh and unforgiving snowy mountains. He was not far from his destination.
Hours Later
Suddenly the Blazar gave a sharp whine and without warning, abruptly stopped. The acceleration change was too sudden for Ardwin to completely react to, hurling him through the Blazar into the wet, snowy ground in front of him. Ardwin looked behind him in consternation as he slowed himself down milliseconds after he’d blasted through the Blazar’s metal surface. The Blazar had a gaping hole in its front with Mana whisps emitting from its thin tail. It had failed a full hour before it was supposed to, a tremendous miscalculation that shook Ardwin. Every moment had been planned since close to 450 years ago. For it to already deviate not even a day in was ominous.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Knowing that the Blazar was unfixable, he rapidly scavenged as much Mana as he could from the functional batteries, filling up his Domain. He was around two hours away from his lair by foot if he pushed himself, which he would. The smaller the impact this miscalculation had, the better.
Taking a breath to compose himself, he stored the Imperial Blazar inside his storage space. He also pulled out his finest set of stealth enchantments and wore them. As an additional precaution, he pulled himself out of phase with Space for half his Mana. Satisfied that the number of people who could keep track of him could be counted on one finger, he set off.
His mind churned furiously as he tried to figure out the source of the discrepancy between his plans and reality. He’d checked the internals of the Blazar countless times and run exhaustive calculations to make the uncertainties best measured in seconds! And yet. Yet he was somehow off by an entire hour.
Was this Devi’s influence? Had she predicted her demise somehow, regardless of how that was supposed to be impossible, and somehow taken revenge? It mattered not. He would need to collect data from the Blazar back in his lab to find out how exactly things had gone so horribly wrong.
As he travelled, the coldness increased beyond natural limits with snow billowing around him. His constitution gave him a reprieve from mortal concerns such as temperature, but the climate here was anything but natural.
Although the same could be said for the entirety of the Realm, this particular snowstorm was a side effect of Devi’s magnum opus, one that had allowed her to play her little games. Spinning webs and catching flies, the spider had gotten very fat indeed as it languished in the centre of its web. The snowstorm heralded the most advanced anti-detection field that he, and likely the Realm, had ever seen. When he first encountered it, he couldn’t make heads or tails of half the technology involved. He’d have given up completely if it hadn’t been for a series of coincidences leading him to kill Devi in a moment of vulnerability.
Whether it was due to sheer arrogance or some other unknown reason, Devi’s magnum opus did not have a fail-safe for her death. It was now keyed towards him, which had aroused his suspicion initially but after a hundred years of study, he’d realised that building such a powerful anti-detection field had been beyond even Devi’s skill. He’d recognized multiple areas of code in the software that were ripped from other, similar technologies. Going through it with a fine-toothed comb had made it clear that Devi had been going off of intuition and her Oracular power alone in the creation of this piece of technology. Spaghetti code abounded leading to unintended effects. For example, if Ardwin decided to peer into Mt. Vesuvius’ future at exactly the time the sun shined overhead its peak, it would, for a brief instant show Devi’s Mountain instead.
Whatever the reason, it was now his.
Ardwin trudged through the snow, as he made his way to the base of the mountain. The mountain itself was part of a massive mountain range, one which spanned the entire Realm. He’d been unable to chart its entirety since each end of the range was the territory of the Dragon and the Phoenix respectively. They didn’t take kindly to strangers trespassing on their territories, especially when the stranger’s name was Ardwin Fellblade. Who knew draining the peasants of their measly life force would cause their rulers to get so puffy about it? It wasn’t like the peasants were going to use it.
Ardwin refocused on the task at hand: The Blazar. He quickly entered the relevant codes, performed the necessary Mana techniques and cleared the endless other security measures present. It was a tedious but necessary process.
The snowstorm around him suddenly stilled, the snow hanging in the air as an opening appeared in the mountain as if it had always existed. He entered the gaping maw.
Home Sweet Home
The entrance to his lair was nothing much to look at, a plain tunnel ending in a teleportation chamber. The chamber was an austere affair, consisting of nothing more than a cylindrical cavity made of Adamantium. Ardwin had little use in decorations or light.
Performing a quick Mana combination, the chamber teleported to the basement where his laboratory lay. He stepped out and made his way to the relevant devices, obtaining data about the Blazar. He entered a flow state as he analysed the results.
Hours passed by in what felt like a blink of an eye. Ardwin was still trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong when he felt a blip on the radar installed into the anti-detection field. A fast-moving object was heading straight towards his mountain.
Ardwin groaned his frustration. This happened on occasion. Enthusiastic, foolhardy brats from nearby civilizations looked for remote areas to have their little “battles”. Here the anti-detection field hamstrung itself by making itself look completely unassuming and thus a perfect place to perform explo- ahem experiments.
Briefly making sure that the body was only going to smash through the upper layers of the mountain, Ardwin returned to his work.
The incoming Mana into the phase driver was over twice the safety limits at around T-0.5 seconds, and was likely the source of the cascading failure, but why? As per this line of runes here, the input Mana should have followed the equation M = M/ (1 – v^2/c^2) + N where N was that constant from the Light Engine. V was pretty close to C, about 0.999 but that was within prediction. So, the source of the sudden influx would be a change in N, but I already went over all the variables in N! What could- Huh?
Ardwin started. A wailing siren was blaring in his mind, one that warned him of an intruder, but how had they gone through his other defences?? Ardwin activated his Time Domain that he’d built around the mountain, buying himself some time to think. The entire mountain was now locked down and under his influence.
Teleporting to the control panel, he temporarily pulled it out of the Domain and ran through all possible detection methods to find the intruder. What he found shocked him to stillness.
The intruder was moving towards him and fast. He barely had time to react before a shadowy figure burst through his lab, shards of the lab flying out a couple of metres before the Domain reasserted itself. This was supposed to be impossible! The Time Domain Ardwin had created was close to being absolute! It was his turf! He was supposed to be unassailable!
That brief moment of outrage cost Ardwin. The figure who seemed to be made of a living void was now right in front of him. The void punched forward.
That snapped him out of it. Flowing down, Ardwin ducked and moved away. He was completely uninterested in striking back until he had the measure of his opponent. The void flowed with him, smoothly thrusting his knee towards his face. Ardwin activated the enchantments on his boots, instantly moving him back five metres and giving him a millisecond to breathe.
In that instant, he undid the Time Domain and activated all of his other defences that would potentially restrict the void’s movements. It was a hasty and inelegant solution, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The void stuttered. Its humanoid appearance wavered and its glowing blue eyes dimmed in intensity. Ardwin didn’t wait for it to figure out what was holding it back and scanned it with every device, Technique and enchantment he had on hand. It was all for nought.
No matter what he did, it was like the void didn’t exist. Every scan, every Technique, everything! It was all coming up empty. Ardwin had never faced anything like this before. Even illusions had telltale hints such as Mana disturbances or dips in the Realm’s fabric. It was like actually staring at a Void!
Fear gripped Ardwin’s heart. He had spent his entire first half of his life running from the unknown, and the second, quashing it. He thought that as long as he knew everything, he’d never be afraid again. The Void in front seemed to mock that notion, its steadily brightening eyes laughing at him derisively.
As a last-ditch attempt, he tried to find out which restriction The Void was labouring under, frantically trying to find a discrepancy in Mana intake, in the inbuilt presence detection, any small deviation from normal operation. No matter how many times he went over the readings, they all said the same thing: Nothing was there.
Ardwin turned white as he stared at The Void. It felt like he was looking into his end as his heart beat faster. Adrenaline thundered through his veins as his mind overclocked itself in an attempt to think of anything. He activated his more aggressive formations, as he perhaps should have done from the start, but arrogance and panic had cost him once more.
As was perhaps predictable, nothing happened. The Void seemed to have snuffed out the more large-scale defences that Ardwin had activated via some unknown mechanism. It was this final action where the Void hadn’t even done anything to enact changes in its environment that finally broke Ardwin.
He ran.
He teleported as fast as he could, not caring where he went. His mind was still stuck on that image of the Void staring at him, its billowy figure just standing there. He ran without thinking about how much he was straining his Roots, nor how much Mana he had left. He ran until his body finally shut down.
Stumbling, he finally felt control return to his body as his reptile brain relinquished control of his muscles. Fat lot of good that did him when his stamina allowed him little more than to sit somewhat comfortably. He took a moment to pause and survey his surroundings.
Ash was falling around him and the temperature was boiling hot. He was in the Phoenix’s domain. Ardwin laughed weakly, realising that he’d gone from the rock to the fireplace. He chuckled further at his wordplay, his mind still trying to pull itself together. He sat there for an unknown amount of time, his sense of time still disabled. It couldn't have been long, however.
When he eventually came back to himself, he took stock. He noted with some relief that he hadn’t damaged his Roots permanently. They were heavily strained, but with a bit of healing treasures and equipment in his storage space, entirely fixable. He reached into-
Ardwin stared up into the eyes of The Void.
Spent, on the ground, utterly helpless he watched as the Void pulled its fist back, his heart beating faster than it ever had. His lips were clammy and he couldn’t seem to swallow. Blood roared in his ears as the end approached.
He didn’t plead. He couldn’t plead. Even that privilege was ripped from him as his mind was once again consumed with fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the beyond. Fear of the future. Fear for his life. Fear for-
The fist connected