In the Ashen Citadel

Granath raged within his throne room, in an apoplectic fury from the never ending litany of losses that he was suffering to that accursed Jonathan Harlowe. This man was rapidly eclipsing the path of the hero all those millenia ago, and at this rate, he might be even able to achieve that no other man had ever done. To kill a circle lord. Even worse, it seemed that Angranor was getting involved.

Yaltan had not reported the presence of Jonathan until a few minutes after his platoon had arrived, meaning that he was in an alternate dimensional space. The only one that Granath knew of like that was Tartarus, and only Angranor could grant access. The Lord of Hell was playing games with his toys, and Granath did not like that one bit.

Granath suddenly found himself overcome by pure anger, and thrashed around for a moment in his throne room. It did little for him, but it made him feel marginally better. He had just reminded himself of his strength and power, and he had managed to convince himself somewhat about his ability to defeat Jonathan, should he even reach the necessary level of power to fight him.

Granath had been on the top of this realm for eons because of his strength, and that was not going to suddenly end just because of some upstart who had a modicum of talent. The only problem was the lower mana density of this world, which had been a thorn in his side ever since reaching the Peak of Tier 2. The demerit to power was only supposed to be about fifty percent at its maximum amount, but for a being of his caliber, it was even more, as his body was supported by his levels and skills. Otherwise he would not be able to even move, what with his massive body.

Monsters beyond a certain size thrived off of mana and System granted strength, which meant that they were basically impotent without them. With a fifty percent decrease in his stats, he would see a far larger demerit to his physical abilities. Not that he really needed them, as he was a mage of the highest level, at least within Tier 2, but it helped to be able to hold his own.

If not for his high levels of defense, that hero would have cut him in half long ago, spelling his end. Seeing as Jonathan followed a martial path, he would have to be able to react to his movements. Even when the man had been a Tier 1, with all of his abilities engaged he had been fast enough to evade his strikes, something that should have been impossible. At his current power, perhaps he was already a physical match for him.

In addition, Jonathan’s special Divinity related skill allowed him to resist soul damage, which rendered Granath’s most iconic technique moot. However, Granath had a host of other magical abilities. He was an elementalist of great skill and power, and when he really got moving, he could destroy mountains with his spells.

As Granath calmed himself by reliving his greatest moments, he slowly got control of his raging emotions once more. Jonathan was proving to be a nuisance, but not one that would be much of a threat, as long as he was dealt with quickly. It was time to stop playing around. He knew where the man was located now, and he would send an entire legion after him. Let Jonathan deal with the combined forces of hundreds of thousands of warriors. He would die before long.

Back in the Rim

A few weeks later, the city had its first newly minted Tier 2. Eva had been able to finally reach that vaunted level, after hundreds of life threatening battles. Jonathan and Edgar had not been slacking off either, and although neither had focused on their growth too much, they had reached the low 120s in level, with the aid of Tartarus.

Jonathan had neglected his skills in favor of his city, but most of them were still hovering on the cusp of Journeyman Rank, or had already passed it. For Jonathan, the growth in power was enough to deal with the repression of the lower mana density, but he would eventually need to find a solution. He had been too busy to justify experimenting with his runes, but he would do so when he was free.

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The average level of the guards had skyrocketed as well, with most of them in the 80s. A large portion of the townspeople had shown interest in leveling as well, and quite a few now however around level 50. With Eva’s presence, they could run more leveling missions than before, which increased the overall efficiency. More and more people had flocked to his banner over that time, and the city was now almost five thousand strong. There were a lot of people in this realm, for its size at least, and enough of them were sufficiently enthused with his strength to join Jonathan’s mission.

He had continued to study the book in the meantime, and had found out some interesting facts about the later circles of the Hells. Although the number of people in them was fewer, that only counted those who were at the actual level of that realm. Children were not born at the Tier of their parents, and in the eons that the Hells had been around, there was ample opportunity to create progeny. Because of the sheer size of the later realms, there were far more people there than Jonathan could have ever imagined.

In addition, the powerful craved the attention of the weak, which meant that this process was encouraged. The book had waxed lyrical about the illustrious nature of the Church of Redeeming Light as well, which Jonathan had mostly glossed over. That had been expected though, given the author’s position.

More importantly, Jonathan had learned of Granath’s powers and skills. The circle lord specialized in the four Natural Elements, as the book had referred to them, those of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. There were three other spheres of elemental power as well. The Conceptual Sphere of Light, Dark, Life and Death, the Ethereal Sphere of Time, Fate and the Primal Sphere of Order and Chaos.

The position on a sphere did not have much of an effect on the overall power of that element, but more on its complexity. Chaos was considered to be the first element, and the most complicated to use. The book had not mentioned the Void, rather alluding to a force that it called Quintessence, which was described as ‘the natural desire for existence to revert to nothingness’.It served as a sort of fifth sphere to balance out the others.

It was similar to the ideas on Earth of the ancient Greeks about the separation between the Earth and the Heavens, with the Quartessence of the natural elements, and the fifth element of Quintessence, which was an immutable, heavenly power that made up the realm of the Gods. In any case, that was mostly just academic conjecture, and the real worth of the book was in its description of Jonathan’s enemies.

Granath was able to summon highly advanced manifestations of those elements, creating spell constructs that would be able to destroy villages in a single hit. The worm had likely been holding back when Jonathan had fled from him, so as to not destroy his city. In those few minutes, the worm would have easily been capable of taking out great swathes of his capital.

He had seen a small fraction of the man’s power during the fight back in the Ashen Citadel, if it could even be called such a thing. It had been more like a fighting retreat. Granath was weaker than him in physical combat, or at least he would be once Jonathan reached his level, but none of that mattered if he was swatted out of the air like a bug as soon as he got near the monster.

His Void energy abilities would help in trying to unbind the spells that the monster used, but so far, none of them were powerful enough to fully take out a skill from the circle lord. Although his Touch of Decay skill had morphed into Hungering Decay, he was still capable of using it in its original form, to unbind spells.

However, if he was able to find a way to extend the pure destructive force that was within his upgraded skill version, and add it to the weaker skill, it would serve him well in terms of being able to unbind attacks. That would be something to practice over the next while. He knew that the soldiers of Granath were likely coming toward him, and although it had been a few weeks, if they were moving in any sort of force, it would take them longer to get here.

At least there were fewer Tier 2s than Tier 1s by quite a large margin, and there wouldn't be thousands of Tier 2s coming towards the town at this moment. Jonathan could deal with a lot of Tier 1s on his own, and if he played his cards right in terms of leveling up the soldiers, they could deal with a lot more.