True to her words, the Uthraki mage showed little emotion at the death of her fellow, and she instead focused on her elementalism, summoning vast drifts of lava and rock. Jonathan was in little mood to play around at that point though, and he simply blitzed her with his true speed, weaving around the magma. Some of the attacks hit him, but he simply ignored the searing pain, opting to close the distance. His fist hammered into her face, and a charge of Voidlight did the rest, obliterating her head. A spray of blood fell to the ground, all that was left of the last member of the council. Jonathan had single handedly taken out the entire governing structure of a world, and it hadn’t even been that hard.

Jonathan quickly triggered the token, and appeared in the courtyard of Granath’s palace. Nobody was there, Edgar having left to complete the quest. However, Jonathan could not wait any longer. His armor and storage pouch were all at hand, the latter of which was filled with money from Granath’s vault.

He quickly used his Void energy to etch a message into the ground for Edgar, telling him that he was able to use the portal, and then raced towards it, the pounding in his head growing ever louder. As the purple disc of light rotated before him, he sent one last glance to the world that had been his home for the last few months, and then dove in, eager to discover what was waiting for him in Mire.

As the portal whooshed into full power, he found himself tumbling along a narrow tunnel made of light. His body twisted and turned through exotic space and time, and he soon lost all track of reality.

Some time later, he tumbled out of a rift in space, and into a pile of disgusting mud. The world around him felt far denser than anything he had encountered before, and his body bathed in concentrated mana. He rose, grunting, and beheld an endless vista of sprawling swamps, fetid copses of gnarled trees, and massive fortifications rising out of the ooze. He was in Mire now, and it was time to evolve. Glory awaited, and he could not achieve it as a mere Tier 2.

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Out in the Ash Heaps

Edgar’s path through the realm was one of death and bloody red ruin, painting a tapestry from the viscera of his enemies. The Dread Legion was spread across the entirety of the realm, and although they were weaker than he was, it was proving to be a pain to hunt them down.

In many cases, they were engaged in battle with the civilians who Jonathan had conscripted to his cause. Jakob, the man who Jonathan had given his runic array to, had emerged as somewhat of a leader figure among them. It was to his support that Edgar went. The man was almost Tier 2 by now, and a vast army of the dispossessed and disillusioned followed him, seizing that which had once belonged solely to Granath. As the majority of the Dread Legion was made up of mid Tier 1s, it hardly was a fight beyond hope of victory. Granath and his captains had been the main reason that rebellions in the past had failed. Still, it was shaping up to be a long and gruesome war.

When Edgar had arrived though, everything changed. The presence of a fighter at his caliber had inspired the lower level fighters, and his strength allowed him to wipe out thousands with a single attack.

He had led a whirlwind charge across the realm, leveling up the citizens of the new order upon the deaths of the old. It was a new era for the Ash Heaps, and for the Hells. It was Edgar’s way of making himself useful to Jonathan.

He was an elite among elites, at least compared to what he had known in Telvaria, but that benighted plane was hardly the best indicator of strength. His kingdom had been nothing but a beggar’s hovel compared to the true powers of the world, only a step up from the dirt that the common folk possessed. In the Hells, at least one could get somewhere with strength. It was a more honest world, and one that Edgar found himself enjoying.

Every enemy killed was a step closer to being able to ascend to Mire. Any sane person would have been loath to enter a world of filth and ooze, but for a man starved of power for most of his life, the promise of more could make a Heaven out of Hell.

That was what Jonathan’s end goal was, after all. Why should Edgar not be able to share in it?