One step forward and my elevation changed. The sudden presence of mana beneath my feet was my only warning. I looked down at the chunk of earth I stood on, now several hundred feet into the air. I could feel Enki’s power on it like the unseen hand of a titan bursting from the ground underneath my new platform.

I had little time to appreciate the god’s display of power as Enlil’s launched his attack from mid-air carried by the winds of his providence. A bolt of lightning struck his upturned palm from the darkest cloud above our heads. Instead of being electrocuted, the bolt gathered in his hand becoming a spear which he threw almost immediately.

The entire sequence had spanned a little over a second. The spear approached faster than my enhanced physical senses could track. Thankfully, my sensitivity to mana far outstripped any of my other senses. A single command to my leg muscles sent my vessel backward a few meters. The platform on which I had been standing ceased to be and the smell of ozone filled the air.

Golden chains swept in from below while a flash of light simultaneously blinded my physical eyes. Had I been limited by mundane forces such as gravity, there would have been no escape from Utu’s radiant grasp.

Unfortunately for the gods, I had very few limitations.

Thousands of tiny motes of mana exploded out of my body scattering to fill the area. At the same time, I jumped off one then another using the incorporeal force to maneuver in mid-air. I kept the motes moving in alternating patterns to give the semblance of chaos to keep my potential pathways unpredictable.

I could’ve manipulated the wind like Enlil or even grown wings with my fleshcraft; however, the former cost too much mana, and the latter put me at the mercy of Enlil’s wind magic with subpar maneuverability. Despite how flashy it looked, summoning the mana motes, even in such large numbers, barely cost anything. In essence, the motes were just small collections of pure mana yet my unique relationship with mana granted the insight to interact with the supernatural energy as though it was a physical thing.

Shouts rang out when some of my motes came close to the gods but Enlil, the most experienced and most powerful, called out, “They are just pieces of his divinity. Utu, disperse any that come close to you and Enki. Ignore the rest.”

Lightning, spikes of hardened earth, and golden chains missed me, again and again, as I zig-zagged through the air from mote to mote building up speed and momentum. I had changed my human vessel to accommodate short-term power and quick acceleration. Thick muscle corded the limbs, each fiber woven at the maximum power I could manage without ruining the equilibrium. Instead of normal bone, I had spread my real body through the area where the bone should’ve been since I could change my true form to achieve a level of hardness and flexibility even reinforced bone structures couldn’t match. I didn’t waste the skeleton though. I pushed osseous matter outside of my skin molding it into an exoskeleton of sorts.

I shifted the motes so that some drifted over the grounded pair keeping them several dozen meters to avoid dispersal. Before any of them could react, I sprang to the cluster then changed directions suddenly toward Utu, launching my counterattack from a normally impossible angle. I shot through the air faster than an arrow, arm extended and fingers sharpened into long claws.

Utu’s ability to seal mana made him a priority target. That he was the youngest and most likely, the weakest, only worked to my advantage. Enlil shouted a warning and a wall of earth sprang into existence at an angle between myself and my quarry.

Rather than attempt to change course, I sent a condensed burst of mana into the wall, completely disrupting the magic within. I sailed through the collapsing earth striking at Utu’s neck. In a spark of brilliance, he used his chains to pull his body out of the way instead of attempting to dodge. My claws sliced into his right shoulder leaving deep gashes but the golden disk behind him burned my hand in the process. Sadly, the contact had been too brief for me to enact any harm onto the god’s soul as well.

I spun midair to land on my feet and launched myself at Enki as soon as I touched the ground. Although my speed far outstripped his, he dodged my first strike by weaving his head out of the way. My second strike came from below nicking him in the thigh before he could retreat. The earth shifted beneath us and carried him away while the ground beneath my feet suddenly became soft and muddy with water bubbling up from below. I tracked the mana responsible back to Enki, apparently, the earth god had added water magic to his repertoire.

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My mana sense warned me of a massive amount rapidly approaching me. I jumped to the side but the soft earth soaked up most of the force and destroy the effectiveness of my dodge. A bolt of lightning struck the ground where I had just been. However, unlike normal lightning, it didn’t disperse its charge into the wet earth. An intense charge filled the air and before I could react, arcs of lightning lanced outward in all directions from the point of impact. Due to my sabotaged jump, I was caught in the explosion.

Two arcs slammed into me drawing in more nearby arcs and increasing the damage. The energy traveled across my vessel’s skin scorching the surface and leaving areas of the exoskeleton blackened. The real damage came from the internal current though. My real body’s temperature soared to dangerous levels and Enlil’s mana flushed throughout my body disrupting my control. My vessel spasmed hitting the ground in a heap.

I was down for less than a second before I flushed the foreign mana out with my own.

Taking a page from Utu’s book, dozens of unseen mana tendrils extended from my body. I used one to pull myself out of the way just as two golden chains slammed down on the area where I’d landed. Earthen spikes erupted from below in an attempt to skewer me before I got too far off the ground but I twisted out of the first few and smashed through the last.

With that, I was back in the air bounding from mote to mote with even greater agility thanks to my mana tendrils while the trio tried to pin me down. The brief exchange had made two things clear to me.

The humans were formidable despite the power gap between us and I needed to change tactics.

I realized I was going about this all wrong. Spending nearly my entire existence as one of the most dominant forces in the Old World had instilled bad habits into me. I usually faced opponents whom I could overcome with a bit of mana and physical might. I had never done battle with creatures capable of wielding mana to the degree that these three displayed. Enlil, Enki, and Utu were mortal who had honed their unique magic for thousands of years within the Physical, likely through practice and conflict. I realized their practical experience likely outstripped mine in magical and martial combat.

A scowl spread across my face as I discovered this glaring flaw in my development. If others of my kind came to the Old World, I might have to face their physical forms in the Physical in some circumstances. Failing to withstand such an encounter and likely losing my physical body in the process was an unacceptable outcome.

This is just like the meeting with my creation. I am allowing them to set the terms of the engagement. My scowl deepened. For all the lessons I taught the kings I groomed, I failed to follow them myself. No matter. I shall end this now.

I would show them true sorcery.

The amount of mana within my body skyrocketed and I rapidly processed the energy into the framework of a technique. All the while, my mana tendrils aided my strengthened vessel through the air pushing and pulling from one mote to the next, more than making up for the muscle damaged by Enlil’s attack.

“Utu, he’s channeling a large amount of mana. Prepare your seal. Enlil, I’ll handle the defense. You need to lock him down,” Enki called. As I expected, Utu’s seal likely took some time to formulate. It wasn’t a bad plan. Enki’s techniques lent themselves well to area control and defense while Enlil stood the best chance of actually limiting my movement. He had failed thus far but I could tell my first student was holding back.

The wind picked up dramatically escalating to hurricane speeds in an instant. The dark clouds cracked with thunder. Several bolts of lightning struck Enlil’s flying form and he began to radiate an absurd amount of mana for a human. Another spear of lightning formed in his hand as he closed the distance between us as quickly as lightning itself.

Still, I dodged using my mana tendrils which had all the strength of my astral will behind them. A short chase ensued faster than the human eye could track. I exercised the full range of my new mobility touching almost every one of the motes I had summoned earlier with my new unseen appendages. Enlil eventually grew tired of my maneuverability and summoned a dome of lightning around the immediate area which promptly began to shrink.

“You will run no further,” he said as he moved somehow faster than before. I dodged the strike barely then deflected another with several of my mana tendrils which were able to interact with his lightning spear with little issue. He feinted a third strike and sent a bolt of lightning from his hand when I made to dodge. The lightning clipped my side before my mana tendrils corrected my course. It was enough to slow me down momentarily.

His spear lanced toward my midsection with enough power to destroy my vessel and real body alike. However, it scraped against a dense layer of mana as my technique went off surrounding my body with a dense barrier.

To my student’s credit, he immediately realized his predicament. The mana barrier wasn’t the issue. Based on its thickness, it shouldn’t have required the inordinate amount of mana that I pulled from the Astral. His eyes widened and I sent him a psychic message.

You have my admiration, firstborn, but you have delayed me long enough. At that moment, thousands of tiny motes, each overcharged with extremely condensed mana by my tendrils, exploded. Force ripped through the area drowning out the noise of the storm in its fury.