Domain rules are declarations that effectively make someone a god within their domain. It is usually awarded by the system in the Mythic class as it requires an immense amount of control to achieve and an even greater amount of concentration, willpower, and intent to function. A few exceptional individuals have managed to achieve the award of a rule before reaching the mythic class, despite the extreme difficulty involved. Needless to say, they were all champions.
General Lucas Deaton.
12th General Commander.
Ragnarok, year 2267.
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If there was one thing Jia Ling, the supreme general of the Sunstonian army, was known for, it was planning ahead, and in the weeks after their attack on Ironhold, the capital city of the Ragnarian industrial sector, she had known that they would retaliate. She had made preparations, assigning elites and champions to guard various sectors and borders, keeping them on standby for the time when their enemies came.
She had, of course, placed more champions within the sovereign capital, along with the 1st, 2nd, and 6th sector—which housed the holy temple of Aeloria. She had prepared and planned; knowing the nature of the Ragnarians, she had made arrangements for unforseen eventualities, but she had made one mistake. planning according to their nature.
The Ragnarians had exploited that flaw. How could she have known they would attack their agricultural sector? Almost no one lived within it except a few workers who were too advanced to join the war anyway.
Now, in retrospect, she realized that it had been foolish to neglect the sector, but this wasn’t the Ragnarok way. The Ragnarians were brutish people, favoring brute strength over mental capabilities, and she’d exploited that weakness for over a century. Why have they changed tactics now?
As the alarm blared, her generals appeared within the war room, arguing among themselves at mythic speeds as they waited for her decision. Her most trusted general, Li Fang, moved to stand next to her and asked. “What are we to do, Supreme?”
She turned in the sector's direction, her gaze piercing through space until it landed on the six individuals who had invaded their kingdom, and she ordered. “Notify the champions within the sector and gather the elites; we’ll have to hope they’ll be enough.”
“What about the army at the border of the holy city, and the ones approaching Sector 2?”
Jia Ling gritted her teeth in annoyance. The Ragnarians really had planned well this time. “Send for reinforcement immediately, but do not withdraw the champions from their assigned sectors; pull out the elites; they should be enough to send this bunch scurrying in no time.”
The generals began calling their subordinates, ordering the immediate transportation of the elites within their individual sectors to sector 3, the agricultural sector. After giving their orders, some of them returned to their sectors while others stayed beside her, itching to do something, but they could not.
Sector 3 was a Sigma 75–99 battle field after all, so they couldn’t do more than stare, even as the group produced a sinister-looking construct that let out a deathly aura so dense that it caused the plants around it to wither.
Jia Ling took out her prayer beads and began praying. Unlike the other generals, she had far more experience watching from the sidelines. She’d been fighting this war for centuries, shedding the blood of her people to pay for the treachery of their ancestors. What were a few hundred more?
…..
Patchwork was cultivating in his room, stripping the flesh off a dead clone, when his chip flashed red and an alarm began to blare. He immediately rushed to his feet, gathering all the strips of flesh he’d woven and melding them into his skin before walking out of his room.
Immediately he stepped into the hall, he found Warp, dressed in her usual temple clothes with her prayer beads dangling from her palms.
“May the light of Aeloria shine upon us.” He bowed in greeting as her clothes rippled and changed into more combat-suitable attire.
“The light of Aeloria is forever with us.” She replied with a similar bow and spoke into her chip. “We have a code red; Luminous, Legion, we need to go now.”
She’d barely finished speaking when Legion and his sidekick walked out of their room. As a devout follower of Aeloria, Legion also wore his temple clothes, but Multiple was dressed in so much jewelry that it was a wonder he could move without making a ruckus.
The feminine man was only a believer in name, and even though he also wore the temple clothes, he’d transformed them into a fashion item rather than a holy symbol.
Patchwork turned his gaze to the last room in the hallway and sneered. For someone with a light affinity, Luminus had a nasty habit of always arriving late, and they had to wait for another minute before the man stumbled out of his room, half asleep and half dressed.
Patchwork would have preferred leaving without the heathen, but Luminus was the strongest champion among them, asudes Warp.
Without waiting for an apology, Warp immediately uttered a rule. {MY DOMAIN, MY REALITY: SPACE HOLDS NO AUTHORITY OVER ME}. Immediately, space rippled, and they moved. A single step took them to the edge of Warp’s domain, which was several miles away.
Warp repeated the rules over and over, warping towards the location, blinking in the corner of their visions. They warped past large acres of farmland filled with wheat, corn, barley, potatoes, and a dense network of fruit trees. It took them roughly two minutes to reach the breach, where they found a group of advanced individuals standing around a sinister-looking machine, and Warp immediately uttered another rule. {YOU’RE NOT HERE. YOU’RE IN THE DEPTH OF THE OCEAN}
Reality warped as her voice thundered out, but a young man with pink hair and purple-ringed pupils countered with a rule of his own. {MY DOMAIN, MY RULES: WE WILL NOT MOVE}
The two rules collided in the air, each fiercely vying for dominance, but when it became clear that neither would prevail, Warp sneered and lunged at the man, teleporting them into the colorful haze of their still-clashing rules.
Patchwork grinned and raised his hands, trying to rip off the flesh of the others, but their armor restricted him, and he grimaced. Ragnarians and their filthy creations—everything about them was heresy.
They probably thought they’d countered him with their armor, but he was a champion for a reason, and with a sneer of disdain, he activated his innate skill, {Flesh Manipulation}. Hundreds of fleshy strands, including the ones he’d just woven from the dead clone, erupted out of his back, and he activated {Harden Flesh}, {Fleshy Plague}, and {Eldritch Form} in succession.
Instantly, his body grew three times larger, and muscles bulged as fleshy strips layered themselves over him until he became a hulking mass of corded tissue that stood about 15 feet tall.
Two of the Ragnarians turned in his direction, and he grinned, exposing bloody teeth as he opened his spirit fully to the origin plane of Flesh, and chaos spilled into his mind. Maggot-sized strips of wriggling flesh burst out of his mouth, rushing towards the enemy, and for good measure, he imbued the skill with willpower.
One of the Ragnarians shot forward and raised a hand to his {Fleshy Plague}, her smile just as insane as his own. Patchwork frowned, shocked, as instead of the skill overwhelming her, the mass of wriggling flesh hit an invisible barrier that reflected the plague back at him.
Patchwork redirected the skill, and this time he added his intent, but his efforts were futile. Every attack he made was reflected back at him. Furious, he drew on the power of his seals and grinned when, finally, his attack caused the woman to stumble.
Patchwork laughed as he channeled energy into {Fleshy Plague} once again, but this time, he employed the power of all his seals. The effect was tremendous; an overwhelming mass of diseased flesh erupted out of his body, and when they came in contact with the invisible barrier this time, they shattered the skill and latched onto the woman like parasitic worms.
….
Towards the left of the battlefield, hundreds of clones rushed forward. They multiplied every second, and only a minute later they numbered in thousands. Like a highly contagious disease, the clones spread out, each one aiming for the insidious contraption the Ragnarians were defending.
All of Legion's actual clones were capable of individual thinking, but the replicated ones had to be manually directed by Multiple.
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Legion sneered as the void awakened and an Earth manipulator moved to oppose his clones, creating an earth barrier that effectively boxed them into a section of the large clearing, cutting off one of the major advantages of his abilities. Still, he wasn't too bothered, sure that his clones would overwhelm the duo in only a few minutes, but his arrogance died a brutal death when a large mass of void tendrils erupted out of the man’s mouth and simply disintegrated half of his clones.
The ones that managed to avoid the void attack cried out an instant later as the earth suddenly split open like the maw of a hungry beast, swallowing hundreds of clones, and before either he or Multiple could react, the earth snapped shut with a bang, destroying the trees and plants within a half-mile radius.
Legion winced from the backlash as hundreds of his clones perished in an instant, and multiple staggered to the floor, coughing out blood as his skill was forcefully broken. Enraged, Legion created more clones, and with a furious glance in his partner’s direction, he attacked again.
…
Towards the right of the battle, Luminus glared at a Zero in anger as he tried to push through the restriction of his null aura. Unlike when Zero had spread out his aura to restrict the cores of his team members, this time he was only focused on one person, and even as he dodged a punch aimed at his forehead, his grip on the Luminus’s core remained unyielding.
He dodged easily, sometimes defending even before Luminus attacked. He’d spread his null anchors all over the area, and not even an ant would move without him knowing.
With Luminus's core completely restricted, there was nothing he could do. Still, he attacked, trying to break the Zero’s concentration, but even that seemed to be an effort in futility.
…..
Six minutes until activation.
Artemis dodged as a reality blade tore through the area where his head had been a microseconds ago, warping the space around it and leaving ghostly afterimages in its wake. He flashed forward, his spirit completely opening to the origin plane of space as he desperately tried to keep his rule from collapsing.
A rule was a command that altered the reality of a particular element or concept within one’s domain. Unlike his own rules, which were limited to the control of space, Warp was a goddess within her domain, manipulating the laws of reality as easily as if she were breathing.
The blade phased through a dozen trees and simply erased them from reality. Time bent and warped, returning to the moment just before he’d dodged the blade the first time. If it wasn’t for the modicum of control he had over the aspect of time, he would have been disoriented by the distortion, but as the blade swung towards him once again, he pulled painfully on the plane of space and activated {Spatial Fortification}.
Space solidified immediately, and the blade halted just an inch away from his neck.
{SPACE DOES NOT INHIBIT ME} Warp uttered fiercely, but just as his skill began to unravel, Artemis countered. {I AM SHIELDED BY SPACE}
Warp growled when reality stabilized once more, and with a wave of her hand, Artemis felt his mind twist as she tried to alter his perception and thoughts.
He immediately channeled a quarter of his energy into {Mental Fortification}, an ability he'd gotten after crossing the tier 25 milestone.
Seeing that her skill had been thwarted once more, Warp punched him, smashing him into the ground, and Artemis felt more than a few bones crack, yet he stubbornly held to his concentration.
He pulled himself out of the small crater he’d formed and dodged as a dozen reality spears shot towards him. Still, he couldn’t escape them all. Three spears stabbed into his back, but he flared his willpower and pulled them out before they could erase him from reality.
Keeping so many rules active was burning through his willpower at an alarming rate, but he’d be damned if he let himself be beaten by a Sunstonian dog.
Warp rushed towards the wraith, but Artemis teleported and smashed his knees into her stomach. She slammed into a tree, and he let out a bloody grin. “I’m your fucking opponent.”
“Filthy heathen!” Warp cursed as she rushed forward, transforming the air around him into a cage of broken realities that threatened his sanity. Artemis slid between the insane images and opened a portal directly in her path.
She dodged the portal, and the next instant, gravity inverted so suddenly and violently that it was a miracle he managed to keep his rules from collapsing. Geneva immediately released a series of elder runes, and gravity righted itself, saving him from a bladed boot aimed at his eyes.
Artemis staggered back and, without hesitation, pulled on the power of all thirteen seals he’d accumulated. Power roared through him, and he channeled it all into his next utterance. {MY DOMAIN, MY RULES: YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE}
Warp tried to resist the rule, matching her willpower against his, but space wasn’t just his skill; it was his affinity, and even with her reality-altering abilities, she couldn’t match up to his control over space.
She was thrown out of his domain the next instant, and her rules collapsed, giving Artemis a few seconds to breathe. She would be back any second now, but in the meantime, he stretched a hand towards the clones that had begun overwhelming Uduak and activated {Spatial Cut}.
Instantly, space shattered and transformed into a razor-edged blade, about 200 meters in length, and with a flex of his will, the blade cut through hundreds of clones, dissecting them into two equal halves.
Leaving Uduak to deal with the rest, he turned his attention to Multiple, who was retching behind a cluster of Legion clones, and activated {Spatial Transfer}.
Multiple squealed as he was roughly teleported out of the battle, and Artemis quickly placed the polychromatic diamond into his spatial storage before anyone could see. He turned, but before he could help the others, Warp reappeared and shouted. {TIME WITHIN THIS DOMAIN IS REVERSED BY TWO SECONDS}
Artemis grimaced; he couldn’t let that happen, as that would mean losing the diamond, so he pulled on his aspect and countered. {THE RIVER OF TIME FLOWS ON}
He staggered and coughed out blood as his nascent aspect groaned from premature use. Fortunately, it held. Warp growled in annoyance and shouted again. {YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE}
Reality twisted violently as it tried to remove him from the space, but Artemis countered once more. {I REFUSE TO MOVE}
Warp growled in frustration and abandoned her rules as she rushed towards him once more.
…
Two minutes until activation.
Geneva ran around the wraith, weaving runes that protected it from the hundreds of elites that sought to destroy it. They’d begun arriving about two minutes ago, and at this point, there were so many of them that she doubted she could hold on for long.
The entire area had been transformed into a battlefield, pockmarked with craters and broken trees. Another crater formed as patchwork was forcefully smashed to the ground by Matharantha, who was surrounded by a dozen revolving mirrors.
Fire, ice, water, space, blood, shadows, and just about any element one could think of exploded around her, and Geneva's runes burned themselves out to keep the wraith safe.
She created more, relentlessly forcing her will on the fabric of reality. Hundreds of runes shimmered around her, and the moment one burned itself out, two more took their place.
The frantic activation of so many runes was not only physically draining but also mentally draining. Yet Geneva continued, rushing around the wraith to patch up the defense formation she’d made.
After taking so much damage, the Runic formation was now a mess of cracks and holes that she had to continuously patch it to prevent it from crumbling.
To her left, Patchwork screamed in frustration as his attacks were either reflected or redirected, and now that Multiple had been taken out of the battle, Legion’s clones were no longer able to overwhelm Uduak.
Yet, Legion kept creating more clones, refusing to give up, even though his clones only succeeded in keeping Uduak occupied.
Ali Hassani, on the other hand, teleported across the battlefield, wielding void daggers as he alternated between the clones and elites. His attacks were fatal, regardless of where they hit, and the ground was filled with dozens of fallen elites.
Still, the elites kept pouring in, hell bent on destroying the wraith, but Geneva wasn’t called the witch of Selia for nothing, and as more elites teleported into the battle field, she opened her spirit fully to the origin plane of Quintessence and immediately activated {Quintessence Overdrive}, {Quintessence Focus}, and {Ethereal Infusion}.
Her body shone as she pulled on an infinite amount of energy and began drawing runes at light speed. They blazed into existence around her, and with a thought, she linked them, forming a dozen chains of elder runes that speedily revolved around her.
Reality shook from the immense amount of energy she was channeling, and the previously damaged formation reconstructed itself.
With {Ethereal Infusion], she imbued each chain of rune with different affinities: the first fire, the second wind, and the third—death.
The elites barely stood a chance, and only the start of their dying screams were heard before they were reduced to ash.
Warp inverted gravity once more, distorting reality, and Geneva turned her gaze skyward, where she and Artemis were locked in combat. Artemis was almost entirely covered in injuries, barely holding on by sheer willpower, and although the sight of his blackened and swollen face gave her immense satisfaction, she knew she had to intervene for the success of the mission.
With a wave of her hand, she created a chain of Elder gravity runes and inverted them to counter Warp’s skill. The runes shook violently as Warp fought against Geneva's intrusion.
They burned out an instant later, but they’d bought Artemis enough time to reassert dominance with his control over space. Geneva turned back to the wraith as the countdown reached thirty seconds and it rumbled to life with a hum of activity.
Warp noticed it too and immediately rushed towards the wraith, but Artemis grabbed her by the hair, twisted space, and threw her into an open portal.
As the countdown dropped to ten seconds, the amount of deathly essence emanating from the wraith suddenly increased, and Geneva had to move away from it before it overwhelmed her.
The wraith shone with black light, its intensity increasing as its activation drew closer. Immediately after the countdown reached zero, the wraith let out a grating sound, and a condensed beam of corrupted verdant energy shot from beneath its head into the earth.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. Decay spread out in a malignant cloud, rolling over the crops like a tidal wave. Vibrant stalks of wheat and corn withered and crumbled to dust within moments of contact. Fruit trees shed their leaves in a sudden, violent cascade, their fruits rotting and falling to the ground in a putrid mess.
Vines withered. Flowers shriveled, and vitality bled out of the land in an ever-expanding wave.
Everyone paused, their gazes wide with horror, as the once lush clearing became barren in mere seconds. Chaos erupted the next instant as a chorus of icon manifestations resounded.
Artemis acted immediately. With all the energy he had left, he activated {Spatial Transfer}, grabbed his team, and immediately teleported out.
They reappeared above Fort Dominion the next instant, and Artemis collapsed from the energy drain, but Geneva grabbed him and channeled energy into his core.
General Lucas appeared before them immediately, his expression grim. “You have done well; the wraith is destroyed, but its effects will continue for a while. This mission is over.”
Artemis stared at the general, still in shock. They’d know that the wraith was dangerous and that its effect was devastating, but he hadn’t realized just how devastating it really was. In mere moments, they had caused so much destruction that it was hard to imagine.
“You should all rest.” General Lucas spoke impassively. “Our message will be clear. Sunstone will either surrender or starve.”
The war had taken a decisive turn, one that Sunstone would not easily recover from, but it was far from over, and although they had won today, Artemis worried for the future and the changes the consequences of this battle would bring.
With a final lingering glance at the general direction of Sunstone, Artemis and his team returned to Fort Dominion for a much-needed rest.