The capitol city had become a ghost town. Many merchants have had to leave or else face taxes they couldn’t afford. Once boasting 5million people the city had roughly 50,000 men still roaming the streets. Nobles, their bastards, and their cousins were the only ones immune to the draft. Markus was coming close to turning 15. Soon, he would have to march North and face his brother.

He had acquired many skills, abilities, and consumables from the various dungeons he had conquered over the years. Many have fallen to his tactics and with every victory he grew a little stronger, sometimes much stronger. The dungeons were his monastery. They were the lock and key to his power. Without them it would have taken hundreds of years to reach his current power. Yet still, he wasn’t satisfied.

His brother was stronger and had abilities that may make him stronger still. Time was against him. His brother was growing stronger as the war waged on. His father held the line but that didn’t stop Lucius from crossing. No, if Lucius wanted to take the capital he could have already while Pa was distracted in the north. That led him to the conclusion that the capital isn’t his brother’s aim. But what was?

For nights while traveling he had pondered it. Society itself was given the task to divine the motive of Markus’s brother god. His worshipers took the task and have given him a scenario he didn’t like. He hoped it was wrong but what if it wasn’t.

He could be forcing the king to do something. No soldier has marched north. They were all sent to various barracks around the kingdom. There was no army being amassed and the training the recruits faced was built to enhance their bodies and increase their durability. But never were they to work on abilities or war tactics. Society had spies everywhere.

Markus stepped through a doorway and found himself in pestilence dungeon. “My lord the special room has been completed.” Pestilence said. Markus nodded and took an elevator down to the new floor.

He stepped out in a dojo built unlike anything else in the dungeon. Sure, the floor was solid bone the pillars were angled like bones from a ribcage, and skulls decorated the walls, but this place had an order to it unlike the other floors.

“Pestilence, why have you built this for me?” Markus asked. A massive creature stepped in the room. It was 3 meters tall and dressed in rags. Its face was mummified, and its body ravaged by plagues. But there was a strength within the creature that couldn’t be denied.

“My lord, you have helped me grow, expand, and learn. The brutal way you tore through my body has strengthened me beyond compare. Even my brother death needs to be weary of me now.” Pestilence said with pride. The dungeon core sat in the Flesh Baron’s chest. The creature was a construct of life and dark. It felt powerful, stronger than a normal knight and nearly as powerful as an elite.

“There are no more people for you to devour. The king has taken everyone who can fight and hid them a thief’s copper collection. It will be a long time before you have anyone to feed from.” Markus said. Pestilence waved its hand showing off the magnificent, macabre dojo.

“This room can feed me just fine with the blood and sweat of your training. It can supply you with any tools you may need, and it is linked to the surface. Best of all any mana you use here I can absorb. I hope you expend a lot of mana.” Pestilence said and nodded his head at Markus’s worried looks. “I’m an old well-fed dungeon. I’ve eaten better than most have for a thousand years. I’m allowed to be as dark as I want. The royal family installed towers of light to balance me. I’ve prepared myself when food became scarce. Many of the monsters in my dungeon reproduce naturally now. I have found a way to become perpetual.” The face of the Flesh Baron smiled revealing black teeth. “I don’t need adventurers anymore, but I like you Markus. You are the brutality of nature given form. This is your ultimate prize for defeating me. Enjoy.” Pestilence said and turned to leave.

“Thank you, I enjoyed challenging you, it was the highlight of the capital.” Markus called at the dungeon core’s back.

“Bah, I know that to be a lie. But an acceptable one all the same. Train and become stronger Markus.” Pestilence said and walked out.

He walked up to a pedestal with glowing a series of screens. He flicked through them seeing various weapons and armor he could summon. Monsters of all kinds were at his disposal if he wanted to spar. Most interesting of all was the training gear. He could summon rocks that were enchanted with an element. He realized quickly that the best way to train was to train.

That sounded stupid because it was at face value. But fighting a dark type monster was good and all, it certainly helped to get telekinesis to where its at. To move further, he felt that enlightenment was the way to go. Slaying the Leviathan was an interesting battle. But it would take a hundred leviathans to bring adept 1 to adept 2. No what he needed was training not a battle.

He pressed a few buttons and in a flash of light a stone enchanted with dark appeared in the middle of the dojo. Markus sat down in front of the block of dark stone and crossed his legs. He made no motions only closing his eyes and looking at the rock.

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To say he was looking at it wasn’t correct. He was feeling it, but that wasn’t entirely correct either. His telekinesis let him touch things and he knew when he touched them. His power could move through them without touching unless they tried to force him away with their own power. Another interesting thing about psychic power was distance.

The further something was from his person the harder it was to affect. Multiple items increased the drain exponentially. He could narrow his field from a sphere of volume to a line and extend his reach by his total area. Let’s say his radius is 50m then his volume would be 523,598m by turning all of that into range, he could easily have 523,598m of rang. He could easily sense beyond the mountains with that. But he would only be able to feel around a 1m diameter circle. Very limiting, with his body open to all forms of attack. He would be left blinded to all manner of attacks. The king would be alerted immediately.

But if he attacked with that technique he could hit an enemy hundreds of kilometers away. It was rather devastating magic. Psychic power was considered one of the most versatile and dangerous of all the types. Even dark fails to compare to the shear number of options for attack that psychic granted. That may be why dark was the ultimate weakness of all other types.

Dark could absorb any other type and assimilate it. Necromancy was merely life altered with darkness. Light when merged with dark becomes a faux light. Deadly to many for its shear destructive power. Markus wasn’t after any new skill from this training session. He wanted to do something thought to be impossible. He was hell bent on using psychic to defend against dark directly.

Markus sent a fist of will hurtling at the block of stone. He felt a rush of air and the fist met stone. For a second the fist of telekinesis-maintained cohesion, then it scattered like smoke, and the stone remined untouched. The force became potential and the mana was sucked into the room.

Holding up his hand he unleashed a powerful beam of psychic energy seeing a new skill pop up. He made no move to acknowledge it. The beam hit the stone and the energy was ripped apart at an exponentially faster rate. The darkness found more energy to feed from and grew more efficient at feeding. He could feel the force behind the darkness increase at a drastic rate. After a few moments of this he cut off the beam. Markus sat down with a plop thinking about what he Observed.

The darkness sent the psychic energy no matter how much, to the four winds scattering it like a loose bundle of straw. He had an idea.

Taking his power, he made long strands out of it, lines really. They were too stiff inflexible due to his willpower. He needed adaptability to bend the strands. But no matter it wouldn’t affect his plans.

Most spells needed to be said for them to have a true effect. Once a spell is used multiple times it becomes a part of the user. Users could only have 5 spells. Some who were very powerful had 10. The hero Mundus of lightning had over 13. More steps can be added to a spell, it can evolve naturally with use, and over time it grew stronger. But once a spell was learned it couldn’t be unlearned. Basic skills weren’t spells. Markus had a feeling that he was about to create a spell and use it enough to take up one of his precious slots.

Markus held his hands in the form of a triangle to better focus his attack. Lines created triangles and through triangles any number of shapes could be created. Just making strings out of telekinesis and forming triangular shapes felt like a spell. There was a force behind what he was doing that was unmistakable. It felt like his light psychic hammer.

Sitting in the chamber he could feel his power ebb. Sweat began to pour down his face as the triangles created gears that sat on strings and locked and moved with other gears. What Markus was creating could only be described as a complex machine in the form of a spell. The gears spun, and the spell condensed by its own power. Heat radiated off his spell shooting out of a hastily made exhaust port. The outer shell of the spell turned revealing hundreds of thousands of triangular shapes melded into a sphere. They moved constantly in a way reminiscent of chaos. The sphere changed to an algorithm that was always changing. The sphere was solid made of many triangular pyramids.

His spell reformed as a square, then a whole triangular pyramid, and finally the head of a spear. Exhaust poured from the back of the spell heating the room. Sweat covered his shirt and dripped on the floor. His mind was fully dedicated to keeping up this strange contraption he created. It was moving even when the outside was seemingly still. It was altering its shape compacting itself to become more devastating or harder to break. Markus could feel a mechanical will from the spell. Not self-awareness but it was more than a collection of mana and mental fortitude.

He thrust his hands forward and thought of a name. Nothing really came to mind other than artillery battery or engine of war. Well it was built for war, long range fighting, and he could feel it pulling ahead trying to break from his will and power forward. “War Head,” Markus yelled, and the spell smashed into the dark stone.

The spell smashed through the stone without pause. He felt no resistance. The spell kept going until it hit the wall. A multitude of dark enchantments materialized around the wall. The spell was half way in the wall before Markus canceled it. The wall began to pull itself back together, but the damage was done.

He had done it, a psychic spell that could best darkness. A shame it took him around 6 hours to form it. Maybe it would get shorter with time. A screen flashed. It asked if he would like to add the spell War Head to his spell slots. He hit yes, and knowledge of the spell flooded him like never. Sure, he created it, but now he could form it at an insane rate.

He looked at the damage the spell was supposed to do.

War Head Mark I

Description: A complicated spell crafted by a mad god to fight the element darkness with an inferior type. Only this time it worked. War Head is a complicated machine in the form of a spell. The longer it is active the denser the spell becomes and the more damage it can inflict.

Damage = Willpower x (1 +1/min)

Physical 50% 132m

Mental 25% 66m

Heat 25% 66m