Chapter 35

Overconfidence

Eliot

Doing his best not to explode from the anger rising in his chest, Eliot jumped on Master Camble’s desk and fell into a meditative pose. After Penelope, Henry, and Reltus freed him, Penelope had Milo—her shape shifting familiar— transform into a phoenix and fly him up to the Monastery of Clouds. He was looking forward to quickly getting his test over with, and planning to visit Ellulia directly after.

  Unfortunately, when he reached the second floor, the administrative monks told him that Master Camble was in the middle of deep meditation that might help him break through his bottle neck, and that he should wait in his office. Which almost set him off like a firecracker. Now, he did his best to quiet his mind and focus it on the moment, all worldly paraphernalia melding into a sense of serenity and absolute balance.

  An hour into his meditation, Eliot let out a deep breath, snapping out of his dormant yet focused state of mind. All of his anger dissipated, replaced with an urging in his heart to see Ellulia. It made him sick to his stomach that he wasn’t able to take her in his arms and tell her everything was amazing, simply because they were together. He felt like his love had evolved— or maybe even devolved— into a burning obsession.

  A month ago, when they played around with the idea of running away together, Eliot was of the mind that they were talking romantic nonsense; neither of them would actually abandon their lives. But now, Ellulia’s actions came dangerously close to just that. It inspired a deep wanting for reciprocation in him, he wanted to show Ellulia that he was just as invested, if not more.

  The need to prove himself was further fueled by his guilt. He knew that, if the roles were reversed, he probably wouldn’t have done what she did. Above all, he wanted to show her that her actions changed him. He felt as if his previous disposition was a transgression all on its own, and he desperately needed to make up for it.

  All of that combined with the fact that he was already fed up with his test to begin with, made his irritation scrape the lower limits of his boiling point. Thankfully, meditation soothed his emotions and helped him get a handle on his pining. He spent the time waiting for Master Camble pacing in thought and reading his grimoire, since he knew that Master Camble was really recovering from his injuries sustained after fighting Ellulia. Possibly the best thing about being a Demigod is that he only needed to sleep eight hours once a week.

  The entire night passed before the door to the Room of Enlightenment opened, framing a refreshed looking Master Camble. Eliot stopped his pacing in a small amount of shock. Master Camble was bathed in golden light streaming from the epiphanic room and radiated wisps of Equilibrium, of which Eliot gained the ability to see its true color: light grey.

  “You were actually in deep meditation?” Eliot asked, seeing that he broke through his bottle neck. It was common knowledge that Master Camble’s progress in his law had been plagued with stagnation since he took over as Head Monk. Although Master Camble was much too powerful for Eliot to get a good read on him through senses alone, he could tell there was most definitely a difference.

  “Come in, Discipulus, we have much to discuss,” he said before receding into the blanket of light that was the Room of Enlightenment.

  Eliot shielded his eyes as he walked in and sat at his usual space. The amount of light was incredibly blinding, but his eyes quickly grew unbothered. He sipped his tea in silence, used to Master Camble starting their conversations. Disconcertingly, his teacher studied him with an expectantly stern expression, like a parent that knew their child did something but wanted them to admit it by themselves.

  After more than a handful of minutes, Eliot said, “So… I passed my test right?”

  “Did you use magic?” Master Camble finally asked with a frown.

  “No. I did use sorcery, but they’re totally different things, and I only used it after conquering the dungeon,” Eliot admitted quickly.

  “Are you lying to me?” Master Camble placed severe emphasis on his words.

  “I’m really not,” Eliot answered truthfully, hands half raised in a show of innocence.

  Master Camble pulled a ragged messenger bag— the very same Eliot lost when the Serpentine BrotherHood kidnapped him— from under the coffee table, producing a map before throwing the bag to the side. He flattened the map of the Crucible Empire he had given Eliot against the table and tapped it. At his touch, hundreds of glowing dots appeared in blue ink.

  “I commissioned this map precisely to record the fluctuations of spell casting. Sorcery is much more disruptive than magic, it wouldn’t have sensed the times you used it,” Master Camble explained to his thoroughly shocked Discipulus. “If you’ve any idea why this picked up so many instances of magic, now would be the time to explain yourself.”

  Eliot opened his mouth to try and convince Master Camble of his cluelessness, freezing in his tracks. His helpless expression slowly morphed to one of realization, then to furious chagrin. Eliot physically smacked himself. He couldn’t believe he could be so stupid, he might as well do the world a favor and castrate himself before he could pass on his deficient, moronic genes.

  The Storing spell was such a habit, so second nature that he completely forgot it was a spell in the first place. Throughout the entire journey, every single time he reflexively retrieved or stored something in his soul, he was using magic.

  With no other choice, Eliot shifted into a bow and apologized, “I’m sorry Magister, I did use magic. But, I wasn’t lying to you, I somehow forgot that it was a spell until just now. I know that’s a really stupid excuse, but it’s the truth.”

  “Which spell did you use?”

  “... The Storing spell.”

  “I see,” Master Camble hummed, falling into contemplative silence. “I trust that you fought solely with martial arts, you passed. However, you will be punished for your use of magic when I deem it best,” he finally decreed.

  “Thank you, Magister!” Eliot obsequiously gave thanks, his forehead pressing into the soft clouds.

  “Enough about that, raise your head,” Master Camble disregarded his show of gratitude. “In-spite-of your carelessness, I’m proud of you. You’re not the youngest Demigod in recorded history, however you are fastest. Reaching such a level in a mere year is unheard of.”

  Eliot sat up with a vauntful grin. He knew if Master Camble was praising him, he definitely deserved to be prideful. But, his self-satisfaction was fleeting.

  “Well, there are some difficulties,” he admitted.

  “Tell me, I’m here to guide you, after all.”

  “First,” Eliot started off, invoking his law. A small black hole of darkness coalesced in his left hand while a blinding miniature sun ignited in his right, his eyes following suit. “I’m a Demigod of Light. Shadows don't actually exist on their own, they’re just the manifestation of a lack of light that falls under the Law of Darkness.”

  “I see,” Master Camble hummed.

  “The problem is with the light.” Eliot closed his left hand, his left eye returning to normal as he dismissed the darkness. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, putting all of his focus on the light. The ball unsteadily jerked out of his palm, following a wobbly flight path through the air. It started dimming after a few seconds and eventually dissipated despite his best efforts. “It feels like I constantly have to fight for control, and it takes a lot more divine mana to sustain than darkness,” he explained with a deep breath to recover from the exertion.

  Master Camble looked him over with unease. “I’m afraid that has to do with your physical alignment.”

  “Are you saying my body’s tainted?”

  “No, it’s better classified as a sort of unique constitution, although Kangan had it too,” Master Camble explained more. “Put simply, it resembles the physique and aura of a dark aligned creature. In fact, it most likely interferes with light as well as makes darkness easier to manipulate than it should.”

  “Then, light manipulation is always going to be this hard?” Eliot asked in consternation.

  “For the time being, but anything can be overcome with enough hard work,” Master Camble encouraged him.

  He frowned and his right eye dimmed to its regular coffee brown. In turn, Master Camble’s uplifting disposition morphed into a serious intensity.

  “Instead of grumbling, you should prepare yourself. I won’t ever repeat anything I say from here on.”

  Eliot shook himself and engaged his utmost focus. He was hardly the same vain brat that fixated on every shortcoming and was prone to throwing tantrums without working to actually fix anything. It also helped that, so far, his martial art’s done little to make him think it worthy of being sacrilegious. The question of why has been burning a hole in his mind since day one.

  “The name of Kangan’s martial art is Lex Ruptor. You should know that it was a restricted technique long before the inception of the Emperor of Death,” Master Camble prefaced.

  “Why?” Eliot floated a question.

  “Lex Ruptor is a God Slaying technique. When mastered, it gives someone at the Mortal Limit the power to kill a tier three Demigod, if you only took into account martial ability and discounted the Demigod’s law. And if mastered by someone at Kangan’s level… well you’ve heard what was required to defeat the Emperor of Death.”

  Eliot suppressed a giddy smile, doing his best to keep the excitement from bursting. He’s read all about God Slaying techniques, they were a large part of the reason people like Reltus Eldon could fight against powerful winged Demigods despite not being a full Demigod himself. They are the pinnacle of human ability, honed to perfection. So powerful that most God Slaying techniques are either passed down from generation to generation until a genius capable of learning it comes along, or intentionally erased from documentation to prevent anyone from obtaining unparalleled power. Even in Eliot’s perfect world where everyone could learn anything, they would be part of the very few pieces of knowledge he would willingly pose restrictions upon.

  “You must consider that learning Lex Ruptor will make other Demigods consider you a dangerous threat, especially those who witnessed the Emperor of Death first hand,” Master Camble’s grave admonishment snapped him out of his daydreams. “You have already earned yourself enemies that wish to stop you before you can mature, or exploit your immeasurable potential. By taking this path, you will be fanning the flames. Are you certain you want to follow through?”

  Instead of mentioning that he didn’t have much of a choice in the beginning or otherwise being difficult, Eliot earnestly confirmed, “I’m certain.”

  “Good,” Master Camble nodded. “Show me your forms.”

  Eliot stood up, taking a few steps back and turning away from the table. One by one, he displayed his mastery of forms one through ten, with the exception of nine since it was a counter. After, Master Camble stood up and abruptly assailed him with a series of pin point jabs at blinding fast speeds, landing all over his body, primarily near his joints.

  “Try form one, once more,” he directed after stepping back.

  Eliot spent a few seconds stretching the pain away before complying. He planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and drew his left arm back. As he did, he could feel a torrential amount of mana welling up inside of his arm, threatening to burst. He was already shaking from the strain in the half second before he moved to release the energy. His arm surged forward with a devastating amount of force. As it reached its maximum distance, the force continued past his fist in a loud, violent gale of wind, followed by a sharp crackle of bone coming from his dislocated shoulder.

  “What did you do to me?” Eliot gasped in astonishment, favoring his shoulder as he spun around to face his teacher.

  “When I first dragged you to the Room of Enlightenment, I reduced the flow in key meridians in your body so that the forms’ true power wouldn’t be realized,” Master Camble dropped the bomb on him.

  “Then… every single form is an Arcane Stance?” Eliot asked in disbelief.

  “Yes, Kangan was mana sensitive, however, unlike you, he only used his gift to expand upon his martial arts. The forms take into account basic spiritual fluidity as well as meridian location and natural flow, allowing the physical and spiritual bodies to be in sync and utilize mana in both, which provides much more than double the amount of mana fueling a regular Arcane Stance,” Master Camble shared.

  Eliot knew that spiritual fluidity referred to the fluctuations of the spiritual body as it moved, causing its overall general shape to morph beyond the shape of the physical body. Since the spiritual body was so much larger than the physical and the way it translated to the material plane was so arbitrary without even factoring in spiritual fluidity, the physical and spiritual bodies were hardly ever in sync.

  When they were in sync, you could transfer mana between the two bodies interchangeably, meaning not only could you fill your physical arm with mana and have that added to the force of your blow. You could also fill your spiritual arm with mana and add all of that to the force of your blow, on top of your muscular strength and all of the mana in your physical arm.

  But the genius of the martial art didn't stop there. Meridians were pockets where the spiritual and physical bodies connected across planes, and by extension always synced up. However, meridian location was unique on a person by person basis. The only meridian everyone shared was just above the soul, which is where mages learn to draw mana, coming from their mana pool that took residence in the spiritual body.

  If you could create an Arcane Stance that funneled mana from a specific nearby meridian, it would fill much quicker than simply letting it fill by natural flow, which resulted in a higher powered strike. Furthermore, since mana has to move through your physical body, some of the mana is used up along the way, so the closer the meridian is to where you wanted to funnel your mana, the better.

  “But, how is it possible that meridian location is taken into account, shouldn’t Lex Ruptor be optimized for Kangan’s meridians?” Eliot queried, snapping his shoulder into place with a grunt. The pain was entirely negligible compared to the agony he went through when ascending to a Demigod.

  “Correct yet again, although you and Kangan have remarkably similar physiques and temperaments. Your meridians are similar enough that you should be able to draw out the majority of the technique’s power, and by the time you master it, you will be more than competent enough to alter it.”

  Eliot looked down at himself and clenched his fists in excitement. The insane power boost he just got was off the charts, he felt like he could probably go toe to toe with Master Camble with such a huge increase. Once he got used to the instability and strain, and he figured out the optimal timing— where he could get the most amount of mana without the attack being too slow— he would be unstoppable by virtue of martial prowess alone. He couldn’t even imagine the level of power he could reach if he used divine mana instead of regular.

  But there was an obvious and severe drawback he had yet to consider. The mana cost of using Lex Ruptor was incredibly immense. The amount of mana poured into his very first punch rivaled that of opening a normal sized portal from the Metropolis to his hometown. Even if his mana pool was abnormally large, and boosted from his Demigod transformation, he couldn’t casually throw around that much mana just yet.

  Master Camble sat back down with a stress deflating sigh. “Now, I order you as your Magister to avoid using any martial arts for the next week. Take the time to rest before jumping into mastering Lex Ruptor right away.”

  Eliot set aside his excitement with ease. “I will,” he promised truthfully. He bowed and courteously bade his teacher goodbye before jumping through a portal.

Sucking in a quick breath through clenched teeth, Ellulia labored to stay standing through the pain, ordering her wobbling knees to stay straight and supporting herself against the walls that were always near in her modest, self proclaimed room.

  She was completely tapped out after making it back to the castle. Without enough adrenaline surging through her veins to give an elephant a heart attack and her law that let her ignore things like fatigue or pain, she crashed hard. Coming down from her battle mindset that stretched the limits of her brain, she made the ill-advised mistake of completely powering down, deactivating the force keeping her bones straight. She wormed on her floor in agony until she could line up and reseal every bone in her body. Unfortunately, after— though her bones were ok— she couldn’t spare the energy to seal her pain, which now plagued her every waking moment.

  Roughly twenty minutes ago, a servant came up to bring her breakfast. Afraid that they would accidentally breath on her too hard and make her spasm in unbearable pain, she told the servant to leave it at the door. The twenty minutes were spent in intense struggle, first getting to the door to begin with then trying to bring it back without dropping the tray. She was very fortunate that her inhuman strength made balance the only strife of carrying a large tray with an entire meal, utensils, various oyster ramekin, a trembleuse, and an amorpha, all only using one hand.

  Suddenly, a portal opened in the middle of her room. Eliot eagerly hopped through with a smile. He took the time to revert what looked like years of wear using his multitude of spells that kept him perpetually and immaculately groomed, as well as wear his highest quality jerkin and leggings.

  Barraged with the image of perfection so abruptly, Ellulia was powerless. The tray flipped out of her outstretched hand and she lost the iron willed resolve that was the only thing keeping her standing. Eliot brusquely casted a stasis spell on the tray before immediately catching her and gently lowering her the rest of the way to her knees.

  “Are you ok?” he asked with a mountain of concern, supporting her shoulders. Instead of answering, Ellulia promptly broke down into violent, shuddering tears. “Hey, hey, you don’t have to cry. I’m here,” he soothingly whispered while pulling her into a hug.

  Ellulia buried her face in his jacket, balling it in her fists hard enough that it ripped and stretched in multiple places. “I-I’m just-” She choked on her words, more from the crushing relief than her sporadic diaphragm, “-I’m just so-so glad!” She sniffed and made it halfway through a shaky breath before immediately letting it all out in one strangled huff. “That you’re alive. I-I was so scared that you wouldn't come back to me.”

  “I was scared too, but you don’t have to worry anymore. You saved me,” he told her a sort of half truth, since he was only scared after the fact.

  He didn’t have the innate, subconscious fear response that everyone else did. Death wasn’t a big deal to him, it just meant that your time alive was over, what was so bad about that? But, he did have a conscious fear response. He knew that if he died, he may never see Ellulia again, the same for his friends, and that thought genuinely terrified him.

  “Promise me that you’ll never throw away your life like that again!” Ellulia cried.

  “I promise,” he vowed with ardent conviction, clenching his fists.

  He really was a naive fool to think that his actions only affected himself. In the past, he thought that since it was his life, he was free to endanger it whenever he pleased. Now he knew better. His life was never actually just his, he owed it to the people that loved him to stay alive.

  They stayed on the floor for what might have been hours, Eliot’s arms wrapped around Ellulia, and Ellulia trying to split open Eliot’s chest cavity with her face. Eventually, she ran out of tears and gradually looked up to face him for the first time this entire encounter. Their eyes locked together like the laws of the universe themselves decreed it.

  “I love you, Eliot,” Ellulia professed before going in for a lengthy kiss. “More than anything,” she finished after they parted.

  “I’m afraid that’s just not possible. I can’t imagine that you love me more than I love you, and I’m what’s considered a genius, so…” he insinuated playfully.

  “It’s not a competition, Dear,” she chided with some mirth.

  He laughed and kissed her again before saying, “You’re right, wisdom comes with age, after all.”

  “By the gods, are you calling me old? I’m only two years older than you!” she laughed, pretending to be offended.

  “You’ve got it wrong, I meant it as a compliment, honest! Who wouldn’t want a woman who was beautiful, wise, and powerful? I’m starting to feel inadequate,” Eliot laughed along with her.

  Ellulia flushed in delight and reciprocated with, “You’re a talented, striking, and intelligent man yourself.”

  Eliot’s heart soared. He closed the distance between them with a kiss. As they pulled apart, he took the time to take a proper look at the person who he shared his heart with, realizing for the first time that she truly was gorgeous. In that moment, he knew that he wasn’t hallucinating or so crazy in love that he was seeing things.

  He saw how the light warped around her, how she glowed the most stunning shades he’s ever witnessed. Her smile literally lit up the room, and her eyes were absolutely divine. On the surface, they were the same breath taking azure as always, but he could see deeper, where profound colors that were too dazzling and brilliant to naturally exist resided with perfect clarity.

  “Eliot, you’re a Demigod? I didn’t notice, that’s amazing, you must be one of the youngest in history!” Ellulia’s acclamation made him realize his eyes had started to glow: the quintessential sign a Demigod was envoking their law in some way, shape, or form.

  “It’s nothing, I was just… I saw the most amazing thing in your eyes,” he said, still mystified.

  “Oh, you must have seen my soul,” she said, ecstatic that Eliot liked what he saw.

  “Your soul?” he asked, bewildered but paying full attention.

  “Don’t you know? The eyes are windows for the soul, why else would Demigods’ eyes glow?” she filled in his lapse of knowledge. “Judging from your different colored eyes, you’re a Demigod of Light?”

  “Yes, how do you know about that?” he queried with interest.

  “I’m surprised, I thought you would be the one explaining to me,” Ellulia noted, happy she could be useful to his overall growth and fascination for knowledge. “The Law of Light is the only law that gives different colored eyes since it's the only law with a dual domain, where two lesser laws don’t fully combine. How much do you know about the hierarchy of laws?”

  “Surprisingly little, and by that I mean next to nothing,” Eliot admitted sheepishly.

  “You can think of it like two trees next to each other, with interlocking branches,” she started, experimenting with the idea of making hand gestures in an attempt to help Eliot learn better, “The bough of the trees are the two highest laws that make up the universe, the Law of Life and the Law of Death. They’re made up of a mix of every other law and axiom in the universe. Every other law is simply a part or parts of these two laws.

  “As the trees start to grow branches, each dividing point where one branch turns into two is represented as a new law that dropped one or more greater axioms, or split into two lesser laws. Much like the Law of Life and Death are a mix of all the laws, every law is the combination of lesser laws.

  “At the end, where the branches sprout leaves, are the individual axioms themselves that are too small to even be considered a law. Half step Demigods are those that understand one or more axioms, but not a full law. The branches that are the most distal and grown out are tier one laws, and all of those axioms, or leaves, combine to create a domain.

  “More axioms, or leaves, are added as you go towards the center of the tree, which changes the law and increases the axioms in the new law’s domain. Once you start to get more laws combining than newer axioms added, you get into tier two territory. Each law is much stronger than even one step below it because instead of merely adding a few axioms, the stronger laws are combinations of the laws below them, and their domains are that of both laws.

  “Furthermore, the mix of these laws creates an entirely new use through interaction, like mixing water and fire to create steam, something that couldn’t be achieved by either of them individually, but isn’t actually a new axiom.

  “This mixing continues until the branches get close enough to the center and trunk that the two trees’ branches no longer touch. This is tier three category, where each is a substantial part of the two highest laws of the universe, and is either solely in the Domain of Life or the Domain of Death.

  “The Law of Light is special in many ways because it's the intersection of the final two branches that touch between the two trees. It has a dual domain because darkness and light are polar opposites that don’t mix together, they coexist, where you gain access to both and can mix them together in practical use, but they don’t actually combine their domains to create a new effect. What’s more is some scholars consider the Law of Light as a pseudo tier three law because it can be argued that the mixing of the Life and Death Domains is just as strong as the tier three laws.”

  Eliot’s brain frazzled for a few seconds. The information was a lot to take in, and being delivered by Ellulia made it all the more difficult to focus.

  “I don’t suppose that you learned all of this from one convenient book that’s still in this room?” he tried after recovering and committing the information to memory.

  “I’m afraid not, but I do have Eridon’s journal somewhere around here-” Wanting to be as helpful as possible, Ellulia attempted to stand up and get the book for him. She immediately buckled with a squirm of pain.

  Eliot reached out to support her once more and worriedly asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said through tense abdominal muscles, doing her best to keep a smile despite the pain.

  Eliot sighed through his nose. “You’re injured from your fight with Master Camble, aren’t you?” he accurately inferred.

  “...Yes,” she finally answered after a long stretch of silence, “I didn’t want you to know I was so weak.”

  “You fought, and defeated, Master Camble! That makes you the strongest on the Feral Continent, probably even the whole world. Besides, you’re only like this because of me. I should take responsibility,” he enjoined with a huff. He held up his ringed hand and directed a small flow of mana. One of his bulb rings suddenly grew at a rapid pace, blooming with hundreds of motes of healing mana that peacefully drifted before settling against Ellulia and being absorbed.

  After, Eliot insisted on spoon feeding Ellulia her breakfast with the excuse that she still needs to rest or else the healing won’t come into proper effect. Ellulia, of course, didn’t raise any objection, she was more than happy with his pampering.

  They spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon cuddling together and analyzing magically preserved books of old. Gleaning knowledge from dusty tombs was already one of Eliot’s favorite pastimes, throw Ellulia into the mix and he was in his own personal paradise. Meanwhile, Ellulia was quickly finding that anything to do with or involving Eliot had become her new life’s purpose.

  Despite having already read every book in the royal athenaeum multiple times over, Ellulia had read them purely out of boredom. That coupled with the sheer quantity of literature resulted in her recollection being foggy at best. So, Eliot’s research granted her a semi-novel experience; not that she would have minded falling asleep in Eliot’s arms. In fact, she proved extremely beneficial with Eliot’s studies. He tended to over complicate everything and entertain the wildest of conjecture, so having Ellulia there to simplify everything was an unexpected boon.

  They learned exactly what an experienced Demigod of Light was capable of through Eridon Crucible’s journal. He was the third king of the Crucible Empire and learned the Law of Light’s apocryphon at the age of thirteen. Most of the earlier entries were of his confusion on what light was. It wasn’t like darkness where it could be manipulated into any physical state of matter and that didn’t even exist in its original state.

  Light was already a physical thing with substance, but for some reason, out of the four states of matter, it can only be condensed into a solid that’s properties were largely dependent on the color of the light. The questions only piled up higher and higher as he found that it didn’t behave like anything else on earth when in its base state.

  In lieu of light, he focused on mastering his uses of darkness first. He found that all the states of darkness were incredibly useful in battle, especially once he puzzled out how to turn it into plasma. Really, it’s only downside was its simplicity. The only thing to it other than its transmutation into states of matter, is optimization of divine mana usage. It takes much more divine mana to melt, vaporize, sublimate, or ionize darkness than it did to solidify, condense, depose, or recombine.

  So, if you wanted solid darkness, it would take less divine mana to solidify already existing liquid darkness than transmuting base darkness, without any substance, to a solid state. However, if you wanted to vaporize your darkness, or gods forbid ionize it, it would save a very significant amount of divine mana to transmute base darkness into gas or plasma, since transmuting base darkness requires the same amount of divine mana when transmuting to a solid, liquid, or gas, and only increases by a factor of two when transmuting to a plasma.

  After mastering the uses of darkness, he went on to study the different properties of differently colored solidified light and the light detecting abilities of his eyes. There were seven main colors of light that gave different effects: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Eridon hypothesized that these seven colors were the seven main lesser laws that made up the Law of Light’s domain, red, orange, and violet from the Domain of Death and the other four from the Domain of Life.

  The effects of the colors are as follows: Red is a combustible, orange can either melt or freeze whatever it comes into contact with, yellow has a gravitational field, green radiates a salubrious aura, blue can discharge lightning, indigo is elastic, and it didn’t say what violet does, just that he never figured it out.

  There wasn’t much past superficial description. He only briefly touched on how they cost huge amounts of divine mana before completely discarding them in favor of a different avenue. The next entry tells about his experimentation with what he called true color sight. According to his experiences, it goes far beyond what Eliot’s seen. If it was fed enough divine mana, the world turns into a raucous mess of colors with a few regular colors here and there in places they were not supposed to be, but predominantly composed of irritatingly vivid, indescribable colors that can’t be seen through any other method, even by other Demigods.

  After a few entries of wild speculation, Eridon abruptly changed his tone to one of epiphanic realization. Through studying the weird colors made visible by true color sight and toiling over what they had to do with light, he was struck with the idea that light wasn’t merely the colors on the visible spectrum, everything he saw with true color sight was also a type of light. Assuming that was true, he came to the conclusion with ninety percent certainty that light was a wave, like sound or force. The visible spectrum was just what humans were made to see, and the other light he could see with true color sight couldn’t be picked up by the human eye.

  The final passages seemed to suddenly jump years into the future, where he drooled over how effective radiation was in combat. He told about how he used it to horrifically melt and deform an entire regiment of Kilandhil soldiers, along with their Demigod commander. Apparently, it was practically impossible to defend against, and with enough of it you could even kill a tier three Demigod without much trouble— that is if they don’t immediately obliterate you on the spot.

  Eliot asked Ellulia about the missing pages, and she explained that a portion of the royal collection was damaged in a fire eight years ago. She was hesitant to answer, so Eliot left it at that. Afterall, he could feel that his understanding— and by extension his authority— in the Law of Light had already increased by leaps and bounds.

  They spent the rest of their time learning general Demigod related knowledge. The more you understand a law, the more that law is willing to bend to your will, which translates to more authority in manipulating said law. Until certain levels of understanding, represented by a percentage value, your manipulation of your law is severely limited. It isn’t enough to simply understand it’s apocryphon, unless you grow your understanding further, you might as well still be a mortal.

  In fact, you aren’t even considered a fully fledged Demigod by other Demigods until you earn your wings, which come at fifty percent understanding for tier one laws, twenty five percent understanding for tier two laws, and ten percent understanding for tier three laws. The only other physical marker of your understanding is a halo, showing that you’ve completed the transformation from mortal to Demigod. To earn a halo is to achieve seventy five percent understanding in your law, regardless of the tier.

  Going into more detail, a Demigod at one percent understanding that’s only understood the apocryphon, only has the authority to minimally manipulate instances of their law that already exist. Between then and having enough understanding to earn wings is when a Demigod gains the ability to create isolated instances of their law and apply it to themselves, resulting in different effects depending on the specific law.

  Once a Demigod earns their wings, they can start directly applying their law on other laws and freely fly, however they can only use those abilities if their wings are summoned. Between earning their wings and halo, a Demigod gains the ability to apply the converse of their law.

  Finally, a halo is the proof of mastery. A Demigod is graced with a halo when they completely understand their law and have nigh administrative authority in its manipulation. The reason a halo manifests at seventy five percent understanding and not one hundred is because to understand a law in its entirety, a Demigod must understand the base components that make it up. A halo gives the ability to manipulate the lesser laws and axioms in the domain of their titular law, and one hundred percent understanding can only be achieved if every single one of those lesser laws or axioms in the law’s domain are understood at the same comprehensive level.

  However, it is possible to have the authority to manipulate parts of a law’s domain if the Demigod in question was originally a tier one or two and reached complete understanding in the lesser law before upgrading to a higher tier. In that case, they keep their authority in the lesser law and in the laws or axioms in that lesser law’s domain.

  Furthermore, it’s much less work to reach a complete understanding in the upgraded law because they have a head start on the laws in its domain. In result of this and factoring in that they have the talent to upgrade their law in the first place, it isn’t rash or bold to expect that a Demigod who upgrades their law to a greater law will eventually continue their progress until tier three, given enough time.

  It was shocking the sheer berth of knowledge the royal athenaeum had on Demigods. Including the hundreds of comprehensive guides on the basics, there were plenty of journals just like Eridon’s that detailed the experiences, breakthroughs, and knowledge of tens of Demigods.

  Through reading those, Eliot learned that the in depth breakdown of a Demigod’s regular progression from eyes to halo was merely the general outline, and mostly applicable to tier one laws. More often than not, a Demigod’s progression is radically different depending on their specific law and tier.

  Also, there were stacks of Axiom Maps that attempted to demarcate the known laws in relation to each other, but they were a mess of contradictions, misguided conjecture, and what shown through the most was the utter lack of knowledge some of them had. There were even a few that attempted to map out the laws with as little as ten of them.

  Fueled by Eliot’s insatiable longing to know more and some spite for the old crones that were audacious enough to try and discover the secrets of the universe with little to no foundation, Eliot and Ellulia sorted the Axiom Maps into two groupings: useless dementia birthed garbage and reference material. Going through the reference material with the Demigod experience journals as guides, they judged the voracity and value of the reference material until they were down to just twelve maps that they would compile to make their own Axiom Map.

  Right as they started discussing the positions of axiom categories, since labelling each one would take a lifetime, the right bulb on Eliot’s ring flickered blue.

  “Henry’s pinging me, I completely forgot that I was supposed to help him and Penelope deal with Serpentine BrotherHood stuff after my meeting with Master Camble,” Eliot sighed, biting his lip. To be fair, the process of taking off the mana sensitivity inhibiting cuffs was nearly as disorienting as putting them on, and the only thing running through his head at the time was Ellulia.

  “It’s ok, go do what you have to do,” Ellulia told him with understanding. She was disheartened that their time together was coming to an end, but she knew for a fact there would be a next time.

  “But…” Eliot wanted to argue, quickly roving over their progress with his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make a prototype for you to look over later,” Ellulia assured him.

  “Really? You wouldn’t rather do something… more important?” he queried responsively, feeling a pull on his heart strings.

  Ellulia shifted her arm to lock hands with him and bore into his eyes as she said, “You’re the most important thing to me.”

  The force translated from his taunt heart strings made Eliot surge forward and kiss her. They only stopped after they topped off on dopamine, which to say they rolled around on the floor for a few minutes and left what was once an array of neat book and parchment towers in a sea of bent and crumpled pages.

  Eliot reorganized the mess with his sorcery and made sure to portal out into the streets before portalling to Henry's study so that he didn’t see Ellulia’s room through the portal gateway. In said study, he found Henry and Penelope knee deep in a parchment sea of their own, frenetically digging through their documentation and notes on the Serpentine BrotherHood the three of them put together over the year.

  “Woah, what’s going on here?” he exclaimed while carefully choosing his footing, the portal autonomously closing behind him.

  “Nice of you to finally show up, where were you this whole time?” Penelope launched a heated question, unable to control her rude tendencies with frayed nerves.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself from having a quick stew at Tal’s,” he threw out a random excuse.

  Suddenly, Penelope flicked her right arm extended. A large blade of grass unwrapped from her arm and shot at Eliot’s neck. She grabbed the bottom, stopping it a few centimeters from his face and said, “You’re lying. Explain.”

  Eliot made a mental note that Penelope was getting a little too good at reading him, meanwhile he put his hands up and adopted a nervous grin. He was a Demigod that could have done any number of things to stop her or just let it hit him, but Penelope’s snark and irritable nature was part of her charm. Eliot was more than happy to play along.

  “You got me,” he admitted with feigned nervousness. “I had the idea to use divine mana to cast light spells as an alternative to using my law since I apparently have a dark alignment that makes it difficult to manipulate light. Also, I’m a Demigod of Light, just thought you should know.”

  “You’re a Demigod?” they asked in unison surprise, Henry finally raising his head from the document he was poring over.

  “Yup,” Eliot confirmed, using a negligible amount of divine mana to activate true color sight for a few seconds.

  “Oh my Gods, Eliot, that’s amazing!” Penelope congratulated him, flipping her demeanor and recalling her blade of grass.

  “That’s a terrifying speed of progression,” Henry said with a wisp of horror, leaning back and running a hand through his hair. “You only started studying magic and martial arts a year and a month ago, and you’re already a Demigod. That’s… more than amazing. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the youngest in history.”

  “Not the youngest in history by a long shot,” Penelope corrected with a raised forefinger, “But definitely the fastest.”

  “When you become an OverGod in a few years, please remember us lowly mortals,” Henry threw out a joke to cope with the unprecedented genius before him.

  “If that happened, my first act as OverGod would be to have everyone think I was still a human mage and go make friends with the Tarrasque. Then, I would sit back and watch as every kingdom, empire, and dukedom on the two continents scramble over each other to get me on their good side. Don’t worry, I’d let you guys have a ride,” Eliot shared the hypothetical pipe dream he’s had since he had an actual dream of him doing just that a few months ago.

  “At this rate, half of that will come true,” Penelope laughed.

  “So, what can this soon to be OverGod help you with?” Eliot steered the subject back to the matter at hand.

  Henry heaved a tortuous sigh. “My father gave us an impossible ultimatum. He scheduled a summonings for the four nobles in league with the Serpentine BrotherHood, and we only have until then to gather enough evidence to convince my father that they’re guilty. To top it all off, they get a chance to refute or explain whatever we have prepared,” he gave Eliot the rundown.

  “How much time do we have left?”

  “Three hours,” Henry answered in dismay.

  “When I was captured, Polly Ofal took the time to talk with me.” Eliot crouched down and started wading through the papers for a specific few pages. “Some of what he said provided insight on the whole thing, and… I think I might have a hidden trump card in mind,” he alluded, frowning as it was impossible to find anything in this mess. “You guys do your best to assemble an argument with what we have here, I’ll handle the rest.”

  Three hours later, Penelope, Henry, and Eliot sat in the grand hall, across from the four heads of the noble households alleged to be dissidents. King Plador presided over the prosecutors and prosecuted with a stoic gaze, perfectly filling the role of a judge from on high.

  “My liege, may I ask the purpose of this summons?” started Sir Doiles, eyeing Eliot.

  “Yes, and we would all be privileged to know why a commoner sits among us,” added Sir Crebs, glaring at Eliot who was currently stuffing his face with a large slab of meat and delicious pastries. Though he didn’t need to eat for days on end, it still felt weird not to, and he thought it would be a waste to not sample the royal cuisine. His plan doesn’t bank on his respectability, afterall.

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m mostly just the closing act,” he coyly reassured them, putting in the mountain of effort it took to eat not like a wild animal now that things were getting started.

  “You all have been summoned to prove your loyalty. My son, the Crown Prince, alleges that you’ve conspired with the Serpentine BrotherHood,” King Plador gave them the prerequisite knowledge for this hearing

  “Actually, I would like to withdraw my earlier claim,” Henry spoke up.

  The furious nobles calmed down at this and Sir Crebs commented, “We’re glad to see you’ve come to your senses, Prince. The mere thought we associated with such rabble is insulting.”

  Henry jumped from his seat and slammed the table as he declared, “I would like to make the correction that we are now accusing them of plotting a coup d'etat with the Serpentine BrotherHood’s support!”

  “That is utterly preposterous! I would trust you aren’t so short sighted as to make a severe accusation without proof,” Sir Geralt, the fourth noble, objected.

  “Oh, we have plenty,” Penelope interjected with clear contempt.

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  Henry lifted a parchment from a bound collection and held it up for everyone to see. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with this slave marker, it’s the one on all of your demihuman slaves.”

  “Please, we’ve already explained the mistake. This is nothing new,” Sir Doiles interrupted.

  “Let him finish,” Penelope snapped.

  With the opening, Henry continued, “Yes, we are well aware of the excuse you gave. If I recount correctly, you claimed that the slaves changed hands multiple times until they were in the care of a Kirlandhill slave trader. Their origins were completely unbeknownst to you.”

  “Yes, of course. We cannot be faulted from whence they came, and we’ve since made sure to domesticate them properly,” Sir Warren, the third noble, reinforced their argument.

  “A carefully crafted lie, but not careful enough,” Penelope backed up the trio’s argument as she passed a parchment to Henry.

  “We present this.” Henry copied his actions with the new document, a picture so crisp that it could only have come from a View Capture spell. “This is a capture of a slave mark found on demihuman slaves in the Serpentine BrotherHood’s base of operations. As you can see, it is identical in every way to the mark on your slaves.”

  “What of it? We never denied their coming from the Serpentine BrotherHood,” said Sir Crebs.

  Henry sneered at the nobles before addressing the king, “Forgive me, father. I’m so often surrounded by capable mages that it slips my mind from time to time that magic knowledge is not widespread.

  “Allow me to explain, slave marks are a form of lesser mana contract that commands absolute obedience from the marked being. However, slave marks use a special method to ensure the conscripted party doesn’t have a say, one that can be undone with the correct application of mana. Because of this, slave marks are updated whenever conscripted mages can find the correct application to unravel them.

  “The usual lifetime of a slave mark is roughly two years. Before this one, the crown’s conscripted mages deciphered the previous slave mark used by the Serpentine BrotherHood exactly six months ago. I first accused you of buying slaves from the Serpentine BrotherHood three months ago. Furthermore, it cost the Serpentine BrotherHood a month of profits before they began using the new mark you see before you. Since this is the case, that would leave only two months between the time the slave mark was updated and when you bought them, for the slaves to have the same updated marker.

  “It seems highly unlikely that the slaves changed hands multiple times, especially to the extent that you bought them from a Kirlandhil slave trader, in that window of time. It would be much more plausible if you all bought them fresh, right as the Serpentine BrotherHood updated their markers!”

  Faced with the newly interpreted chain of events, the nobles sat silent, exchanging furtive glances between themselves.

  “Well?” King Plador demanded their rebuttal.

  Sir Geralt stepped up and said, “The slave market is a large and thriving chain of hundreds if not a few thousand people. For premium product such as what we fancy, it’s entirely possible for them to change hands many times within two months. This is all circumstantial, at best.”

  “Then allow us to provide tangible proof.” Henry motioned to Eliot. At his cue, Eliot opened a portal and a large hand of shadows sprouted from the shadow of the table that dragged a shackled prisoner onto the floor. During this time, he continued his meal like nothing had happened.

  “We found it awfully convenient that you bought the slaves from a Kirlandhil slave trader, who is no longer in the Crucible Empire to corroborate your story. Too convenient. Naturally, after considering this, we ventured to find the real distributor.”

  After the haggard man was unceremoniously dragged in, Penelope tended to his wounds and cleaned him up to look more reputable. Then, once Henry finished his piece, she started the questioning.

  “State your name and position in the Serpentine BrotherHood.”

  The man scanned his surroundings with bewilderment before belatedly bowing to the king and answering, “I’m Yule Barro, I was an overseer and I used to take orders directly from Death’s Kiss.”

  “You don’t seem much like an assassin one would expect from the Serpentine BrotherHood,” King Plador raised a question of legitimacy, taking in the gaunt and harmless man.

  “Well, most of the assassin talents were captains of the assassin teams. Captains and overseers are technically the same rank, but overseers have more administrative duties and we relay orders from the Three Deaths, so we don’t tend to be assassins,” nervously explained the man, bowing so low he was almost falling over.

  Seeing that the king was content with that answer, Penelope continued, “Can you confirm these are the four nobles that bought slaves from your previous organization?”

  “Yes, I remember it clearly,” the man said firmly, after taking a good, long look at the nobles.

  “Do you remember when they bought them?”

  “Yes, they came in right as we updated the product, and they came to me two at a time.”

  “When we asked you to be a witness, you said that you could even remember which ones they bought. Can you still remember?”

  The man pointed his slender index finger at the nobles one by one as he listed, “That one bought twelve horns, that one bought a mix of horns and apples, that one bought the same, and the last one only bought two, a peculiar yellow and green horn, and a black eyed grape.

  To make it easier and dehumanize demihumans to the absolute limits, demihuman slave traders gave each common characteristic a name that all who share the same characteristic are referred to as. The demihumans with a horn and no other abyssal features are known as horns, ones with different colored skin are called a certain fruit or vegetable, and so on. When discussing a particularly rare one that doesn’t exactly fit into the categories, they simply refer to it based on its peculiar characteristics.

  “Obviously, they tortured or bribed this man to be a witness, everything he says is a desperate lie,” argued Sir Doiles, crossing his arms.

  “That can be disproven with a simple Truth spell,” countered Henry.

  “How can we be sure that you won’t deceive us, you three are the only mages on castle grounds!” Sir Warren voiced his doubts.

  “Unlike you scum, we would never stoop so low,” Penelope denigrated the man in a flash of fury.

  “I demand a non-biased conscripted mage be summoned,” Sir Crebs maintained their stance.

  “Reltus,” King Plador directed to the gold plated man standing more impassive than a statue, by the door.

  “Right away, my king.” Reltus bowed, then cracked open the double doors and ordered one of the two guards standing watch to fulfill the request. “A mage is being summoned,” he assured, closing the door and assuming his previous unconcerned position.

  “Now that that is underway, I submit our final piece of evidence,” announced Henry, sliding a large stack of parchment over to the king at the head of the table. “What you see before you is a list of mysterious transactions the nobles have made within the past year and possibly connected Serpentine BrotherHood movement. It may seem like conjecture, however there is a clearly apparent trend between mysterious payments or donations and assassinations.”

  Meanwhile, Eliot opened a portal and dragged the man back to his cell. Chances were, the nobles would be found guilty before the mage was able to arrive.

  Sir Crebs was quick to come up with a counter argument, but Henry cut him off, saying, “You’re going to argue that this is all merely circumstantial, it should count for anything. But if provided with enough, even circumstances turn into likelihoods and trends that only a fool would overlook. And I assure you, though you think you’ve played him like one, my father, the king, is. No. Fool.”

  By now, Sir Crebs and Henry had electric sparks fizzling between them and were practically butting heads over the table.

  Kind Plador directed his gaze to the nobles and his gravitas immediately stole their attention as he spoke, “Do you have any closing arguments?” Despite the acrimonious air, his face was of unperturbed indifference.

  In response, every noble stepped out of their chairs and fell to one knee with their heads lowered. “We don’t hope to perpetuate this ugly farce any longer. You, our benevolent sovereign, hold the highest praises in our hearts, and we know that in your infinite wisdom you will make the just choice,” obsequiously deferred Sir Doiles, the lead noble.

  “Then, if there is no more substance to this matter, I have made my decision,” King Plador carried on.

  “Actually, we would like to make one more motion that will prove without a shadow of a doubt that these nobles are conniving knaves,” Eliot jumped out of his chair to say his piece, going through the tortue of waiting until the nobles and King Plador finished instead of interrupting mid sentence.

  “Go ahead, but this will be your final proposition and they will have another closing statement as compensation,” laid out King Plador. Now that Eliot was finally acting, Penelope and Henry relaxed in their seats, their jobs were done.

  For the most part, everything up until now was Penelope and Henry’s doing. In fact, though she didn’t deliver the arguments, Penelope was the one who put together the bulk of their argument. She was the one that cross referenced the nobles’ spending and Serpentine BrotherHood movement, she convinced Yule Barro to be a witness with the promise of administrative labor with oversight instead of execution, and she was part of a joint effort with Henry in figuring out their demihuman slave marker argument.

  Henry mildly helped Penelope in her tasks and did his fair share coming up with the slave marker argument, but he mostly rehearsed and put together how they would present their argument. Eliot was away getting his hands on their closing act the entire time, only giving information that led to minor adjustments right before the hearing.

  Now that it was finally his turn, Eliot was up with ebullience in his step and perfectly prepared to annihilate any hope the nobles had of seeming innocent.

  Suddenly, he smacked his forehead and exclaimed, “Ah, my deepest, most remorseful apologies, my liege. The food of the court is simply divine, and I forgot to properly introduce myself!” He theatrically fluttered his hands and arms as he bowed a full ninety degrees. “I am Eliot Relius, The Portal Mage, discipulus of Master Camble and Karl Favesh.”

  Against all odds, King Plador had a small smile as he said, “I’m well aware of your identity, the court is filled with your admirers. Though I’m to remain impartial, I must admit that I look forward to what you will bring before me.”

  Of course, everything King Plador said was true. Since mages were so rare in the modern times, especially in the Crucible Empire, the top ten scorers from the Arcane Academy of Everveil are always fought over tooth and nail by the noble houses. In fact, someone with Eliot’s background was even more sought after because all he really needed was funds, his natural genius would take care of the rest.

  It really was brilliant of Polly Ofal to choose now to sow seeds of discord between the nobles. Since there are ten noble houses, the thing that decides their standings is which of the top ten scorers from the academy they can get, where every noble house can usually manage to rope in one. If a noble house were to miss out on getting even one, unless there were extraneous circumstances that almost always have to do with Demigods, they would be steam rolled by the other houses, and the house that got two would become the top dog.

  But, this year was different in an especially bad way, all thanks to the trio of troublemakers. Henry was the crown prince, Penelope already belonged to the House of Evergreen, and Eliot was gone for a month almost immediately after graduation. That left the bottom seven of the top ten scorers to fight over. That and the other lower ranked graduates were suddenly important as well. Unless there was a dark horse, the lower rankers were usually disregarded because, similar to comparing Demigods and mortals, a single bright mage could take on hundreds of dim ones.

  But now, the lower ranks were needed just to bolster their personnel. The usual contract between a noble house and mage is a few years, typically half to a full decade, of magical labor in return for supplying resources and daily accommodations. Over time, there grew a cycle of letting a few mages go and picking up new ones every year.

  That’s not even considering the effects Henry and Penelope had. With Henry, he would be the first future king in nearly four generations to be a mage, and Penelope was the sole reason the Evergreens were now the top dogs. Every noble house desperately prays to the gods that their child will not only be mana sensitive, but talented because that means they have a talented mage that will willingly serve the household their entire lives. In Penelope’s case, her advantages also included her clout in the church of Life, which claimed prominence in the Crucible Empire during its founding, practically stamping the churches of other gods out of existence, in the Crucible Empire.

  “I assure you your expectations will be surpassed, your majesty,” Eliot said as he came up from his bow and reached into a newly opened portal. “I present the Pale Heart!”

  From the portal, he took out and hefted a pale white orb, making sure to carry it with a cloth. “This orb is an artifact that judges the amount of good and evil inside of anyone who touches it. In fact, it was first commissioned by King Henry II when he suspected his nobles of colluding with underground organizations to plot a coup. I’m just a simple commonner that can’t hope to match the royals in a battle of wits, but I do believe those are the exact circumstances we find ourselves in now,” he elucidated.

  The nobles’ expressions took a turn for the worst. “As you’ve so eloquently interpreted it, you are nothing but a simple commoner that can’t hope to match our wits, you could never get your hands on an artifact. Simply looking at the dull orb is enough to say with certainty!” blurted Sir Crebs. Eliot sneered at the nobles and raised his chin in defiance.

  “I didn’t take away from His Majesty’s precious time just to boast. As the discipulus of Master Camble I am also well acquainted with the other Head Monks, including Master Polle, Head Monk of the Monastery of Perpetual Mountains. If you knew your history, you would know that it was gifted to the Monastery of Perpetual Mountains as a thanks for subjugating a violent dragon running rampant in the Crucible Empire, roughly a hundred years ago.”

  The grand hall fell into tense silence. The nobles all wore unsightly expressions and glared up at Eliot with acutely angled faces, clearly recognizing him as a threat. Meanwhile, Eliot was having a ball being able to show these nobles up on their own turf, and in front of the king.

  In his heart, he was still a peasant in many ways, especially when it came to royalty. To him, every noble was a formidable opponent that deserved the full force of his means. Looking at the nobles’ faces now, he knew he had won; they had no choice but to call in their trump card to counter his.

  Finally, anger crept into the king’s features as he looked down upon his traitorous nobles. “Why do you all carry those faces? If you’ve truly nothing to hide, take the orb and prove your loyalty,” he shouted over the silence.

  “We beseech you, your eminence, to regard our pride. As nobles, our loyalty being tested as such, by a commoner no less, is unthinkable,” said Sir Doiles, his servile demeanor beginning to crumble.

  King Plador relaxed back into his throne and humored him, “Very well then. If your loyalties lie with me after all, he will be subjected to five hundred lashings for his transgressions.”

  Eliot had to suppress a frown, it turns out the king is still a noble in the end. Nobles’ arrogance in thinking they were above everyone else because of a fanciful royal status still grated on Eliot’s nerves.

  “Enough of this!” Sir Crebs exploded, fed up with their act. “Why don’t you take the orb and give us a reason as to why you’re king?”

  “The impudence! Reltus, execute these miscreant traitors,” roared the king, face warped with fury.

  Eliot smiled at this turn of events, hopping further away from the table and warning his friends, “Get ready, things are about to get interesting.”

  Polly Ofal’s words left him little to parse for deeper implications, but he inevitably let his self satisfaction get the better of his conscientiousness. He had way too much information on Ellulia than he should have, which Eliot speculated was mostly his fault. For most of it, all they needed to do was watch him, and they could easily make the conclusion that Beelzebub was Ellulia, as well as the fact that she didn’t actually die to Master Camble.

  But, they couldn’t have possibly found out that she ended up fighting one on one with Master Camble just by watching him. They would have needed someone there to know that. The only reason Eliot was able to see with an Eye of the Watchers is because Master Camble told Celeste Chantelle that he was permitted to watch them, anyone else would have been blocked.

  That only leaves the Four Seraphim, three of which would never ally with the Serpentine BrotherHood. To make things more interesting, it was also likely that the traitor purposefully feigned weakness when fighting Beelzebub.

  As Reltus readied his sword, the nobles sneered at the convention. Before Reltus could take a step forward, he was slapped across the room, slamming into the opposite wall more than sixty meters away with a crash of metal on stone.

  Leaving the brutally cut down bodies of the two posted guards and conscripted mage in a brutal heap in the hallway, behind him, Lobrin stepped through the double doors with his sword raised and eyes aflame with violent red mana.

  Reltus was back on his feet in an instant, crossing the room in a mere two seconds to clash swords with the unwelcome intruder. With a few short exchanges that radiated force via intense vibrations in the air and stone, Lobrin was already pressured to step back into the hallway. Reltus, partly shrouded in golden splendor, had Lobrin completely overpowered. Even in Eliot’s vision, his sword was nothing but a blurred streak.

  As he was forced to step back once more, Lobrin erupted in angry red mana and used the sudden increase in speed to push Reltus back with a devastating punch. Somehow able to react in time to block with his sword and sturdy enough not to lose his footing, the exaggerated tips of Reltus’ sabatons screeched as friction failed him, and he slid across the floor until being stopped by the end of the grand table.

  “You should surrender, Lobrin. Your loss is only a matter of time, and I would hate to damage your fine armor more than necessary,” taunted Reltus.

  Lobrin stepped back into the room with his short mana wings fully manifested, radiating pure indignation. “You may be strong, but you’re no Demigod.” As he said this, he tore a sphere of glistening iron bands from his belt and threw it at reltus faster than a bullet.

  Reltus casually moved to deflect it, but the ball suddenly expanded and opened up to engulf him. With its abrupt increase in size came a severe reduction of acceleration, allowing everyone present to see with perfect clarity as Reltus was swallowed in a giant ball of iron bands. The remaining inertia sent it rolling down the grand table, coming to a wobbly stop right before the king’s throne.

  As for why it mattered that Reltus wasn’t a Demigod, it had to do with how authentic magic items— not engraved ones— functioned. Similar to how Demigods need authority to affect their law, regular magic items have a limit on the things they can affect, based on the authority of what it was interacting with. In this case, the Ball of Binding Bands wouldn’t be able to seal Reltus if he were a fully fledged Demigod because Demigods have more general authority than the item can affect.

  King Plador shot to his feet in panic, breaking out in a cold sweat. Henry formed his sword out of golden mana and Penelope straightened her giant blade of grass, both of them very angry with Eliot. Eliot was completely taken in by the Ball of Binding Bands, and shut out his surroundings for a few seconds while he studied its outward appearance in earnest.

  “Resistance is futile, my blind king,” said Sir Doiles, grinning wickedly. “Your Demigods have turned against you, and the Four Seraphim— or should I say three—are currently preoccupied.” As if on cue, a jolting explosion in the distance shook the castle in its entirety. It was obvious the nobles decided to follow through with their coup without Serpentine BrotherHood assistance.

  “At least refrain from floundering about before your inevitable demise,” mocked Sir Crebs.

  Suddenly, a portal opened under the magic ball, and Eliot jumped onto the now clear table top with a smirk. “Then it’s a good thing the Crucible Empire just gained a new Demigod,” he said with blithe poise. His eyes pulsed to life as he snapped his fingers.

  A previously invisible ritual—unfortunately still just a translated spell— lit up underneath Lobrin’s feet, causing tens of solid dark spikes to bubble and launch from his shadow, impaling him like a pin cushion. At the same time, the room visibly darkened as the light gathered in a uniform sphere above him, swiftly growing to the size of a man before directing downwards in a nearly solid looking pillar of light that completely blinded Lobrin from view, but did nothing to lessen his roars of pain.

  The nobles jerked away from Eliot in fear. Penelope, knowing their next instinct would be to retreat, lurched forward and instantly quadruple cast the same spell. Four tangles of vines with pitch black thorns the size of a thumb flung from her runes, swathing each noble with practically thespian yowls of agony as the thorns took hold.

  Meanwhile, Eliot bowed as he got the king’s attention, “Your majesty, it would be best if you got to safety.” After coming back up, he motioned to a newly opened portal leading to the Royal Barracks, allowing them to see the bewildered reactions of the guards through the gate. The king jumped through with no hesitation.

  “Eliot, the next time you know in advance that a Seraphim is a traitor and may try assassinating the king, I would appreciate it if you told us,” Henry grumbled as the three of them turned to face said Seraphim.

  “Yeah, none of this warning us last second shit,” added Penelope.

  Before Eliot could respond, the pillar of light ceased forthwith, out of fuel. Lobrin stood, impaled by a multitude of shadow spikes, with a mask of utter abhorrence. His skin and armor were red hot, steaming like a pot of boiling water. As if shrugging, he moved forward with a flex of muscle, first snapping off the spikes lodged in his torso then jerking his legs free.

  Pure Light isn’t very effective as a direct method of attack. It doesn’t actually seem to have any destructive capabilities, it just heats things up. That makes sense since pure light isn’t even solid, Eliot noted.

  Henry brandished his sword, stepping forward to face the Demigod. Eliot opened a small portal near Lobrin’s face, and, mostly for effect, blew into his cupped hand, blinding Lobrin with a puff of pure gaseous darkness. While he coughed and sputtered, Henry lunged forward at the opportunity, managing to plunge his sword deep into the side of Lobrin’s pectoral girdle.

  In retaliation, Lobrin wildly lashed out, forcing Henry to dematerialize his sword into mana and jump away. Eliot snapped his fingers again, deposing the darkness in a solid cloud around Lobrin’s face and transmuting the spikes of darkness into completely mundane, nonexistent shadow. The simultaneous feelings of an armory of swords pulling free from his body and a surprisingly heavy block of darkness attaching to his head, out of seemingly thin air, made him stumble.

  Waiting for the proper moment, Penelope engraved the runes shaped in front of her into reality. The air became drenched in the smell of ozone as the mana rushed back into Penelope’s chest; electricity surged from her torso, down her right arm, and she thrust her pointed finger at Lobrin with impetus. White lightning sprang from the tip of her nail, jumping at Lobrin like a predator pouncing on its prey. It struck his exposed neck with a strident crash of thunder.

  Lobrin tensed for a split second under the attack, before smashing the brick of darkness obscuring his vision and swinging his sword in a wide arc. Henry barely had enough time to block, the massive force behind the blow cracked his sword and sent him flipping across the room. Next, he bounded towards Penelope, completely vulnerable after pouring nearly half of her mana into her spell, and much too slow to react to a Demigod’s dash.

  Eliot jerked his open right hand forward in a pushing motion, activating his engraving. Lobrin was swatted out of the air by an invisible force, shoved a meter deep into the stone walls that he was more than twenty meters away from a mere moment ago. Eliot’s engraving glowed fire red like a metal undergoing heat treatment, searing his skin with an audible sizzle from the sheer influx of mana he directed to flow through it.

  Using portals, Eliot grouped together with Henry and Penelope at the other end of the grand hall.

  “Sorry guys,” Penelope huffed, suffering from drastic mana fatigue. “I thought if I poured everything I had into it, I’d be able to do something. But, I’m still just a mortal.”

  “I have something, but it might not work. It’s still under development,” Henry shared, shaking the pain away.

  Lobrin’s war cry cut off Eliot’s piece for the second time, demanding the attention of his opponents. Standing free of the pile of rubble and massive crater in the wall behind him, Lobrin’s frame oozed angry red mana, his eyes shown with sentience consuming acrimony, his wings were made up of physical feathers of red hate that stretched to the usual two meter wingspan, and his presence dominated the space five meters around him with the physical weight of enmity. Along with these changes, a wreath of flames now sat perfectly wedged on the top of his head.

  “He has a halo?” Penelope growled in equal parts exasperation, disbelief, and helplessness.

  “What the Abyss is going on?” a voice suddenly demanded in a tone only royalty could possibly muster. Everyone in the room turned to see Ellulia walk in from a side hallway, much closer to Lobrin than the trio.

  “Ellulia, RUN!”Henry shouted in world crumbling horror.

  Lobrin, less conscious than a wild animal, rushed to attack the closest thing in his proximity. Ellulia immediately cursed the designers of the Grand Hall as she turned to face the train of red mana rushing towards her, Whose bright idea was it to only have one side entrance for a huge banquet hall?

  Since the beginning, she had been closely following the proceedings of the trial from behind a particularly thin and hollow wall in the kitchen— one of many intentionally made that way for exactly her purposes. When the fighting started and Reltus’ mana signature suddenly disappeared, she rushed to the scene in case the worst happened and she had to step in, her hast causing the quagmire she just jumped into. Of course, she had a myriad of methods to completely evade or directly tank his attack, but none she could use in front of Henry or Penelope.

  Coming up with the idea to say her father gave her a powerful amulet that could take a hit from a Demigod, she planted her feet and prepared to take the hit. However, incredibly fast— even by her standards— Eliot flashed in front of her and intercepted Lobrin with a devastating roundhouse kick. He catapulted across the entire length of the room, smashing through the back wall as if it wasn’t there in the first place, and only stopped after impacting the outer castle walls, making the entire section where he landed collapse in a mountain of rubble. The shockwaves of the kick by itself would have knocked Ellulia off of her feet if she were a regular mortal.

  Eliot grinned, savoring the pain and numbness his entire body was subjected to. Afraid of draining his remaining regular mana, he decided to experiment with using Divine Mana to power forms eight and six of Lex Ruptor. It shattered his expectations. It would have shattered his bones as well if he hadn’t gotten especially lucky.

  He ended up pouring more Divine Mana into it than he could make us of. He thought that it would be as simple as replacing his mana with Divine Mana, but he found that Divine Mana exerted pressure beyond its apparent volume. Before even a quarter of the space in his spiritual legs was filled, his senses were suddenly assaulted by a searing pain, and Divine Mana refused to fill them anymore.

  This led to his Divine Mana flowing through his nearby meridian and filling his physical legs to near bursting before Eliot could get a handle on it. In the end, since his physical legs could hold much less than his spiritual legs, the majority of the Divine Mana he used radiated from him as excess energy mostly in the forms of heat and light. But, there was a small amount that remained as Divine Mana and formed a temporary mage armor around his legs, effectively shielding him from the worst of his kick’s recoil.

  “Thank the gods!” Henry exclaimed in relief, wrapping Ellulia in a hug. “What the Abyss were you thinking?” he suddenly changed his tone to outraged, pushing her to arm’s lengths.

  “Princess, the next time you hear a ruckus in the castle, the first thing you should do is seek out the Royal Guard for protection,” admonished Penelope from the side.

  “Sorry. I thought if anything was happening, Reltus would handle it,” she apologized earnestly. “Where is he anyway,” she quickly changed the subject.

  “Lobrin sealed him away with a magic item, so I portaled him and the king to the Royal Barracks,” Eliot filled her in.

  “Ah, I see, thank you for saving me!” she said with a curtsy. “May I ask your name?”

  Eliot flashed a dazzling smile and bowed respectfully. “Eliot Relius at your service, my lady.”

  “We don’t have time for idle conversation,” Penelope reminded them, “Lobrin could be back up here any second.”

  “Your right,” Eliot agreed with a clap of his hands. “I have a plan.”

  Once everyone knew what they were doing, Eliot portaled to the top of the castle’s lowest turret. Sitting in a meditative position, he focused his attention on the beating sun. Using what he termed true color sense, he felt the different wavelengths of the light in the air.

  With a mountain of effort, he reached out to all the blue light around him and drew it to the space between his palms. Sweat budded on his forehead as he grit his teeth. Slowly but surely, the sky in close proximity shifted to an alien greenish yellow as a rod of pure blue light formed between his hands.

  The amount of struggle and Divine Mana required just to hold the light in that shape was unbearable. But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Compared to what I need to do next, this is nothing, he told himself with a smirk. Redoubling his efforts, he invoked his authority in the Law of Light to solidify the rod of blue light in front of him, shaking from the exertion.

  Meanwhile, Ellulia and Penelope watched from the large hole in the wall as Henry jumped down to face Lobrin alone. Needless to say, Henry wasn’t happy with Ellulia watching. Unfortunately, Penelope had to be there for the plan to work and there was absolutely no way he would let her go off on her own. So he had to be content with Penelope protecting her.

  The way things were looking, however, it was more the other way around. Penelope insisted on giving Henry every buff spell she knew, which thoroughly drained her of whatever mana she had left. She was so mana fatigued that she struggled to stand; she had to lean on the wall and awkwardly curve her neck to get a good view. Seeing Penelope push herself so far, and interpreting the distressed look on her face, Ellulia crossed the distance between them and supported her efforts.

  “It’s sweet that you’re so worried for him, but there’s really no need,” Ellulia told her. “Ever since he came back from his vacation at the academy, Henry’s been spending every second of his time either dealing with the nobles, or training.”

  “You seem to have more faith in him then he does in himself,” Penelope argued.

  Ellulia sighed. “That’s because he places impossible expectations on himself. No matter what he does, it’s never enough for him. Trust me, once the fighting starts you’ll see for yourself how amazing he is,” she insisted. She knew that Henry was only comparing himself to their older brother, though. At Henry’s age, Howard was thrice the swordsman Henry is now.

  They didn’t need to wait long. Lobrin sped across the training grounds as a blur of red light, crashing into Henry. Alert for his attack, Henry shifted his stance as fast as his enhanced body could go. As Lobrin’s Blade impacted his own, he curved his body left while rotating his blade to the right, until it was almost parallel with the ground. A dance of sparks erupted from Henry’s sword as Lobrin’s blade scraped across it. Instead of smashing into Henry, nearly all of Lobrin’s force was redirected behind him, causing Lobrin to stumble when his inertia continued forward but he instinctually expected to come to a stop.

  Taking a step forward, Henry pulled his sword proximal, closer to himself, changing to a backwards grip with his right hand in the process. He tensed his muscles, butt his left hand against the sword’s pommel, and drove his sword into the side of Lobrin’s neck with the full force his body could possibly muster.

  Amazingly, it pierced his skin and sunk half its length in, its bloody tip jutting out the other side. Lobrin threw, more than swung, his blade to his right with a roar. Henry crouched, ducked, and twisted left on his feet, all in one motion. Weaving under Lobrin’s blade, he shot back up, directing the entirety of his body’s directional force to his right hand, striking his sword’s pommel with his palm. The combined force of his strike and the Force spell he cast punched the sword with enough impetus that it sunk its entire length. Then, when it could go no further, it worked with Lobrin’s completely off target swing to send him staggering to his south-west.

  Henry, afflicted with heavy panting, dematerialized his sword into golden mana and took the opportunity to back off, rematerializing his sword in his hands and taking a defensive stance. Not only did no blood come from Lobrin’s wound, his neck healed at a prodigious rate, comparable to the regenerative abilities of a troll.

  Belting a sound of pure antipathy, Lobrin crouched and dashed at Henry with a low horizontal swing of his sword. Henry simply hopped above it and jammed his sword into the opening of his clavicle on the way down. Abandoning his sword, Lobrin resorted to a left hook. Henry high jumped and used the hilt of his sword to flip over Lobrin completely. Pulling his sword free, Henry spun the second his foot touched the ground and slashed through the mail protecting Lobrin’s lower back as if it wasn't even there.

  The laceration in Lobrin’s body healed the next second, and Henry jumped away before Lobrin’s backhand hit him. Without sparing a moment, Lobrin charged at him, taking advantage of his wings to simply surge forward as if he was riding a wave of red light. Henry snapped into a backwards run, somehow able to match Lobrin’s flight speed, but just barely. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford the mana drain of his flight spell, which was superior to Lobrin’s flight in every way.

  Lobrin sent punch after punch at Henry, who completely abandoned any hope of offense. He dematerialized his sword and focused on leading Lobrin’s punches this way and that before any of them had a chance to shatter his skeleton. Suddenly, Lobrin started throwing kicks in between his punches. It looked almost effortless as Henry curved his body and side stepped left to dodge the mix up, then seamlessly integrated all sorts of ducks and jumps in his dodge routine— somehow without any loss of speed to his backwards stride.

  Time seemed to slow down in Henry’s squinted, dimly glowing eyes. His world shrunk down to the opponent before him. Never in his life had he been so focused on a battle. Never before had he felt the effects of a truly life and death fight.

  Lobrin’s power vastly eclipsed his own, one wrong move and his skull would be bashed in. He needed to catch the smallest, most insignificant twitches of muscle under heavy armor and extrapolate to predict how Lobrin was going to move. If he didn’t accurately guess any and all of Lobrin’s moves three seconds before Lobrin himself knew how he would move, the difference in their speed ensured his death. If he didn’t perfectly redirect all of Lobrin’s attacks, the difference in their strength would crush him to a bloody pulp. If his body didn’t move instantly and perfectly perform every single one of the movements he required, no matter what gravity or the proportions and flexibility of his body said, he was dead.

  Watching from the Grand Hall, Penelope was utterly flabbergasted. Henry was somehow holding his own as a mere mortal at the mortal limit against a gods damned haloed Demigod. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out were disgruntled word fragments— she was rendered speechless.

“Since when did Henry learn a God Slaying technique?” Eliot’s crabby voice sounded behind Penelope and Ellulia. His efforts to keep his jealousy and incredulousness out of his tone were abysmal.

  Henry’s movements were so amazing that they were approaching Ellulia’s level. His dexterity was that of a master rogue, fencer, ranger, assassin, ballet dancer, and b-boy all mixed together to surpass the level of a human. At this point, he uncannily resembled a god of celerity trapped in a mortal’s body.

  “Never,” answered Ellulia with clear mirth at their expense. “Reltus did offer to teach him, but Henry decided it would be better if he made his own, instead.”

  Eliot exploded into uproarious laughter, clutching a deep blue rod that sparkled with electricity against his cramping stomach. “And he calls me a genius? Now I’ll never be able to see all of his fawning as anything but patronizing,” he breathed helplessly.

  Penelope, meanwhile, gave up on feeling anything. The shock was so overwhelming that she simply accepted it as fact, and proceeded to treat it as if it was perfectly normal. “Do we even need to intervene at this point?” she asked lamely.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Henry’s bound to run out of energy soon, and while it looks amazing, his technique is nowhere near perfect. Just watching him now, it’s obvious he has no hope to actually injure Lobrin, nor would this be possible if he wasn’t being buffed by fifteen separate spells,” Ellulia shared her analysis, immediately regretful. She thoughtlessly shared her thoughts for Eliot’s benefit, completely forgetting that she was supposed to be playing the part of a powerless and clueless mortal.

  Penelope spared a queer glance in her direction. “You can follow them?” she inquired, more curious than suspicious.

  “My eyes are actually very well trained since I’ve liked to watch Henry train and spare since we were kids. When he got to be too fast for me to follow clearly, Reltus taught me a few tricks to help my eyes adjust,” Ellulia conjured an explanation from a half truth.

  Mulling this over, Penelope eventually considered, “Maybe she should be the one with the lightning rod.”

  “Unfortunately, it still needs a degree of mana manipulation to shoot the lightning,” Eliot told her, handing over the crackling rod of solidified blue light. “You should probably step back for this, princess,” he admonished Ellulia while half-kneeling at the edge of the precipice and fixing his focus on the fight below them.

  As Lobrin was off his balance from one of Henry’s canny dodges, Eliot portaled down to switch places with Henry. He gave Eliot a dopey smile and a high five as he practically fell through the portal leading to the safety of the Grand Hall.

  Lobrin hardly registered that his opponent was someone else, and charged forward all the same. Eliot simply opened a portal in front of him, letting Penelope accurately hit him at the opening of the second portal despite their difference in speed.

  She thrust the rod forward like a spear from her high vantage point, sending a consistent lance of vigorously animated prominent blue lightning cascading through the air that ravenously homed in on Lobrin’s somehow still shiny metal armor, and locked his muscles in place. It really should have burned him to a crisp too, but his insane regeneration negated that effect.

  Eliot dropped into a meditative pose immediately, knowing that the rod would soon run out of fuel. He felt the light pervading the space all around him and quickly followed the rays back to their source. As he approached, no matter the amount of times he told himself he wasn’t actually there, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling like he was being incinerated from the monstrous amounts of heat the sun radiated by merely existing.

  Regardless, Eliot grit his metaphorical teeth and urged himself to go faster. The pain was ruthlessly rivaling that of his Demigod transformation, when he finally reached the titanic ball of molten iron, plasma, molecular fusion, and light in nearly every wavelength possible.

  There are worse forms of pain than physical, Eliot reminded himself as he regrouped with his reserves of will power. Knowing it would be sanity threatening, he rushed forward and grappled with the celestial body without the opportunity of second thoughts. For a handful of seconds, all he knew was screaming and searing anguish, as his body carried forward with his direction seemingly of its own accord.

  He dug his hands into the flames and heaved a chunk of sunlight and plasma from its mass. Although it was close to nothing comparatively, it was more than enough subjectively. With one final, trembling push, he sent the roiling piece of sun down towards the earth, and snapped back into his own body.

  Heaving for breath and wiping the waterfall of sweat off his brow, Eliot looked inwards, at his spiritual body. With all of his divine mana spent, his soul appeared as the same, boring and mundane white ball that he had when he was a mortal.

  His mana reserves weren’t much better. He figured that his divine mana ran out somewhere near the end of the ordeal and he had to rely on sorcery to get the job done. The feeling of using sorcery and manipulating his law were incredibly similar, so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t notice the switch.

  Turning his perception back outwards, Eliot stretched out his legs and leaned back on his palms with a sigh. The blue lightning continued to hold Lobrin in place without any problems and the light was well on its way, all he had to do was sit back and wait. But, as he passively monitored the proceedings, he realized that wasn’t the case.

  “Crap,” he bitterly cursed, forcing his fried brain to turn back on. At the rate things were going, the rod of blue light would run out of energy in less than four minutes, while the sun light still had more than five minutes until it made contact.

  Although it gave him a scare, the problem had a simple fix. All he needed to do was cut out some of the distance the light had to travel, trivial indeed with his portals. After doing some quick calculations, Eliot opened a set of portals that cut out the required amount of time, spending the last of his mana and thoroughly draining himself.

  Suddenly, something brushed against his senses that reflexively made him look up at the sky. The magnitude of it all let his senses as a Demigod of Light pick it up while it was still more than a minute away, trillions of kilometers in space. But, as it sped closer, he felt something else. There was something trailing the light, something extremely hot. Eliot physically recoiled when he finally recognized what that something was: unbridled plasma served piping hot directly from the sun.

  He knew that that shouldn’t be possible. Light was the fastest naturally occurring thing in the universe, and only light could possibly move as fast. The Hermit laid it all out near the beginning of the grimoire; it was impossible for any amount, no matter how small, of physical substance to even reach the speed of light. As far as he knew, there should be no such thing as hitching a ride, either. So, how the Abyss was it moving at the speed of light?

  That isn’t important right now, Eliot mentally scolded himself. He was less than forty meters away from Lobrin, the plasma was going to erase him from the face of the earth, ashes and all, if he stayed where he was. A quick estimation of the fatality radius showed that his friends would probably be alright, but unlikely to be able to help him. Ellulia was the only real possibility, and even she wasn’t fast enough to save him by the time she noticed he was in trouble.

  There has to be a way out of this, he told himself, there always is.

  Unfortunately, survival seemed impossible. With the state his legs were in now, it would be a wonder if he could stand up without tripping over three times, let alone escape before the plasma engulfed the entire courtyard. And, he was completely, utterly drained of both mana types.

  Fine then, what can I do that costs nothing? Eliot refused to take powerless as an answer.

  That train of thought was useless in the end, however. He already knew there was absolutely nothing he could do without any payment. He would be surprised if there wasn’t some sort of Law of Exchange out there, or at least some sort of axiom. If you want something to happen, you have to put in energy to make that happen, everyone knew that and pretty much regarded it as basic common sense.

  In reality, he only posed that question to go one step further, Is there anything I can do to gain energy?

  It was still speculation at this point, something he tucked away in his brain to study later, but it was a hypothesis he was willing to bet on. In Eridon’s journals, he touched on the subject of optimizing divine mana usage by comparing how much energy it would take to change darkness’ state of matter versus creating entirely new darkness. He wrote that it cost practically nothing to move left on the flow chart of states of matter, condensing a gas, solidifying a liquid, and so on.

  However, his earlier attacks on Lobrin suggested something else. He was too focused in the moment to say for absolute curtain, but he was fairly sure that when he turned the gaseous darkness around Lobrin’s head into a solid and transmuted the solid darkness to base darkness, he gained some divine mana. The key word was some. Eliot’s inexperience with divine mana and skeptical nature made him slightly unsure whether that small amount of divine mana was always there, or not.

  Even if his speculations are true, that still left him with the problem of how he would exploit it. This problem, at least, had a few potential solutions. The first two he thought of he completely rejected, since they made unnecessary assumptions about the nature of things.

  The first assumed that the sun was made out of ionized light, which he entertained in the first place because of the impossible speeds its plasma was traveling. The second was much more likely, and definitely something he would test in the future but ultimately decided it wouldn’t be best because he was already taking a leap assuming that he could gain energy in any way that wasn’t orthodox.

  It involved somehow absorbing base light and transferring it into divine mana. Base darkness wouldn’t work because it technically doesn’t even exist in its base form. Once he got his wings, he would gain the ability to produce his own light and darkness out of nothing instead of relying on already existing instances— presumably at the cost of some divine mana. In that case, Eliot didn’t think it would be far fetched to assume that there was a way to absorb light in exchange for divine mana.

  Eliot wisely chose to follow through with his third option, the one he knew was most likely to work with his limited knowledge. The only assumption he was making was that the gain of divine mana from the darkness had to do with the transfer between states of matter, and not because of a trait unique to darkness. With that as a given and using his spikes of solid darkness as a proof of concept, he should gain divine mana if he transmutes the solidified rod of blue light back into base light.

  I love my brain, Eliot thought with a smirk as he came down from a state of absolute focus. When in a life or death situation, it never failed to go a thousand kilometers a second whenever he needed, and if that wasn’t enough, it would freeze time just long enough for him to come to a conclusion.

  After a healthy amount of haughtiness, he reached out to the rod of blue light and waited until the second before the light hit to dismiss the powers that held it solid. Originally, Lobrin was supposed to be immobilized for the entirety of the attack, otherwise there would be nothing stopping him from simply stepping out of the pillar of light. Now, he was doubtless the plasma would take care of that problem.

  Divine mana flooded his dearth soul. He had enough that he opted for a small self destruct to hopefully construe to his friends that they should take cover, before mentally seizing all of the mana he just gained and setting up a large barrier of plasma darkness around himself. Fortunately, he knew in advance from Eridon’s journals that plasma darkness didn’t follow the regular characteristic of plasma and would not cremate him.

  The light enveloped Lobrin right as Eliot’s barrier finished forming. There was enough of it that it took an entire half second before fiery death descended to raze the earth. The next few moments were complete pandemonium. The utterly deafening roars of fire alone shook his mental fortitude, then his mind was ruthlessly shoved to its knees as the plasma crashed into his barrier with all the force of a massive commercial plane. Mercifully, after only an instant, the plasma passed over his barrier and the blaring that signified the end of times ceased.

  Eliot reeled from the blow nonetheless. He vigorously writhed against the soft, thankfully somehow still cold, dirt while clutching his head in an attempt to hold its shattered pieces together. The pain finally subsided from unbearable to tolerable migraine after a few tortuous minutes, and he dismissed his shaky barrier in relief.

From the Grand Hall, Ellulia watched grimly as Eliot simply sat in the dirt, waiting for something as Penelope kept Lobrin rooted in place. If the surreptitious glances he sent her way while explaining his plan were any indication, he was relying on her to keep Penelope and Henry safe from him literally pulling the gods damned sun out of the sky.

  I know that we have no other options, but did he have to go so above and beyond? How am I supposed to know what Abyssal dangers dropping the sun entailed?

  She silently shuffled behind Henry and Penelope, deeply uncomfortable with the stifling calm before the storm. Eventually, with a healthy amount of convincing on Beelzebub’s part, Ellulia conceded her efforts to never seal her emotions around Eliot. Her entire being sharpened into absolute clarity as the neurotic shawl of her emotions pulled back from her vision. Immediately, she found she could sense the light barrelling towards them from space, as well as the law breaking plasma, only two seconds before impact.

  Ellulia lunged forward to grab the pair in front of her in sync with Eliot’s timing to unravel the solidified blue light. Wrapping them in a protective hug, one in each arm, she pulled them away from the vulnerable position at the mouth of the opening, with a dive to the left. As they hit the unforgiving stone floor, the entire massive structure violently lurched, and continued to quake as the raucous wails of fire and wind boomed and echoed throughout the endless hallways and rooms.

  Even as the world fell into motionless silence, Ellulia waited, poised above her charges like a Cirrus Feline protecting its young. It helped that they were both so haggard in one way or another that the hazardous cacophony rendered them unconscious. When no threats presented themselves, she blithely flowed to two feet and checked on Eliot. A slight, thoughtful frown took residence on her face as she took in the Abyssal landscape, mulling over the best course of action.

  It almost looked as if the courtyard came alive by way of some occult ritual. A conspicuous red-ish orange hue danced in the warped air. Molten stone oozed from the edifices that boxed the courtyard, framing the scene in lethargic lava, slowly encroaching further to swallow it whole. The dirt was replaced with a gleaming sheet of sizzling fulgurite that emitted long, wispy strands of steam— the only exception being the starkly contrasting small dot of ethereal darkness, its body of diaphanous energy waving in some invisible, peaceful winds.

  In the middle of it all was an armored torso suspended in space, and wrapped in red feathers. Its two meter long, completely physical wings slowly fanned out from their curled position, revealing a nearly majestic blazing maine of solid red fire attached to the head and neck of a human with two flaring red eye sockets.

The maniacal laughter bubbling up Eliot’s throat died on his tongue and the rhapsodic elation in his chest spontaneously combusted.

  “He survived that!?” Eliot cried out in disbelief. That isn’t fair! I dropped the sun on him! he continued in the turbulence of his thoughts.

  But Lobrin didn’t intend on giving him any grace period. Not only did he survive, he was filled with more power than ever. The unflappable passive observer in the back of Eliot’s brain noted that this was due to a phenomenon called Concordia Instance. When a Demigod fully exemplifies their law, they enter an Instance of Concordia where they temporarily resonate with their law to such an extent that their law grants them extra authority, depending on the level of resonance.

  Although dubious, there are multiple accounts of Demigods achieving Concordia Instance, and temporarily wielding godly amounts of power. It’s said to give more of a power boost than any God Slaying technique ever created; wether the rumors took Lex ruptor into account, he didn't know.

  Lobrin raised a few meters in the air while extending his wings to their maximum and letting out a sonorous roar. Eliot could feel the weight of the world settling on his shoulders; he wasn’t in the position to fight it. With a cry of pain, his body was pressed into the ground face first. As Lobrin drew closer, he could feel the pressure mounting on his head and torso. He was going to be crushed to death just by being in his presence.

  Suddenly, just as the pressure reached a level too much to bear, it all cleared away with an almost audible gust of wind, and something heavy smashed into the ground a meter ahead of him.

  “This is why everyone hates barbarians,” snarled a voice dripping in disdain. Eliot could hear the soft clack of their footsteps and the drag of clothing on the fulgurite as they approached. “No human worth the air they breathe would give up their sentience in exchange for power.” Eliot lifted himself with shaky arms to look up at his savior.

  “There I was thinking I actually earned that bald skeleton’s respect when he let me in on his secrets and asked for my help,” Celeste Chantelle began with a huff, complaining about something seemingly entirely unrelated. “I thought I must have really made an impression when he told me about the coup d'etat, then he tells me that my only job is to babysit two kids that I thought clearly didn’t need supervision. I was rightfully outraged.”

  She angrily gestured with her wand without skipping a beat. “But the worst part is, I almost failed my one damn job! The one I was supposed to protect was on the floor about to die, and the one I was supposed to keep under control was about to reveal herself to everyone in Evervail.”

  Then, throwing her arms in the air with exasperation, she quickly fired her next few sentences. “But can you blame me? They attacked me during a ritual, and those bastards put five Demigods on me! I mean, I’m worth ten, at least, right? And the ritual was completely ruined, of course! I got so carried away slapping them around that I forgot about you two until that one up there started making some serious mana fluctuations.”

  She seemed to calm down some after her tirade, and took a deep breath before saying, “So, where—” She was cut off when Lobrin unleashed an abrupt sonic barrage, reminding them of his existence.

  “Enough of that.” With the flick of a finger, Lobrin launched into the air. Then, with a hand gesture that resembled turning a dial, he was utterly eviscerated in a maelstrom of blood, bone, and metal shrapnel, that ellicited a sickening squelch.

  “Oh, and Princess? You should really tone that down before someone else notices you,” she casually admonished a second after, placing her hands on her hips.

  Warmth returned to Ellulia’s cold, dispassionate demeanor before she jumped down next to them, somehow landing without a sound. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew, it’s insulting you thought I was that weak! The pitiful display I showed back then was something this one could do,” she irritatedly pined, gesturing to Eliot. “And by the dumb struck look on his face, he hasn’t even figured out how to get past an aura.”

  Ellulia immediately helped Eliot to his feet and leaned him on her shoulder. “If you keep staring in that manner, I’ll start to get jealous, Dear,” she playfully chided him with a bright grin.

  “Right, sorry,” he quickly apologized, tearing his eyes from Celeste, a small flush coloring his face. “It’s just that, I dropped part of the sun on him, and he only got angier.”

  “Oh, you two fancy each other? I didn’t see that one coming, good luck with that. Anyways, that’s a rookie assumption to make. Fire and acid may work if the regeneration is biological, but if it’s from any other source, your best bet is to hit them with something powerful enough that they die in one shot, else they’ll just regenerate,” Celeste readily explained.

  That’s what I was going for, Eliot whined in his thoughts.

  “Anyways, anyways, what the Abyss happened here for things to go so sideways? Where is Reltus and that fat crown helm we all call a king?” she demanded, tapping her foot.

  Ellulia’s mood brightened further in response. Celeste was usually much more composed and withdrawn during the formal events which were the only reason they interacted before this. She was taking a liking to her informal side already.

  “We’ll explain on the way.”