"How?"

Arath couldn't wrap his head around events that led to this situation. His head, lying on the floor, was like a tree in the middle of a wildfire, dozens of people fought around his body and one by one they were going to end up in the same situation. He tried to block the river of blood by putting his hands over the wound but to no avail, within a blink of an eye a not so small pool of blood formed. His death was not going to be fast and it seemed to Arath that the Tower wanted to see him suffer before he could close his eyes for the last time.

"How? How did he do that?" Arath kept repeating this sentence until his mouth slowly filled up with blood.

The answer to his question hit him like a rampaging blestol. The Sound Elementalist was walking from one enemy to the other surprising them with a backstab, but when Arath focused to understand how it was possible he realised the source of his opponent's strength. The Sound Elementalist was manipulating space around him by sending sound waves that confused their enemy's senses and allowed him to sneak up on them undetected.

'So that is the power of a Hero that can manifestate their element, even worse is the fact that this is no basic element but one of the most complex. Scary. I wonder if I could be this strong if I managed to overcome basic level.' He thought and started to give up on any hope.

In the same moment he saw Elizabeth, with the corner of his eye, rushing towards him. She was tired and her armor was tattered but an undying flame of determination in her eyes made his heart pound faster. She raised flames around Arath's body and, without a flinch, shot out a small ball of weak fire towards him. He opened his eyes wide and was about to throw the most intense and horrifying curses the Tower has ever heard when the flame engulfed his stomach for a second. Yet, instead of cold touch of death, he felt a relief, although it was painful, he could now think straight. When the flame burnt out he finally understood Elizabeth's intentions.

'She gave me time, I need to think of something real quick.' He closed his eyes and cut himself off completely from the outside world.

The fire might have stopped the bleeding for a while but that didn't mean he wasn't going to die in few minutes if he couldn't come up with something incredibly game-changing.

'Eureka!' He would exclaim if he could still speak.

Without wasting more time he focused completely on awaking his body. His plan was simple - awake as much as he could and try to break through to the next level. Depending on one's element side effects would occur whenever a breakthrough from the basic level was achieved. Sometimes, if the elementalist was too weak, they could suffer a horrible death, sometimes nothing happened, but in some cases the person would be granted amazing control over the element for a short while.

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He focused on his left hand as the right one would be occupied by his sword anyway. Firstly humerus bone and once done with that, turn for radius bone arrived and before Arath realised he had already awakened almost everything he wanted and had to make a decision on how to procceed with his hands. After a while of contemplation he decided on awakening just his thumb for now and was done with that in no time too. He couldn't believe how quickly he was advancing and for a moment got scared that he was just dreaming but when he opened his eyes and returned to the world of living he quickly realised it was way too bloody for it to be a dream.

He lost all strength in his legs and was slowly becoming too weak to even think, the only thing that kept him awake was the pain in his stomach from the flame. He wasn't sure whether to thank or curse Elizabeth for her methods but there was no time to think about it. Right now he had to figure out what to do to break through from the basic level. To his knowledge it required one to force their magical energy out of their body and somehow still control it. His Element was the strongest when controlled by hands, at least that is what was generally thought, so he focused on doing that. He raised his hand a little and tried with every single thought to enslave his energy in order to order it around. His veins almost exploded from the pressure he put on his hand and bones were on the verge of cracking when a sharp pain in his arm broke the focus. A short and thin arrow pierced his body and flew through, paying no attention to the suffering it caused. He lost any control over his hand as the limb just folded and hit his head.

Arath screamed from frustration and spat out a mouthful of saliva when to his surprise he noticed a weak wisp of magical energy flowing out from the wound on his arm. Due to the enormous amount of energy accumulated in his arm and the pressure he put on it, as soon as it found a way out it just poured out from it. Arath, whose hopes had been recently crushed and reincarnated over and over again, grasped this last line of hope and did his best to not let it escape. His mind swung into high gear and was close to imploding from the pressure but after few seconds that felt like hours he could finally move the elemental energy with his will.

That revelation stroke him like a boulder as every single particle and every atom was easy to spot for Arath. He felt like that place belonged to him and he was the owner of the space and time, something on his forehead tried to tear through his skin and tear his head apart but no matter how hard it tried the best it could do is cause immense pain.

"It's all or nothing now." He said as he tried to implement his best plan to reality.

He tried to force the air behind the enemy commanders into an incredibly small area from which nothing could escape, which was known to Elementalists as Dimensional Bags. The more particles entered the place the bigger pressure. Even though it was almost impossible to control them after few seconds, Arath forced even more atoms inside until it became unstable. In that very moment he used his ability to make the space even smaller and even before he was done, a gigantic explosion shook the cave and instantly wiped out everyone close to the source of it.

"I FUCKING MADE IT!" He shouted and immediately fell on the ground unconscious.