“So much has happened here…” Eliza said, striding over to the edge of the path. “It’s only been a bit over a month.”

  “People in the Hells work fast,” Jonathan said with a shrug. “When everyone is like a machine, construction is very quick.”

  Eliza nodded her agreement. “Let’s find out what they’ve been up to, then.”

  Jonathan started down the hill, before smirking. He had a better idea in mind. Tensing his muscles, Jonathan gathered his stamina to his legs. With a crackling boom, he leaped off the ledge, shattering the ground beneath him. Like a comet, he hurtled through the air, surrounded in a mantle of Voidlight.

  Behind him, Eliza sighed, and followed suit. The two warriors sailed through the skies, landing a few moments later in Arkanon’s training field. With a great splattering of mud, they crashed down. Arkanon tensed, already gathering the power of his Supernova Fist skill. As soon as he saw who had arrived, he canceled the technique, and grinned.

  “There you are! What took you so long?” A sardonic smile appeared on his face. “Oh… I see.”

  Jonathan frowned, before realizing what Arkanon was implying. “Nothing like that,” he hurriedly said. “We were scouting out the realm. There's a lot you guys need to know.”

  “Scouting out the realm. Huh. Never heard that one before.”

  One of the trainees raised a hand. “Are we dismissed, Lord Arkanon?”

  Arkanon turned, a scowl forming. “You’re dismissed when I say so! Keep training!”

  “Should we take this conversion somewhere more private?” Eliza asked.

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  Arkanon shook his head. “If you two have some valuable information about the Greater Circle of Sloth, all of those who are going to fight and die there need to know it.”

  “Gather up our soldiers, then,” Jonathan declared. “Let’s get this invasion force ready.”

  A few hours later, Jonathan stood on a pillar of obsidian, raised by Maranta so that he could better address the crowds gathered before him. The rest of his closest allies stood behind him. An army of this size should have taken days to gather, but as nobody above Tier 2 needed to eat or drink, supplies were limited to whatever the soldiers needed to carry. It was very easy to gather a large force in a short amount of time.

  There were over a hundred thousand soldiers arrayed in the streets of the Oozing Bastion, with the most powerful closest to the front. None of them were Tier 4, but all were poised on the brink. Just a single Tier 5 kill, split between them, would probably push them into a new realm of power.

  Jonathan paced back and forth for a few seconds, before speaking. “Eliza and I have surveyed the Greater Circle of Sloth. It’s a uniquely dangerous place, but also one with great opportunities.” He raised a hand, and a bolt of crackling purple lightning arced up into the heavens, before exploding outwards for miles in every direction. “We both reached Tier 5 in a matter of weeks, and I believe that you can as well. Leveling is easy there, especially if you know what you’re doing.”

  “And we know what we’re doing,” Eliza said, flexing her own aura. “I think you all can get up to a similar level in no time at all.”

  A cheer rang out from the crowd, deafening in its volume. The lungs of Tier 3s were nothing to be scoffed at, and the noise was like thunder. Jonathan smiled, and opened the realm portal at the base of the pillar. Before anyone stepped through, he tried something new. Enlarging the portal. Normally, it was about ten feet wide, but seeing as it didn’t take any of his own energy to use, the maximum size was still a mystery.

  He raised his hands to the sky, as if imploring the heavens to aid him. As he did so, the portal slowly widened, propelled by his will. A few gasps escaped the soldiers as he worked. Closing his eyes, Jonathan looked deep within, finding the Divinity within himself to catalyze this whole thing. All of this was theoretical, but it seemed like it was working. Rather than draw from any sort of mastery or prior knowledge, the portal instead worked based on his total power.