The forces of the cloud cities arrived en masse within the next hour, pretending to be surprised that Eventide was already dead. It was quite obvious what they had done. Jonathan was sure that they had some means of watching the surface. Otherwise, how would they have known when to come, had the original plan stood? Instead, they had used it to shirk their duties, arriving only after Eventide was dead. Honestly, Jonathan didn’t really blame them. None of them would have been able to do anything to Eventide, even towards the end of the battle. If a single punch nearly killed Jonathan, it would be completely fatal to anyone else in his Tier bracket.

  “It seems we are a bit late,” Exandra said caustically, glaring at the other elder of Cantasia. Representatives from all of the cloud cities were there, many of whom were on the same level as the Cantasian elders.

  “So,” Agni fired back. “Had we been here, this battle would have been over in moments. We let Harlowe take all the credit.”

  Jonathan frowned. “Are you delusional? Weren’t all of you afraid of facing Eventide before I arrived? Yet now you’re suddenly confident in killing him?”

  “We are. So what? We are under no obligation to be honest to the likes of you.”

  Something about Agni was rubbing Jonathan the wrong way, and he decided to do something that he often tried not to. Letting his ego determine his actions.

  “If you are superior to me to such a degree, then how about we fight?” Jonathan asked. “You’ve insulted my honor, or whatever the hell people use as a reason for dueling, and I want to defend it.”

  Agni paled slightly. “There is no reason for that. The battle is over. Eventide is dead. Why should more blood be spilled?”

  “You’re so sure that it will be my blood, so what is there to lose? Come on. Put me in my place. I dare you.”

  “You should do it,” Exandra said blandly, clearly trying not to let her satisfaction show. “We all know you are the strongest amongst us. Or at least, that is what you always say. You should be able to win this battle in a heartbeat.”

  Jonathan smiled. “Well? Are you going to listen to your fellow Elder? I have things to do. If we are going to do this, then let’s get it over with as quickly as possible.”

  Agni snarled, but as he looked around to his peers for support, he found shifting eyes and predatory smiles instead. Forced more by his own arrogance than anything else, Agni shifted forwards. Jonathan waited with his arms outstretched, waiting for Agni to make the first move.

  Agni sliced his right hand across the air and a blade of fire emerged, landing in his palm. He gripped it tightly and swung directly at Jonathan’s seemingly exposed chest.

  Jonathan’s hand snapped up faster than Agni could track, blocking the sword with ease. A thin sheath of Void energy completely counteracted the elemental fire, treating the weapon as if it were made out of more mundane materials. He clenched his fist and the sword broke apart into shards of fire. His other fist slammed into Agni’s gut at the same moment, launching him into the sky.

  Agni righted himself, wings of fire emerging from his back. Jonathan raised his hand and brought it down, a veil of Void energy descending from above Agni. His wings winked out and he fell from the sky.

  Jonathan pivoted, and as Agni was about to land, he landed a hammerfist blow on the Elder’s gut. Reality seemed to crack, and Agni flew off into the distance, flying miles before he landed in a twisted heap. He didn’t get up again.

  “Right,” Jonathan said to the stunned crowd. “I’ll be on my way now. I’ll leave it to you to fix up Hollow Dream. Don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Some of the Cantasian elders moved forward to confront Jonathan, but he ignored them, pushing past them to leave. His friend followed him, some of them less contrite about their opinions.

  “Arrogant bastards,” Arkanon grumbled, making sure that he said it loudly enough that everyone heard it. “They don’t realize that they wouldn’t have done anything in that battle.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said. “Our only objective here was to kill Eventide. None of this matters. Let’s just get back to Bloodspill and regroup. I want to check in on Kaloss, and reunite with Hushar and the others.”

  Arkanon nodded. “Alright.”

  ***

  With the death, or at least weakening of the Dream King, the spatial warping of Hollow Dream was gone. It only took about a day to return to Bloodspill, and that was because they ended up heading the wrong way. Jonathan had witnessed the edge of Hollow Dream for the first time. In fact, it was the very first realm’s edge he had seen. The world simply vanished, falling away into the outer darkness of the Void. There was an invisible barrier preventing the Void from encroaching upon the Circle, but other than that, it was very clear that it was the world’s boundary.

  Jonathan had spent a few minutes there contemplating his element, but he wasn’t really able to gain anything out of simply looking at it from a distance. At his stage of mastery, he would need to completely immerse himself in the element to make any sort of gains.

  After looking over the edge of the world, the party had continued on their way, using the boundary to guide back around Hollow Dream and towards the rest of Jonathan’s domain. The disparate realms of the Greater Circle of Sloth arranged themselves in a spiral pattern around the Ash Heaps, with the very first and smallest circle serving as the beginning. Hollow Dream, as the largest, was at the very end of that spiral and the closest to Bloodspill.

  By the time they reached the edge of Bloodspill, the group were getting a bit tired of the nothingness that remained in Hollow Dream after the defeat of the Dream King. Without any monsters to fight, all they could do was keep going back to Bloodspill.

  When they finally reached the border of the drab realm that was the former domain of Avarana, Jonathan was almost relieved when he saw a pack of monsters roaming around. They were far too weak to bother fighting, but it was still a welcome sight. With the sheer level of speed that Jonathan had, along with his monstrous perception, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion if he didn’t make an active effort to suppress it. When he could move miles in the span of seconds, even a minute could feel like an eternity if he truly let loose. The same went for all of the others, even though they were quite a bit weaker than he was.

  As the monsters loped away across the wasteland, Jonathan took in a deep breath. He really needed a break from battle. He was starting to turn into a complete addict. For a normal person, seeing a monster was a terrifying event. Jonathan’s perception was so warped that he saw creatures that could have torn apart entire cities as a simple amusement.

  “We’re back,” Jonathan said softly. He looked over at Eliza. “What do you say that we take another little vacation after we check in? It’s about time.”

  “I think we all should,” Edgar interjected. “Didn’t you say that Avarana’s private keep was well appointed for things like that?”

  Jonathan frowned.

  “Oh, sorry,” Edgar said. “You and Eliza probably want some time to yourselves. I didn’t mean to suggest intruding upon that.”

  “No, there’s plenty of space. I just never think about the rest of you taking time off. What do you guys even do when you’re not fighting?”

  “Much the same as what you two do, I’m sure,” Edgar replied. “We explore the cities, maybe go off on a few excursions into the wilds. Out of all of us, you are probably the most battle-focused. We appreciate the time off.”

  “Even you, Arkanon?” Jonathan asked incredulously, staring at the Uthraki. “I would have thought that you of all people would like training.”

  “I have had centuries of training,” Arkanon explained. “Right now I am trying to bring my level up to match that. Your growth rate is far higher than my own. People do not simply reach Tier 9 in a bit over a year. It normally takes a decade if not longer.”

  “I suppose my perception is a bit warped,” Jonathan admitted. “I understand now.”

  “If we’re finished getting sidetracked,” Eliza said, “my answer to your earlier question is yes. I would be happy to go off for a few days. Maybe even a few weeks? We aren’t in that much of a hurry, right?”

  Jonathan nodded. “With Limit Breaker, I don’t have to focus on leveling up as much as before. I still have a bit to go before it can equalize my power with a higher Tier Circle Lord, but if it could deal with Eventide, I think it won’t be very long. Tier 10 will probably give me enough strength to even the gap.”

  “If that’s settled, maybe we should split up here?” Edgar asked. “You and Eva can go ahead. I know you two are keeping your speed suppressed to let us keep up. Go and meet with Kaloss or whatever it is you wanted to do. We’ll meet you at Avarana’s keep in a few days.”

  “Alright. We really need to find some way to communicate across the distances,” Jonathan said. “I know we always end up finding one another eventually, but it would cut down on a lot of time if we simply could coordinate first.”

  “The sort of communication device that could transmit hundreds of thousands of miles, or maybe millions, and across realms to boot?” Edgar said incredulously. “Something like that just doesn’t exist at this level, at least one that is portable.”

  “Can’t you just put it into a storage device?” Jonathan asked.

  “By not portable, I mean that it’s the size of an entire building,” Edgar corrected. “No storage device you could ever find at your level would hold something like that.”

  “What I’m hearing is that to get the tool that would make it easier for us to get stronger, we need to get stronger in the first place?”

  Edgar smiled. “Is that not the case for everything in this world?”

  “I suppose so. I guess we don’t really need it that badly. Hushar and the others can take care of themselves. We’ll meet up again eventually.”

  “Goodbye,” Edgar said, waving as Jonathan and Eliza started off into the distance.

  Despite how large and sprawling the realm of Bloodspill was, it didn’t take much time for them to find what they were looking for. A stationary hurricane was quite hard to miss, especially when it was situated into the middle of a flat patch of land.

  “We’re really going to need to do something about that hurricane,” Jonathan said. “I know we can get through it, but it might be harder for anyone else.”

  “Who else would be trying to come here?” Eliza asked. “I’m not sure if anyone would want to, given their memories of Avarana.”

  “Well, still. Even if it was just for us, I feel like it would look nicer without the storm concealing it from sight. When we were there before, there wasn’t really anything to see.”

  “There isn’t really anything to see now,” Eliza countered. “Look around you. There’s boulders and gravel and the occasional skeleton. You can’t even see the cities from here.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jonathan replied with a sigh. Let’s just enjoy it for now.”

  The hurricane was massive, so large that the first time Jonathan had tried to bypass it, it had taken him almost an hour. The sideways winds were so strong that they threatened to pull him off his feet. Or at least, they had been last time. Now that Jonathan had another Tier under his belt, he was able to simply walk through the barrier of swirling wind like it was just a stiff breeze.

  It still took far longer than normal to cross through the hurricane, but it was only about ten minutes before Jonathan and Eliza emerged into the paradise within. The mountain Avarana’s keep was set on gleamed in the light of the false sun above. A thundering, sparkling river cascaded down the front of the mountain. It was just like Jonathan remembered.

  A wave of relaxation passed over him as he took in the sight, and for the first time in a while, he let his worries go.

  The next few days passed quickly, but it wasn’t until Edgar and the others arrived that anything really happened. Jonathan and Eliza spent most of that time lounging around, walking around the complex and taking advantage of the unlimited food.

  When Edgar arrived, it was through a vast tunnel carved into the hurricane. His face was red and he was clearly strained from holding the winds back, but he had clearly grown enough to handle it.

  All of the rest of Jonathan’s close companions were with him, as well as Kaloss. The priest of Sarnakthros looked significantly less haggard than before, having acclimated to his new state more effectively. Going from Tier 75 down to sub Tier 10 was a horrific experience, but as the mana density continued to grow, so too could Kaloss.

  Hushar, Tukar, Maranta and Bordeg were also there, having returned from their training in Tartarus. They were all near the peak of Tier 8, on a comparable level to everyone else. Traveling through Hollow Dream had taken a lot of time, time which the Uthraki training in Tartarus had put to great effect.

  The four warriors were wearing suits of glowing red obsidian, an intense inner heat shining out through the plates. It was clearly the result of a skill and not actual armor, as Jonathan could see them as pillars of elemental strength when he looked at through the lens of his element. While they weren’t as powerful as the core fighters who had come to Hollow Dream, they were close enough.

  Jonathan strode down the side of the mountain with Eliza by his side, smiling at the newcomers.

  “Did you accomplish what you wanted?” Jonathan asked Hushar as he neared. “You four gained a lot of levels when we were gone.”

  Hushar nodded, his face invisible under a helmet of dark stone. He quickly banished it, the obsidian sliding back into the rest of the armor. Hushar smiled. “We did. Tartarus was quite valuable for training. We moved on to the next realm when we reached Tier 8. I’m surprised you aren’t higher leveled, though.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Hollow Dream had a lot of challenges that weren’t anything to do with monsters,” Jonathan explained. “We spent a while traveling.”

  “But you beat Eventide in the end. That’s all that really matters,” Hushar said. “How was the fight? Edgar told me it was close, but that he wasn’t really near enough to properly watch the battle.”

  Jonathan’s face fell slightly as he remembered the brutal fight. “Right. I’ll tell you all when you come in. Let’s regroup a bit before we decided what to do next.”

  Everyone made their way into the keep, gathering in the food hall. Various types of elementals traveled in between the kitchen and dining area, carrying platters so full of food that they bent. Around bites, Jonathan told the story of Hollow Dream.

  “So he crushed your heart but you somehow survived? How is that even possible?” Hushar asked.

  “I should have died there,” Jonathan admitted. “It was my new skill that saved me.”

  “You really do have the gods’ own luck,” Hushar said, shaking his head. “But anyway, what comes next? Do we know anything about the next Circle?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Well, that might be a good place to start,” Hushar continued. “I guess it would have been hard to do any research in Hollow Dream.”

  “Let’s just enjoy the next few days,” Eliza suggested. “We have all the time in the world.”

  Chapter 42

  At the end of their little vacation, everyone packed up their admittedly meager belongings and headed out through the tornado. Using Edgar’s Air manipulation was the easiest way to get through, even more effective than Jonathan’s brute strength. They marched through the swirling tunnel of gale force winds, coming out the other side barely a few minutes later.

  From there it was a relatively quick race to the nearest city, easily noticeable due to the soaring spire in the center. Avarana’s former base of operations loomed over the landscape, the only landmark between here and civilization.

  Going at full speed, it only took a few minutes to get back to the city. The tens of thousands of miles between the hurricane and the city were eaten up by the hungry strides of the powerful warriors, vanishing like the mist before the morning sun.

  They reached the city, heading in through one of the open gates. The guards recognized them, letting them through without saying a word. Once inside the city, Jonathan and Edgar split off, looking for a library. The others fanned out, asking locals what they knew about the next Circle of the Hells. Because of how large the city was, they set a rendezvous point at Avarana’s tower, the easiest building in the city to find.

  It took a few minutes to find a library, a small, somewhat musty building nestled between a butcher’s shop and a tailor. The only thing even indicating that it was a library was the faded wooden cutout of a book above the door.

  Jonathan cautiously opened the door. It creaked loudly as he did so, leading to a scuffling noise in the back. The inside of the building was incredibly dark, lit only by a few candles perched in precarious locations. He could see perfectly, but the candles did seem like a fire hazard. Books were piled high throughout the room, with only a few shelves arrayed against the wall adding some modicum of order.

  In the back a disheveled man emerged from behind stacks of books, squinting through the darkness. He wore spectacles, a rarity in a world where people could see for miles as if it were a few feet.

  “Hello?” the librarian called out. “Who are you? There hasn’t been anyone in here for weeks!”

  “Do you have any books on the next Circle after Hollow Dream?” Jonathan asked. “Your library is the first one we found.”

  The librarian nodded. “Ah, scholars, are we? I do have a book on the Loop. It’s very rare and easily damaged, though. If you want to read it, you will have to do so here. Also… I might have misplaced it. You’ll have to look if you want to find it.”

  Surprised that the dingy library actually had what they were looking for, Jonathan and Edgar split up, searching through the stacks of books. The librarian watched them, somewhat bemused at the whole interaction. His head twitched every now and again. He didn’t seem entirely sane, now that Jonathan thought about it, but he wasn’t any sort of danger.

  Eventually, Jonathan found what he was looking for. A small, tattered book with an infinity sign on it. The title

  was half worn off, but he could still see the word Loop written on it.

  “Edgar?” Jonathan called out. “I found it. Come over here.”

  Edgar quickly headed over, his face lighting up.

  Jonathan opened the book, a layer of dust falling off. He blew some more dust off of the pages. The words were faded, but Jonathan could still easily read them with his enhanced eyesight. The first page had a picture on it. The color was gone, but the ink was still there. It depicted a coiling snake-like creature that looked somewhat like Granath. The only difference was the lack of a humanoid torso.

  Underneath it was a caption. Aluran the Ouroborous.

  Jonathan already knew the name of the Circle Lord from his Hellbreaker quest, but he hadn’t known anything about what the monster actually was.

  He leafed over to the next page.

  The Loop is a twisted labyrinth of spatial distortions and the ruins of an ancient, technologically advanced society. The hubris of that civilization lead to their downfall, the explosion of a powerful weapon destroying their cities and forever scarring the landscape. In the meantime, Aluran rose to power, ruling the Loop with an iron fist. He possess nearly unmatched mastery of space and time, at least for his level, leading to any would-be assassins quickly discovering the errors of their ways.

  His legions of followers, who call themselves the Order of the Ouroborous, make up most of the inhabitants of the Loop. One of Aluran’s philosophies is that a true ruler controls his people absolutely. Few rebels remain alive in the Loop, and only the most fervent of his supporters are able to make anything of their lives.

  The next few pages were covered in illustrations of various locations in the Loop. All of them seemed to be lifted straight out of the pages of a sci-fi novel. Strange metal gateways filled with shimmering portals of energy. The ruins of towering skyscrapers that must have been as large as mountains in their prime. Vast roads traversing a parched desert, the concrete making them up cracked and worn. Even though all of the color had been leeched out of the book by time, the pictures were still clear enough to study in great detail.

  “Do you find the book interesting?” the shopkeeper asked, his voice slightly singsongy. Somehow he had made his way behind both Jonathan and Edgar without either of them noticing.

  “Yes,” Jonathan replied hesitantly. “It’s exactly what we were looking for.”

  The bookshop owner nodded, smiling a bit too wide for what his face should have supported. His teeth were pointed and glistened in the light.

  “What are you?” Edgar asked, taking a step back. “Some kind of monster or demon?”

  The shopkeeper kept smiling. His feet seemed to crumble away into dust, quickly followed by the rest of his body. The dust whirled around, the individual motes arranging themselves into the shapes of letters. They weren’t letters from any alphabet that Jonathan recognized, even with the assistance of the System translation.

  Those letters gathered together into the shape of a large book, about three feet long and half a foot wide. A mouth emerged from the center of the book. “It has been too long since I have feasted,” a hissing voice said, the mouth moving in sync with the words. “I sense great knowledge in both of you. One of magic and the other of a world beyond Telvaria. Tell me about Earth, Jonathan Harlowe. Tell me or I shall devour you and pick the scraps of your mind apart in search of the truth!”

  Jonathan curled his lip. “How come Avarana didn’t kill you by now? Have you just been living in this bookshop, waiting for people to enter?”

  “I am a Script Elemental,” the living book said. “My prerogative is to illuminate the world with the beacon of my knowledge. To amass that sort of knowledge, sacrifices must be made.”

  Jonathan sighed and snapped his fingers. A tiny nova of Void energy went off in the center of the Script Elemental’s body. A few of the letters shifted, but nothing else happened.

  The elemental laughed and burst into motion, flying straight towards Jonathan. Its mouth distended, the teeth growing darker and more defined the closer it got. Jonathan raised a shield of elemental power, placing it in the way of the monster. It paused for a brief moment, before starting to push through, the letters making up its body phasing out of reality.

  “The kingdom of wisdom has no borders,” the Script Elemental said. “The only impediments to entry are within one’s own mind.”

  “Hold it for a bit longer!” Edgar shouted, beginning to gather a whirling sorb of wind within his hands. “I think I know why you can’t destroy it!”

  Jonathan nodded and thickened the shield. Rather than try to push the elemental outwards, he pulled it in, trapping sections of its body within the Void matrix.

  Edgar took a deep breath and blew outwards, the force of his breath providing the catalyze for his technique. All of the air in the room collapsed down into the sphere of wind above Edgar’s hand. As if it were a puppet with its strings cut, the Script Elemental fell from the air, landing in a heap of grayish ash.

  Coughing emerged from the heap as a hand pushed its way out. The Script Elemental dragged itself out of the heap, bits of its original body coming back together as they were taken from the pile.

  Jonathan was already standing before the elemental before it could fully reconstitute. He rarely met foes who could resist the Void, but he had a trick up his sleeve for situations like this. The Script Elemental’s unnatural durability was likely tied to its ephemeral nature. The Void in its basic form couldn’t do anything because for all intents and purposes, the Script Elemental had already been destroyed.

  Jonathan used Maw of the Void and the elemental vanished like it had never been there. The only traces of its existence were the remnants of ash on the ground that hadn’t yet reincorporated into the elemental.

  “What just happened?” Jonathan asked. “Why was that Elemental living here?”

  Edgar shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe it was formed from the conceptual energy of the books that had been here for centuries? Script Elementals are extremely rare, even amongst hybrid elementals. This is the first one I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now. We found the book and I doubt the elemental will care about us taking it now. Maybe we should look for more? Though there probably aren’t many books about the Loop in a Circle two Tiers below it.”

  They quickly browsed through the store, with Edgar using his elemental abilities to sift through the books. Neither of them found anything else about the loop.

  There were a few other books that piqued their interest, however, on various subjects like magical theory and elemental cultivation. Jonathan ended up taking a book about the Void. It was purely theoretical, as the author had never encountered a Void elementalist before, but a lot of the information was very similar to what Jonathan himself had discovered. The author had been a respected academic back in Telvaria, but his experiments on the nature of the Void had ended up with him being punished by the gods. He had managed to open a temporary rift to the Void, but was unable to control it. An entire swathe of countryside had been obliterated. In the last few hours before his death, he had written down everything he knew on his own skin, carrying it with him the Hells. Upon arriving there, he had written his magnum opus.

  Edgar had also found a book pertaining to his elemental abilities. This one was naturally much more practical than Jonathan’s own book, as the author had been an actual Air mage. It was filled with all sorts of breathing and cycling techniques, as well as advice on where to find the best sources of elemental energy.

  With their prizes in hand, the two men left the bookshop. As soon as they passed through the doorway, the bookshop vanished as if it had never been there. All that was left was an alleyway rambling off into the darkness between the two buildings that had stood on either side of the shop.

  A bit confused about the strange experience, Jonathan and Edgar kept going, heading towards the rendezvous point.

  They waited at the base of Avarana’s tower for the next hour, devoting the time to reading their new books. Jonathan put the book about the Loop aside, as he wanted to dive into it with everyone else present. Instead, he started on the book about the Void. One of the chapters was about Void manipulation, and while the author hadn’t had much success on that front, he had discovered a lot about the nature of the Void.

  The first bits Jonathan understood, about the different types of Void energy. Negation, Consumption and Cessation were all familiar to him. The author admitted that he hadn’t been able to isolate other types, but he was certain that they existed. The writing was extremely dense, as was most writing in books meant for higher Tier System users. It would have been as long as an entire series had it been printed at the normal size, but the minuscule scrawl of the author allowed for much more information to be packed into it. It was clearly the work of a master at his craft, as all of the legibility was preserved while the letters were smaller than grains of dust.

  The others arrived eventually, but the looks on their faces told Jonathan that they hadn’t found anything useful.

  “Any luck?” he called out.

  “Not really,” Eliza replied. “There were a few people who knew a little about the Loop, but all they could tell us was the name of the Circle Lord and that he was a worm of some sort.”

  Jonathan smiled at her. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that Edgar and I found something. We had a run in with a strange elemental posing as the owner of a bookshop. There was a single book about the Loop there.”

  “An elemental posing as person?” Eliza asked, frowning. “Why would such an advanced form of elemental be in a city like this? Wouldn’t Avarana have destroyed it long ago?”

  “It was a Script Elemental,” Edgar explained. “They become more intelligent as they absorb more knowledge. Power has nothing to do with it. Other than having a body that is extremely difficult to destroy, they aren’t very powerful.”

  Eliza nodded. “Huh. The more you know. Anyway, what was in the book you found? Anything useful?”

  “I haven’t really looked through it yet,” Jonathan admitted, “but it seems to be pretty comprehensive. It has a few maps of the Loop as well as a lot of history. You know, I wonder how the author found all of that out. It’s not like people traveled between the Hell Circles before I started freeing them.”

  “Maybe the author was working for Avarana?” Edgar suggested. “She would have known what the Loop was like.”

  “Perhaps, but why was that book secreted away in a dingy bookshop with an elemental guarding it? From what I could tell, that monster killed everyone who entered. What’s the point of the book being there if nobody would ever read it?” Edgar shrugged. “That could be the point. Avarana might have killed the author, and tried to destroy all of his books. An ally could have spirted away a few copies and hidden them around the city.”

  “Let’s crack open the book, shall we?” Arkanon asked, a bit impatiently. “I want to know what we will be going up against.”

  Jonathan pulled the book out of his storage device and put away the treatise on the Void. He leafed through the pages, showing everyone the drawings and maps. He went a bit further than he had in the bookshop, and eventually found a page that seemed relevant to what Arkanon had asked about.

  Forces of the Loop

  Under the command of Aluran are countless warriors, mages and even wild monsters, leashed by fear. There are eight divisions of Aluran’s army, each representing a portion of an infinity sign. Even the number of divisions is significant, as the number eight is closest to infinity in shape. Aluran’s closest allies serve directly at his whims, commanding his armies as he sees fit. While they are still mortal, Aluran’s mastery over space and time allows him to reincarnate his allies, raising them from birth to be the same people they once were. He has perfected this art over the eons, finding the most efficient ways to cultivate power within his followers. Other than his army, Aluran has control over much of the salvaged technology that once made the Loop a paradise. He wields weapons that can summon natural disasters and uses artifacts to watch the entire realm.

  The next few pages contained a wealth of information about the eight division commanders, but it delved into irrelevance at times. The basic points were that the division commanders didn’t have names and instead were numbered one through eight in order of their strength. Breakdowns of their power sets were included within the chapter, but they weren’t exactly helpful. All Jonathan could make out was that half of them were warriors, and half were mages. They all utilized either Dark or Time elemental powers, with the strongest commander, One, using both.

  It was a similar situation to Bloodspill, with a Circle Lord ruling over an empire that was held together by loyal subordinates and fear. The only difference was the Circle itself. While Bloodspill was mostly an empty wasteland, with the majority of the population living in the massive fortress cities, the Loop was still covered in the ruins of previous civilizations. Most of the infrastructure remained intact, and even some of the ancient technology worked.

  “Interesting,” Eliza said. “This whole world has been entirely fantasy based as far as I can tell, but it looks like this Loop is even more advanced than Earth. Or was at least.”

  “Maybe we’ll find something useful for going forward?” Jonathan asked. “I really think a communication system would be helpful, considering the distances we have to cover these days. Magical means might not work, but technology isn’t as limited sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?” Edgar asked. “Less limited in what way?”

  “Well, a telephone back on Earth could connect people that were thousands of miles away, but a similar level of communication here would require all sorts of magical power here.”

  Edgar nodded. “Oh, I see what you mean. It would take at least a Tier 5 communication device to link people across those sorts of distances. It just scales exponentially from there.”

  “Why is that?” Jonathan asked. “Why is it so difficult to communicate with magic? I would feel like it would be easier.”

  Edgar shrugged. “So would I. Magic is supposed to be a miraculous force that allows the user to do pretty much anything. However, the key limit with things like this is the ambient elemental energy. The longer a signal travels through space that is occupied by mana and elemental energy, the weaker it becomes. It is somewhat like firing an arrow. It travels more or less straight for a little bit, but gravity quickly brings it down to earth.”

  “Oh. I get it now. You need enough magical energy to overcome the friction across large distances. That means using far more than is efficient.”

  “It is fine for much higher level System users or artifacts because they can channel more power than exists in an area of ambient mana of the same Tier. At lower Tiers there just isn’t enough energy available.”

  “I used to be able to communicate through dimensional boundaries,” Kaloss said. “At Tier 75 I was strong enough to overcome most natural laws. All I had to do was create a conduit robust enough to withstand the pressure of the natural world. Depending on where they linked to, some were more or less permanent.”

  Edgar turned to him. “That sounds extremely useful. Is there any chance you can replicate something like that at your current level of power?”

  Kaloss shook his head. “No. I have the knowledge, but it is mostly a matter of power. The procedure is quite simple. I just don’t have the strength to carry it out.”

  “Alright,” Edgar said. “So we will be better served searching through the Loop for something that will let us keep in touch.”

  “We’re going to need to get a lot stronger before we can go there,” Jonathan warned. “I think it’s time to return to Tartarus. I’m quite interested in seeing the Tier 9 realm.”