Zathrax watched, madness burning in its unseeing eyes as it felt the power of its god devouring the world on a conceptual level. The Eternal Flame had chosen it so long ago that Zathrax could barely remember a time before that. Its mind had been hollowed out by madness and scouring flame, transforming it into nothing more than a vessel for an extradimensional being’s will.
Only, doubt was beginning to cloud the divine surety its mastery had imparted. Few monsters in the Rim were able to stand up to the boundless might of the Eternal Flame, and only those with their own elemental patrons or special circumstances could consider themselves Zathrax’s equal. It had rampaged across the realm of the Umber Trolls once before, back when the boundaries between civilization and the Rim had been less secure. It had taken the combined force of nations’ strongest warriors to beat Zathrax back, and even then it had taken dozens to the grave before its defeat.
The might of the Eternal Flame should have atomized this new challenger and his allies in the blink of an eye, but to Zathrax’s surprise, the newcomer was able to survive.
Jonathan strode through the fading flames, the remnants of the inferno too weak to burn him. Loops of purple light gathered around his fingers, forming a second pair of gauntlets around his own. Clenching his fists, Jonathan pulsed his Divinity, empowering Wrath of the Void. With an almighty leap, he propelled himself towards Zathrax like a bullet.
Cocking his fist back, Jonathan channeled all of his physical strength into his arm, stamina flowing into his fist like crimson lightning. He arrived faster than Zathrax could react, driving his fist into the center of the raptor’s chest. Melted scales tore like paper before the strike and his fist sank deep into flesh. Zathrax’s innards were blisteringly hot, burning Jonathan through his gauntlet. He ignored the pain, loosing the elemental energy surrounding his fists.
Zathrax let out a pained cry as its chest was blown open, chunks of flesh and rivers of molten blood falling to the ground.
The raptor stumbled as Jonathan finished his strike, knocking the titanic monster off balance. As Zathrax fell, a warcry erupted from behind the monster, Arkanon, Hushar and Tukar already waiting there. Hushar and Tukar summoned great swords of shining obsidian, the edges hotter than the surface of a star. Arkanon’s fists glowed as he used Supernova Fist, driving it up towards his enemy.
Before Zathrax hit the ground, the combined efforts of the Uthraki warrior sent the monster hurtling into the sky, two gaping cuts carved into its flesh on both sides of a massive crater, charred and blackened by Arkanon’s strike.
Eliza hovered in the air above the beast, having flown there mere moments earlier. Her sword, Sevras, let out a howl like a hurricane as she loosed all of the stored energy contained within it. A vast blade of air descended on Zathrax, the edge an atom thick and as tough as diamond. It carved through the monster, slicing off a thick chunk of bloody meat before glancing off a bone hidden under the surface.
With the tempo of the battle now under their control, Jonathan and his allies mercilessly attacked Zathrax, not letting it fall to the ground. Edgar and Maranta got in on the action, and Eva made her own contribution, skewering the raptor’s open wounds with her spear.
Waves of searing flame burst from the monster over and over again, but Jonathan was waiting to absorb the brunt of the force. While the power came from the Eternal Flame, it still needed Zathrax’s control and Jonathan made sure that the monster was too dazed to do anything more than screech in protest. The battle was all but over at that point.
Jonathan’s fist descended towards Zathrax’s head, preparing to deal the final blow to the beleaguered monster. Before his fist could make contact, however, an intense sense of danger screamed at him to move back. Jonathan trusted his instincts, which had carried him through dozens of battles at this point, and withdrew.
“Get away from Zathrax!” he roared as he did so, promoting his companions to make some space. Barely a second passed before the monster exploded. A pillar of flame reached upwards like a finger, piercing the clouds of smoke. A shockwave rippled out a moment later, clearing the obfuscation for almost a hundred miles in every direction.
“FOLLOWERS OF MY CREED!” a voice boomed from the epicenter of the explosion. “ONE OF MY CHOSEN HAS FALLEN! AVENGE ZATHRAX! DESTROY THE NONBELIEVERS! CLAIM THEIR BODIES AS FUEL FOR MY FLAME!”
The voice of what could only be the Eternal Flame was far clearer than the murmur Jonathan had heard earlier, yet was still clouded with the single-minded insanity of the flickering flames. All the elemental, or god, or entity or whatever the Eternal Flame was, desired was the absolute consumption of everything in existence. It was almost like the Void in many ways, though far more brutish in its ways. It encompassed a tiny fraction of what the element of Fire meant, while Jonathan was the wielder of the Void as a whole.
His thoughts were interrupted by a cacophony of bellows, howls, screeches and rumbling roars from the horizon. Whatever the Eternal Flame was, all that mattered in this instant was that it seemed to have many followers.
“Shit,” Jonathan swore. “We need to get out of here. We can look over notifications later.”
“Agreed,” Eliza said worriedly, looking out into the distance. Nothing was visible yet but given the speeds higher Tier System users could move at, enemies would be there within the next few minutes.
The only way that seemed safe was the direction they had come from, as the roars of rage had covered the entire horizon everywhere else.
“Looks like we were just lucky not seeing any other monsters,” Jonathan said grimly, breaking into a run. “There must be dozens of them out there.”
“Hey, at least we’ll be able to get some good levels out of this,” Eliza said. “I leveled up four times from that fight and I didn’t even deal the finishing blow.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, but realized that he too had leveled up significantly. At his Tier, levels came rarely unless one fought enemies far stronger than themselves. It seemed that Zathrax had qualified, evidenced by the notification he had received.
You have slain Zathrax, Chosen of the Eternal Flame!
You have leveled up!(x3)
Jonathan hadn’t been expecting much more than a single level, anticipating weeks of grinding out in the Rim to come anywhere close to Tier 10. At this rate he could get there in under a week, not accounting for the potential difficulties Sarnakthros had hinted at in actually reaching that Tier.
Speaking of Sarnakthros…
“You know anything about the Eternal Flame?” Jonathan asked, sending part of his awareness to his corespace.
Sarnakthros was slow to respond, but as the vast, abyssal bulk of the god emerged from the depths of Jonathan’s soul, it was with an answer ready to go.
“Yes,” he said. “Every corner of reality intersects with one or more elemental planes. They are like pocket dimensions in which the pure expression of a single element can be found. The only creatures that live there are elementals, and some of them are stronger than others.”
“I’m guessing this Eternal Flame is one of the stronger ones?” Jonathan asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes. It is troubling that you have encountered it so early in your journey,” Sarnakthros replied. “The Eternal Flame is one of the so-called Elemental Hegemons. Every element has dozens of different interpretations, if not hundreds, and the most powerful elementals that arise from the chaos of elemental energy are attuned to one or more of those aspects. The Eternal Flame represents both the endless hunger of Fire, as well as its inevitability. One may douse a flame, but as long as a spark remains, all it takes is fuel to create a world-devouring inferno.”
“Is this going to be a problem going forward?” Jonathan asked. “It seems like the Eternal Flame isn’t really able to do much in this realm.”
Sarnakthros nodded. “I would recommend against journeying to any of the elemental planes of Fire in the future, at least until you have surpassed Tier 90. The Elemental Hegemons are unable to leave their realms, on account of the ambient energy of the material world being too sparse, but within their domains they are second only to True Gods.”
“Alright,” Jonathan replied. “Any tips for dealing with its servants? The power Zathrax was able to channel was quite disproportionate to its Tier and level.”
“As with many problems of the elemental variety, a good dose of Void energy will deal with the issue,” Sarnakthros suggested. “The Eternal Flame represents an especially potent strain of conceptual Fire, but the Void is the ultimate weapon against all forms of energy. If you can use it effectively, developing techniques to specifically counter the Eternal Flame, victory in this battle will be assured.”
Thanking Sarnakthros, Jonathan returned his attention to the real world and explained the situation to the rest of his group. The common consensus was that they needed to find a safe place to hide out for a bit and plan. Even Jonathan wasn’t confident in taking care of hordes of monsters at a similar level of power to Zathrax. His abilities were great at taking out groups of lower level fodder, but his true specialty was taking out beings beyond his own level of power. Even Limit Breaker, arguably his strongest ability, would be next to useless here. Jonathan was stronger than any of the Rim denizens individually, and the skill only worked against single opponents.
As Sarnakthros had said, it was time for Jonathan to develop his abilities further. He had a suspicion that the answer would lie in his Runes, long neglected in favor of his far more accessible Void energy. While he wasn’t expecting any breakthroughs without weeks or months of dedicated Runecrafting, Jonathan was sure that he could find something he had missed.
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***
The next few days passed in the blink of an eye, taken up by skirmishes with the local monsters and training. Jonathan refreshed his mastery of his various runes, trying to use them in new ways. The truth of the matter was that their power lagged significantly behind his other abilities relative to how much of his resources he needed to put in them. The only one that was of any sort of relevance in combat was his Vengefire Array, and that was composed of multiple runes as well as needing him to be hurt in order to properly use it. It was intensely draining upon his Divinity, even with the heightened regeneration of that resources Jonathan had gained from fusing it with the Void.
As for his basic runes, none of them had achieved much against the monster Jonathan had used them on, none of whom had been as strong as Zathrax. He was beginning to realize that his fighting style and strength was propped up to a large degree on inflated stats, his essentially infinite elemental energy and his abilities as a Lesser God. That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t worked hard for that strength, but his potential was much higher than he was taking advantage of. The only thing standing in his way was time, and that was something he had all too little of.
After some futile tinkering with his current runes, Jonathan set his eyes on a different path. Extending the amount of time he had to train. With his host of powerful skills, all manner of higher Tier runes were waiting for him to pluck out of the skill matrices and use. Surely there was some way to create a time dilation effect, giving him the opportunity to train without worrying about his enemies outpacing his rate of growth.
His main concern was that trying to develop something like this would end up taking more time than he saved.
After hours of perusing his skills for the runes he needed, Jonathan discovered that few if any of his abilities had any sort of connection to the concept of time. None of his simpler, lower rarity skills had any of the runes that he needed and it was not until he moved onto the more complicated skills that he made any progress.
Within the network of tens if not hundreds of thousands of runes that made up the pattern for Limit Breaker were a few promising ones. Namely those that transferred power from an outside source into Jonathan, increasing his power, but most importantly, his speed. While he had initially thought that was simply a result of stealing his foes’ power, it wasn’t that simple. Jonathan had never met anyone with a similar ability to Limit Breaker, as it was an incredibly powerful and rare skill. Even the lesser version had still been Ancient rarity, meaning that it operated off of concepts far more potent and intricate than the simple theft of energy from others.
What Jonathan ended up finding out was that the skill actually worked by creating a localized field of empowerment that only worked on himself. Instead of altering his stats, it adjusted the laws of physics around him to make his strikes hit harder and faster, while his enemy’s abilities suffered because of the power drain. It was beyond his meager understanding of runes, but it was something that he could recreate on a far more basic level. His hope was that increasing levels of amplification would allow for more time to experiment, further empowering the ability. It wasn’t something he would be able to push very far with the limited time he had, but it was a good project to work on while he and his party planned out their monster hunts.
The necessity of leveling forced Jonathan to leave his experiments behind after a few days, taking a break to search for another monster on the level of Zathrax. Because of the high level and abnormally high power of the Rim dwellers, it wasn’t necessary to constantly hunt them as one might do with lesser foes. A single kill was enough to bring multiple levels, as opposed to hundreds if not thousands of kills required if Jonathan were hunting weaker monsters.
The sounds of the Eternal Flame’s servants continued to echo across the Rim, the beasts seemingly tireless in their desire to broadcast their enmity far and wide. However, either the Eternal Flame wasn’t entirely capable of directing its hosts or it and its chosen monsters were a bit behind on the intelligence curve, as none of them had come close to the party’s hiding spot. They seemed content to bulldoze their way across the wastes, occasionally picking fights with other monsters to pass the time.
It was because of this belligerence that Jonathan was able to find isolated prey. A towering, golem-like elemental made from liquid rock oozed over the ground in pursuit of a faster but weaker saurian beast that looked like a triceratops the size of a small hill. Its horns were surrounded by a crackling web of lightning, but by the looks of the burn scars all over its scales, it hadn't done much against its pursuer.
The former of the monsters was one of the Eternal Flame’s bonded beasts, and Jonathan knew that he would need to be quick about taking it out because as soon as the Elemental Hegemon lurking in the distant planes of Fire detected them, it would broadcast their location far and wide.
As a result, he and his friends waited until the small procession of hunter and the hunted was well past their base, far enough away that any retreat would bring them out of sight of the rest of the horde.
Jonathan opened the battle by bringing down the might of the Void like a hammer upon the two creatures, a bomb of elemental energy detonating between them with source force that it bored a hole over a mile into the ground. The monsters fell in, reeling from the assault.
Rather than fall upon his usual habits, Joanthan instead tried to fill a support role, using his Void energy in different ways that mindless assault. He conjured rotating shields around his allies and intercepted attacks coming their way.
As the battle, hardly notable in terms of difficulty, continued, Jonathan resolved not to directly interfere. Instead he focused on keeping his party out of harm's way, ensuring that not a single attack reached them.
This stretched his abilities far more than he was used to, even more perhaps than his fights against the Circle Lords. Jonathan had unconsciously fallen into a rut in terms of progression, relying upon the same old abilities over and over again just because he was powerful enough to brute force his way forward. Now that he thought about it, his roster of abilities was almost entirely made up of variations of attack skills, ones that he should have been able to conjure directly from his element without the assistance of the System.
In a few minutes of inspiration, Jonathan forged two new abilities out of the raw material that was his element, these ones designed not to attack, but to protect. His only skill thus far that he could consider a protection based ability was Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy and while that was powerful, it was also quite inflexible. It was nearly impenetrable until it came up against something too powerful and then it simply cracked apart. The problem was that the skill’s rate of energy consumption was too inefficient to take full advantage of Jonathan’s Void reserves. While he technically had infinite energy to work with, his Tier limited the rate at which he could draw upon that energy. Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy tried to do too much for what it was, closing out all forms of elemental energy and outside influences.
Instead, Jonathan split the function of the skill in two, creating two new abilities to work in conjunction with it. While they weren’t as powerful, or as all encompassing, the key difference was that Jonathan could run them indefinitely against pretty much any threat at or near his level.
You have created a new skill!
Void Negation: Mythical
Use your element’s hunger for the energies of the natural world to swallow any and all elemental attacks near your level. This ability cannot protect against physical strikes or anything that is not solely elemental in nature. The protection granted by this skill scales exponentially with the amount of power invested within it.
You have created a new skill!
Void Consumption: Mythical
In the vast emptiness between worlds, there is only one constant. Absence. No matter exists there, not even an atom. Bring that power to the material world and swallow whole the weapons, force and even bodies of your foes. This skill cannot protect against elemental energy. The protection granted by this skill scales exponentially with the amount of power invested within it.
Most elementalists would have been satisfied with a skill like Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy, but Jonathan possessed abilities that few if any others could claim to have. By focusing on singular aspects of the Void’s conceptual nature, he could draw out far more power than he could by wielding it as a whole.
With the skills now mastered to a sufficient level for the System to recognize them, Jonathan used Void Negation with the full weight of the runes underpinning it. He scanned the battlefield for who needed the most help, laying his eyes on Arkanon. The Uthraki was a close and personal frontline fighter, and he was currently beating away the lava elemental’s advances with his fists. While he was strong, he didn’t have the overwhelming physical power that Jonathan was able to bring to bear, meaning that he was in more danger of counterattacks from opponents that weren’t simply blown away by a punch.
At least the other monster wasn’t an issue, having been already defeated, ground between the hammer of Jonathan’s allies and the anvil of the lava elemental.
A pillar of flame descended upon him from above as the elemental channeled the power of its patron. It was white hot, glowing brighter than the sun. Arkanon grimaced, crossing his arms above his head to block, but it wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t have a True Affinity for Fire, and although his defences were far stronger than most, the power of the Eternal Flame was not to be ignored.
Then, before the attack could hit him, a glowing shield of ethereal purple light formed above him. It thickened rapidly, taking the full force of the blow. In the metaphysical realm, a sturdy conduit of energy linked Jonathan to his skill, allowing him to pump far more power into it.
The elemental wound up a punch, a portion of its body hardening into a massive limb the size of a bus. Jonathan smiled and used Void Consumption. While it manifested in a similar way to Void Negation, it was far darker in color and completely opaque. When the elemental’s strike hit home, the plate of elemental energy bent, absorbing the force. That was another problem that Jonathan had encountered with his Aegis skill, as it was far more brittle. His general philosophy of overwhelming force wasn’t going to work forever and sometimes, compromise worked far better than anything else.
With the assault stymied, Arkanon flashed Jonathan a grateful smile, before throwing himself back into fray. Shards of razor sharp obsidian covered his gauntlets, a patina of ruddy light surrounding them. When he punched the elemental, its body bent outwards, the earthen components of its lava repelled by Arkanon’s technique.
“Now!” he shouted, and the party’s mages launched a combination attack through the hole. A superheated bullet of lava, accelerated to hypersonic speed by Edgar and Eliza’s wind powers, rocketed through the air and impacted the elemental’s core. It detonated with the power of an atom bomb, knocking Arkanon off his feet and sending him hurtling towards the crater wall.
He slowed down before hitting it, Edgar creating a pillow of wind to catch him. Arkanon winced, his skin covered in burns. “I’m not used to being burnt like this. The flames are my ally, but in this place they are my enemy.”
“All the more reason for us to get out of here as quickly as possible,” Edgar said. “I got some good levels from that fight, more than usual given that Jonathan was… taking a smaller role than usual.”
“You can just say I end up hogging most of the essence,” Jonathan said as he hopped down into the pit. “I know it's true. I’ve decided to work on that a bit, at least for a bit.” Despite this, he had still leveled up once, on account of his valuable contributions to the battle.
“Well, you shouldn’t work on it too much,” Edgar replied. “It’s still necessary. You receive the most strength from your levels, so it makes sense that you should prioritize leveling.This isn’t a normal party, and that’s fine. Most adventurers don’t have Circle Lords on their hit lists. I do appreciate the effort, though.”
Jonathan shrugged. “There are a lot of monsters here, and plenty of opportunities for you to level up as well. Besides, I gained something far more valuable than a few levels from that fight.”
“I saw,” Arkanon said. “Your old barrier skill couldn’t do that. How did you upgrade it?”
“I didn’t upgrade it, per se. I analyzed the two components of the skill, physical and magical defence, and split it apart. By optimizing each part, I can devote much more power to the relevant defence with much more efficiency.”
“Interesting,” Arkanon mused. “Perhaps there is value in studying skills we consider to be infallible parts of our fighting styles. If nothing else, it will help a lot with training.”
