Looking at the force arrayed against him and his brother, Damien could easily discern that this wasn't a group that was hurriedly mashed up to ambush them.

  The Spirit lords assembled here had been sent specifically to counter him and Keilan.

  Samon and his gravity affinity paired with one of the Empire's renowned earth wielders, a Duke—Damien did not want to remember his name—made for a hard counter against him.

  The Bulwark alone would have posed a surmountable challenge, but with a partner, it was assured that Damien was going to be forced to reveal his top cards.

  The two facing Keilan were Lightning and Water wielders, respectively, an even harder counter for his brother, seeing as he couldn't simply blow away the lightning bolts that were assuredly going to be sent against him, or the wave that was beginning to rise, seething off from the ocean's surface.

  Damien was exhausted from the fight against the Sea Serpent, which had been a constructed disadvantage considering the situation he was in now, but he forced himself to calm his heavily beating heart, tightening his hold on his spear as he regarded the Pillars.

  “I was beginning to wonder why a Monarch would have the gall to attack us despite being aware of our ranks, or why a Spirit lord would fight to the death given how outclassed it was," he smiled at Samon. “What did you promise that second Prince in exchange for aggravating us? You must have been aware that he wouldn't have won that battle. Why send him anyway?”

  [Combat assessment, duhh,] Gray said into his mind. [The serpent couldn't have defeated you two, which I assume they were fully aware of, and yet they still went with it. The only reason that would be was if their original goal wasn't to kill you two, but to check and assess how powerful you were, both of you.]

  Keilan chuckled and shook his head. “Then they failed woefully. We barely revealed anything that they didn't already.”

  [I assume that is why they have revealed themselves,] Gray replied. [This group has come with the intent to force your secrets out of you.]

  Damien grimaced and his eyes narrowed further. Gray was right, and it was made all the worse seeing as he and his brother hadn't fully recovered from their previous battle, a disadvantage which he was increasingly sure his enemies had played into.

  “I would offer you the chance to surrender quietly, but you are known very much for fighting against the inevitable. So I will instead offer you a clean death,” Samon rumbled out as he raised his great hammer to point at them.

  Damien shrugged, forcing out an unconcerned smile. “It's nothing personal, I've always been known for stubbornness ever since I was little. Keilan can testify.”

  The battle began almost instantly.

  Gray's voice went silent in his head, leaving him clear to focus on his upcoming fight.

  He rose to meet Samon, his new spear rising against the Bulwark’s lowering Hammer as both their Meridian revved to life.

  His spear met and held against the crushing force of the Empire's foremost defender, which sent no small surprise up the man's face. Damien was forced back, blasting backwards in a whirl of howling wind. It felt like he had been hit by a meteor, something that should have shattered all the bones in his body had he not been a Spirit lord.

  He'd barely recovered when a whistle of sharp sounds reached his ears, and Damien had to swerve chaotically to avoid the spears of earth that blew past him.

  Keilan had taken his battle a distance away from them, enshrouding himself in a storm of wind as he weathered the combined assault of a Lightning storm and a swarm of ice spears.

  He would have loved to watch his brother's battle, but he had his own to deal with. He turned to the side, narrowly redirecting the hammer head that had been craving his skull a moment before. Samon’s physical prowess was overwhelming, honestly too much for Damien to handle, but he wasn't feared for nothing.

  A bolt of crackling grey energy appeared against the chest of the Bulwark's metallic armor, and he jumped backwards hurriedly, getting out of the way as he detonated it.

  An explosion shook the world, sending a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky, and out of it blasted the Bulwark, who was thrown out in a trail of smoke.

  Damien did not have the time to admire his work, dodging aside as the Duke appeared by his side, bringing down his great sword on Damien's head.

  “What do you people have against my head?” Damien growled as he slammed the shaft of his spear on the man's armor with his full strength, smiling contentedly as his bodily protection cracked and he was sent reeling backwards.

  A dozen bolts of crackling grey energy appeared by his side, and he sent two against the incoming missile that was Samon.

  The man raised a towel shield before his body, unfortunately weathering Damien's attack a little bit better than he would have liked.

  They exchanged a few more blows, and with each one Damien's plan for a timely win went down more and more until he settled with the realization that if this continued as it was, the fight would carry on for hours, leaving him tired and opening him up to whatever assault the Empire might send next.

  He was not so far away from Greensend that the whirling energies couldn't have been detected. He reckoned the only reason his allies hadn't moved to his rescue was that they assumed he would prevail. Anything more and there was no doubt that the ocean would be seething with the auras of multiple Spirit lords, something no one willingly wanted to put themselves in. There was no telling when the Sea Serpents would decide to live up to their names.

  As it was, he was left alone to deal with Samon and the Duke, the former of which posed more of a threat than the Earth wielder.

  Like Damien's element, Gravity was almost unique. The number of people born with the affinity in recorded history could probably be counted on one hand, and only Samon was known to have reached Spirit lord, which meant, just like his element of Destruction, there wasn't much that was known about it.

  The man hit with a level of force Damien hadn't ever imagined was possible for a Spirit lord, and he moved with speed almost comparable to Keilan's.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Damien could not match his level of force, but he was able to catch his movements before he could strike.

  His partner was a generic earth wielder, physically strong but weakened when it came to speed. The only reason the man hadn't been dismantled and his body scattered to the wind was because of how heavy the world grew whenever he was near, slowing Damien just enough to counter his attacks and maybe land one or two attacks in return.

  It wasn't hard to discern where the sudden weight came from, and he moved his bolts of Destruction to his flanks whenever that happened, just in case of any backend sneak attack.

  Unlike Damien and his opponents, Keilan and his foes had turned their part of the ocean into a brewing natural disaster.

  A giant tornado sucked in the heavens, rumbling as it unleashed a swarm of invisible wind scythes against the great waterspouts that swallowed and vomited out a rain of ice spears in response.

  Combined with the storm of lightning that rained on him continuously, and Damien could only watch helplessly as his brother was slowly crushed and suffocated.

  He wanted to offer a switch, take on his brother's opponents while Keilan did the same for him. But fighting Samon was no different from the ones he was currently combating. In fact, Keilan was most likely to fall quickly if he was pitted against the Bulwark.

  Frustrated, Damien gestured and sent his bolt swarm against the earth wielder, leaving them to deal with him while he focused on Samon.

  The man was a mid-tier Spirit lord, a tier above Damien—all of them were. That, alongside the presence of Samon, who was a tier above the common rabble, made Damien's goal for an easy win unattainable.

  He fought on nonetheless, pushing both of them even to the edge, but not over it. This was not the time for a full-on battle yet. There was no need for Astral images.

  Unfortunately for him, his reservoir of essence was dwindling fast while his enemies seemed far from any sign of exhaustion.

  Damien was tired of all this. He searched his mind for solutions and came up with one. It was much earlier than he had planned—it was something he had been building for years and had wanted to keep as a surprise for his eventual clash against Solaris, a trump card, so to speak— but considering it was the only way he was leaving this battle alive without resorting to a full Astral image summoning, Damien chose to take it.

  He could always work up another one.

  He swerved to the side, placing his spear cross-positioned in front of him to tank Samon's hammer strike. And rather than push for a closer reach, he released all resistance and used the force of the attack to launch himself backwards, far out of easy reach.

  Multiple items flew out of his spatial space as he got within a mile of his opponent—a scale from the last sea serpent that fell to his hand, a piece of feline bone, a chunk of stone from an earth elemental, and a vial filled with sloshing red liquid.

  Samon was a sharp man. He recognized almost instantly what Damien planned to do, and moved to stop him.

  Damien's flight halted as gravity took hold of him. He gritted his teeth as he was forced down, pushed almost to the surface of the water, and would have been forced into it had he not stretched his will to the maximum.

  All through this, he held on to the objects he'd brought out, mental power gripped around them like tight-fisted baby hands.

  Multiple orbs of bronze energy flew out from Samon—aimed not at Damien but at the objects floating around him. If those things touched them, then that was it. Years of effort, gone down the drain. Damien would have no choice but to summon his full Astral image.

  As it was, the realization of what he was about to do had started to set into the minds of the others, including those set against Keilan.

  They turned their fury on him, raining jagged ice spikes and forks of nerve-frying lightning bolts. Samon and the Duke joined their effort, and Damien smiled.

  … And then he triggered his Ascension.

  ***

  Damien had always known that Defense and Speed were not his forte. He'd had offensive power in spades right from the start, much more than any Spirit lord he knew of, and this had grown his strength into the terror that it was today.

  But speed and defense, he'd lacked sorely, and Samon had hammered that realization in hard enough, pun intended.

  It was no fault of his, his element was simply not geared for anything other than offense. Keilan, on the other hand, could fight for hours at top speed and not get tired. He was like a roaming tornado, an untiring natural disaster.

  The only thing Damien had that was close to a well formed defense oriented technique was his Astral formed cloak, and he couldn't summon that at every battle.

  Which left a single solution, incorporate it into his physical structure. If he lacked a defensive or movement technique, he was simply going to make himself fast and strong enough to take attacks normally meant for armors.

  Color leached from the world as everything turned monochrome. Pressure crashed down and heat suffused everything.

  The creatures that Damien could sense crawling up to the surface retreated, fleeing for their lives just as a gale of deathly wind blew, one not of his brother's doing.

  Every technique dimmed or was snuffed out, their element suffocated under the pressure of something greater, something a rank above them.

  Horror took his enemies but Damien was not focused on them.

  He hovered a foot above the waters as the feline bone melted, turning into a dense misty energy that flowed into his body. Instantly, he felt the change. His bones lengthened, muscles stretched and enhanced to accommodate his greater reach. Damien felt like a catapult drawn taut, waiting to be let loose at the slightest permission.

  The elemental rock followed, turning into mist that flowed into his bones, and into them alone. Shock ran through his body as power flowed down his veins, thrumming through him like a beating heart.

  Not only that, but he felt stable, rested, like he'd just woken from a long awaited comfortable nap. Physically, Damien felt like he could go for two more rounds of battle, and he felt the urge to test that, but held himself back. This was not the time, yet.

  He'd laid the foundation for his defense, and so he let in the scales, watching with a smile as it melted and flowed into his body. His skin responded this time, stretching and hardening as if concrete had been plastered over it.

  he knew instantly that the level of attack he could endure had grown drastically, setting him two notches above the average.

  As expected, the side effects of cramming too many amplifiers, too quickly, set in. Damien felt his body thrum, not a positive sign unlike the first time. This time he felt like a building on the cusp of collapse. One mistake and not only would he lose his ability to progress, he'd be reduced to a physical cripple.

  Fortunately, he wasn't going to. Not today.

  The last object, the vial, shattered, and its content flowed into his body.

  And there went half a decade of a city's worth of budget down the drain.

  Revitalizing energy rushed into him and Damien felt the small fractures growing over his bones cease, closing back in real time as everything within him was infused and strengthened.

  The whole of his Ascension lasted within the timespan of a micro second, and when the world returned back to normal, he felt stronger, more powerful than ever before.

  It felt like he'd just summoned his full Astral image, except there was nothing looming behind him.

  Damien clenched and unclenched his hands, admiring his fist and the strength within them. Not only had he been blessed with more physical prowess, he felt that he could withstand more, endure more, than he previously could.

  As planned.

  Damien blinked and then raised his head, turning his attention back to the enemies that should have been waiting for him.

  Only to find the space empty.

  “They're gone,” Keilan said as he flew over to Damien. His brother looked haggard, hair matted to his forehead by sweaty glue.

  He sagged forward slightly, hand loosely gripped around his spear. Behind him was clear skies, with no sign of a tornado. The only evidence that it had been present was the churning ocean surface that was noe dying down.

  Damien blinked, confused, and Keilan smiled as he shook his head.

  “You forget how intense you can be sometimes. Your ascension snuffed out their powers, and mine too. It felt like I was a rat standing before a lion—powerless.” He rested a palm on the waist of his shredded armor. “Now if I, your brother, could feel this way, imagine what your enemies must have felt. Think of that and worry not why they fled. You're a monster, Dame.”

  Damien shook his head. This was his goal after all. Why was he then disappointed? Huh… maybe the intensity of the battle had gotten to him more than he'd thought.

  He gestured to his brother. “We can't stay here for long. Anybody that has been waiting to strike now has the perfect time. I can't fight and protect you at the same time.”

  “Speak of the obvious,” Keilan sighed.