Chapter 445: Breaking The Earth

A hundred and fifty.

I lay in that puddle of blood with most of my skin somewhere behind me in the flood and I looked at that number, and I laughed, and the sound was more of a wheeze, as my throat had been flayed too.

The world seemed to slow down around me, as something broke inside of me.

I do not know how to describe it. It was like I crossed a new threshold, but I could clearly see that I was still at the Sovereign level.

There was one unbreakable rule that every new Initiate who entered the academy was supposed to understand, because this was the rule that would guide us our entire life, and that rule was the difference between the tiers, and how our skills and rankings worked.

As mages, we grew from Initiates, all the way to Sovereign, and the same thing happened with whatever skills we had. Every Initiate technically starts with zero in a skill or spell, and when this number climbs to thirty, the Initiate would become an Acolyte of that Skill or Spell.

The same thing happens when you push the spell all the way from 30 to 60. The spell transforms to an Adept level spell, and from 60 to 90 brings it to the Arcanist Tier, and finally 90 to 120 takes it to Sovereign.

There was a clear distinction within the ranking that was easy to follow. Transformation happens when a spell, skill, even the soul passes a particular tier, and in the case of every mage, that distinction is tied around the number thirty.

Adamantium Titan became my first Sovereign Tier skill, and because I lived in such dangerous times and challenged beings far more powerful than me, this skill that safeguarded my body was forced to grow faster than normal, and in the blink of an eye, I reached 149 in this skill, and following every rule I knew about the magus world, it must mean that I was at the peak of the Sovereign Tier already.

However, even when I reached the so-called peak, I did not feel any barrier, and I wondered if the Sovereign Tier was different or my skills were just perverted. Reaching 150 in Adamantium Titan did not cross my skill into a new tier, but it must have meant something important since I gained an Unattuned Law Shard.

It was not as if I was unfamiliar with this thing, after all, I had gained five Unattuned Law Shards when I opened the fifth Earth Gate, and it was from the fusion of these Shards with Endurance and Titan’s Marrow that I was able to gain both the Law of Flesh and Adamantium Titan.

It was curious that reaching 150 in this skill gave birth to one of these shards, but I had no time to fully deliberate on this as the Law of Flesh sang in my bones. The Adamantium that had been hardening my skin and densifying my muscles suddenly bloomed.

∞

Every channel in me opened at once. Ten thousand and eight of them, and the seal on my soul could not stop my Anima from pouring through them, and my body used it as a match to ignite the marrow inside my bones.

My body expanded with devastating force, as the sound of my bones breaking and elongating was like the crack of thunder. The pain was enormous as my flesh packed itself denser and denser until the blood around me hissed and steamed from the heat of the transformation.

Twenty feet... Sixty... A hundred and twenty... My body crushed stone behind me as I kept growing, and somewhere around two hundred feet my head touched stone and the stone shattered around it.

Three hundred feet.

My channels that were thin like threads were now the size of pythons and with a cry towards the heavens, they all opened wide, and it was as if the lightning inside me echoed my cry as it tore out of my body.

It came off my skin, everywhere, a sheet of blue fire that lit the entire cavern from wall to wall, and for one long moment there was a star standing in the dark with a serpent coiled around it.

The cavern, which had seemed so vast, suddenly felt small. The serpent was now face to face with something of equal size.

Raktanāgeya’s eyes widened.

"What..." it hissed. "What are you?"

I looked at my hands. They were the size of houses. The sword in my grip, Dorrik’s gift, had grown with me, the blade now the length of a ship’s mast.

"There are days when I don’t even know myself," I muttered.

∞

The serpent lunged, and it was faster than anything that size had any right to be, but in this form, everything about me was being accelerated, and I could follow its motions.

I brought the massive blade round to cleave its skull, but its head whipped to the side, and my blade, which should have connected with its skull, instead slammed into its neck, slicing the scales there in two and sending a wave of heat through its flesh. The impact sent a shockwave through the cavern, shattering what remained of the rocks around me for a thousand meters and sending a rain of stone down on both of us.

Raktanāgeya screamed in pain and rage. Its body coiled, and faster than my eyes could follow, it struck again, using its head as a battering ram, and... I caught it.

I did not expect it to work. I put both hands out and caught that head as it came, one palm across the upper jaw and one under, and the impact drove me back forty feet through solid stone and I did not let go.

Then I closed my hands and twisted, causing the serpent to hiss in surprise before the force being exerted against me suddenly multiplied and my body was lifted into the air and I slammed against the roof of the cavern, which gave way, and we went up.

Its body was a mile of muscle and it whipped up out of the depths and came around me in a coil, and I felt the pressure begin to grow even as we tore our way through the earth.

My ribs protested, as they began to snap, one by one, and the Law of Flesh fought against these breaks as they happened. I stopped trying to breathe because I did not need to and it was distracting.

So I put my thumb through the god’s left eye, up to the knuckle, then further. The serpent hissed and its body shuddered, causing its coil to come apart.

We came up through a mile of stone with the serpent trying to crush me and me holding onto its head with one hand, while hitting it with the other... I had lost my grip on the damned sword. The crater that had swallowed a mountain was not deep enough to hold us.

Rock the size of houses went up with us. The floor of that crater split in every direction, and I hoped the warband had escaped the tunnel and were far enough from the crater, or they would have been crushed to paste there.

And then there was open sky, and the stars were out, and the two of us came out of the earth of Terra as if the world were spitting us out.