Chapter 510: The Hunt

Nobody answered, which was fair, since I had not said it out loud, and was not expecting an answer anyway... I just did not think I resembled a monster.

I sat up, and the dust fell away from my body, and with my connection to the earth, I sealed the ground under me, erasing the damage I had done, including all the dust that was floating around.

I looked at my hand, and the glow beneath my skin showed even through the robes I wore.

This was not the hand I remembered, but my appearance was the last thing I was thinking about at the moment. I could not fight in a body that I did not really know, and checking my Status Screen would solidify all the gains that I had made so far.

I opened the screen.

∞

[ Name: Elric Voss ]

[ Age: 16 ]

[ Titles: Abyssal Executioner (Mythic) | The Unbroken Titan (Legendary) ]

[ Available Titles: Lightning Arcanist (Legendary), Storm Bearer (Legendary), Death-Consort (Mythic), Heaven Beast Tamer (Mythic), God Slayer (Mythic) ]

[ Anima Depth: 119 (Arcanist — Peak) ]

[ Soul State: Crystallised — Third Stage ]

[ Soul Purity: 100% ]

[ Boundary: Lawbound — 5/5 ]

[ Domain: The Stillness of the Storm — 485 → 600 metres ]

[ Celestial Status: Archangel (Broken) ]

[ Warden: Caelith Fragment (243^235) — Integrated ]

[ Shell: ████████ ]

[ Disciplines: ]

Lightning Edict: 108 → 119 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Loom of Lightning: 114 → 119 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Heaven’s Tribunal: 101 (Mythic) — Broken-Celestial — New

[ Attunement Skills: ]

Lightning Resonance: 129 → 133 (Sovereign) — Epic

Space Resonance: 75 → 79 (Adept) — Legendary

Elemental Resonance: 91 → 93 (Arcanist) — Legendary — New

Force Resonance: 94 → 96 (Arcanist) — Epic

Darkness Resonance: 92 → 93 (Arcanist) — Rare

Death Resonance: 71 → 79 (Adept) — Unique

Staff Resonance: 70 (Adept) — Rare

[ Auxiliary Skills: ]

Eldritch Perception: 59 → 65 (Acolyte → Adept) — Unique

Demonology: 119 (Arcanist) — Registered

Observation: 119 (Arcanist) — Rare

Anima Sensitivity: 118 → 119 (Arcanist) — Rare

Concentration: 119 (Arcanist) — Rare

Meditation: 99 → 109 (Arcanist) — Uncommon

First Aid: 85 → 93 (Adept → Arcanist) — Uncommon → Rare

Cartography: 71 → 79 (Adept)

Cooking: 16 (Initiate)

[ Celestial-tier Skills: ]

Celestial Body: 200 (Sovereign) — Mythic — Broken-Celestial — New

Lightning Form: 109 (Arcanist) — Mythic — Broken-Celestial — New

Living Script: 132 → 134 (Sovereign) — Mythic — Broken-Celestial — New

Hollow Titan: 119 → 131 (Arcanist → Sovereign) — Mythic — Broken-Celestial — New

[ Laws: ]

[ Lightning Law Shards (9/9 — Complete) ]

[ Heavenly Bond: Moon Fox — 24% → 31% ]

[ Stored Essence: 0 / 10,000,000 — Seventh Earth Gate ]

[ Nine Heavenly Pillars 0/9 ]

[ Blessings: Anansi Web (Consumed) ]

[ Temporal Anchors: 3 placed, 1 unspent ]

[ Soul: Absolute ]

∞

I have rarely been speechless in my life despite all the crazy and unbelievable things that I had seen, but the sheer advancement that I had gained in the blink of an eye stunned me to the core.

I had never seen so many new abilities in my life, and opening my Status Screen drove everything home: I had several new abilities now at the Sovereign level, and I instinctively knew that every ability that had been touched by Hollow could now easily break through to Sovereign.

The moment I pushed all of these new abilities to the peak of Sovereign, I would be gaining law fragments that I could use to break the barrier to Sovereign for the rest of my skills, or I could fuse them, and that was not even factoring in the law fragments I would be obtaining when I opened the seventh Earth Gate.

In many ways, my pathway to Sovereign had never been clearer, and there was nothing left for me but to take the last steps.

I was surprised that I had not gained any new Title or even several of them, but something told me that I had indeed gained something, since the state of my soul remained at the Arcanist level, I did not have the space to accept this Title.

And this led me to wonder what sort of Title I could obtain that was even beyond what I had so far. I already had multiple Mythics, was there something even better than this?

"You crazy lovable bastard..." I sighed with astonishment. I had not fully tested myself or what I could truly do, and I was eager to find out. Hollow said it would make me perfect, but I think he may have gone beyond perfection.

My soul was absolute; I had a new shell, several new Sovereign-level abilities, and most of my abilities were at the peak of Arcanist, with multiple of them no longer having any barrier to their growth.

The Pale Matron had pushed me away for a reason, and I believed it was the time for me to hunt. She had never been weaker, and I wondered if killing this demon before she found a way to open the rest of the Caeliths would give me enough essence to finally open the last Earth Gate.

∞

I closed the screen. I had barely spent two seconds reading through it. Time seemed to be slow all around me, as if I existed in a different world than everything else. I could hear the voices of many people, my descent had been observed, and at any other time, I would have loved to meet the masters of my Academy. With my present powers, I could talk to the Sovereigns... but there was no time for this.

With every moment that the Pale Matron spent outside her prison, demons were being birthed in unreasonable numbers. Maybe for me, every demon below the Sovereign level was trash, but a single Khaaz could kill dozens before they were stopped. I had to end this, now.

I wrapped myself in Lightning Edict, cloaking my presence from the gaze of anyone who may be looking towards my position, and took to the sky, with the air folding quietly out of the way instead of catching fire. The spell was cast instantaneously, and there was no delay between my thought and its execution. Was it what it meant to have an Absolute Soul?

At nine thousand feet, I turned east and saw where the devastation of my passage began, and no further, because the land went on past the haze and I had been thrown further than a man can see. I tried not to think about the dead, as my thoughts were on the Pale Matron and her next move.

With the map of the entirety of Aelmar in my mind and the position of the Caeliths that were on the continent, I tried to figure out the next moves of the demon.

There were ten Caeliths imprisoning various parts of the Pale Matron all across the world. Whoever brought down the thing that became the Caeliths had shattered it into pieces, and these pieces held different parts of their prisoner; whether this was deliberate, I did not know.

What I knew was that there were five Caeliths on this continent, and three of them held the pieces of the Pale Matron. Of those three, I was the Warden of one of them, and shamefully, my prison had been broken, and its prisoner had escaped.

Using my connection with my Caelith, I triangulated the closest Caelith to the Pale Matron... and it was nearly four thousand miles away from me, but about two thousand miles away from the last known position of the Pale Matron.

So this meant the Pale Matron was most likely heading for the second Caelith.

From the previous loop where I imprisoned her hand inside my Caelith, I knew how fast the Pale Matron could move, she covered hundreds of miles in a few minutes. Relative to me, she was not very fast, but she had a head start.

Two thousand miles. If she maintained her pace, she would reach the second Caelith in approximately twenty minutes. If I flew at my maximum speed, which I do not yet know, I believe I would be able to beat her to it.