Chapter 515: A Flaming Tomb

The Hollow Titan shared its perception with me at this moment, and I saw my soul the way it saw it, and it resembled a multicolored void, inside the void were areas of power and contradictions, the nascent dimensions in my soul.

I could see multiple channels of darkness travelling from an area filled with darkness to the other nascent dimensions in my soul. As the channel traveled, I could see a fiery flow upon it, and bringing my sight closer showed me the fiery armies of the Sovereign.

That small part of me that was still a boy was amazed that I had armies of fire and will galloping inside my soul on flaming winged horses. Who would believe me when I tell this story?

The Spirits of the Unconsumed followed the channels and soon they reached their destination, and they began pouring into them.

’It is done, Elric, prepare yourself.’

∞

My perception fully returned outside my body, drawn out not just by the words of Hollow, but a weird feeling that I was beginning to assign to danger. No longer doubting my instincts, I whipped my hand forward and grabbed something, and looked up to find the Sovereign smirking.

Opening my hand, I saw a tiny dot at the center of my palm, the dot was glowing and I peered more closely and what entered my sight was a flaming orb compressed to such an extent that it was as if I was holding a miniature sun.

The world seemed to slow down as my hands were closing, and making a throwing motion even before the intent fully realised itself in my head, when I heard the words of the Sovereign, and my Force Attunement informed me that he had given that command several seconds ago, and only now was it entering my ears.

"Collapse!"

I gasped before I was covered by a terrifying explosion of fire that created a mushroom cloud greater than a dozen miles.

My perception was spread out in a wide area so I could see what came next.

As the mushroom cloud of flame erupted from my position, Sovereign Caldus reached out with both hands as if he was grasping something and he closed both fists, causing the flames that had arisen to scream as a million orbs of fire were born from it.

One orb of flame had birthed a million.

With an arcane gesture with his fingers, all the million flame orbs compressed around my burning figure, sealing me inside a tomb of a million suns that glowed brighter than anything a mortal had ever seen.

"Collapse!"

∞

A part of my mind knew that Sovereign Caldus was using a spell to attack me, and even in the ravage of the flames, I was smiling. This confrontation between us was a delightful game that only a careful observer would understand.

From the beginning, I played a game of weakness, appearing to kneel when the pressure he gave me was nothing, or when he sent flames to cover the darkness and I deliberately shrank it a bit so he could believe that my darkness was a thing that could be burned away when I had an ocean of it inside my soul.

It was this wrong notion that caused him to send his Spirits of the Unconsumed inside my darkness, and the Hollow followed the rest of the plan.

This was all possible because I had seen the Sovereign fight with the Pale Matron in the previous loop, and I was able to gather data about some of his capabilities.

Of course that advantage did not go far, as Sovereign Caldus had also played me, when he primarily used his laws to attack, and now suddenly using such a devastating spell.

Spells did something that laws could not by skipping the darkness that surrounded me and attacking my physical body directly. Who said that spells were weaker than laws? There were no weak spells, just weak mages... and for everything that he was, Sovereign Caldus was not a weak mage.

∞

I had expected an explosion a million times greater than what I had just endured, but what I got was an implosion, as the flames began to compress.

There was ridiculous heat of course, but the compression of this flame made it all worse. The million suns that surrounded me were collapsing inward, and the pressure was not just heat but weight as well. The weight of a million stars pressing against my body from every direction.

My skin began to glow red-orange, and when I cried out in pain, flames rushed into my body, and for a moment I was consumed by agony. And yet in the midst of agony, my mind was still functional, it was as if Absolute Soul was able to give me immunity from effects that could cloud my consciousness, and I was barely stunned for a second.

My skin peeled layer by layer, like the skin of an onion, the outer layers of my body were being stripped away by the pressure of the collapsing suns, as my Celestial Body was fighting to adapt to the ridiculous heat that would have turned even Adamantium to ash.

Elemental Resonance: 93 → 97

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to stop screaming. This was just another kind of pain, another kind of death... but I was not going to die here.

∞

The flames of the Sovereign armies poured into the depths of my soul and his fires surrounded my flesh, and for one long moment that stretched for an eternity, I was surrounded by nothing but fire.

It was at this moment that one of the rooms inside me quaked, stimulated by the intense power of the fire, and my body slowly left the ground, pushing against the weight of a million suns.

The Lightning Law Shards erupted from my body, led by my first completed law, the Law of Stillness. All nine of them were the powers that I had been forging since the moment I first cast Spark.

They burst out of me like the fury of the heavens themselves. The Lightning Law Shards swirled around me. Nine fragments of the same truth, and even in the midst of this flame, their lights could not be hidden.

My perception caught the voice of Sovereign Caldus, "Nine laws of lightning... impressive but futile. A soul can only hold one. Is it for this reason you stop yourself from reaching Sovereign, how foolish. Let me educate you about power as I turn you to ash."

Another gesture, and the million suns multiplied to ten million, and my body that was rising in the air was slammed back down and pressed into the ground.

The lightning law shards were furiously rotating around my body, even the weight of these suns could not hold them, when everything just fell into place.

I had gained Stillness in the silence of a celestial prison, and in the midst of these hellish flames, the second law of lightning that had been on the edge of my consciousness clicked into place, and it was... Armor.

A single flaming tear fell from my eyes that evaporated in the heat.

My first shard was Stillness. It was lightning that does not travel, but arrives. The world frozen in the moment before the strike.

This second shard was Armor. I had spent so long gaining injuries, but this law was my reply to all the moments I was hurt. It would become a part of my domain, absorbing incoming attacks.

With that realization, my domain began to emerge from my body.