Chapter 521: The Unbroken Edict

I gave myself nine seconds to make my decision. Not a whole lot of time, but it would have to do. I knew the moment I killed the demons in the city below, the Pale Matron would be aware of my presence, and the battle would begin... I had to make these nine seconds count.

"Loom," I said.

’That is the obvious one.’

I nodded. "I know, I can imagine threads that cannot be broken. A weave that eats what it catches. It is the obvious one and it would be excellent if I was fighting anything else. I would need more."

’And the Edict?’

I looked down at the city, and frowned. Lightning Edict was the spell that changed the world because I said so, for as long as my will could hold the shape of the sentence.

This power was ridiculously powerful, but more and more it was not very useful against the sort of beings that I was going up against. I thought about the Armor law, and in the time I had been using it, I knew that it was not all about defence. Armor was not just a generic shield, it was a statement to the world that I will not be unmade.

If I was going to be fighting a Transcendental demon, I had to stay in the fight for as long as possible, I had to eat this demon to pieces bit by bit, no matter how hard she fought back.

"Edict," I said with conviction in my voice.

’Are you sure about your choice?’

I nodded, "I am linking the law of armor to Lightning Edict."

∞

It was almost too easy to link my armor to my spell, and the moment I did it, my robes vanished into lightning sparks, I had created them with Edict and at this time the skill was evolving and everything was washed aside for its completion.

The sparks did not vanish, they hung in the air around me, a cloud of blue-white light that crackled and popped, hiding my nakedness from the heavens, not that I cared much at this point, dying so many times had made concepts like shame about nudity seem so... useless.

I could feel the change happening inside me, in a manner that I had not felt before when I upgraded my Lightning Resonance, due to the fact that my soul was much weaker then and could not fully comprehend everything that was happening inside me.

My new channels contracted and expanded as if they were breathing, and I could feel the changes heading even deeper, into the core of who I was.

Lightning Edict was a spell that had become a part of my soul, woven into my being through hundreds of loops and deaths and rebirths. Even if my memories were somehow wiped away, I would still know how to instinctively wield this spell.

And now it was changing.

[ Lightning Edict — Evolving ]

[ Law of Armor — Linked ]

[ Evolution in progress... ]

The words burned across my vision, and I felt it happen.

Lightning Edict had always been about command, saying a word and watching the world obey. It was the spell that had allowed me to shatter reality with a sentence, to freeze enemies with a whisper, to unmake anything that stood in my way.

But the Law of Armor was about absorbing attacks, and not being unmade. These two were not truly opposites, in the right hands they were complements.

[ Evolution complete ]

∞

[ Lightning Edict (119, Legendary) → Unbroken Edict (120, Sovereign) ]

[ Rank: Sovereign → Mythic ]

I felt this change more deeply than I thought I would, and it did not take me long to figure out why that was.

The way Lightning Edict worked was simple, my command to the world worked with Lightning Essence, and so before I made any changes, I had to infuse Lightning Essence into the world.

I had no issue with this because there was always lightning essence in the environment, and even if there was not, I was a generator of lightning essence. There was so much lightning inside me that if I stayed in one location for a long enough time, my presence would soon begin to change my environment.

However, Unbroken Edict did something different, it had taken away the reliance I had on lightning essence and shifted it to my Anima. On paper this appeared to be a small change, but it was anything but small... my very Anima was now able to command the world around me, there was no more delay between my intent and the changes I could make.

What this meant was that if I returned to the past, my Anima would be able to easily transform to whatever I wanted. I knew I had barely scratched the surface of what I could do with this spell, but my nine seconds were over.

’Do you understand what you have taken.’

"Not really," I shrugged, "but I am going to be finding out soon enough."

A new robe covered my body, it was still my Acolyte robes and I wondered why I unconsciously always chose this robe. In many ways I was a Sovereign in all but my soul, but maybe a part of me did not want to lose one of the last symbols of my innocence.

∞

I looked down at the city below me, my perception sweeping past its entirety, my soul was so powerful I was able to count every living organism that mattered below. There were about fifteen thousand demons below, against the almost one hundred thousand people in the city.

However, the power differences between these two parties were incredibly wide. With the appearance of two horned Narghul Sorcerers and the Khaazim, the demons had several Adept level powerhouses, but the most powerful presence on the side of the humans was equal to an Acolyte.

They had soldiers and guards, but even the strongest of the soldiers was still equal to an Acolyte. The magic users I could detect were warlocks, these were special cases, since they were people who were born with a higher soul capacity than normal, but unlike a mage, their souls could not grow, locking them to their present state forever.

Of course they could continuously refine their spells, but without a soul that could grow to accommodate more powerful spells, these warlocks may at most match a very weak Adept, and their lifespan hardly exceeded a hundred and fifty years.

Hundreds were already dead, mostly soldiers and guards, but I knew that it was because the demons were not truly focused on slaughter, but I knew how quickly all of this could change.

I raised my hand and pointed a finger down at the city, and I focused on the magical spectrum, at all the essence flowing through the city. There were a lot, from elemental essence and special essences like force, darkness, even space and death.

These were the essences I was able to recognize, and there were many more, but I lacked the Attunements for them. If I lived long enough, I may be able to gather every single resonance in the world. At that time, I don’t even want to think about how powerful I would be at that point.

I sighed and connected to my first Sovereign Tier Discipline, and tapped the air, invoking Unbroken Edict, "Ash." I whispered, and every demon, from the Khaaz to the Narghul Sorcerers, instantly became ash.