Lowering the amount of elemental energy coursing through his body, Edgar peeled his capabilities back down to a level near the top of Tier 3. It wasn’t hard, far easier than if he had been a close quarters fighter, with his stats making up most of his strength. Instead, elemental power was what turned him into a juggernaut of battle, and that was completely under his control.
He stared down the other fighters, waiting for them to make the first move. With a single, massed roar, they attacked. Edgar immediately sprung into motion, whips of air pressure gathering around his body like serpents. Then he let them loose, cracking them towards the approaching warriors.
The first line of warriors were knocked off their feet, despite bracing for the blow. Edgar advanced, walking as slowly as a mage of the level that he was pretending to be should. Even then, he found himself facing not warriors, but what appeared to be mice in the form of men. He, Arkanon and all the other elites were venerated by the soldiers, which meant that when forced to face them in battle, they were understandably cowed.
“Why don’t you have them train against one another?” Edgar asked Arkanon, not bothering to look at the trainees as he did so.
“Because they need to learn what it means to come face to face to death. Or, a Circle Lord.” Arkanon grimaced. “For anyone other than Jonathan, and people like us, those are the same thing.”
Edgar shrugged. “Very well. I still don’t appreciate being roped in as a training dummy.”
“You should have been working your own recruits harder, then.”
Edgar couldn’t really say anything to that. As he waded into the gaggle of soldiers, he cast a glance up at the heavens. Where are you, Jonathan? Perhaps he should have looked at the ground beneath his feet.
Maelstrom Keep, Malaraxia’s Domain
When not at work in the wider realms, or in conclave, the gods kept to their private realms. Malaraxia’s was the largest, as she was the strongest of her siblings, behind the late Sarnakthros.
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Maelstrom Keep manifested as a titanic hurricane with a single island in the center. On that island was a palace as large as a world. In the very heart of that palace was a much smaller hurricane, one shaped like a throne. On that throne, an icon of Malaraxia sat, a mile in height. However, the real goddess was usually found within a meditation chamber deep beneath the throne, where she communed with the element of Air. She was the only elementalist in existence with total mastery over that element, and as such dictated much of its nature across the universe. The very concept of air was subject to her whims, at least within the bounds of Telvaria.
For the last few weeks, she had mused over the problem that was Jonathan Harlowe. Again, the System had tried to kill him, using a bait that none, save for the mad or the truly wise, would be able to resist. Not only had Jonathan taken that bait, but he had turned it into an opportunity, ascending to the ranks of the Lesser Gods. If not in power, then in nature.
The worst part was that he followed a path not of the gods’ own. Every other god below the Nine had found a path of Divinity related in some way to the others, whether elementally or conceptually. This ensured that they had no way to rise above the rulers of the universe. Jonathan on the other hand had limitless potential.
Malaraxia had no real way to influence him within the bounds of the Infinite Hells, save for hoping that the System could pull through. However, that infernal construct was bound by rules beyond her knowledge. Although the gods had facilitated the arrival of the System, they were not its creators. It was a well guarded secret that they had kept since the Beginning. Only the Nine knew, and some of the various Tier 100 entities of the universe like Angranor.
Telvaria was a relatively young universe. Indeed, most of the universes in its cluster were. Universes like that of Earth. Beyond that the Astral Plane grew deeper and darker, and the universes became older and more powerful. It was from one of those universes that the System had originated. Malaraxia had only seen glimpses of the might of beings from that place, but it was a civilization of gods, where even peasants were as strong as her and her siblings. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, but the fact remained that she was outclassed.
The System had spread across wide swathes of the Multiverse to some extent, gravitating towards places rich in mana. It was why Earth had no System, as the mana density there was nonexistent. It could barely support the mortals living there, let alone even a level 10 System user.
Universes were limited by their mana density to some degree, and while Tier 100 seemed incredibly powerful, many of the older universes were far larger and could support far higher densities of power. They also had different forms of the System.
