MAGUS INFINITE

For forty seconds, the continent held its breath. I felt it through the lightning that connected me to the sky and the earth... the sudden pause in the slaughter, the moment when every living thing under that blazing sky looked up and understood that something fundamental had just changed.

[ Lightning Law Shard I — comprehension achieved ]

[ Shard evolving... ]

[ Law of Stillness — COMPLETE ]

[ The lightning does not travel. It arrives. ]

I hung in the air, suspended between heaven and earth, the blue light of my completed Law still crackling across my skin. My body was a statement made manifest. I was right about the Lightning Law Shards inside of me; every single one of them was a Completed Law in its own right, and yet each law was coming together to create something vast and unknown.

Heaven above... Earth below.

The words echoed in my soul, and I felt the weight of what I had just done settle onto my shoulders, and so I closed my eyes, and I felt the world.

The continent of Aelmar was laid out beneath me like a wound. I could feel the burning cities, the shattered mountains, the rivers that had been turned to steam; some of these had happened due to the ascension of my fragment to a complete law, but most were due to the war.

I could feel the demons, millions of them, with different shapes than the ones I had seen emerge from Caelith Mourne, as these seemed to be made from shadows, and they were frozen in the moment of the lightning’s arrival.

What this meant was that when the Sovereign of the Stars took me from Caelith Mourne and did not release the Pale Matron, there must have been another Transcedent Demon that he released, so that meant there was at least another Demon God buried in my continent.

Indeed, I could feel something else that was extremely vast, but I had mistaken it for a living mass of darkness, as this presence was buried deep in the ocean, and if not for this glorious moment when all the world stood still, I would not have noticed that another Demon God was buried in the ocean, watching the world tear itself apart.

And somehow, this felt worse, because this presence felt awfully complete, and not the patchwork that was the Pale Matron. It would seem that for me to truly conquer this second timeline, I had to become much stronger and find a way to thoroughly end the Pale Matron who was in pieces, rather than a Demon God that I suspected was nearly fully awakened and watching the world burn,

There was only one thing that could draw my attention from this darkness in the deep, and those were the Sovereigns above.

They were like living stars, and now I could see them much more clearly. There were sixteen figures hovering in the sky above. The elements they controlled and the domain they had mastered were blinding to my senses, and I saw one familiar figure among them, Sovereign Caldus.

It was a thing of horror to sense so much power centered among only sixteen individuals, and I suspected that I was looking at all the Sovereigns on the planet, but I could not see the Sovereign of the Stars here; perhaps he thought this battle was too small for him, or most likely he was out there committing more havoc.

The forty seconds ended as the lightning that had connected me to the sky and the earth faded, and the blue glow that had covered the continent began to dissipate. The war did not resume immediately; it could not. The shock of what had just happened was too great.

”HERESY!” One of the Sovereigns covered with the green lights of an occultic discipline I had no name for roared, ”THE FIRES OF THE HEAVENS SHOULD NOT BE CLAIMED... SEE, AELMAR HAS RAISED AN ABOMINATION IN SECRET, CLEANSE THIS CONTINENT IN FIRE!”

My eyes widened in surprise and fury, and it was at that moment that the last hold of my lightning law in my body vanished, and I fell.

I could have held myself back from falling, but I did not, and so I fell like a stone. I was not foolish enough to think I could fight the Sovereigns in the heavens, and besides, I had not yet understood what I had acquired or if it would aid me in fighting.

The wind screamed past me, but I did not feel it. The heat of tearing through the air was nothing to my Adamantite flesh. The distance from the sky to the earth was just a fact, and I was going to arrive at the end of it.

I hit the ground, and the impact cratered the earth for a hundred meters in every direction. The shockwave flattened what remained of the trees and sent rocks and a small house flying. I stood in the center of the crater, my body unmarked, my robes tattered, and I was nearly naked, but an unconscious pass with Lightning Edict fixed this issue in the blink of an eye, and I quickly glanced at my status screen.

The screen came up, and my heart began to beat in my chest at the first notification that was seemingly branded into my sight.

[ Complete Law detected. ]

[ Anima Depth: 119 (Arcanist) — barrier condition satisfied. ]

[ Ascension to Sovereign tier available. ]

[ Proceed? ]

I stood there frozen in shock, not believing that it could be this easy to cross to the Sovereign level, not that what I had been doing was easy, but you get my point, don’t you?

I had suffered, but there were so many more geniuses in the world, and so it should be impossible that there were only three Sovereigns on my continent, and what I suspected was a grand total of sixteen Sovereigns across the entire world.

Was the gap between me and an ordinary mage so deep, or was it possible that I was not seeing the entire picture here?

Comprehend a Law, and cross. This was what the Master of Flame had told me, and I had done just that, and yet, there seemed to be something here that I was missing.

The screen flashed in front of my eyes again with a deeper insistence,

[ Proceed? ]

But I did not, and I stared at what was arrayed before me, trying to figure out why I instinctively rejected the thought of becoming a Sovereign, but then it seemed as if my thoughts must have triggered something new in my status screen as another screen popped out to the side, and my eyes widened as I read through it.

[ Notice: Ascension by single Law. ]

[ Domain: The Stillness of the Storm will be sealed at current coherence. Fracture permanent. ]

[ Remaining Lightning Law Shards (8) will be rendered inert and dissolved. ]

[ A Sovereign’s Domain is fixed at the moment of crossing. What is not complete at ascension is never completed. ]

[ Proceed? ]

I blinked as I read through this message again, and I chuckled without any mirth in my voice. I had just completed a single Law, and if I push forward, I lose any chance to gain the other eight, and this was not even including the fact that my domain would become permanently fractured.

The answer to this question was quite simple, was it not?