MAGUS INFINITE

[New Properties Unlocked:]

Absolute Command: All lightning within your sphere of influence answers to you.

Path Perception: You can see the routes lightning can take before it takes them.

Resonance Field: Your Lightning Resonance now projects a passive field. Within this field, enemy lightning-based spells are weakened by 50%. Friendly lightning-based spells are strengthened by 50%.

Sovereign Resistance: You are now immune to all lightning-based attacks below the Sovereign tier. Attacks at the Sovereign tier are reduced by 75%.

Law Conduction: The Law of Stillness is woven into your Resonance.

I had spent enough time as a mage and instinctively understood certain facets of my abilities without dwelling too deeply upon them, especially in situations like these where I was surrounded by enemies who were about to come for my blood anytime now.

Absolute Command drew my interest, and I think I knew why it was the first property that I acquired once my Lightning Resonance crossed into the Sovereign tier.

Every mage alive shapes lightning by pushing their will through their channels and forcing the world to comply, but with this power, anything in my sphere of influence that is lightning is mine.

I glanced at a scrap of loose discharge crawling along the glassed lip of the crater about fifty metres out, most likely left over from the downpour of lightning when I comprehended my first Law of lightning.

I did not reach for it as I had learned to do as a Storm Source; I just made a mental gesture that the lightning was mine and it was on my palm before I finished the thought. What was remarkable was that it had not crossed the fifty metres between us, and had simply arrived at my hand... amazing, this must be the effect of Law Conduction, and it immediately showed the gap between a Sovereign and everything else.

If I wanted to kill an Arcanist, they would not even know how they died when I commanded the lightning in my hand to appear inside their chest. How could they block or defend against a move that not even their souls would be able to track? How absolutely ridiculous.

Then I looked into the world with Path Perception, and I saw that the air was laid out in routes, every potential difference a road on a map. But reading it was a bit strange before I got used to it, since I was seeing all the potential roads that lightning could follow, even before it happened, which means that in any fight involving lightning, I now know the entire board before the first move is made.

I blinked in amazement, as the absolute domination of a Sovereign kept breaking everything that I knew about magic up to this point, and I wondered if every Sovereign had these traits or if they were unique to me alone, but I would rather bet that they have it than bet that they did not... I had not finished exploring all the properties I gained from Lightning Resonance at the Sovereign level, but I can see that no number of Arcanists wielding lightning would be able to face me.

However, I glanced back at my status screen and looked at the words that began this whole affair... [Attunement Skill Evolution: Lightning Resonance — Sovereign Tier]

I had chosen to evolve my Lightning Resonance Skill using the Law of Stillness, just because Adamantium Titan was born using this same method, but I wondered if this was the normal way to use a Law, or if I was just following a brand new path.

I sighed and reached into the field that was constantly surrounding me; the description for this was a Resonance Field. A passive field that was always on, and it could halve hostile lightning and strengthen friendly.

I had no allies to strengthen, so I only cared about the first half, and the first half was very interesting indeed, because it applies to everyone in my field, forever, whether they know it or not, and the only way to stop it is to leave.

Sovereign Resistance was well known to me, giving me immunity to all lightning spells below the Sovereign Tier and greatly reducing all Sovereign Tier lightning spells by 75%.

I found it interesting that it could not fully grant me immunity to Sovereign-level attacks; if it could, then Tribulations would become meaningless to me. However, with my Adamantium flesh, I don’t know if I ever needed to fear Tribulations anymore.

However...

I shivered as my Path Perception lit up like a struck bell. I thought this ability would only warn me about lightning, but I did not fully understand this ability, because it renders every route that a discharge can take within my perception, and something four miles above me had gathered an focus a ridiculous amount of energy the size of a mountain above my head, causing evbery single bit of lightning essence in its path to become excited, and I was able to feel this with Path Perception.

I saw the whole board even before it happened. The lightning essence in the air would follow several branches, as the incoming energy would fork around the wreckage and zoom in on my position, and there was enough power here to turn this area to glass for hundreds of miles.

I saw it about a quarter of a second before it existed, and a smile washed across my face, because if I could take a Sovereign-level strike, then this entire loop was about to change.

I chose not to avoid this strike and began to prepare myself to face it. I cast the Loom, and lightning threads burst out of my body in waves... it was as if my body was now a source that led to lightning, and the pathways where they usually crawled out from were no longer in existence.

This was the first surprise that I had when I cast a spell for the first time; the second was that as I gestured for my threads to rise up, they vanished and appeared above me, creating a dense web that blocked out the world and enclosed me in a cocoon of lightning hundreds of feet deep.

My eyes flickered as I cast Lightning Edict, and the cocoon took the shape of metal, and I frowned, no. I can do better than this; my flesh was more durable than metal.

I pressed my palm against the metallic cocoon and reached for my understanding of the Law of Flesh and my Adamantium Flesh. I did not understand what my flesh was made up of, but I did not need to know to wield this spell.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I pushed my lightning through my flesh, with Lightning Edict firmly fixed in my head, and I commanded my spell to drag the property of my flesh into the cocoon.

The flesh on my arms began to peel back before they were stripped away in massive chunks and melded into the cocoon. I held the screams inside my chest, as in less than a tenth of a second, I no longer had any flesh on my arms, and only shining silver bones remained, surrounded by glowing channels that were wrapped around my bones like worms.