Here is tomorrow's chapter early since I won't be home. Enjoy.
***
Beams of light roared through the sky as the serpents roared, declaring, "This is our fight, begone!"
Kai smiled confidently. “Nox, my old friend, come. Let’s show them what a weapon forged through it all can do!” He reached out and grasped at the empty space.
Not a second later, a buzzing echoed, and space shattered, revealing an ink-black sword, concepts of destruction and death dripping from it like raindrops.
Kai grasped it and whispered, “You need more color, my friend.”
As he spoke, the darkness within Nox rippled, and star by star erupted across its surface, painting a night sky upon the canvas of the ancient blade.
“The world needs a night sky, my friend. Wouldn’t you say so?” Kai smiled.
“Leaving all the work to me, I see!” Umbra teased as she spun her scythe, creating an enormous cyclone of death and darkness.
Then, with a single step, the world around her rippled and changed. Dark lightning fell alongside black flaming meteors, while deathly winds howled.
“You are not the only one who has benefited from our link, you know.” She grinned. “Umbra’s Hollow!”
With those words, she single-handedly pushed back the ten beams.
“Well, isn’t she great? Come, One with the World!” Kai stepped forward, yet with each step he crossed hundreds of meters as if distance itself no longer mattered.
Swish
He swung, and Nox whistled through the air as a simple line split the world of the egg, landing upon the Serpent of Water.
“That is my element. It is only natural that I take it back first!” Kai smiled.
The slash landed upon the serpent’s massive head.
The beast raised enormous tsunamis and thick barriers to defend itself, yet Kai swung once more with a flick of his wrist, and the cross-shaped slash split the serpent into four pieces.
The fragments crumbled into elemental water and surged into him.
He absorbed it all like thirsty ground drinking rain, and as he did, a large circle appeared behind him.
Spinning as it always had.
“No, you won’t!” Umbra shouted as she landed atop the Serpent of Deathly Darkness.
“Let me show you something fun!” Umbra roared and tossed the scythe high into the air, where it spun unstoppably.
From Umbra’s form, a titanic being of pure darkness emerged, towering over the serpent itself.
“Titan God Series: Tigerhawk’s Rage!” She roared as the titan enveloped her and her hands morphed into massive claws flowing with deathly mana. Calmly, she stabbed forward in a flurry of death-charged strikes.
Then, as the serpent’s head started to crack, the scythe descended and cleaved it in half, sending its essence toward Kai and creating another circle behind him.
The battle barely lasted a minute before Umbra moved toward the Serpent of Life.
“Let’s see who is stronger, life or death!” She smiled ecstatically.
Kai, on the other hand, fought the Thunderfire and Earth Serpents.
His sword slashes flowed like a river of death, each strike ripping pieces from both serpents, while around him an endless river flowed in the shape of a horizontal number eight.
“Now, Nox!” Kai shouted as he thrust toward the Earth Serpent.
Nox channeled the infinite waters flowing through Kai, and a geyser of eternal water erupted, shattering the serpent’s head.
Then, in one swift motion, Kai spun and appeared above the Thunderfire Serpent and sent a sharp disc of death flying downward, decapitating it and creating two more circles behind him.
On the other side, Umbra danced through three more serpents.
Life, Wind, and Light slithered and coiled, sending all sorts of elemental attacks at her while she avoided them all.
“Dance of the Thunder!” she laughed as lightning coiled around her limbs.
Then, with the roar of a Tigerhawk, she disappeared, leaving an Umbra-shaped hole within the Serpent of Wind.
As she landed on the other side, she used the burst of wind mana as cover and tossed her scythe flying into the Serpent of Light, which opened its maw and summoned a storm of light spears that rained down, exploding in surges of melting radiance.
Yet as soon as the scythe was above the serpent, Umbra materialized in its place.
“Fun, right?” she chuckled and released a lightning bolt as thick as the serpent itself.
BOOM!
The serpent was scattered like a house of cards.
“Watch out!” Kai appeared behind her and summoned an impenetrable barrier of dark waters crackling with lightning.
A beam of space-time struck it, sending him flying backward as he stabbed Nox into the ground, slowing his descent.
Umbra grew serious and summoned her armor, which covered her entire form, making her look like a knight of darkness and death.
Her helm bore a single horn at its center, as if a unicorn had descended into darkness.
Her wings, now sheathed in dark steel, shimmered as she spun forward like a drill, folding them before herself and burrowing through the Serpent of Life, smothering its vitality with deathly darkness.
“And then there were three!” Kai smiled.
“I will take the burning one; you take the other two!” Umbra commanded and flew toward the Eternal Serpent of Space and Creation.
Kai took a deep breath and gripped Nox while seven circles spun behind him.
“Nox, buddy, how about we try something new?” Kai smiled and whispered inwardly, World Serpent Swallows the Sun.
Around him, a flash of light erupted, revealing an ethereal sun, and around the sun coiled a serpent as blue as the ocean.
Then it opened its maw.
The sun vanished, and the serpent turned pitch black before coiling around Nox, who swallowed it whole.
Kai soared into the sky, not needing his wings.
He used the aspect of wind and moved wherever he wished.
Then he swung downward, and Nox released a night sky that erupted with countless stars detonating one after another, swallowing the two serpents completely.
They writhed and spat beams of time and screaming souls, and yet the night devoured them all.
BOOM!
On the other side, the last serpent sent Umbra flying toward Kai with a forceful slam of its space-melting tail.
“Damn you, looks like the strongest one is left to me!” she growled.
“Come, let’s work together like in the old days!” Kai smiled.
“What’s our game?” she smirked.
“You go high, I go low?” Kai winked and ran forward.
“Haha, deal!” She soared into the heights of the soul world.
Kai summoned countless threads that swirled around him like deadly weapons.
“An old skill, but somehow I hold it dear,” he spoke and added, “I will call it Dawnbreaker’s Revenge!”
Threads of light intertwined with time and death surged forward and shot toward the last serpent, enveloping it tightly just as a meteor of darkness descended.
BOOM!
Umbra’s fist landed, sending the serpent crashing into the ground, while Kai snapped his fingers and the threads sank deep, cutting the serpent into thousands of pieces.
The last circle morphed behind him.
“Thank you, sister.” He smiled and fell to his knees as the circles started grinding against one another, as if fighting for the leading position.
“Kai?!” she shouted and rushed to his side.
“Don’t worry, I have an idea,” he muttered through the pain.
“Who told you that you can fight for control?! You are part of me, you fools, and for that matter, I don’t need all of you, or to be more precise, any of you!”
He screamed, and the circles shattered one by one into a vortex of Laws and Aspects, into the very building blocks of creation.
At the same time, the proto-divine spark he had condensed from the beasts’ relics melted into pure chaotic liquid intertwined with the Laws of Creation and fused into his very being, fueling the transformation.
“Condense!” he shouted, and the vortex slammed into his back, engraving a massive circle across his entire back.
The circle took the shape of a draconic Ouroboros, silver and crimson in color, while deep within Kai, the entrance to his old realm reappeared, now a whole solar system, continuously expanding.
His Thunder Tree spread its canopy and branches through space and pierced into the unknown, each branch absorbing the Laws of Time and Space and creating a passage to a new small realm.
The original island where Arcanum still stood flowed with primordial mana as thick as mist.
Kai appeared within and waved his hand.
From the mist, he remade Faker, his clone, granting him true life.
“I knew you’d be back. Thanks for the upgrade!” Faker smiled as Kai tossed him Cryofang.
“It’s yours. Take it!”
“Thanks, other me, I think. I’ll go investigate this new world of yours. Wish me luck!” Faker soared away with a burst of azure water and followed one of the branches of the Thunder Tree.
“Have fun!” Kai spoke as he returned to his core space. The place within him where his core had first appeared before his circles and later the entrance to his realm.
Now, an ethereal copy of Kai sat there in a meditative position while behind him a multicolored draconic serpent spun endlessly, chasing its own tail.
“So, this is the true Kai?” He smiled proudly.
“I like it.” He whispered and returned to the world of the egg.
***
Back, Umbra was clutching at her chest as all sorts of deathly darkness manifested around her. Flames, lightning, winds, rivers of death, even laws of flowing time and decaying space.
She absorbed through Kai everything related to death and roared.
“Umbra! Focus, hold on to yourself, hold on to me!” he shouted and clenched her hand, which had turned clawed and feral.
She screamed, a deep guttural roar, and within her world, her core and the fragment of the divine spark melted into an orb of dark liquid sludge, from which a pitch-black diamond emerged and engraved itself into her existence, feeding her soul and body with origin mana.
She opened her eyes in a flash of inky darkness before the whites of her eyes returned.
“I am back. Thank you, brother.” She smiled.
“Proto-Divine Spark?” He smiled.
“I think so. What now?” she asked.
“You need to figure out what you represent. Once you do, you will ascend,” he spoke proudly.
“Not that, you fool. What do we do now? How do we go back?” She cracked a smile.
“Oh, that.” He scratched the back of his head.
“Just break the egg?” He smiled.
“Now you are talking my language. Let’s go back and torment the bastard Scry, haha. He probably missed me dearly!” she chuckled and morphed her hands into feline claws.
“I have been thinking; this suits me better than that scythe. Very unoriginal if you ask me.” She smiled again before clawing forward with the full power of her spark.
Kai smiled happily and raised Nox, simply stabbing forward.
Already cracked, time and space split before Nox.
Crack
The world erupted.
***
In the First Hell, Kai’s spirits all fell to the ground one by one, each screaming in pain as their bodies twisted and grew.
The worst among them was Scry, whose seals shattered one by one until only a single seal remained.
“You will break! You will return my past to me!” The pain of loss, the pain of eons of lifetimes, flooded his weakened heart. Yet deep within, he felt it, his connection to Kai dimming before erupting with the surge of the cosmos itself.
He smirked through the pain, his fangs shining as he roared. “Scryus the Primordial Flame is here to stay! Damn you, Tenebria, let me come home!”
He roared, forcing tears down Arthraxius’ face. “You have suffered enough, brother!”
As Scry fought against his own mind, the other spirits grew larger and larger until they resembled their original forms.
Viridya returned to her divine feminine form.
Solivus grew into a handsome God of Light, and even his old spear suddenly shot from the egg, perfectly reforged.
“Sunpiercer, my friend, you are back?!” He cheered.
“Hello, Sol, you old coward. It’s been ages.” The spear spoke happily.
Next to Sol, the five beasts roared, elemental origin mana flooding their beings and pushing their levels beyond High Spirits into something new, something never seen before.
Even Gaeruda shifted into his humanoid form, his shell twisting into a set of earthen armor while his tail elongated into a sleek trident-like tip, sands swirling around it.
Then there was Silver.
His body expanded, his wings draconified even further, and then he stood tall, his form shifting into a draconic werewolf.
His tail became lizard-like, silver and crackling with lightning, while his horns grew draconic and silver, matching his eyes.
He roared, a true dragon’s roar, and then knelt and bowed.
As he did, the other spirits followed, even Viridya and Solivus.
At that moment, the egg shattered, and from its depths Kai emerged in simple black martial attire alongside Umbra in her leather armor.
Nox swirled happily beside him, and Kai smiled.
As the full power of Kai’s new state surged into Scry, his final seal shattered, and he fully released the power of a Primordial Spirit of Fire.
“Burn, burn, flames of Scryus! Torch all impurity to dust! Reign supreme, Origin of Flames, Scryus the First Flame!” He roared, his body expanding to the size of a dragon before shrinking back into his small, adorable form.
He flew toward Kai and Umbra. “Took you long enough, you bastards! Did you waste your time with the birdbrain?” He shouted as tears flowed freely.
“I missed you too, buddy!” Kai squeezed the sobbing tiger tightly as Umbra joined in.
“Damn tiger, always making problems.” She grinned through her tears.
For a moment, everyone froze as waves of mana unlike anything they had ever felt enveloped them.
Arthraxius roared, his draconic heart beating faster as tears fell from his eyes. “Welcome back, Kai!” He smiled.
Kai and the trio separated, and he noticed his spirits bowing.
“Raise your heads, my friends. You do not bow to me!” He spoke and bowed deeply to them.
“I thank you all for your gifts. If it wasn’t for you, I would not be where I am now!” He shouted, making everyone smile.
“Welcome back, Master!”
“Welcome back, Kai!”
They shouted in return.
“So, you are the troublesome child who caused my best student so much pain?” Mortia spoke coldly.
“For that, I am sorry. I did not know. Thank you for all of your help.” Kai smiled warmly.
“For a being with such overwhelming mana, you certainly are a nice kid.” She smiled back.
“Alright, let us celebrate this moment. My student has broken into the Proto-Divine Realm, and her brother has ascended into something quite confusing!” Mortia shouted.
“WHAT?!” The other assembled gods shouted in unison, shocked.
***
“So… he really did it?” Progenius murmured.
“He was my last hope. The last Chosen,” Tenebria replied, her smile radiant.
“I expected nothing less from my successor and my brother.” Kaleth nodded.
Together, the trio opened a small portal and stepped through into a peaceful meadow beyond which stood a large, distant mansion.
“Time for a well-deserved rest,” Kaleth added.
The portal snapped shut, leaving behind only the quiet, peaceful darkness.
***
Well, there it is, the end of book 4. One last arc remains, and my first story will be finished. It's definitely one of my weaker ones, but I think that even if it lacks some polishing and maybe even needs some rewrites, especially the arc 1, it does have a lot of heart.
I currently have 20 chapters written for book 5, so the posting continues. I'm not sure how large the last arcs will be since I want to tie all the loose ends nicely, but it will probably be shorter than this one. We will see, I guess. I don't want to add unnecessary fillers.
Though I wanted to have it done by now, but I had no time to write either Sacra or Iconless due to Druid being on the RS, which should change starting this weekend.
Cheers.