Heir of Synthesis: The World Mage

Priam steadied his breathing, slowing his heartbeat as he watched the unreal silence surrounding that oasis.

If even a monstrosity of that size feared setting foot there, then caution demanded twice the care. Even so, turning back after getting this close wasn’t even an option.

With Divine Concealment pushed to its absolute limit, he advanced one step at a time until he reached the shore of a small crystal-clear lake.

Subtly kneeling down, Priam extended his perception over the water, letting out a heavy sigh as he examined the place.

”No fish, no algae... not even a single living bacterium. And this water is...!”

Suddenly, Priam’s eyes widened. As he swept the sandy bottom of the lake with his senses, he detected thousands of tiny bluish crystals shimmering beneath the water. Every single one radiated a terrifyingly pure Yin energy.

”This...”

He pulled his hand back instantly. He wouldn’t dare touch anything before figuring out what this place really was.

Priam swallowed a few Ether pills. The bitter taste burned down his throat, but the recovery was subtle. At his current level, those ordinary pills barely made a dent in his reserves—once he finally broke through to the next Rank, they’d become completely useless.

He remained there for over an hour, consuming almost his entire stock of pills until he felt his Ether had recovered to a minimally safe level. When he finally stood up, his eyes locked onto the small mountainous island rising from the very center of the lake.

Time to move.

Priam pulled out two simple medicinal herbs he kept inside his ring.

[Synthesize?] [Yes / No]

He confirmed the command, guiding the energies.

[Rune of Power: Ethereal Steps]

[For a short time, your movements become smooth and imperceptible, interacting directly with nothing.]

Without wasting a second, Priam activated the power of the glowing rune. As he took his first step onto the lake’s surface, his feet touched the water without sinking even a single millimeter, without creating ripples or making the slightest sound. Combined with Divine Concealment, he was practically an invisible aberration to the laws of physics.

’This reminds me of a ninja anime from Earth... well, they’re more like mages than ninjas, so I guess it makes sense.’

Gliding across the lake like a ghost, he reached the rocky island and climbed to the top, stopping in front of the entrance to a dark cave.

He couldn’t help but notice that the rocks he had climbed also contained tiny crystals. But these ones were made of pure Yang.

Casting a careful glance into the cave, he confirmed the ground inside was solid earth and silently stepped in.

The interior was vast and stifling.

At the center of the cavernous chamber, Priam spotted a colossal pool of lava nearly ten meters across. The magma wasn’t still; it churned and bubbled endlessly like a living furnace.

Priam’s heart pounded inside his chest. His suspicions had been one hundred percent correct.

’I really found the Sacred Flame of Nature!’

The lava pool radiated such brutal waves of heat that the surrounding air warped, making every breath Priam took heavy and painful.

*Buzz...*

Suddenly, the fabric of space inside the cave trembled. The lava began surging violently, forming blazing spirals that threatened to erupt outward. Priam reacted on instinct, leaping backward and pressing his back against the cave wall.

Several suffocating seconds passed before the disturbance finally subsided and the magma returned to its constant flow.

Priam wiped the cold sweat running down his face, feeling the weight of having brushed against death once again.

’So that’s why...’, he realized, connecting the dots.

The Corrupted Beast would never dare approach this oasis because the Sacred Flame of Nature possessed a natural self-defense mechanism.

The treasure had no consciousness or life of its own. It was simply an astronomically dense and pure concentration of the fire element. Even so, it functioned like a sensitive time bomb: any unusual energy fluctuation that came close would trigger a furious chain reaction.

If the Corrupted Beast stepped in there, the Yang fire’s purification outburst would burn it to ashes in the blink of an eye. The only reason Priam had managed to get this close and witness everything was because of the absolute isolation granted by Divine Concealment.

Looking at the blazing expanse before him, Priam let out a bitter laugh.

’Damn... this treasure is way too much for me to handle. There’s no way I can take it with me right now.’

The frustration was unavoidable. Trying to subdue that flame at this moment would be suicide; at best, he’d only be able to absorb a tiny fraction of it, while the rest would kill him. He was like a tiny sponge trying to swallow an entire ocean. They existed on completely different levels.

’Well, at least now I know where it is. Nobody’s stealing it from me anytime soon.’

Picking up his pace, Priam quickly made his way back, knowing Ethereal Steps was about to run out.

In less than a minute, he crossed the lake and stepped onto solid ground at the shore.

That was when a crafty smile slowly spread across his lips.

He looked back, staring at the thousands of bluish crystals beneath the shallow water. Just like the Yang crystals near the source of the great danger.

That lake hadn’t formed by chance. The Sacred Flame’s presence inside the mountain had created a massive concentration of Yang energy, causing the planet’s natural elements to draw in the opposite force to balance the environment. The purest Yin had naturally gathered around the island, condensing into those crystals.

Most importantly, the cave and the lake weren’t directly connected to the main treasure.

Priam didn’t have to leave empty-handed.

Keeping Divine Concealment active without releasing even the slightest energy fluctuation, he could enter the water and loot every last Yin crystal from the lake. Then, by carefully approaching the cave, he could also collect the Yang crystals.

***

Almost three days later, Priam emerged from the lake’s freezing waters for the last time.

He hadn’t left a single thing behind. Safely stored inside his spatial ring were hundreds of thousands of extremely pure Yin and Yang crystals, a fortune great enough to shock the people of the outer sect. The profit from his exile had already become astronomical.

But Priam wasn’t satisfied with just escaping.

While mining at the bottom of the lake, his mind had never stopped analyzing every variable, every anatomical and behavioral detail of that underground monster. Now, he had a plan.

Fixing his gaze on the gray horizon, he left the oasis from the opposite side of where he had entered.

Knowing exactly how the monster tracked its prey through vibrations in the ground, Priam synthesized the Rune of Power: Ethereal Steps once again.

He only had enough materials left to create that rune two more times. Adding both durations together, he’d have at most ten minutes of absolute physical stealth—ten minutes during which his legs wouldn’t create the slightest bit of friction against the sand.

Under normal circumstances, that time would’ve been used to run in the opposite direction and put as much distance as possible between himself and the Corrupted Beast.

But was he really going to run? Priam smiled, answering the question he’d asked himself over and over.

Without hesitation, he activated the Rune of Power. His feet floated just millimeters above the surface, gliding across the desert like a leaf carried by an invisible breeze, without sinking or disturbing a single grain of sand.

For five straight minutes, Priam traveled deep into the heart of the monster’s territory before stopping at a strategic location.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned hundreds of extremely dense pure Yang crystals from his spatial ring.

He gathered them in the palm of his hand before gently placing them on the ground.

The concentration of energy within those crystals was so overwhelming that the sand beneath them instantly melted, turning into bubbling molten glass before the glowing mass slowly sank into the depths below.

Priam silently stepped back several paces.

*Buzz...*

Less than a minute passed.

The ground beneath his feet began trembling with a constant, hungry vibration.

A desert was naturally dominated by the earth element, but it also contained abundant fire and Yang. That Corrupted Beast naturally controlled those elements, even though earth was its specialty.

That’s why it sensed that extraordinary source of energy deep underground. Its ravenous instincts took over, and it charged blindly at full speed to devour the delicacy.

The tremors became deafening.

Priam waited patiently while the creature swallowed all the Yang crystals in one gulp deep beneath the surface.

Then suddenly...

...the sand within a fifty-meter radius began boiling, releasing scorching steam.

A victorious smile spread across Priam’s face.

After devouring such an enormous amount of concentrated Yang energy at once, the Corrupted Beast’s internal temperature skyrocketed to critical levels. The monster’s body desperately tried to assimilate the element, causing its entire body to enter a state of extreme overheating.

This was the exact moment!

Priam clenched his fists, gathered his Ether, and attacked.

*BOOOOM!*

*Sky-Rending Wind* erupted with full force, tearing through the earth and hurling tons of sand into the sky, creating a massive crater in the middle of the desert.

At the center of the newly formed abyss, the giant worm was finally exposed.

However, its enormous body was no longer translucent like cold glass; the plates covering it had turned incandescent, glowing a blood-red color while spewing scorching steam.

Priam waved his hand, giving his enemy not even a second to recover.

From inside his spatial ring, nearly a thousand pure Yin crystals were released all at once, floating in the air like a cloud of icy stars above the crater.

”GO!”

At his roar, all one thousand Yin crystals exploded simultaneously in midair! A freezing blue shockwave erupted, unleashing a tidal wave of pure, absolute Yin energy.

The entire blast crashed down onto the Corrupted Beast’s incandescent body.

*GUAAAAAAW!*

A deafening, shrill, visceral cry echoed across the desert, sounding like the scream of a mountain splitting apart. Priam had never imagined that a giant worm could let out such a horrifying howl of pain.

His plan had worked with surgical precision.

The beast’s glass-like armor had been formed from the earth element—an element that depended on the delicate balance between Yin and Yang.

When the beast absorbed that massive surge of Yang, its molecular and elemental structure expanded under the extreme heat. Then, in the very next instant, the freezing Yin wave struck it from above, forcing the armor’s earth element to absorb it in an attempt to restore balance.

The easiest way to explain the result was that it suffered a thermal shock of catastrophic proportions.

The monster’s tempered glass armor cracked. Thousands of spiderweb fractures spread across its scales, destroying the structural integrity of its absolute defense.

With his enemy defenseless and writhing in agony...

*Sky-Rending Wind!*

Priam burned through 100% of the Ether remaining in his reserves, not sparing a single drop.

**RUMBLE!!**

A drill-shaped storm of razor-sharp wind slammed directly into the creature’s central crack.

The sound of tempered glass shattering echoed alongside a devastating explosion of flesh and corrupted fluid.

The giant aberration that had terrorized that region of the desert was reduced to debris.

”You are the defenseless ant!”