MAGUS INFINITE

What was funny was that when I decided to comprehend the rest of my Lightning Shards, I came across a unique problem, and I did not know if I should laugh or cry, just because I could not access the room with the shards.

Like the rest of my abilities and titles, they were sealed behind a weird wall, and this was the final stroke that I needed to push my mind to focus. I stopped hesitating about my next actions as I reached for the mechanism of the loop deep inside my soul, and I blinked in confusion.

I did not think I fully understood the nature of the loop, but its functions were rather straightforward: it brought my soul back to a fixed point in time whenever I died, and those points were called Temporal Anchors.

When the Sovereign of the Stars kidnapped me and placed me in a tank for my soul to be eaten by a Soul Flayer, that action had somehow satisfied the requirements needed for me to solve my first World Quest to stop the Pale Matron from rising.

As a result, I had gained several rewards, which included being able to wear two Titles at once, and more importantly, I was able to gain a second Temporal Anchor, which gave me a sort of flexibility and reach that had pushed me to this present height.

Now, what made me extremely confused at this time was the fact that my Temporal Anchors were still present; I could feel them deep in my soul, although they seemed to somehow be farther away from me, and if they shone as brightly as the sun inside my soul before, now they were like a candle flame.

This should have troubled me extremely, but what drew my attention was that I had two more Temporal Anchors floating around in my soul that were not attached to anything.

I blinked in confusion and closed my eyes again, entering my soul, and nothing had changed; in addition to my two Temporal Anchors, there were another two exact Anchors in my soul that had not been attached to any Temporal points.

I looked around me and at my status screen again, before I sighed and looked up. It was time to lay my suspicion to rest about this place I found myself, as it seemed there were new variables at work here, and I could not help but think that everything was tied to where I just found myself in.

∞

I stood up and analyzed every tool I had to work with, and my toolkit had been reduced to my diminished domain, my equipped Titles and Adamantium Titan, and they would have to be enough.

The Titles I had equipped were The Unbroken Titan and Heaven Beast Tamer. The first Title enhanced everything about my Adamantium Titan body, while also greatly enhancing my survivability, and although the second Title seemed useless without the Moon Fox awake, I was fairly sure it was Aurora’s borrowed instincts that had let me survive the spatial pillars.”

This Title enhanced my flight capabilities and made me much more nimble. In short, my two Titles were focused on survivability, and this was precisely what I needed.

I had no access to my spells, but my lightning resonance was firmly in the Sovereign Tier, which meant I could create lightning from my body as easily as breathing. The lightning I could create may not have all the specialties of a spell, but it was fast, hot, and deadly, and in many instances, this three-in-one combination would be enough.

Then there was my most powerful skill, Adamantium Titan. The unknown attack that splattered me across the sky when I was in the midst of thee Sovereigns came when this skill had just entered the Sovereign Tier, and now that I had been placed inside a grinder for weeks and endured injuries that I believed may kill a Sovereign, this skill had reached 149, the peak of the Sovereign Tier!

However, I did not feel the sense of barrier that usually arrived when a skill neared the peak of its tier, and I would have to confirm in the near future, but I don’t think 149 was the peak of the Sovereign level. However, I did not know if this was unique to this skill, or maybe the Sovereign Tier was much deeper than I once thought.

The point was that my body was vastly stronger than before, and that meant my size, when in my full Adamantium form, would have grown bigger as well. If there were any reason I needed to go on a rampage, all that power, size, and mass would crush cities in the blink of an eye.

So it was not as if I was helpless, not when I had access to my most powerful skills, in addition to a body that would recover from anything given enough time.

On a whim, I came to my feet, and as I spread out my legs to take the stance that I was tentatively calling Stone Stance in my head, it fit after all; I felt a blossoming connection with the earth all around me.

Making a rising gesture with my arm, the rocks under me began to churn as if they were mud, and I was lifted into the air. So, I still had access to this strange power, and after a few seconds I stopped using it. Maybe I had developed a bit of a phobia, considering where this stance had taken me the last time I experimented with it.

Knowing all the tools I had available to me, I began to rise through the tunnel I had made while coming in from the sky, and a part of me could not help but observe that the tunnel looked like a wound.

I went up through it slowly, and I did not fly, mostly because I wanted to experience this act of climbing out of my grave, and if by any chance there was danger outside the mountain, I wanted to be seen as less of a threat, and someone who could fly would obviously be powerful.

Oh, and I was naked; I just wanted to throw it out there for no particular reasons.

Lightning Edict had made it ridiculously easy for me to clothe myself with lightning, and I no longer bothered with the act of finding clothes anymore, but without access to these spells, I was forced to be like everyone else.

I had a few ideas about Inscriptions that I wanted to try out, but first, I should solve the burning suspicion in my heart.

It took a while to climb all the way to the top. The stone had come apart and settled and locked itself together, and twice I had to shoulder through a plug of it, but with my present strength I had to hold back to keep from collapsing a section of the mountain. Still, I moved fast enough that a mortal watching would have seen only a blur.

The air grew colder as I rose, and I could smell the smoke of distant fires and other smells, the faint tang of something ancient and wild that I did not recognize. The sky was dark, and I could see the stars beginning to emerge.

For some reason, my heart began to beat faster, and I paused before acknowledging that what I was feeling was anticipation, before I continued my climb, and quicker than I thought, I reached the peak and stepped out under a night sky.