The Burning Fiend

Reynolds had learned from his mock battle with Atrius that his weakness was speed, but it would take too long a time to change that, and he thought that focusing on gaining speed should not be his priority. In his reasoning, all Elemental Laws had traits of specialization... the Fire Elemental Laws seemed to be more aligned to powerful soul attacks than anything else.

An in reality, he felt he was suppressed in speed only because Atrius trained the Wind Elemental Laws and speed is the main trait for this specific system of elemental laws. If he had used his soul attacks seriously, Atrius would have suffered to the point of being forced to escape. He felt that his killing efficiency might only be restrained by Wind and Lightning Elemental Laws users with powerful soul defense and that was only because their ability to escape.

Water Elemental Laws users had great defense in both material and soul attacks, but they would end up immediately reduced into a defensive and passive stance. And while Earth Elemental Laws users might have incredible material attacks, Reynolds's soul attacks were more powerful and swift at the same level of power.

Reynolds felt satisfied with his progress and continue with his training as usual. A couple of years later, the family was looking expectantly at Talia who was presenting her first attempt at cooking with high grade ingredients. She had prepared a dish using phoenix, and they all were trying not to drool when the tempting fragrance reached their noses as she brought the dish to the table.

Koral had tears in her eyes, but neither Reynolds nor Talia could be sure if this was caused due to her expectations for the new dish or out of pride over her daughter's success. They both suspected she was lost in her love for good food and wasn't paying attention to anything else making them chuckle.

Dinner was a complete success, it was not really comparable to the food one could try on a well-established restaurant, but it was much better that the food they would usually enjoy. Reynolds was tempted to find someone who could cook for them during their travels, but decided that this sort of food should not be enjoyed often. Talia sighed in both disappointment and relief... she liked cooking, but she did not want to spend too much time on this activity, she wanted to become strong and use this only as a hobby.

The next 20 years passed in a blur for them, specially for Rosarie and Reynolds as they disassembled the attack formation to try understand how it worked. They did not have trouble in placing the required runes on a few belts and Rosarie was able to activate the array and control it with the help of her sisters.

They found out that this attack formation required a high level of understanding for one to be able to use it for battle. If they gave the formation to Talia, Koral, Jenne and Windsor they would be able to activated but the resulting construct would be unstable and dull causing more trouble than assistance. Only when Rosarie was leading the attack formation, they could rise to a new level and use the full power of the resulting construct while the other three women only supported her with divine power.

Reynolds had tried to use the attack formation by reproducing the runes over three fire constructs to power the array, but he had not managed to obtain satisfactory results. He knew that there were attack formations that could be used by individuals without the support of other deities, but those were more complicated and had not yet managed to understand them.

A few days later, hundreds of kilometers outside the city, Reynolds was floating in the air observing with curiosity a translucent gray wolf that was four times bigger than him. He squinted his eyes trying to focus inside the beast, instead of its massive body and warlike aura, and was barely able to see four women standing in a circle while facing him. Koral, Jenne and Windsor were looking curiously around as if fascinated from the experience while not finding it much different from sitting inside a metallic life form except for the fact that the divine power construct was feeding on their divine power directly and not powered by gems.

Rosarie had her eyes closed in concentration, but she could see him through the eyes of the giant gray wolf and after a moment the wolf bowed to him. Reynolds smiled and said. "We will start slowly... I will use weak attacks and slowly increase the power while you try to understand how resistant the divine power construct is".

A spear fire construct appeared in front of Reynolds and made its way towards the giant wolf making sure that the impact would not be close to the area where his wives were to avoid danger in case the divine power construct ended being pierced by the attack. He smiled as he saw the spear reaching the wolf's shoulder and dissipate after the impact.

He continued increasing the power of his attacks and it started to take damage under two fused low level laws but the divine power construct showed not danger of dissipating making Reynolds nod. "Alright, I will start with soul attacks... remember to paid attention to the divine power curtain protecting your sea of consciousness to find out when the soul attack starts bypassing the protection granted the attack formation, all right?" His voice was serious as he did not want to hurt them and waited until the four women nodded indicating their understanding.

The material defense was enough to resist the onslaught caused by either the fusion of two low level laws or a single high level mystery, but started to show signs of damage and instability after receiving damage from anything stronger than that. Reynolds started using different soul attacks and the result were similar but their soul artifacts had started to work when he used the 'Heat' mystery to power his soul attack.

The results were less appealing when testing soul attacks but it did increase their defenses to a new degree guaranteeing their safety. Rosarie and Reynolds nodded with satisfaction and proceed to test the divine power construct speed. The giant wolf rushed toward Reynolds trying to use a paw to pierce him, but Reynolds avoided the attack without effort making him frown.

Reynolds did not consider his speed as something notable and it only indicated the limits of the divine power construct. Rosarie also noted the situation and increased the attack speed to the limit but this time using fangs, claws and tail in a barrage of attacks that Reynolds avoided without effort.

He sighed while nodding to Rosarie, and he created a 'Fire Essence' shield to test the attack power of the giant wolf. A translucent paw impacted the shield managing to create cracks on it but it took three more hits to finally break the shield. Rosarie and Reynolds were disappointed but understood that this was only the most basic of attack formations they had, and they were still far from mastering it.

Still, this attack formation would allow them to increase their defenses effectively as they remain together, and according to the theory... they could keep a couple of people inside the divine power construct without affecting the attack formation. This meant that his family had a new layer of protection in case it was needed and this counted already as a success in his book.

Koral, Jenne and Windsor understood that the attack formation was not as powerful as they had expected but it was still a useful strategy. They experience had been more than novel and exciting to them, and they were eager to find what a more powerful attack formation could do.

A few people in the distance had observed the events with wide eyes and confusion as runes and arrays were not common tools used by the general population within the Infernal Realm, thus they failed to understand what they were seeing.

Soon Reynolds and his wives were on their way back to the city while discussing the benefits and disadvantages of using the attack formation, Rosarie seemed to have gained more understanding on the arrays as she was the one controlling it and was explaining her findings to Reynolds. "The divine power travels along the paths using different intensities for each channel, I guess that its regulated by the runes and I don't seem to have the ability to modify that while controlling the array. But most importantly, the divine power construct did not seem to react to my mental instructions... I had to use the prepared mechanics within the array to control it". Rosarie's voice was excited and a little frustrated.

Reynolds smiled and muttered. "Perhaps that's the reason why this attack formation is considered a basic one... I think that it is intended as an exercise to facilitate the understanding of formation attacks more than as a true tool for battle. We will understand more when we try different attack formations... solving both issues, finding a good attack formation that you could use in battle and understanding better the inner workings of the runic arrays".

Rosarie was nodding half absentminded, and they continued their discussion until they entered the city and joined Talia in their courtyard, she seemed eager to know how the experiment had gone.