The Burning Fiend

A blond haired man was using his left hand to hold his right shoulder where his arm was supposed to be, his face was full of despair and unwillingness. His armor and clothes were covered in blood as well as his disheveled hair, he did not have enough divine power to regenerate his arm and was trying to use the lowest quantity of divine power to stop the bleeding, so repairing his clothes and armor was not even a possibility.

Suddenly a giant reptilian tail appeared in front of him looking like a deadly whip attack that made space tremble as it advanced toward him, strangely the attack was only fast enough for him to escape, and he started fleeing in the opposite direction. He was breathing was heavy due to the panic and exhaustion it was already started to wonder if he was on a nightmare but then remember that he had not slept in thousands of years. The blond haired man suddenly felt the cold breath of death itself and stopped his advance abruptly only to see in terror that two rows full of sharp teeth clashed against each other with violence in the place where he would have been if he had not stopped abruptly, a moment later he could see the head of a green dragon opening its mouth while its eyes were fixed on him.

The blond haired man screamed in madness as he flew in another direction as fast as he could, his mind was barely functioning now but somehow deep inside his mind he registered that he had managed to catch a glimpse on the amus.e.m.e.nt that shined on the dragon's eyes as he had escaped death a moment ago. This hellish experience had started half an hour ago when his brothers had decided to attack a metallic life form that was flying not far from their lair with only two women.

They have assumed that it would be easy to take their possessions and play with them, they were already imagined the celebration they will have after the successful robbery. But after the metallic life form exploded, they only found a purple haired young man floating on the air while holding a glass of wine, he was looking at them with pity and amus.e.m.e.nt while a beautiful girl with blue electric hair floated a few meters behind him. Before their minds could register that they had not found these two when they used their divine sense to probe the metallic life form, and that the two women who were their original target were nowhere to be seen, a green oriental type dragon appeared out of thin air and started killing his brother with ease.

They suddenly understood why the purple haired youth had looked at them like that, the behemoth was extremely fast it moved as if it were swimming, but space itself seemed to be under its control. It did not take even 5 minutes for all his group to be killed by either its tail, claws or fangs, then the true terror started as the green dragon started playing with its food.

Just as the blond haired man was starting to regain control of his mind, he noticed that the dragon had coiled around him creating a tall tunnel that would only allow him to move either up or down, but at the same time he saw in horror as the dragon's head appeared from below forcing him to move upwards trying to escape while cursing his faith. However, this time he did not manage to escape as the coiled body of the dragon limited him to only one direction and the speed in which the dragon head approached from below was much greater than his.

He screamed in despair as the dragon's jaws closed over him destroying his body with sharp fangs, the green dragon chewed with p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e as it keep coiling its body as if to show its excitement after a good hunt. A chuckle interrupted the celebration and the green dragon turned to look at the purple haired youth that was smiling with satisfaction and pride.

Soon the green dragon turned translucent and disappeared leaving five beautiful women in its place. Four of the women were looking in a mixture of terror and awe to the black haired beauty with horns, Koral seemed extremely satisfied with the hunt and started collecting divine sparks and interspatial rings while the other women started to calm themselves.

Rosarie muttered to herself. "So that's how a dragon fight? No wonder..." This time Reynolds had not moved at all from beginning to end, he did not to stop the bandits from fleeing and Koral killed them efficiently one by one without wasting time or effort leaving only one to play for a while at the end.

"You did well Koral, it seems that the 'divine dragon construct' is most effective when you are in control. How does it feel to fight as a dragon again?" Reynolds's voice was happy and looked at his wife with pride. Koral was still excited from the slaughter and seemed unsure how to respond, but after a minute she finally answered.

"I did not know that I missed 'hunting' so much, I know that it is not as effective as using the Elemental Laws of Fire... but it was fun to resort to pure physical attacks for once. It just came natural I guess..." Reynolds nodded thinking that whoever had created this attack formation had a perfect understanding of the anatomy of dragons and how they usually fight.

'Perhaps runic arrays are strongest when emulating something real... as if they receive greater power the closer the result is to the real phenomenon? But why? How is it that one can borrow power while using runes?' He sighed in frustration as he felt he was close to understand something important but the answer escaped him at the most crucial moment.

Reynolds shook his head and summoned another metallic life form to continue their travel, they would arrive in five years at their final destination, Crystal Cave City, completing their tour of the Jadefloat Continent. During this time his progress was satisfactory, he had reached the bottleneck for the fusion of the four laws and was only lacking a moment of enlightenment to succeed. Now his divine avatars had returned to ponder the Edicts of Life and Death while his fire avatar worked on pondering the mystery of 'Explosion' while trying to fuse it to other laws.

But his most powerful move at the moment was the attack formation he had created, it allowed him to step firmly on the Asura level. He had carved runes on five bracelets, powering four of them with Highgod level fire-type divine sparks. This four bracelets would be worn by four flame doppelgangers to create an attack formation on the shape of a Ba-Serpent. 'The Ba-Serpent Attack Formation' was powered by his flames and not by his divine power, he experimented countless times with this in order to retain the ability of his flames instead of creating a pure divine power construct.

Reynolds had spent decades working on this low level attack formation and was extremely satisfied with the results, its power depended entirely on his soul mutation and to others it would be not much different from the 'divine wolf construct' he had learned a few decades ago.

What he needed now was a good battle in order to breakthrough the bottleneck, or he might spend hundreds of years waiting for the inspiration he was lacking, thus Reynolds planned to take a few 7-star missions once they arrived at Crystal Cave City hoping to gain inspiration. He smiled as he watched Rosarie talking with Koral trying to understand how to get better at controlling attack formations.

Catherine seemed a little traumatized by the way Koral had played with the last God and looked at her as if seeing her for the first time with a bit of fear showing in her eyes. Reynolds shook his head, this little elf was still extremely naive and rejected violence, he wondered what would have happened to her if she had gone of her own. He turned his attention to Windsor and Jenne to find that they were listening with curiosity to the conversation without showing any adverse reactions while Talia looked at her mother with bright eyes full worship, Reynolds chuckled noticing that Talia had used divine power to create a pair horns becoming in an almost identical copy of her mother.

Reynolds returned to his own thoughts trying to figure out what to do next. Fusing the four laws he had mastered could happen at any moment, but completely mastering 'Explosion' and fusing it to the other four laws would take close to 10,000 years. That was nearly the same time that it would take him for his Life and Death avatars to reach the level of Highgod.

"So it seems that the only area in which I can to make significant constant progress during the next 10,000 years would be runic arrays..." He muttered a little confused and frustrated, he had not been alive for even a thousand years... but his next plan considered a period of 10,000 years, and he had no idea how long it would take him to reach the next level after that. He sighed shaking his head and thought. 'I will have to ask for advice once I met Lord Beirut again'.

Unknown to Reynolds, the 'green dragon hunt' was becoming the most sought after recording orb. Most inhabitants of the Infernal Realm did not understand runes, and they thought that the green dragon was a special ability or creature. But the recording orb showed clearly that the green dragon was obedient toward the Burning Fiend increasing the mystery since the deities that managed to obtain the recording were so far away that the last God had seemed like an ant being tortured by a snake.

They did not find more bandits on the way toward the city, and they soon arrived at the tunnel under the mountain. The maps showed that this tunnel crossed through the mountain connecting the Jadefloat Continent with the Starmist Sea while the city was in the middle of the tunnel. The mountain was simply monstrous and the clouds blocked the peak of the mountain from view, the books mentioned that the clouds started blocking the view at the middle of the mountain and if one were to fly to the peak, they would end up watching a sea of clouds that extended infinitely in all directions blocking the view of the continent below.

For a moment he wondered if that view would be more worthy than the Crystal Cave City itself, but decided that they would go to the city first. After all they will spend a few decades there while he took missions looking for a way to breakthrough the bottleneck, he would have time to see the view from the top of the mountain.

He smiled seeing that Talia's eyes were shining and could not wait to enter the tunnel and reach the mythical city, he chuckled and said. "Calm down little one, it will still take us a few years to reach the city. Be patient". Talia seemed like a deflated balloon and turned to glare at him as if to blame him for crushing her hopes. Reynolds felt sweat drops forming on his forehead under the upset look of his daughter and patted her head while trying to distract her asking her if she wanted to play chess only to sigh when she started laughing and kissed him on the cheek before going to play with the girls.

Reynolds chuckled after a moment of confusion and took a bottle of wine and started filling a glass while paying attention to the tunnel as it could be a good place for an ambush.