The Burning Fiend

Reynolds was sitting cross-legged in the garden of the villa that he and his family have rented at their arrival in the city, he had just come back from his battle with the Lord Prefect and started working on the insights he had gained from it. Reynolds went as far as to stop his extremely slow pondering on the Edicts to dedicate all the attention of his avatars to ponder the Elemental Laws of Fire and complete the fusion.

He had talked briefly with the City Lord and the Lord Prefect and agreed to have another battle once he had completed the fusion of the four laws. When the Lord Prefect left, Reynolds found that the blue haired girl had stayed with Catherine making him slightly curious and his imagination started going wild for a moment thinking that they might end up together as he had never seeing Catherine showing interest on any male. He chuckled at the thought while both blue haired girls directed a deadly glare toward him as if they were reading his mind, but he ignored them completely being the shameless person he had always been.

While his avatars were busy pondering and fusing the laws, Reynolds's saint body spent time with his family and focused to study runes and arrays. He felt that there was too much power unused on this art and found it astonishing, and the more he studied the more he felt that the existing understanding of runes was only able to touch the surface and never its true potential.

He already suspected that the universe was created by runes, even the souls seemed to be created by runes... this thought was so terrifying that he had refused to believe it whenever it had crossed his mind before. But he suddenly had an idea, if this was real... then everything in this world could be reproduced by runes... people, souls... laws.

He decided to experiment and started to look for a way to represent the 'Fire Elemental Essence' by a runic array. If his idea was correct, then he would be able to create such a rune and however terrifying it might be this might end up opening a new whole world for him. The idea might be terrifying if he thought that someone had created the universe where he lived and that him and everyone he knew were nothing more than a complex construct made out of runes.

It might open a new whole world to him, because it would mean that if he manages to gain enough understanding of runes, he might gain control of everything in this universe. Of course, the limitations would be that he would not be able to create a runic array for a law that he could not understand if... he would only be able to create a runic array that represent a law that he already understood.

Reynolds shook his head thinking that instead of considering the 'ifs', it would be better to just try to prove his hypothesis and move from there. However, he had a feeling that this idea was something that he should not tell anyone... like if the mere mention of it out loud could be dangerous. He certainly did not understand why, but he decided to believe in his instincts.

Reynolds decided that he needed a break before diving into the world of runes, he turned around exploring the garden and found that Koral was playing music, while Rosarie and Jenne were reading book under the shade of a tree, and Windsor was looking at Talia as she was working with a boulder in preparation to start sculpting. He smirked and walked toward Windsor and without saying anything he threw her over his shoulder and carried her while walking towards their room.

Windsor was slightly startled, but his had been a common occurrence for the early days of their life together, so she only smiled with curiosity and looked apologetically at Talia who seemed bewildered and about to protest in her defense. But before her niece could say anything, Talia realized that Rosarie, Jenne and Koral were walking toward their room together and the expectation could be read from their smiles.

The two blue haired girls seemed bewildered while Talia sighed resigned and turned her attention to the boulder thinking that it was a blessing that her aunt Rosarie had placed a new runic array to prevent noise from leaving their room.

---

It took Reynolds nearly ten years of hard work for his three divine avatars to complete the fusion, his battle style did not change as he had being using the incomplete 4-way fusion for a while now but his power increased tremendously. Now he was a 7-star Fiend by his mastery over the 'Elemental Laws' and with the blessing of his soul mutations he was already an Asura level combatant.

He could challenge the Lord of a city and take control of it if he wanted to, but he had never cared for status and responsibility... just imagining having to command the guards was annoying already. But he could practice with the City Lord and the Lord Prefect, so he planned on visit them in a few years. Before that, he wanted to see if his idea of the runes being the 'code' of the universe was correct. He had being making progress on his runic array to represent the 'Fire Essence', and he planed to spend the next 10 years working on this experiment with the help of his three avatars.

The process was more like a trial and error as his understanding on runes was lacking, he would like to said that the understanding of runes in the whole universe was lacking. The bright side on his experiments was that there seemed to be no danger at all, every time he failed the runic array simple unraveled and sometimes a small flame surged from it but it was extinguished after a couple of seconds.

During these few years, the Lord Prefect had come to visit and speak with Reynolds. On his second visit he expressed his curiosity about his home plane. "Reynolds, did you ever visited the Necropolis of the Gods?" The gray haired man had asked with a serious tune that surprised Reynolds, he took a small sip from his wine to buy a little time before answering.

"The Necropolis of the Gods... yes, when I was a saint I entered the lower levels of the Necropolis. I became a Demigod in that exploration and meet Rosarie there". He smirked remembering how alluring she had looked to him the time he teased her with his divine field on the last floor of the Necropolis, and he couldn't help but start laughing out loud and ended telling Kendrics how their first meeting went.

The gray haired man was laughing with tears in his eyes while imagining the proud woman Rosarie was at that time being completely suppressed and toyed with. After that he turned serious again and asked. "How does the Necropolis of the Gods works? Can anyone enter?" Reynolds understood that Kendrics wanted to visit the Necropolis of the Gods and smiled.

"Well, yes and no... I mean, I was invited by a Demigod to represent him... at that time there were only 4 Demigods ruling the Yulan Continent and the number of saints allowed to explore the Necropolis was limited. But after the saints returned, the Demigods were forced to enter by Lord Beirut. A few years later, several deities descended to the Yulan Plane and wanted to enter only to find out that Lord Beirut would open the Necropolis once every 1000 years but any deity who wanted to could enter".

Reynolds took another sip of his drink and said. "I would say that it depends on the mood of the Sovereign or perhaps Lord Beirut... I have no way to be sure. I only know that it might be incredibly dangerous but a good opportunity to obtain a sovereign artifact... however, I think that if you want a Sovereign artifact, perhaps the Planar Wars would be a better option as you at least get to chose what type of artifact you want, and even perhaps compatible with the Elemental Laws you practice".

The Lord Prefect was thoughtful and remained quiet, but he agreed. He was curious about the Necropolis of the Gods due to the challenge it could be, but the treasures he could obtain in there would be completely random and by taking part on the Planar Wars one might gain a more compatible option.

(A/N- Reynolds learned about the Planar Wars by reading books... he had not met anyone who had taken part on one)

A few months later, Reynolds was trying a new iteration of his 'Fire Elemental Essence' runic array when he suddenly felt a resonance with his soul and the array, it was only for a fraction of a second, and then he saw that the runic array started to become unstable, he sighed thinking that it was another mistake and that he might have imagined the resonance. But then the unthinkable happened and instead on unraveling and producing flames as he would have expected, the runic array contracted and became a Demigod divine spark that floated for a moment before falling to the floor in front of him.

Reynolds stayed frozen for a moment, full of excitement and terror... he had managed to recreate a runic array that perfectly represented the 'Fire Elemental Essence' and as soon as it was manifested it transformed into a divine spark. This meant that his seemingly crazy idea was correct and the universe and everything in it was created by runes, he felt a chill traveling through his spine as he took the divine spark and started examining it, hoping to find that he was wrong.

He did not know how to feel thinking that he was nothing but a runic construct that could be erased without any effort by the person that had created this universe. It took a moment for Reynolds to calm down as he realized that a Paragon and a Sovereign could kill him but with a single thought, and this made no difference for his existence. He only needed to find how his terrible discovery could be used to his advantage and never speak of this to another soul.

He decided to buy books on different topics to have a better understanding on how the world worked, the more he knew about the Overgods the more he would be able to understand, as he was now completely sure that the so called Overgods were nothing but mindless overseers tasked in keeping the correct functioning of this 'man-made' world he lived in.