The Burning Fiend

After the experience of creating runic arrays for every one of the mysteries of the Fire Elemental Laws that he had already mastered, Reynolds found that translating his understanding of a mystery into a runic array was not as complicated as before. The exercise helped to improve his skill with every attempt he made, regardless of failure or success.

It only took him 10 years to finish the second prototype for the runic array that would represent the fusion of 'Fire Essence' and 'Flame Body', the array did not unravel and showed a basic level of stability providing a good start for the experiment. After playing around with it for a while, Reynolds found happily that the runic array provided almost a 90% fusion of the two laws, and he decided to take a rest before continuing with his research.

A few kilometers away, within a luxurious hall, Mosi was writing a few experimental ideas that he had for his own version of the fusion or combination, he was not sure which one Reynolds had used on Shade, for the 'Soul Brand' and the 'Memory Shackle' techniques. He guessed that it would take him a few centuries to develop his own technique, and he would need hundreds of experimental subjects to test his ideas and improve his technique prototype. He seemed completely unaware that a kitten was sleeping on his head while he was completely absorbed in writing his ideas, the two silver foxes glared at the black kitten with hate, but they did not dare to interrupt their Master.

Shade had taken great p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e while teasing the two silver foxes, she looked at them with contempt after scratching their Master with her little paws making them completely furious. Even more when they remember that they were powerful 7-star Fiends while the black kitten was only a Demigod. Still, they did not dare making a move on their Master's companion.

---

It took another 10 years for Reynolds to complete a satisfactory runic array that represented perfectly the fusion between 'Fire Essence' and 'Flame Body', he was extremely happy with his progress and continued with the next runic array without performing the tests he originally had planned for this runic array. He was curious of what would happen if he inscribed this array within the soul of a saint... Would the saint become a God directly? Would the saint gain complete understanding of both laws and their fusion?

Reynolds was truly intrigued by these questions, but those things could wait, he was fascinated with the idea of completing runic arrays for all the 2-way fusions he currently had before performing these tests. His next project was to create a runic array that would represent the fusion of the mysteries of 'Fire Essence' and 'Heat', and out of curiosity he repeated the same process that he had used before... instead of working on the runic array from scratch.

This would give him a good start and perhaps would reaffirm his confidence on how useful the superimposing process for runes could be to help him in fusing mysteries. It took him another ten years to create the first prototype from the superimposed runic arrays and found that the resulting array could represent the d.e.s.i.r.ed fusion by nearly a 55%.

Reynolds smiled with this result, but decided to take a rest. He had spent the last 10 years sitting on the same place working on this runic array. He stretched his body for a moment before finding that Windsor was reading a book not far from him, Reynolds smiled and carried her in a princess style as he started walking toward the bedroom.

Windsor yelped in surprise, but smiled as she realized that Reynolds had stopped his research. "Master! You have spent so much time alone! I'm angry!" She said as she buried her head in his c.h.e.s.t, Reynolds smiled at her said. "I know, I was really focused and somehow time just flew without me realizing... but I promise you that I will be more careful in the future. For now... I will take good care of you and your sisters for a few days before starting with my research again".

He chuckled when he saw that Koral was already walking by his side looking angrily at him, he chuckled and stopped to kiss her forehead before they continued their way towards the bedroom.

---

During the next hundred years, Reynolds completed the runic arrays for all the 2-way fusions, but he no longer spent long periods of time focused on his research. He remembered to focus in the moment and enjoy life along the way, he knew that growing strong was important, but he was no longer in urgent need of power as there were very few people in the universe that could actually be considered a threat to him.

Mosi had completely focused on his experiments and his understanding over the Edict of Death was growing, he had not tried to probe into Shade's soul for nearly 40 years, but she was still sleeping on his shoulder or head and demanded food from time to time. There was one time when Mosi was walking from wall to wall within the hall while pondering a specially difficult part of one of his experiments, he was interrupted by Shade who was sitting on his head. "Onward! Battle steed Mosi!" She extended a tiny paw directing the way, Mosi stopped walking for a moment before chuckling as he continued with his pondering deciding that it was best to ignore her... he did not even remember when was the last time he had threatened her.

Now Reynolds was working on superimposing two runic arrays, one of them represented the fusion between 'Fire Essence' and 'Flame Body' while the second one represented the fusion between 'Fire Essence' and 'Heat'. He was looking for common parts between the two arrays and smiled satisfied as he quickly found many parts that were identical between the two arrays.

Reynolds started to identify these parts before attempting to draw a new array that would represent the fusion of the three laws. All the superimposed arrays for the 2-way fusions had provided an initial result of nearly 50% of control over the fused law, he was extremely curious to find how much of the 3-way fusion the new array would represent on the first prototype. To be honest, he would be more than satisfied as long as he managed to find a single point of fusion between the different 5-way fusion at the last step of mastering the Elemental Laws, but he wanted to understand the process and was even thinking that this might help him to fuse the Fire Elemental Laws and the Edicts of Life and Death.

During the past hundred years he had received news of the Four Divine Beast Clan, and he knew they were in a difficult situation, but he also knew that there would be no real danger to them in at least 5,000 years. Reynolds suspected that by that time Linley would have become a peak 7-star Fiend if not an Asura level figure, and he would have no problem to protect his own life and his wife.

(A/N- in this alternative universe, Linley is not as strong and did not become an Elder of the clan. Thus, he did not join the battle against the enemies of the clan and the war did not escalate in danger as the enemy clans did not know of his existence. He still had enmity with the Elder, but Linley was under the protection of the clan due to his high potential and power.)

During this time Talia had almost completed her objective of creating an avatar for every type of Elemental Law. She was only lacking a light avatar and Sasha was happy to help her by demonstrating different applications of the mystery of 'Light Essence'. At this point the two girls were inseparable and spent every moment together, Reynolds had already understood a few secrets of the Four Divine Beast Clan and was planing to ask Lord Beirut to help his daughter-in-law to receive the baptism of the Redding clan without actually joining the Four Divine Beast Clan.

Reynolds found that he liked the idea of the two girls being together and still shuddered at the thought of Bebe joining his family. He was not strong enough to refuse Lord Beirut, and he was glad to have a reason to deny them if they asked, that was another reason for him to aid in his decision to stay in Miluo Island until he had managed to upgrade his "Ba-Serpent Attack Formation" with a runic array that would allow him to use the four fused laws that he had already mastered.

Then, he would no longer feel pressure while meeting Lord Beirut. During this last hundred years, he had found a fusion point for the mysteries of 'Explosion' and 'Heat'. He had mastered around 90% of the mystery of 'Explosion' without finding a fusion point with the mystery of 'Mirage', but he was not worried as he was sure to find it before mastering the mystery of 'Explosion'. And after completely mastering the mystery of 'Explosion' along with all the 2-way fusions, he would be able to start using the runic method to start fusing laws. Of course, he would have to take a break to create a runic array for the mystery of 'Explosion'.

Reynolds was excited at the idea, and decided that after completing the first prototype for the 3-way fusion runic array he would allow his saint body to help with the pondering and fusion of the Fire Elemental Laws to complete the new 2-way fusion with their corresponding runic arrays before returning to work with the 3-way fusion runic arrays.

But he was forced to interrupt his research and planning as Rosarie suddenly sat on his l.a.p demanding his attention. They have made an agreement in which whenever he spends more than 5 days lost in training, one of his wives would come to interrupt him. He smiled at her as she started explaining the few important things that had happened during the last few days.

As he was listening to the beautiful woman, he decided that he would pay a visit to Mosi in the following days to see if he wanted to be rescued from the unforgiving Shade, he truly liked the personality he had chosen for her, but he had not expected her to actually manage to tame Mosi. Reynolds had been so sure that Mosi would end up killing her a long time ago, perhaps the old monster had some strange tendencies. He chuckled remembering how the beautiful woman who was happily sitting on his l.a.p had ended coming to him and beg him to take her as a maid.