The Burning Fiend

After talking with the 'visitors' the 'guardian' returned to the 11th floor to train as they all started their own training, except for Bebe who decided that sleeping was more important. The Ba-Serpent was again coiled on the metal island sleeping, Reynolds was surprised to find that the molten metal lake did not solidify even after being away for nearly 10 hours.

Before resuming his training he decided that summarizing his understanding till this moment might help him in his future training. The elemental laws he had touched were the law of fire elemental essence, the law of flame body and the law of heat. He had already advanced in fusing the fire elemental essence with the flame body but the law of heat had not met a point of convergence with the other two laws.

He decided that his divine fire body will train pondering the elemental laws of fire while focusing mostly on the fusion between fire elemental essence and the flame body as these two laws seemed easier to understand. Whenever he felt frustrated or needed a change of pace his divine fire body will ponder the law of heat and will try to find a point of convergence with the fire elemental essence which seemed to be the simplest of laws.

His saint body would ponder the edicts of life, focusing in healing, and death, focusing on slaving and refining souls. These were the applications of the life and death magic that he had contacted the most while the refining souls came second nature to the fire within his saint body and it might facilitate pondering this aspect of the edicts. His saint body would also take daily breaks to spend time with his wives once he returned to the Yulan Continent.

He smiled satisfied about his future plans and soon his saint body left the Ba-Serpent construct as hed decided to go to the second level where life was more abundant and spend half a year there before going to the first level where the undead had lived hoping to gain a few insights before leaving the Necropolis of the Gods.

Linley and the other soon lost themselves in training and it was rare to be interrupted still the three cat brothers visited one day to ask for advice regarding their training and inquiring about Koral. The Ba-Serpent opened its eyes and raised its head to look at the three kittens that seemed not as annoying as that lazy-ass Bolt who only knew how to eat and sleep.

"You only train the edicts of destruction? But you have no affinity, as small as it might be, to any of the elements? Well I am not very sure and perhaps you should wait until you ask your father, but have you tried meditate as human mages would do for training? In my understanding the elements are gathered and filtered through the soul before making their way towards a place that will store the magical essence in the case of humans is in the middle of the c.h.e.s.t and I guess that for magical creatures that place would be your magical core. But the point is that meditation serves to baptize the soul and it rises the individual to a new level of existence, when I became a saint warrior the change was only at qi level but when I became a saint magus my soul was baptized and took form which for saint warriors would only happen when they become gods I guess".

The three kittens seemed to have forgot about their prejudgment and listened excited about the possibility of training. "Your father understanding on the soul of magical beasts should be more accurate as he underwent the process of becoming a god and his soul was baptized by the laws, so he might have a better idea in regard of meditation being useful to you and this way you might find an elemental affinity? That is all that comes to mind".

The three kittens were excited and seemed to be impatient to leave the Necropolis of the Gods to ask their father about the possibility of meditating as human mages. "Thank you Lord Reynolds!" After this short episode life returned to normal and the Ba-Serpent of the 11th floor returned to its sleep.

On the other hand his saint body had ventured to the 2nd floor and did not disturb the real sleeping Ba-Serpent as he passed by, he entered the second floor and started meditating pondering about the healing aspect of the edicts of life. He had as reference the magic spells and the life energy provided by the 'Pearl of Life' that he realized was a treasure built under the edicts of life and he wondered if he could one day create another one if his understanding reached a sufficient realm.

He had already gained entrance to the edicts of life before but making progress on them seemed extremely difficult and forced himself to abandon his pondering and made his way to the 1st level to spend the last six months before they were allowed to leave. He arrived at the familiar desert and found a place to sit cross-legged to meditate pondering about souls and it was then that he noticed that this desert was different of what he would expect as there was a trace of desolation within. A normal desert would be thriving with life in perfectly adapted forms for survival but this desert lacked life entirely and Reynolds focused on the aura of desolation figuring out that it might be related to the edicts of death as many undead had inhabited this floor for thousands of years.

As time passed he familiarized more and more with the aura of desolation but gaining entrance into the edicts of death proved to be more difficult that he had expected and when the six months were about to pass he stopped his pondering and made his way towards the 11th floor to reunite with his fire divine body. He had noticed that since his soul was divided and baptized by the elemental laws, even his saint body had become and existence of a different level than normal saints. The saints that were waiting on the 1st floor to regain their freedom did not even find out he was there.

His fire divine body and his saint body reunited on the 10th floor as Reynolds decided to rest for the last few days before returning to the Yulan Continent and smiled as he saw the other saints training. Besides Bebe, Linley and the other young saint, with hair perfectly divided by halves in white and black, all of the saints there had lived for thousands of years and they might become Gods any moment now or might as well remain as saints forever.

He went to Bebe who was sleeping leisurely and lay on the grass with his arms serving as pillows while keeping a blade of grass between his teeth playfully trying to enjoy the peaceful environment and forget his restlessness. Part of the reason that he had gone to train to other levels and did not remain with them was that Rosarie was too much of atemptation for a Reynolds who had not touched a woman for nearly 10 years, he knew that he was not a good person but he was not willing to fall that low... so keeping distance seemed to be the best medicine available.

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Beirut appeared on the 10th floor of the Necropolis of the Gods and watched the situation calmly, the first thing he found was Bebe sleeping peacefully and couldn't help but smile fondly while at the same time sighed in frustration for how lazy this beloved grandson of his was. Then he looked at Reynolds who had managed to become a Demi God by fusing the fire elemental essence and the flame body to the necessary realm. He had noticed before that he was a soul mutate but his mutation seemed different to the one the other, kid who could use light and darkness at the same time, had. Oliver's soul mutation produced balance between light and darkness while Reynolds's soul mutation did keep balance between life and death but both edits seemed to be completely dominated by his fire affinity and wondered what effect this might produce in the future if he managed to reach the Demi God level with the edicts of life and death.

He then turned to look at Linley and knew that he had gained precious insights during this 10 years mostly with the slow and fast aspects of the wind but had not yet managed to make the connection and fuse them into the law of velocity, he decided that he would had to arrange something for him. He wanted to help him not only because he had taken his grandson as a little brother and never tried to make him a slave but because he was the most talented descendant of the Four Divine Beast clan that he had ever met and had great hopes for him.

Then his attention turned to the disappointing saints that had failed for thousand of years to reach the deity realm but was surprised as they found them with different attitude and perhaps they were not lost cases yet. Specially the magical beasts seemed highly motivated and smiled deciding that the kid Reynolds was not as annoying after all... even if he had killed more than 2/3 of the prisoners within this Necropolis and he would have to spent some time fixing the damage by taking saints from the other 2 Necropolis or perhaps he could take a few saint from the Gebados Planar Prison, the Necropolis might become heaven for them... He turned to look at Reynolds while thinking. 'Perhaps I should had given him a material defense artifact as well, it will be a shame if an accident occurred and his path were to be broken... but how to do? I see... it is a good idea'.

He appeared besides Reynolds and used his divine field to block everyone else except the three of them as he took Bebe in his arms. "Grandpa! Can we finally go home? I miss food so much?" A kind smile formed in his face while but if one were to pay careful attention it would be able to see that his brow twitched slightly. "Lord Beirut". Reynolds greeting with respect but no submissiveness. 'That is a new experience... it is been a while since a Demi God has been so casual in my presence'.

"Kid congratulations on conquering the Necropolis, do you have a treasure that you might want to trade? Perhaps I can give you something more useful for your current stage". His kind grandfather voice made Reynolds smile and said.

"Lord Beirut, if it is not trouble for you I do wish to change these treasures". He took the great axe that he obtained after killing the Flame Tyrant and the metal liquid that used to be the body of the metallic creature from the 9th floor. The ice spear would be for Jenne, the red scimitar would go to Windsor and the staff-spear he had made would go to Koral as he would keep using his own energy to nurture it and within a 100 years it would turn into a proper spear artifact.

Beirut seemed to understand that and felt satisfied that the kid would take care of Koral, he knew that the little velocidragon was talented and had great expectations for her. 'It is rare to find a hardworking magical beast'. He sighed internally and took the great axe and the thorium metal in exchange for a chained-mail artifact. "This would be more helpful to you in case you encounter yourself in battle even a normal Median God will have trouble to hurt you when you are wearing this material defensive artifact convined with your flame body". Reynolds was happy and his smile grew as he thanked Beirut.

"Well it is time to go". This time his voice resounded in the entire Necropolis and portals appeared on each floor where saints of the expedition still remained creating excitement and relieve from those who had spend ten years within the two lower levels. But the most excited was a devilish youth who could help but laugh in excitement and couldn't help to go back to the Yulan Continent, even if he knew that he would be forced to come back in a year along with the other Gods of the Yulan Continent.