The Burning Fiend

Three years had passed since the many deities escaped the Gebados Planar Prison and life within Reynolds's island was calm and fulfilling for Reynolds and his wives. During this time Reynolds have mastered the second step of soul erosion and was currently comparing the grey mist that the Great Warlock had left from the third step with the refined mist he obtained with the second step trying to find out the difference and have a better understanding on how to progress to avoid waste as he realized that with each level of refinement he would have less and less opportunities for practice.

In terms of illusion he had made great progress with Catherine's help and she had gained entry to the healing aspect regaining her hope for advancing. But the major improvement was the progress made by his fire avatar as his understanding of the 'Flame Body' and the 'Fire Elemental Essence' have reached 50% and he had met no trouble with the fusion of the two laws. His understanding of 'Heat' had reached 10% as he was not focussed on it and he also found that the fusion of 'Heat' and 'Fire Elemental Essence' was slightly more difficult than the fusion of 'Fire Elemental Essence' and 'Flame Body'.

Still in his moments of tedium he had tried to find a point of fusion of the three laws but without any success, since learning from Tarosse the importance to fuse the elemental laws he had tried to find a common point of fusion whenever he made progress with either of the two fusions thinking that perhaps he would be lucky and find it before becoming a full God.

Rosarie was making great progress and she was already a rank 8 warrior, since her body had been nurtured by the water elemental essence for five thousand years of meditation it was no difficult for her to increase the quantity of qi within her body, and she had already touched the realm of 'impose'. Once she gained mastery over it she would be able to start applying her understanding of the laws through it and it might not take more than 20 years for her to become a Demigod, there was a running bet between Rosarie and Koral which both used for motivation.

Jenne had finally reached the rank 9 as a warrior and gained a good control over the 'impose' realm which she tried to use from time to time to ponder the 'Water Elemental Essence' and she entered long discussions with Rosarie, she had decided to try the same training method that Reynolds and Koral had used by creating a weapon of elemental essence to practice but her efforts were still without much reward.

He had recently heard news of a group of Gods attacking Linley's castle but were repelled by Beirut's sons causing great damage to the invaders, he was surprised of the heritage of the Beirut clan and felt happy for Linley and his family as they were now under Beirut's protection. He also knew by Yale's letters that he and George were fine and their lives did not suffer any change from the new ruling forces on the empires.

Another 10 years passed and Rosarie was already a peak rank 9 warrior and her progress was so good that Reynolds wondered if she would become a warrior saint or a Demigod first. Jenne has just breakthrough to become a rank 9 warrior and now could manage to produce a water spear that could not compare with her weapon but was good for practice and pondering the laws. Windsor had made good progress on the 'Earth Elemental Essence' but Reynolds was sure that she would become a saint magus long before she could reach the Demigod realm.

The fur ball Bolt had finally become a saint and created his own territory not far from the island, were he slept most of the time, as Koral's dislike for him had grown to the point of intolerance. Koral herself had made good progress and was sure to become a Demigod within 5 years.

During this 10 years Reynolds completed two more steps on the 'soul erosion' process leaving 3 more levels before he could reach the realm of Demigod with the edict of death, he estimated that it would take him from 10 to 20 years. While his understanding of the aspect of illusion from the edict of life has grown steadily and with Catherine they estimated that he might reach the Demigod realm in 30 to 40 years, so he might end up with three Demigod avatars before his fire avatar reached the realm of Fullgod which he estimated would take him from 40 to 60 years.

Koral was the first to gain a new divine avatar as her fusion of the 'Fire Elemental Essence' and the 'Flame Body' reached the required level and the Elemental Laws descended, she chose to divide her soul and create a new body wich was almost identical to her humanoid fire construct she had used for training. She had a perfect body that Reynolds was sure she had copied from Rosarie but the details of her face were a mixture between Windsor and Jenne with a very dark tone of red for her long hair, that extended to her knees, and her 30 cm long horns that made her look like an enchanting s.u.c.c.u.b.u.s. Her eyes were brilliant red and her pointy teeth complemented her wild beauty.

She did not bother to get dressed as she happily examined her new body while the rest of the people waited patiently smiling at her, even Catherine had come to congratulate Koral. After a couple of minutes she created a dark red warrior outfit in the same style that the girls used for training and smiled mischievously at the three women while saying. "Well little sisters... from now on I am the main wife so you better behave and call me 'Elder Sister'". Reynolds laughed a loud at that while Rosarie sighed in defeat, Reynolds finally understood what their bet was about, Catherine blinked at that smiling with amus.e.m.e.nt as Koral was like a little girl with the body of an a.d.u.l.t woman.

Koral entered her new life and status with pride and adapted almost immediately but continued with her training routines without almost any change, he used her saint body and her divine avatar to train maintaining the progress rate she had before her soul was divided and muttered constantly about not losing her 'Elder Sister' status to the little ice woman making Reynolds chuckle.

Five year later the Elemental Laws descended again and Rosarie, who had been a warrior saint for a couple of months, reached the realm of Demigod and chose to create a new body that was identical to her saint body with the only exception that her jade hair turned light blue. Koral declared her proudly 'Second Sister' gaining looks of grievance from the three women that did not dare to complain. Both Koral and Rosarie were awarded with Demigod level artifacts to their great delight.

Another five years passed and Jenne finally became a warrior saint and smiled with pride and relief as if she had defeated fate itself while tears filled her eyes, she ran to Reynolds and jumped into his embrace with happiness, it might take her around 300 years to become a magus saint and perhaps 3,000 years to became a Demigod but she had already attained eternal youth and gained the promised status of wife and 'Fourth Sister', she wasn't sure how to feel about that last title and decided not to think much of it.

Over this last five years Reynolds have managed to complete the 5th and 6th steps of 'soul erosion' but he had not being able to advance to the last part and generate the golden mist of soul essence, the main problem was that the Great Warlock had not completed this step and only a trace of the golden mist could be noticed on the last crystal orb. After failing to gain insights for a long time he suddenly had an idea. 'If it is true that this is the last step of refinement, shouldn't the result be similar to what my purple flame obtained?'

With this flash of inspiration he finally encountered a path to move forward and spent two years comparing the soul essence refined by his purple flame with the trace of golden mist on the last crystal orb and with the rest of the grey mist that was yet to be processed by the final step. After two years he finally encountered a path and managed to modify his soul erosion mist to complete this process finally moving forward.

Still it took his a full year and half of the refined souls to finally manage to create a trace of golden mist and at that very moment the Elemental Laws descended over the island and locked onto Reynolds who was within the training room. He smiled with happiness and resignation as he prepared himself to experience once again the feeling of having his soul split in half.

As soon as the divine spark with death aura appeared in front of him he willed to create a new body and his soul, in the form of a flaming tree, left his body remaining floating above his head for a moment. Soon his screams filled the pocket dimension as his soul was divided but it only took a few moments for his soul to become two small flaming trees floating side by side, one entered his saint body and the other fused with the divine spark to create a divine avatar with silver hair.

Reynolds smiled in relief and his death clone entered his saint body, the next moment within his sea of conciousness Reynolds could see a silver haired young man wearing a silver warrior outfit sitting below the flaming tree as the soul essences started flowing towards the tree and the new Demigod avatar, he estimated that it would take a whole year for his newly divided souls to recover to their peak while absorbing the soul essence.

Meanwhile his saint body returned to refine the souls to using the 'soul erosion' aspect of the edict of death, he knew that the resulting gold mist would be on the same level of the soul essence refined by his purple flame and it was extremely lacking in efficiency, but he had managed to achieve his main purpose of creating a new divine avatar. He was refining the rest of soul mist thinking that even if the quantity was extremely lacking it would be a good help for his four wives, especially for Jenny.

He smiled and took a couple of weeks to completely refine the rest of the grey mist into golden soul essence, he sighed with slight regret on how wasteful this process was and felt his sense of accomplishment reducing. He shaked his head and left the training room summoning his wives. He smiled with glee when he saw that Koral had the three girls formed in line while they send her aggrieved looks which she ignored happily, she spoke. "Master! Me and my little sisters are here, why did you call us?"

Reynolds couldn't help laughing at them causing the three girls to look at him with anger only to be ignored again. He took four crystal orbs, each with equal quantity of golden soul essence, and gave one to each of them. "This is soul essence that I refined through the edict of death, you will sit in meditation and use your spiritual sense to direct the gold mist to your soul and absorb it. Even if it's lacking in quantity it will help you increase the power of your soul and your ability to ponder the laws. Be extremely careful and don't be greedy, absorb them as slowly as you can and take your time with plenty of rest between each try or the result might hurt you instead of helping you. Do you understand?" His voice was doting but strict.

The four women were delighted and soon sat down preparing to start absorbing the soul essence, Reynolds smiled and regretted giving the soul essence to all of them at the same time as he found himself alone and chuckled walking towards the garden to ponder the aspect of illusion, his training speed on the edict of life would not be affected as his saint body would no longer ponder the edict of death. He smiled extremely curious as to what would happen to his saint body once he manage to create a life divine avatar.