The Burning Fiend

Ten years had passed since Linley and the others left the Yulan Plane, Reynolds progress would have made even Beirut surprised. His fusion of 'Fire Elemental Essence' and 'Flame Body' was only a step away from complete mastery as was the fusion of 'Fire Elemental Essence' and 'Heat' while the fusion between 'Flame Body' and 'Heat' was at 90%.

He could become a Fullgod at any time but he still restrained himself and tried to find the starting point for fusing the three laws while his saint body worked his way with the aspect of illusion. He was also a step away to create his divine life avatar. His death avatar had not made much progress with the aspect of controlling souls and he felt that, like Catherine, he will remain trapped on the Demigod level for thousands of years unless he leave the Yulan Plane.

One day feeling, frustrated, he decided to ask Catherine to trap his saint body on a powerful illusion in hopes of finding what he was missing. She did not refuse and soon he found himself trapped in a place full of life that seemed unreal but made him feel welcome and warm as if he had finally found his true home after thousands of years of searching.

He understood enough of the aspect of illusion to avoid loosing himself on it and started analyzing the skillful use that Catherine had over the edict of life. After traveling what seemed for centuries he started finding some clues, this was a real place... a place of great importance to Catherine... an obsession. 'The Life Realm! This was her home and the place she wants to go back...' Obsession, that was the word, the thing that was missing on his understanding.

"I have put enough attention to the details but just like when I started pondering the 'Fire Elemental Essence' I overlooked that emotions and feelings had great impact on the laws and edicts". Reynolds muttered in understanding and smiled as the illusion was broken by the overbearing energy of the Elemental Laws that had descended startling Catherine that had been paying attention to break the illusion if she felt that Reynolds ended loosing himself.

Windsor, Jenne, Koral and Rosarie soon appeared near Catherine as they witnessed a dark stone emitting a soft green aura appear in front of Reynolds. He smiled in resignation as he willed the divine spark to create a new body and his flaming three shaped soul was divided again while he unwillingly screamed in agony. The process was fast and soon half of his soul returned to his saint body while the other half fused with the divine spark.

Soon a green haired Reynolds appeared and he willed a dark green warrior outfit to cover his body before charging towards his saint body. Soon in his sea of consciousness the remaining soul essence he had started to heal and nurture the two souls, he estimated that the soul essence would be enough to recover both souls to the peak but it would be consumed completely and he would not have any more soul essence to absorb when his divine fire avatar reached the Fullgod level.

He sighed and decided not to be greedy, his soul would grow slowly and he was completely sure that he would not be able to create another divine avatar so his souls would not be splitted again. He opened his eyes and smiled towards the girls before thanking Catherine for her help. That night they celebrated with a banquet and the girls experienced the benefits of a husband with four bodies as none of them were allowed to rest for one night, making it one of the best nights Reynolds could remember.

Next morning Windsor and Jenne looked at him with grievances, as they both still needed to rest and their bodies were not as strong as Koral and Rosarie, making Reynolds to feel a little guilt as he left them to rest while whistling a happy tune.

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Now that he had his divine life avatar, his saint body started pondering the Elemental Laws of Fire along with his divine fire avatar, he decided to wait until his soul recovered completely before allowing his other avatar to join his saint body sea of consciousness. He felt that this would be an important moment for him and he was curious, but he wanted to gain the most benefit and decided to balance his life and death avatars as much as possible.

His routine was more relaxed as his divine death avatar stopped training waiting for the moment of his life avatar soul reached the peak, he spend more time with his wives and trying to help Winsor and Jenne to understand the laws. He had not way to help Jenne understand the edict of death without creating a genocide, he knew that she would not be able to accept it and he didn't want to force her.

Windsor's progress was slow but steady, her understanding of the 'Earth Elemental Essence' keep growing slowly but she would take a long time before she became a prime saint. Rosarie had become a Demigod with the law of 'Ice' and was pondering the 'Water Elemental Essence' while trying to fuse the two laws but she had not found a starting point.

Koral on her part was growing frustrated as she was finding increasingly difficult to fuse the 'Fire Elemental Essence' and the 'Flame Body', but she was the strongest of the four women and the one who had better chances of becoming a Fullgod.

After a year Reynolds's divine life avatar and his saint body finally managed to nurture their corresponding souls to the peak and he entered the pocket dimension preparing himself to join all his divine avatars within his saint body sea of consciousness. He did not know what to expect so he told the girls that he might enter seclusion training for a while.

He took a deep breath and steeled his determination as his fire and death avatars entered his saint body sea of consciousness and instead floating side by side under the burning three, that represented his soul, both life and death avatars seemed to be adsorbed by his fire avatar.

His fire avatar started to change slowly as his hair, eyes and robe started turning into dark purple, he felt that it was a similar process to what he had experienced when he became a saint magus, but this time his body had not being engulfed by flame... at least not yet, as he had the feeling that when his divine avatars completed their transformation it would be the turn of this saint body.

He felt a moment of panic as he lost contact with all three of his divine avatars, as if they had fallen into a coma and decided to wait in distress as he could do nothing else. He could not even focus on pondering the laws as he feared something going wrong that might end with the lost of his divine avatars. Unknown to him both Beirut and Leylin were observing with rapt attention and curiosity... soul mutations were a very rare condition and they did not know if this was suppose to happen or an accident had already occurred. By this time Leylin had already become a Fire Sovereign and had equal status with Beirut who had being a Wind Sovereign for more than 5,000 years.

The process took a whole week as he suddenly regained contact with his three divine avatars making him sigh in relief but before he could even smile he found himself engulfed on purple flames that seemed to refine his saint body burning his flesh and blood while divine power started to repair the damage. He barely was able to stop himself for screaming from pain as he had no control of neither the flames nor his body.

After two days every part of his saint body had been destroyed and rebuild with divine power but the process did not stop and took another 10 days of constant pain and fear while Beirut and Leylin watched speechless. "This kid's body is being refined into something comparable to a low level artifact... does that mean that if his three divine bodies were to reach the Highgod realm his body would turn into a high level artifact?" Leylin voice was unbelieving while Beirut seemed affronted as one of his main advantages was precisely that his body was comparable to high level artifact.

"Apparently so, but we would only know for sure after he manage to take his three avatars to the God realm. I'm started to think that I decided to soon... perhaps he was a better option, don't you think Bluefire?" Beirut's voice seemed amused but he was truly conflicted while Leylin just laughed without caring for Beirut's troubles.

Finally Reynolds body relaxed as the pain subsided and he took a deep breath before starting to examine his body, his saint body seemed even stronger than his divine avatars and felt both surprised and delighted. 'It seems that the pain was not in vain and the rewards were worthy'. He thought as he willed a dark purple, almost black, sleeveless warrior outfit to cover his body while wearing the chain mail defense artifact under it. (A/N – You can imagine it as ninja outfit, even if there are no ninjas in the Coiling Dragon Universe).

He found that his hair had also turned an almost black shade of purple while his eyes were bright purple, he did not care much about the change and started concentrating on his divine avatars that were fused together but he felt that he could separate them at will and soon three identical Reynolds were surrounding his saint body. This time they were completely identical, all four had the same hair color, the same eye color and even their outfits were the same with the exception of the chain mail defense artifact that remained over his saint body.

All four Reynolds started laughing like maniacs while their eyes shined with excitement scaring both Beirut and Bluefire wondering if the pain had drove him crazy. He just had realized that all four of his bodies could ponder the laws of fire and the edicts of life and death. Bluefire and Beirut watched in surprise as all four Reynolds turned into purple flame bodies without stopping their laughter and understood what was happening as they watched with envy feeling the sudden urge to go and give a good beating to this kid.

Then their shock grew in their eyes as they felt that each flame body contained traces of illusion and soul erosion. "His purple flame automatically gain the properties of the edicts without needing to fuse them! How terrifying..." Beirut now truly regretted that he gave the fire sovereign spark to Bluefire and even started making plans on how he could protect this kid.

"Bluefire you will start working on a material defense artifact and nurture it with sovereign might... be sure to have it ready within 300 years no matter how much sovereign might you end up wasting. I will do the same with a soul defense artifact and might as well prepare a spear made of fire, life and death divine sparks". His voice was plain and painful as if thinking of the annoying work he would have to go through for the next three centuries.

Bluefire nodded resigned as he looked at Beirut reaction, he did not understand how much effort creating a half-sovereign level artifact implied in such short time because he had just become a Sovereign but understood the importance of the matter. "We cannot allow this kid to die!"

(A/N – I said half-sovereign artifact because creating a sovereign artifact would required thousands of years and it is forbidden by agreement between Sovereigns to give more than one sovereign artifact as a gift to a single person. Any one could get more than one but they had to work for it by participating on the Planar Wars... in the end the two artifacts would be slightly more powerful than high level artifacts.)