The Burning Fiend

A metallic life form in the shape of an eagle was flying at high speed toward the Capital of the Indigo Prefecture, the travel would take nearly a century but the people sitting inside did not plan to stop until they reached their destination.

Tarosse and Dylin seemed depressed and sometimes their eyes were moist, but they refused to tell the others what had happened to them, O'Brien, Cleo and his two brothers, Cesar and his new wife did not understand the urgency or the reason that compelled them to travel while leaving behind the comfortable life they had, still they chose to go with them. O'Brien and Cesar had become Highgod thanks to Tarosse and the three brother will not abandon their father.

Cesar smiled confused but satisfied, he remembered the conversation he had with Reynolds about not fusing with divine sparks on his darkness avatar and to keep training. He had found that pondering the Elemental Laws was much easier living in the Infernal Real and was close of becoming a God in the Darkness Elemental Laws and to complete the fusion of the two laws. He had followed the advice and took the divine sparks offered by Tarosse to become a Highgod under the Elemental Laws of Wind. Wind and darkness... a good combination for an old assassin.

Only after they had left for a long distance Dylin told his children that he had lost his free will during the past few centuries making them fell horror due to the suffering he had gone through and the fact that they had not even realized he was not himself. He refused to say more besides that they owed their freedom to Lord Beirut, and their plan was to reach the city where he lives and train there until they are strong enough. He also urged them to train and stop playing around, the last part was directed at O'Brien and Cesar who nodded before starting to train. For O'Brien it would be almost impossible to fuse laws, but he could at least improve his control and create new ways of defense, attack and even support.

---

Reynolds was floating in the air with a focused expression while he looked at three women fighting in the distance against a group of 25 deities, most of them were Demigods while only three were Gods. They seemed to think that because of their superior numbers, and that most of his group was composed of women, they could target a group of seven Gods traveling near their territory.

Talia, Koral and Rosarie were protected by their Highgod artifacts while they used different attacks to slowly kill their enemies one by one. The bandits soon found that they were in disadvantage and tried to flee, but they realized that those who avoided the battle turned into ashes instantly. They looked in horror at the young man with dark purple hair that floated on the distance along with another three women.

Jenne and Windsor had never showed interest in fighting and were happy to let their two sisters and their niece to gain experience fighting deities while Reynolds watched over them to avoid any accident. Catherine also watched the battle with interest wondering how could it be that these children had become stronger than her, she shook her head in frustration.

"Talia, Rosarie do not trust your artifacts blindly! Use your own understanding of the laws to intercept their attacks... that is the only way you can get insights. And what would you do if by any change they had a more powerful artifact?"

Talia and Rosarie blushed and adjusted their fighting style to create shields and started to avoid a few attacks, Koral had more battle experience since her very instincts were warlike. Reynolds noticed the terror and despair on the 10 remaining deities, and he said.

"Keep attacking, the last three survivors get to leave alive!" The bandits suddenly saw hope and started fighting with more energy and using strategies to avoid being killed by either the three beautiful demonic women or their own companions.

After a few minutes, only 2 Demigods and 1 God remained and begged for mercy. Reynolds nodded and said. "Well done, unbound your interspatial rings, give them to the girls and you can leave". The three deities did as they were told and soon they were escaping while thanking the heavens for having surviving and cursing their bad luck at losing most of the belongings.

The three women were delighted at having fought after hundreds of years and eagerly started reviewing their loot making Reynolds laugh. They blushed and returned to his side as he said. "Before you start checking the rings, sit down and repeat the battle in your minds. Think about what you could have done better and repeat the moves of your enemies in your mind to see if you can gain any insight, all right?"

The three girls smiled happily and started meditating while the others keep watch over them, Reynolds smiled thinking that they have being traveling for close to 20 years now and soon they would be able to see the Jade Floating Mountains in the distance, even Catherine was excited about reaching that place as she had never heard of a similar place before.

Catherine looked at Reynolds and asked. "After touring within the Jadefloat Continent, what do you plan to do?" Reynolds blinked and after a moment he said. "Well I don't really have much of a plan, but I think we will be heading towards the Bloodridge Continent to visit the Indigo Prefecture that is under Lord Beirut's controls. We don't have a fixed point to travel as we do not have family here, so visiting Lord Beirut is as good a plan as any, and we might even get news of my idiot brother or Lord Tarosse and O'Brien". He smiled while looking at the distance before turning to her. "And by the time we arrive there you might be close to becoming a Highgod I think, so it would be nice to see if you can meet with our old friends before you start making your way home, don't you think?"

She smiled, Catherine did not have love for the Yulan Continent, but she did spend thousands of years there and she had a friendly relationship with O'Brien and Tarosse. Noticing that the girls were already opening their eyes, he summoned their metallic life form again to resume their trip, they were all eager to reach the Jade Floating Mountains.

A few days later Reynolds was studying the tome of advanced arrays with Rosarie when part of the drawing he had copied from the 'Pearl of Life' started to make sense to him, the array extracted energy from something... or collecting energy from the environment seemed more accurate. It was an array that was constantly working, this finding made Reynolds sure that studying the array would actually help him and might even be enough to upgrade his Demigod avatars by the time they had arrived at the Crystal Cave City. At that point he would be experiencing another baptism, and he might need to prepare a few arrays to avoid entering the radars of powerful beings.

He smiled, he knew that his affinity towards the Edicts was average at best and managing to upgrade his avatars under a thousand years of effort was already a great accomplishment for him. Talia had started to tease him that she might manage to gain a couple of new elemental avatars before he managed to upgrade his own avatars. He chuckled at that... 'perhaps a little competition could be also a good incentive'.

---

A few years went by and soon they cool already see the Jade Floating Mountains in the distance, the view was fantastic, and they all forgot everything for a moment as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing. The base of the mountains were jade-like rocks that seemed to keep the mountains floating, after a few hundred meters a curtain of vegetation seemed to divide the jade-like rocks with a normal mountain.

Each mountain was covered with a forest full of life and a few castles were barely visible as they were covered by clouds. The higher the castles were located on the mountain, the richer they seemed. The castle at the very top of each mountain was a small city, but only the one on the biggest mountain was considered a true city. Jade Float City, some people said that the Sovereign lived on this city but that did seem possible.

Reynolds imagined that a Sovereign would not like to flaunt his or hers presence to others and might rather choose an isolated place to live, but then again... he was no sovereign, and he could not know for sure. So they have no plans to go to the main city and would only observe the mountains from afar.

They planned to look for a small floating boulder to examine it and play with it, they had heard that besides the great floating mountains, there were a few floating boulders with similar properties than the mountains. They were quite expensive and, if possible, Reynolds wanted to find out why.

---

On one of the castles over one of the floating mountains, a group of Highgods were conversing using their divine sense to avoid that their words could be listened by other people. "The scouts had confirmed that the target is coming... it is amazing that a kid could become a 7-star Fiend while only being a God, no wonder the Lord Prefect has interest in him. Is everything ready?" A blue haired young man said while looking at his three companions.

A black haired middle-aged man responded. "Yes, no matter if they approach one of the cities or explore the outer areas of the forest below the floating mountain range, our people will use the recording orb on them and then sell it to the idiot of the Yura Clan. He will most likely try to kidnap the women and get his Clan involved in a battle... a confrontation is sure to happen".

The blue haired young man nodded and said. "Remember to avoid being identified, we want to create a conflict with the clan so the kid use them as a sharpening stone, not to get his family killed". They all nodded solemnly and even felt as if they were doing good deeds by helping a kid to grow stronger, then they smiled and moved in different directions to prepare and avoid missing the opportunity.