Chapter 506

With a perfect soul and body, it was now time to forge the skills that could drive this body. There were only fourteen minutes left, and four operations I considered to be necessary… the rest would be sorted out later.

I began with Soul-Forge and Inscription. Inscription was the highest skill he had, and Soul-Forge was the furnace in the shell. It consumes and rebuilds, and if I did not have pure Celestial Essence to work with, then I would have had to find a way to access this power, or else even creating a new shell would have been impossible.

Elric’s Celestial Body needed something more powerful to edit his flesh and process Transcendental-grade materials, and these two skills would work hand in hand for that purpose.

Soul-Forge was the skill that had allowed him to harvest the essences of demons, to feed Cor Telluris, to grow stronger with every kill. Inscription was the language of reality itself, the Scripts that altered the world with a stroke of the pen.

They were complementary, and in a sense, also redundant. Both were about creation, even though one consumes, and the other writes. Both were about change, one rebuilding, one declaring. Two halves of a single concept, separated by the accident of how Elric had learned them.

I took them, and I pulled.

[ Soul-Forge — Extracting ]

[ Inscription — Extracting ]

The threads came free. They were beautiful in their way, each one a different texture. They were also uncoordinated and would not serve in the new battlefield.

I took them, and I fused them. Soul-Forge became the power, Inscription became the language, and what served as a bridge between these two was the Law of Sharpness. Elric thought this law was to divide, I used it to connect and accelerate the fusion… time was not on my side.

[ Fusion in progress… ]

[ Soul-Forge + Inscription → Living Script ]

[ Living Script: 132 (Sovereign) Broken-Celestial — Mythic ]

[ Cost: 1 Unattuned Law Fragment ]

[ Unattuned Law Fragments: 7 → 6 ]

The new skill would allow Elric to write Scripts with his mind, without needing a pen or a physical medium. The Scripts became extensions of his will, capable of altering reality with a thought.

But that was not all. Living Script was also a consuming skill. It could break down the essence of things, demons, materials, even Laws, if it was taken to the right level, and rewrite them into new forms. It was creation and destruction in a single thought.

I reached into the ash and found a fragment of a Demon Titan’s flesh, and wrote a Script, Break. The flesh shattered into its component essences. Then I wrote another, Form, and the essences swirled together into a blade of pure Adamantium.

I looked at the weapon, testing that its weight and sharpness were at the peak of the current skill, before I discarded it. The blade was a test, what mattered was the skill.

∞

Next came Lightning Tribunal and Heaven’s Verdict.

Both were about judgement, Tribunal calling down lightning from the heavens, tainted by the laws of this world, and Verdict was Elric’s answer to the blindness of the heavens, when he declared that he would become the judge and executioner for the wicked and guilty.

They were the host’s ultimate attacks, but his anger over the heavens’ blindness had caused him to disregard some of the essential components of this spell. I did not have that problem, for the heavens of this world were too small to contain my path and the order given to me by my host… he needs perfection.

Merging this skill would be difficult anywhere else, but we were covered by a storm of Celestial Essence, now much diminished, but enough to hide what I was doing from the heavens of this world long enough that it would no longer matter.

[ Fusion in progress… ]

[ Lightning Tribunal + Heaven’s Verdict — merging. ]

[ … ]

[ Heaven’s Tribunal: 101 (Arcanist) — Broken Celestial, Mythic ]

[ Cost: none. ]

As a bonus, I did not use any law fragments to fuse these spells, something that I was sure that Elric would appreciate the irony of. Taking back from the heavens that did not give much in return.

∞

I was approaching the end now, so I focused on the attribute that was unique to mages. Their Attunements. There were other species and powers who shared similar abilities, but the shell that Elric had forged had enabled him to reach beyond what this ability was meant for.

Most mages would only have at most two resonances in all their lives, maybe three if they lived long enough. Elric had been focusing primarily on lightning, but he had gathered ten resonances. He could have had more, but he barely had the time to fully explore his path.

If I had more resources, I would have pushed further into the refinement of this unique path, but I could show him the path forward, and it would have to be enough.

The host had accumulated several Elemental Attunements; I had only the resources for four, so I chose the least among his attunements, shoring up his weaknesses.

Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Each one was a separate resonance, and in time, Elric would understand that they were all separate understandings of the universe.

Unlike what I did with his skills and spells, I carefully wove all four of these attunements together using one law fragment. If I had attempted to include lightning in the mix, I would have needed three fragments, and if I had placed space or death, then I would need the Active Law Shard, but I already had somewhere more important to use that resource.

[ Earth + Fire + Air + Water — merging. ]

[ … ]

[ Elemental Resonance: 91 (Arcanist) — Legendary ]

[ Unattuned Law Fragments: 6 → 5 ]

The body accepted these new Attunements, and the changes I was observing were so potent it almost made me reconsider not merging lightning into this new Attunement, but I held back. If Elric pushed more of his skills to the Sovereign level, he would keep earning Law fragments, and they would be used for future fusions, for now, he needed something more important to tie his abilities together.

∞

There were five fragments left, one Active Law Shard, and eleven minutes for me to work on the most complex and dangerous operation, as there was a chance that this fusion could cause the dissolution of my being.

Hollow Avatar was born from Demon Slayer, but it would not keep up with Abyssal Executioner. If Elric awakens and takes charge of his new body, I would no longer be of much use to him, unless I was willing to evolve with him.

With the resources and time I had, I could only focus on the skills that were needed for this task. I took Marksman. Unlike Elric, I could not manipulate his Anima, I only had access to Celestial Tier Skills and his Titles, so I needed several skills to bridge that gap.

After Marksman, I selected Flesh-Scribing, the skill that could write Scripts into living tissue, then a surprising component that Elric had gained from the past, the unformed Natal Weapon, Hollow Avatar, and the five fragments and one active law shard.

I used the last five fragments and the shard at the same time, risky, but worth it for the time I would be saving. The shard drafted the form around him, neither flesh nor energy, becoming a second outline standing in the same space as his body but three times his height.

Flesh-Scribing wrote into it, and because the Inscription was alive now, the script was moving under the skin as it merged both forms together while rewriting itself as the form settled.

Marksman went into the hands and the eyes. There would be moments when all senses could be deceived, but being able to move in an unchanging direction was important.

The Natal Weapon entry was filled with the potential to merge physical form with the supernatural, and I poured it into this form to solidify it.

All the Celestial Essence around the body was gone, so I began to pull from the stores of Essence in the channels to fuel this transformation.

Finally, I took Hollow Avatar and ran it through all of it, using the five fragments to seal all the control channels melded to his flesh. These laws bound the creation until they were one, and everything quietly slid into place.

My consciousness stuttered and I paused, there was a fifty-fifty chance that I would be erased at this moment, and I patiently waited. Elric had access to all the records of my workings, and he would not be lost in my creation.

Twenty seconds passed, and I was still here, it seems that I had survived.

[ Natal Weapon — consumed. ]

[ Marksman — consumed. ]

[ Flesh-Scribing — consumed. ]

[ Active Law Shard — consumed. ]

[ Unattuned Law Fragments: 5 → 0 ]

[ Hollow Avatar (104) — evolved. ]

[ Hollow Titan — Mythic ]

[ Classification: Battle Form. ]