World Seal, Ch 4: Avatar's Gamble (Patreon)

As the Silver Army reappeared in the Void, the bright red light of a new star shone in front of them. The chaos winds were different here, their currents touched with heat.

This region was filled with Fire.

It was also hot enough to incinerate anyone under the Third Evolution.

As soon as the nagas felt it, they let out a hiss of approval. Their world was a hot jungle and if they had their choice between heat and cold, they would always take heat. Even with their enchantments, they liked this type of system much better than the cold regions of the Void.

To Sam, it felt like he was standing in the path of a warm wind and he turned to look at the distant red sun that was bathing everything here in Fire. It glowed like a red ember.

Nearby, he could sense the next target he’d selected, a group of Surgeflame Elementals.

They were scattered across a stream of Fire energy from the nearby star in groups of twos and threes as they absorbed energy from the flames. It was already about half the size of the others nearby.

Given the rate at which the elementals were absorbing it, the current would only last for a few more weeks before it dissipated, but this system wasn’t threatened by the loss.

The energy here was healthy and vibrant. The current was one of many in the area that were constantly created from the star.

There were only a few dozen of the elementals in total, but one-to-one they were more dangerous than the basilisks. The basilisks had been the best target nearby, but these elementals would also be good for crafting materials and experience.

In particular, there were powerful Fire cores at the center of their bodies. They were an excellent material for forging artifacts, but he was planning to redirect the elemental energy from them into the Astral Guardian’s life gem.

It wasn’t crystal flame, but if it worked, it would shorten the Cer’Aleth’s recovery. Then the Guardian could deal with anyone from the civilized galaxy while he focused on rebuilding the Moonlight Relic and finding Asenya.

He turned to look at the Silver Army behind him, studying their progress. Most of the nagas had gained two or three levels from the basilisks, similar to Sleset, even though they’d had to split the experience.

It was a sharp difference from his own requirements.

They’d had about a hundred basilisks and saved half of them for the World Core, resulting in about one basilisk per six nagas. To get two or more levels from a Void beast of similar strength like that was a good result.

By comparison, he’d had a hundred basilisks to himself and picked up seven levels, which was about one level per fourteen basilisks. The difference between his Heroic and Lord-tier class requirements and theirs was around 200 times.

It was a little extreme, but it didn’t matter much. His race was also playing a role.

Most of the nagas still had Rare classes, including Sleset. Only a few of the younger generation had an opportunity so far to evolve as Silver Nagas when they reached the Third Evolution.

The older generation had been at the Third the entire time they had followed him. It would be at their Fourth Evolution when their new race would influence their class choices.

He knew they were looking forward to it.

With all of their accomplishments since becoming Silver Nagas, they should be able to select classes at a higher tier.

The World Core had awarded them each a hundred Marks for their battle with the Vos’Rekan, as well as a Heroic ability upgrade, so they met the requirements. They also had some Marks for their earlier work destroying Flaws near the relic.

Heroic classes were within their reach, and he was confident they would also be offered a Legendary racial option as Silver Nagas.

The next Evolution should be transformative for them.

He almost wished his parents had been able to fight the Vos’Rekan for the same reward, but they weren’t a high enough level and he wasn’t willing to put them in that sort of danger for a temporary gain.

Their efforts at the Moonlight Relic already gave them a steep advantage and a lot of Marks, as well as a Heroic ability. They didn’t need these.

He would have to let one of his avatars take them hunting soon. They needed to reach the Third Evolution, so the Boundless Alliance didn’t look down on them.

A slight smile crossed his face at the thought.

If the Boundless Alliance tried that, they would only prove that they weren’t worth releasing from Aster Fall.

A few orders from Sleset were enough to get the Silver Army sorted out for the new battle.

While they were arranging themselves, he turned his attention to his attribute increase from the basilisks.

STR: 22,221

CON: 25,296

AGI: 7,783

WIS: 3,189

INT: 40,115

AUR: 40,115

CHA: 3,377

It was enough to raise his Intelligence to just over 40,000, which gave him another mental division and enabled him to create a seventh avatar.

Within a few minutes, a new version of himself was standing there, formed out of starlight. The avatar’s body quickly coalesced until it looked like an exact copy of him. He passed it some clothes and a few spare artifacts and auras.

The artifacts were just normal Third Evolution equipment, but it was all he had left. It was better to have them than not.

With the ability at Heroic, the avatar had 60% of his attributes, which should be enough for it.

There was no need for any conversation between them, so with a nod, the avatar gathered the basilisks that were intended for the World Core and disappeared, heading off in a streak of silver light for Aster Fall.

Once he arrived, he would join the others in repairing the Moonlight Relic. With seven of them working on it, the speed of repairs would reach a new level. They were already progressing at an incredible pace.

Sometime in the next few months, the top six layers should be fully operational. They would still have to repair the surface buildings, but except for a couple of core ones like the Hall of the Dawn that had scrying enchantments, those were only necessary as houses for the inhabitants.

When he looked back, the nagas had finished their preparations and were waiting for his command.

This time, they were grouped by elemental affinity, with those who could manipulate Fire distributed across the formations as focal points. They were supported by the other elemental affinities in a balanced distribution. Besides Fire, there were Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Wood, and Poison abilities among them.

At their head, Sleset was surrounded by a swirling storm of defensive green runes and stony armor that came from his Coils of the Earth ability.

Swearing to him as Silver Nagas and absorbing his blood gave them all a single element manipulation ability that derived from his own Elemental Mastery. Poison wasn’t something he used, but it came naturally to them. Apparently the oathbond could create abilities that were a combination of both his and theirs.

They also received a healing ability called Bloodline Regeneration and a defensive ability called Enduring Scales, which increased their resistance to fire, cold, and the stray elements of the Chaos Wild.

Even with those abilities, the battle against these elementals would be dangerous for them. The elementals of the Chaos Wild were a pure expression of the raging forces of the deep.

They were born from a concentration of the chaos winds and barely sentient, just enough to move from place to place.

Now that the nagas were ready, Sleset was waiting for his command.

“Wait a moment,” Sam said as he pulled out a scroll that glimmered with icy blue runes, as well as three luminous blue auras from his storage. Each of the auras swirled like a vast snowstorm was contained inside, but there was something unearthly about them, like it was only half present.

The scroll was a Scroll of Runic Ice, while the auras were Auras of Ethereal Frost (Heroic).

The scroll was the same type he used for his own runic ice armor, and the auras were the base energy to infuse it.

It took some effort to create these auras using Modify Aura. They started out as regular ones from cold-aligned beasts. Then he modified them into an Aura of Astral Ice, and with a bit more effort into an Aura of Ethereal Ice.

Ethereal was a type of dimensional effect, one that he’d been studying for a while. It was built into his cloak and most of his personal artifacts, which gave it the ability to change size and increased its resistance to damage, among other things.

One by one, he infused the auras into the scroll, which made it glow with a blindingly bright blue energy. Then he activated the spell, turning it into a storm of ethereal blue armor runes that drifted across the Silver Army.

Their scales shimmered with icy runes like snowflakes, making them look like ferocious warriors of winter, almost like the Ice Sylphs on Aster Fall. Blue runes drifted across their bodies, slowly moving.

With his Adept of Ice ability increasing the power of the Ice spell by 40%, it should be enough to protect them.

“There is no need to hold back any experience this time,” he said, directing his words to Sleset. “I’ll deal with the most powerful ones. Advance when ready.”

Sleset bowed to Sam. Then he let out a commanding hiss that sent the Silver Army forward.

As they headed for their first target, Sam turned to his own battle. The elementals were all over Level 380, but several were in the early Fourth Evolution, around Level 420.

Although they weren’t as numerous as the basilisks, they were even more dangerous. One to one they could easily incinerate them.

The power of the Fourth Evolution dimensional energy radiating from them felt like scorching waves of flames that weaved through the Fire current, pulling its energy in curves and eddies.

When the nagas met it, their formations shook like they’d been struck by a battering ram. Their neat lines warped, and the icy runes protecting them hissed as they began to boil away.

But then they were through, and they headed for the first group of elementals.

It was fortunate that the elementals weren’t grouped up in a solid ball and that they had no real sense of cooperation. They were distributed across a fairly wide area and weren’t the fastest to respond.

Sam still needed to intervene to make sure they didn’t swarm the army. If they did, things would become difficult. As soon as the nagas closed in on their targets isolated, he moved forward into the gap, separating them from the rest.

The dimensional energy from the elementals presented no obstacle to him. As he walked, it split apart around him like he was a mountain moving through the ocean.

It was the effect of his True Dimension body, which ignored dimensional damage, combined with his immunity to Fire.

He stood in the fiery current and raised his hands. Runes burned in the Void as the silver light of Astral Binding spread in every direction, creating a massive wall that cut off the elementals’ approach.

The only target left in front of them was him.

Then he began to walk forward again, heading for his first enemy. Even if he was just gathering materials and hunting, he still wanted to train his new abilities.

His muscles swelled as he punched out, sending a golden meteor across the distance.

***

Aster Fall. On the Peak of Sun’s Rest.

The astral forge glowed like a silver diamond against the dark sky as a column of flame poured upward. At the base of that flame, one of Sam’s avatars raised a hammer and brought it down onto an elemental crystal, which released a sharp ring of power.

As the sound echoed from the pillars that made up the forge hall and poured down the mountainside like thunder, he looked into the night sky, where a new silver star had just appeared.

An instant later, the star descended to the earth and landed beside him on the peak, resolving into a familiar shape.

The new golden titan grinned at the one who was already there, but there was no need to exchange words. A moment later, he disappeared again, heading to a more open area to deliver the fifty basilisk corpses to the World Core.

The avatar at the forge nodded in response, although it wasn’t necessary, and then he turned back to his work on the Water elemental crystal. Once it was finished, it was going to support a mana node on the fourth layer.

It was the same type of pure elemental crystal that he had used so long ago here at the relic, in the battle against the outsiders and the Grand Flaw, right after he’d first formed a connection with it.

Crystals like these were key focal points for the relic’s operation. They allowed it to channel massive amounts of elemental energy from the world, which was where it derived a large portion of its strength and defenses, as well as the ability to grow crops, provide water to the inhabitants, and balance the weather.

Even in the Chaos Wild, it was difficult to find crystals of the necessary purity. Any flaw in them would lead to an explosion or at least unbalance the elemental currents. They were rare and precious.

If he’d needed to search for them one by one, the repairs would have taken even longer. Fortunately, his Elemental Mastery and Aura Forging made it possible to create them on his own.

It still took time, but it was no longer a serious obstacle.

With the help of his avatars, the top three layers of the relic were already complete. They weren’t that large compared to the lower layers, so it hadn’t taken too long to finish them.

Now, the relic’s aura was a dense moonlight glow covering the peak of Sun’s Rest, lighting the streets and the buildings with rays of green, blue, and purple light that made it seem like every night was a full moon.

Buildings were connected to one another by channels of silver astral energy that ran through the greenstone, humming with a potent celestial force. The dimensional space on the peak felt different and sturdier now, like it was weighed down by a heavy steel plate.

It was the dimensional anchoring effect of the relic’s enchantments. It took a moment to get used to its presence, but then it faded into the background.

So far, it could only cover the completed layers and a short distance outside, but once the lower layers joined in, that distance would swiftly improve. Each layer added its own multiplier.

All of the avatars were Sam, just separate divisions of his mind, so he had no difficulty thinking of himself that way as he pulled the elemental crystal out of the forge flame and examined it.

The repairs were progressing, but time was still short to get everything ready.

There was just under two months left until the Conclave of the Moons, at least in Aster Fall’s time.

On Silverguard, it was double that.

When they created the Nexus, the ancient titans had shaken the laws of reality, changing this location of the Void to suit their purpose as they reached into the dark to see what was on the other side.

The power of the Nexus had done the rest.

Even time was trapped in its draw, making events inside its range move more slowly than those farther away. The effect extended beyond the limit of the World Seal, but it dropped off quickly as distance increased.

One of the main advantages of the fortress’s location away from the World Seal and the Nexus was that time moved a little more quickly there, which gave him an opportunity to recover and hunt.

It wasn’t much compared to the difference between Aster Fall and the civilized galaxy, or to the distant regions of the Chaos Wild, but it was helpful.

Now that he was hunting farther away, it was more like a three times difference between this avatar and his main body.

Fortunately, the time distortion had no real effect on his avatars’ perception of one another. It just felt like the thoughts of his main body were faster.

His thoughts were capable of operating independently for each avatar, but they shared information instantly, with the only limit being the time frame in which the other avatars could perceive it.

Even at the Heroic tier, the ability was still constrained by time. Perhaps if it reached the Divine tier one day, if that was even possible, it would find a way to break that effect, but he wasn’t sure it was even possible.

Having seven divisions in his mind created a strange type of mirrored effect, where he thought of himself as working on seven distinct things at the same time, but it worked.

There were moments when it felt like the divisions pulled apart and felt more independent and others where they came back together and their thoughts merged, but that was all.

Thanks to his high Intelligence, it wasn’t even that confusing.

The ripples of different time and focus were just like idle waves in his mind, which encompassed them all.

He looked down at the elemental crystal in his hand as he placed it back into the silver forge flame for the final refinement, considering the state of the relic.

If he had the opportunity, he would have to send an avatar even farther out, to a region where he would be free from the Nexus’s time distortion.

If he had an avatar working 215 times faster than the others, he could get a lot more done.

He didn’t have the years it would take to get far enough away to eliminate the full time distortion, and each of his avatars was doing critical work here for the repairs, but now that he had a seventh...perhaps it would be best to send it on a solo hunt out into the deep Chaos Wild.

One of the key properties of the Heroic tier for the ability was that essence and experience could flow between his avatars and his main body, so he could send back whatever experience he gathered.

The idea had been tempting him ever since he’d had a moment to think about it, and he couldn’t deny the obvious advantages.

It would take a week to reach an area where the time acceleration really began to take off, passing the 10 times mark, but once it did...all of that time would flow in his favor.

His main body had to stay near Silverguard to keep an eye on things, but an avatar was expendable. Even at 60% of his strength, it would still be at the peak of the Fourth Evolution.

He would also have full access to all of his racial abilities.

That was enough to hunt most of the Void beasts in the Chaos Wild besides Vos’Rekans and the rare Fifth Evolution ones that were each mighty forces in their own right.

It would also be good to have an avatar thinking through his plans and creating complex artifacts and scrolls that could be sent back to Aster Fall, especially since he could transfer small items instantly.

The only thing that had kept him from doing it already was the dire need to repair the relic as quickly as possible. His personal growth wasn’t as important as stabilizing Aster Fall.

At the same time, it wasn’t separate either.

Like it or not, he was currently the world’s chief defender. The stronger he was, the safer Aster Fall would be.

As the decision weighed on his mind, he could feel the scale tilting. It wouldn’t be that much faster to have seven avatars instead of six working here.

If the Astral Guardian had still been around to deal with the reinforcements, he might have chosen differently, but he wasn’t.

It was necessary.

Between one thought and the next, the new avatar that had brought the basilisk corpses back to Aster Fall looked up at the sky and nodded to himself.

He was currently standing on the Storm Plains and tossing the corpses one by one onto a field of rippling grass. As soon as they landed, waves of silvery experience rose up from them and dissolved into the air.

With each one, he could feel a notification from the World Core that was constantly increasing, telling him how many Level 399s he could release. It rang in his mind with a clarion call of bright trumpets.

World Limit Equivalent Experience: 53.

There was a satisfied tone in the World Core’s voice as it announced the result. It liked the new experience from the Void.

He knew that it reminded it of better days, before the war when it had first been forged and when the Astral Titans had guarded it from things like Vos’Rekan.

As soon as he was done with the last basilisk, he gathered up the empty corpses and stuffed them back into his spatial bracelet. It was the same design as the one his main body used.

All of the avatars had a copy of the spatial enchantment he’d learned from the Will of the Path. It was easy enough to recreate and better than any spatial bag.

Then he looked toward the distant peak of Sun’s Rest, nodding at the figure of himself he could sense in the distance.

He had nothing on him except a few basic artifacts, but it didn’t matter. This was the most powerful of his current avatars.

He looked upward, searching through the stars until he found an astral path heading in the right direction. Between one instant and the next, he disappeared in a streak of silver light.

He would head into the Deep Wild and see what he could find.