World Seal, Ch 6: Dimensional Gate (Patreon)

In the Void.

Sam looked into the distance, where he could sense his seventh avatar heading farther away. For the first time in a while, he let out a deep breath that was accompanied by a sense of gaining time.

With each avatar he created, it moved more in his favor.

He was fighting against a short window to get things done, but with his mind divided across the avatars, it felt like everything was moving seven times more slowly.

Even if it was only from his own perspective, it was an important change. It gave him a chance to catch his breath, study, and craft.

He was still worried about finishing everything before the reinforcements arrived, before the Vos’Rekan returned, and before the Dimensional Convergence turned worse, but he could feel the difference.

Each avatar was another set of hands. Soon, he would be able to add a couple more, and the process would continue to accelerate.

Based on his estimate, he was reaching a tipping point. With the next avatar, he should be able to finish the most critical work before the reinforcements arrived.

It shouldn’t be long now.

He turned his attention to where the nagas were cleaning up after the battle with the Surgeflame Elementals, and a smile spread across his face. It would be faster in some ways to hunt on his own, but they weren’t slowing him down by much.

They’d done a wonderful job.

There was nothing like continually fighting Void beasts to drag out their full potential. Any one of these elementals would have torn a regular army into pieces.

Without their equipment, racial abilities, and his help to limit the number they faced at once, even the Silver Army would have been overwhelmed.

He looked to Sleset, who was surrounded by a sheen of silver experience that glowed in his sight. The naga’s scales were saturated with power, gleaming so brightly that he looked like a beacon in the dark.

“Congratulations on reaching Level 399, old friend,” Sam said across the distance. “When you’re ready, I’ll help you Evolve.”

He could tell that Sleset was only a sliver of experience away from the Fourth Evolution. He probably could have gained the last fraction in this battle, but for some reason he’d held back, apparently by ensuring someone else gathered the experience instead.

“I will wait for you, my lord!” Sleset’s hiss carried across the distance with a proud force. “And for as many of my nestmates who can reach it at the same time! These battles let us test our abilities and improve them. Perhaps it will be important to meet requirements for the Fourth Evolution.”

Sam studied the energy around Sleset for a moment, making sure that it was stable, and then he nodded in agreement.

It was possible that the next battles would improve Sleset’s abilities even more, although unlikely. He’d spent over a century at the Third Evolution, so there shouldn’t be much that he had left to do.

His words weren’t about that, however. They were for those following him, a call for unity and a reminder that they needed to make the most of these battles. He was motivating them to reach the same level so they could undergo their evolutions together as an army, rather than as individuals.

The Silver Nagas were more tightly connected than most forces, partly because they were almost all related to one another, but they still had their differences of opinion. Sleset was using this opportunity to show his dedication to them as their commander.

He was also seizing the opportunity for them to evolve together with their Oathlord, making this series of battles into a historic moment that they would remember for the rest of their lives.

He had become a wise commander after all these years.

The difference between the Third and Fourth Evolution was large, but at the rate they were going, it was only a matter of days. If anything came up, they could evolve on the spot.

Sam didn’t push the issue. After the loss of a quarter of their number against the Vos’Rekan, this type of thing was important.

“Then we shall evolve together,” he replied with a warm laugh. “Think about what concept you will focus on for your Evolution. I expect you all to be ready!”

The nagas let out a hissing explosion of noise, their fists slamming against their scales in approval. Their formations shifted slightly, becoming even tighter as they stood shoulder to shoulder.

He had no doubt that over the next few battles, the nagas would sort themselves out and push each other forward, balancing the gain in experience so that they would all reach the Fourth Evolution at close to the same time.

After the last couple of battles, the nagas who had been in the lower half of the Third Evolution had made massive strides. There were only a few under Level 360 now. It wouldn’t take much to get them all there.

Once they crossed that line, they wouldn’t be able to go to Aster Fall until he repaired the World Seal, but it didn’t matter. He would ensure they had enough to enjoy at Silverguard.

It would be quite a shock to the Boundless Alliance when they arrived and saw them. He was already looking forward to it.

Even the reinforcements from the High Nine would have to respect an entire army of Fourth Evolution warriors. It was rare for that type of power to exist in the civilized galaxy. The stronger they were, the less trouble the reinforcements would cause and the better off the world would be.

Each of them was a key support. They’d proved that in the fight against the Vos’Rekan.

If he had enough time, he would push them all to the Fifth Evolution. The thought sent a crackle of expectant silver flames across his skin. If they reached that level, he’d like to see what tried to challenge his homeworld.

With 300 Fifth Evolution Silver Nagas guarding the horizon...

Not even a Vos’Rekan would survive that.

He studied them, debating how to reward them. They were stubborn and only wanted to fight beside him, so when he did, it would have to be something they couldn’t refuse. Different ideas simmered at the back of his mind.

With a nod to Sleset, he sent the nagas to finish up their work on the battlefield, including gathering the cores from the elementals, and then he focused on his own gains.

A wave of his hand summoned the auras, essence, and experience from the field. He’d taken out about half of the total enemies while practicing with his abilities and left the rest to be divided among the nagas.

The Titan Star summarized the results.

Congratulations, Lord of Silver Stars.

You have gained five Class and General Levels.

You are now Level 382.

You have gained 701,427 essence.

Essence Constellation (Third Star): 6,660,330 / 10,000,000.

You have gained 1052 Strength, 1219 Constitution, 317 Agility, 25 Wisdom, 2004 Intelligence, 2004 Aura, and 100 Charisma.

You have gained 98 Auras of Surging Flame (Heroic).

He glanced at the notifications as he tossed the ten free points into Charisma. With that and the 100 from the levels, it raised all of his other attributes by another 55.

He glanced at his new attribute totals, but his attention was focused on Intelligence and Aura, which had just risen to 42,174. It wasn’t enough to create another avatar yet, but he was almost halfway there.

The remaining 18 levels wouldn’t give him that many attributes, but there was still a lot of essence to gather before the Fourth Star. It would be enough.

As for his own concept to base the Fourth Evolution on, he had been thinking about it while testing out his abilities and he felt like he had finally settled on the best idea.

It wouldn’t be long now until he could see how it turned out.

When he was finished, he looked over at the nagas and his words rang out in the Void like a wave of brilliant heat from a star.

“Prepare to travel. We’re heading to the next target.”

He had already picked out the next set of enemies ahead of them, which weren’t too far away, at least as a Titan traveled.

A few moments later, the materials from the Surgeflame Elementals were all stored away and the Silver Army was gathered into shining ranks, their scales glimmering against the dark chaos of the Void.

A wave of silver light swept across their formation, crackling with brilliant energy. When it disappeared, they were gone.

***

On the Storm Plains.

Sam’s avatar looked around the rolling waves of golden grass and raised his hands. Then he called to the stone below him. The land was suffused with power from the elemental storms, and the earth was no different.

The plains trembled for miles around, shaking so fiercely that the grasses whipped back and forth, their tips blurring with the movement until it seemed like they had turned into a liquid ocean.

A torrent of stone surged from below his feet, leaping upward in arcing columns hundreds of feet into the sky, until it looked like a forest of boiling stone was soaring above the plains in every direction.

The stone spiraled around him, turning into a massive sphere of molten currents that continued to expand. More was constantly flowing upward from the earth and fusing into it.

Soon, it stretched out for over a mile.

All of it was infused with the intense mana natural to the plains. That was one reason he’d chosen this place. The earth here had a high natural potential, which made it easier to turn the stone into enchantment material.

He could have done it with regular stone, but saving time was important.

His aura roared through the liquid sphere, infusing it with even more power, a combination of essence and astral energy, as he purified it. The sphere shrank by a third, only to instantly grow larger as more stone flowed upward to join it.

The cycle of shrinking and expanding continued until it was back to a mile across, but this time it hardly resembled its old self. The stone glowed with silver flames like it was celestial lava, as if the heart of a star was burning here.

A pure sense of clear Stone and starlight radiated from it.

His Elemental Mastery racial ability and his two Heroic abilities that eliminated a need for specific materials were a fantastic shortcut when it came to crafting, something that he was happy about every time it came to mind.

Without those abilities, his path would have gone in an entirely different direction.

Right now, he was using those abilities to shape this stone into something greater than it had been before. When it reached the right quality, his hands shifted as runes began to appear, flowing upward from his aura into the sphere.

Natural laws of earth, lightning, and dimensional energy fused together as he inlaid the core properties of the enchantment he’d been working on.

At the same time as he was infusing the runes, he poured in astral energy, Stone, and Lightning in precise amounts, beginning the process of changing the sphere into astral stone.

Silver paths of runes connected to one another, flowing through the heart of the sphere. Each of them resonated with purpose, creating a sound like thunder that rolled out across the grasslands and echoed in the sky.

This was the same type of Titan material that he’d used for his forge on Sun’s Rest. It shared a similar nature to the greenstone that made up the Moonlight Relic, but that used Silvas’s aura and Ice as its main components.

The advantage of this type of material was that it gathered energy from the environment. Whatever element it was made from could be used to heal and reinforce it. The relic continually gathered natural energy from the Ice mana and moonlight on the peaks.

With Stone and Lightning in this one, the result would be intimately suited to enduring on the Storm Plains. Every ripple of Stone energy through the earth and rain of Lightning would charge it with energy, making it grow stronger over time.

He could have used other elements like Wind, which was always present on the Storm Plains. It would have let the stone gather energy whenever the wind blew across it.

But for dimensional enchantments, Stone and Lightning were better. They held the necessary grounding and explosive force to pierce through dimensions while remaining stable.

They would also endure the worst of the storms. If stones the size of boulders rained down or lightning pillars the size of entire cities crashed into them from above, it would only give them more energy.

Of the five main types of storms, Stone and Lightning were the most damaging to a structure. If he used one of the other elements, there was a risk that those two would disrupt the gate. It was a very small one given the level of the artifact he was planning, but it was something to account for.

Wind, Wood, and Fire storms were dangerous, but they didn’t have the same explosive energy.

The sphere swiftly began to change color as swirls of translucent white Stone and threads of silver Lightning appeared, showing off what it would look like when it was finished. Its base color was pure white and the jagged silver lightning surged across it.

The sphere was majestic, full of power and potential.

When the entire sphere had changed into the proper material, his hands shifted again. The sphere followed suit, crackling with contained power as it sank toward the earth.

When the bottom edge of the sphere met the ground, there was no contest. The ground compressed in front of it, swiftly sinking down beneath the weight.

Within moments, exactly half of the sphere was buried in the earth. It was a mile wide and half a mile deep. The top half of the sphere looked like a massive dome now.

Sam studied the arrangement, and then he began to shift the nearby ley lines into the sphere, connecting them to its core. It didn’t take long to finish.

A river of runes poured out of his hands, fusing into the sphere to anchor the ley lines into the core enchantment, and then he took a deep breath and began the next step.

Blazing astral energy poured out from him as he brought the full force of Elemental Mastery to bear. The white dome flowed away as he stepped forward.

The surface rippled as part of it changed to resemble a gate and other parts changed to a flat plaza stretching inward. On the sides, the exterior of the sphere changed into low walls.

As he walked onto the newly formed plaza, his mind raced at lightning speed as he poured out instructions. The material flowed away from him, changing into arches and buildings, roads, and open areas.

But they were only exterior structures, a way to use some of the material here. The main feature was still to come. The buildings might come in useful at some point if any forces needed to rest here or if someone just needed shelter from the elemental storms.

He continued walking and when he’d crossed a quarter mile toward the center of the sphere, he stopped. His senses flowed along the rest of the outer ring, filling it with buildings of different types, from barracks and taverns, to warehouses and private residences.

He even created a fortified castle at one side, merging its defenses into the exterior wall. At the same time, he added some arching fortifications and battlements around the outside, along with another half dozen main gates.

Eventually, he was satisfied with the outer ring. This would be the outer city, if anyone ever lived here. At a quarter-mile deep, it took up half of the total footprint.

Despite its appearance, it was just part of the supporting enchantment structure. The stone that made up the buildings would help to gather ambient energy and channel it toward the center. It was similar to how the relic’s layers channeled energy toward the peak.

The half mile at the center was where he would build the gate.

The remaining part of the sphere slowly churned as it crackled with lightning. Then it flowed away as he focused on it, turning into a massive archway that stretched across the broad plaza at the center of the city.

It wasn’t a simple one

Instead of having two pillars to support a single arch, there were thirteen separate pillars, each of them holding a position that was strangely asymmetrical as they marked out places across the center of the plaza.

The pillars near the outer edge were slightly shorter than the ones at the center. They were all between a quarter mile and a half mile tall, but none of them were exactly the same height.

White stone arched above all the pillars like a roof and connected them together, resulting in a single main arch surrounded by over a dozen slightly smaller ones. Cross arches between the supporting pillars created even more sub arches.

The result made for a confusing sight, one that bent the eye in search of straight lines that didn’t exist. The total number of arches was difficult to count, slipping away into questions of whether a particular merger counted as a single arch or five separate ones, or if it was actually three heading in a different direction, depending on how you looked at it.

The concept of this place was based on dimensional laws, and it was one of the highest forms of dimensional enchantment that Sam knew. Every line here was essential, creating a pathway for dimensional energy to flow.

The pillars were thirteen foundational concepts, each of them aligned to a core principle of dimensional energy, while the arches were openings that could channel that energy at a particular level.

The main arch at the center was the primary gate, one that drew energy from the entire enchantment, but every single arch around it was a subgate.

There was still quite a bit of stone left over from the sphere after the arches formed, so he directed it outward, where he used it to build up the outer city a bit more, adding a second and third story to some buildings.

Then he pushed the rest out across the plain, creating a secondary enchantment around the exterior of the city to gather ambient mana and send it toward the center.

Radial spikes like roads spread outward from the city, leading toward the gates, while pathways of white and silver stone sank into the plains. By the time he was done, the secondary enchantment extended for miles, leaving an ornate tracery of enchantment across the area.

He stepped into the air, rising half a mile above the city until he could see everything at once. It was all a single connected artifact. With the exception of Silverguard, it was the largest thing he had ever made.

The artifact spread out below him in concentric circles, while directly below, the arches of the gate structure created a profound, interconnected symbol at the center of it all.

He had to admit it was impressive. The speed and efficiency of constructing it, as well as the sheer power it represented, reminded him of why the Titans were called the greatest builders the galaxy had ever known.

He’d taken many of the insights he’d had from building Silverguard and applied them here. This was just the beginning, but he had to admit that it felt like he was finally beginning to build on a Titan’s level.

A sudden smile tugged at his features as he looked across the artifact below. Since he’d built a city, it was only appropriate to give it a name.

“I'll call you Portal,” he said solemnly. “You shall be a gate that opens on better days.”

He sent a wave of astral energy across the silent city, bathing it in a silver glow that sank into the stones. The light surged across the quiet plaza, leaping from arch to arch until every stone shone with brilliant force, like a beacon of hope.

He gave it a nod and then he pushed those thoughts out of his mind as he floated back to the ground. He needed to move on to the next phase and finish creating the enchantments that would power the gate.

Then the real work could begin.