THE GATE OPENS

While Thalia entered the plaza to begin her fight, Lynne sat down in a lotus position, silently meditating. He didn’t worry about her losing the fight; as the matter of fact, deep in his heart, he suspected she was similar to him – that she was following the Origin Laws but, unlike him, she was following them for a long time.

One had to understand that the current system for ranking Mages was devised with current 7 Magus Paths in mind. Although Lynne still didn’t veer astray, he could feel himself breaking apart from the mold, bit by bit. Therein the mysteries of the Origin Laws lay; even with Lynne’s innate Gift of Comprehension, he still found it incredibly hard to meditate upon the six symbols long-term. As all understandings contained within the symbols were merely ‘concepts’, it got increasingly hard the longer one studied them.

It was similar to ordinary mortals trying to unveil the vestiges of time, devising ideas on how to go back into the past. However, eventually, they’d reach a form of bottleneck where a paradox after a paradox would begin consuming their thoughts.

Lynne actually firmly believed that him comprehending Gift of Infinity was pure luck, and that it wasn’t due to his sudden enlightenment. Alas, there was no other way for him to try as he lacked proper guidance. He understood very well that exploring grounds of the ancient sect would be extremely dangerous, which is why he used every sliver of free time to train. When he first embarked on the Path of Magus, his aims were rather lofty. However, now, he had far too much at stake; not only was his father’s fate weighing on him, there was also the matter of the terrifying creature and their five year agreement.

Whether Lynne grew stronger or stagnated, he had to show up; naturally, the stronger he’d become, the greater chances he’d survive would be. Although his Master had told him he’d try to free his father, Lynne didn’t put many hopes into it; relying on others, he learned long ago, was not a surefire way to do things.

In the end though, for the stage he was in at the moment, Lynne was exceedingly powerful. He felt that no one besides those who’d begun understanding Natural Laws could fight with him. This was primarily due to the purity of his Mana; if the battle was short-term, he’d absolutely destroy everyone. However, in prolonged battles, he simply lacked Mana reserves to endure. Still, his Mana reserves grew quickly every day; he estimated that he currently had roughly three times the Mana of an ordinary Magus on his level. Still, it was far, far from enough.

He sent out his Soul Force to the plaza, inspecting the ongoing battle; more than half of the black-clad figures were rolling on the ground, groaning in pain. The youth he swindled was standing frozen, ashen-faced, his eyes bulged out as he stared at Thalia. She didn’t even take out her spear; she merely used ice-based Spell Arts to fight them all off.

This made Lynne almost certain that she was also training in the Origin Laws – one of which was Law of either Water or Ice. While ice came from water, it contained Laws in and of itself, so it wasn’t necessary for one to understand water in order to understand ice as well. However, Lynne expected as much; from what the creature had told him, the level at which Mages on Alloy trained was terribly, terribly low. All paths were simple derivatives of Natural Laws without actually utilizing the said Laws. This made it so that even when stronger Mages embarked on the path of understanding Laws, they wouldn’t be studying Origin Laws like Lynne did, but mere replicas.

The battle was quickly finished, and Thalia returned. However, once she saw that Lynne was meditating with his eyes closed, she couldn’t help but pout slightly. Her interest in him continued to grow, while his interest in her continued to wane. Ah, ah… to think there’d be a man who can just calmly ignore me. Master’s words ring true… there are oddballs everywhere.

“I won!” she exclaimed as she sat next to Lynne.

“Good for you sweetie.” Lynne replied without even opening his eyes.

“Tch,” she clicked he tongue, glaring at him. “You know, I fought that battle for you. Can’t you at least thank me?”

“Thank you? What for? For beating some sheep? Heh, why congratulated a cow who beat down some sheep?”

“Eh… as ruthless as ever.”

Shortly after, they returned to the inn. Lynne decided to remain there until the opening of the sect’s grounds; he had made one-too-many friends recently, and if today was the indicator, he’d best stay low-key lest they gang up on him the moment he enters the sect grounds.

Due to his recent insight into green flames, Lynne ignored the symbols for Spellweaver Origin Path and focused entirely on Skyfire. While he knew that Skyfire was actually Origin Law of Flame, he had no idea what Origin Law the Spellweaver Origin Path referred to. Perhaps, in the end, it wasn’t even an Origin Law, but just a bundle of scraps.

Three towering symbols rested within his mind, seemingly indifferent to all else; no matter what Lynne did, he couldn’t move them. They remained seated like statues, yet they still brimmed with odd sense of life.

“Flames…” Lynne muttered lowly under his breath. “Ugh, it’s almost irrelevant how much I understand. The symbols probably pertain to Origin of Flames; what is actually the origin of flames? A spark? External ignition? For a Magus to form fire, they need to combust their Mana; that combustion is expelled outwardly, causing flames to appear seemingly out of thin air. The greater the combustion inwardly, the greater the explosion outwardly.”

“Skyfire and Hellfire are two Origin Flames,” Lynne mused silently. “But… how did they come to be? Via the Natural Law of Flames? But… how could there be a Natural Law of something that didn’t even exist prior to that Law? But… how did, then, the very first flames spawn?” the more Lynne thought about it, the greater the headache became. Still, he forcibly ignored the pain; each time he’d study the symbols for the extended periods of time, he’d feel extreme headache overcome him. However, he never attempted to push through it until today.

“It’s… it’s probably the case of there being Origin Laws for the Origin Laws,” Lynne grit his teeth as he began breathing heavily. “Similarly to how Law of Ice spawned from Law of Water, despite the fact that Law of Ice has its own, unique mysteries. The worst part is that I don’t know how many Origin Laws there are; are they unique only to materialized things, or even those abstract ones? No, there’s Law of Darkness; darkness is intangible, so it’s possible that there are other, similar Laws.”

“In that case, could it be that material Laws spawned from the abstract ones?” Lynne continued to ponder as his headache grew increasingly more painful. “What can cause fire? If the sun is hot enough, it can burn the dry leafs… actually, any major collision has a chance of erupting into a massive explosion, where the flames would spawn… in the end, all fires are simply offset of other, more powerful forces…”

Suddenly, as if a massive dam had been broken inside his mind, Lynne felt his headache completely disappear as a myriad of information flowed into his consciousness. The stream was extremely gentle as it began nourishing both his Mana and Soul; spark of sudden inspiration caused him to finally grasp one thousandth of the first symbol pertaining to Law of Flames. While it was just a small, almost negligible understanding, Lynne felt as if he had mastered a complete, overbearing Spell Art.

While his understandings could be produced into words, the concepts that evolved from those understandings could not; Lynne had, in total, comprehended three just now. His Gift of Infinity appeared when he understood a mere speck of the Spellweaver’s Origin law, while three additional ‘gifts’ had been comprehended from the one thousandth of the Law of Flames symbols.

One concept was Firmament; Lynne felt small sparks of flame cruise through his veins continuously, nourishing his blood. This concept provided him with innate fiery constitution of sorts; others would find it extremely hard to harm him using flames.

Second concept was Blaze; each of Lynne’s attacks would carry with it innate ‘sense’ of flames. That is, each attack would be empowered by flames without Lynne having to spend any Mana. It acted similarly to Starcarrier, and Lynne immediately understood that the Headmaster must have reached this understanding of Law of Flames as well, which prompted him to devise Starcarrier in the first place.

Third concept Lynne ‘understood’ was the most profound: Pyre. It was similar to Lynne’s understanding of ‘combustion’ process while creating outward flames; however, Pyre worked in a rather strange fashion. Inside of Lynne’s body, side-storage container for Mana appeared due to this concept. It was being replenished constantly without Lynne’s help. During the battle, Lynne would be able to combust all Mana within this side-storage, whereas his body would be set ablaze, increasing his defensive capabilities by a large margin. In addition, he could immediately combust the flames themselves, causing them to expand outwardly in a ring-like fashion, consuming everything within a half-mile radius.

Firmament, Blaze and Pyre… just from a small flash of understanding, Lynne had obtained three rather deep additions to his arsenal. While the two acted as Lynne’s innate Gifts, in as they couldn’t be activated, they still increased his battle prowess. Pyre, though, was more akin to a Spell Art, as the side-storage could only be used to unleash this ‘Gift’, and not in any other way.

However, during this sudden flash of enlightenment, Lynne had come to understand one more thing: each time he’d learn twelve of these concepts, they would merge into a singular one. Lynne would be able to choose the leading concept that would retain its original form, while eleven others would weaken as they fused. Still, Lynne didn’t care much for it at the moment; even if he suddenly understood ten thousand concepts, it was all quite meaningless. After all, he lacked experience in battle more so than anything else. If he couldn’t properly infuse these newfound powers into his battle style, they’d become meaningless. For instance, Lynne immediately decided to use Pyre in a singular fashion: last line of defense. He preferred mid-raged combat over close-quarters, and he would use Pyre only if he had no other means of escaping the melee engagement.

As for the other two, they would always be active so Lynne didn’t even bother with devising anything pertaining to them. Unbeknownst to him, though, almost five days have passed since his sudden flash of enlightenment. Lynne heard loud knocks on the door, waking him up from the strange stupor. Although Lynne felt his stomach rumbling, he ignored it for a moment as he jolted onto his feet and opened the doors. On the other side was Thalia, carrying her everlasting smile.

“Yo,” she greeted him rather casually. “The Gates are about to open. Let’s go.”

“Hm,” Lynne nodded. “Give me a minute.” he then shut the doors close, completely ignoring Thalia. He immediately raced to the bathroom and took a quick bath, changed his clothes and ate before leaving his room. This all took nearly half an hour during which Thalia actually stayed outside of his room.

“Damn, what kind of a monster makes a lady wait?” she immediately asked, clearly grumpy, as the two headed out of their inn.

“A perfect one.” Lynne replied with a brilliant smile.

“Eh… you truly are perfect. Perfect waste of air.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“At least I’m wasting less.”

“Considering your capacity for cruelty, I doubt your lungs are much smaller.”

“Ah, warring against you with words is like trying to get a man pregnant…”

“Oh, stop it,” Lynne covered his lips lightly, acting coy. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“… screw off.”

Outside of inn, Anna, Elynal, the monkey and the bird were already set to go and waiting. Lynne noticed that they were rather excited; however, he couldn’t blame them. After all, there are many stories of ordinary Mages entering the ancient sect, and leaving as supreme existences amongst their generation. There were many chances awaiting inside the sect’s grounds, and while their original goal – or rather, Elynal’s original goal – no longer mattered, they still could search for other opportunities.

On the other hand, Thalia and Lynne were much calmer; what Lynne lacked was time and experience, not treasures and inheritances. As the matter of fact, he already had way too many inheritances, causing him enough of a headache. As for the treasures? He would lie if he said he wasn’t interested – as the matter of fact, he’d rob the entire ancient sect if he could – but he knew all too well that his expedition into the sect’s grounds would be all but peaceful. His main goal was to survive and gain some battle experience along the way. Treasures, if he could obtain them, would be great; if not, there’d be other opportunities. Lynne decided to remain within sect’s grounds for only two months tops. After that, he’d have a month to reach Edgemaw where his father’s execution would be held. Luckily, there is a string of teleportation arrays that would get him to the very border of Highlind, while he could cover the rest of the ground rather easily.

The group soon arrived at the very center of the city; hundreds… thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people were already gathered here. Some were standing on the ground, some were floating in the air; the mass of people bloated out the sky, causing the ground beneath to be plunged in darkness. Lynne couldn’t help but be startled; he had never seen such a massive amount of Mages gathered in a single place.

On the ground, there was a circular array formation, composed of various, ancient runes along its edges. Three hooded figures stood in a triangular fashion around the formation; just as the sun hit the peak of the sky, the three figures suddenly began forming seals in blur-like speed with their fingers. The ground shook slightly as the formation was activated. Runes began shimmering in deep brilliance, and edged layers of formation began rotating, causing the frequency of quakes to increase. Soon after, a towering pillar of golden light broke out from the very heart of the formation, piercing straight towards the sky. It was nearly five meters in radius and was completely blinding; Lynne could only observe everything with his Soul Force, as just glancing at this towering pillar caused his eyes to itch.

A few minutes later, the towering pillar – alongside three hooded figures – disappeared, leaving behind a round gap in the ground, reaching far beneath the earth. There was a moment of silence, after which countless figures poured into the hole like rain. One by one, Mages leapt into the abyss, leaving behind only afterimages.

“Let us go as well,” Thalia said as she took a step forward. “Stay close to me; there’ll probably be some idiots at the very edge of the first level that will try to stir up trouble.”

“Just kick their ass.” Lynne replied calmly.

“I’ll kick your ass,” Thalia rebuked angrily. “Let’s go!” Lynne and others also joined the outpouring of Mages, diving directly into the abyss, lunging into the first layer of the Emperor’s Flame sect.