The beautiful sunrise greeted us as we had breakfast. “It’s been two months, right?” I swallowed. “What’s August still doing in Et Draco?”

Dawn and Donna gave each other a weird look, then Donna looked at me, but Dawn couldn’t. They were definitely hiding something.

“Guys…” I bellowed.

“Alright, alright!” Dawn gave in; she knew I wouldn’t let it go if they remained so mysteriously silent anyway. “For the past two months, August has been fighting off Apollyon?” she said it in a questioning way, closing her eyes as if expecting me to berate her.

And that’s exactly what I did. “What the fuck? W-what?! Explain.”

“Calm down,” Donna flicked her wrist, “he’s doing just fine, but we can’t leave him like that forever.”

“Excuse me? My best friend is fighting with Apollyon the ‘Destroyer’ for two entire fucking months and you want me to calm down? Since when was Apollyon back anyway?”

She rolled her eyes and brushed her hair past an ear, “Yes, dumbass, I expect you to be calm. Remember your training. Anyway,” she bit onto a single slice of bacon, “Apollyon came back a day or two after you passed out. August played it safe and let his clone do the dirty work so he wouldn’t be injured. He could last a long time because of that. But, a lot of lives have been lost, even in worlds we’ve never been to.”

That damn hairy blacksmith amazed me every time. Just let the clones do the work. Sure, if they sustained too much damage, they would forcibly be dismissed, but once they lasted long enough, he’d be able to just summon another one without worrying about running out of mana. “Okay, um, how was he allowed to sleep?”

“Mandy and Adrasteia would fight when he had to sleep,” Dawn explained. “If they got injured, they would return to a city in one of the coalition worlds and Donna’s clone would heal them there.”

I breathed, “Alright, then it’s time to g–”

“Nope,” Donna denied me. “I know I just retired but this is my last order to you as your master, continue training in soul magic. The three of them,” Donna referred to August, Adrasteia, and Mandy, “said they’ll hold out for three months. I’m quite positive you’re strong enough to face Apollyon as you are now, but I’d like for you to make it so that he’s nothing but an ant. Use the next month, Eric.” She continued gnawing on the bacon, “Alright, now I’m retired.”

Indeed, she had a good point. Fine then. Instead of starting training right away, I checked out the spell called Coalesce, and by Hydra’s lovely ass, I understood why Donna had that reaction when she heard about it. The spell was a permanent buff that synchronised one’s mind and body to somewhat replicate the nature of the soul. It, very simply, was like August’s enchantments; it gave a 20% boost to the base primary and secondary attributes. The primary attributes were strength, agility, and intelligence. The secondary attributes were quint, health, and mana regeneration, mana and quintessential power, durability, and quintessential energy pool. I believe quint pool had something to do with storing quint in one’s body, but I never bothered to learn more about it.

Anyway, the real advantages to me from Coalesce would be health regeneration, durability, and mana power increases. August’s enchantments did the exact thing this spell did. With this ridiculous spell, it added another 20% and increased my mana power to 17,952%. Coming from 5,500% to 17,952% in two months made me understand why Mandy suggested training as much as she did.

And with light manipulation’s passive restorative abilities coupled with my now 40% increased health regeneration and durability, most injuries were nothing to worry about. With that, my defences could take more of a backseat in favour of focusing on obliterating my opponent.

I sat down, and for the next week of training, I focused on taking the littlest amount of soul energy possible, which worked out great. It boosted my regular void magic far beyond what I was normally capable of. I solved the issue of using soul energy very early on, but now the issue of doing it as fast as using normal mana came up. I explained this to Donna after constantly trying and failing.

“Well,” she put a finger to her lips, “you have a ‘room’, right?”

“Uh, yes?” I raised a brow.

“That room is from your memories, right? Do I exist in that room?”

“Um, yeah. Why?”

“Just have the me in your room extract the soul energy for you. When you need it, you take it. No need to medita–”

“Donna, you absolute fucking genius! I love you!” I grabbed her by the cheeks and pulled them out.

I sat down to meditate again and entered that room – my soul. Indeed, she somewhat existed in here too, but not exactly like we thought. She wasn’t a person of her own, but something already glued to my mind. Ugh, be great if this worked like… Just then, I got another idea. I took the new clone’s consciousness I made for Division and implanted him in my soul instead. Because it was already me, the transition was flawless.

After that, I remade yet another clone to grant me Division. So, now I had a clone responsible for extracting my mana, letting the mana absorb my soul’s energy, and transferring that energy to me. This process meant I no longer had to sit still and concentrate to access soul energy. It needed a bit of preparation time, but it was much faster than before. Okay, I think that’s good enough for using soul energy. I was satisfied with the process, and decided to simply practise it.

So, I basically used Hydra as a weight. There was no other safe way to practise something like soul-powered void magic without ripping my planet apart. But it wasn’t very efficient. For larger doses of soul energy, I’d have to lift Hydra for hours on end in order to get rid of the energy. Not using it fast enough caused damaged to my soul, which I had to wait in order for it to heal back. It also invoked that horrifying lunacy I felt the first time I harnessed soul energy. Light magic did nothing to heal the soul’s damage.

This is slow. I can’t lift her up every time either.

“Use voidfire then,” Dawn indifferently suggested.

It was a marvellous idea as it could be more of an open-ended method instead of lifting Hydra for a bunch of hours. With manipulation, I could increase the output as much as I wanted to. My progress snowballed very far, and the only thoughts frequenting my mind as distractions to my training was the state of the worlds. Which ones were affected? How bad was it?

Just as the third week finished, I took a deep breath in the afternoon sun and wiped the sweat off my face. “Donna,” I called out to her after I returned with Voidport, “I’m ready.”

She nodded. I hugged them all and cast Riftwalk to Jynnak, where I felt August’s Light Link. The minute I appeared I felt a huge mass of magic spiralling towards me. I casted Convergence and diverted the giant wave of arcane magic away from me and into the sky. Apollyon took clear notice of me.

August noticed me and sent another clone my way for the sole purpose of using Scour on it. According to his memories, they defeated the demon countless times, but his regeneration brought their efforts to nil. They weren’t any closer to understanding why than when they first saw it.

In the first place, it seemed like Apollyon was on an even playing field when it came to their individual skills against his. The demon could brawl with August without the need for magic. He could withstand Adrasteia’s physical attacks easily, and still somewhat avoid her draconic attacks. And Mandy’s shadow transformation was much like Adrasteia’s – except it buffed her shadow magic instead of draconic magic. However, Mandy’s physical prowess was almost on par with August because of her teleportation ability. She also had a type of armour just like Adrasteia’s Dragon Armour. She was smack dab in the middle of physical and magical ability.

They chose not to combine their powers against Apollyon, seemingly because at the level they fought at, it was hard to work together. And even if they managed to beat him, without knowing how to stop his regeneration, tiring themselves out was pointless. So, they chose to take turns and distracted him as much as possible from killing innocent beings. Nevertheless, there were a lot of casualties even with someone fighting against Apollyon to get his attention and another busy containing the damage. This would especially be true for when he fought against Mandy. Two beings using shadow magic against each other was the primary cause for the tens of thousands of skeletons left scattered around the area.

The other issue they faced was when Apollyon chose to teleport to another world. They would have no idea where he might’ve gone unless that world was one of the coalition worlds and it was reported that Apollyon’s foul power was felt in their world.

However, this time, August would receive reports that the Baruum Empire was asked for help by the neighbouring countries against an unimaginable foe. When we went over to Pargat, we found that Apollyon was rinsing the ground from the sky with shadow magic, almost as if painting with a roller brush. The trees wilted and died, along with every animal caught within, and that beam of shadow magic was fast approaching human settlements. While doing this, another nova of shadow magic erupted from him and quickly spread.

After asking August to hit him with Displacement, I quickly hatched my plan.

I began casting Exile, taking my time in the void to do it. Once the required time and mana was sufficient to make the cast, I had a clone Voidport me over to Apollyon, then I grabbed the demon by the neck and cast Exile on him, indefinitely locking him to a void plane. Of course, with his space magic, he could get out, but I’d prepared before-hand.

There were hundreds of clones just waiting there for Apollyon to enter. They all had Augment stacked 100x and constantly sank Apollyon to the floor. I gave them some time to really entrap him and eventually made my way over to the demon. My clones kept a portion of him available for me to touch, so I commenced the process of merging cells. I couldn’t speed up the process with clones because of the limited space on his shoulder that I had to use.

After becoming an avatar of nature, merging became almost instantaneous for most beings, but those with high sentience or complicated magical makeup could end up taking hours. Apollyon was no different. The same feeling that I got when merging with spirit lords was the same feeling I got when trying to merge with Apollyon. He was the spirit lord of shadow. He was shadow.

“I see,” my hand shook. Intriguing, he’s a spirit lord, but can use other magic types. I knew it was reckless to do such a thing without first gaining mastery of shadow manipulation, so I at least decided to use my demonic transformation before continuing further with such a crazy stunt. In that form, using shadow magic for me wasn’t a big deal, so I refocused on merging with Apollyon.

Even though he wasn’t able to use magic because of August’s Displacement, his sheer strength greatly combated my clones, but alas, the number of my clones constantly holding him down was too many. To escape from a void hold so effective, he absolutely needed space magic to distort my void.

Whilst I was busy using Scour on August, I saw the havoc they wreaked upon many worlds. Tens of millions of people perished. Some died by stray shadow magic, some by the sheer destruction of battle going on, especially when Adrasteia was forced to use soul energy.

However, most of the mayhem was caused by the physical fights between August’s clones and Apollyon. It was unending and frightening, and undetectable to anyone else. The breakneck speeds they fought at was even faster than their skirmish in Inferno Desert. In fact, it really did concrete to me that August wasn’t someone I could just beat so easily. Even Apollyon’s ghastly shadow magic had to be concentrated on him for much longer than usual for it to affect him badly; other people would just need to be slightly touched by the magic for them to decompose in but a matter of seconds.

I was progressing nicely with merging Apollyon’s cells, until I saw his first hint of emotion. His fists clenched and his eyebrows twitched. Afterward, a stupidly high amount of magical power was released. I immediately retreated; if I didn’t, I’d be toast just like my clones. What a beast.

Within moments, he managed to escape my void plane, essentially undoing Exile. In the blink of an eye, his sword rammed right through my chest which he then slammed through the ground. The back of my head smacked against the ground and I began losing consciousness a little, but my passive health regeneration staved it off just long enough for me to use Convalesce to heal myself. I was a lot more resistant to it, but light magic still stunned me a little because of my demon form. By the time I opened my eyes and focused on Apollyon, the Staff of Eliora was already halfway pulled out of me.

I stacked Timedial then took head his off with Wind Cutter. His convulsing body was sent into overdrive after Wrath of God steamrolled him until his snow-white skin turned charred-black. Even with his head severed, his spell-hand opened up and aimed at me. The blast of shadow magic missed me. I grew irritated and sent a beam of shadow magic right back at him; there was some damage, but nothing like I imagined.

He regenerated soon enough, and our slugfest of spells began. I would use clones, Augment, potions, and Apollyon would still pull strength out from some abyss of power that I couldn’t see. We fought all damn day because I chose to exhaust other means of defeating this bastard without resorting to soul magic, but it seemed like I had no choice. However, there was one thing I didn’t try; perhaps it was the first thing I should’ve done.

I finally summoned the Staff of Eliora from out of my inventory, which he wanted so badly. I could tell his gaze was firmly attached to the artefact, like a cat’s focus on a string of yarn. Although his eyes were just black, I could feel his attention changed from me to the staff. I undid my demon transformation and we both stood on damaged ground.

The more we fight, the more lives are lost. How much soul energy would I have to use if light magic doesn’t work? Damn. I cast Holy Edge, Voidported next to him and cast Holy Nova, then immediately used Convalesce a few times over. The light magic on a demon who was made of the exact opposite magic type disorientated him. I coupled that with void magic and arcane magic to hold him still until Holy Edge hit him. The spell’s ability to directly destroy a life essence meant that he would actually die. That’s what should’ve happened, but no such thing happened.

It occurred to me then that what I saw as his life essence wasn’t actually the true one. The real one was anchored somewhere else. I asked the Spectre of Eliora, but she didn’t know anything about the location, however she did tell me that I should try to find the Orb of Eblis. Again, it was mentioned.

Just as I got the bright idea to ask Madam or Mister Jelly where I might find the Orb of Eblis, Apollyon’s power spiked once again. I teleported away. Shit, I was warned that he’d continually keep growing stronger. Fuck. I Voidported to the nearest human villages where August, Mandy, and Adrasteia helped people evacuate. “I need you to hold him for me!” I said to August and immediately teleported to Hyzek.

I took a deep breath once I got there and started my search. Since the paladins of Hyzek should know of Leo’s location, I used Scour to quickly get that information from them. They were in the city of Telon, so I Voidported to the Telonis household and began my search from there; the family and servants were quite surprised to see me, but I was glad I saw someone I knew. “Herona,” I called out to her.

The girl who wanted to learn magic from me wore quite the surprised expression. “E-Eric? Why a–”

“Never mind that,” I simply glided over to her and touched her head to use Scour. She was pretty confused, but I didn’t have time to explain. Thankfully, Herona’s information of Madam Jelly’s location was pretty recent.

“That thing that appeared here,” she grabbed my hand. “Is it that? Is it happening?”

I exhaled piteously. I had no idea how bad Apollyon’s deathly magics affected Hyzek when he teleported here, but I knew some cities sustained massive damage. And by her sudden tears, I suspected Telon was no exception. “Yes. Do not engage him. I must go,” I gently removed her hold on me with void magic and teleported away.

Within the minute, I found Madam Jelly in a botanical garden, as carefree as ever. Perhaps she knew her helplessness wasn’t a reason to fear death. That was a feeling I abhorred. “Madam Jelly,” I greeted her and Leo. “I need to know where I can find the Orb of Eblis.”

Leo gave her a look, then sighed. “You took so many months to ask for it, we assumed you gave up,” he untied a pouch from his waist and within it was a world-traversing artefact. “Once the creature realises that you’re in that world, he’ll know you’re there for it. It won’t be easy. Godspeed.”

“Thanks,” I took the artefact and went to this new world and appeared in a jungle surrounded by mountains. I flew to where I found that a large amount of magic emitted and, on the way, Apollyon intercepted me, just like Leo warned. We paused; the demon and I glared at each other for a while. I knew the true fight would begin here.

I suddenly felt myself losing altitude. I crashed into the trees far below. Did he just, use void magic?! The fuck?!