“Greetings, master. We can have a proper conversation at last. I was but a nameless being in the underworld before I was left at your side by my previous master. You can call me Devinn for now.” Devinn said.

“Alright Devinn, what are you exactly.” Alwyn knew Devinn was the will inside the violet smoke from before. It was just that he could now talk to him after burning through two thirds of a good supply of mana.

“I ate the bloodline weapon and the mana you provided before igniting your own cosmic bloodline. It pushed you to become a True Elemental with the space element just like your ancestor. I used our symbiotic fusion to become a True elemental as well with me as the element. Since your ancestor’s bloodline was made at the cosmic level, I could only ignite it and stay away from it. It was both a blunder and a blessing. I did not know your bloodline was sealed, my apologies, Master.” Devinn said apologetically.

“Wait. Bloodline weapon and cosmic bloodline? Explain clearly.” Alwyn was trying to decipher this fellow’s words.

“A bloodline weapon is a product of a being who died but fused his soul with his blood, allowing him to keep his blood alive by giving it his knowledge, power and other things he deems necessary and pass it down to the next generation. Usually, it is like an heritage of some sort. It is what that Netherwyrm bloodline is. Your bloodline is a little different, your ancestor started your bloodline at the Cosmic level and then sealed it otherwise you would have been born at the True Elemental level. My action of igniting it probably alerted him. He allowed me to become a True elemental alongside you but made me your servant. He must’ve decided to leave me alive for some reason.” Devinn could not hide his fear as he narrated his story.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. You’re telling me he is still alive?” Alwyn could not believe what he was hearing.

“Yes. He is alive. He is in another universe. Cosmic gods cannot die but can be sealed or imprisoned.” Devinn was praying for a chance to change the subject, he did not want to lose his life by revealing more information about that dreadful Cosmic god.

“Do you know why he wants every last member of his bloodline to become the Cosmic God of this universe?” Alwyn wanted to know if there was a way for him to disappear far away, especially now that he knew that there were other universes.

“No, I do not know, but I can guess that he left one of his descendants in the universe in the case of a breakout. There has to be a Cosmic God on watch just in case a prisoner escapes from the underworld.” Devinn could not continue anymore and regretted asking to come out.

“Breakout? Underworld prison? Are you telling me that he makes his descendants act as warden for every universe he decides to create on a whim. Does anybody care what I want?” he was starting to think that no matter how strong he becomes there was still his ancestor who was strong enough to make him do whatever he wanted. The universe suddenly lost its alluring luster in his heart. He wanted to be the one to escape from his own ancestor but it seemed that he already knew about his recent rise in power and even helped him himself.

“The descendants that he sends to watch over his universes are all prisoners themselves. Most bloodline seals are put on dangerous people or convicts. Some accept to become Cosmic gods and stay in that universe forever, others prefer to die human and let their descendants become guardians just like you.” Devinn said.

“Even if I become a Cosmic God, I can just escape. Is he not just a Cosmic God himself?” Alwyn was feeling like he was back to his days in the subterranean world. Without freedom. A future as dull as that of an eternal guardian was not what he wished for.

“You are wrong master. You would just become a Cosmic God in name only by wielding a cosmic pool. He is a full fledged Cosmic God and becoming one is the hardest thing ever.” Devinn said. He was realizing that his new master was going to lead him to an early death.

“What is a True Elemental? How far am I from the Cosmic god level? And How can I escape from this universe?” Alwyn asked.

Devinn felt a headache heading his way but decided to explain anyway:

“Every magician has an ancestor who was a magician. In fact, all beings can coexist with mana. It is just a question of affinity and bloodline. You are either born favoured by the elements or just born in a bloodline of magic. It is the same thing but the latter gives you a better talent at practicing magic. Your bloodline was sealed so you had no chance of ever practicing magic without your ancestor’s authorization. Most of your ancestor’s descendants are still at the same level as you because the next level is exactly the Cosmic God level. Others are just given the title Cosmic god by using the cosmic pool your ancestor gave them.”

Devinn stopped for a moment and then continued:

“Before reaching the God level, every magician attunes himself with his element(s) of choice or the element(s) he has the best affinity with. From being a novice magician, an intermediary magician, a Grand magician, a half-elemental to an Elemental magician, it is a process of fusing your element(s) with your body until you breathe and live by said element(s). Your mana pool evolves as well as your body becomes more suitable for it. Reaching the god realm and beyond it is the realm of the soul. Your soul must become attuned to the element(s) your body completely fused with. It prepares your soul to reach the True Elemental level which is the same goal your body had, live and breathe with the same element. At the god level, your soul is introduced to your element(s), the next prime god level is to choose the element with your best affinity to partially fuse with your soul and finally there is the True elemental level in which the body and the soul breathe and live by the same element(s). In some rare cases, there is a problem that occurs with an element that polarises itself because of the influence of the soul and personality, people afflicted by that problem are called Polar gods, forever stuck just below the True elemental level. A Polar god of the light element will find himself plagued by the darkness element or a polar god of water will be assailed the fire element just before the True elemental level. It is a rare situation. A Polar god that succeeds in advancing is almost guaranteed to reach the Cosmic level as the prerequisite to reach the Cosmic god level is to have your mana pool become one with your body and soul. Polar gods experience a chaotic exchange between the body, the soul and the mana pool, because of the invading polar element, making it easier for them to succeed in the process of mana fusion. It is the ideal case everybody wants to be in, but surviving it is even harder than reaching the Cosmic god level. It is a race against time between you and the polar element.” Devinn shared his knowledge as fast as he could.

“Mana pool, body and soul. My bloodline is the space element. If that old bastard succeeded in doing it, why can’t I? But what if train in another element and try to see if I can become a polar god? I can then take advantage of the chaos inside my body to become a Cosmic god.” Alwyn was thinking out loud and did not notice that Devinn was paying attention to an area of the universe close to them.

“Like I said, master, it only happens in rare cases. Now that you have become a True elemental it will be just easier to train in other elements to strengthen yourself but the Cosmic god level will still be nigh impossible to reach. Of hundreds of universes, I only know of seven Cosmic gods.”

“Stop calling me master, just call me by my name, Alwyn.” Alwyn had just had enough of hearing about the number of universes that he could not run to as long as his ancestor was alive.

“I asked you if it was possible to leave this universe.” Alwyn reminded Devinn.

“I would not recommend it, your ancestor will just send my previous master and his subordinates after you. They will be sure to bring you back unless you have descendants of your own.” Devinn said.

“To hell with it. why would I let my children suffer for me?” Alwyn said.

“Then with your future status and strength you have the right to visit the underworld of this world. It is the only place you can go to for now. My previous master is the lazy kind, even if you run, he will let you have your fun before he brings you back. If you want to keep running from universe to universe, it could prove to be fun.” Devinn said.

“How strong is your previous master?” Alwyn’s glowing violet eyes were filled with anticipation.

“Leland Ingram. All I know is that he is one of the thirteen overseers of this universe’s underworld. If you become this world’s in name Cosmic God, he will be your direct underling along with the twelve others. As for his strength, he is an eight-star True Elemental.” Devinn said.

“ Eight star. Don’t tell me he fused with eight elements to the True elemental level.” Alwyn immediately asked.

“It is exactly that and he is ranked sixth. Just be lucky that he is the one who is in charge of your ancestor’s descendants and also the laziest one that will be sent after you.” Devinn said.

Alwyn’s dream of strengthening himself for a while and running away was shattered as he learned of Leland’s strength.

“With your space element, which is rare, it will be even harder for him to catch you. But your plan is hopeless because your ancestor can just teleport you back in this universe from where he is whenever he wants. That is why of all seven Cosmic gods he is the strongest and is the most feared. He can appear from nowhere and kill you or teleport you in front of him and kill you.” Devinn was trying to keep Alwyn away from a hopeless struggle.

“We could use this ring you made from the gauntlet to keep trying to escape.” Alwyn was not ready to abandon his freedom so easily.

Devinn was having a hard time trying to get through the thick skull of Alwyn. He inwardly sighed and said: “That ring would be useful if we were below the True Elemental level now your ability to warp through space is already better than the ring. I will teach you how to teleport and I will guide you towards the destination until you can do it by yourself. As strong as we are now, we can easily teleport to the closest universe if we are lucky.”

“It is useless then.” Said Alwyn just before he threw the ring into space.

“Finally, he stopped spying on us” Devinn thought. All this time the ancestor had been spying on their conversation.

Devinn retrieved the ring. The black violet element left his hand towards the levitating ring that had started turning black violet as well. It took a long time for him to stop pouring power into it. He looked completely drained.

Alwyn was asking himself many questions about Devinn’s behavior. He asked him: “You just said that the ring was useless. Why are you giving it your power?”

Devinn looked at him and gave him an enigmatic smile before saying:” You know, you have not yet asked what element I am and why me an element can be sentient. You ancestor was asking himself the same question when he saw me and I suspect he let me live because he understood.” He took some time to regain some strength and said:

” Back in the underworld I was just an artificial wraith who accidently gained the power of healing after a failed experiment. The only good thing about it is that it was easy for me to fuse with anything except the soul. But for Leland it was a start. Imagine something that can eat mana and fuse with anything but the soul. What if the soul was part of the equation? Our souls are linked.All I would need would be enough mana to complete a Cosmic god transformation with your body. I am the kind of accidental being that every Cosmic god dreams of creating by himself. An army of artificial real Cosmic gods as underlings instead of the ones that use a cosmic pool.”

“ Then why did Leland give me a weak violet smoke? And why has my ancestor left you behind.” Alwyn asked.

“Because they are both in the dark when it comes to my true nature. When Leland separated a stand of violet smoke from him to you because he was too lazy to always bring you back to life, he did not know that I had transferred my true will inside that strand. Other than that, he always thought that the little will I showed on the surface was everything that I was. He never knew I was aware of everything that happened during every experiment. All I wanted was to leave the underground world to escape from his useless experiments. And now that I’ve reached this level, I can finally eat and fuse with souls. My powers are also yours and while we do not share the same ancestry, my soul and yours are interlinked together. I have no need for your bloodline. I am strong enough already. Only you know about that now.” Devinn explained. Once again a strange gleam was seen in his eyes:” That old fox is back again. He is in bad luck. He does not know that I can detect his space magic so easily.” He thought. Alwyn’s ancestor was back to his spying. Devinn had decided to change the course of the conversation again.

“Why tell me this now? You just lied minutes ago.” The clueless Alwyn asked.

“Sigh… I just want you to just live your life and have another perspective other than just being free. You got this far by stealing power after power that you have no idea what it means to be strong or to be alive. “Devinn said before turning around and look at the planet before them and said:

“Look at this planet in front of us, because of what you set in motion, those poor humans that you never cared about are now in the hands of a bloodline weapon. They will never know when they are being controlled or not, but at the same time there is our personal gains. I knew what would happen and you did not. Still the choices were yours not mine. Right now, there is an army heading straight for us and these new Netherwyrm gods will have to fight to the death. Half will be exterminated. Now tell me who is the one responsible for all of this? Is it us? Or the bloodline weapon?” Devinn had turned serious as he asked his questions. In his mental vision, the invisible space ripple disappeared, signaling the departure of the ancestor.

“It is getting annoying, but all I have to do is keep the conversation boring so he does not learn anything. Even our thoughts are being listened to. I am going to go crazy if he keeps doing this.” Devinn thought,

“No one is to blame.” Alwyn said. He then added:” What does all of this have to do with the ring anyways.” He did not care at all for his twin’s attempt to speak some sense into him.

“The ring…” Devinn stared at the ring as it levitated in the space between them. He said:” I just turned it into a simple refinery. My power of trapping gods and refining them back to mana is in there. So you’ll never lack mana at all. Instead of just a teleportation spell and a space element seed, I inscribed all the spells I know but the corresponding seed of the element the spell targets are needed. The seeds will automatically be added from the souls and bodies of the gods you kill. As for the pocket dimension, I split the previous mana core into two and gave the dimension its own mana core and will grow bigger the more mana you decide to give it. The second core will be to power up those spells. If we get our hands on enough mana, we will be able to become Cosmic gods as soon as possible. As long as we still have mana even Cosmic gods will have to let us go.” Devinn smugly said.

“Why the change of heart?” it seemed too good to be true for Alwyn.

“You ancestor keeps spying on us. I caught him snooping around and only started telling you the truth about me when he was gone. Now that he thinks that I am scared enough to keep you here, he is going to prepare and come for me himself. If my guess is right he is consulting the clueless Leland about the steps he took into creating me. The moment I cut the connection between your bloodlines, will be the moment to flee fast enough before he notices. We will probably clash for a while until he starts having nightmares about us.” Devinn said.

“But you just said that Cosmic gods especially him are impossible to fight. What can you do with a little ring.” Alwyn said.

“I just told you I need an enormous amount of mana to become a Cosmic God as I now have a soul, and your body. When I use your body my soul and the mana that we acquire, we will both become Cosmic gods. In the meantime, we will use the ring to stay alive.” Devinn said.

“Where do we start?” Alwyn excitedly asked.

“Let us start with the army that is coming towards us. Let us meet them halfway. At least we will be polite enough to send them on their way early. Their souls and mana pools will become ours. It will be enough mana to use for a while. After, we will hit every cosmic pool your ancestor left behind in each of his universes, starting by the one that is right here for us. It is the purest mana ever. We might even want to try to steal from the other Cosmic gods. It almost feels like they are begging us to steal from them.” Devinn said.

“Sounds good to me.”Alwyn said unafraid of the mayhem they were about to start.

Devinn turned into a black violet element and fused back with Alwyn. Alwyn wore the ring and asked: “Where is that army?”

“Here.” Devinn’s voice sounded in his head followed by a gigantic star map of the area appeared in Alwyn’s head. His attention was drawn to an area that glowed red. He could see an army of gods heading towards them.

“Just imagine that you are there and you will. If you are not confident in your powers, just put the coordinates inside the ring and it will be the same thing. I highly recommend you practice with your own powers though.” Devinn explained.

Alwyn chose the ring.