Volume 4: Earth

(General P.O.V)

(1 year later)

The sky bleed only increased with time. More and more catastrophic events falling onto the crater.

At one time it rained lava.

When before this phenomenon only happened once a month, now it happened almost every week. The howls of pain had in contrast died out.

Inside the crater, a lone body that shone golden from the tips of the hair to the toes opened it's eyes. They glowed a completely new color, silver.

Time stilled, space froze and then the moment was gone. The eyes lost their new color and Aden floated to the smooth ground, gently touching down and sighing.

"I still can't hold that form for more than three seconds."

From Equity, which was floating around him in a steady rotation, a black shadow shot out.

"Which is more than ideal, seeing as you could destroy not only Energia but half the universe if you lost control."

Chaos voice was heard from the dark smoke that formed up into an exact replica of Aden, only Chaos was wearing a completely black outfit.

Aden sagged onto the hard ground, lying on his back, with his hands and legs spread out.

"This sucks."

After deciding to officially unlock Earth bending, Aden had run in to some problems. Earth bending was complicated as fuck. It was his hardest Element to understand so far. It felt as if the mysteries of Earth were hidden behind a veil, inaccessible to him without putting in almost 10 times the effort of normal elements.

It was disappointing to say the least. A true let down. Which is why after achieving the minimum control he could, he decided to try fusing all his elements into one for a faster power up in preparation for anything.

It wasn't lost to him that there were cosmic entities here that did not want him around. Which made the One Above All's behavior strange. The creator of marvel could have expelled him out of the universe but chose not to.

Back to the fusion, it put more strain on his body than even the short bursts of 10,000 g's he used to break his body and train his healing power. He could also only hold onto it for 3 seconds before being unceremoniously thrown back into his regular form, lest he died. Or came close to it.

"Why don't you put a pause on the fusion form and get back to Earth bending?" Chaos advised, making Aden groan and pull up the system interface.

"Even after a year of continuous training, I still only managed to unlock it. At this rate, it's going to be a decade before I unlock the first sub skill."

He frowned, lifting his palm to the sky and spraying out his fingers.

"It's...weird, almost like I can feel the mastery just out of reach, but under lock and key."

A strange look crossed Chaos' Face. He shook his head before focusing his attention back on Aden.

"Well, at least you didn't completely waste all that time. You've already managed to master Blood Bending and healing. Both subskills are very useful."

Aden couldn't deny that he had a point.

"The White Shadow was the perfect way to practice it's effects on human low lives. Focus on controlling them without completely hurting them."

He explained, thinking back to when he had decided to have some presence on Earth to keep track of the timeline due to the existence of the X-Men. This wasn't normal canon anymore. He was wary of being blindsided when he decided to begin his plan.

"And even if you did hurt them, they are criminals. They deserve it."

Chaos added, curiously studying the magical formation spread out across the sky above the crater.

Aden frowned, a little bit uncomfortable.

"Don't talk like that."

He admonished.

"Like what?" Chaos shrugged, looking at him weirdly.

"The truth? You're not human, boss. You've also killed before incase you forgot."

He snorted.

"I'll be busy with something. Shout if you need me."

He added before disappearing into Equity, leaving a conflicted Aden on the ground under 3000 G's. This wasn't the limit of what he could do, during his normal serious training, that gravity usually went up to 7000.

Now his problems with Earth bending did not stop there. Aden had hit the limit of what level of gravity Energia could impose on the crater at 1000 times the gravity of Earth. Anything more than that for a long period of time and he would be risking his new realm's destruction. His plan had been to unlock gravity as the first Subskill in the Earth category but that plan had failed spectacularly.

To keep the progress of his physical training from dropping, he had to look for other alternatives. And after thinking about it extensively, he finally settled on magic.

Over head, there were platforms of energy above the crater, flat formations of huge magical symbols designed to increase the gravity. Each formation was an individual spell on it's own. The increase simply stacked double the enhancement on top of the existing gravitational pull acting on Aden's form. One formation was 2 times the crater's gravity.

So with one formation above his head, Aden was under 2000 times the gravity of earth with the exception of the initial pull. 2 formations would be 4000, 3 formations would be 6000 and so on. He could only create a sustained amount of 3. Which meant that Aden was currently under 3000 times the gravity of Earth if you took into account the gravity Energia could support.

And even that left him completely immobilized. It didn't break his body like before so that was a plus at least.

Now, magic was an extensive topic. It wasn't something that a normal person could easily master. Luckily for him, he wasn't normal. His comprehension speed was crazy and he could give himself speed thinking to solve complex problems. And on top of that, Aden did not bite off more than he could chew.

He accessed his magic by going into a deep meditative state for one entire month and then after getting a feel for it, he used another month to try and achieve good control over it. He did this through difficult exercises like telekinesis and construct formation.

First, he begun with simple shapes like round balls made up of yellow energy ( Which was the color of his magic), then triangles, cubes and stars with several points. Shapes that combined arcs and lines into constructs with multiple segments were the last step in this training.

It was somehow easier the more he practiced. From shape construction, he moved on to size alteration, then matter alteration, however he couldn't change the state of the energy no matter how much he tried, so he backtracked. Maybe magic was akin to science, more than elemental energy in that it followed some hardcore rules. But even that made little sense. So maybe it was his control that was the problem.

He decided to approach the issue from a different angle and so added an elemental touch to the mystical energy. Fire magic, Lightning magic, water magic, ice magic, air magic and Earth magic was born.

Subskills belonging to different elements were expressed as magical disciplines on their own. He also noticed that the attacks were much weaker than his elemental energy, and there was also another component added to the whole thing. Aden found out that he was talented in specific elemental magics. Fire being the main one and air surprisingly being the least he was talented in.

The natural step up from there was to create a magical spell that would imbue certain effects to a surrounding designated zone. That was the only time things got a little hard. Turns out that magic was volatile and free thinking. A one off attack worked wonders. However Aden struggled with creating a magical spell that worked for a longer period of time. A sustained spell.

The spell structure usually broke down and exploded in his face.

Instead of simply casting a spell that would carry out a function, he decided to construct a shell around it, holding together it's own reserves of magic that would keep the spell going up until the magical power ran out. A sort of battery.

That presented another problem for Aden, to construct such a formation he would need knowledge of a magical language in which the meaning of the spell would be translated into the actual effects of the spell. He was essentially cutting off energy from within himself and having it autonomously continue function without his direction.

Aden realized he was using up more time than he was comfortable with, so he exhausted lesser miracles to simply cut off the learning process and basically just will the formation into existence through intention alone. That magical spell became attached to his very soul. Now all he had to do was simply will it and it would activate.

The whole incident made Chaos curious why Aden did not use the lesser and major miracles as often as he could. Aden pondered on this for a while before understanding the reason. Just like he had refused Lucifer's own help, the miracles were not really meant for him to throw problems at. Without conscious use, any sufficiently powerful prayers coming to Aden from his worshippers were answered by exhausting the lesser miracles.

Despite being endless, that was only the case because the faith energy coming in was more than the faith energy being used. If by any chance his worshippers were to dwindle, his reserves of faith energy would be exhausted.

So the miracles weren't meant to help him get rid of personal problems or take shortcuts, they were meant for the worshippers. With Aden so far away from them, they would need a lot of miracles if something bad were to happen.

Through using the lesser miracle, Aden understood the formation he wanted to create past the need of a written language and so his training progress did not slow down. Infact it increased due to the level he wanted to reach.

His body was so powerful, he now had to put conscious effort not to cause shockwaves by merely moving. And that still wasn't enough. He would be going up against Celestials and Cosmic Entities, he needed all the power he could get. Aden had not tested just how powerful he was. The only reference he had was in the massive reserves of Chi he currently possessed. Enough to destroy the solar system a couple of hundred times over.

After a few hours of rest, Aden was about to jump back into the fray when Chaos appeared once more.

"Oh, still lazing around?"

He joked. Aden showed him the middle finger.

"Mmh I see, someone is in a bad mood."

Chaos used his foot to nudge Aden on the chest.

"Get up, I think I know why you're struggling with Earth bending."

Aden propped himself up on his elbows.

"Huh? You're serious?

Chaos nodded grimly.

"I think it's to do with the Earth spirit."