Amun.
Nearly ten years had passed since I first heard the name. And another five had gone by until I heard it for the second time.
Both were in passing from Sir Knagh and his mentions of correspondence with the Necro King. Nothing more than one-sided messages. All but demanding that Magus Everandus Cole's position at the academy be reinstated later down the line while he simultaneously bragging about his genius of a great-grandson. The half-drow, half-royal heir of the House of Cole, Amun of Odissi.
Since long before I first met him as a young Arcane Wizard, the Necro King had been infamous for being a fox in bear clothing. Only saying what was needed for one to get the general sense of his point with no hope for further details or comments. Especially when such things were needed the most. As such, I had only grown more eager to see the Grand Duke's prowess with my own eyes. And finally, I had my chance.
Patience is a virtue, as they say.
Visually, Amun appeared more like his father, Emeric, than the Necro King. Their visages were all the same, of course, but their proportions couldn't have been any different. Magus Everandus Cole was a massive mound of muscle, bone, and magic that stood as tall as I, a pure-blooded Amazonian did, and twice as wide. A side-effect of his pervasive magic, I've come to learn over the decades; otherwise, he'd have retained the same slender build as his descendants.
At 1.7 meters and sixty-eight kilos, however, Amun was neither as tall nor as defined as his father. As a result of the Fey running through his blood, his family assured us.
A claim that we had no choice but to blindly accept since the only ones here to be privileged with the presence of elves was the Iron Magus and the House of Cole.
On the other hand, witnessing Arcane Magic was something I had a fair amount of experience with. Though, seeing it wielded by a human was something I never thought I'd see in all my days.
As always, the Grand Duke of Odissi had a blatant flair of boredom and disinterest throughout Law's explanation of the order of operations over the intercom. Even after the golem spurred to action with three bullet spells in one-second intervals, that flair persisted, and with hardly a motion or influx of mana, the shadow of each spell darkened to an illogical degree. Opening a maw that spawned a growth of writhing tentacles and ink-black hands that grasped and dragged each spell to the depths below while their caster. Using the same method, the golem's flesh was ripped asunder and pulled into the forsaken realm of legend that only the Cole House was privy to.
All in less than a few seconds.
"Next is Death Magic," Idonea announced to our subordinates while the golem was reformed. Though, no one could listen, as we all felt a sudden, inexplicable shift in the mana around Amun before the newly formed golem attacked.
Amun stood in the face of tar, lava, and iron without as much as shifting his posture, all for the sake of displaying his affinity with death to the rest of us.
Or so we assumed.
Most of the magical tar, lava, and iron that'd been thrown at him simply rebounded upon impact, yet forced him back all the same. Scarring his chest and face with simmering and glowing splotches and scuff marks.
Still, Amun didn't grimace in pain or anger, nor did he counterattack in any way. He phlegmatically stood there and healed the scars and bruises covering his body with necromancy, flooding the coliseum with potent death mana as a consequence.
I watched every spine in the room straighten and subsequently shudder forward into a hunched posture just as mine did.
As a Grandmaster Mage, it was both a miraculous sight and feeling to behold. Throughout my career, I had faced the foulest creatures imaginable and had walked the line with death more times than I could count. Like many others before me, I grew to think that I'd grown familiar with that feeling after a time; the shadow of death.
Naturally, such thinking ceased once I met the Necro King.
As far as I understood, the power of the Cole House resided in their blood. Many have speculated that their power was of draconic, demonic, or even divine origins. Or, possibly all three. More have speculated that not even the Necro King was aware of the source of his power. That it was an enigma lost to time, ironic as that may seem.
What was factual, was that whatever it was that dwelled in their blood made them a part of the plane of shadow and the underworld more so than they were a part of the physical plane. They were natural born sovereigns of the Shadow Plane and the Under; and now the void.
But the frightening part was that their sorcery allowed such otherworldly energies to enter the physical plane.
As such, feeling the Necro King's mana was nothing like feeling the shadow of death. It was like being forced to gaze upon the gates of the underworld as they peered ajar just enough for the gelid winds to whip a plague of sorrowful whispers into one's mind.
It was a truly, pervasive energy that invoked a primal feeling. I could never mentally prepare for it, block it out or evade it entirely. But I grew accustomed to it with time all the same.
What I was feeling now, however, finally made me realize that not even passing would make me familiar with the afterlife.
The negligible sliver of death mana Amun withdrew to heal himself served to open the gates entirely before my eyes, if only for a moment. Forcing the grayed landscape of screaming, clashing souls that expanded at Infinitum into my mind's eye.
I snapped back to reality after what felt like an eternity of fighting and dying to see Amun, casually approaching the golem with his hand stretched out before him.
At the slightest touch, the lava flowing within the golem's eye sockets rapidly cooled, then cracked into a web of crumbling stone that cascaded down the igneous and iron body. Within seconds, the entire construct decayed into a billowing pile of dust and rust. Evoking a long period of bewildering silence that continued as the Grand Duke went on to display his next ability.
"Void Magic," Idonea muttered after steeling herself.
If I hadn't been focusing my eyes, I'd have missed the abyssal black streaks that sprawled across Amun's body just before the first bullet made contact. Much to everyone's bewilderment, the center of each bullet simply disappeared on contact, leaving the edges of each spell to continue unabated behind him as if two smaller bullets had been thrown out instead. Then, with a simple hand gesture, he created a mind-bogglingly black plate next to the golem and swept it across its flesh. Erasing the golem, the golem's magic, and the ground it was standing on with naught a sound or hint of resistance.
After a long, long moment had passed, the period of horrific silence had been broken by Dutch's astonished low whistle. "Three affinities from a single hereditary core. Thus is the power of a sorcerer."
I snorted softly at the remark. Not out of contemptuousness or even amusement, but nostalgia. There had been a time where every mage in this room had said something similar, including myself.
As a Grandmaster Mage, seeing the torch be passed to Dutch and Skye overjoyed my heart. For the lessons, such a sight yielded were far greater than anything I or anyone else could teach. Here and now, they'd been humbled and made to realize that even with their tremendous power and immense blessings, they could be outmatched and outclassed at a moment's notice.
"Next on the list is… Gravity Magic." Idonea stated. Followed by her muttering. "Whatever that is."
Without removing my eyes from the young halfling, who was, in turn, studying the reforming golem with a curious eye, I said. "It's one of the spells he keeps active."
"Like… constantly?" Skye hesitantly asked.
"You didn't feel it?" Lia laughed in her usual dry manner. "Two spells activate every time his ring comes off. Three if you count his shadow clone, four if he's floating around like he does."
"He canceled it for a split second to let the bullets hit him." Yolanda monotonously added.
"Ah." Skye rocked backward in understanding. "You think it's powerful?"
"We shall soon find out." I leaned ever forward as the potent stream of mana ceased its flow from the perch adjacent to ours, eventually forcing my legs to support my weight more so than the seat behind me.
A mere inconvenience when compared to waiting.
After a few eternal seconds, the construct threw out its triage of bullet spells. And Amun's reaction all but verified my assumptions.
Or rather, his lack thereof.
As before, each bullet spell was fired at low intensity at one-second intervals. The head-sized mass of tar taking point sailed true to within five meters of Amun before inexplicably lurched upward, diverting its trajectory just enough to fly over Amun's head and splat against the far wall. Similarly, the iron bullet jolted after crossing Amun's low-powered domain and continued on at an odd angle towards the ceiling. Followed in tune by the lava bullet being pulled away from its target and sent away to crash dangerously close to our viewing booth.
Following the same motions as his opponent, Amun flicked a mass of the deep purple mana towards the golem. Being no larger than the tip of his middle finger, the gravity bullet crossed the twelve meters between them in a flash, seeming to assimilate with the golem on contact. Imbuing it with a strange energy that pulled at its arms, legs, and head, forcing it to curl unnaturally to its sides in an ear-piercing cacophony of wrenched iron and crushed stone.
In the end, a smooth sphere of igneous rock and iron was all that remained of the golem, floating at eye level until the mana wore off. Allowing it to fall to the ground with a resounding thud.
I and countless others were at a complete loss of words. For many reasons, I assumed.
For me, it was the potential behind this… gravity magic. From the remains of the golem that had just fallen, the bullet spells from before, and the curious way Amun flew around, I was able to deduce that his ability was centered around falling. A seemingly innocuous power, at first glance, but one that I was sure could break the world.
For his electromagnetic demonstration, Amun sent out twin flashes of lightning towards the lava and tar bullets whilst simultaneously gripping the iron bullet in a magnetic embrace to then sling it back at the golem. And without pause, he began whipping up a violent tempest of mana behind him, invoking a sense of deja vu in everyone present.
Just as we felt and saw a few days prior, a massive amount of mana was concentrated before being released in a perpetual stream of lightning. Seeing it up close and personal, however, was a much different story.
It was like the tamed breath of a blue dragon, the way it lashed out at the construct. A veritable pillar of crackling blue lightning, it was. That lightning was forced through a conduit that linked the tip of Amun's finger with the golem's flesh, resulting in every bit of the spell being poured into his target. Even after it was obliterated after the impact, the crackling streams arced between the spreading shards of inorganic flesh until the spell tapered out. Leaving molten pieces of slag strewn about the arena.
His next magic was the most obscure of all, and the object of almost everyone's eye. To have any type of spatial magic was rare. Any type of temporal magic was even rarer. I've only ever seen Clerics or Warlocks gaining a fraction of such power through mutations or divine intervention. Having them both in a single affinity core was unheard of, as far as I was aware.
Like before, Amun stayed still while the spells made their way to them. Canceling one of the low-powered domains he kept around him was his only action. The reaction of such a meager defense was each bullet spell halting in place; or, so it seemed.
They appeared to continue flying while they remained suspended in the air just a meter away from him. Spinning and flinging bits of tar, iron, and lava out to their sides as if there was an immeasurable distance lying between them. Then, with but a flick of his finger, a speck of the same energy flew out towards the golem. Causing it to rust and decay on the spot just as it did with his death magic.
A perceptible tension rose in the air as the Iron Magus reached his mana down to repair the golem. I and everyone else present was more than anxious to see the final affinity in action. His void magic had been long anticipated, that was true. And his gravity and electromagnetic affinities were a large topic of interest amongst all the spectators, but with the instance from the other day and Amun's incessant use of the former to navigate, it was easy to make conjectures on the nature of those abilities. As was the case with space-time magic, being as self-explanatory as it was.
Nuclear Magic, however, was something no one had even heard of. Not the high societies of Vagua or the expansive labyrinths beyond the White Wall were privy to such information. Perhaps not even the mysterious elves of Youtera, I was certain.
Thus, I felt extremely fortunate to witness such an esoteric affinity with my own eyes.
Much to my dismay, however, my eyes were forced away just after the golem sent out its attack. I saw Amun send out a bullet spell in his usual manner. Then, that image remained in my sight for a period that felt like an eternity.
In that time, I felt as if my body were leagues away, flailing helplessly while its invisible surroundings shook with wild abandon. After, the light faded to reveal Amun, still standing with his hand stretched out before him. Containing a withering explosion with a barrier of his Space-Time magic and releasing it only when a molten crater remained where the golem once was.
While a roar of applause and conjecture erupted in every booth, I paid close attention to the flux of mana traveling into the combination spell the two Magus' were preparing.
As explained before, the Necro King would only put enough necrotic energy into the golem to make it sentient, effectively turning it into a necromental. The necromental's power would then be increased with a large deposit of raw mana.
Mana sourced from the Necro King and the Iron Magus in tandem.
Though they tried and in turn succeeded in empowering the necromental far beyond a level needed to challenge any platinum grade initiate, I could tell that they didn't even come close to matching the potency of Amun's well.
"Ensure that you pay close attention. And don't blink."
Following my advice, I began concentrating ambient mana around my eyes and ears at an ever-increasing rate. In turn, my mind turned its focus away from the sudden spikes in mana around me and towards the hulking behemoth hunching forward on its knees.
With my eyes focused to near their limit, I saw the necromental pounce forward with the strength of a minotaur. The ground where it stood shattered while the massive creature itself was rendered into a black and amber streak straight to Amun. Even then, I failed to see Amun flick out a gravity bullet. I only saw him slowly lowering his arm and watching in awe as the necromental's gathered speed was brought to a sudden but gradual stop before being forced backward.
With a swing towards Amun, the necromental tumbled, somersaulted backward, and halted itself by gripping the stone tiles as if it were a crevice in a cliff face.
In lieu of its efforts, the necromental's purchase waned and eventually gave out. Sending its hulking mass plummeting at an ever-increasing rate towards the cove-like opening of the coliseum.
With a flick of a finger a sudden spike of mana, the golem disappeared entirely. Only to reappear before the viewing box in the far wall in the next instant.
We stood in horrific awe before our minds registered what we subconsciously knew and began to brace only after the necromental's full size loomed before our window. Only for a warped space to open up below our booth, returning the beast from where it just came.
The room itself seemed to sigh in relief as much the same scene repeated before our eyes. The only difference was a similar portal had been opened up on the far side. Effectively creating a loop for the thrashing necromental to fall through at a rapid blur.
I, however, couldn't help but feel slighted. Especially after refocusing my sensing and becoming aware of the permanent smirk wrapped around Amun's face.
Amun flicked his fingers again after a few seconds, shifting the portal below us to the ceiling whilst simultaneously closing the one on the far side with hardly any mana being expended in the process. Naturally, the necromental had no choice but to plummet into the arena in a land-shattering impact.
With the amount of raw mana empowering the necromental, however, it rebounded from the attack without issue and lunged through the smoke with a wide swing to Amun's side.
Eliciting a loud exclamation from the crowd.
That exclamation turned to wonder once the necromental's fist followed through with no bits of blood or fabric attached to it.
All of us, myself and the enchanted glass we were watching through, searched the arena for Amun's position until we saw the monster lunge across the arena.
Enhancing my senses beyond their limit, I turned my attention to see Amun at the eastern edge of the arena. Looking out at the ocean as if he were taking a relaxing night for himself.
He just stood there, even as the necromental came in from overhead to shatter the balcony on which he stood.
Like the rest of us, the sentient chunk of inorganic material searched the reforming balcony for Amun. Only for us to simultaneously avert our attention a few meters to the side in the next moment to see Amun, casually walking towards the center of the arena.
With a lava-spewing roar, the monster spun about, lunged, and again made contact with Amun's afterimage. Injecting all sorts of rock, iron, and magma into the crater it'd created while its opponent remained unscathed just a few meters away, walking as if he were strolling through a market.
Naturally, this enraged the necromental to an absurd degree. It began attacking without pause, producing more craters, chasms, and lava puddles with each attempt at smashing, pummeling, and destroying Amun. Only for the seemingly fragile Initiate to all but teleport a few meters out of the way to safety and continue his stroll.
As miraculous as it was, I could only feel that this display was intended to be a message to us organizers of this assessment. A message that said this challenge was weak, boring, perhaps even, 'I am untouchable.'
I'd seen countless messages of a similar nature, over the years. Mostly by those who couldn't back up their claims, but a shining star could be found on occasion.
Though, even those stars found themselves humbled after enough time.
If I were to judge this star from what I'd seen thus far, there were only a few entities that I knew of who could outshine him.
And only three of them were in Maru.
Even with my senses focused beyond their limit, I struggled to keep up with Amun casually teleporting away from the necromental with a noticeable grin on his face. My frustrations and amazement rose to an all-time high when he disappeared entirely, forcing us to search the arena for his position once again until we felt a spike of mana coming from above.
Craning my head above, I saw him… standing on the ceiling with something cradled in his hand.
I saw a shift fall around him before disappearing into the ground. Then, the golem attacked with a jet stream of chunky lava.
Unconcerned, Amun swept his arm aside, forcing the spell apart with a dense wave of mana; all the while, his attention remained locked on the ground, away from the golem.
Following his eyes brought me to the strangest sight. A black, red-eyed rabbit dashing madly towards the necromental. With its attention focused on Amun, however, the beast paid the little creature no mind and thus remained unaware of the rabbit maneuvering into its shadow.
Though it was hard to see, its flesh began to bulge and bulk grotesquely until it was around twice its original size. Then, one became two. And two became four. The process continued unabated until the necromental noticed their presence. But by then, it was too late. Shadow bunnies were crawling over its arms and legs, ripping chunks of stone and iron from its limbs while others burrowed into the chest cavity. Some died as a result, others stomped over their ashes to burrow further. All the while, the swarming sea of umbral animals below them could be seen jumping over each other to tend to the remains until nothing was left.
Leaving an army of shadow bunnies standing atop a sea of shredded material, staring up at the half-elf standing on the ceiling.
Amun of Odissi.