The battles to defend his plane from the demons were intense. They were not like anything he had ever experienced, not like the friendly spars he had been in with other high elves. No one actually wants to liberate your head from your shoulders during friendly spars.
There were body parts everywhere. Craters and fire had destroyed that part of the forest. Trees had been uprooted and shredded to pieces. Different power levels engaged in combat in various parts of the battlefield, on the land, and in the air. Explosions rang out like fireworks at a celebration, but this event was anything but happy.
He was fighting a war demon of demon noble prowess, and he was losing badly. War demons are physically oriented demons. They have a tyrannical physique and a weapon that needs immense strength to wield. They are also called demons of wrath. They get more powerful and more resistant to damage the angrier they become.
It was a bad combination for him since he could only make use of the laws of life. Demons, in general, are the complete opposite of them, especially ones that are capable of freely using abyssal flames. High elves are more in tune with nature, which is weak to fire.
So he was losing badly. He had used everything in his arsenal, and he even transformed into various animals to utilize their strength, but the demon would just destroy his spells with its four hammers and shrug off spells it couldn't destroy with its body.
Things were also worsening as the fight continued. Each of the clashes where he didn't keel over irritated the war demon and got it angrier, which in turn made subsequent clashes unfavorable to him.
Only his king Domain could slow the demon lord enough for him to dodge and roll in unsightly manners, or else he would be crushed. His opponent seemed to have unlimited stamina, and he was dealing meager damage to the tough-skinned demon. As time passed, his frail mind reached its limit. Then he slipped.
There's only so much you can do to evade the attacks of an enemy that is getting faster and hitting harder. He was too slow by a beat, then he was hit in the chest by the huge hammer and was thrown quite a distance away.
The pain from being impacted in the chest by a hammer weighing 10 thousand tonnes was too much for him to bear, so he refused to move his body after that and just lay there.
The soul fragment of a dead Demon Lord mistook the intense bleeding, fractured and mangled body as a sign that he was dying and tried to possess his body only to find out that he wasn't.
Gehald was just sick of battle and wanted to sleep. So he decided to play dead. But even that wouldn't come easy because his soul was suddenly impacted by a terrifying pain. Someone wanted to take possession of his body.
Even though he was inexperienced and young, the possession failed because he was a King through his own efforts, not through fusion with a King crystal. His soul is strong enough to resist the weak attempt at possession.
It wasn't until later that he learned that it was the height of foolishness to try and play dead to a demon who can confirm death when your soul is liberated from your body. He would have had to pay for that mistake with his true death if he hadn't been saved by another High elf.
The possession failed, and he got off that event with just memories from that demon lord and some injury to his soul. The memories were from a demon of greed, and they changed his outlook on life. From the memories, he gained the knowledge that the demon attacks were a result of tacit acknowledgment from the realm lord.
The realm lord could have locked out any trespassers from their plane, but he allowed the demons to mount attacks on the plane. The elves got some battle experience, and the demon lords got life essence.
He became depressed by that information. He couldn't believe that the realm lord, his hero, who was capable of doing almost anything in the realm, didn't stop the demons from killing and pillaging their sacred Life trees.
His depression transformed into an admission of weakness. If he were strong enough, then he could protect the plane on his own. If he were strong enough, then he wouldn't need the real Lord to protect him or the plane. If he were strong enough, he wouldn't need anybody for anything. That understanding transformed into a resolution not to be at the mercy of anyone ever again. This resolution further became an obsession for power.
From the demon Lord's memories, he learned some of his flaws in combat and the various efficient means to correct them. He promised himself to do better, and he did just that. As the invasion continued, he became better and better at fighting. The bloody battles honed his fighting sense. He continued to be diligent even after the war. He didn't give up his pursuit of strength, and he now looked down on other elves who were busy having fun.
This obsession changed his outlook on life. He became greedy for power. To others, he became hardworking in his training and nothing else. Soon he became a sovereign in the law of life and gained the power of a king in the laws of the earth, water, and air just after 5 origin cycles. It is a worthy achievement, but it wasn't enough.
During the long period after the war, he had gone out of the High life plane to train and had met various extraordinaries and seen different types of races. He became aware of the various advantages that some races have towards training and progress in the path of perfection.
For example, High elves have a high magic affinity and the ability to assume the physical features of other creatures. They can shapeshift into the form of dragons but they will never be true dragons.
True dragons have a very powerful organ that pushes them toward perfection even with little effort. They are not the only special race in the high heaven realm. Vampires grow stronger without much effort as they age and drink more blood. Some really strong vampires even feed on the soul, which greatly increases their power.
Then there are minotaurs, hydras, krakens, phoenixes, and other divine races. These races have powerful inherent abilities and aptitudes for magic, but they also come with weaknesses. Dragons, for all their ease with magic manipulation, can't master opposite laws of their Origin core.
Water Dragons can't master the law of fire, and vice versa, plant Dragons can't master poisons, and Dragons of destruction can't master creation laws. They were also too slow in training. These various reasons made their race lose out on holding the sit of realm lord.
Compared to all these creatures, High elves seem lacking. They don't have powerful race abilities, and even with their magic affinity, it is still difficult to master the law of fire.
He made a decision some years after that. He decided he wanted all these abilities. He wanted the powers and not the weaknesses. He wanted to become the ultimate creature who is perfect and without any weakness.