"The second Concept," said Patriarch Azure Flame, "Emerges where lightning strikes fire! It is called Chain Combustion."
The Patriarch nodded, stroking his beard.
"Chain Combustion goes hand in hand with Plasma. A Stormfire with Chain Combustion creates itself anew, multiplies like never before…it makes the world its fuel. Come with me."
He took a step—a Skill something like Stormfire Step. And Zane's perspective shifted with the move—the world became a blur of reds and blacks.
Everything clarified again.
They stood just outside the strike zone of the storm cloud. Below, feeding into it, was a burgeoning smog-cloud too. The volcano vomited it up as it erupted. It joined its brethren above, making a wall of pure black ash-cloud, hanging oppressively, blanketing the skies for miles.
"Let us see," said the Patriarch. "The spark!"
He flicked his hand with a casual authority.
Red lightning sundered the air. Blasted out of the clouds—struck the rising fumes with a crashing fury.
It was like setting a lighter to a cloud of gasoline. The whole thing went up in blinding light, blinding heat, roaring, crackling, a geyser of pure Plasma, a great fat plume of it rising to the sky. Quickly blooming to a mushroom-cloud…
Zane saw the second Concept then. It was woven through every layer of that gas—priming it for explosion. And as soon as Plasma touched it a new, frothing emotion came into the material world.
Everything it touched went up in Plasma.
The Patriarch slashed a gnarled hand across the sky. And Plasma chained into Plasma chained in the Plasma, racing across the clouds, eating everything up, a chain reaction, a growing raging emotion—and in mere blinks a sea of pure Plasma seethed above them. It had swallowed the cloudscape—it had swallowed the very skies. Lit it up a palette of shocking blues laced through with bolts of shining white.
Everywhere Zane looked. Pure Stormfire. Everywhere Zane looked, that one pure Concept…
"A strong enough spark," intoned the Patriarch. "Can ignite anything. Even the body of the enemy. Chain Combustion is, at its essence, a transmutation. A changing of states of matter. An unlocking of the powers latent within every grain of matter which touches its neighbor and unlocks their power too. It makes a self-sustaining reaction."
Zane could hardly hear him over the violent cackling, the earth-shattering roaring. Could barely see him through all that brilliant blue.
"This is a new way to power Stormfire!" roared the Patriarch. "So far you've merely burned your own essence. The greater it spreads, the more it draws of you… but this need not be the case! True Stormfire can spread infinitely, unlocking the potential within all matter… if the first Stormfire Concept, Plasma, teaches you the intensity of true Stormfire. Chain Combustion teaches you its volume!"
He drew back his hand, stroked his beard. "You've learned how to light yourself on fire. Now, you shall know how to light the world on fire. It will grant your Stormfire an intensity, and more—a size it could never achieve burning essence alone."
He gave a fierce snort. "If you wish to spread True Stormfire like this, it is not the same as trying to spread Elemental Fire or Elemental Electricity. It is not that simple. You must achieve creation, propagation, transmutation, the conversion of matter, on a new plane of power. To turn a candle into a wildfire, to know the true nature of Stormfire… you must know the meaning of Chain Combustion!"
Zane got what he was saying, even if he didn't specifically get how he was saying it. The Patriarch was quite a dramatic old man. And Zane got the sense he liked hearing the sound of his own voice.
Zane marveled at the sky for a moment. At that shifting sea of Stormfire, at the currents swirling about, crashing into each other, like a color-shifted version of that one famous Impressionist painting. It was pretty cool. It was probably the most Stormfire he'd see in one place for a long time.
In a one-on-one this would help quite a bit—he could set things on fire very quickly. Punch rippling explosions through Monsters' bodies, swallowing them up much faster. But Zane figured this was much more useful against big crowds of Monsters since it could spread so fast. It would come in handy in the Superdungeon.
"This concludes the demonstration."
The Patriarch clenched his fist.
And all the Plasma blotting out the sky, stretching horizon to horizon, just… vanished. In a blink. So fast it left a howling vacuum behind it for a few seconds—the atmosphere seemed not to know what to do with all that new space. It was like what Zane did with Emperor's will. But done much more effortlessly—there was no forced squashing.
Sunlight poured through the gap. Gracing the shattered plains, the snaking rivers of lava…
"Study diligently, disciple."
***
Zane devoted the next full day to trying to comprehend the Concept. He kept replaying the scene in his mind. Imprinting it.
It was, at its core, the spreading of a new emotion. A high excitement, a fiery passion, the kind only Stormfire brought—he just had to figure out how to make that feeling infectious. And the more feeling there was, the easier it spread…
It wasn't just lighting things on fire. Everything he lit on fire exploded with Stormfire. Exploded all over.
But just staring at visions wasn't enough for him anymore.
It might be fine for Major Laws. Concepts were too high-level. It took him about two days to grasp it fully, replaying the scenes over and over—it helped that it built on his previous understandings. He knew how fire spread. He knew how electricity spread. Chain Combustion was all that and more. He got it in the way you could empathize with someone else's feeling.
That was not the same as feeling it yourself. Zane had trouble explaining the difference. One was just better. The difference was the difference between getting the Concept, and getting the Concept.
He had to make a journey.
Soon he was on his way to Italy. Back to the A+-ranked Safe Zone Searing Sky Peak—transformed Mount Vesuvius. It had been a dungeon before he'd cleared it. The place he'd first comprehended Plasma.
It was, as far as he knew, the place where lightning struck fire most intensely on all of planet Earth.
It was an easy thing to get clearance from the local Faction, Nova Roma. He was off teleporting there within three hours. Within another, he was hiking through the little New Pompeii they'd built at the base of the mountain—it looked like a reenactment of a Roman town, just with more magic and flabbergasted staring locals. Hiking up the mountain.
Its peak was wreathed in swirling black clouds, raging with lightning. That volcano was constantly erupting. Zane waded through it all, putting out his soul as a feeler. Closing his eyes. Trying to sense where the Plasma was. It was nowhere near the level of the explosions in that Law vision. He sensed just a hint of true Plasma flitting between strike and eruption, vanishing fast—but it was there.
It would be enough.
He sat there cross-legged and started to meditate.
Nova Roma sectioned off the peak just for him. But if the locals were to climb up to the outer perimeter—as a fair few did—they would see a buff half-naked man sitting cross-legged, perfectly still, meditating as streams of lava washed up against his broad back. As lightning flickered down the front of him.
***
It would take a few days to break through—that became immediately clear. He was already tiring by the end of the first day; he had to run on soul-rejuvenating vials, those energy drinks of the soul, to do it. If he crashed later and had to recover he was fine with it—he just wanted to finish this off in one session.
He took little breaks in between. It was pretty simple to go home, eat, romp with Reina for a few hours, take a quick look at how the European A-Team was doing.
The answer was quite well.
There were four floors to Heaven's Peak. They were just finishing up the second, moving on to the third. The winds had grown super intense up here, threatening to throw them off steep crags into ten-thousand-foot gorges. They each wore special enchanted cuffs. They weighed them down.
They were almost past the cloud layer now.
Irina Volkova was the closest thing to a Core Cultivator without being Core. Her power was a kind of perma-freeze. She was a Chain user, like Zane—and like him she seemed to have some kind of power Bloodline. He saw the faces of the Monsters she fought—Level 190 beasts going googly-eyed once she got her chains on them. Like they were shocked at her sheer strength.
They had a lot in common. Zane wondered what it would be like to fight her.
Unlike Zane her thing seemed to be more of a slow strangulation though. Everything her chains touched deadened, blackened, got an instant frostbite. Zane watched as she wrestled down a Blue-Skinned Giant, made it kneel before her, broke off its limbs and twisted off its head in a slow, grinding rhythm. It was an icicle by the end of it.
The Necromancer Lagarde summoned a horde of Skeletons in the background. They were finishing off a horde of Giant Snow Wolves, leaving squashed bloody pelts littering the mountainside.
Soon after a Yeti went toe-to-toe with the Sacred Flame Warpriest, but his flaming gauntlets proved too much for them.
And shadows flashed by through it all. Knives thrown by that Italian assassin guy. They flew as fast as Evan's shots. They didn't quite barrage like Evan's, but the few that flew and landed did even more damage—Zane watched one slice clean through a Yeti's skull, going in black one ear, coming out dripping red the other.
"They're moving onto the third floor now," said the silver-haired reporter. "And they're showing no signs of stopping! Incredibly—though a few of the crew dipped below 50% Health, especially after the Boss Fight—at no point were they in any real danger. So far it's been a show of strength!"
"They still ought to be cautious, Jack," said his co-commentator, a middle-aged Asian lady. "With these high-tier dungeons each subsequent floor is significantly more difficult than the last. Remember the Luminous Faction's S-Rank run? It's hard to say what awaits them at the top…"
"Certainly. But they sure are getting close, Yvonne! Just two more Bosses—the Yeti Chieftain and the Ice-Wyrm—and they'll have reached the peak. And with the Ice Queen leading the way, crushing anything that comes across her path, they've got good reason to be optimistic!"
***
After Reina woke from their latest Leveling session—which saw him gain another Level, from 195 to 196—she told him, in a kind of dreamy murmur, head nuzzled against his chest, that she was up to the mid-Level 180s. That much she was pleased about.
She wasn't so pleased about her Signature Healing Skill—it'd hit a Level wall lately. 'Architect of Restoration' could heal anything, living or nonliving, from walls to undead to people. As far as she knew, it was the strongest healing Skill on Earth.
Zane could vouch for that. It healed him crazy fast, enough to offset damage from Core bosses, even—and it also healed his soul. He'd never seen a Skill that could do both at once. And so well, too. It seemed unique.
Usually when Skills hit a Level wall that was because they had to evolve to keep going. Or there would be a MAX symbol applied to it. Reina felt she had to get to Core first before her Skill would go up a grade. Zane hadn't even known Signature Skills could evolve.
She would get there soon. She was working quite hard.
***
Next morning Zane was back on his way to Searing Sky Peak. Thinking it'd be a little while before he could explore that soul defense stuff, probably—he'd be too burned out once all these soul rejuvenation shots wore off. Thinking he probably had two more days to nail this new Concept before he couldn't stave off the soul exhaustion any longer.
There was a special VIP teleporter just for Luminous Faction elites. Used by him, Reina, his friends, and also a few of the elite teams they were cooking up—quite a few talented World Ranker youths had defected to join them. That one team he'd met in San Diego was one. Reina made it clear he wouldn't have time to coach them or spar with them or anything, at least not right now. They were happy just training in the same facilities and watching though. Apparently it was inspirational. He saw a few now—black-haired fluffy-haired Rogue boy. Brunette Archer girl. Level 150s. They waved excitedly at him. He was grateful for System Identify—otherwise he would not have been able to recall their names for the life of him.
He stepped into the teleportation array. Already his mind was on Plasma. Also on Italy. He liked the place—it still had an old-world vibe; lots of cool ancient columns, buildings in that white marble style, though runed over with a magical, fantastic flair now. Mostly the old art, the historical ruins, got destroyed in the Change. But some of it got preserved, made cooler-looking. That one statue with the slingshot not only grew bigger, it also got enchanted to be a moving war machine that the Nova Roma Faction could control. He got a kick out of seeing it in the Town Square every time he teleported.
He was looking forward to seeing it again. The world vanished in front of him. He waited for that split-second in the in-between. This dull gray void that flashed between portals.
He kept waiting.
… This was turning out to be a rather long split-second.
He frowned at the nothing. Was something up? Where was the—
𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤!
𝔸𝕡𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕚𝕖𝕤 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕧𝕠𝕚𝕕, ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕖𝕣—𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕓𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕝𝕪. 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕠𝕟𝕝𝕪 𝕨𝕒𝕪 𝕨𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕 𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕤𝕖𝕔𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕔𝕥. 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕒𝕘𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 𝕊𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕥 ℂ𝕠𝕖𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕄𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥 𝕋𝕙𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕥. 𝕎𝕖 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕥𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕟 𝕒 𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕥 𝕚𝕟 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕗𝕦𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕘 𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝕚𝕟 𝕡𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝔼𝕝𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕔𝕚𝕥𝕪.
ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕤 𝕨𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕒𝕟 𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥.