My cry of hunger still echoed in the air, longer than it should have, as I hunted across the field for a long time after that, and I am not going to pretend I hated it.
When I was fighting and killing demons, when there was a clear purpose in front of me, everything vanished, and I no longer cared for the fate of the world; I only cared for this moment.
The battle became a harvest, and although I could not fly, my body was strong enough that if I leapt into the air, powered by Lightning Incarnate, I could reach a ridiculous height, and I was sure that if I applied Lightning Incarnate in the right manner, then I would be able to fly.
At this discovery, I stopped waiting for the Narghul to come to me. I went to them. Lightning Incarnate carried me across the air in fractions of a second, and each time I reappeared, I was beside a demon, my hands already glowing, as I unleashed lightning without holding back much.
I tore through a dozen Sorcerers before they began to move farther away from me, but I was getting used to moving across the air. Every time I fell, I would be surrounded by Khaaz and Khaazim, and I did not bother with creating a stationary web; I simply blasted raw lightning from my body in an expanding dome that turned everything to ash for hundreds of meters around me, leaving large wrecks of Khaazims behind.
Under the red sun, it was as if a silver sun was detonating every now and then.
With the death of every Narghul Sorcerer, my core was fed, and new channels threaded through my flesh, making me more lightning than mage.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,660 → 1,750 → 1,850 → 2,000]
The battle began to shift around me, as I was surrounded by tens of thousands, and from afar, I was a single glowing light in the midst of a horde of flesh that stretched untill the horizon.
Madness... this was pure madness, but I was in the center of it all, and I was laughing.
"Boom!"
My body flew into the air, and I activated Lightning Incarnate, and I vanished, leaving a shockwave behind that shredded through dozens of Khaaz. My target was a Narghul Sorcerer who did not even know when he died as I tore him apart.
As my body descended, I saw hundreds of Khaazim arraigned below me, their scorpion stinger raised, and I laughed before my body exploded with golden lightning and I impacted the earth like a falling star.
I rose from a crater, and for a thousand meters around me, nothing was moving. I had burned more Anima than a hundred Adept Magi placed together, and apart from my body feeling a bit tired, and pain from my fried channels that had not been transformed... I was in great fighting shape.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 2,000 → 2,200 → 2,500]
[Stored Essence: 21,000 → 26,000 → 31,000]
Tiny streams made an ocean, and I was already seeing the completion of my fourth Earth Gate on the horizon.
I howled to the sky, and the sky answered... The red clouds parted as something was coming through. Something large enough that the clouds had to move aside or be torn apart.
The Narghul Sorcerers who had been circling above froze. Their burning eyes turned toward the descending shape, and I saw something in their posture that I had never seen before... Deference.
I watched with them as a three-horned Narghul Sorcerer descended like a falling star.
He was larger than the others, easily twelve feet tall, his body more muscular, his red skin darker, almost maroon. His horns were not the smooth, curving spikes of the two-horned. They were jagged, broken-looking, as if they had been snapped and regrown multiple times. His eyes were not four. He had six. Three on each side of his face, arranged in a vertical line, all of them burning with the same hungry light.
And his shadow construct was not a claw like the rest; it was a crown. A halo of darkness behind his head, pulsing with the same rhythm as the pyramid’s heartbeat.
The other Narghul Sorcerers backed away. The Khaazim went still, and the Khaaz dropped to the ground, their tendrils pressed flat against their skulls in a posture that looked almost like worship.
The three-horned landed fifty metres from me, and the impact sent a shockwave across the crater, and the earth beneath his feet cracked in a perfect circle.
The Avatar whispered for the first time after it had been silent for so long, "This demon is older than the entirety of the Magus Civilization."
I felt the weight of those words even before I saw him clearly. His soul was vast, cold, and... old.
"How long can demons live?" I asked the Hollow Avatar.
"For royalty like this three-horned Narghul Sorcerer... A hundred thousand years, and I believe that this one is nearing the twilight of his life... this would be the most formidable opponent you have ever fought."
"Stronger than the Arcanists inside the Pyramid?"
"Far stronger."
Six burning eyes looked at me, and I could feel a wave of malevolence blow past me, and my hair turned white, and I no longer hid the color of my robes. I unconsciously focused all of my attention on this demon, and everything else became a distraction.
"Broken Celestial," he said, and his voice was not the guttural rasp of the lesser Narghul as I had imagined; it was smooth, almost musical, and it resonated. I would expect this voice from a scholar or a teacher, not an ancient demon older than civilizations. "You have killed many of my coven."
"Your coven?" I raised an eyebrow. "They are weak."
The demon’s six eyes narrowed. "Yes, and I watched you cull these weaknesses, but you have challenged my authority, and you shall die."
He raised his hand as the shadow crown behind his head pulsed, and the ground between us suddenly cracked open. A geyser of dark flame erupted from the fissure, and I could not recognize what it was, since it was not flame essence or corruption conjuration, but it made the threads of my Loom recoil.
"I am Narghul Vrakth," the demon said. "The first of my Line. The Killer of the Moon Fox. The one who will teach your corpse what it means to challenge the Pale Matron’s will."