Wild Era, Ch 4: Lord of Wildfire

“Path of Stars,” Kelin said aloud. “Access my record. How did I die?”

He waited for a response, putting all the mana he had to spare into the call.

However, as time passed there was no response from the Path.

Only silence.

His mood, which had been expectant, became irritated as he called on it again.

The Path was everywhere, and the skill updates he’d noticed as well as his status sheet said that it was still around, but most of its processes were automatic. 

He could feel it humming along in the background at the edge of his awareness, that trace of power that tracked his actions and experience, which meant it was working.

But it wasn’t answering.

He reached out a third time, trying harder to extend his paltry mana reserves as far as possible, but after several more minutes, there was still no answer.

He muttered beneath his breath as he pulled his awareness back.

“Fine,” he said. “So that’s how it is.”

There were two parts to Path, an automatic part and a more intelligent part. It was the second one he wanted, but it was harder to reach. 

It didn’t pay attention to everything that the entire population of the galaxy did, just their accomplishments. Otherwise, it would have been bombarded by constant requests.

A few high-level figures, like he had been in the past, had more of its attention and could get it to answer questions or to help directly, but everything else was taken care of by the automated functions, which only tracked experience and other accomplishments.

Right now, he didn’t have the qualifications to talk to it. 

He wanted to shout at it and demand his old status back, but that wouldn’t help, so he controlled his temper, forcing down the hot response of his young body.

Then he stood up and dusted himself off as he looked around the cavern again.

The next best options to get the Path’s attention were to gather a significant amount of experience and to make it recognize Wildfire.

His unique flame was a special ability, one that it was sure to notice. 

It would naturally pay more attention to that and he could try to talk to it again, but if that also failed, answers to his questions would have to wait. 

They probably wouldn’t affect much of what he did for the next few years anyway. He had to regain his strength before he could influence the war.

He set Gaius to gathering the mana crystals from around the cavern, which the elemental did as easily as reaching out his hand.

Kelin carefully stabilized each of them with a web of mana to make sure they didn’t shatter and placed them in a pile nearby.

It didn’t take long for the elemental to get them all, making a collection of twenty high-grade and a dozen medium-grade crystals.

Then he began to stretch, running through a basic unarmed combat series as he tested out how his healing was going.

In his youth, everyone was trained in a variety of skills, and the Path had reinforced that for them. He’d always focused on magic, but he still knew the basics of melee combat. It had saved his life more than once.

If you ran out of mana, you needed something to fall back on.

He took his time with the stretching, channeling mana to one location after another through his body as he tested each part, from his bones to his meridians.

Most of his broken bones were fusing back together, but they were still aching. Without the mana lattice, it would have been difficult to walk.

He added touches of mana to critical areas, manually helping the lattice to fuse, and turned his thoughts to Wildfire and the necessary steps to acquire it.

The simplest way was to find something to fight and to let his ability take its natural course. 

Although it wasn’t listed on his status sheet, he was confident in using it anyway.

As he continued to work on his body, he set Gaius to scan the mine for a target of opportunity.

From time to time, memories from his new life rose to the front of his mind, but he let them flow away. They were a drop in the bucket of his existence, and even as unhappy as they were, they weren’t difficult to handle. 

The problems of his reborn life were simple ones about food, shelter, and comfort. 

To an old man, they were valid enough, but not something that really got his attention. He’d seen too many similar problems and he’d lived through more difficult times.

He had been born at the beginning of the Wild Era over 5,000 years before, on Irian when it was a young and unsettled world. 

The first 2,000 years of his life had been a calm and wonderful age of study and magic as he took advantage of all of the training options that humanity had available with the Path of Stars.

He had made the most of his potential and trained his elemental affinity, his body, and his magic. He’d been planning to be a scholar on Irian researching new arts for the future.

He’d traveled most of the settled worlds and even part of the Chaos Wild, the raw and elemental zone that made up half of the galaxy. It was a region of endless treasure and perils.

Then came the Chaos War.

He’d spent the next 3,000 years fighting it.

Gates had opened across the galaxy, revealing paths to distant realms, other galaxies, dimensions, and more.

Powerful beings began to invade. 

The level of the forces that came through the Chaos Gates were devastatingly strong, usually 200-300 levels higher than most of the people in this galaxy. 

Even the weakest enemy foot soldiers were at the Third Evolution, Levels 300 to 399, and their regular officers were at the Fourth and Fifth Evolutions, Levels 400+ and 500+. 

Their generals were at the Sixth, Level 600 and higher, which was as strong as the most elite warriors in the galaxy, like Kelin had been in his past life, but those weren’t even the true terrors.

That honor went to the invading Immortal Lords, as they called themselves, who were at the Seventh Evolution. 

They were powerful enough to destroy a solar system with a single word.

Before they arrived, there hadn’t even been any Seventh Evolution beings in the galaxy.

It was a steep learning curve.

Without the Sovereign of Silver Chaos, they all would have been dead. 

The war was under control only because he had stepped in. He’d personally blocked all of the Immortals, killing them one by one. Rumor said he had shattered their bodies and dissolved their souls back to primal chaos.

He held terrifying power and was one of the few truly eternal existences.

He’d set limits to the war, using the Path of Stars to rewrite the dimensional signature of the galaxy and forcing all new gates to open in the Chaos Wild. It dictated where the battles could happen and who could fight in them. 

That was when the mass slaughters had stopped.

Irian had been an exception, a casualty of the first wave. 

Ever since, the war had been in a dangerous stalemate. 

The Immortals didn’t dare to enter the battlefield any longer, but their lesser forces still sprang up on every side. They routinely crossed over the Great Divide into the settled galaxy and waged war on the worlds they could reach.

The Sovereign’s forces dealt with the worst ones, but there was enough to go around.

It was one galaxy against a hundred or even a thousand.

Kelin shook his head as he finished his stretches, hissing slightly as he worked a series of knots out of his muscles. When he was done, his blood was flowing easily and he felt a little more limber.

At that moment, an alert from Gaius sounded in his mind, letting him know that some monsters were moving through the tunnels above. 

Enemies approach.

A question pulsed through their bond, asking if they should fight or hide.

Kelin’s senses weren't advanced enough yet to detect the movement, but an image of what was coming filled his mind through the bond.

There were three monsters approaching. Based on the dried blood on their claws, they’d already found some things to eat, probably bodies lower down in the mine, and now they were searching for more. 

They were stocky, lizard-like monsters with narrow scaled heads and four limbs that ended in sharp claws. They slunk along low to the ground with a long tail that swept back and forth. 

Flames flickered along their scales, rising and falling in waves as their natural energy reacted with the fire essence in the mine.

They would be stronger than usual because of that. 

Unlike humans, monsters never had a problem with high mana or elemental essence. They were born from excessive concentrations of it and some aspect of chaos.

He’d heard once that it hadn’t always been that way, but ever since the Wild Era began, it was a law of nature, and one of the reasons that humans never ran out of things to fight.

Fire Braggans, Gaius sent, identifying the type.

Kelin nodded in agreement, recognizing them from his younger memories. 

These were one of the most frequent monsters that troubled the mines and the reason that the mining company had plenty of guards.

Braggans and other monsters were attracted to the mana crystals here since eating them was one of the ways they could grow stronger.

Eating humans worked too.

These were around Level 30, which was pushing it if he wanted to fight them, but they were some of the weakest things in the area. The mine’s high mana density went hand in hand with the higher level of monsters nearby.

One braggan would have been the best to start, but they rarely moved alone. 

He would make do.

“Let’s deal with them,” he said as he sent some instructions to Gaius. 

He had long ago lost any fear of battle. There was only caution when necessary. Being Level 9 again didn’t change that.

Three braggans would be tricky, but having Gaius here gave him confidence. 

If it worked, he would unlock Wildfire and gain a level or two, or maybe a few more with the level difference. 

He spent a few moments preparing as he checked over his status sheet for the standard abilities that came with the Elemental Mage class. 

His younger self had barely used them.

Class Abilities: Elemental Bolt, Mana Shield, Elemental Ward, Explosive Sigil.

They were versions of the attack, defensive shield, utility and fortification ward, and runic trap abilities that most mage classes had.

He was familiar with them, since they were the foundation of almost everything that came later, at least in the general line of spells. They were designed to give young mages a fighting chance against things at their level, as long as they kept their distance.

His own first class had been almost the same. 

A subclass would have rounded out his build with a few more abilities, but he didn’t have one yet, which was actually a blessing in disguise. 

His younger self had been trying to get a mining subclass, and that would have been a problem. 

He would have to do something to unlock a more useful one. A fight was the best way.

There was also the Innate Ability: Minor Elemental Manipulation.

The racial ability was something that every human had, part of the basic connection to the elements that they’d gained at the beginning of the Wild Era. 

It could be upgraded later by selecting a specialty and training his body around it.

All of the abilities were at the Basic tier, which was the lowest possible. 

Tiers weren’t everything, but abilities were based on physical reality as much as knowledge. His meridians and the flow of his mana would take time to adapt. 

It would be difficult to infuse more than a couple of points of mana into a spell. He could force it a bit, but he would have to be careful.

He set a basic mana shield to flow around his body in a sphere and infused it with a touch of earth essence that he borrowed from Gaius, which would help to improve the durability.

Then his skin glowed with earthen runes as Gaius carried him upward. The rocks parted around him like liquid as he surfaced in the tunnel.

The elemental didn’t need to appear physically for this. He was simply channeling his innate earth manipulation through Kelin’s body. 

Down the tunnel, the three fire braggans were coming into sight, their heads roving from side to side as they searched for prey. 

Now that he could see them, he tried to Analyze them. 

The ability wasn’t on his status sheet, so he had to force his mana and soul to reach out to the monsters. It fought against his control, but he pushed it along.

A moment later a series of notifications flared in his mind.

You have gained the Innate Ability: Analyze (Basic).

Fire Braggan, Level 30. Monster. 

Type: Basic Elemental Monster Variant. Spawned from ambient mana and wild elemental essence.

Abilities: Fire Breath, Physical Melee Attacks (Claw, Tail, Fangs), Flame Venom.

Weaknesses: Earth, Ice, Puncture.

Average Attribute Rating: 135.

Highest Attribute: Agility.

The information passed through Kelin’s mind in an instant, drawing his attention to the beast’s abilities and the venom coating its fangs.

At a higher rank of Analyze, he could get even more information, including a better breakdown of the beast's attributes, but for now this was enough.

The other two braggans were similar, except they were Levels 32 and 33.

As soon as they saw him, the lizards let out a threatening hiss and raced forward across the floor, easily leaping over the fallen stones that were scattered everywhere.

They were each about two feet high and ten feet long, but six feet of that was their tails. Their heads were slightly elevated on a long neck above the rest of their body, and their scales were red and grey, partially blending in with the stones around them.

They were also fast. Their claws scrabbled for purchase and their tails whipped in the air as they covered half the distance in the blink of an eye.

The one in the lead reared up. Its mouth opened as a tumbling red-orange sphere appeared and shot toward Kelin. It was about the size of a fist, but the energy in it was highly concentrated.

Kelin sent a pulse of mana toward his feet as he dodged to the side, and the fire sphere flew past him to explode against a wall farther down the tunnel. 

But he hadn’t been idle while scanning them. 

At the same time, his hand rose and an elemental bolt flared out. It was a pale yellow color as it shot across the distance, infused with Gaius’s Earth affinity. Without that, it would have been a translucent blue.

Shards of stone coalesced around the edges of the bolt as it flew, making it more solid. It struck the beast in the left eye like the tip of a spear, tearing a few inches deep.

The lizard let out a pained hiss as it staggered, swinging its face away and using its shoulder to block Kelin’s view as it shook its head from side to side.

The other two lizards were racing forward as well, but as soon as the front one was hit, stone flowed up from the tunnel floor and wrapped around their legs, rooting them in place. 

Gaius didn’t stop there. 

The stone continued to climb the braggans’ bodies until they were half buried in it, and bands of stone looped around their jaws, sealing their mouths closed. 

The elemental was only Level 22, but he was a higher tier existence than the lizards. They wouldn’t escape.

The first lizard shook off the hit and swung back around, ignoring the plight of its compatriots as it glared murderously at Kelin. Then it raced forward again.

Kelin’s meridians were already feeling scorched from condensing the first bolt, but it hadn’t been enough to drive through the higher level beast’s skull, so he readjusted his mana on the fly.

He released another elemental bolt, targeting the same eye, and ignored the notifications that he’d just learned the skills Mana Control and Intensify Spell.

This time, the attack was twice as bright as the first and it flew out of his hand with an explosive crack. The bolt drilled into the lizard’s eye and deep into its brain.

Then it exploded into rocky shrapnel.

The lizard staggered as blood poured out of its eyes and ears, and then it slumped to the tunnel floor. It was already breathing its last as its heart stuttered.

Kelin ignored the two lizards that Gaius had trapped as he walked forward and stopped in front of the lizard. 

He wasn’t done with the thing yet.

He sent his consciousness into his soul and with some difficulty gathered a small amount of soul energy, a type of energy that was rare in this galaxy. 

He ignored another notification that rang in his mind, alerting him that he’d just gained the trait Soul Affinity.

He shaped that tiny bit of energy into a bolt, one that was woven in a completely different way than the Elemental Bolt. It took him a few moments of struggle as his mind ached, since this skill was even less familiar to his current body than the advanced mana bolt had been.

Soon enough, a bolt of soul energy was visible on his hand, glowing with a rainbow light. It was mostly red and yellow, but other colors wove along the surface.

Then he flicked the bolt into the braggan’s head. 

He felt it when it struck.

Monster souls were generally weak, more a chaotic mass of energy than a true soul, and the lizard’s was no different. The bolt sank into its soul and tore a path through the center, leaving devastation in its wake.

The braggan shuddered as it collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. 

It was followed by another notification.

You have learned the Spell: Soul Arrow (Basic).

Kelin ignored it again as he turned toward the two lizards that were still trapped.

Another Soul Arrow appeared in his hand, this time a bit more quickly, and he launched it at the one on the left. It disappeared through the beast’s scales like a wisp of intangible light.

This time, when the spell tore into the lizard’s soul, he took control of the energy and twisted it, condensing and igniting it at the same time. Instead of simply ripping through, the arrow exploded, turning into a flare of soul energy.

It was like a miniature fireball exploding in the beast’s consciousness.

The lizard let out a coughing roar as it shuddered. Its eyes took on a rainbow hue and trails of ethereal smoke in the same shades poured out of them.

Then it collapsed, held up only by the stone around it. 

You have learned the Skill: Soul Ignition (Basic). 

Another notification rang in Kelin’s mind as a wave of exhaustion hit him. He staggered, taking a moment to blink the black spots out of his vision, and then he pushed it to the side. 

His body would have to adjust. Stressing it was the best way. 

It ended up being lucky that there were three lizards. It gave him a chance to work through the necessary skills one by one, building them in a chain toward the goal. A few more might have been even better, but it would have been hard for Gaius to hold them all. 

Another soul arrow formed on his hand as he turned toward the third braggan.

This one was larger than the first two, and it looked more dangerous. It was already burning with a flickering rainbow light. The same red and yellow colors were the brightest.

In order to create it, he’d mixed soul energy with mana and ignited the result.

There was a searing pain in his head as he forced himself to step forward and his own eyes were flaring with rainbow light, but he ignored it as he hurled the arrow at the last braggan.

The lizard let out a gravelly, stuttering hiss as the spell sank into its head.

Then its eyes went wide as a rainbow hue flared across them.

As the spell struck the braggan’s soul, it didn’t tear through. It landed like a flaming arrow on a thatched roof. The flames spread outward in wild colors, flaring and leaping as they ignited everything they touched.

There was nothing that held the flames back as they ripped through the braggan's soul, consuming everything. Ethereal smoke in the same color as the flames poured out of the monster’s eyes, ears, and mouth.

The lizard shuddered, thrashing as it tried to fight what it couldn’t see, but it didn’t take long.

Within seconds, it collapsed in the stone bonds.

A series of notifications rang in Kelin’s mind. The first ones were for experience gained, which he ignored for now, since it was the last one that was the most important.

There was a moment of hesitation before that one came, as if the Path was verifying what it had just recorded.

You have learned the Spell: Wildfire (Legendary).

Wildfire is a dangerous soul-based attack that ignites the target’s soul and destroys their consciousness. It was the signature spell of the former Lord of Wildfire. 

All records of this spell until now have been strictly controlled by the Path of Stars, confined to the Legacy of Wildfire, the inheritance path left by its creator. It is considered a Unique Path, one that cannot be walked by anyone else.

It is unknown how you learned this spell, but caution is advised. The spell damages the soul. 

A method to prevent the damage was formerly known by the Lord of Wildfire, but none of his students ever found success with it. 

His legacy was archived after his death in battle 347 years ago.

Kelin slid to the ground, gasping for breath as his lungs and his own soul burned. It felt like he’d hurt himself almost as much as the monster.

He ignored the spell description as he closed his eyes in the tunnel and trusted to Gaius’s protection. 

The Path wasn’t wrong. 

Wildfire would kill you if you kept using it like this, but this was also the critical moment. 

He focused on his soul. 

Rainbow flames were flickering around the edges in the same color as the last arrow he’d launched. It looked almost like what he’d done to the lizard, just less intense. 

This was the backlash and why no one else had ever mastered it. 

Repeated use of Wildfire would burn your soul almost as badly as it did the enemy unless you knew how to stop it.

The art hasn’t been lost quite yet, he muttered.

He concentrated on the Wildfire flames, gathering them up with his will, and then he began threading them through his soul. It was similar in some ways to the reinforcement he’d done for his body, but it worked on completely different principles. 

Bit by bit, the flames became brighter and more robust, but he ignored the pain of it as he used them to continue weaving the lattice, which he then enhanced further until it formed a series of runes across his soul. 

It was an intricate layering that created a unique ward and soul enchantment, one that swiftly became too complex to understand for anyone who might have been watching. 

Bit by bit, he incorporated the wildfire everywhere. It tried to burn him, but the runes calmed it down, keeping it under control for just long enough.

Eventually his soul began to absorb the wildfire in the same way as his meridians would absorb an elemental affinity, and its nature changed.

The same rainbow light spread through his soul, until it looked like an inferno with flames rising and falling. Here and there, strange runes appeared in the flares, ones formed by nature instead of his will.

He continued to work, adding reinforcements around his soul and pathways that would help it to grow stronger in the future, but before long his energy ran out and he had to stop.

He’d achieved a basic level of integration and he wanted to do more, but he was running out of energy. The flames he’d woven into his soul were growing thinner, and his soul along with them.

With a flick of will, he poured his remaining soul energy into healing. A wave of relaxing heat spread through him, calming the flames.

When he opened his eyes, he was so exhausted that he could barely move. His skin looked sunburned and wisps of rainbow smoke were drifting around him. 

This was why no one else had ever fully learned his art.

He’d tried to teach it to his students, but none of them had ever grasped it. He’d been forced to help them through while they struggled to stay alive, and then to rescue them before it killed them.

There was something unique about his soul that let him do it, the result of a battle he’d fought once against an enemy from a Chaos Gate.

He’d been at the Third Evolution back then, just barely over Level 300 when it happened.

One of the enemies had used a Soul Burn spell on him. 

It had nearly killed him. 

He’d managed to fight it off, but it left burns on his soul, places like hard ridges where his soul had condensed.

Scars. 

It had taken a long time to recover from that, almost a century.

Soul magic wasn’t common in this galaxy, but that battle had given him some insight into how it functioned. No one he’d asked about it had been able to help, so he’d started to study his soul and experiment with ways to heal it.

He’d discovered traces of a strange energy in those scars, like embers, and he’d worked to take control of it. He hadn’t been successful at first, but since he couldn’t remove the scars any other way, he kept at it, trying to extract it and manipulate it. 

He’d eventually gained a Trait for Soul Strength and then Soul Affinity.

Then he reconstructed what he remembered from the attack, and by combining his old talent for Fire with that soul energy, he’d learned the spell Soul Burn, the same one that had nearly killed him.

Some people might have stopped at that, but he still hadn’t managed to heal his soul, so he continued his studies, looking for higher laws. 

It had only been a matter of time until he walked further on the path of soul magic. 

He'd needed to make it part of his Concept at the Fourth Evolution and his Law at the Fifth Evolution before he was capable of healing himself.

He’d named the result the Law of Wildfire, since that was what it looked like in action.

A wild rainbow flame where red and yellow were the most obvious colors. It was a unique blend of Fire and Soul, one that followed its own principles.

He learned how to manipulate soul energy in more complex ways and how to regenerate his soul, which removed the scars, but by that point, he was locked into his path and there was nothing to do but continue.

He'd already been one of the strongest mages of his generation and a terror on the battlefield, so he couldn’t complain. 

His work paid off when he reached the Sixth Evolution and realized the Truth of Wildfire, the signature ability of that Evolution. It turned his soul magic into something unique, an energy that was verified by the truths of existence. 

His Domain had been capable of burning the souls and mana of his enemies, as well as almost any material in existence. That was when he’d gained his title as the Lord of Wildfire.

Irian had already been lost, so he used his strength to defend other worlds, killing invaders as they came through the Chaos Gates. 

Wildfire had spread through the battlefield, igniting one soul after another, and thousands of enemies fell at his hand. 

They’d been terrified of him, and for good reason.

Along the way, he’d become the foremost authority on soul magic in the galaxy. He’d helped to destroy curses, control spells, possessions, and more, all things that the enemy had used for years.

He’d also taught a lot of students, although none of them had a knack for it.

He’d thought he would keep doing that for a while, since lifespans at the Sixth Evolution could reach a million years or more, but in the end, something had happened and he’d ended up here. 

It wasn’t hard to guess that his skill with soul magic was what had helped him to reincarnate.

He just didn’t know how.

He wasn’t sure himself where the eventual end of his particular school of magic was, but in this new life perhaps he would have a chance to find out.

He shook his head as he pulled himself from his memories. Then he dusted himself off and stood up.

The Path hadn’t answered his earlier request, but it had given him the most critical piece of information when he unlocked Wildfire.

“347 years, is it?” he asked quietly. “It could have been worse.”

He’d been worried it had been thousands of years. A few hundred wasn’t that much.

Unless something major had happened, the state of the war should be roughly what he remembered.

He called on Gaius to release the stone around the lizards and quickly looted the useful materials from them, including their cores, which could be sold or used for other purposes, like powering a ward.

Then he sank back through the floor to the cavern. 

The other notifications were waiting for him as he settled down to rest. As he focused on them, they resounded in his mind like silver trumpets. 

Congratulations, Lord of Wildfire!

You have gained seven levels. 

You are now Level 16.

You gain 21 Intelligence, 7 Wisdom, and 35 Free Attribute Points to assign as you wish.

Class Specialization and Subclass options are now available to you.

Please see the following list.

He quickly assigned the free points to Intelligence, since his mana pool was the most critical issue. Once that was better, he’d pay attention to Wisdom and Aura, his other two most important areas.

He was going to rest for a minute, and then he’d deal with his class.