‘It’s been a long time since a human relinquished their ego for my sake. This man has found a way to evolve on his own, with no help on my side until this moment. He even managed to do it from the lowest point possible.
‘He turned the only fallen species I have given up on into a new race.’ Under the eye of Mogar, the blackness of the Chaos spread over the Abomination’s body disappeared, replaced by the pink, soft skin of Zogar Vastor.
As he screamed in determination, perfecting his form with the Master Scalpel spell, the Chaos energy left condensed on his left shoulder blade.
From there, it sprouted into a black feathered wing, filled to the brim with the Cursed Element. Feeling the sudden imbalance, Vastor tapped into the Decay component of his core, making a pristine white wing emerge from his right shoulder blade.
The wings countered each other, one sucking the light element and giving the darkness to the other and vice versa. Chaos fueled Decay, Decay fueled Chaos, and they both kept each other stable.
The violet light disappeared from Zogar Vastor’s right eye, taking the white of the Decay while his left eye burned with black mana.
‘Too bad that the Master infected himself with Abomination tissues.’ Mogar sighed. ‘I had really hoped to see a Fomor, for once. That’s the path I had assumed humans would take whereas this is something different.’
The planet watched as Vastor’s teeth became sharp, his nails turned into short claws, and his ears pointy.
‘Oh well, this is much more interesting.’ They shrugged. ‘I bet that my Guardians will regret missing this. The rebirth of Zogar Vastor, the Master of the Fallen Eldritches, into the first of the Arisen.’
The moment the undead had kidnapped the Master and the kids, the alarm had resounded inside the Vastor Household and the Organization had started looking for them. The undead didn’t have the time to relax the space after the Warp Array which had left a trace.
Unfortunately, using dimensional diagnostic spells while the Corps, the city guards, and the Corpse were still around would have been impossible. Tezka had lost precious time hiding from the crowd and avoiding to draw attention to himself since there was no way to explain his presence there.
At least not without exposing the bond between Professor Vastor and the Dimensional Magus.
“Great Mother almighty.” Tezka the Suneater said while emerging from his Chaos Warp just in time to witness the last bit of the green pillar disappear. “This isn’t evolution. This is apotheosis.”
With his double core, Vastor had long since surpassed the limits of the bright violet but what Tezka felt was a whole new level. Something that brought the old Professor into the realm of the white cores.
The Master was still much weaker than the Suneater, but he could also feel that Vastor’s aura was no different from the wailing that accompanied the birth of a new life form.
Before the green pillar faded away, Vastor touched Grimbark briefly and filled it with new spells while he got accustomed to his new body. He mostly looked the same as before but he felt nothing like it.
At the same time, hearing the staff humming with power and seeing the armor fixing all the cracks on its surface made Filia and Frey sigh in relief.
“Dad?” For the first time since they had been kidnapped, the word didn’t hold fear, sounding like a question rather than a plea for help.
“I’m okay, kids. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.” Vastor’s voice was calm and soothing.
For some reason, Filia knew that he was telling the truth. There was a finality in his words that reassured her. The girl felt calm enough from the beginning of that ordeal to try something.
Friya wasn’t the only one who had watched at the fight between Tezka and Salaark, learning from them. The Yggdrasill wood made that lesson even clearer, making countless thoughts that she had never had before pop into her mind.
Filia tried and failed to follow her sudden inspiration, but her mana core was too weak to cast even a cantrip. Then, she tried to guide the flow of energy of Grimbark, using the mana crystals to make up for her own weakness.
The staff was programmed to assist her but her will was untrained and her mana insufficient for the task.
“Frey, I need your help.” She said. “This is what I want to do…”
Her brother grabbed the staff as well, gaining the insight and wits to understand what his sister was talking about and how to do it. They pushed together, weaving a very small Loop spell.
The entry and exit points were just a few millimeters away from each other, but close enough to look past the Davross shielding them.
Vastor took a step forward, spreading a circle of light as he moved.
The Grendel, empowered by a second bolt of Blood Maelstrom, was the first to reach the Master. He lunged his claws at the human’s throat, only for his knife hand to be grabbed right before it could reach its target.
“Begone.” Vastor pulled Phresia’s hand down while also punching at his chest with his right.
This time, a black circle appeared but it closed in, the energy drawn instead of emitted. The darkness element was sucked by the black wing, turned into Chaos, and then channeled inside Vastor’s fist.
The blow was so strong that the Grendel’s chest caved in and his wrist broke. It also injected the Chaos straight inside his body, ravaging it from the inside.
The white circle had been a mix between a diagnostic spell and a breathing technique. The Master had employed his original creation to send his mana inside the undead assassins and find the exact location of their respective weak points.
The black circle, instead, was simply meant to gather the strength necessary to destroy them.
Even though Lith and Vastor had both recently evolved there was a huge difference between them.
While Lith belonged to a new species and had practiced high tiered magic for just seven years, Vastor had spent decades mastering the elements and studying the Eldritches of his Organization.
While Lith worked alone with Solus, the Master could count on the help of some of the most powerful and ancient beings on Mogar. The Eldritches had all shared their millennia of knowledge with him.
They had allowed Vastor to study their Chaos forms and he was the one who had devised a way to grant them the power of their newfound hybrid bodies. Bodies that he had thoroughly studied, learning how their old and new abilities worked and how to use them.
He shared with his children whatever he discovered and they did the same with him, in a virtuous cycle that had deepened the Master’s understanding of the Cursed Elements beyond what even those who had learned Mirror Magic knew.
Vastor’s body might be brand new, but to him, the experience was no different from that of an engineer driving a new car of which he had designed every single component.
