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    After meeting with the formerly frozen residents of the ancient Cold Storage we’d found on Callus during the siege, I’d made agreements with them to gain introductions to all their factions for potential allies. With the war of succession (which sounded better to me than ‘wishmaster competition) coming up, I’d need all the help I could get, even if the contest was limited at the high end to ten B-rankers and five A-rankers.


    While I had my mom, Zeke, and possibly my dad onboard, the other positions for A-rank support were still open, and I hadn’t even started filling B-rank slots. In order to prove myself to the various factions, I needed to be at my strongest, so I decided to train the one aspect of my abilities with the most potential, my techniques.


    To my surprise, I was given an ETA of just a week before we arrived at the Divine Tree Temple, and my grandfather was more than willing to do some training with me on the way, beginning the very next day. I was pretty excited, because while I’d worked with my mom, I’d never trained with an S-ranker before.


    At S-rank, the Saga becomes part of the body, integrating into the physical form to the point where powers can be passed on as a bloodline. In a very real sense, S-rank was the beginning of real divinity, and it was a rare and impressive thing to reach this level. From what I knew, in the whole universe, there was only about a hundred S-rankers anywhere, which given the trillions of people scattered amongst the five faction alliance, was saying something about the difficulty of passing that barrier.


    My grandfather, meanwhile, was one of the top ten or twenty S-rankers anywhere, meaning he was stronger than four out of five people who had managed to create bloodlines, and was renowned as one of seven popes of the Red Revenant Church, even if he wasn’t the strongest of the Revenant’s disciples.


    “So,” he told me as we cleared out the training room to start our lesson. “I’ve heard plenty about your gift for technique creation. But techniques at the S-rank and techniques at the A-rank aren’t the same. To condense a Chronicle, your Path has to be part of your main ability, which means when the Saga becomes part of you, so does your Path. Technique manipulation is a whole different beast when your Path is integrated into your physical body.”


    I nodded slowly. “In what sense? Like they’re smoother, finer control? Stronger?”


    “All of the above, mostly,” he said bluntly. “But one of the biggest things is that once you’ve integrated your Path, you have a deeper understanding of techniques, and can alter them more finely. Techniques are, at their core, just miniature Paths with singular uses. I’m sure you noticed that with your forms, which are essentially Solid Techniques.”


    I’d never really considered it that way, but he wasn’t wrong. At the Solid Path stage, techniques were solidified with stats, made into Skills so they could be integrated into the Chronicle later. I’d basically been doing the same with my form so I could integrate Goetia into my Path of the Doom Sovereign. “So pseudo Domains are…”


    “Complicated,” he said with a wave. “If I had to describe it….it’s like packing your techniques so densely they try to condense into a Chronicle but can’t. Usually because you already have one or can’t make one yet. Don’t worry about the mechanics of your pseudo Domain, it’s way too early to start altering or refining those more than you already have. Your forms are too Solid to be altered at this point without a lot of trouble too. What we’re going to work on is your other techniques. Combat moves. Show me some of them.”


    That was an easy enough ask. Except I was currently missing my weapon, and Goetia was a staff art. All my movements were optimized for hitting things with a big stick, and I felt unwieldy and awkward without one.


    Luckily, we were in the training room, and they had training weapons. Finding a staff tough enough to handle my output wasn’t too much trouble. The Acheron played host to A, B, and C-rankers and they regularly sparred. Finding a C-rank training staff was simple, and after getting used to the weight, I started to limber up a bit, going through a few stances just to get into the rhythm of the temporary staff.


    Once I did, I started moving through a few techniques. Cosmic Collapse, Life Nova, Mephisto’s Waltz. I triggered my forms as needed, since it made it easier.


    When I was done, my grandfather raised an eyebrow. “So, do you NEED to enter your forms in order to use those techniques? Can you do that black flame Cosmic Collapse without being in your Mephistopheles form?”


    “I mean, sure,” I shrugged. “Not easily, but yeah.”


    He grinned at me. “Well, we found your first exercise. Once you imprint a Path on your body, you gain finer control over your techniques. Your new pseudo Domain, Pride, should be able to mimic that function. The reason your technique isn’t stable enough to use independently is because it’s half formed. You know the effect, but the story isn’t solid enough. Remember, these are almost like miniature Paths. The story is what matters.”This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Closing my eyes, I let myself drift down into my soul, appearing inside of the black stone Library anchored by my Ten Demons Tome. The heavy brown book sat on its pedestal in the center, holding the place together, and surrounding it were shelves of Skills and techniques.


    The Skill tomes were pretty general. They had some information on function, and a vague diagram of the stats involved, but that took up most of the book. The techniques, meanwhile, were just stories, and most of the books that I looked through were barely even filled. A few pages, a chapter at most.


    I could see what he meant. When I designed my techniques, I designed them to function as extensions of my forms. They were additions to the foundational stories of my demonic selves. But if I went back and altered the tomes holding them, I could add in that context. They would still reference my forms, but they’d also be able to stand independently of them.


    Opening Cosmic Collapse, I started leafing through the pages. Cosmic Collapse was brief, just a quick story about a massive compacted wellspring of demonic energy that exploded out one side like an erupting star. I’d copied it from my mother, but it was made on the fly, so the sloppy construction really limited the usefulness.


    So I started reworking it. I told the story of Mephistopheles, the demon prince of destruction. Mephistopheles was not the only demon to wield hellfire, but he was the most skilled. An artisan with the flames of destruction, Mephistopheles reached such a height with his skills in it’s manipulation that he could recreate the natural world. What could be created could be destroyed, and the apex of destruction is to reach a form of creation.


    The sun, giver of life and vitality, was the ultimate seed of creation in the realm of man, and so Mephistopheles sought to pervert the sun to his own use. He created an anti sun, a star of destruction that unmade any who fell within its light, and hung it in the sky above his realm, the circle of Wrath.


    When the day came that challengers entered Mephistopheles realm, he called the un-sun from its place in the sky, and allowed it to return to it’s natural state, an act of uncreation, an inverted supernova.


    I had to add some context for the demon, referencing my form heavily to make sure the underpinnings of the story were solid enough to work on their own, but once I’d done that, I opened my eyes, emerging into the real world to find my grandfather waiting patiently. “For future reference,” he said dryly. “Closing your eyes for twenty minutes in the middle of the fight is generally a poor tactical choice.”


    Chuckling, I just shrugged. “I’ve got Piece of Mind, which should let me do things like that mid combat without just stopping to wait. But I take your point, I’ll watch that in the future. Now, can I show off my new technique?”


    “By all means,” he chuckled. “Go ahead and use it on me. We’ll see what you can do.”


    Spinning my staff around me to build up some momentum, I whirled and struck out in a thrust. Instead of triggering Mephistopheles or even reaching through it to tap into the black flame, I reached directly for my technique. After all the changes, I no longer considered it Cosmic Collapse, having renamed the move something a bit more fitting. Extinction Event.


    As my staff struck out like a cobra, a small orb of black flame, much denser than one I would have formed after MINUTES of working with Cosmic Collapse, manifested in front of me. With a bit of will, I was able to shove more power into it, inflating it like a balloon until I decided I was satisfied, then slammed my staff into it look a pool cue.


    Rather than rupture and spray out a cone of power like the old technique, the orb shot forward, blurring through the air, and on impact, exploded, expanding into a sphere of pure destruction that swallowed my grandfather whole, stopping at about fifteen or twenty feet out and hanging in the air until dissipating.


    Of course, my S-rank grandpa with his purifying flame bloodline was unharmed, but he looked floored by the attack. “That was…a colossal improvement. I knew you were talented, and that this new domain of yours would be an advantage, but that was a staggering jump in quality. I won’t say it was S-rank standard, you don’t have the sheer impact to read the minor ebbs and flows of the story and map how they alter the minute aspects of its manifestation, but that was definitely the best technique I’ve ever seen from a D-ranker.”


    Grinning, I tried it again. This time I went with a smaller one. Again, it took seconds to form. When I pushed it too much bigger than balloon sized it did slow down, but it was still faster and smoother than Cosmic Collapse had ever been.


    I could FEEL the difference in the technique. In the past my techniques had been sloppy and brute force, similar to holding Skills together with my soul. I could do it because of my talent for creating them, but it wasn’t OPTIMAL. Now though, I’d machined Extinction Event to something so much more stable, and it made using it child’s play.


    My next revision was Mephisto’s Waltz. This one was actually a lot easier, I’d put more effort into the story originally, and while context needed to be added for Mephistopheles to allow it to function more easily outside the form, the structure of the technique was better, and only needed some light revision in order to reach the standard I wanted. Glancing over to where my companion slept, I yelled to Archie. “Hey, lazy bones, wake up and watch this, you’ll need to try to emulate it.”


    My sleeping phoenix, clearly annoyed at having to get up, raised his head from where he was sleeping on top of a nearby cabinet. I could see the disdain in his eyes…right up until I triggered my Waltz.


    This one I didn’t rename, but I could have. It was a whole different technique. The speed, fluidity, and versatility of the technique had all improved, and I knew from his expression that Archie could see the difference. Trilling a challenge, he rose and took off from the cabinet, flapping his wings. With a thought, I was standing right below him, my staff flicking up to poke him in the belly. “Tag,” I said with a grin. “You’re it.” And the game was on.