Return of the Fallen Volume 9 Chapter 29
Zephris was already considered a dominant figure throughout the continent. Many showed him respect or at least showed him no disrespect to his face. After learning how to use Aura, his dominance began to eclipse many experts who were deemed to be at the top of the food chain. This power of Zephris, caused many to start to worry and things began to move in the background.
With his mastery of aura, came his unlearning and learning of the ways of the soul and its capabilities. He could now split his soul into millions of fragments. With this, he found a new path forward. He found a way to combine different energies. Finally, he added a fragment of his soul into his ultimate creation and promptly named it after his master.
(With this, a new creature shall be made.)
“Rise…Azirian!”
A pair of red eyes opened as this Azirian came into being.
“Master.”
No words needed to be said. With a fragment of his soul within this Azirian, the creature already understood who its master was and could be commanded not through the mind but directly through Zephris’s soul.
Testing his new creation he found its strength to be between the 3rd and fourth stage. His creature was similar to Aziria his master albeit slightly weaker. His creature had near-instantaneous healing and could change the shape of its body at will. Even if it were crushed, burnt, frozen, electrocuted, and so on, it would survive, recover, and as long as it had the energy it could basically keep regenerating and last forever. Soon though a problem came about.
How does an Azirian continuously regenerate? It has no core and uses no magic but to heal at that speed it is consuming a vast amount of energy. Where or how can it replace that energy? It needed to feed, feed on something, anything.
A side effect came about in which his creature fed on any living thing. Whether it be animals, beasts, or people, it did not discriminate and in doing so, its energy was replenished. Zephris did not like this though. Not because his creature fed on people or anything like that but rather because it was feeding in the first place.
After all this time, Zephris had found a way to no longer need food. He could sustain himself simply on magical energy in the world around him. He found that his creature feeding on other things to be highly inefficient and sought to fix this problem.
Zephris was incredibly smart but he could not fix everything in his design. Trying to do so would only cause more problems here or more oddities there. Combing the power of space directly into the creature’s blood as well as darkness he found a way for the creature to replace its feeding habit. His Azirian got its abilities from its blood so he added fused energy to its blood. Now the creature would regenerate because its blood would be constantly feeding off of the energy around it but this brought more problems.
There was no control mechanism. The Azirian should follow every single order given by Zephris but this creature’s entire makeup was designed from beasts and other creatures. All of these creatures had a natural instinct to feed and no matter how he tried to control his creation, it still would try and feed. Even if he made it remain perfectly still and it put nothing in its mouth, the special fused blood would simply drain energy from its surroundings.
Its instincts got in the way with Zephris’s orders and it would drain energy and life from anything around it. Zephris could not have this. If he could not overcome this problem, his creature would be counted as a failure. Once more, Zephris had to go back to the drawing board.
During all of this, a few experts began to come after him. Because he had been stealing information from powerful beings, not only did others find this to be a sign of humiliation and disrespect but Zephris had also stolen many secrets in the process. Secrets others did not wish to get out.
Things started simple in the beginning. An assassin or two would come in the dark of night, sneaking about like sewer rats. They would try to kill Zephris by any means to seal his mouth permanently shut. They would use the greatest and rarest of poisons but found that none of them worked. Zephris had become immune to every poison in the lower realm long ago and this effort on the part of the assassins bore only rotten fruit.
They tried to kill him with swords, spears, arrows but repeatedly failed. They tried sneak attacks with powerful magic and ungodly traps but again they failed. Not only did they fail but Zephris countered completely devastating them. He would capture every assassin and before they could take their own life, he would use a Mind Frey on them.
In this way, he would learn exactly who they were and he would also uncover the exact person who hired them in the first place. Once he knew who had ordered the hits on his life, there was no reason to let such devious bastards continue to live. Zephris would drop everything he was doing. with a wave of his hand he would teleport to any corner of the Feya continent and appear before his enemies. He would then capture them, extract all of their knowledge, and then kill them like the mad dogs they were.
This brought a deadly cycle of those seeking revenge for the previous killings Zephris had committed but in the end, the results were the same every single time. Someone would try and kill Zephris and Zephris would counter, teleporting directly in front of those who wished him dead and he instead would take the information in their head and then kill them.
In this way, Zephris tore through thousands of clans and several kingdoms. He killed Ancient beast after Ancient beasts and leveled many kingdoms. Everyone quickly understood that Zephris had completely changed and he was no longer anti-war. This fact itself terrified them and many cursed the day they ever sought to take advantage of Zephris.
Zephris was an existence that could threaten the world. Many backed off once this was understood but a few who could not let it go plotted. After the many years that Zephris made his appearance known to the world, instead of him stealing everyone’s secrets, it was a secret of his own that entered the ears of his enemies.
(So the alchemist has a family.)
Once this secret got out, it wasn’t long after that that the protected island his family was on was surrounded by powerful experts from many different backgrounds. Thousands upon thousands of Ancient beasts, powerful mages at the 6th stage and even a Titan came to this island. If they could capture even one of these family members, they could hold them hostage.
Taking his family hostage was not about money but instead, it was about power. Whoever held his family’s life in the palm of their hand could then control Zephris and whoever controlled Zephris would be considered nearly unstoppable.
Zephris understood this and came up with a bold plan. Sneaking into his enemy’s ranks he made tensions ramp up and instigated infighting. All of these experts surrounding the island did not mean they were all on the same side. These beings were nearly all from different backgrounds and from different factions and alliances. It was not like they could share Zephris’s family members amongst themselves, it just wouldn’t work. Because of this, the natural course came about and all-out war befell this place.
Zephris though had already snuck his family away.
Once he returned to the island, more than half the experts had already died. Zephris who used to loathe war with disgust, once he saw so many dead by his actions, he couldn’t help but feel a spine-tingling thrill. A fiendish smile covered his face as he dealt with those that were leftover.
In the end, he killed every single expert there except for one. A Titan of immense power went toe to toe with Zephris but as time went on, Zephris clearly held the advantage. Eventually, it was Zephris who came out on top and he actually managed to capture this Titan and seal him with a magic tool. Once he sealed the Titan, he got a new idea for his Azirian.
Returning back to the Feya continent, the first thing Zephris did was build a place for his family and it turns out their family as well. During the time Zephris had been away, nearly 80 years had passed. Because his father was part dragon and his mother an elf, time had done nothing to them over these years and they still looked exactly the same. His sister on the other hand had grown into a beautiful woman and had married decades ago and had many children. These children of hers had also already had children with the locals of said island and now his family was more than 30 strong.
When he snuck his family off the island, he had brought all of these people with him and he now needed a safe place for them all. Zephris returned to his birthplace and raised a hand.
The great forest screamed out in terror and pain but Zephris ignored her as he terraformed the land and created a city of Orichalcum.
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