Hope

It was unfathomable. How does one destroy an entire region? Even if they had the mana reserves, which Irwyn miraculously did, it would take too long. Finity would restrain their reach, so even the most powerful spell would be magnitudes too small in area. Perhaps he could try to somehow use the trick he had used to ignite mana when first testing his Concept, but that would do little against Concept bearing monsters which seemed plentiful.

Not to mention that nowhere would be safe. Every bit of ground was literally made out of monsters. And those creatures were gradually waking up, movements spreading from the area where they had entered. Would every single one of them eventually be in pursuit? For the moment they were safe in the sky but Irwyn doubted that would last forever. He remembered how the undead in the Republic tried to build a ladder with their own bodies. Even ground locked creatures would find a way. And that was pressuming they actually were incapable of flight.

"We will need to take turns sleeping," Irwyn concluded. "And it will still take… weeks? Longer? I have no idea how to estimate."

"Possibly," Elizabeth slowly nodded. "Or I might have a different way in mind. I need you to test something."

"Go on."

"Use an explosive spell that you are the most familiar with and fire it in a way that we can see. Compare the detonation area."

"As in, compare to what it should be?" Irwyn frowned, not sure where she was going with that. But when she nodded, he complied.

What explosive spell was Irwyn the most familiar with? He rarely actually used magic with the intention of causing widespread damage. He was much more prone to focusing on damaging singular targets. But often his spells did indeed result in a bit of an explosive finale simply because of the quantity of mana and nature of Flame. For example, his simplest spears of Starfire were something he had used extensively. While they weren't made to explode, they still released something close enough at the point of impact.

Deciding to go in that direction, Irwyn formed a nine-intention spear, then chugged the projectile against the boundary wall behind them. It was still close enough, wouldn't aggravate any of the slumbering monsters, and whatever effect Elizabeth desired to see would be much more visible. The projectile indeed released its remaining energy upon collision, the blats extending… what seemed like almost two or three times further than he had presumed it would. Irwyn blinked.

"Much bigger than expected, isn't it," Elizabeth said, a grin creeping onto her lips.

"Why?"

"My guess was right. We have technically left our Realm. My magic is a lot worse at confirming as much."

"What does that… wait, I know," Irwyn said, dots connecting. "Natural laws that apply only to Realms don't exist here. And among them… Finity."

"And among them Finity," Elizabeth confirmed, smile widening.

Irwyn knew, theoretically, that it didn't exist in some places. The Void, for example. He had actually first heard about the natural law when he and Desir had seen that mighty captured bird unable to even function under its constraints and be devoured by a demon of Greed. But he had not envisioned going someplace like that. Not anytime soon, at least. After all, there was a good reason the law existed.

How easy would it be to destroy an entire Realm otherwise? Without the principle preventing spells from lasting forever or spreading indefinitely, any Truth mage could presumable easily create something self-perpetuating that wiped out all life. The Rot would have likely long won if not for its existence. With Finity, any spells got progressively and almost exponentially more expensive to maintain with increasing duration and range or area.

But if the law did not apply… could Irwyn create something potent enough to demolish an entire region? He had to find a way. Not for a moment did he believe that it was a mistake this trial did not impose such a fundamental principle.

"Take over while I think?" he turned to Elizabeth who just nodded and summoned her own platforms right beneath his. Once the switch was done, Irwyn put his mind to focus on the how.

His power was limited mostly by his ability to pour mana out. While he hadn't attempted to exhaust his reserves since reaching Conception, it was most likely that reaching the actual limit of his Soul was still unfeasible. Usually when casting, he would continually feed a spell as it was ongoing to maintain it… But he could channel at his maximum capacity for a long time to power a greater spell to be released all at once.

That was where the absence of Finity immediately came into play. Usually, the best way to get around the 'duration' limitation of it was to actively manipulate the spell. Any magic that Irwyn was magically holding onto would not suffer from those negative effects. But 'holding' meant it actively occupied part of his focus, limiting the amount of power that could be put to use that way. Not to mention that such spells would still become more unstable the further they got from his body.

Yet without Finity, he could break from his usual habits and essentially build a spell 'piece by piece'. Create stable building blocks of magic, disconnect from them, then stack another more on top, layer by layer. Until he had a whole construct far larger than what he could manage otherwise. Usually, those blocks would decay with Finity, limiting the usefulness of such techniques, but in its absence it was a viable method. Possibly even required.

The biggest problem would be that Irwyn had literally zero practice with attempting similar things. Because of his past-life Oath he never really had an opportunity to try. Even though it would not apply to decidedly impermanent magic he never could learn enchantment or such. But then, when had inexperience ever stopped him in magic? That gap he would close with talent and effort. He only needed to figure out how.

The first problem his spell would face was still power. Even without Finity's crippling, it would be beyond him to actually gather the amount of mana needed to devastate an entire region - or it would probably take him days of constant effort at the very least. But there was magic everywhere. In the air, in the monsters, even in matter itself. He knew that all physical matter could in theory be converted back to magic, even if the process was supposedly very difficult. But he had previously managed to ignite ambient mana by accident. He did not need to understand the exact process. Hints might suffice.

"You once mentioned that matter could be converted back to mana…" he turned to ask.

"Yes, which is beyond impossible for you."

"If I used them as just fuel though?"

"Even you cannot manage that, Irwyn," she shook her head. "In the history of the Federation, only several mages had ever attained that ability, all of them with a Truth. Perhaps you are ludicrous enough to accomplish as much with just a Domain one day, but it's too early."

"That is a bust then," he sighed.

"There is also a much better alternative."

"Hmm," he inclined his head for her to continue.

"The monster cores."

"Cores?" Irwyn paused. Yes, they did have those, didn't they? He usually burned them to ash wholesale since he had no need for money ever since Elizabeth took it upon herself to share her practically infinite resources. "But these are not even Flame adjacent."

"That hardly matters. It is the fundamental nature of monsters to be scrapped for parts. As Parios had intended; and why they don't have Souls."

"I am aware," Irwyn nodded. As much was written in the Book of the Name. "Rock is Realm though. That makes for a difficult conversion."

"Usually, but since monsters are literally designed to be used as materials, their pieces are much more malleable. Cores usually will be at least half unattuned, and converting them back to pure magic is several orders of magnitude easier than with regular matter. Especially if you have a suitable Concept like yours for it. Even the Realm mana will likely shift with partial efficiency. And given the nature of this Trial, it will probably also be easier than usual."

"Now just to hope there will be enough of cored monsters to provided that much power."

"Anything with a Concept is guaranteed to have one," she shrugged. "I thought you knew. It is what bears the carvings in place of the Soul. As an added bonus, you should be using said Concepts as fuel as well if you can manage that. The lesser creatures on the other hand… they are either going to almost all have a small one or almost none will. Depends on if this place had existed before we stepped through the arch. Usually, lesser creatures grow them over time as they glacially tread towards Conception, but if they had been created spontaneously a few minutes ago there might be very few."

"Which could be a problem."

"Probably not. A core with Concept engraved upon it will provide magnitudes greater power when used as fuel compared to even a hundred lesser ones. Either way, if whatever you are planning can slay those monsters with a Concept, it should be able to fuel itself."

"Now I just need to figure out how to ignite them then," Irwyn nodded.

"Switch. I will go grab you a few."

Irwyn nodded, taking over platform duty again. Then Elizabeth jumped off, onto the traitorous earth. Making sure to maintain his position, he still began thinking about the monumental spell he had to come up with.

It would need to be part Flame, part Light. Regretfully he had not yet merged those two Concepts into just Starfire, so they would have to act separately. A limitation, but one that could be worked around. Flame would take care of the burning and propagation… actually, did it have to? He was restraining his creativity to how fire behaved naturally, but he had two Concepts. Such restraints should not hinder his magic, twice so with Finity not present.

What if the fire spread not by heat but by the very glow it emitted? Even a wildfire would take days to spread across an entire region. Too long. What he needed was a magical inferno proliferating with such haste he struggled to even imagine it. And while magical Light was not nearly as fast as the natural counterpart, it was still magnitudes quicker then the natural spread of Flames over surfaces.

His Light was also piercing. That was what he had carved the Concept to excel at. What if it punctured through the rock hide and calcified armor? Rather than needing to burn them away, his magic could start burning the monsters already beneath those outer defenses. Most would likely struggle much more with such an insidious attack. He was not an expert on rock serpents, but most beings with shells and natural armor were logically more vulnerable beneath.

He first needed to test if that was even possible. His ability to use his Concepts was still admittedly clumsy. He had been hesitant to experiment around their more… squishy companions. Particularly Alice and Waylan, since Desir with his Life magic would be more durable. But that was beside the point since it would be only Elizabeth nearby, and she would never let herself get hit by accident - even if something ended up aimed her way, she was fast enough to either dodge or at least block.

So Irwyn began to play around with his magic. How does one merge Light and Flame in a way distinct from Starfire? He conjured a beam of light, then empowered it with the Concept. For the moment, he left it simple, merely as a fast, piercing projectile held in his hand. Then he tried to add Flame into the mix. The construct immediately crumbled.

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Not deterred, Irwyn tried a few more times but after making no progress determined that it was the wrong direction. Next, he attempted to create two separate spells. One was the identical beam of Light, the other was a handful of burning Flame. Then Irwyn tried to merge them.

There was no real reaction. Neither acceptance nor rejection. The spells mostly just coexisted next to each other. At least until Irwyn tried to forcefully push them into the same spot in existence. Then they both unravelled as each spell's structure interfered with the other. They were not meant to both be in the same spot. So Irwyn would have to make them in a way that they would be.

That reminded him of the time he had first learned to Imbue multiple intentions into a spell. That trick was essentially a mental exercise to convince himself that one spell construct was fundamentally two. Would the same work for Concepts? There was no reason to not try.

"Here," Elizabeth startled him out of the experiment. Which Irwyn quickly hid as to not reveal he might have gotten a tad too distracted in the middle of hostile territory.

She was holding four monster cores - or at least Irwyn assumed that was what they were. The objects were not uniform in appearance. Two were jagged gemstones - blue and red - one was just a smooth pebble and another was a complex jade carving appearing to be vaguely similar to a snail's shell. All of them had a distinct presence of power, dense mana, and deeper mystery, though. Likely his way of perceiving the Concepts that were so far away from his affinities he could not make the slightest sense of them from just the cores.

"I can get more later if you have the need."

"Thank you. On a different note, how would you overlap multiple Concepts?"

"Surely you will have more fun figuring it out yourself," she smiled, also wordlessly taking over platform duty again.

"Fair," Irwyn nodded and was about to return to his spellcraft, but his companion opened her mouth again.

"I had a thought. We should get into a corner of this 'chamber'," Elizabeth suggested.

"It would make the spell less efficient to start so far from the middle," Irwyn frowned.

"Yes, but I don't think all of the monsters will be as weak as those we have been greeted by. Namely…," she pointed towards those far away mountains, leaving the rest unsaid.

"You think those are individual monsters?" Irwyn gaped, not realizing the possibility before.

"It is quite likely. Once you get your spell going, I presume there is a good chance you will be at lower than normal capacity. That means I will likely need to protect you, and a corner is a much more easily defensible position."

"Also harder to escape from," Irwyn pointed out.

"Surrounded from all sides is still surrounded from all sides. Better to funnel them into a smaller area where the enemies get into each other's way."

"Still, it is rather far away."

"We have been given no time limit," she shrugged.

"Fine. You get us started on the journey there," Irwyn relented. "But I will still want to cast from a bit further away than the very edge."

"That's fine. I expect we will have some time before the surviving monsters reach us. If there even are any. Who knows what miracles you will conjure this time."

"I will do my best," he nodded, then returned to thinking.

Back to his earlier idea of making himself think of one spell as two. Experimentation with just Light quickly yielded results. He could essentially apply the Concept another time… but the actual efficacy was minimal. Unlike intentions which greatly increased the limit of mana a spell could utilize with each one added, this way of applying the same Concept twice had no such effect. It was basically just a way for giving a spell additional utility at the cost of great focus, but added no direct power.

But then… did his spells even need more power? What was the point of saturation for a Concept bearing spell? Another thing he had not fully tested, but it was exponentially beyond even nine-intentions. Irwyn also had doubts the method he had stumbled upon was optimal. Concepts could be technically bent to do anything within their purview, even though the way they had been shaped made them moderately better at some tasks than others. If he needed a spell to do two things, he could just include both in the original effects, rather than the convoluted mental exercise.

Next, he attempted to do this with both of his Concepts instead. That immediately ran into a fundamental problem: Light would only attach to Light and Flame only to Flame. As he had already figured out earlier with trying to update his Starfire spells, he could not use the prismatic element to bridge that gap. That left the option of making a spell that was simultaneously Flame and Light without actually mixing into a greater whole.

And… was that actually that hard? Irwyn had never done so in the past because his Starfire was simply superior to both in most aspects, but perhaps that was a flawed way of thinking. He knew how to usher Light. He knew how to ignite Flame. The elements were sometimes relatively close to each other in what they accomplished.

Light could summon a glare so intense it burned. Flame could illuminate a room with its heated glow. There was a niche in reality that could be filled with both of them without needing to step into what Starfire was. A kind of… lightfire? Burning-brightness? Irwyn didn't know a name for it, if the combination even had one. It was not a different element.

It was both of them at the same time, twisted in a way they only did what both of them could. The overlap. And that allowed them to merge into one creation. Something that burned the same way Light and Flame did at once. The intersection of a diagram that was both… but also less. They kept only those overlapping properties, losing all their unique benefits. But that was a problem for later.

Hopeful, Irwyn applied his Concept of Flame first, and it worked… somewhat. There was still a major dissonance, making the magic unruly. That might be fine if he was attempting something simple, but for the spell he sought to bring forth, there could be no imperfection or incompatibility. Racking his brain for a while, he came up with a different idea:

He did not actually need both the elements to perfectly merge. His original idea had been to deliver Flame by Light. Instead of trying to apply a Concept to the entire mix, he tried to only apply it to the parts that were actually Flame. That worked significantly better… for about a second before the Concept empowered half overwhelmed the Light and completely took it over. That left Irwyn with a construct of pure Flame in just a few short seconds.

The next obvious thing to attempt was to apply both of the Concepts at the same time. To his joy, that worked. It was clumsy and took impractically long, but Irwyn found himself with a working combined creation, bearing both of his Concepts, if separately. But there were still obvious major issues.

Creating the combination was too finicky. Even when doing so personally, it took him far longer than it should and required more effort. Moreover, he had no way of accomplishing this on magic he was not directly controlling - which any spell meant to destroy a region would need to be. No, he had to find a way that would allow the two elements to merge and unmerge fluidly.

His next experiment was to create Concept bearing Light and Flame separately, then try to mix them from that more powerful state. At first he had limited success as they were simply… too much of themselves. For his original mixture he had stripped away all the parts where the two elements did not overlap, but that would not do for what he wanted - he desired to mix them exactly because of those differing properties. Thankfully, inspiration came not too long after.

He reminded himself again that there was still no need for a perfect mix. Just a method of delivery and propagation. He summoned a thin beam of light and a fistful of flame, brought them next to each other, and then tried to merge them partially. A beam of Light still had that burning glare. A handful of fire still emitted its glow.

Rather than trying to make a construct that was entirely formed of their combination, he took only the parts where the spells overlapped and used them to form a connection. Two separate creations, two separate effects, yet able to borrow each other's properties to some extent by partially merging. There was the needle, then there was the connection, then there was the Flame - each a separate part, but able to form a whole that way. In other words, exactly what Irwyn needed.

The next issue was making them do that naturally. For the scale he intended, the process of merging and decoupling would have to be automatic. At least in the destruction he was envisioning. Irwyn struggled with that question for a while, before deciding to revisit it later. Perhaps once he solved the rest of the spell, inspiration would strike from a new angle.

The form of the whole spell was properly taking shape in his head at that point after all. His initial casting would be a storm of needles, made of Light and fully focused on honing in on monsters, then piercing into them. Or rather honing in onto the cores of monsters. He still needed to figure out how to identify those, but he was confident it would be possible.

At the same time, he would half-merge those needles with Flame, a rampant inferno crafted to devour anything they touched from within. He needed a wildfire that was as efficient as possible, using everything to fuel itself. While he could not directly convert matter, monsters still had mana flowing through them. Especially those at the stage of Conception. Since they would be mostly Realm attuned the conversion to fuel would not be perfect, but good enough. As a bonus, Irwyn could ignite ambient mana for additional damage. It would feasibly kill the lesser creatures without Concepts, or at least let the Flame be inflicted on them.

The next step would be using the core itself as fuel. That would be done through Flame, but Irwyn had to figure out a way to also make that fuel the needles of Light. They needed to have enough power to remain in existence and then reach the next monster, ideally losslessly. With Finity that would be wholly unsustainable. Without it, the magic needed to maintain their existence was minimal. He only needed to always get more than what would be spent at piercing the creature's defenses and burning it to ash.

So he turned to the cores and experimented. Elizabeth had been right that combusting them to raw power was relatively simple. His Concept allowed him to do as much effortlessly on the first attempt. What proved far more troublesome was turning this power into something that could fuel the needle. Scrambling with the first core had achieved no real results, so he went to the second with a plan.

By keeping the partial merger of the Flame and Light within the needle ongoing, he found a way to transfer magic between the two. The burning portion could likely mostly sustain itself by incinerating the mana inside the monster, but the delivery was a different matter. How much mana would it take to pierce the rock shell of a Concept bearing monster? Irwyn estimated and detracted it by gut feeling, then tried to see if he could transfer an equivalent amount by burning the second core - all without manually guiding the magic.

There was actually a large surplus… which gave Irwyn another idea. If there was enough magic, the needles could split. That kind of self propagation would go a long way towards actually clearing out a whole region of monsters. Which presented another massive complication. Irwyn tried making the spell split, which resulted in the whole thing crumbling. But no other solution presented itself. Thus, Irwyn had to admit that he needed to remake the whole structure from scratch to allow for such separation.

Which was easier than he would have expected. The alteration was relatively simple as he did not need to fundamentally change anything. Just make it more… modular. The solution he came up with was that instead of having one chunk of Light forming the entire needle and one wisp of Flame connected to it, he instead separated the construct into many smaller but identical building blocks. The actual size of the needle would not matter, just the power which could be concentrated.

That meant that splitting would be easy for such a spell. Any of those modular parts could grow to full power if provided sufficient magic. Moreover, if the needle was partially damaged, it would not easily disperse. Spreading inside the monsters bodies also became clearly easier since it could spread out. Irwyn was quite happy with that result - a structural annoyance had yielded a large improvement as he fixed it.

The downside was that it would be far far harder to create. Completely impractical for a spell cast in battle. But for something he could take his time building piece by piece? It was fine if he took hours as long as the desired desolation was attained. Secondly, the spell would only be able to split only as many times as was the number of these smaller parts he composed each needle of… which was in theory only limited by his patience. All that was left was actually creating something that could do all that independently of his control.

He began crafting a single such needle. The spell he was envisioning would be made up of thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. But he needed to create one that worked as a proof of concept. Capable of seeking down a cored monster, feeding off of them through burning said core, then bursting out to attack the next, ideally splitting itself into multiple if there was surplus magic available.

Actually, he also needed to make sure every single needle would not just home on a single monster, that would be a waste. Thankfully, he was quickly finding that Concepts were much more versatile than intentions. An intention would only let spell lean towards doing something. Concepts seemingly almost had a will of their own.

They were part of Irwyn's Soul after all, reflected there from the carving. Irwyn was trying to give them commands that required something close enough to decision-making… and they were taking on the properties of his Soul to make this work. It wasn't actual thought, but rather Irwyn imprinting his own desires onto the spell. He still needed the the base to be workable, but it could correct small problems and imperfections.

He still had two leftover cores which he used for testing. Each was shielded within a durable barrier and the needles homing on them were not provided enough power, both literal and Conceptual, to piece within. It was still a very good way of refining his targeting though.

The project still took over an hour more as Irwyn tested, failed, and retested individual parts of his spell. It was magical engineering on a level far beyond anything he had ever attempted. Needing to be indestructible, yet by its very nature finicky. Irwyn was not deterred though. He loved the challenge. Adored it. How long has it been since he had last delved into a magical puzzle to such a degree? Had he ever? Piece by piece, he completed it. A single bright needle, hiding a burning rage within.

Then the platform vanished underneath his feet. Irwyn startled, turning to Elizabeth, only to see her crumbling as if unconscious. If his vision spell was still not active, he would not have noticed what was wrong. But with it, it was obvious:

Around her neck and into her throat stretched an invisible monster, a literal wisp of living air.