Stormforge (Rise To Omniscience Book 5) Read online

  Octagon was going to change that nonsense, and within just a few months, the Five Kingdoms would be his. No more wars, no more politics, no separate Kingdoms. Only one mighty empire under the rule of its only rightful master. Octagon had been created to rule and he would do so with an iron fist.

  He was intelligent, powerful, and commanded the respect of those who remained sane after tasting his power. He was the epitome of what a ruler should be, and his might was unquestionable. But if the West agreed to surrender instead of fight, they could save themselves months of effort. Seeing as Octagon was a master at the art of war and negotiation, he’d reached out to the West Kingdom first.

  Sure, Arnold had been forced to abandon his attack early and leave his post, however, with the potential gains in the long-run, the single surrendered battle wouldn’t mean much. Fiona was pretty much done by now anyway, which would mean bringing Shane back to Octagon to receive his reward. Once Hu Shane had a taste of the Master’s power, if he survived with his mind intact that was, he would be the first ruler under Octagon’s new nation.

  He would maintain his rule of the West, but only as a proxy under the Pinnacle King’s rule. He would have the Master constantly watching and commanding from his fortress in the North, and should he fail, he would be disposed of and replaced by a more worthy candidate.

  “Very well,” Shane replied, his shoulders slumping. “I agree to your terms.”

  The smile on Fiona’s face could have given a snake the creeps, however, when Shane looked back up, it was gone, replaced by one of happiness.

  “So, what do we do from here?” he asked.

  “Oh, we’ll just be escorting you back to meet our Master. Then, we’ll bring you back here, just as before. You’ll be feeling better than ever, and those who wronged you will know fear and regret before they fall.”

  “You know,” Shane said, rising and heading towards the open portal. “I do like the sound of that.”

  “Good work,” Arnold muttered as Fiona passed.

  “I do it all in the name of the Master,” she replied.

  “As do we all,” he finished. “Leave the portal open. Now that we have his agreement, we can finally send them through.”

  Fiona’s grin grew even wider at that. “The North is as good as ours now.”

  And though Arnold didn’t respond as she left through the portal, he couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of excitement at the prospect.

  The North would fall, and it would be by his hand.

  26

  Morgan’s nose broke yet again, but this time, instead of merely allowing him to fall, Hilda followed him, slamming several more closed-fisted punches into his face. The pain barely registered in his mind as his cheekbone cracked, his left eye was destroyed, and his front teeth were blasted to the back of his throat.

  He’d been going at this for over a day straight – or so he thought – and had lost more times than he could count. Most fights, he couldn’t even get his arms up before Hilda was inside his guard. Morgan had been broken and put back together so many times, that he had to wonder what kind of damage it was doing to his psyche.

  It seemed, to him at least, that Hilda was growing faster and stronger with each encounter. Not by much, perhaps a fraction of a percent. However, over the course of the day, it had really begun to show. He was still banned access from his skills, cut off from his core and reliant only on the martial skills contained in his mind and muscle-memory.

  His tough skin, adamant-enforced muscles, and bones had no effect on Hilda. She punched straight through his defenses each time, causing trauma on a level that should have killed him. Yet each time he fell, the scene reset itself and he was forced to face her anew. Le’vine’s mocking laughter was a staple by now, starting the moment he reappeared and only ending when it reset.

  Hilda grew cockier and cockier as well, sometimes choosing to toy with him, leaving herself wide open then kicking his ass – literally – when he tried to take it. Once, she’d even grabbed the back of his head and dragged his face along the floor just to make a point while he struggled uselessly in her grip.

  The sheer feeling of helplessness and degradation was seriously starting to wear on him though and he barely even put up a fight anymore, merely wishing it to be over as quickly as possible, so he might get closer to the god releasing him from this hellish torture. He’d called out a few times and received no answer. Morgan figured that whenever the man got bored of seeing him being beaten up over and over, he’d answer him.

  For now, all he had to do was survive long enough for that to happen. The scene reset itself and Morgan once again faced down the only person he’d lost to, the super he’d been so sure he could beat before handing him the single most painful lesson of humility he’d experienced since receiving his powers.

  As Hilda’s fist connected with his stomach, radiating with enough force to crack several disks in his spine, Morgan had an odd flashback to his days on the streets. Back then, he’d had nothing and no one. The only person he’d been able to rely on was himself, and the only way to survive was by being the fastest, meanest, and most determined.

  Physical strength had meant little in the face of those traits. He’d always been small, scrawny, but had made up for that with his tactics and excellent hand to hand skills. The other boys had fought him tooth and nail, but once they saw they couldn’t keep him down, they’d given up whatever food they’d been fighting for and gone off in search of easier prey.

  The scene was reset as Morgan hit the ground, though his mind didn’t stop working. What was the essence of a fighter? What defined a true master of the arts?

  The pain of his ribs caving in from Hilda’s knee temporality distracted him, as did the kick to his head, which made his vision flash red. Then, he was back on his feet and facing the woman once more. This time, Morgan didn’t think he wanted to just stand by and let himself be beaten. There was a time he would have fought tooth and nail. Where retreat wasn’t even an option and fear didn’t exist. He had to find that Morgan again, the one who’d fight to the death for a moldy scrap of bread or half-rotting apple.

  That Morgan was strong. He was a survivor and did whatever was necessary to make it to the next day. That was the man he needed to be if he wanted to make it out of here alive. At that moment, Morgan felt his core. It was just for an instant, but that was more than enough to tell him what was about to happen.

  The brief flash of power gave him an insight he’d never before felt in his entire life. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He could see it playing out clearly in his mind, as though it had already happened.

  Hilda came into his guard once again, throwing a kick down at his braced knee. It snapped like a twig and he fell to the side, the white bone protruding from the side of his leg. On his way down, her knee snapped up, catching him on the chin, cracking his jaw and killing him. That would then trigger the sequence to reset.

  Morgan blinked once, the scene vanishing from his mind just as quickly as it had come, and he found himself facing Hilda’s oncoming form. Without even thinking, Morgan took a quick step back, subconsciously avoiding Hilda’s kick. He was so shocked by what had happened that he failed to take advantage of the opening she offered and suffered another painful defeat a second later.

  This time, instead of the scene resetting itself, Morgan found himself standing at the center of one of the craters he’d created. He blinked around owlishly, noting that it was nighttime.

  Was I in there a full day or just a few minutes? Morgan wondered.

  It was hard to tell time in there, so it could have been minutes, or it could have been days. A loud bang from off to his right made him jump, and Morgan whirled to see the man who’d trapped him in that hellhole sitting in his strange chair. It was tilted back now, with a support for his legs now poking from the front. On his lap sat a bucket filled with fluffy white food, and before him floated a massive screen, kind of like the ones that had been used in tournaments Morgan
had been in.

  The people on the screen were doing something very strange. They were sitting inside some sort of wagon, obviously panicking as something continuously boomed in the background. The men were arguing, though Morgan couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Not really sure what to do, Morgan simply stood there for a few moments.

  It didn’t seem like the man was paying any attention to him and Morgan briefly considered trying to make a run for it. However, the memory of what he’d accomplished in the last fight, that brief moment of total clarity kept him where he was. Instead of running, as any sane person would do, Morgan cleared his throat.

  “Shit!” the god cried out, jumping and fumbling for a small device sitting on his lap.

  The violent and sudden movement caused him to spill the entire bucket of the white food all over himself, sending it scattering to the crater below. Morgan had to force down laughter as the man continued fumbling with the small black object. He looked so panicked, though Morgan couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Finally, the god seemed to get what he wanted, as the picture on the screen froze.

  “You weren’t supposed to see that,” the man said as his chair swiveled around to face him.

  Despite his obvious panic just a few moments ago, there wasn’t so much as a hint of it on his face now.

  Morgan shrugged.

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just say that this world is a very long time away from seeing anything like this and leave it at that.”

  “Why did you have that thing out then?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, I obviously wasn’t expecting you to be able to break the sequence anytime soon,” the man said, brushing stray bits of the white food off his lap. “How did you manage to do it, by the way?”

  “You’re a god, can’t you figure it out yourself?” Morgan replied.

  “Well, yeah,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “But where’s the fun in that?”

  When Morgan didn’t reply, the man let out a long sigh then pulled something up before his eyes. Morgan couldn’t see anything at all, though it was clear by the way the man’s eyes were moving that he was either reading or watching something.

  “Ah, that explains it,” he said after a few moments. “You pushed yourself hard enough to move forward in your Perfect Self trait. Not to worry, I’ve remedied that, so there’s no more cheating.”

  “Wait…!” Morgan began to say, but a second later, he found himself once again back inside the sequence.

  Though he wanted to scream in frustration, Morgan held it in. He had no idea what the man was referring to when he said his move forward in his Perfect Self triggered his exit, but he wasn’t going to be sticking around here for much longer with a burning question like that in the back of his mind. He’d done the impossible in his last fight. For just a moment, he’d seen into the future, something that should have been impossible — unless he was finally beginning to unlock the true powers of the supermage, omniscience.

  “Back for more, huh? I thought you’d given up.”

  Morgan turned his attention to the apparition of Hilda, who’d broken his body in more ways than he could count over the last…well, he actually didn’t know how long, as the man hadn’t told him before shoving him back in here.

  No matter, Morgan thought. All I have to do is win, then he’ll have to let me out.

  Hilda dashed forward, blurring across the intervening distance and threw a straight punch at his nose. By now, she wasn’t even trying to hide her moves, sure that Morgan couldn’t hope to match her speed or strength. Though she may have been a careful fighter, winning so many times in a row would make anyone cocky, even the best and most disciplined of people.

  That was why, when Morgan blocked the attack, she wasn’t fast enough to react to his counter. Morgan’s arm snapped up, knocking her fist to one side so that it barely grazed by his left cheek. Then, he brought his own fist up in a short uppercut to her abdomen. Hilda managed to twist her body to avoid a crippling blow, but the attack did something very unexpected.

  A massive hole was blasted straight through Hilda’s body, spraying her innards across the surrounding guards and painting the floor and walls with her blood. Morgan stared in shock for a moment as the girl who’d defeated him time after time collapsed to the ground with half her torso missing.

  A scream tore itself from Le’vine’s throat as she stared in horror at the grisly scene. The smug sureness was gone, replaced by a look of such pain and loss that it hit Morgan harder than Hilda ever could.

  Holy shit! Morgan’s mind began to race. What the hell have I done?

  27

  The scene froze then, leaving Morgan to stare at the grisly remains of Hilda’s body, the growing pool of blood halted in place.

  “Do you understand now?”

  Morgan turned to see the mystery god standing there, a look of sadness on his face.

  “No. I really don’t!” Morgan replied. “What the hell happened to her?”

  The man turned to face him, his face deadly serious.

  “You killed her, obviously,” he replied.

  “Well, duh! But how? I didn’t even hit her that hard, and she’s been kicking my ass over and over!”

  “You lack control over your strength. Even without enhancement, this is what you would have done to the girl, had you actually landed a blow during your fight.”

  “But I did hit her,” Morgan replied.

  “Did you?” the man asked with a raised eyebrow. “Because, if memory serves, you didn’t manage to land so much as a single punch.”

  Morgan looked back down at the horribly twisted woman. He thought he’d feel some sense of satisfaction at finally beating her, but this was just horrific!

  “I didn’t kill any of the guards, and they were weaker than her. There’s no way I could have done this with just one punch,” Morgan said after a few more moments of silence.

  “Control is a very finite thing. It takes time to master. You’ve barely come into your strength and have to actively focus on keeping it under control. Tell me honestly. Were you thinking of pulling your punches during that fight, working to hold back so you didn’t accidentally kill her?”

  Morgan opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated. No, he couldn’t say that he’d been holding back. In fact, he’d been going all out, or as much as he could without the use of his skills. If that were the case, would a landed attack really have done this amount of damage? He hadn’t even thought he’d been hitting that hard when he attacked. All he’d intended was the punch to knock her back a bit and give him room for a finishing blow, not blowing her guts out all over everyone.

  “With strength like yours, the difference between killing and disabling isn’t much,” the man said after he’d let Morgan think it over. “While you might not feel that you’re putting much effort behind an attack, the ones you’re hitting most certainly do. With each rank gained now, your strength increases exponentially.

  “Again, it might seem trivial to you, but think of the amount of stored energy each successive rank costs.”

  Morgan’s eyes widened as he actually thought about that. His last rank had cost millions, and every successive rank went up by a further half-million in cost. Seeing as he’d only been able to allocate 4 points per rank, he hadn’t really thought about it. But it did make sense.

  “Now, imagine all that energy being used to fuel your attacks,” the man continued. “How much damage do you think you can do now?”

  Morgan shook his head, trying to find some rationalization, some reason this man could be wrong. It came to him then in a flash.

  “If I’m as strong as you say, then no one should be able to beat me. In fact, no one should even be able to stand up to me, let alone land an attack.”

  The god actually cracked a smile here.

  “Once again, your lack of control comes into play. You still don’t seem to grasp just how much power you have bottled up inside of you. Why do you think you
were able to face two rank 55 beasts and come out of it alive, supermage or not?”

  “Because I’m at the Advanced stage,” Morgan replied, his brows creasing in confusion.

  “Exactly!” the man replied. “As an Advanced Supermage, your power far outstrips anyone still at the Intermediate stage, which was why you were able to beat two beasts 4 ranks above your own.

  “Just think on that for a moment. At this stage, in the 50’s and above, every single rank packs a hell of a lot of more power than the one before, yet you somehow defeated two and without taking any serious injuries.”

  Morgan rubbed at his eyes to clear the headache brought on by all of his confusion. On the one hand, he was much stronger, but his lack of control made him weaker, but he was also stronger and still weaker.

  “Gah! None of this makes sense!” Morgan yelled, throwing his arms up in frustration.

  “Fine then, let me give it to you in terms you can understand,” the man said. “Normally, you’d be ten times stronger than an Intermediate-stage person or beast if you were at the same rank. However, due to your lack of control, I’d say you’re pulling on about fifteen percent of your power at any given time.

  “There have been times, like when you faced Hilda or those beasts, where you managed to pull out more of it, reaching perhaps thirty percent, if not a bit more. But that’s about as far as you can go without some serious time and dedication to your training.

  “Now, as for how strong people become past rank 50. Each successive rank increases strength by a factor of 25 percent. So, a rank 51 is 25 percent stronger than a rank 50, which, at this level of power, is a massive difference in strength. It will increase even more as the ranks continue piling on, and if this world survives another hundred years, we’ll definitely be seeing a lot more of the stronger types emerging.”