Darian took a deep breath and announced to all the Heavenly Elemental Spirits:

"Start preparing. In three days, we'll attack the Millennial Abscess and leave this desert."

"YES!!" — everyone shouted excitedly and ran off toward their houses in the city.

Darian turned around and went back to the central building, deep in thought. The enemy had fifty thousand shadows under its control, while he had only nine thousand people. On paper, that fight looked flat-out impossible, but in reality, things were different.

During those two years, he had gotten closer to the region where the Abscess's army was stationed. Its location was right on the border between the Yin and Yang sides of the desert.

He had tested them carefully, and realized those shadows were just as mindless as the normal ones. The only difference was that the Abscess could provide support, using two Laws given by the system.

One of them Darian knew very well: the Darkness Law. It created a black powder, which in truth was made of countless tiny black runes that invaded the enemy's body and temporarily paralyzed them.

The other was a Law that normally only appeared for those living on the Yang side of the desert, called the Order Law.

That Order Law was the same power the Chromaraic had used in the past to attack the Fiendgods' city with their shadow army.

From what Darian had figured out, this power, when applied to ordinary people, made the energy from their primordial core partially controlled by the attacker.

In the desert, where nobody had yet reached the first realm, that effect was nearly useless on people. But when applied to shadows, it let you direct and command them partially, giving them simple orders like attacking a single target.

Darian thought that power was insanely useful, but on the Yin side of the desert, only the Chromaraic race could get it. They were special, receiving from the system the option to obtain all 8 Laws available.

Darian, on the other hand, had only received the 4 standard Laws, like most people... but that wasn't really a problem. After all, he could steal them.

Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out.

It was incredibly rare to find a Chromaraic shadow, since they all bought that Law as soon as possible, making them very hard to kill. On top of that, the race usually didn't get involved in shady deeds that would justify Darian killing them.

There were exceptions, like the ones who had attacked the city before, but those were rare. Because of that, he'd had few chances and hadn't managed to get the Law.

Back to the Millennial Abscess—this thing had three main powers: Permanently controlling shadows with the Order Law. Using the Darkness Law over a wide area, affecting all attackers. And finally, in order to kill it, you'd need to wipe out its entire massive army.

For ordinary people, those three factors made it impossible to beat with his current power. But Darian could work around that, thanks to his own abilities. In this specific case, numbers didn't mean much—if he could just cancel out all of the enemy's power.

Darian breathed deeply... two years had gone by.

"Master must be furious with me..." he muttered seriously.

Meru had warned him that within four years, he'd have to take on the mission on Earth and get another book from a universe. Darian had worked hard to achieve that, even went as far as creating a clan... but in the end, he'd been forced to enter that place, losing the chance.

"Well, it's unlikely anyone will be able to steal the book. I'll just have to find a way to go there in the future, some way other than through the mission."

For a moment he thought about his younger brother and sister. He had no idea how much longer he'd be stuck in that place. Maybe by the time he returned, they'd already be full-grown adults, completely different from how he remembered them.

Then... his mind was pulled to someone else. Day by day, he found himself thinking of her more and more often.

With a long sigh, he forced himself back to focus on the preparations.

He went through everything in his inventory. There, he had stored a vast sea of elemental runes.

During those two years, he had used essence absorption every single day. It had become clear the success rate was only about 5%. He had just been ridiculously lucky the first times he used the technique.

In total, there had been 36 successes. Thinking of the system, the green screens appeared in front of him:

[Available Laws:]

[Darkness Law +10]

[Wind Law +10]

[Water Law +10]

[Earth Law +2]

[Fire Law +2]

[Lightning Law +2]

[Almighty Law]

[Enhancement Points available: 02]

Basically, since they were on the Yin side of the desert, most people ended up getting the Water or Wind Laws, while a few picked Earth, though most considered it less useful. As for the Darkness Law, it was super common among assassins and thieves—thousands of whom Darian had already killed.

Among the primordial beasts, there were some rare ones with affinity for Fire or Lightning, and in those cases the system granted them those options. With a lot of luck, Darian managed to get both, and later earned two enhancements.

When he hit +10, the system warned him that he had reached the max cap before advancing to the next realm. Only by advancing could he go further.

By then, Darian had already reached level 5 a long time ago, meaning he could step into the first realm whenever he wanted. In total, he had earned 6 enhancement points to spend. To acquire and then upgrade the Almighty Law, though, it required 3 enhancement points.

Unfortunately, he had wasted his very first enhancement point before completing the special mission. Because of that, he was only able to acquire the Almighty Law once, leaving the rest of his points useless.

As for the power of the Almighty Law, it was pretty straightforward. When activated by the system, Darian had to point out a target. Then, the system itself would strike in his place.

It wasn't physical damage—it was a theft. It would absorb one of the person's strengths and transfer it to the user. What exactly was absorbed depended on the target's race or personal traits.

In short, this Almighty Law was insanely useful. In one-on-one fights, it was ridiculously hard to beat someone with it. Anyone who managed to save up and get it without hesitation had an unbelievable advantage.

That only made Darian more and more obsessed with finding powerful bastards who had that Law. With his absorption skill, maybe one day he could actually steal it from them.

Another important thing that had happened during those years was that Darian and his little allies had visited five high-level ruins.

The guardians of those places at first didn't allow Darian to enter. But after checking what had happened to the city of the Primordial Beasts, they chose the smarter path.

Darian would only enter, stay for seven days, and then leave. After all, why create trouble for themselves?

Inside the ruins, everything was similar to the first one he had visited. Only the biome changed, making the illusory dangers subtly adapt to the environment.

In these challenges imposed by the system, Darian always came across extra trials related to morality, kindness, and honor: defending a village from predators, finding a rare herb to save people, and so on. In the end, he scored the maximum in all five ruins.

The Heavenly Elemental Spirits earned countless different techniques, each one based on their own elements and shared among all of them, which boosted the army's overall power significantly.

Darian himself got two unique techniques and three Primordial-level Stellar Ores.

These Stellar Ores weren't like the ones he had found in the training universe—the difference was like night and day. They contained elemental power at the primordial level. The strangest part was that all three were exactly Wind, Water, and Earth.

The system was handing him exactly what he needed, and this was clearly tied to the elements of Tir, Awel, and Eleri. He just had no idea why...

He already had the system's runes, so it wasn't like he lacked those three elements. In the end, he had just gotten an additional power source to use.

As for the two techniques, he quickly understood why he had received them.

They were techniques that combined two natural elements. One was focused on speed, the other on attack. Yeah... they were identical to the idea he himself had come up with for his creations: Tempest Blink and Whirlwind Flare.

Darian had two choices: drop his original techniques and only use the new ones, which were stronger; or deeply study the differences and refine his own creations.

In the second option, he could use the foundation and ideas from the new techniques to improve the two he created. Obviously, they would still be inferior to the ones he had received. But... they were something he had created, adapted to his own fighting style. Power wasn't always everything—sometimes what fit best was more important.

Another point was that techniques granted by the system would always stay the same level—he couldn't alter them perfectly since he hadn't created them.

His own creations were different: he could modify and improve them whenever he wanted. In the long run, that opened the door for far greater progress. Nothing would stop him from one day making his two techniques surpass the ones given by the system.

Thinking long-term, Darian chose to refine his own creations.

So, those two rough techniques he had come up with in his very first battle as a High Human, inside the empire's array, were now far more refined and effective. And now, they carried enormous potential for the future.

In the middle of his reflection, he heard a soft knock at the door. The real action was about to begin.

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