Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 49: Mage

Uriel washed up while Enoch cleaned the mess they’d made across the house.

Well, to say he did would be inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say his army of Lie Eaters did all the work, much to Uriel’s dismay.

A while later, the house stood spotless, all dust and blood gone and a deep floral scent pervading through the air.

"How do I form a Class?" Uriel asked Enoch as he came down the stairs. "I’ve wasted enough time. Or can I go and buy one at the shop, maybe?"

Enoch, who was lounging in the living room and still a bit weak, shook his head. "Don’t go out."

"If you do, you’ll get swarmed by the crowd."

Uriel frowned. "For what?"

Enoch threw him a glance. "You gave all of humanity boons they’d never have been able to get."

"You gave dying children cures, hopeless men courage, and weak mothers power. To them, you put your life on the line for the greater good. They don’t know you were forced."

"You’re a hero."

Uriel paused. "I guess... I didn’t think about it like that."

"But," Enoch continued, "with fame and admiration, there’s always gonna be a small crowd of greedy, opportunistic people."

"They just saw you ’kill’ billions of monsters, then get rewards for all of humanity. Then they saw your name, the same name that got first in the cloud trial."

"They probably think you have rewards valuable enough to turn them into Gods." He shrugged. "And in a sense, you do."

"People would kill for those Evolution Set Cards."

Uriel walked to the counter table and sat on one of its high chairs. "So, essentially, I’m too weak to defend myself?"

"Yeah," Enoch nodded. "As for Classes? There’s no real method to form one. You either do, or you don’t. It’s a very intangible thing."

"It’s like enlightenment. You can’t standardise it. At least, if you want it to be good and worthwhile, you can’t."

"But there are ways to guarantee it. And for you, like I told you, it’s simple. Focus on your spellcasting and your disease. Try to find the bridge between both, and it should happen."

"My disease..." Uriel muttered. His gaze sharpened. "How did you form your class? Let me see it."

"What Frames did you get?"

Enoch’s brows furrowed. "Who said I formed my own? My trial was suspended before I could succeed."

"But I should have mine soon. I’m close."

"You can’t just directly reform your class?" Uriel asked. "If it’s a matter of enlightenment, or even comprehension, don’t you literally just have to... remember?"

Enoch sighed. "I could, but I don’t want to. Most of the classes I created back then made sense in the context I was in."

"Gaining a Class and a Spark Frame while knowing time doesn’t really matter, and that you can restart anytime, isn’t comparable to... now. If I make a choice, it’s final."

"This is my last chance to get the most out of my potential. To truly forge a path that’ll be enough to support my hopes."

Uriel nodded, not speaking immediately.

He could imagine the pressure.

Living as a regressor, where consequences held no meaning and death was pointless, surely had to fundamentally change the way one viewed the world.

’He also failed and died ten times. Or more than that. Each time, his classes and frames probably weren’t powerful enough.’

A thought drifted across his mind.

"Wait—how do I know I’m going in the right direction, then? What if I create a class worse than anything I’ve done in the past?"

"Did my past self, or future self, not give you any instructions to pass on to me?" he asked, panic threading into his voice. "Anything regarding my Class, or even my Spark?"

Enoch chuckled and gave Uriel an apologetic look.

"All you said was that understanding your disease would be enough. Understanding it is also your Death Quest."

"He..." Enoch chuckled again. "...said that if you can’t surpass him as you are, then it’d be pointless anyway."

Uriel grimaced.

"Of course I did."

He closed his eyes, massaging his forehead as Enoch laughed. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

...

Moments later, Enoch fell asleep, still exhausted from his close encounter with death.

Uriel sat cross-legged not far away, in the middle of the room.

With his eyes closed, he finally assimilated the knowledge from the guide in his pack, mulling over every stream of information and block of guidance.

’...Huh. How interesting.’

As it turned out, Uriel’s spellcasting was unorthodox to the point of being horrible and inefficient.

Currently, the way Uriel cast spells was rather simple.

He harmonised his natal aether with the atmospheric aether of the world, forming a resonance between the two. Then, he used his mind and intent to mould that resonance into runes.

Runes, as he’d found out, were letters of a language that coded the states of aether, controlling its changes and transformations.

Runes were letters. Spell circles were commands, sentences.

If aether birthed all things, and all things birthed aether, then spellcasting was a method of controlling these two sides: to mould aether into fire, to break flames back down into aether, and to cycle between the two states.

More specifically, he cast spells purely by copying the runes the little witch had used, runes he didn’t understand, but could still deploy by copying her Spell Sentry formation.

The Spell Sentry formation he placed at his back whenever he used runes essentially allowed him to cast spells without doing any of the work himself.

It was a shocking creation, most likely the hallmark of the little witch’s genius, assuming she existed somewhere in the wider universe, but it was also a formation Uriel couldn’t properly use.

Because he was doing it all wrong.

’By the gods.’ Uriel couldn’t help but shake his head inwardly as he finished reading through the guide.

It was actually quite simple.

The path of a mage—the path of spell use—was an auxiliary system built directly atop the path of Ascendance.

The two fed off one another.

’Let’s try this.’