5.49 Empyrean rising (Patreon)

Difference: Minimal

After their first mission, Irwyn finally had the opportunity do to what he had wanted to since before the Summit: Spar with an experienced Domain mage. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, compare his magic to one. 

Not long after embodying a Domain, Irwyn had realized that he lacked a way to compare his magic against anyone else. Elizabeth was not exactly a reasonable comparison either, as they were both rapidly improving at the time and were just as clueless about how they would compare to others.

When first experimenting with his Domain, Irwyn had thus designed a scale of sorts. Measuring the magnitude of each facet of his Domain, where 100 points would be comparable to his first cast of a barrier using separation without a chant. As he had found both then and since, even small things like intent or the environment could massively affect that.

Since then, he had undergone some months of reclusive training to improve. Between spars, repetitive exercise, and experimentation he had made much progress. And also found his scale to be deeply insufficient. Flawed. Because he lacked the understanding to construct something proper.

He had accidentally chosen to display just raw durability with it. Improving in that direction, Irwyn had been able to push that metric all the way to 350—outside a spar—before he fully plateaued. That did not mean that had been the end of the improvements he could make. Not long later he had discovered a significantly more efficient way to stop outside intrusion from the Void in response to Elizabeth finding a way to completely bypass his existing “boundary” to slip inside during a spar.

After much contemplation, Irwyn decided that the problem was applying the measurement too broadly. He liked to think of his barrier as one spell, but that was not how the facets of his Domain really operated. They were each composed of increasingly more precise parts that got increasingly hyperspecific the further he tried to examine them. For his barrier, he was trying to master “separation”, but that was not what he had done. Instead, he had mostly practiced the subparts of separation which were effective against piercing attacks and impacts, not the totality of it.

Which was another headache to contemplate. Because that was the only metric where Irwyn could actually perceive his improvement. Defense against the straightforward felt more solid. Let him feed the spell more raw mana and become increasingly more unshakable with every improvement. But there was no such convenient feeling when he made advancements in protections against hostile teleportation or other indirect entry. In fact, he couldn’t even be truly sure they were improvements without practical testing, which could ever be done only for Void magic.

Similar issues had plagued almost all his exercises. He made improvements, but eventually mostly plateaued. Best off was his vision, which was somewhere between ‘piercing’ like sunlight and ‘omniscient’ like a sun looking from above. Since optimal use required no combat, he had made massive strides, measuring himself against the Dry Palace’s enchantments. Eventually, there were issues with variety, but he had gotten rather skilled at seeing through certain enchantments. After some thought, Irwyn had decided not to apply the “magnitude” to those spells though, since the improvements were again not possible to diagnose so directly.

The worst off was desolation. Unwilling to truly hurt Elizabeth and inside a relatively fragile dueling chamber, Irwyn could never afford to go properly all out, and it showed. His magnitude ended up stalled at around 200, sometimes falling short of even that. After making the discovery about imperceptible improvements he managed to figure out a few devious tricks, but the raw power ended up being rather lacking in comparison to his other improvements.

Irwyn was thus eager to finally test his magic against someone with extensive experience of steady progress. The reason they had never quite asked for a comparison before was twofold. First, because of the escalation and increased urgency after the Summit, getting help from a Domain mage with decades of battle experience would likely pull them from a battlefield. 

The bigger worry had been discretion, as making such a request would require pulling on connections to perhaps even the Archduke. And while the cat was somewhat out of the bag after the Summit, it was still unwise to let details proliferate too far. Such as greatly increasing the number of people in the know or details on their growth. Anyone who realized how young they were would quickly become very interested. Meanwhile, they were still technically trying to stop the major factions in the Duchy of Black from learning the truth—even if Irwyn harbored increasing doubts of how much longer that could possibly last.

With Fig it was a much lesser worry, as the squad leaded had, at the very least, respect for their privacy. While Boat had lightly pried about their identities, Fig and Blow never once so much as glanced sideways at the masks hiding their facades. Detached from their identities, everyone would assume they had just made themselves sound younger, and with no names or faces to match, it would be difficult to make the connection retroactively.

“Ready?” Fig asked, interrupting the train of thought.

Irwyn had his barrier already erected. No chant, but full effort put into it besides that. Meanwhile, the squad leader had prepared three attacks to test it. A swarm of water needless, a rock spike the size of a large building, and a massive gust of cutting wind ready to envelop him whole.

After all, even though Realm was most known for the abundance of earthly rock, it technically held sway over all non-biological parts of a landscape. It was just that focusing on more than reinforced rock was generally inefficient in comparison and thus discouraged. Because of his limited interactions with Realm mages in the first place, Irwyn had known it was a possibility, but had never seen it done by anyone with notable power compared to himself at the time.

“Yes,” he affirmed.

First were the needles. They spread into clusters as well as individual attacks trying to both overwhelm with brute force and find weakpoints. The latter was doomer from the start, as Irwyn’s spell was uniform. As for the former, Irwyn withheld judgment until they struck. Like rain.

About as harmful too. Though, logically, those attack would be each able to overwhelm someone at the peak of Conception, Irwyn’s barrier barely even reacted to them. As it was outside of a proper battle, the magnitude on his scale would be around 330 or so. Apparently an overkill.

“Any difficulty?” Fig asked.

“I might need to make the barrier weaker,” Irwyn frowned. “This tells me nothing.”

And so he did. It took repeated weakening to start getting any reaction at all. Down to a magnitude of 160 for the first signs of strains to even appear. Then all the way down to 75, less than a fourth of his full capability, for the barrier to be actually overwhelmed.

Perhaps Fig could even feel his disappointment. “Let’s see the rest before we talk more.”

The rock and the winds revealed little else. Irwyn’s defense was somewhat better against omnidirectional attacks, but it was made to withstand everything, including singular strikes like the building sized reinforced rock. He needed a similar level of lowering to be breached… while standing still, not doing anything to reinforce nor intercept.

It was honestly both disappointing and exciting. He had already become so powerful, yet still had so far to go. If only he could get a better grasp as to the how.

Fig opened the conversation headed that way. “About ten years ago one of the Truth Mages in the Duchy of Brown had offered to conduct a widespread review for any Domain Realm mage who had the interest. Therefore I have a good understanding of where I stand. I assume you never had a similar opportunity?”

“No,” Irwyn shook his head. Elizabeth mimed the same. He half-expected Fig to try and pry, but she simply nodded and moved on. Another part why he felt comfortable showing her their apparent ignorance—the woman seemed to lack even a sliver of curiosity as to anyone else’s business.

“I do not specialize in attack, but he has appraised my offense to reach about 20 to 25 percent of REALM’s full potential. My traversal reaches about 85 percent of REALM’s and 90 of UNDERPATH’s. Of course, since I do not actually intent to return someone’s remains to our Realm outside actual combat, the number would be a bit higher in real battle, but its roughly accurate.”

“So a quarter of a Domain’s full power cannot shake my barrier,” Irwyn summarized.

“It’s not power, Mockingbird. Potential. Power implies that the difference between 25 and 75 has to be triple. That is distinctly not the case. It differs greatly from Domain to Domain, but the extremely generalized estimate is that every ten percent of mastery doubles the actual danger a Domain mage posses.”

“So someone with full mastery is… 512 times more powerful than someone with just 10%? Those are Imbuement numbers again.” Irwyn quickly calculated.

“Domains are far less straightforward. It’s never just raw mana or elemental control, that merely serves as a multiplier. It is breadth of options and grasp of intricate applications. Do not think of mastery as a linear scale, or a scale at all for that matter. There can be a single trick which would account for less than a one percent which will allow someone to beat opponents they would stand no chance against otherwise.

“I have known many Inquisitors who would be quantified to grasp only 15% of SOUL’s offensive potential, yet they knew the exact parts that let them obliterate undead who could wield thrice that. The low number merely represented that they were basically useless with any attacks targeting the living. The doubling of danger is meant to signify the sheer breadth of new options and unforeseeable trump cards.”

That made Irwyn wonder how that logic applied to his “magnitude”. It was, after all, a relative scale based entirely on his self-perception. Determining whether his senses gave him linear values would require very specific testing. He tried to think back to the data points he had, and quickly decided that the scale in his head wasn’t quite linear, but the growth curve accelerated relatively slowly. 

Elizabeth, meanwhile, nodded and spoke. “So someone who grasps the right ten percent of a specific corner of Domain could be much more devastating than someone with multitudes more mastery in the right situation.”

“Exactly,” Fig confirmed. “An offensively focused Realm mage half again my age would likely not be able to achieve a fraction of what I do with my traversal spells. The calculation gets even more complicated with additional Domains and becomes incredibly difficult to self-evaluate. Usually, only a Truth mage can estimate your mastery after seeing you try and deploy its full breadth, and even then its just an estimation. 99% could be called true perfection, because not even immortals can grasp the absolute breadth of a Domain’s minutiae.”

“The no one can know exactly how profound their grasp is, since there are too many incomprehensible variables,” Irwyn summarized. “I can at least feel improvement in some factors, but not all of them. Basically only the straightforward ones.”

“The easiest to perceive are what could actually be called raw power. Increasing the density of mana so that it may apply the Domain more strongly. Perhaps you will develop a sense for the direction of your subsequent path as well. I had eventually learned to intuit when I was making progress on improving my traversal.”

Afterwards, Irwyn performed similar exercise with his offensive magic—and Elizabeth likewise got her share of time—but there were no real further insights. Either way, Irwyn had gotten plenty to think about. For perhaps the first time since early Imbuement, there was genuine uncertainty in his magic. And in a way, that deeply excited him.

In total, they got three days of rest before being called on again. A surprisingly long window, though Fig explained that as a combination of their limited operation range as well as the war having slowed down to a crawl due to mutual attrition. During that second mission, Irwyn realized he would likely be making truly absurd progress on his Domain mastery.

Their arrival was much like the first time, traversing an unreasonably fast bubble beneath the earth. Then, for the first time ever since stepping into a Domain, Irwyn was faced with real resistance. Instead of arriving to a rescue, they were dispatched to burn down a hidden cell that had been uncovered by divination after great struggle. Inside, they found full seven Raveners.

Though unprepared, their approach was not quite enough to catch the group off guard as one of them wielded REALM. They also only learned the actual number of enemies and their elements  once engaging. Something that worried Fig, at least to a degree.

“If you cannot hold on, sound the retreat immediately,” she commanded, then began to stir up a storm again. Both to stop the lesser undead from intervening and to build the smokescreen which benefited their squad.

Within the first barrage, Irwyn realised he had broken through the limits that had constrained him. Even though his magnitudes were far from an accurate descriptor of his mastery, he felt them all rising from their first taste of real combat. After all, there was only so much a life saving barrier could be polished in scenarios where no life was in danger. Not to even speak on the radical change in desolation, which demanded he destroy the Rot.

In other words, since most of his facets could only be fully expressed in real combat, experiencing it pushed his mastery by weeks of practice for every moment he put his all into the battle. Of course, not holding back meant that the battle was brief against a few bottom rung Raveners, but there was nothing to be done about that. If he didn’t try to wholeheartedly annihilate them, how could the facet of desolation truly sprout?

So Irwyn destroyed. Stars fell in a relentless barrage as the Raveners tried anything they could to break through his barrier. The two Void mages were his biggest worry. Or perhaps just one, as the other stepped into the Void and then did not comae out again, courtesy of Elizabeth that hid, looking for better opportunities. Experimentally, Irwyn let a bit of the fire power land on a carefully separated segment of his protections.

Their Void magic was still very effective at breaking his barrier, but not nearly so much as Elizabeth’s. Not just in power and implementation, but on a more fundamental level. Like… her VOIDFIRE was actually more Void than the Ravener’s, and thus expressed its anathemic mutual annihilation with light more potently. That gave him an idea: Could he reduce that influence? Make Void and Light more compatible?

The old saying went that against natural laws, Domains nudged, Truths bent, and Edicts broke. What was then stopping Irwyn from making his Starfire less prone to being destroyed by the Void? A fascinating thought that had to be saved only for after the battle. But that was for later.

Despite his little experiment, Irwyn was genuinely pressed. The six enemies attacked him relentlessly with spells made to break through defenses exactly like his. They would try and stop him from intercepting the most damaging Void magic. Try and figure out gaps in his perception and scouting for weaknesses, all the while avoiding or easily withstanding anything the rest of the squad threw at them from within the proactive bubble. 

But Irwyn was not staying idle. With his rapid improvement also came the opportunity to ramp up his offense as the battle went on. The barrage of desolate falling stars that was more of an annoyance at first suddenly spiked into a genuine threat, as Irwyn achieved and implemented several simultaneous breakthroughs just intending to obliterate his enemies had caused.

The first time he landed a real hit and watched the diminished and weakened little star literally burn a hole into the Ravener’s very Soul, Irwyn made another jump in capability. Because that was desolation. Not just something that burns, but the destructions placed into the heart of the very stars. The will to incinerate everything to dust, even souls. Because once caught in its fury, the undead would be powerless to extricate themselves from that heavenly fury.

One of the Raveners soon fell to Irwyn’s relentless attack, surprised by the sudden potency as they cornered themselves trying to block. They were almost saved by the Time mage of the group, who tried to dive in for a rescue, except that Blow had been as if waiting for that exact moment, disrupting that undead with all his might. His mastery worked wonderfully for that, preventing a rescue and even scoring an invisible wound on the enemy. Irwyn did not have any time to finish it off himself as Elizaeth slipped in for a final blow. Shredding even the Soul, severing it like only the Void could..

Not long after, the remaining Raveners ran. The five split into two groups, each fleeing in a different direction. Fig immediately decided they would pursue the bigger one. Two of them quickly sacrificed themselves to give the third an opportunity to flee. Which was by the way of destroying their body and fleeing with just the Soul that Irwyn did not have a good way to contain.

The escapee was still injured at least somewhat though, and the other two put down properly. They proceeded to clear what little was left of the horde and soon were in retreat, before the Rot had any chance to launch a reply. 

“You can burn souls,” their Inquisitor said in even voice once they were in the tunnel again. “Unusual.”

“I wasn’t sure how well it would work,” Irwyn admitted. He had seen the effect with Draugr in Conception, but it was no sure thing this would apply for the much more potent Souls housing a Domain.  

“Three still escaped,” Boat still sighed, an almost audible irritation in his voice. “Two undamaged.”

“It will still take the last some years to recreate the bodies,” Fig consoled. “And four out of seven is a damn good haul. Most squads would have had to retreat or suffer casualties if the Raveners chose to fight them to the bitter end.”

“Rarely does the Rot flee from a wining ground. Or even a decent draw,” Blow added. “Next time, they will know you better and run sooner.”