Is every Archlord this impossible to kill?
Dirtclaw felt like he had hit a wall. In terms of pure combat technique, he had nothing left to show. He had emptied his arsenal of strikes, feints, and savagery, yet the enemy refused to die.
Realizing that brute force alone wouldn't secure the kill, Dirtclaw's manic energy receded. His expression shifted from wild excitent to a cold, solemn gravity. He stared into the compound eyes of the monstrosity.
"What is your na?"
It was an absurd question to ask a beast in the middle of a death match. The only answer he received was a chittering, wary shriek.
"Lost your mind completely, have you?" Dirtclaw shook his head. "Fine. Naless it is."
He lowered his head, his claws twitching as if grasping for sothing unseen in the air.
"Whoever you are... I am going to bury you."
He began to mutter, his voice dropping to a rhythmic, fanatical whisper.
"Not out of anger. Not out of hate. But so that I may live better. My enemies must be buried."
Dirtclaw looked possessed. He wasn't talking to the insect anymore; he was reciting a liturgy to himself.
"Today, I bury the enemy. Tomorrow, I welco the dawn. For this, I suppress you. I turn you to dust. I turn you to smoke."
Dirtclaw raised both hands, palms open toward the sky. His expression was devout, his gaze unyielding.
manifesting in his grasp was a heavy, unadulterated slab of gray stone. A blank tombstone.
"SUPPRESS."
The word fell from his lips like a gavel strike.
The blank tombstone vanished from his hands and reappeared instantly above the titan insect's head. It expanded rapidly, growing until it blotted out the sun, casting a shadow that seed to weigh more than the mountain itself.
It was majestic, terrifying, and absolute.
To Dirtclaw, it felt as though he wasn't just crushing a bug; he was burying everything under the sky, pushing the very world down into the abyss.
"SACRIFICE."
Another command. The giant insect, pinned and struggling beneath the spectral weight of the grave marker, suddenly stopped moving. An unknown, cosmic force took hold. The creature's chitin dissolved. Its flesh decomposed in seconds.
In less than a minute, the titan form of Eryndor was gone.
There was no corpse. There was only a stain of blood on the rocks—Dirtclaw's own blood, shed during the lee.
The ritual complete, the massive tombstone shrank back down to the size of a tablet and floated back into Dirtclaw's hand. There was still no na carved upon it, only a stylized engraving of a giant insect.
"Is this the power of Authority?" Dirtclaw murmured, running a claw over the stone. "My power? The power of The God of the Grave?"
For the first ti, he truly understood the magnitude of the gift My Lord Orion had bestowed upon him.
"Don't abuse the Authority. It burns your own Faith Energy, which draws directly from My Lord's Divine Power."
Gustalon appeared beside him, his voice dry and pragmatic, shattering Dirtclaw's mont of reverence.
Dirtclaw blinked, snapping out of his trance. "Is the cost high?"
"The Faith Energy you just burned to suppress and sacrifice that thing was greater than the energy you harvested from its death," Gustalon explained, sounding like a disappointed accountant. "You made a bad trade. You operated at a loss."
"Huh?" Dirtclaw looked at the stone, then at the empty spot where the Archlord had been.
"The smart move," Gustalon lectured, "is to beat the enemy until they have one breath left. Then you sacrifice them. That maximizes the yield."
Gustalon continued to outline the basics of being an Exarch. Though they were different species, they both wielded Authority, and the fundantal economics of divinity were universal.
"So, the best use for Authority is just for finishing moves?"
"Generally, yes. But there are exceptions..."
In reality, Authority was versatile. Dirtclaw had perford two distinct actions: Suppression and Sacrifice. Suppression was an energy sink, and the cost scaled with the enemy's strength. Furthermore, there was a hard limit—he couldn't suppress anything stronger than Orion himself, or the Authority would shatter and rebound, potentially stripping him of his power entirely.
Far to the South, in the Citadel of Stoneheart.
Resting on the throne, Orion slowly opened his eyes. His gaze seed to pierce the stone walls, focusing on the aftermath of the battle in the central continent.
He felt it. Dirtclaw had used the Authority. He had sacrificed a newly ascended Insect King, and in doing so, etched a sliver of Insectoid Law into Orion's Divine Kingdom.
Every world was born with a complete set of laws, but which laws manifested depended on developnt. It was like DNA; a single cell held the blueprint for the whole body, yet only expressed specific traits. The developnt of a Divine Kingdom was, in essence, the asure of a god's complexity and power.
"Sacrifice benefits the Kingdom greatly," Orion mused. "Should I partition more Authority to the others?"
He hesitated. Splitting his Authority caused a temporary dip in his Faith Energy reserves. However, in the long run, it created independent channels of growth.
But timing was the issue. He was staring down a war with the sea races of the World of Eldoria. He needed to stockpile power for the dinsional conflict in the Titanion Realm. And he had to send aid to Arthas in the Minor Hell.
More importantly, Orion wanted to ascend. He needed to climb the sub-ranks of the Demigod tier. Personal strength was the only true insurance policy.
He felt trapped in a loop. To gain more Faith Energy, he needed to conquer more territory. But conquering territory cost Faith Energy. It felt like he was running in place, the ledger balancing out to zero every ti.
"It seems the legends are true," Orion thought. "Slumber is the most efficient way to accrue power."
He finally understood why so many ancient Demigods spent eons sleeping. By going dormant, they minimized consumption, allowing their reserves to slowly fill like a rain barrel.
"Enter."
Orion's thought stream broke. He sensed a presence pacing back and forth just outside the great hall.
He knew who it was. Other than Lilith, only one woman would hesitate at his door.
Hearing his voice, the figure froze for a second, then stepped into the chamber with a mix of relief and trepidation.
"Co here," Orion commanded softly.
He watched Vixen Sylvana approach. It was a rare sight.
Despite being a Vixen—a race synonymous with seduction and allure—Sylvana was an anomaly. She was quiet, almost demure. In their private monts, she was always passive, letting Orion lead.
Since he had regained his sight, she had beco even more skittish. She struggled to et his eyes. To her, his gaze wasn't just sight; it felt like a physical invasion, a divine pressure that stripped her soul bare.
"You rarely seek out on your own," Orion said, his voice echoing in the vast hall. "Let guess. Sothing significant is happening. Sothing that concerns the future of the realm... or ?"
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