Aurelian took a steadying breath when the System announced what was to come, and realised he was going to be a lot later getting into the fight than he’d thought. He could feel it, in fact: the energy building within his Calamity Core like a surging tempest of power, a maelstrom of potential and inarguable might that was going to flatten him like a can of soft drink under a truck tyre.


    His eyes searched for signs of an alert, but none came, and he breathed out shakily.


    Bahamut.


    A moment of silence passed before the dragon replied.


    I know. I saw the alert as well. Bahamut said grimly. How long will you need?


    You’d know better than me, bud. Let’s just hope it isn’t too long.


    A mental rumble followed in response, but it was mild.


    Zylara’s new form is impressive, the dragon admitted, and she is more than pulling her weight. Your new creations are equally useful, albeit to a lesser degree. She appears to be working with them in perfect synchronism, which bodes well. We should be able to hold.


    Should I call them back to—


    You will be safe. Bahamut stated firmly. I will ensure it. Do as you must, Aurelian. We will hold.


    A wave of relief swept through him, and Aurelian took a breath against the rising tide of power. Even then it was like a pool forming in his Core, radiating through his veins and sending goosebumps across his flesh. For some reason, he suspected that what came next would not be like the Tempering others endured. He had been told by Tarixi already that one’s Infusions dictated the qualitative increase of each Tempering.


    His Infusions were far more powerful than almost anyone else’s, including during the prime of the Empire, if the Echo’s words were to be believed.


    Thank you, he sent to Bahamut. I will contact you when I am concluded.


    I will share my strength as needed.


    The link went quiet, and Aurelian drew another steadying breath.


    His eyes searched the immediate area nearby and he grimaced at the rampancy of sand, dirt, dry earth and ruined materials. What a time to not have his satchel. The Nephilim took another moment and then cursed and forced himself to his feet. His eyes sought the crater he’d made when saving Zylara, and he sprinted toward it immediately—ignoring the building whine of power in his body and the latent surge of raw potential blistering in his veins.


    He reached it in less than a minute, and threw caution to the wind to drop over the edge and half slide, half dirt-surf his way to the bottom. Dust and sand occluded his vision, and he tapped into his Force Dominion—very mildly—to clear the air around him with a small pulse-wave.


    Instead, he detonated a shockwave that popped his ears from the displacement.


    Moreover, he drained an exponential amount of his recovered mana.


    Aurelian’s eyes widened, and he shook his head in wonder. That was going to take some getting used to, and he’d need to practise daily, most likely, with the new skill to ensure he didn’t accidentally harm himself or his allies when using it. A shiver of anticipation rolled up his spine, and Aurelian settled himself down onto the dirt and on his back—grimacing at the discomfort of his head on the ground.


    It was, as he suspected, perfectly flat—like a divine razor had sheared it smooth.


    His eyes closed, and he let his nervous energy manifest in a wiggle of his fingers as he felt the energy in his body building. It had started in his Core, but it was not isolated there; the power was snaking in everywhere, steadily growing in both intensity and density as the seconds went by. He had thought it would be an instantaneous process, but it was almost as if the System was giving him time.


    It was a strange change from form, but one he was not about to complain over.


    Aurelian settled his hands on his abdomen, over his solar plexus, and tried not to think about what would happen next. His Pain Tolerance was level 42, which meant he was almost at Adept tier with it thanks to the insanity of his Infusions, and his Dragon’s Sanguination meant his body would be far stronger than any other Novice in the Realms.


    Combine both skills with Dragon’s Resolve, and he was reasonably certain he would—if nothing else—have quite a considerable advantage in staying alive through the Tempering. His vague understanding of the process was that it would expel impurities and, given it was his First Temper, massively expand his available soulforce.


    Tarixi had been very clear on that: Soulforce, not mana.


    It dealt primarily with his Core, his active use of power, and his aural projection.


    Mana was tied to Soulforce, but was not directly apart of it, and though that confused him to an extent—he vaguely understood. Soulforce was more about passive or instinctive skills, and things that wielded his focus, sense of self, and internal energy. It was transcendent and mystical, like sorcery.


    Mana, meanwhile, relied on rigid patterns and almost mathematical or chemical knowledge to combine different types of energy to create reactions. It was like combustion or, perhaps, like physics—crafting the framework through which the world functioned, as opposed to Soulforce, which was the essence by which existence gave that function the building blocks. They were interconnected but separate.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    It was also way above his head, but he found the puzzle distracting.


    Aurelian’s breathing calmed somewhat from the rumination, but the build of power in his body only grew, and it was only thanks to Dragon’s Resolve that he wasn’t out-and-out panicking. It was not fear, really, as much as it was nervous anticipation. A First Temper affected everything, even if Soulforce Expansion was its primary impact. It made his body more durable, his muscles denser, more responsive, and more tolerant to considerable punishment.


    There was a stark and clear difference between a Novice and an Initiate, the same way—so he had been told—that there was a clear difference between an Initiate and an Adept. Aurelian had trained against both First and Second Temper enemies, either as genuine foes or simulacrums, and that experience gave him some very practical awareness of what he could expect from—


    His Core pulsed. His breath hitched. The power inside of him flared.


    Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!


    System Energy has reached required levels for Soulforce Expansion.


    The System will now begin the First Temper process.


    Good luck, Reclaimer!


    Aurelian’s Calamity Core whined to his own mind, and began a rotation within his mind’s eye that created a whorl of prismatic motion—searing its way into rapidity beneath the skein of crimson and radiant banding. He shivered under the feeling of the metaphysical representation of his power when it created an upswing, and his hands dug into the dirt.


    Power started to build like a turbine accruing energy, and he felt himself shaking subtly—not from nerves, but from the sheer density of the energy that was beginning to come to life in his veins. Aurelian took another shaky breath and, a moment later, the first wave of power hit him.


    His back arched, his teeth grit, and he felt it sweep through his body; more intense, more powerful, and more impactful than anything that had come before. Pain Tolerance flared to life, and while the suffering did not match that of his Infusions—yet—in scope, there was a sense that what he was experiencing was simply the precursor to the main event.


    “I hate this so much…” he muttered in a voice he didn’t care sounded whiny.


    He was entitled to complain. It wasn’t like he’d chosen to be summoned. The bloody System had picked him out of who knows how many people to transmigrate, and now he was stuck being tortured by the universal arbitration engine—the closest thing to God—each time he did anything to actually improve his chance at survival.


    Another spasm rocked his body as the second wave of rising power flooded through him, and Aurelian groaned openly in pain. That one had really hurt. It felt like knives were digging into his skin, and like an acupuncture had gone horribly wrong and someone was just sticking thousands of needles into every inch of his skin. Had he not already been through mass level-ups and three Legendary Infusions, he’d have worried the pain would drive him crazy.


    Another surge rolled through his nervous system hot on the heels of the third, and this time he felt the difference. The power, he realized, wasn’t ratcheting up additively—it was ratcheting up multiplicatively. Each wave was twice as strong as the one that had come before, which made the third wave four times worse than the first.


    That meant the tenth wave would be—


    Aurelian killed the thought before he could finish it and squeezed his eyes shut even tighter.


    No time to dwell on that. Just focus on surviving for now.


    When the fourth wave crashed into him, Aurelian felt his jaw creak from the force of biting down, and he felt his consciousness waver at the suddenness of the onslaught. If it was only ratcheting up in additive waves, that would be one thing—but this… this was something else entirely. Tarixi hadn’t mentioned anything like this, and Aurelian was beginning to want to go back in time and yell at himself never to lose that stupid storage room.


    He opened his mouth to laugh hysterically at his own situation, and then the fifth wave hit.


    It crashed into him like a cascade of mind-warping agony, and Aurelian raged at the fact that it was absolute bullshit that Pain Tolerance hadn’t gained a level. His body writhed, his fingers clawed at the dirt, and he tasted copper in his throat from a scream he didn’t know he’d unleashed—a scream loud enough and forceful enough that he’d torn the tissue of his throat.


    He didn’t last until the sixth wave.


    Darkness embraced him, and Aurelian was free of the pain.


    A moment later he opened his eyes to a white expanse, staring up at space.


    Aurelian furrowed his brow in surprise, and found himself lying on a ground that wasn’t entirely a ground. His eyes raked the sky, which showed countless stars, nebulae, comets, and other astral phenomena—and then lowered to look around a stretching plain of pure white.


    A blink followed, and suddenly the white was green grass, and a tree stood in full bloom nearby. Its trunk was white, with platinum and golden whorls across his length. He recognized the tree. He’d seen it before. He’d been sitting against it when he first transmigrated.


    Aurelian picked himself up from the ground, looked down at himself, and noticed he was wearing new attire. A white toga, of some sort, adorned his body, with nothing on his feet and what looked like platinum bands around his biceps, each one bearing the embellishment of a soaring dragon in obsidian stone.


    His eyes moved back to the tree, and Aurelian now saw he was no longer alone.


    A woman with jet black hair sat against its trunk, right leg stretched out and left leg pulled inward, with her left arm resting over her knee. She wore a simple toga of her own, cinched in silver at the waist, and entirely black in colouration—with crimson trimming along the edges.


    As he watched, her right hand rose, and she curled a beckoning finger.


    “Don’t be scared, Alex—or should I call you Aurelian?” she asked rhetorically in a strong and faintly amused voice. “I am neither god nor devil, and I mean you no harm.”


    Aurelian arched an eyebrow warily, but given the tree was there, and she knew his Earth name, something told him he was—at least for that moment—safe. It was obvious she was connected to the System somehow, and she didn’t look like any of the gods he’d seen.


    “Who are you?” he half-asked, half-demanded while he approached, and eyed the woman carefully. Her skin was faintly tanned, in a way reminiscent of the Mediterranean on Earth, and her features spoke of what he would actually call Greek ancestry at a glance.


    “This is the part where I say it isn’t all that important,” the woman said with a wry smile, and a crinkle of mirth around the corners of her eyes—both of which were red, and as bright a shade of scarlet as his own.


    “But?” Aurelian prompted her as he came closer and halted a few feet away.


    “But,” the woman continued agreeably, “I don’t care much for the mysterious, and I am not vlammeni.”


    “Vla-what?”


    The woman laughed at him, and shook her head with an apologetic wave.


    “Sorry, it slips out sometimes. Forget it,” she said and offered her right hand to him casually from the ground. “Pleased to meet you, Aurelian Lucis Imperius,” she said warmly when he took her hand. Her grip was warm, but her palm was calloused, and Aurelian felt a strength there that could have crushed his bones in an instant.


    “My name is Elysea.”