Sael stared out at the passing countryside without really seeing it, his mind occupied with the implications of what the professor had revealed. An avatar. They weren't just trying to tear open a rift and let the Primordial flood through in its raw, chaotic form; they wanted to give it a physical anchor in this world. A body it could inhabit, through which it could exert its will with precision rather than the mindless hunger that characterized most Corruption manifestations.

  That changed things.

  A Primordial with focused intent, and the ability to plan and strategize rather than simply consume... the Battle of Yrsult would look like a minor skirmish by comparison. And if they'd been working toward this for years, possibly decades, then the infrastructure had to be extensive. Cells scattered across multiple cities, maybe multiple kingdoms.

  He'd purged two so far in Orlys and the mines of Marrix. How many more were out there? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

  And somewhere among all those infected, there was someone the Corruption had deemed suitable and whose body could withstand the strain of housing a Primordial's essence.

  Finding that person before the summoning occurred was—

  The cart hit a rut in the road, jostling everyone inside.

  Sael barely noticed. They were heading to deal with the merchant he'd encountered a few days ago, the one who'd tried to sell him that suspiciously enchanted amulet. He'd deal with them the same way he'd dealt with the professor: beat them nearly to death and purge the Corruption.

  Would they have answers? Leads on the avatar's identity, or the locations of other cells?

  Probably not. The compartmentalization seemed deliberate, designed to prevent exactly the kind of intelligence gathering he was attempting. Each corrupted individual knew only their immediate circle, their specific directives. The network protected itself through isolation.

  Which made this slow. Painfully slow, for what he was now racing against.

  "Archmage."

  Richter's voice cut through his thoughts.

  Sael blinked, pulling his attention back to the present. The Duke was watching him with concern and wariness.

  "You've been very quiet ever since we got back in the cart," Richter said. His tone was casual, but there was an undercurrent of unease. "What happened back there with the professor... is everything alright?"

  Sael realized, belatedly, that he'd been sitting perfectly still for the entire ride, staring at nothing, his expression probably somewhere between grim and murderous as he worked through the strategic implications.

  ...That must have looked somewhat threatening.

  He considered for a moment, then decided there was no point in being evasive. Not with what was at stake.

  "If you had to guess," he said, turning to face Richter properly, "how and why I'm so powerful and long-lived despite being human, what would you say?"

  Richter's expression shifted, surprise flickering across his features before settling into something more contemplative. He leaned back slightly, clearly taking the question seriously.

  The silence stretched for several long moments.

  "Honestly," the Duke said finally, "it's a question many have asked throughout history. There are hundreds of theories about you, Archmage. Some of which I read myself at the military academy." He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Divine blessing. Ancient pacts with entities beyond mortal comprehension. Forbidden magic that trades something fundamental for power. Some even claim you're not one person at all, but a succession of individuals taking up the same name and mantle."

  "And which one do you think is closer to the truth?"

  Richter fell silent again, his gaze distant as he worked through whatever thoughts were occupying him. When he spoke, there was a hesitance to his voice that hadn't been there before.

  "Honestly, after I met you in person... after seeing everything you've done..." He met Sael's eyes. "I don't think a human being could be this powerful. No matter how long they train, no matter what knowledge they accumulate. Every race has their upper limits. The Jade Emperor reached that ceiling, declared there was no way to advance further. He is the known peak of what humanity could achieve."

  The Duke's expression grew more troubled.

  "I witnessed him fight once, you know. The Jade Emperor, I mean. It was humbling. The sheer scale of power he commanded, the precision with which he wielded it... it redefined what I thought was possible for our kind." He paused. "But after watching you? I don't think you would lose, if the two of you were to fight. And I've been thinking about that for a while now."

  Richter drew in a breath.

  "So no offense, Archmage, but I don't think you're human. Nor demon, nor fey, nor anything I've seen or read about before."

  Sael listened without interrupting, as Richter held his gaze for a long moment.

  "...This is about the avatar," the Duke said slowly. "Isn't it?"

  Sael said nothing, which was answer enough.

  Richter's jaw tightened. "You're asking me this because of what the professor said, yes? About the Corrupted searching for a vessel?" He shook his head. "Archmage, I'm not sure how feasible that actually is. The tolerances required to contain a Primordial's essence... we're talking about forces that would tear apart anything mortal. Perhaps an ancient dragon could survive the strain, and even that I'd consider optimistic. But a person?" He looked at Sael. "I don't think we should worry too much for them finding one."

  "It's possible," Sael said quietly. "Even among humans."

  Richter frowned. "How do you—"

  "Because I've experienced it myself."

  The cart rattled on, but neither of them spoke for several seconds.

  He noticed Oz watching him without even pretending to do otherwise, those beady chicken eyes fixed on him with uncharacteristic intensity.

  "When I was seven, my mother broke my…" Sael froze for a moment. Hmm, what word could he use here? In High Elvish, it would have been simple, since there was a word that carried the weight of the act. But in Common… there was nothing that captured the way she had pried something out of him, a natural restraint he hadn’t even realized existed.

  ...Limiter? Yes. Limiter came closest, though it sounded clumsy, but it would do, he supposed.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "When I was seven," he repeated, "my mother broke my limiter."

  "Limiter?" Richter frowned. "What’s a limiter?"

  "You said it best yourself," Sael replied. "Each race can level up to a certain ceiling. Most never reach their full potential—it's rare, extremely so—but it happens. The Jade Emperor, as you mentioned. In my case, the... ceiling of my human nature was broken when my mother gave me something called the Mana of Origin."

  "Mana of Origin," Richter repeated slowly, testing the words. His bushy brows furrowed. "I've never heard of that before." He paused, something clicking into place. "But now that I think about it... didn't you say your mother was the avatar of the Primordial of Wrath?"

  "What?!" Oz interjected sharply.

  Sael smiled at the chicken. "Would you like to comment?"

  Oz turned his head away with an air of deliberate dismissal as Sael's smile widened slightly. He'd come around eventually. He was sure of it.

  "Yes," Sael confirmed, turning back to Richter. "But she wasn't like other avatars. Avatars are generally people born with certain magical and physical dispositions that make them able to host the essence of a Primordial summoned into the world. But once the Primordial enters their body, it becomes theirs completely. The avatar is functionally dead; their body totally overtaken and used by the Primordial as a vessel."

  He could see Richter processing that, the implications settling across his features with visible unease.

  "I suppose," the Duke said carefully, weighing each word, "your mother wasn't like that, when you said she wasn't like the others."

  "Correct. The Tellem were the first sapient beings to exist after the Primordials themselves. They were advanced not just in magic, but in Deep Magic, the fundamental force that gave birth to the universe and to the Primordials. The energy that flows from that origin is the Mana of Origin."

  Sael's expression grew distant, remembering.

  "My mother and her companions created a series of spells and wards to imprison the Primordial's essence within her body. It gave her a portion of Wrath's power without requiring her death, without surrendering her body to the aspect. This was the same party of heroes who managed to banish the Primordial of Corruption to its own dimension. Many of them became avatars through this method; vessels that retained their autonomy while wielding Primordial power."

  Sael realized he'd only ever talked about this with Eirlys. It was information he'd rather not be widely known—the last thing he needed was ambitious mages attempting to replicate the process and inevitably destroying themselves or worse. But as things stood right now...

  "I'm telling you this," Sael continued, "because my mother and her party, despite having only a fraction of a Primordial's power, were so powerful that after their fight with the entity, the three continents at the time became the twelve we now know. They managed to drive the aspect of Corruption into its own realm." He let that sink in. "Those were people who had only a fraction of power, and they weren't normal avatars. Now imagine a full Primordial, with complete access to their abilities, anchored in this world through a proper avatar's body."

  Richter's face had gone pale and Sael paused for a moment, organizing his thoughts.

  "To break my limiter, my mother conditioned me from a tender age. By seven, she had me undergo a ritual that she'd had millennia to research, test, and perfect during her time in Hel, after the Primordials condemned her for stealing Wrath's essence."

  He saw Richter's expression shift, a question forming, but the Duke visibly swallowed it back. Not the subject at hand.

  Sael was grateful for the restraint.

  "She gave me the Mana of Origin when I was still young enough to grow with it, for it to integrate into my very being. This is why, over time, I became what the System recognizes as a Demi-Primordial."

  Richter went utterly still.

  "A... Demi-Primordial," he repeated, the words sounding strange in his mouth.

  "What?" Oz's head swiveled toward Sael with such speed it should have been comical, but the chicken's entire posture had changed. His feathers were slightly ruffled, and for once, the perpetual judgment in his beady eyes had been replaced by a sentiment closer to genuine alarm.

  Sael watched them both process it. He understood the reaction; it wasn't the sort of revelation that settled easily into one's worldview.

  "I will keep evolving as time goes by," Sael said quietly. "Even if I do nothing to actively level up. Which I've been avoiding." He paused, letting that land. "Because the end of that path would be to become a full Primordial myself. And the world would not be able to contain me."

  Richter's throat worked as he swallowed. "You mean—"

  "I mean the physical laws that govern this reality would eventually begin to break down around my presence. Space would warp. The very fabric of existence would tear at the seams trying to accommodate something it was never designed to hold."

  The Duke's face had lost what little color it had regained. Oz had gone completely silent, not even a token cluck.

  "But if this is me," Sael continued, gesturing vaguely at himself, "not at my full potential, what do you think a full Primordial would be like? The kind the Corrupted are trying to bring into this world through a proper avatar?"

  The question hung in the air.

  Richter opened his mouth to speak, then closed it after a while. Sael supposed the Duke's military training had clearly prepared him for strategic thinking, for calculating odds and assessing threats, but this was quite beyond the scope of conventional warfare.

  "You're saying," he finally managed, his voice careful, "that even you, as you are now, wouldn't be able to stop it."

  "I'm saying it would be stronger than me, yes." Sael held his gaze. "Significantly so. It would have full access to its power, and its only goal would be consumption. A is Corruption's nature. And with a Primordial's full strength behind that nature..."

  He didn't need to finish the thought.

  Richter's hands had unconsciously clenched into fists, knuckles white against the fabric of his trousers. "The avatar the professor mentioned, I suppose they have reasons to believe they actually exist somewhere, in this world?"

  "It would be better to assume so, yes."

  The single word carried the weight of millennia.

  Oz made a small, strangled sound that might have been distress, his feathers flattening against his body in a way Sael had never seen before.

  Richter's jaw worked silently for a moment, his mind clearly racing through possibilities. "Do you think they actually know how to do this, though? How to find an avatar, and perform the summoning correctly? That knowledge was lost to time, wasn't it? Even in the most comprehensive archives at the Royal Library, there's barely a mention of the process beyond vague references in fragmentary texts."

  Sael considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. This was the crux of it, really. The difference between a catastrophe and an apocalypse.

  "I don't know," he admitted. "But I do know this: the first time the Primordial of Corruption entered our world, twelve thousand years ago, the High Elves didn't have knowledge of what an avatar was either. They didn't understand the mechanics, didn't have the framework. Someone simply... experimented. They attempted rituals, made assumptions based on incomplete information, tried to harness power they fundamentally didn't comprehend."

  He paused, letting Richter follow the logic.

  "And they failed. Catastrophically. Instead of creating a controlled vessel, they summoned the actual Primordial in its pure, unfiltered form. No avatar, no anchor, and certainly no buffer between our reality and something that existed beyond the boundaries of natural law."

  "You're saying both scenarios are possible?"

  "Precisely." Sael's expression was grave. "If they know what they're doing—if somewhere in their network there's someone who's pieced together the lost knowledge and understands the requirements for a suitable avatar and the ritual mechanics—then they'll succeed in creating what they intend. An avatar would be found. Corruption would descend upon the world and remain in it long enough to do whatever Corruption does. Consume, unmake, spread. The body would last perhaps a century before burning out entirely, but in that time..."

  He didn't need to elaborate. A century was more than enough time to reduce the world to ash.

  "But," Sael continued, his voice taking on an even darker edge, "if they don't know how to properly perform the summoning, if they lack the knowledge to identify or prepare a suitable avatar, then they're even more dangerous. Because we could be witnessing a second coming of the true Primordial of Corruption, unbound and uncontained, exactly like twelve thousand years ago."

  To that declaration, Oz had gone completely motionless as his eyes were fixed on Sael and Richter's composure was cracking at the edges.

  "Which scenario is worse?"

  "The second," Sael said without hesitation. "By a considerable margin. An avatar, terrible as it would be, would at least give us time. If they know what they're doing, finding a person whose body is special enough to withstand a Primordial's essence—someone with the right magical disposition and the physical resilience—that takes time. They need to search, test and prepare. It would give me time to track them and identify their candidates then disrupt their operations before they succeed."

  He paused, his expression darkening. "But a true Primordial, manifesting directly would break the world."

  The cart rumbled on through the countryside, the sound of wheels on packed earth suddenly seeming absurdly mundane against the backdrop of their conversation.

  "The point is," Sael said, his voice quiet, "this is bigger than I anticipated. Significantly bigger. The network has been building toward something that could threaten the world on a scale not seen since the first Age of Ash."

  He met Richter's eyes directly.

  "And because of that, I now envision no longer stopping my own progression, if push comes to shove."