Magus Reborn [Stubbing in Three Weeks]

375. Soverign of earth

The moment the earth sovereign's eyes found Veridia, Kai's instincts fired.She was on the ground. The vibrations had taken her feet out from under her like everyone else, and even if she could get a spell up in time, it wasn't going to be fast enough.

Moreover, the earth sovereign was clearly a spirit that could kill a Magus without particularly trying.

It lifted one leg and brought it down hard into the array—tendrils still wrapped around it, snapping further with each impact—and the ground responded immediately. Earth spikes tore upward in a line driving straight toward Veridia. She was already raising her hand, spell structure forming between her fingers, but her hands were shaking and she was slow.

Kai knew.

Hence, he threw his own spell before she finished building hers.

Balls of magma shot from his hands and crossed the distance in less than a second, slamming into the spikes as they rose. Explosions blasted out in waves and sent fragments raining outward in every direction. Kai was already in front of Veridia by then. His wind shield protected him, catching the debris and deflecting pieces of shattered stone back across the clearance.

The dust settled after a while and that was when he got to take a good look at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Veridia stared up at him for a moment, looking genuinely surprised. “Yeah,” she said after a few seconds.

Kai nodded and turned back to the sovereign.

"We just want to talk. We have something to ask you,” he said.

The sovereign snorted—a sound like a boulder splitting—and lifted its leg again. But Kai was ready for it with another spell.

Chains of white flame burst from his hands and shot forward to coil around the spirit's legs before it could bring them down. They wrapped tight, layer over layer, and the sovereign's movement came to a halt mid-motion as the chains pulled taut.

Its massive body hit the ground hard enough to shake the clearing all over again. Kai was already building the next spell structure when the sovereign opened its mouth.

“Oh, goddess Lumaris!” Claire yelled from the side and the next second, a tornado of earth and dust exploded outward from the spirit’s mouth, spinning and expanding at once.

Kai grabbed Veridia and threw himself left, the tornado screaming past them and slamming into the tree line.

Trees that had stood for what looked like centuries snapped at the base and crashed into each other, the sound rolling through the forest like a wave.

By the time the dust settled, the sovereign was back on its feet. It fixed its eyes on Kai and screeched, drawing back for another attack.

Then the mana shifted.

It gathered fast—a sudden dense pressure building in the sky above Claire—and a bright flash cut through the clearing before the storm sovereign materialized above her.

The air around it crackled faintly, as small bursts of lightning fell around her.

All the heads snapped towards it, and even the earth sovereign paused.

It turned its head toward the storm sovereign slowly, the rage in its brown eyes giving way to something Kai hadn't seen from it yet. It looked confused.

The two spirits stared at each other, and standing there together the difference between them was stark. Same broad shape, similar structure, but the earth sovereign was at least three times the size of the storm one. Even if both of them had similar appearances, the earth sovereign was clearly older, probably having lived for centuries.

For a second, Kai expected another attack. But then it growled, sending vibrations through their bodies.

"You are one of the sovereigns too."

A female voice cut through the air. A moment earlier, it had wanted to kill each and every one in the vicinity, but now, there was an odd calmness to its tone.

Aeralion lifted its head, chin rising with the pride that always reflected in its eyes. "I am," it said. "I am Aeralion, the great storm sovereign."

The earth sovereign blinked at that. Then it snorted.

"You are nothing more than a child," it said in a mocking tone. "With a stupid name on top of it. Don't call yourself great. You are a sovereign, yes, but you haven't been alive long enough to carry that title."

Aeralion's horns cracked with lightning. "Take that back."

The earth sovereign took a slow step forward even as more tendrils snapped around its legs one by one. "Why don't you make me, child?"

Kai's heart dropped straight to his stomach.

He had spent hours on this—the plan, the array, the spirits, all of it—and it was about to fall apart because of Aeralion's arrogance. He opened his mouth to say something. But before he could, Claire’s voice cut through cleanly.

"I told you to behave." She looked straight up at her spirit, arms crossed, expression leaving no room for argument. "We are not here to pick a fight."

Aeralion looked down at her, some of the heat leaving its eyes. "But you see how this spirit speaks to me."

"Why do you need it to accept that you're great? I know that. No one else should matter,” Claire said, narrowing her eyes.

The earth sovereign watched the exchange with something close to amusement in its eyes before it snorted. "You also have a human trainer. And you call yourself great while a human puts a collar on you?"

Lightning cracked across Aeralion's body in an instant, spreading from its horns to the ground below, and it surged forward. "Take it back!"

"Make me," the earth sovereign growled, dropping its head low. "Child."

The air between them pulled tight. Kai could already imagine what was going on, and couldn’t let that happen. So, he flew, planting himself directly between the two spirits, forcing both sets of eyes onto him at once.

“Can we please have a conversation—” Kai said, looking between them both, “without any fighting for a while?”

He turned to Aeralion. "You know exactly why we need the earth sovereign. You were there when we decided this."

"Do you not see how arrogant this spirit is? How do you expect me to have a conversation with it?"

"By not starting a fight because it called you a child," Kai said flatly.

Aeralion growled. The earth sovereign, on the other hand, let out a low rumbling sound that Kai took a moment to recognise as a chuckle. Its eyes settled on Kai, and for the first time since it had come crashing through the tree line, there was something other than rage or confusion in them. There was curiousity.

"You look like the strongest human here," it said. "And the one whose mana was making every spirit in this part of the forest wild." It paused. "Am I right?"

Kai nodded slowly. "Yes."

The curiosity vanished, replaced by a hard stare. "Then why did you do that? You agitated spirits that don't leave their nests under normal circumstances. All of them wanted to know what was producing such a strong mana presence in their territory."

"I'm sorry about that," Kai said, meeting its eyes without looking away. "But my party and I needed to speak with a spirit as old and as wise as you. It was the only way we could think of reaching you."

"It’s not wise—" Aeralion started.

"Let Lord Arzan talk." Claire's voice came up from the ground, silencing Aeralion once and for all.

Kai made a mental note to thank her later, then turned back to the earth sovereign and kept going before the moment could slip. "We tried to approach spirits here to speak with them. Every one of them attacked on sight. We had no other choice but to call you here, hoping that in the presence of a distant kin, you might be willing to hear us out."

"Just because one is my distant kin doesn't mean I will answer your questions, human. And you are foreigners in our land. Why do you think we spirits would let you move around it without aggression? What is your purpose here?"

Kai didn't answer right away.

He had managed to get the earth sovereign talking, and that was more than he had expected when the thing had been trying to level the clearing a few minutes ago. But it wasn't warm, and it wasn't patient. He could tell that one wrong word was going to send everything back to where it had started. He turned his options over carefully before he opened his mouth.

"My purpose is honourable. We aren't here for our own profit. We're here for the survival of our world. For that purpose, we're looking for an elder tree seed,” he said.

The earth sovereign's expression shifted slightly. "Your world should already have one."

"And it's dying." Elder Caelith's voice came from below. "Because of people who want to see our world destroyed for their own ends. Without a new one, everything will become barren."

The earth sovereign looked down at him. Something moved through its eyes briefly. Surprise, maybe, at finding an elf standing among them. It held its gaze on the elder for a moment before turning back to Kai.

"Hmm. Elder tree seeds are invaluable," it said. "What makes you think I have one?"

"I don't think you do, to be honest,” Kai said. "But we aren't asking you to give us anything. We're looking for information, something that points us in the right direction. That's all we need from you. Once we find one and have it in our hands, we leave. We go back to our world and we don't take anything else from here. Nothing that belongs to this plane."

"You say that," the earth sovereign snarled, "when we both know you must have killed plenty of spirits here. Are they not precious?"

"We never attacked a single one until we were attacked first. Every fight here has been us defending ourselves. Even to attract your attention, we didn't kill anything. The array teleports spirits to other parts of the plane. That's all it does. I don't shed blood when I can avoid it."

The earth sovereign held its eyes on him, unblinking, like trying to figure out whether to accept his words or not. The silence stretched for a few seconds before it spoke again.

"What if I don't tell you what you want to know?"

"Then I can't do anything about that," Kai said simply. "We came here to ask. That's all it is—a request. If you say no, we move on and find another way."

The earth sovereign's eyes narrowed. "And if I don't let you leave?"

Kai's expression settled into something flat. "Then we fight back. I'd rather it didn't come to that."

The sovereign held his gaze for a moment longer before shifting its eyes to Aeralion. "What about you, child? Would you fight me too—A soverign against sovereign?"

"Yes." Aeralion didn't hesitate, didn't even draw a breath before the word came out. "If you harm Claire, I will fight you with everything I have. Even if it kills me."

Kai glanced at Aeralion, mildly caught off guard by how quickly it spoke.

He turned back to the earth sovereign the next second, and tried to placate it further, "Like I said, we don't want to fight you. We want information, and if you want something in return for it, tell us. We'll find a way to give it to you."

The earth sovereign's gaze moved briefly past Kai to Aeralion before settling back on him. "Why do you think I need anything from a human like you? And why do you think I know where the elder tree seed is?"

"Because if you didn't, you would have said so by now," Kai said simply. "But we're still talking."

It was a guess, he knew that well. But the earth sovereign struck him as the kind of being that didn't waste time on things that didn't matter to it. Old beings rarely did. And the silence that followed told him he'd guessed right.

The earth sovereign was quiet for a long moment. Then it exhaled, slow and heavy, like it that hadn't quite decided how much it wanted to say.

"Even if I told you where the seed is," it said, "there is no way you would be able to acquire it."

"That's for me and my party to figure out," Kai said. "I just need the location—"

"You don't understand, human." The sovereign's voice cut across his cleanly. "The place it sits—it is like a grave. Anyone who enters already knows they are not coming back out. It is not a challenge. It is not a test. It is suicide. For you, for your party, for that arrogant child standing behind you."

Kai went quiet.

He turned over the words in his head, trying to picture what kind of place made an earth sovereign—something that had lived for centuries and flattened ancient trees just by a single attack—speak about it with such weight in its voice. It made him pause more than anything else it had said.

But whatever this place was, whatever waited inside it, the elder tree seed was there.

"Please," Kai said finally. "Tell me what that place is."

The earth sovereign looked at him the way someone looks at a person making a choice it already knows is wrong. Then it muttered, almost reluctantly.

"The spirit king palace."

***

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