As the two continued to fight, they slowly began to wear each other out. Zedrin had lost one hand and had hundreds of cuts on his body. He was blinded in one eye and his mana had run out long ago, leaving him to fight with only his physical capabilities.

As for Sear, he wasn't in much better shape. Though he hadn't lost any limbs, he was cut in many places. Alongside that, his endurance was running low. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep up for much longer. The dragon's endurance and strength were truly at levels only capable of dragons.

*Damn, I wanted to finish this with only my soul, but it seems I'll have to use mana.*

Unlike Zedrin, Sear had used very little mana. Even now, he was still almost full. But he would need all of it for a final attack. He created a shield around himself as on of Zedrin's claws connected with him. The shield held, but he let himself get blown back. Hell, he even sped himself up. As he was launched a few kilometers away from Zedrin, he prepared his attack.

Sending his weapon away, he put both of his arms up, palms pointing at the sky. Instantly a glyph appeared. The only difference from last time was the size. Before, it's diameter might have been 100 meters. But now it had a full kilometer. That's the amount of runes he needed to make it work properly. Seeing it, Zedrin attempted to fly towards Sear. But as he began thousands of chains covered in black fire came out of the earth and wrapped around him. They didn't hurt him, but pushing against them felt like pushing against the entire planet. Because that's what he was doing.

Those chains extended down to the planets core and were connected to it so moving the chains would mean attempting to push the planet. As he struggled, more and more chains wrapped around him, before slowly pulling him downwards. He began thrashing about, thinking he was about to get buried, but once his back touched the floor, the chains stopped.

By then, Sear had finally finished casting the spell. He would have used normal magic and not runes, but he found that runes were more powerful, but they also took much longer for things are large as this.

"Magnitude." - Sear

The very air around Sear trembled as he poured his remaining mana into the glyph. Suddenly it floated upwards above the dragon, and disappeared above the cloud cover. And then it appeared. Falling through the skies, pushing the clouds away, a meteor fell.

It was cone shaped, and sped up the more it fell. Seeing it, Zedrin stopped struggling. He knew he couldn't fight against it.

Seeing it, Sear was happy. It might seem like he would be scared of destroying the planet but he actually wasn't. The hardest part of the spell wasn't creating the chains or the meteor, it was creating a dome that can cover the area the meteor falls and then reflecting the energy right back to where it came from. If the cone fell onto Zedrin, the force of the meteor and all of the earth being displaced would collide against the shield, and be sent right back to where it came from, Zedrin.

For the chains, Sear made them out of his own magic. For the meteor, he just created a very, very, large cone of dense stone and make it fall from the sky. That much is simple if you think about it. The hard part was makig it so the shield could hold the energy within and manage to reflect it.

He smiled as he watched the meteor collide into Zedrin. A large, blue dome appeared around the area of impact, and soon all that Sear could see what a blinding white light. Opening his eyes, he saw what he wanted, the meteor had killed Zedrin. Smiling, he ran over to it's body. He quickly began to absorb it, into his total. He would refill his mana pool, but it would do that automatically.

He wouldn't waste 780 units like that. Looking into his inner self, he found out how much he had improved. He was currently at 23,405 units and his Soul Purification was at 67%. The fight against the dragon really did improve him quite quickly. He didn't absorb the bones, knowing that it would help his minions. Instead he stored them in his ring before flying away.

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Somehow, during these past three days, his minions had been able to absolutely destroy the country. He had around 200,000 units worth of human bodies to absorb, along with over 100 million corpses to add to his minions.

Instead of rushing through, he went slowly. He would still need mana to imbue his minions, so there was no point in rushing.

Mid-flight, he kept thinking about how fast he was gaining strength. It was quite scary honestly. He didn't know whether other people or beings could absorb mana like his mist or whether he was gaining too much strength too fast. He needed foundations. While he had some from his time before he became quite powerful as a young kid who had better weapon skills than most professionals have when they die, he didn't know what he would need for his future, just that it would be more than he currently had.

After thinking about this, he decided to try something dumb. Creating an orb of air around himself so that he wouldn't suffocate, he flew into space. As he got further and further from the planet, he could feel himself speeding up, no longer bound by gravity or air resistance. He smiled. While on land it would take him just under two hours to fly fully around the planet, it would now take him under 20 minutes.

As he began to go back into the atmosphere, he created a shield around himself as he himself heat up due to the air resistance. Soon he was back by his minions.

He slowed down and landed by the five, which were just standing in a circle looking at the pile of corpses and bones.

"Good job you 5. With this we will be unstoppable, at least on this planet." - Sear

"Thank you my lord. Will you be imbuing us with the bones once more?" - Ilodis

"Yes I will. With this final evolution, you five together should pose a small challenge for me, which should be enough to help me continue to purify my soul." - Sear

"And it seems you four don't talk much huh?" - Sear

"No master." - Klod

Shrugging, he took the dragon bones out of his storage ring, splitting it into five pieces, he imbued it into each of them. But that barely did anything. For the next two hours, he would condense all of the millions of corpses down into 5 orbs, before imbuing them with the orbs.

Suddenly, Sear watched as the five quickly gained power and mana, going from 50 units, to 500, and then to 1,000, before stopping. A dark cocoon appeared around them, before burrowing itself into the ground. it would most likely take a while for this evolution.

Leaving them as they were, he began to absorb all of the bodies. In a few hours he was done. After absorbing all of their bodies, he realized that he was quite close to undergoing another transformation, but he didn't want that. It would make holding back even harder. Looking into his inner self, he took note: 265,701 units. If he kept absorbing humans at this pace he could reach 5 million in just over two months.

The only problem being, there weren't enough humans. Nowhere near the 500 million he would need. And making human's go extinct would probably make Prodikous just show up again. And he didn't want that.

The only sensible thing for him to do is get to 500,000 and then begin to purify. Now that he could fly into space, he wouldn't need to worry about things attacking him. It also seemed like those two lizardmen watched over this place so he doubted any god would come and attempt to kill him, if they even care about his miniscule mana.

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Five months, 3 weeks later...

*Hmmm, 4 days left until they come back to pick me up. I've taken a liking to those five over this time, but I guess I can always come back after Exile. At least I hope that there is an exit.*

During these past almost 6 months, Sear had never stopped. After his minions awoke, he fought with them for two months straight before he finally finished the first stage of purifying his soul. After that, he quickly went around and absorbed whole cities until he got to the 500,000 units he wanted to be at.

Since then, he had been flying into space for a week at a time, purifying. Whenever he came back, he would continue to spar with his minions, this time limiting himself to using 2 different weapon shapes per fight. By now, he was 18% through the second stage of soul purification, and 37% through the second stage of mana purification.

After reaching the second stage of soul purification, his speed slowed down even more, to less than a percent per week. As for his mana purification, it was also quite slow. Not only did he now have much more mana, but since he had no purified mana at the start, he had to begin purifying with extremely small amounts. Even now he couldn't purify more than 20,000 units at once, and even then it would take a long time for him to purify those 20,000 units.

Currently, his mana pool was a staggering 5,607,204 units. He had reached where he wanted to be and passed it with flying colors. He had also undergone two more transformations. One at 270,000 units, and one at 5,300,000 units. His next one would most likely be in the hundreds of millions.

During this time, he also hadn't used his full strength, with fear of damaging the planet. He knew he couldn't shatter the planet with his fist, but he could leave a crater a good 200 kilometers deep, and crack the planet's crust.

His minions hadn't undergone another transformation. At this point, he didn't know what to do with them. He wasn't sure if he could take them with him or if they would be forced to stay. If they would be forced to stay, he would just come back to pick them up.

He had also, monthly, expanded the area of his storage ring. He didn't know the exact number, but if his calculations were correct, which they probably were, then he would currently have around 315,000 cubic meters. A third of a cubic kilometer.

He continued to purify until the very last day, reaching just under 39% completion. Since they still didn't show up, he went over where the five were.

"You guys!" - Sear

He called out to them, and they all ran to go up to him.

"Good day milord." - Ilodis

For some reason, after his evolution, Ilodis had taken to calling Sear milord. He acted somewhat like a very loyal butler, only much stronger.

"Hey boss." - Yrol

Yrol had become more carefree and even more berserker-like. The more people he killed, the happier he would get. After every slaughter they would find him jumping around singing about cutting people up.

"Hello sire." - Klod

Klod was the weirdest out of them all. He seemed to have the least self-control, easily letting himself go crazy during fights, but out of fights he was a whole different person.

""Lord."" - Grev & Flint

Grev and Flint, though changing in completely different ways, acted much the same. Maybe it's because they both evolved into the same type of berserker off of the beginning.

"Now then, I will be going in a few hours. Make sure you don't get killed while I am gone, though I'm pretty sure that'll be hard. Every month you can travel to every village and city to accept the ritual. If they don't accept, then turn them into the ritual. Also, if you see the humans gaining power quickly, kill them all except for 100 million people. You guys will still need them to evolve." - Sear

During these past few months, one of the things they had done to the cities not destroyed is ask for rituals. These rituals were basically they would bathe in the blood of sacrifices, slaves, or prisoners. The few times people didn't accept, they would get cut up and used.

After finishing talking to them, he flew off into the distance, landing on a small floating island he had created. Well "small." it was roughly 6 kilometers wide and 15 long, and he had used glyphs drawn into the rock itself to keep it afloat. With the amount of mana he was put into them, the island should stay afloat for a few hundred thousand years at least.

Sitting atop the island, he waited, staring off into the sky. After a few seconds he felt a presence at his back. He began sweating again, but this time the fear wasn't as strong.

"Well, well. You sure have improved since last time. Managed to jump up to the 7th stage within a few months. Though the methods were a bit weird, I can't deny that they were good." - Prodikous

Turning around, he spotted Prod. Different from last time, he was wearing a deep blue robe and had the staff in his hands. Sear could tell that he also became much stronger. In the time it took Sear to gain 5,000,000 units, the man had gained a few trillion. But that's to be expected, as he was much stronger.

"Now then, I'm a few hours early, but this is a good time to explain a few things and help you along. You will be going to Exile, as I've told you before. The land is absolutely giant. Currently, there are only 1 trillion people on the planet. If the land was split evenly between them all, everyone would have around 2.8 septillion(2,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) square kilometers of land to each other. That means you will find many creatures to improve with. The entire place is extremely dangerous, and is mainly used to weed out the weak from the strong." - Prod

"If you see a bright white pillar, go towards it as fast as possible. It is a portal out of the realm. Once you go through it, you will be sent to the main hall of the group that governs the area of land you came from. So, once you escape, you will be sent to the main hall of the group I work for. From there on you will be allowed to join them or venture out. Luckily for me, I managed to find a portal out within 4,000 years. I know of some that take over 400,000. Good luck to you, and come out stronger." - Prod

"Also, before I forget, here's a tip, you don't need to fight to increase your soul purification." - Prod

He tapped his staff into the ground, and a portal appeared beside him. Motioning to it, Sear stepped through.

Prodikus POV------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*How did he jump up two stages in such a short amount of time… It took me over 2 years to go from Stage 5 to Stage 6, and he’s done it and jumped up to 7 in 6 months. His absorption ability is extremely powerful. I would kill him to not let him become stronger, and see if he had an artifact that allowed him to absorb mana like that, but if I allow him to live and the higher ups find out I helped him, I’ll get many benefits…*

PURIFICATION STATS AND MANA STATS

Mana Units: 5,607,204 units

Mana Purification: 1st Stage: 100% Complete

2nd Stage: 37% Complete

Soul Purification: 1st Stage: 100% Complete

2nd Stage: 18% Complete