The moment the words slipped past his lips, streams of energy from all the elements he wielded seeped out of his body. They swirled around him, growing thicker and more concentrated with each passing second until nearly all of his monstrous reserves had been drained dry.

Then, with a quiet sigh, he clenched his fingers and issued the command.

"Converge."

Watching as they mystically swirled before slowly melding into one another in an intricate, harmonious process.

***

At the side, Graegor and the rest of the elders watched tensely, fully understanding what was happening.

At first, they had expected the dark-robed figure to explode from the unstable result of trying to merge the energies of all the different elements.

But as time passed and that didn’t happen, the panic welling inside them slowly eased. A few elders even considered rushing forward to plead with the young lord to stop this madness.

Yet the longer they stared, the more that thought faded. Their initial panic was quickly replaced by pure surprise and shock.

"Huh...? This... how?" Graegor muttered, a dumbfounded expression plastered across his face. At first, he had attributed the smooth flow of merging energy to nothing more than a burst of luck. But after several minutes passed and the lord remained unfazed, still in complete control, he could no longer call it luck.

This was something else entirely.

Something that inspired even greater shock. According to the records, each element possessed a hidden balance. Once discovered, it allowed the user to wield it with effortless grace, perhaps even as simply as breathing. A balance no one in Tempest, or even in many greater cities had ever truly achieved.

To grasp that balance, one had to master an element to its absolute peak. And even then, merging elements would require mastering at least two.

But the young lord... he was attempting to merge five elements at once. With their extremities, no less.

Graegor wanted to scream that it was impossible... but stopped himself. The young lord had already proven to be a monstrous talent, and with the recent realization that his talents stood at the absolute peak of their ranks, Graegor was starting to second-guess everything.

Perhaps he had pushed the thought away because he couldn’t, or didn’t want to process the implications. It was simply too terrifying.

If the young lord had truly mastered the elements to the point where he could wield their balance with ease, there was no doubt he would rise far beyond the constraints of a small city like Tempest and become a pillar of humanity.

The only question left was... what would be the result of this bizarre occurrence? Had any other being ever tried merging this many elements and succeeded? Were they watching history being written?

Multiple questions raced through the minds of Graegor and the other elders. Their gazes grew even more intense as they stared at the dark-robed figure, unable to look away.

***

The crowd below stared in confusion, which soon bloomed into awe. Streams of energy shot out of Ulric and spread around him.

As time slowly passed, the released energy began influencing the environment.

Earth energy caused the ground to tremble, growing more violent as fissures spread outward. Cold air whipped around him, freezing moisture in the air and dropping the temperature dangerously. A sea of fire bloomed outward, scorching everything in its path. Brilliant golden energy pressed down with overwhelming might. Dark clouds gathered above, flashing with lightning as thunder rumbled.

More phenomena continuously unfolded.

At first, all the energies seemed to fight against each other, each trying to dominate. But slowly they eased, their innate wills overwhelmed by Ulric’s as he guided them. It was difficult at first, like going against the forces of nature, but as time passed, it flowed smoothly, almost giving him the illusion that this was a natural occurrence.

The scorching flames seeped into the freezing cold without repelling each other. The two extremes flowed together like yin and yang. With them as the base, the rest folded into one another relatively smoothly.

The process continued for hours. Before Ulric smiled, staring at the result.

He had initially thought merging them would create something entirely new or better. But now he saw he was only partially right. The ball of coalesced energy streaked into the sky before exploding outward in a mesmerizing sight.

Merging hadn’t stripped them of their essence, it simply allowed them to exist all at once in a strange, harmonious state.

Fire bloomed across the blue sky. Ice flakes fell from the clouds. Darkness and light hovered together, filled with a golden hue.

It was as if he were staring at the origin of all things. A surreal sight. Ulric smiled faintly as he extended his arms, calling the energy back and letting it drill into him.

***

At the side, the crowd watched blankly. Gasps spread as they tried to make sense of everything.

"Wait... this... I don’t understand what’s happening?"

"It seems the young lord somehow merged all the elements together."

"But that’s impossible... the differences... how is it possible?"

"How am I supposed to know? I’m seeing the same thing as you!"

"Haha, I think you’re all missing the point. What does it matter how he did it? All that matters is that he did. Do you think you’ll ever see something like this again?"

Far within the crowd, a youth draped in a simple robe clutching a bow smiled wryly.

"Yeah... you’re right. It’s too beautiful. It feels like I’m staring at the secrets of the heavens."

"Something to aspire to..." Kaeden muttered repeatedly, staring at the amalgamation of all the elements. A strange sense of accomplishment washed over him.

The sight was mesmerizing. And as the energy streaked down to drill into the black-robed youth, he finally glimpsed the true scale of his power.

For a split second, Ulric’s aura exploded outward, crushing down across all of Tempest and stretching for tens of thousands of meters. It was overwhelming. Sweat dripped down the faces of elders and commoners alike in fear.

The aura contained no malice, it felt more like a declaration of the birth of a monstrous entity. Otherwise, they had no doubt it would have crushed everyone into blood mist, or at least heavily injured them.

The sheer thought sent chills racing down their spines. They had heard of beings strong enough to decimate cities with their power... but with just their aura? That was something else entirely.

The lord’s power had already grown beyond any conceivable threshold. And now, with this leap, it would only become more terrifying.

As some snapped out of their daze, a few couldn’t help themselves. They stared at the splendiferous beam of energy drilling into the dark-robed figure with greedy glints in their eyes.

After witnessing what even a single element had granted them, this amalgamation promised unimaginable benefits. Such an opportunity might never arise again.

Acting on that thought, a few stepped forward toward the edges of the city gates, only to regret it instantly. Despite appearing gentle from a distance, the energy was far less receptive than the previous beams. Their bodies were too weak to withstand it.

Breaking out in shrill screams, some erupted into balls of dark energy, pulled into the spectral beam. Others froze into ice or burned to cinders. They soon realized being exposed to all the elements at once was not a merciful fate.

But to someone who wielded all the elements, whose body had been repeatedly reforged by them, the sensation of the spectral beam drilling into him was surprisingly soothing.

As time passed, the energy lifted his body into the sky, constantly reforging him. Ulric smiled as he sensed the profound changes.

When he first began walking the path of power, his mortal body had been relatively simple. But with the constant influx of power, it had grown complex. Now, it was growing simple again, yet the limits of the power he could wield were amplified repeatedly.

A profound cycle, Ulric thought. He could also feel a new energy being birthed within him, one with no direct connection to his previous elements.

He wanted to monitor it closely, but lost track of time in this state. The transformation suddenly halted as a notification blinked before his vision.

[Ding! Congratulations! The Supreme Arts have merged and evolved into the Transcendent Art: Myriad Aether]

"Transcendent, huh?" Ulric chuckled softly, snapping out of his daze.

The concept clearly ranked higher than Supreme, and the changes reflected it perfectly.

Now that clarity had returned to his mind, he could sense the differences instantly.

Waving his arm, a small blade of darkness coalesced before him, hovering right in front of his face.

Nothing fancy, just a basic skill he could conjure before. But now there was only one difference. And that difference changed everything.

As the realization hit him, a slow chuckle escaped his lips, quickly bubbling up into full-blown maniacal laughter.

No energy had been used to conjure the blade.

Previously, he would need to tap into the reserves of a particular element before he could wield its power.

But now... he had simply willed it, and the blade formed into existence. He no longer wielded the power of the elements. The elements had been engraved into him. It was as if he had become one with them, their power now flowing directly through his veins.

Processing the full implication of what this meant, his laughter only grew more hysterical.

Was this what power looked like at its transcendent form?