"Don't be too confused." Shadowheart spoke as he walked through the crowd of powerless Elementalists, heading towards those with three robes who had been watching the fight calmly.
"My power lies in eternity, and how to control it. For the longest time, my biggest mistake was my misconception that it was used to grant immortality to myself and perpetuity to anything else."
Shadowheart continued speaking, but his words were mostly aimed to enlighten the other God Serpents, who were thoroughly confused as to his sudden power display. They nodded as they listened to him explain.
"Fortunately, that man quickly showed me that my thinking was wrong. There are two types of control, manipulation and expulsion. Manipulation means that one can control the essence of the power in it origin, while expulsion is simply gathering the essence of the power and using it as it is."
"Die!!" A two colored Elementalist pulled a knife from her robe and tried to stab Shadowheart in the back, only shouting out when she was about to pierce into him. Shadowheart only tapped her legs with his staff, and the woman froze in place completely.
"Expulsion is crude, practically what you fellows do with your elements. You don't control them, you just have access to them. Manipulation is the true method of control, because you control both the positive and the negative." Shadowheart continued as he walked through the crowd, who began to part fearfully in the face of his actions.
"A person who expulses a fireballs does so at a fixed power level that they are able to access. A person who can manipulate fire controls heat in essence. He can make his fire as hot as the sun, as tame as a warm light or as cold as a blizzard. That does not mean he controls ice. He just has the ability to send his fire to the positive or negative of its state."
Shadowheart eventually stopped a few meters before the seven three colored robes leaders, who still sat calmly in their places, looking down on him with cold expressions.
"I control eternity. If I slide up the scale, I can elongate the state of existence of... anything. Likewise, if I turn the scale down, everything goes to nihil."
Shadowheart smiled with amusement. "Let me give a demonstration."
"I have split my power into three abilities. The first is Time Control, the second is Existence and the third is Nihil."
Shadowheart tapped his staff on the ground, and the woman who had been frozen in place began to move again.
"When you think about it, the ability of Eternity is just the ability to take time to is extreme. The ability to reverse Eternity is also the same, so one could say the core of my power is the ability to control time, to fast-forward it or to slow it down."
"Typical time based abilities are Time Skip, Time Accel, Time Slow and Time Stop. Time Skipping is simply jumping from one point in time to another, both outcomes predetermined. So if I am going to punch you 5 seconds later and 5 seconds later you would defend it successfully, time skipping allows me to reach the predetermined outcome of punching you at this instant, so you would not be in your predetermined position 5 seconds later, but in your position now."
Shadowheart explained this calmly as he tapped the floor. The woman who had been unpaused showrf a look of confusion before she disappeared from everyone's eyes, only to appear near the door the next second.
"As you can see, the action she would have performed within 5 seconds was to flee in terror after having been stopped in time previously." Shadowheart revealed with a chuckle.
"As for Time Accel and Time Slow, they are obvious. One allows a person or an area to move faster than others in relative time and the other does the opposite. We've all watched enough sci-fi to know what that does."
"As for Time Stop, it's a really difficult time concept that is also quite famous. If you imagine the ability to control time as a slider, where moving right speeds up time and moving left slows it down, then time stopping would be the extreme of the left side. I have already demonstrated this using her, but I shall do so again."
Shadowheart tapped the butt of his staff on the ground, and the woman who was about to exit from the door stopped once again, frozen entirely in place.
"That's as far as I can do with Time Control for now. It's possible for me to unlock the more advanced abilities like Time Theft, Time Wipe, Time Destruction, Time Looping and more."
"Now for Existence, this section is quite simple. Eternity can be seen as the ability to control Time, but that is only if time is a slider. Eternity itself is synonymous with Existence, and is the length of existence of all things combined into one."
Shadowheart scratched his cheek. "This is a bit complex. Basically, I can control the state of being of any living thing."
"I can either make you eternal..." Shadowheart tapped his staff on the ground, and a golden light rushed out from his body and entered the frozen woman.
Nothing seemed to change about her, but every living thing in this room could sense that her State of Being, her fundamental essence, had changed from theirs imperceptibly. It was like looking at a giant tree that had existed for ages, that feeling of agelessness and timelessness that it would have.
"...or I can make you cease to exist." Shadowheart finished as he tapped his staff once more. This time, the golden light he infused into the woman came out, and with it came another smaller golden orb, only the size of a groundnut.
The one Shadowheart had sent was the size of a football. Both orbs returned to him and entered his body. As for the woman, she did not even change from her current state, simply turning into ash that dissipated with the wind.
For the first time since he started speaking, the three colored robed Elementalists had their expression change greatly. A hint of fear appeared in their eyes because this kind of power superseded something that control over the elements could beget.
After all, Shadowheart's first display was - in its essence - him showing off his ability to control time. That made him no different from any other Time Elementalist and there was one among their midst.
That was why they allowed the God Serpent group to slaughter, for that Elementalist would simply reverse time and resurrect all those who had died. However, someone whose existence had been undone would not resurrect even if you reverse time, because they were 404 - unable to be found by Existence.exe!
If it wasn't the case, then Existence would just be another form of time control and not its own thing. Time control could also achieve something like this, de-aging a person until they became a baby then into nothingness, or aging them rapidly into nothingness.
But the fact was that another time user could bring them back using the opposite means at any point. However, this power was absolute, for Shadowheart took the very core of the essence of an organism's existence.
That was the power of Eternity.
With Ouroboros, he could attach the Essence of Infinity to anything and let it exist forever, and this was a power he always had. However, Draco's avatar showed him how to do the reverse and take away the power of infinitude from everything else.
By taking away infinitude, he was taking away their essence of existence and reducing their length of existence from XX years to nil. So this ability did two things.
Firstly, it drained the length of existence and gave it to Shadowheart. If he refined it and gained enough of it, he could form a full Essence of Infinity that could be granted to anything else. So his previous limit of only having 100 Essences of Infinity was overturned.
Secondly, it drained the essence of existence, meaning that one thoroughly ceased to exist. Even if time was reversed or any other means was sued, that person was gone for good. Of course, nothing like people forgetting they existed would occur, as that had to do with memory and the soul.
"And finally, there's Nihil. There's not much to say about this one, it's essentially the same as Existence." Shadowheart began once more, but this time he slowly raised his staff.
"The only difference between Nihil and Existence is the former affects living organisms, while Nihil affects everything else, especially abstract concepts or intangible things." Shadowheart finished as he slammed the butt of his staff down hard.
"That includes things your ability to control the elements. I can either make them exist forever or make it so you never even had those powers in the first place." Shadowheart calmly elaborated as a grey wave emerged from his staff, encompassing the three colored robe elders who had been still seated calmly as if waiting for Shadowheart's tirade to finish before passing judgment on him.
However, their expressions soon warped as they stood to their feet, their bodies trembling.
"My abilities? What have you done?!" The female elder with black robes screamed crazily.
The others looked like wanted to ask the same thing, but were barely able to keep themselves calm. They had gone from all powerful gods who could look down on these eight invaders, even though their display was impressive, to mortals who could not even survive a particularly bad paper cut.
Apart from endless fear that drowned their hearts, they were feeling potent despair and coldness. They sorely regretted their arrogance in not making a move the moment these fellows showed up and suppressing them.
Don't blame them for such thoughts. If you thought about it, the display of the others could be linked to other elements, so it looked like the God Serpents simply had exceptional control of various elements. How could they understand the depth of a single God Serpent's power when they didn't even know what a God Serpent was?
"Impressive, it cost me a total of 30% Bloodline Energy to nullify your powers. You guys really aren't too bad. It's unfortunate you chose to be the enemies of the wrong people." Shadowheart commented with surprise.
Suddenly, it was as if water had poured on top of the heads of the three colored robe members.
That's right, we don't even know who these fuckers are! They just burst in here and started killing without any monologues or aimless filler-like chatting! Who does that nowadays?!
"Who are you?!" The elder named Hanson asked with suppressed fury.
This time, Nightwalker stepped forward and spoke seriously.
"We are the sons of the wizards you didn't bur- Ouch!"
His nonsense was stopped by Elle shooting him in the butt with a laser. Unlike the 'mortal' Elementalists, a God Serpent Inheritor like Nightwalker wouldn't be harmed by just this, not to mention Elle had lowered the potency greatly.
Shadowheart nodded to Elle for taking care of this troublemaker before speaking. "We are the top echelon of the Purgatory Group. You now, the you recently decided to set your sights on. As retaliation, we were ordered to slaughter you all."
All the alive Elementalists were left speechless, and even the ghosts of the dead ones who had yet to dissipate were feeling aggrieved. Many wished to pull their hair out on the spot, but their eyes had become too bloodshot to even see what was in front of them.
Boss, we weren't even going to hurt a hair on your head! We were just going to apply corporate pressure on you until you caved in! What kind of full on nuclear response?! Who does things like this in the world?!
This was completely like being bitten by a mosquito once and deciding to slaughter all mosquitoes in the world!
How the FUCK does that equate?!
