I ducked the swing of the staff as the Champion of Meresha, goddess of Oracles and Seers fought me and Guinevere. His ability to see the future seemed to match mine and he had that annoying ability certain people like Guinevere did to be immune to having their own movements foreseen. This meant the slim humanoid was able to duck and weave under my attacks as he foresaw and countered them. Unfortunately for him….I had six arms to his two.

  “What good is to see a future that cannot be avoided

  The elf-like humanoid didn’t respond just grit his teeth and kept fighting ignoring his chance to surrender. Pride was the downfall of most champions, I myself had suffered from it many times. Ichero, the Champion of Meresha, was Demigod rank and his physical attributes reflected that only my titles boosting my attributes making me on par with him.

  Guinevere stabbed at him from behind scoring a deep hit in his back, like me he couldn’t see her actions with his foresight and so she had actually been the one to do the most damage in the fight against him. I had managed to kill most of his party in the first few minutes of our battle their corpses splattered around us or smoking. Most of them had been Demigod rank as well, of the last three Champions we’d slain in the week since killing Arthur all of them had been Demigod rank.

  Ichero stumbled and sagged in defeat as Guinevere ripped out his hamstrings in his right leg with a slice of her sword.

  “Kill me,” he growled straightening his back in proud defiance. “I will not surrender, nor will I serve you.”

  I didn’t argue with him, just nodded and swung Clarent taking off his head.

  “You get anything out of that?” I asked Guinevere.

  “Yeah,” she said her eyes holding the distant look everyone had when reading a notification from the System. “Its called Time Stop, it lets me slow the perception of time for everyone else around me in about a fifty foot radius.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I just got some weird prophecy ability.”

  “Isn’t that already something you had from Watcher from Beyond?” Guinevere asked.

  “There is overlap but this one seems more focused on actions that affect people I know than just on me,” I explained.

  “At the very least it will increase your attributes,” Guinevere said with a shrug. “Combined with the other two abilities you got that pushes you closer to Demigod rank. We need to talk about that…I need you to consider using rank points to directly increase your Attributes.”

  “That would weaken my power base,” I argued. “Physical and mental power is all well and good, but they don’t compare to the strength you get from an ability.”

  “That won’t matter if they beat you to God rank,” Aranea said. “If that happens the System will stop spawning all the monsters we fight, there won’t be another Event, the only option will be fighting existing Gifted and those will quickly run out. The reason only one person can ever make it to God rank isn’t just some arbitrary rule the System shuts off the ability for those at the top ranks to even get new abilities…they simply can’t progress anymore.”

  I paused…that hadn’t really occurred to me. From the moment I had come to this world I’d been in nearly constant conflict, and I had just thought of that as the natural state of the world. That was only partially true but for the regular person the game of the gods was a cataclysm that occurred every five-hundred years like clockwork and reshaped the boundaries of countries and sometimes wiped-out continents.

  A brief flash of guilt for my own actions in putting this world through the apocalypse flashed through me but I pushed down the guilt. My actions had been necessary.

  “There is another option,” I said. “We break the System.”

  The skin prickled on the back of my neck as I felt something exert more focus on me than usual.

  Ignoring the System’s annoyance I continued.

  “I raise the rank limit for our abilities,” I suggested. “I’ll experiment on myself first but if I can do it….we don’t need to get new abilities we just need to increase the ones we have.”

  “That could work but tampering with your own soul isn’t something you should engage in lightly,” Guinevere said placing her hand on my shoulder. “You aren’t invincible Mordred, I’d rather us lose and live out the rest of our lives together than have you die trying to get to God rank.”

  I gave her look letting my fa?ade of implacable assurance fall away for a moment. “If we don’t win Guinevere…. we will die in a war of attrition against the gods eventually, they win.”

  “I think we’re stronger than that,” Guinevere said. “I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying be careful.”

  I nodded. “Its time we return to Avalon than, I want to be in the safest place in the universe when I start tinkering with the inner workings of my soul.”

  I opened a portal, and we stepped through into the black and silver streets of Avalon. I sat in the center of the temple atop the city closing my eyes as I delved into the tangled depth of my soul and twisting motes of light that made up my abilities. I wasn’t trying to alter an ability this time to have some specific effect I was just trying to…give it more room.

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  I poked and prodded at the tangled lines of Prophecy of Ragnar?k, I didn’t care much about this ability so it would be the basis for my experimentation. I went over every thread of the skill looking for the block that prevented it from ranking up past twenty. I looked and looked and couldn’t find it.

  Puzzled I switched to looking over Void Asura. As I examined the many more and complicated threads of that ability I realized my error. There was no block to preventing an ability to rank up past twenty. It wasn’t that abilities were blocked from reaching their potential it was that they had a maximum potential and just ran out of juice at rank twenty. In order to rank up past twenty they didn’t need something removed, they needed something added. For Void Assura that had been Ability Tokens, the shattered remains of Dominion and the devoured essence of Void Ancients who had fed on gods. My other abilities that I had advanced to fifty had all come from devouring Void Ancients.

  This was a problem, Void Ancients didn’t grow on trees and even if there were still some out there, I didn’t know where and wouldn’t really solve my problem even if I knew where they were. What I had to do was create the power to provide the extra potential for the abilities to grow. I brought up my status looking it over closely for the first time in a while.

  I pushed aside Prophecy of Ragnar?k for the time being, while I had intended to experiment on it first, I selected Mind Melder instead I began weaving a new thread out of condensed ethereal energy. In the confines of my soul, I spoke

  I grabbed hold of the nebulous energy that was my thousands of rank points and pushed them into the ability increasing its rank. Triumph filled me as the ability ranked up and my test was successful

  I said delegating him that task while I turned towards my other abilities. If the other champions wanted to push the race to godhood into a sprint I’d comply but I wasn’t bound by the System the way they were anymore. Hours later I opened my eyes I’d finished increasing all my rank twenty abilities potential although upgrades were still underway but now I needed to do the most important task see if I could do the same thing to another person.

  I found Guinevere rocking Aurora in her cradle swinging from one of the void trees. I sat next to her as my skin roiled as inward changes affected me slowly moving me close towards demigod rank.

  “I’m ready to try upgrading someone else,” I said. “I found a way to increase the potential of our abilities to level them up past twenty, but I will need access to your soul.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Guinevere asked.

  “It’s your soul,” I said flatly. “If you want me to test it on someone else first…”

  “I trust you,” Guinevere said taking my hand. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

  In the end Guinevere didn’t really have to do anything, it was for the best I hadn’t tried to experiment on someone else first because only the bond Guinevere and I shared allowed me any access to her soul at all and even then, it was like holding a frightened rabbit in my hand. This went beyond any intimacy as I entered Guinevere’s true self. I found her abilities and began to slowly examine their spell scripts gaining a deeper understanding of them before beginning the process of increasing their potential.

  It took even longer with Guinevere that it had with my own abilities. That was to be expected I was familiar with my own abilities but the skill and knowledge I’d gained from increasing my own potential let me slowly alter her abilities one by one. Guinevere blinked as I finally let go and opened my eyes.

  “That was…” she began than through up which quite an unusual thing for someone of her rank. “Having another soul inside yours is…”

  “You get used to it,” I said with a shrug.

  Guinevere looked towards Aurora suddenly. “You mean Aurora is going through that?”

  “No,” I said calming her and taking her hand. “I suspect if felt very different with me than having Voidra, Karnen and Ares inside of me. My soul was never truly inside yours more like I was reaching an arm in. I suspect me being halfway in and halfway out is what caused the discomfort.”

  A chill ran up my spine as I blinked, and the world disappeared.

  Albion was burning not with normal fires but a terrible red energy that slowly crept over and consumed everything. Red specters battled with angels in the sky and a massive warship that was technologically beyond anything I’d ever seen on Earth or Talba hung in the sky.

  I opened my eyes and vision was gone.

  “So your saying Aurora is fine and doesn’t feel any discomfort?” Guinevere asked, oblivious to the vision I had just seen. “What’s wrong?”

  “Aurora will be fine,” I assured her. “I just had a vision.” I looked out over the horizon. “Arther is still out there somehow and he’s coming.”