In the meantime, the observation room that was occupied by the Obsidian Circle Members was eerily quiet as they sat in their ornate seats with dumbfounded expressions. None of them had ever seen an Elemental Sovereign in action, they only heard bard’s tales of their achievements.
However, only six people were dumbfounded. The seventh one, a gorgeous oriental woman with lush, straight long black hair, was feeling emotions her ancient heart had never known.
Black Fang couldn’t tear her eyes from the images the visual artifacts were transmitting. Saying that her gut was right would be an understatement. Devil was an Elemental Sovereign, the first recorded one in 300 years, yes, but that was not at all the end of this illogical entity’s list of strange achievements. In fact, it was just one of many.
For example, his age. He was 7 weeks old when he was measured. Black Fang was aware that some dwarven masters could make an artifact that obscured one’s age, but why would he set it to 7 weeks old when the upper limit for participation was 30 years – 1565 weeks?
Then let’s look at the fact that he could cause such mighty destruction with his spells which meant that he must’ve had around 100 stat points invested into Magic as the might of one’s spells were bolstered by that stat, yet Black Fang’s eyes were now showing her images of Devil speed-blitzing werewolves while outright overpowering orcs. How did any of that make sense?
One of the newer revelations he’d showered them with was the ease with which he cast his spells. Wands and staves existed primarily to assist the caster with casting their spells. It was recommended for novice mages to use staves as they assisted the most, and then once they got confident, they could use a lightweight wand instead, making maneuvering battlefields much more seamless.
Of course, higher-tier wands and staves had more to them than simply assistance in casting, but that didn’t change their basic function.
When she first laid her eyes on Devil, he was already running around with a saber – with no wands or staves being even in sight. However, back then he was at least making hand gestures, which were the method with which experienced mages could cast their spells. It was important for a battlemage to learn casting without wands or staves, because if they depended on them, then their potential as combatants went only as far as their equipment’s availability. It was the same conundrum the blademasters found themselves in.
With a good katana in her hand, Ayame was one of the strongest combatants at her level, but take it away and she was mediocre at best as her Samurai class outright required a sword to be in her hands for some of its spells to work.
Back when Black Fang saw him use hand gestures, he only cast basic tier spells which were the easiest to cast, so it made sense in her head that a hybrid mage would dedicate a great deal of effort into learning wandless casting.
However, now Devil was slinging these spells of great proportions, and he wasn’t even using hand gestures! He just pointed his sword or his finger where he wanted the spell to go, and the laws of magic obeyed him perfectly. It made no sense at all. This was a feat only the greatest mages on the Iskaris continent could replicate!
To put into perspective just how rare and outstanding this feat of his was, the organization which was older than a hundred thousand years, the Vesper Consortium, could only count three such living members among their ranks, two of whom were Circle Members approaching the age of 1000, while the last one was a Veil Walker of similar age.
Thus, Black Fang was presented with two possible explanations that provided at least some semblances of logic.
One, he was some old hermit who spent hundreds of years in hiding from the entire world as he slowly made his power grow, and now that he was confident, he decided to leave his hiding spot. However, this line of reasoning only made sense as long as she considered him to be a weirdo because he would need to set his age-obscuring artifact to show that he was 7 weeks old.
No… Black Fang was not a person of logic, she was a creature of emotions and hunches, and every fiber of her existence was screaming at her that this was the wrong conclusion to draw.
She decided to take another angle to look at things.
What if… he was not a human?
She already had this suspicion tugging at her chest previously, but today’s display only reinforced this feeling.
Devil didn’t seem like a weirdo who would spend centuries in a cave and then pretend to be a baby just so he could claim the useless title of being the youngest Elemental Sovereign, Vesper Phenom member, or whatever else.
What if he was truly 7 weeks old at the time?
Although dragons had completely disappeared from this continent long before Black Fang was born, there were still numerous tales available about them, all of which she read.
Some claimed that dragon babies spent years if not decades inside their eggs which were connected to their mothers’ mana that supplied them as they slowly grew from an embryo to a lifeform that could fight as soon as it hatched from its egg – as soon as it was born.
Maybe Devil, or Quinlan Noir as they’d learned his real identity from Vex’s investigations, was a legendary creature akin to a dragon who was born ready to protect himself.
However, he was not a beast, or at least he didn’t have the form of one. Furthermore, young dragons were described to have a completely different behavioral pattern than what Quinlan Noir had displayed.
He was not only bipedal, but he was very calm, collected, and extremely mature for a newborn. No newborn dragon could assimilate into human society without raising a few very obvious red flags, not even considering their feats on the field of battle but how they acted outside of combat.
Vex, Raika, and Orianna spent weeks observing him as they traveled to the Phantom League territory, and they didn’t note any strange behaviors that would make him seem like a creature trying to blend into the ranks of humanity, because he didn’t need to – he blended in effortlessly.
Explore more at empire
A human-like person who could level up much faster than what logic told her was reasonable, accompanied by the many feats of power and otherworldly talent he showed her, made Black Fang remember one single word she’d read about in an obscure ancient tome.
Quinlan Noir was like that… A creature of the highest order… One who enjoyed a truly unfair amount of advantages over any mortal race. A supreme existence…
… A Primordial.