Thea and Sabine stared absentmindedly up at the calm looking Abaddon while in relative awe of everything they had just witnessed.
Fire spirits are, as one would expect, extremely combative.
They usually spend all day fighting each other in an unending struggle for supremacy, but the arrival of three new faces in their domain gave them new targets to focus their aggression on.
But of course, Abaddon had no intention of allowing these creatures to lay a finger on his lovely daughter, and so he pummeled the flaming spirits himself.
And Sabine and Thea had watched the entire absurd display, while feeling more and more pity for the opponents with every second.
"That...required almost no effort from him."
Sabine was initially worried about how Abaddon would fare without nature to protect him, as the environment they were in was solely comprised of molten magma.
However, her worries proved to be entirely unfounded and unnecessary.
"Has your father always been this strong?" She asked.
Thea seemed to have trouble meeting Sabine's gaze for some reason and instead stared at the burning coals beneath her feet.
"N-No actually.. apparently he used to be so weak he couldn't even make it up a flight of stairs on most days... but he got a lucky encounter of sorts and worked really hard and then he became... this."
Thea knew that her father was a very humble man who still saw himself as someone with very far to go, but she couldn't help but idolize him and see him as the apex of all things.
He was her hero, and the man who always seemed to show her what it was like to go to the ends of the earth for the ones you love.
She watched him close his eyes and start absorbing the fiery energy in the air, and one could swear they saw literal sparkles in her eyes.
Sabine found such a look to be rather cute and she lightly brushed her hand past Thea's, at which point the young girl pulled away hesitantly.
This caused the bewitching nature spirit to raise a brow in surprise.
After their contract was formed, she had almost total free reign into Thea's mind.
She knew that this princess was attracted to her, so why was she acting so standoffish?
"Thea.. have I done something to-"
WHOOSH!
Suddenly, the temperature in the air became noticeably warmer and the girls identified Abaddon as the culprit.
After only a few seconds of absorbing the spiritual energy in this place, he had attained the same level of understanding and mastery that he had with nature.
In a flash of light, he entered the state of a spiritual dragon and the red gem in his chest was now also glowing brightly.
Stepping down, Abaddon floated down from the pile of bodies and landed on the ground in front of the two girls.
"You really did it... I was almost expecting you to explode."
"O ye of little faith." Abaddon said jokingly.
The dragon shifted back towards his normal appearance and gave the girls his usual friendly smile.
"How were you able to accomplish this understanding so quickly??" Sabine asked.
"I was born with the elements of flame and darkness, Sabine. It was easy for me to assimilate this energy into my body."
Abaddon held his hand out and gestured for one of the girls to help him test his new understanding.
Volunteering as the Guinea pig, Thea took a deep breath before throwing out a simple side kick to her father's Crown Jewels.
As they suspected, a fiery wall of magma rose up from the ground and knocked away Thea's foot like a cat swatting a mouse.
Once he confirmed it's effectiveness, Abaddon nodded satisfactorily before he started looking around for his next destination.
"Now, where should we... hold on."
Out of the corner of his eye, Abaddon found a familiar yet unfamiliar item semi buried in a lava pond a few feet away.
Floating towards it, he flicked his finger and the item of his focus floated upwards into full view.
It was an enormous red crystal the size of a boulder, that gave off a smoldering intensity and glowed like a miniature sun.
"I don't know why you'd be interested in that."
Sabine and Thea floated alongside Abaddon and stared at his findings with two very different reactions.
"What is it?" He asked.
"It is a judgment crystal. Something of a trial for the elven kings who would come here."
"Oh?"
"Each of the domains will have one of these crystals inside of them. Upon contact with them, one will be subject to a test of compatibility and if they pass, they will gain the element inside."
Both Abaddon and Thea stared at Sabine with slack jaws and she got sense that she'd just said something strange to them.
"What?"
"Is there... a limit to the amount of times that this can be used?" Thea asked.
"No? Should there be?"
Abaddon suddenly lifted up an empty hand and removed another large gem from his dimensional storage.
Once Sabine saw that it had gone dark, she raised a brow in surprise. "Where... did you get this?"
"In the ocean in the outside world."
"Ah...well then I suppose that it is no wonder that this one is dead. If it hasn't been bathing in the energy of it's environment then I can't imagine it still being effective."
Abaddon and Thea looked at each other in understanding before flying up into the air.
Looking around, they found a land comprised of crystal clear ocean water that was beautiful beyond description.
Flying towards the new domain, they could see the inhabitants swimming about freely.
Like the nature spirits, they seemed to be entirely comprised of women.
With their fishy tails and sea shell bras, they were the closest thing to mermaids that Abaddon had seen since he came to this world.
As soon as he saw them, he decided it was best to turn invisible.
Judging by the way these women were 'interacting' with each other, they appeared to be just as free spirited and devious as nature spirits.
He was still getting used to the exaggerated effects produced by his new appearance, so he decided that this was best for now.
The three of them landed in the watery domain and placed their feet on the cool and clear surface.
As soon as Abaddon lowered the crystal into the water, the glow that it had long lost started to return once again.
Once it was shining just as brilliantly as the red crystal they'd left behind, Thea placed her palm onto the stone and closed her eyes.
She seemed to enter a trance for a few seconds before she pulled away, a slight blue glow on her body.
Abaddon didn't need to ask his daughter how it had gone, as he could sense the presence of a new component within her body.
"This... is amazing."
Turning back towards her father, she looked up at him excitedly like she had just had a brilliant thought.
"Father, can I go look for more of these stones while you collect the spiritual energy??"
"If you like." Abaddon figured that his daughter was going to try to be like him and collect as many elements as her body could handle.
And since she was technically fused together with one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, he was sure that her potential should be no less than his.
Thea stood on the tips of her toes to give her father a small kiss on the cheek before she and Sabine flew away excitedly.
Abaddon on the other hand let his body sink underneath the water and started absorbing the surrounding energy from the ocean.
The entire process took around five minutes to complete before he succeeded in his venture.
But opening his eyes underwater, he found a swarm of water spirits lurking in the water all around him.
While he was still invisible, they had sensed the spiritual fluctuations in their surroundings and come looking for the source.
"I'm sure it came from this way..?"
"Could the disturbance have left already?"
"But none of us saw anything!"
"We've never had a ruler, I want to meet them!"
Against his better judgment, Abaddon disabled his invisibility.
When his body miraculously appeared within the water, he watched the jaws of every woman around him go slack.
A helpless smile spread across his lips as he opened his mouth to introduce himself, the girls around him trembled before bowing their heads.
This came as a small surprise to him, as he was expecting their reactions to be a bit more shameless.
Nature spirits were little deviants, and cared nothing about hierarchy and their only interest was in getting their bodies acquainted with his.
Water spirits wanted him more desperately than they had ever wanted anything in their whole lives, and yet there was a fear of overstepping that could be seen on their faces.
"This is interesting... I wonder if the reactions of the other spirits will be quite so dramatic."
-
Abaddon traveled throughout the spirit realm to the remaining eleven areas and cultivated with their spiritual energy.
He learned that not all of the domains actually had spirits inside of them.
The realms of destruction and death were completely desolate, but contained two very different atmospheres that Abaddon was able to learn quite a lot from.
But as he expected, the reactions produced by the spirits of the other domains were borderline fanatical.
The reactions of the darkness and ice spirits were probably the worst that he could recall, as they were so enthralled with every facet of his being that he literally had to stop them from licking his sandals.
Despite those uncomfortable moments, he was unbelievably glad he had decided to stay in this place for a while longer.
The gifts he gained didn't stop at protection from most elements, he was enlightened with new applications of them, their inner workings in nature and even how to branch them off to create something new.
For example, his understanding of fire and heat had become so great that he now had thermal manipulation.
He could drain all of the heat and energy from anything he wished, and use it for himself in all sorts of unfair ways.
But by far, his biggest gain came from the element of blood.
As he bathed in what seemed like an endless stream of red water, he realized he was waist deep in the blood of every living creature, in this world and the next.
He understood their weaknesses, their inner workings, and even their maximum capabilities.
Under the right circumstances, he could kill a true dragon thousands of years older than him with just a touch.
But what surprised him the most was that this ability was not just limited to mortals.
The blood of gods and higher beings was mixed inside of here as well.
It made him wonder exactly what the spiritual realm was, and how it was able to provide him with such a resource.
Thanks to this, his family's future plans to kill or subjugate every being in the upper realm no longer seemed like such a pipe dream.
He was excited... so very excited for the day when his conquest would begin.
But before he could get into any of that, he had to go home and be reunited with his family.
Something told him that they were due to receive visitors at any moment now.
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m