The explosion was cataclysmic.

For one elongated second, there was only light. Pure, incandescent, absolutely blinding light that erased the wave of insects below like God had decided to take an eraser to that particular section of reality. The sphere expanded outwards from where his fingers had been pointing, a miniature star birthed in the ruins of Watford.

There was only light so bright it hurt to look at, overpowering even the burning sky. The heat was incredible even from hundreds of metres away, like he'd just stepped into an oven.

And then it vanished as quickly as it had come. Just… pop. And nothing. A timer started ticking down at the back of his mind. Sixty seconds.

The giant insects that had been rushing across the street below were gone. As was the street itself. And the houses on either side. Lampposts, grass, walls, fences, everything was just disintegrated. A perfectly spherical absence had been carved into the world, leaving behind only singed wreckage.

Only when the sphere of destruction was gone did actual fires start up, the material around the sphere finally reacting to the sudden and overwhelming heat. The blaze swept through the surroundings like fire through paper, and the spherical rend in the ground turned cherry red in an instant.

Air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and John felt the tug of it even from hundreds of metres up. He had to flap his Dragon Wings a bit more forcefully to keep from being chucked about by the sudden wind.

+45000 Aura

The notification intruded on his vision, and John stared blankly through it, entranced by the empty space below. His hand was still extended, fingers still curled into the fast that had triggered the Spell. He slowly unclenched them, watched his own digits unfold like he'd never seen them before.

"Holy shit," he murmured, a note of disbelief in his voice. He couldn't quite process what he'd just done.

That had been Supernova. A Level 9 Spell. One-hundred-and-twenty-eight-thousand Aura's worth of destructive capability, and he'd just used it to swat a cluster of blue-souled monsters like they were gnats. Overkill didn't begin to cover it. It was like using a nuclear warhead to kill a spider.

It had been effortless. He'd pointed, he'd clenched his fist, and an entire section of the street had been sterilised of monster presence in the blink of an eye.

John looked at his hand again. The same hand that had trembled the first time he'd fired a Soul Arrow. That hand had just unleashed enough power to level a city block.

A chuckle escaped him before he could stop it. At the same time, his stomach did a slow roll. Not nausea, exactly. More like vertigo, the sensation of standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing how easy it would be to fall. Or jump.

Because that was what this was, wasn't it? That kind of power, concentrated in a single moment, capable of being deployed with nothing more than a thought and a gesture, was actually a bit terrifying when he gave it a little thought. Not in the way the monsters were terrifying, with their teeth and claws and alien hunger.

More like the kind of fear that came with holding something precious and fragile and being worried your grip might slip.

Or having an intrusive thought that you could drop it on purpose, just to see what would happen.

John shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought. His wings beat hard, keeping him stable in the air as he stared down at the sphere of absence, that now-flaming void. The monsters hadn't even had the chance to react. Had they even known they were up here, above them?

That's what I can do now, he thought. Those kinds of monsters are nothing to me. No threat. I can erase them effortlessly.

He'd killed plenty of monsters over the last week. Hundreds, probably thousands by now. He'd burned them, frozen them, electrocuted them, impaled them, crushed them, and dissolved them. He'd gotten used to the violence, compartmentalised the stress.

But this felt different. This felt like crossing a line he hadn't known existed until he'd already stepped over it.

Then the awe kicked in, and the unease got shoved aside and told to shut up.

Because fuck, that had been incredible. John had never felt anything like it. The sheer scope of it, the absolute certainty of the effect. For one perfect moment, he'd held the power of a god in his palm, and he'd wielded it with the casual ease of flicking a light switch.

What would something like that do to a red? The question struck his mind, electric with possibility. The stickbug monster in the supermarket portal world had nearly killed him, even with all his tricks and upgrades and desperate improvisations. What if he'd had Supernova then? Would it have been enough? Or would a red-souled creature just shrug off a Level 9 Spell the way it had shrugged off almost everything else?

He needed to know. He needed to test it. Needed to see what happened when unstoppable force met immovable object.

John pulled up his Spell menu with a thought, his eyes tracking down the list of Level 9 options he'd unlocked. He'd chosen Supernova first because the name had been self-explanatory, a concept he understood from science rather than speculation. But the others…

Gravity Bomb. He pictured a sphere of crushing force, space-time itself folding inward until everything in range was compacted to a singularity.

Dark Side of the Moon. That one was harder to parse. Some kind of shadow effect? Dimensional manipulation? Or just an edgy name for something mundane? The dark side of the actual moon was meant to be absurdly cold, right? Maybe the Spell would freeze everything in his vicinity.

Reaper's Gale seemed wind-based, almost certainly. But "Reaper" implied lethality beyond just cutting force. Life-draining? Necrotic? Soul-targeting?

Planetary Devastation made John's mind immediately go to a certain anime character creating a black hole that sucked in matter in a massive radius, creating a great sphere that then crashed down on his enemies. If the Spell lived up to that mental image, it would be utterly absurd.

Null Field implied a defensive option, maybe? Something that negated other effects, created a zone of anti-magic? Could be useful, but it lacked the immediate appeal of the others—that being said, it was Level 9. For it to be considered on the same level as what he'd just witnessed with Supernova, it pretty much had to be something awesome.

Elemental Supremacy was probably a blanket upgrade to all his elemental spells, or maybe the ability to control all elements simultaneously. Either way, the name screamed "ultimate technique."

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The World. Another opaque one, but if it referenced what he thought it did... a time-stop? Full reality manipulation? The possibilities were staggering and terrifying at the same time. The thought of it sounded almost too OP. Like, he hadn't actually watched the anime the reference came from so he wasn't sure, but how did anyone actually counter that ability?

Reality Anchor at first sounded like a counter to reality-warping effects. Which wood be situational, but potentially life-saving if he ever faced an enemy with similar such powers. But could that really be it? Kind of like Null Field, that idea sounded too simple. There had to be more.

Karmic Retribution was probably the most vague name on the list in his opinion. Would it mean reflective damage? Cosmic justice? Automatic vengeance against anyone who hurt him? Perhaps an enemy who hurt him would be cursed with bad luck thereafter. No way to know, and he was hardly going to test it when there was stuff on the list that seemed much clearer.

All of them were powerful. Probably capable of reshaping a battlefield with a single cast. All of them were also expensive.

And now that he'd unlocked them, now that he'd tasted what a Level 9 Spell could do, his hunger for power was only growing. He wanted more. Wanted to test them all, see what each one could accomplish, figure out which situations called for which apocalypse.

His mind drifted to his other powerful Spells. Draconic Inferno had carried him through the fight with the red-souled stickbug, and that was only a combination of Dragon Breath upgraded and merged with Pyromancy and Pyromaniac. What would it become at Level 9? Would the flames burn hot enough to melt through any red's defences?

Hurricane, too. He'd used it to clear swaths of enemies, creating localized storms that tore through everything in their path. Level 9 Hurricane would probably be capable of annihilating entire neighbourhoods with winds strong enough to peel buildings from their foundations. The difference between a category one and category five hurricane.

Or whatever the categories were. He had no clue.

The possibilities made his fingers itch. He could spend the next hour just theorycrafting, working out optimal combinations and upgrade paths, figuring out how to maximize his destructive potential.

Then his thoughts turned to Aura farming, and a familiar calculus began running through his head.

45,000 Aura in one go. The maths he'd figured out long ago were simple: more spectators plus more impressive displays equalled more Aura. It had always been that way, but seeing it quantified so starkly drove the point home.

Which meant he needed more people. Not just for gathering materials and harvesting monster reagents for his crafting projects like he had planned, though that was going to be useful too. He needed them for the audience. Needed witnesses to his power, people who could see him work and be appropriately awed.

The thought sat uncomfortably in his mind, mercenary and calculating in a way that made him feel like a bit of a prick. But it was also pragmatic. If showing off generated Aura, and Aura let him unlock abilities that would keep everyone alive, then showing off was a survival strategy. A virtuous cycle: he protected people, people watched him be awesome, he got stronger, he protected more people. Everyone won.

John dismissed the menu, the Level 10 option still greyed out and locked behind a stat threshold he hadn't reached. Part of him wanted to just push Arcane up to 10 right now, spend the 51,200 Aura and see what Spells awaited him at the peak. The temptation was fierce, a curiosity so intense it almost hurt.

But he held back. Because levelling up wasn't just about unlocking new abilities. Every time he upgraded a stat, the System flooded him with restorative energy, knitting wounds and purging toxins and generally keeping him alive when he had no right to be. He only had six more level-ups left before he hit the cap, and after that, he'd need to rely purely on Cellular Regeneration and Biomancy and healing potions and whatnot to keep himself intact.

Six level-ups. Six emergency heals. Six get-out-of-death-free cards. He couldn't afford to waste one just because he was curious about Level 10 Spells. That curiosity might kill him later, when he was staring down another red and bleeding out and desperately wishing he'd saved just one more level for the healing pulse.

So the Level 10 unlock could wait. He'd be pragmatic. Strategic. He'd save those levels for when he really needed them.

Even if it killed him not to know.

It genuinely took every bit of his willpower not to do it.

John took a breath and turned his attention back to his companions. They were all still airborne, scattered across the sky in a rough formation, and now he could see them properly, could focus on something other than the light show he'd just created.

Jade floated about ten metres to his left, her hoodie rippling in the wind. The Dragon Wings Enchantment he'd imbued into the fabric manifested as oddly fabric-like wings sprouting from the back of the garment, flapping with a slow, powerful rhythm that kept her hovering effortlessly. She was grinning at him, eyes bright with an excitement that looked almost manic.

"Holy fucking shit, John!" she called out, her Scottish accent thick with enthusiasm. "That was absolutely mental! Did you see that? The way they just—" She made an explosive gesture with her hands. "—gone! Not even ash left behind! That was the most badass thing I've ever seen in my entire life!"

+1000 Aura

Laying it on a little thick there, he thought. He was thankful for Biomancy stopping the cringe from showing on his face.

Chester was hovering nearby. He kept wobbling slightly, overcorrecting his balance, clearly still getting used to flight. His face was pale, but when he met John's eyes, there was something there that looked like awe.

"I—" Chester started, then stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "That was really something. I mean, I knew you were strong, but that... I didn't know anyone could do that."

+1000 Aura

John stared at him for a moment. Have they coordinated? Are they all going to be glazing me whenever I do something cool, now?

Doug was off to the right, standing on a floating platform of stone that hovered through the air with surprising stability. The old man had his arms crossed, feet planted shoulder-width apart like he was standing on solid ground rather than a chunk of rock defying gravity through magical force. The ring on his finger pulsed with a faint brown glow.

He was staring at the empty space below where the monsters had been, his expression unreadable. Then he looked at John, and a slow grin spread across his weathered face.

"Fuck me sideways," Doug said, his voice carrying easily across the distance. "That's the kind of firepower that wins wars, kid. I take back every time I called you a show-off. You can show off as much as you bloody well want if that's what you're showing off."

John just nodded slightly. Fuck. They totally have coordinated this. Also, when did he call me a show-off?

Lily brought up the rear, riding a giant falcon made entirely of flame. She was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite parse. Her lips were curved in a way that should have been a smile, and her eyes were bright, but there was an edge to it, sort of? He'd never seen an expression like that from her before.

"You have so much firepower, dude." Even her voice was chipper. Maybe it was just his imagination. "Always takes me off guard, ya know? Is there actually anyone around stronger than you, right now? Probably not, right?"

+1000 Aura

Okay, she's still glazing me like the others, and the System gave me Aura for it, but like… What the hell?

He pushed the feeling aside. Deal with it later. Right now, he had an agenda to pursue.

"That's the thing," John said, keeping his voice casual as he drifted closer to the group. His wings beat lazily, the motion taking almost no conscious effort now. "I can do that to basically any wave of monsters we come across. Drop a Supernova on them, wipe them out in seconds."

He paused, let that sink in. Watched the various expressions play across their faces as they processed the implications. Had to account for the fact they all knew he was being forced to act 'cool,' and calibrate his speech as such to make it clear he was being at least somewhat sincere.

"So here's what I'm thinking," John continued. "We do exactly what we talked about before, except we do it better. I fly overhead, scout out the monster waves, drop Supernovas on anything that looks threatening. You guys focus on getting anyone still alive in this fucking shithole out. We direct them toward safe routes, systematically clear Watford section by section, save everyone who's still alive."

The others exchanged glances he couldn't interpret. For some reason, they eventually turned back to him as one with flat looks on their faces.

"The concept of overkill just doesn't exist to you, does it?" Doug asked wryly.

John didn't know how to respond to that, so he kept silent.

The old man sighed. "Come on, whippersnappers. Let's go find Alissa and Sam, and we can discuss this without getting chucked about by the wind."

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