Eo moved.

  The water around him pulsed as his body shifted, no longer the fragile, amorphous being that had once drifted unnoticed in the abyss. Power coiled beneath his translucent flesh, waiting to be tested. The elements he had gathered during his hibernation buzzed within him, restless, eager.

  He needed to understand them.

  A slow ripple spread outward as he extended his tendrils, drawing upon different combinations of elements. He wasn’t just fighting—he was experimenting, testing the interactions like a scientist adjusting variables in a complex equation.

  The first combination took form.

  Mist. Stormgleam. Graviton.

  A deep rumble vibrated through the water.

  The Mist seeped outward, diffusing into the battlefield, forming a thick veil that masked movement. Stormgleam, the essence of lightning, crackled through it, turning each droplet into a conduit for electricity. Finally, Graviton pressed downward, condensing the mist into a dense, weighted fog.

  Electricity snapped through the charged haze, forming a suffocating field of conductive mist.

  One of the wounded territorial lords twitched, its massive form stiffening as the unseen force pressed against it. Movement inside would mean electrocution.

  A perfect synergy, Eo thought. The mist extended his senses, the storm served as a weapon, and gravity anchored it all into place. It was a balance of perception, offense, and control.

  But this was only the first test.

  Tideflow. Venomshade. Earthy Orb.

  The battlefield shifted again.

  The deep-sea essence, Tideflow, surged within Eo, exerting pressure control over the surrounding waters. It allowed him to manipulate the flow itself, turning the battlefield into a weapon. Then came Venomshade, an insidious poison that laced into the currents, seeping outward in a silent, corrosive wave. Finally, Earthy Orb stabilized it, thickening the poisoned water into a viscous, sludge-like consistency.

  The result was a miasmic abyss.

  A deep crimson glow flickered as one of the lords recoiled, its armored hide sizzling where the venom clung.

  Even Ozure, who had remained still, shifted slightly as she observed.

  "Efficient," Eo noted. Tideflow ensured mobility, Venomshade introduced lethality, and Earthy Orb provided structure. Another effective combination.

  Yet something still felt off.

  Frostshard. Umbral Veil. Galecrest.

  A new formation.

  Frostshard condensed around him, ice forming in razor-thin sheets, coiling into jagged veins of glass-like spikes. Umbral Veil shrouded the battlefield in a light-devouring fog, distorting vision, turning the space into a nightmare of shifting shadows. Galecrest manipulated atmospheric currents, giving him sharp bursts of movement, making him a ghost within the darkness.

  Eo disappeared into the blackened abyss, moving with unnatural speed.

  A guttural roar erupted as one of the lords slammed into an unseen frost spike, its armored body convulsing from the sudden cold.

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  Ambush perfected.

  Attack, concealment, movement—another precise balance.

  He was getting closer.

  Then he made a mistake.

  Mist. Stormgleam. Graviton. Amber.

  When Eo attempted to merge the fourth element—Amber—a sharp resistance surged through his body. Not a rejection, but a strain.

  His form shuddered, the delicate balance he had carefully woven buckling under the pressure. The battlefield trembled as an uncontrolled surge of energy rippled outward, violently dispersing.

  Eo's tendrils recoiled, instinctively stabilizing his core.

  His body… couldn’t handle four at once. Not yet.

  The realization settled in. He wasn’t limited by an external rule—it was his own structure that failed to bear the weight of such complexity. His evolution wasn’t complete.

  Before he could contemplate, a shift in the currents drew his attention.

  Ozure had been watching him.

  For the first time, there was a flicker of genuine disbelief in her abyssal eyes.

  "This… should not be possible."

  She had lived for centuries, seen monsters rise and fall, witnessed the territorial lords clash over dominion. Never had she encountered something like this.

  A being capable of wielding multiple elements.

  One affinity was natural.

  Two affinities were a rarity, a mark of greatness.

  Three…

  That was legend.

  She had only ever heard of such beings in history—in the Ancient Era, when creatures of unfathomable power roamed the world. Before the fall. Before the decline.

  Yet, Eo wielded three with ease.

  And if he had not just reached a restriction, would he have gone beyond even that?

  The implications were staggering.

  She had dismissed him before. An anomaly. Something interesting, but ultimately unimportant.

  Now, she realized her mistake.

  Eo was something far worse.

  He was a breaking point. A creature rewriting the very laws of existence.

  And that made him dangerous.

  The battlefield had gone silent.

  The territorial lords—three behemoths, once locked in a struggle against him—had stopped their attacks.

  One of them, a deep-crimson leviathan, lowered its head slightly.

  Not in submission.

  But acknowledgment.

  For the first time, they recognized Eo not as some newly awakened creature—but as something far more.

  A rival.

  Eo’s tendrils flexed. He was still adjusting to the restriction he had just discovered. His form still trembled slightly from the sudden failure of his attempted fourth combination.

  But he understood what this meant.

  This battle had changed.

  It was no longer a test.

  It was a statement.

  And he was far from finished.

  Eo steadied himself, his pulsating body contracting as he reassessed his approach. Three elements worked in harmony. Four tipped the balance into chaos.

  It wasn’t rejection. His body was attempting to synchronize the fourth element, but its structure—though vastly evolved—was still adapting. The strain wasn’t from incompatibility but from the sheer complexity of weaving multiple forces together.

  Still, even within the failure, there was insight.

  He shifted his focus, retracting the unstable fourth element and refining his control over the three he had already combined. Tideflow, Stormgleam, and Verdant Core.

  The moment he committed to just these three, his control sharpened. The environment around him bent in response—moisture from the abyss condensed into dense hydrostatic blades, laced with electricity, their movements eerily organic. At the same time, unseen fibrous strands of nature energy spread through the currents, binding his attacks together like a net of living steel.

  Eo lunged.

  The wounded territorial lords reacted instantly, their massive forms twisting as they prepared to counter. But Eo had already adapted—his movements had become sharper, unnervingly precise. He struck, the charged blades slicing forward, guided by the subtle influence of nature’s binding. One lord—a monstrous, eel-like entity cloaked in abyssal darkness—barely dodged, but not unscathed.

  A deep gash tore along its side, releasing a dark ichor into the water.

  Ozure watched the battle from above, her massive, wounded form coiled around the battlefield. Her gaze narrowed.

  (Shift to Ozure’s POV)

  This creature…

  Ozure had existed for centuries, witnessing the rise and fall of countless abyssal beings. But never had she seen one wield multiple elements with such precision.

  The depths followed a simple law—each entity was born with a singular affinity. Two affinities were anomalies, and three? Legends of old, creatures that once rivaled the gods.

  Yet here was Eo. Not merely wielding three, but experimenting, pushing boundaries like a scholar dissecting the fabric of existence.

  She had expected him to be stronger after his hibernation. But this? This was beyond reason.

  The other lords had noticed as well.

  Their initial hostility had shifted. Wariness crept into their movements, their attacks less reckless. They weren’t merely fighting now.

  They were evaluating him.