The first few days passed by quickly enough, with both Alcadram and Sarnakthros attempting to increase Jonathan’s control over his Divinity. The purple ghost he had summoned on instinct during his first training session was one of the three parts of his Divinity, as explained by Alcadram. Every god had a trio of distinct elements that made up their godhood. One of the body, one of the mind and one of the soul.
The specter represented the soul, dragged into the real world to defend its host. It was the easiest to summon, as it required no conscious control. The other two were the Smite ability for the body, which according to Alcadram, had vastly more potential and usages than Jonathan had ever found, and the art of True Elemental Mastery. While Jonathan could control the raging power of the Void already, he didn’t have any degree of proper control, acting more as a conduit than anything else. With the right application of will, almost anything could be achieved with a given element. This required a mind aligned with the conceptual nature of the element, rather than its more simple aspects.
That was a process that could not be achieved by anything save for a lifetime of using an element, but Jonathan was going to do his damndest to achieve some degree of competency.
In this realm without the System, every iota of his power depended on his element and his Divinity. Either mana didn’t exist without the effects of the System, or Alcadram was suppressing it for the purposes of training. Either could have been correct, given that there hadn’t been any mana on Earth.
As it was, none of that mattered. Jonathan had access to Smite and his other Divinity based abilities. Only, they were changed by his new connection to the Void. For example, Smite now girded him in flames of a deep purple, boosting not only his stats, but his elemental power as well. With a single punch, devastating beams of consumption were projected from his fist, tearing across the subrealm that he was in. This seemed impressive to him, but his two mentors seemed disappointed. Sarnakthros possessed the mastery, but not the power, while Alcadram possessed both, meaning that they were very critical of his accomplishments.
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Jonathan took a battering every day from the golden Alcadram, the avatar of Divinity resolving to force the mastery out of wherever it was hiding. Jonathan was confident that he possessed plenty of mastery, especially considering that nobody else in the Hells had Divinity as far as he knew. After all, it was simply an extra level of power. The only problem was that if his quest was successful, he would have to fight the gods themselves, who most assuredly were masters of the very power that made them gods.
Still, Jonathan grew in his own right, finding ways to enhance his skills with Divinity. Having his element fused with his Divinity was a force multiplier like no other but also a steep learning curve. While there was little danger posed to him by his own skills, there was an abundance of peril at the hands of Alcadram, and to a lesser extent, Sarnakthros. The latter was almost completely without form, but in this place, the seals on his power were somewhat loosened, and he could wield the ambient Divinity, passing it through his form to aspect it.
Progress came slow at first, but as the hours turned to days, and the days to weeks, Jonathan found himself growing at an incredible rate. He could now maintain Smite for a nearly unlimited amount of time, drawing upon his elemental reserves as well as his Divinity stores. Not only that, but he could even directly influence the power of Smite by modulating the flow of Divinity and elemental energy to it.
In the pocket dimension, Jonathan found it hard to find a measuring stick for his progression, especially without his System interface. Alcadram was infinitely stronger than he was, while Sarnakthros lacked any strength at all. Neither were satisfying to use as a bar of progress. Instead, Jonathan tried to compare himself to the him previous to the trial. All he could really come up with was that he was a few times more powerful overall.
On the first day of the second month, Jonathan prepared to fight Alcadram for what felt like the thousandth time, summoning the specter of his Divine Spirit to amplify his powers. This time, though, Alcadram stopped him. “I think you’re ready for something more. While I enjoy showing off my might, you’ve learned about all you can from being beaten into to the ground.”
