Just over a year passed and Araxis rapidly grew his strength. Relying on not only his expertise but with the help of Yue. Yue's blood pavillion was still a thing in this timeline, in the previous one it was used to make a body for Hou.
Araxis and Yue combined their strengths rapidly using their expertise to grow Hou's power. All throughout Hou had not awoken and has not said anything.
Yue could easily regain authority over the bloody crystal pavillion, it was made of various spirits. Those spirits were bundles of laws, which Araxis then gained control of.
While Araxis focused on developing magic power, Yue worked on the cultivation side. Strictly speaking magic and cultivation was one in the same. The only difference was cultivation used spirit wills to manipulate laws instead of directly.
Yue used Araxis' help and cultivated How's soul, gaining another two spirit wills in only one year when normally it would take many years.
This was possible since magic could be used to break the soul and let it spirits rather than brute force with qi. While magic had more potential, for fighting cultivation was faster and used instant laws.
Overall, over the year Araxis and Yue had vastly improved Hou's strength. Before he had been a 5th circle mage, but now he was on his 7th circle.
And cultivation wise, the soul had grown stronger. The soul strengthening had two advantages. The first is it could have influence in a larger area, and the second was the amount of influence.
Spirits could theoretically do much more than Hou had been doing but they were limited. Spirits were limited but the dao restrictions, through the soul they could go past the restrictions.
But when the soul was spread further, the amount it could stop the restrictions lowered, meaning the spirits would become weaker. This was one of the reasons the false spirit wills were so weak. They were a portion of a heavily restricted spirit will, the inner world of the miasma cultivator was at least throughout the whole lands Hou knew of. The soul was much stronger now and Hou could use more power from the spirits he had.
***
On the other side of the lands, a year previous, Nelzahar woke up. He found himself flooded with memories, he knew exactly where he was.
'so this is Araxis' new world... It's quite quaint.'
As soon as he awoke inside Juniors mind he took over, familial bonds were useless. What he needed was strength. Strength was all that he needed, with strength all is possible!
He first tested his magic, using the body he found himself in was first unfamiliar but he quickly grew to understand it. He created a fireball, with the bodies natural resonance, he could make a 3rd circle magic with only quasi 1st circle magic.
Nelzahar looked outside and saw that there were people on a faraway mountaintop. He quickly shot at them, in order to test out his power.
The fireball continued growing through the air and collided with the mountaintop, though his attack was stopped...
Junior was not alone, when Nelzahar woke up Hou was bedside him. He could easily save the people Nelzahar was targeting. Though because of Hou's feelings towards his disciple, he did not notice that he targeted the people on purpose.
Nelzahar quickly tried to act like Junior again, happily leaving Hou after being scolded.
He walked out into the city, and started doing dark magic. He walked into a shady alleyway and sat down. He started to resonate and take in the world through the eyes of somebody beyond it.
Nelzahar was really in the astral world, the physical material could not stop him. Instantly he saw all the weak civilians. Their Etheric bodies weak but a few were standing out.
A few people had strong Etheric bodies, and they had peculiar laws on them. He could identify them from Junior's memories, these were the people with abilities and aura.
Aura was dangerous but Hamar had not been taught by another swordsman. He was taught all he knew from his own intuition and a mage, his techniques were not perfect.
As to make sure he did not stop his plans, Nelzahar first went to defeat Hamar. He first walked into a random person's house, a scared women.
Nelzahar instantly shut off her ability to speak, then grabbing her. He pulled out a knife and started cutting her. He flayed and tortured her alive, drawing in the suffering using a magic circle. Unlike normal mages, Nelzahar could resonate without trouble.
Araxis had accidently made him stronger than ever, he created a soul that could protect his consciousness from assimilating!
Nelzahar used magic and took in the girls appearance. He made his way to Hamar. His plan was to seduce Hamar then while he's weak, he would cause him to sleep.
However Hamar noticed the oddity and started attacking Nelzahar! Hamar had an intuitive feeling that this was not who they seemed, he had moved to take them down.
However he was still fighting a women, that he used to see happily in the town, and could not easily kill her with a healthy conscience. Instead he was only focusing on apprehending them.
Nelzahar dodged Hamar multiple times, using the wind around him to moved himself in a dance with Hamar. When he felt Hamar speed up, Nelzahar took another action.
He ran towards a civilian and grabbed them, releasing his disguise. Now it Hamar doubly so, he saw a civilian being used as a hostage and his nephew Junior was the one doing it!
Nelzahar could slightly tell Hamar's defenses wearing in his Etheric body and went to finish him off. He killed the hostage, leaving Hamar's defenses thoroughly broken.
He used resonance and manipulated wills, causing Hamar's body to betray him. Normally sleep was caused by the light and exhaustion, Nelzahar took this and twisted it. He made Hamar's body feel it needs to sleep regardless of whether it truly did.
Nelzahar had won, he needed to escape still. He saw through Junior's memories that Hou could raise mountains and create suns from nothing. Even with his limited understanding of this world's power, he knew that if he didn't leave, Hou could kill him like an ant.