Eden found it hard to accept the spell had failed. He tried several more times.
He thought that maybe he was supposed to use the precise spell.
"I wish to cast Planar Shift."
It still failed.
"I wish to teleport out of the Abyss."
Nothing. It all failed.
The realization that his 'surefire' way of escaping the Abyss did not work had been especially crushing when he had already started planning what he would do once he left this place.
From there, Eden was tempted to cast every teleportation spell he had heard of through Wish. After all, he did not need to have learned a particular spell to use it through Wish, and he had memorized the whole spell list of every class because he had anticipated his meeting with Gale and Elminster, and also because he needed to know about a spell to guard against it.
But no matter how much he tried, how he worded it, none allowed him to leave. At best, he could move within the layer, but that was it.
So, once he determined it was impossible for him to escape this place through teleportation, he sought to understand why. Fortunately, this time, Wish was far more accommodating, probably because he would have found out the reason by himself given long enough.
The Forgotten Layer of the Abyss was a prison for Tharizdun, and one of the measures set in place was a complete ban on Plane Shifting. One could enter this place, but leaving through it was completely impossible.
Well, it was, if one was powerful enough to break through the ban set on reality itself by the multiple gods who had imprisoned Tharizdun in this place.
And for the same reason Eden could have been affected by that banishment, it also stopped him, despite his talent. It was not a debuff per se, only a ban on reality.
This ban also extended to communication. He could not even ask for help if he wanted to, this layer was completely isolated from the outside world. The only reason he had been able to communicate with his Simulacrum had been his talent, and now that it had been dissipated, he no longer had any means of communicating with the outside.
The more spells and possibilities Eden went through, the more despairing his situation got as he slowly realized that he was well and utterly trapped.
Eden's estimate had been that the party would take at least several months to regain all their power, join Baldur's Gate, and face the Absolute. The travel time would at the very least be a month long, which would translate to over 50 years for Eden.
Including all the other factors though, their journey might take between half a year to a full year. In other words, between 333 and 666 years for Eden.
One might think he would only see a portion of that, but perhaps the worst thing about this sentence was that Eden had multiple ways to increase his lifespan. Wish, for one, could probably do it, especially when he could easily cast it multiple times a day.
He also had the possibility of Binding Vows, and if nothing else, he could even turn himself into a Cursed Spirit as Sukuna had done, thus becoming immortal.
That hardly made his situation any better, because Eden did not know if his mind could survive several centuries in that place. He might be immune to the curse of madness permeating the place, spending several centuries without anyone to talk and everything trying to kill him…
But no matter how much he thought about it, only a single solution came to Eden's mind: become the Lord of this layer.
In other words, kill Tharizdun.
Demon Lords had a certain level of agency over their layer of the Abyss. Maybe this would allow him to leave.
But killing Tharizdun would require him to kill all the demons and other beings in this layer, or find a way to stop it from switching souls with them when he killed it.
After taking some time to think about things, once he recovered from the sheer impact the discovery of Wish not being a free way out was, Eden devised three paths for himself.
First, go at it dumbly. Just kill every being on this layer, forcibly stopping Tharizdun from reviving. That would take a long time, considering there had to be thousands, if not millions, of different beings, but maybe.
Second, study magic. He did not know much, but he did increase his talent with magic, and maybe that given enough time, he would learn a powerful enough spell to leave, or permanently kill Tharizdun without having to go through every other inhabitant of this layer first.
Third, master domain expansion. Barrier techniques were the only thing in his Cursed Energy arsenal that could potentially help with killing Tharizdun directly, and Domain Expansion may be a way to stop him it from swapping souls.
So, Eden got to work.
Time became a complete mystery to Eden as he put himself into his escape plan fully. Magically, he started with learning all the spell scrolls he had on him, before branching out into innovation. He did not study strictly spells either, as he also got into runes, and from time to time, he would learn some alchemy.
Although Eden only had access to so many ingredients, many things could be done with the flesh and blood of powerful demons and monsters.
A good part of his time was also spent slaughtering demons, simply killing everything that was unfortunate enough to come within sight, and he would only stop when he became too tired to kill and collapsed under the innumerable corpses he left behind.
From time to time, he would also pass by Tharizdun and kill it, just in case something had changed, but it always revived.
For a time, Eden saw a steady increase in his attributes, combat prowess and spell-crafting, but after a while, he hit a plateau. How much time it took him to reach it, he had no idea, especially since he had found a solution for his aging.
[Name: Ozymandias]
[Title: Monster Hunter II, Omen of Death]
[Talent: Soul Overlord]
[Perks: Tier I, Silver Flame I, Will of Steel I, STD Free, Immense Cursed Energy III, Shrine, Timeless Body]
[HP: 490/490]
[MP: 882/882]
[CE: 1699/1699]
[Strength: 49]
[Agility: 49]
[Physique: 49]
[Intelligence: 49]
[Wisdom: 49]
[Sorcery: 49]
[Skills: Expand]
[Immunity: Psychic III]
[Resistances: None]
[Weaknesses: None]
[Currency: 27522 Dream Points]
By that point, Eden could feel that the various attributes of his body had reached their absolute limit, and that all he would require to promote to Tier II would be a nudge. Perhaps not even that.
But his Binding Vow blocked him, forcefully kept his attributes capped at 49 and forbidding him from promoting.
Again, he did not know how long it had taken him to reach this point, because he had found an easy solution to his lifespan problem.
Monks and Druids of a high level had access to a feature called Timeless Body, which increased their lifespan by ten times. He easily recreated it with Wish. Considering Eden had a lifespan of slightly more than 100 years, and probably closer to 150 years considering his high attributes, that had been turned into 1000 to 1500 years.
While not exactly immortality, it was enough for Eden. 1000 years in the Forgotten Layer of the Abyss was the equivalent of a year and a half in Faerun, and Eden was pretty sure they would need less time than that to deal with the Absolute, or lose to it, for that matter.
If that was not enough time though… well, his lifespan might not be Eden's biggest problem after a thousand years down here.
Eden had chosen this solution because it was the simplest. At first, he had thought about using Wish to cast True Polymorph on himself and turn himself into a dragon. Like that, not only would age not impair him, but he would actually strengthen with time.
Unfortunately, after testing the waters out with the spell, he discovered that it could not allow him to truly permanently change his form. The spell could still be dispelled, which would make him regain his true form.
What this meant was that at his core, Eden would still be human, meaning that his lifespan would remain the same.
He also found out that his perks would change whenever he would cast True Polymorph on himself.
By the way, something else that he found out was that while Wish could be used to cast any other spell, it would only cast the most basic version of it, and not the mastered one. Also, it took away any control he could have over the spell itself.
Wish also could not really be used to learn spells as whenever he used it to cast a spell, that spell would not have its spell circle or concepts shown to him, so he could only rely on his innovation to learn new spells.
Back to Eden's age, it was hard to ascertain how much time had passed with his age since it was hard to ascertain one's own age without any other references, but Eden did get the impression that he had changed.
His features were sharp, his body bulky, and his hair always short. He never allowed it to grow long ever since a Balor had grabbed him by his then long hair and smashed him into the ground, nearly tearing his scalp off.
Whatever time had passed, Eden did not feel like there were any less monsters than before, despite killing thousands upon thousands of them, and his studies of magic were not going as well as he had hoped.
The one aspect he made good progress in was his Cursed Energy, as many of his battles were life and death struggles. Many of the beings present on this layer were powerful Tier II, and each of them required effort to slaughter.
Because he had reached a milestone in his attributes did not mean Eden's efforts stopped there. Eden threw himself a small celebration by eating an Adult Red Dragon, a rare delicacy compared to the other monsters and demons.
But other than that, the grind continued.
Apparently, he had been extremely lucky when he had found Abraxax, as he did not find a single other intelligent being since then. As far as he could tell, Eden remained pretty sane throughout, although it was hard to say without anyone to speak to.
The capping of all his attributes did represent something important for Eden though. Grinding through them helped him cope with his situation, as it gave him a goal, and something to track.
Now that they had all reached their limits, Eden strove to find something else he could keep track of. His magical studies, as fascinating as they could be, were not only impossible to track numerically, but it also took a while to see any improvements.
His Cursed Energy Output had the numbers, but the higher he got, the slower the effects. This was not just about him reaching his upper limit, but also because he was starting to use Cursed Energy much higher than his body should be able to have.
For a time, he switched to learning to fight with different weapons, as well as bare handed combat, but that was easier, and it did not take long for him to master whatever weapons he could find down there. Also, there were no numbers.
In the end, he decided to regularly pit himself against the toughest being aside from Tharizdun in the Forgotten Layer, and that was Gorellik, the fallen god.
Although Gorellik's attributes were not particularly impressive, his domain provided him with an immense boost, and also weakened any spells Eden tried to use.
He was one of the few beings he could not overpower in a one versus one, and he was also always accompanied by Gnolls.