Arima snapped his fingers and his soul gate that remained within the real world as a bridge between the realms opened again. An inversed vortex was revealed behind the doors. Then, like when they were pulled inside the soul land, everyone felt the same force trying to get them out.
Soon, they all disappeared from the soul manifestation. When Arima returned to the academy’s arena, he looked up at the gate which was slowly closing. But just before the doors were entirely shut, a pair of red eyes peeked out from the vortex and a sinister laugh resounded.
Everyone shivered right then. They felt as if the devil had just whispered in their ears. They rubbed their neck because of the goosebumps.
In contrast to their reaction, Night and Karma stiffened and looked away. Arima clicked his tongue and turned around from the gate. He directly went to the portal to leave. The soul gate then disintegrated into white particles without any additional incident.
"We will head to Cross Island in two days. Rest well until then," Arima said whilst waving his hand.
Chulainn stared at Arima with an odd look as he exited the arena. Arister and Lanya both looked at his back too, obviously noticing his strange behavior. Lanya was greatly bemused. It was the second time she didn't recognize Arima in his actions.
The first time was when she saw him emitting genuine hatred and this time, the emotions she recognized were worry and annoyance. That thought made her falter. She directed her sight toward the now-vanished gate and squinted her eyes. Why would Arima be worried about something originating from his own soul?
"Lanya, come here," She then heard Arima's voice calling her. She trembled and rolled her eyes toward the source. She noticed afterward that Arima had already ‘reset’ his expression and was completely calm. As always, his composure was astounding. Lanya smiled wryly and hurried to follow him through the gate.
Velvet silently watched until Arima's group left. She also sighed in relief when the miniature dragon on her neck jumped off. The small beast also strangely stared at her, it smirked and snorted before turning into silver particles. A vein popped out on Velvet's forehead and even Natsu's expression twitched. Was that the ego of Arima's magic?
The Lawless Tome was actually very demeaning toward her because Arima said that he was craftier than a fox.
Velvet sighed and also left the place soon after.
"This signs the end of the local competition. The winning teams are Sir Blade’s and Miss Venu's classes," The announcer declared.
The images displayed by the recording crystals were cut and the entire academy immediately started chatting and gossiping.
*******************************************
"Okay, let's begin," Arima said after bringing Lanya into another dimension.
Raal and Karia had tagged along because they were curious about what was going to happen. The students had been left to go wherever they wanted though and Arister followed them as well.
"The reason I made you battle Velvet was that I wanted time to analyze your soul during your fight. I could have let you fight Karma or Night, but in those conditions, you’d never really 'open' your soul to the fight," Arima explained and shrugged.
"But, well, when the principal asked me if I could do something about the stage, I thought of my soul realm. I then realized that I may have been able to inspect your soul as long as you were in it, no matter the opponent."
Lanya could only smile bitterly. Night sighed and shook his head. Karma just chuckled. The rest simply thought that it was like Arima, relaxed and laid back. Lazy at times but beyond serious at others.
"So, what do I do?" Lanya finally asked.
Arima smiled and summoned Ira. He ejected the magazine and loaded a new one. He then took a transparent bullet and forcefully put it in the chamber by pulling the slide. Lanya observed perplexed.
"Don't worry. You don't need to anything," Arima declared and pointed Ira at Lanya. He then shot without any warning. Lanya's eyes narrowed but she didn't feel any threat from that bullet. Its speed was also relatively slow for her level.
She didn't move and the bullet landed on her chest and went through her heart. There wasn't any resulting blood or even a scratch on her. But Lanya couldn't reflect on it before she suddenly lost consciousness. Behind her, a huge figure started forming.
Gradually, the body of a hundred-meter-tall silver noble dragon appeared. Night reacted quite strongly at the presence that had just emerged from Lanya’s soul. He abruptly felt the urge to kneel down and pay his respects.
The silver dragon opened his dull eyes that reflected wisdom and awareness. His huge pupils locked on Arima. The dragon sighed as it slowly lied down on the ground.
"You again… So, you noticed after all," The dragon spoke with a sluggish voice but it was strong enough for Raal and Karia to fall on their knees. To their surprise, they couldn’t even control their bodies anymore. Karma and Night could barely withstand it.
Meanwhile, Chulainn frowned as he stared at the dragon.
"You are Chronepsis…right?" He asked hesitatingly. He sounded odd as if he was trying to convince himself.
Arima smiled when he heard Chulainn say that. His guesses had been proven.
"You are Kanryin's son, huh?" Chronepsis muttered when he spotted Chulainn.
The Hellhound was now completely lost. He knew about Chronepsis because, as the Guardian of Hell, he memorized almost all of the Earthen Gods that ever existed. He also knew that Chronepsis was supposed to be a typical Dragon God. But right now, he was under the pressure of an aura even stronger than his own.
"I thought that it was strange," Arima's voice resounded and Chronepsis turned toward him. "I asked Lilis about it before. To be an Earthen God, you need more than simply breakthrough to the Earthen Realm.”
“You also need to have a legend backing your persona and then refine your own body with a certain ritual," Arima paused and smiled. "To then truly become what people call a god," He said and Chronepsis squinted his eyes.
"For example, if I were to take that kind of ritual, my legend could be something like the ‘Kind Demon’ or…" Arima stopped in the middle of his sentence and shook his head. "Well, you get the point. Now, the thing is, I know your legend.”
“You're the Watcher. The outsider who is always looking at everything. Your title carries 'justice' but you don't care about it."
"The main reason I realized that you were not completely fused with Lanya was that the descriptions made of you are a lot more awe-inspiring. Additionally, Lanya lacked the ‘Unblinking Draconic Eyes’, which are your trademark along with your 'vision'.”
“So?” Chronepsis snorted.
“So… you’re a Heavenly God, aren't you?"
Those words not only shocked Chulainn but everyone else except Raal and Karia who didn't know what it signified.
"What's the point in knowing that?" Chronepsis responded. He then stared at Arima and his eyes changed slowly. His pupils became filled with gold light and his irises turned sky blue like sparkling diamond. The dragon gazed at Arima with those peculiar eyes for a short while before closing them. When he opened them again, they had already returned to normal.
"…Life and Death Hunter, Silver Emperor, Wicked One, Arimane R. Blade, Kind Demon, First Eternal Dragon, and Plane Guardian," Chronepsis suddenly listed out a number of titles and Arima's expression changed with each. Chulainn was also stunned by all of that, especially by the last one.
First, he said 'Life and Death Hunter' as if it was a single title. He then followed with 'Silver Emperor' which was actually pretty easy to notice for the higher-level entities. The third title, Wicked One, was something pretty confusing. He then continued by saying Arima's full name but added a middle name that even the concerned person didn't know about.
When he said, Kind Demon, Arima was even more puzzled. Why would he put that title just after those extremely perturbing ones?
The penultimate one, 'First Eternal Dragon', was extremely weird since Arima knew that he was human. But when he heard ‘dragon’ he instinctively thought of Night.
And finally, 'Plane Guardian'. It was something that he had heard from Chulainn when he first met him but didn’t get to know what it was.
Arima repeated all of this in his mind and then raised his head to look at Chronepsis. "Was that what you saw in my future?"
"Correct. But I’m unable to see further. My power isn't sufficient to probe into the life of a Plane Guardian. I only know that you will become one," The silver dragon replied. "But let me tell you, your fate is bound to be chaotic. I cannot say for sure if it will be hard for you or not, but your life is certainly… ‘exceptional’."
Chronepsis sighed afterward and his body started glowing. "Anyway, I suppose your original motive was to wake me up and make me fuse completely with this little girl, right?”
“In fact, I barely have enough strength to stay alive anymore. You didn’t need to force me out, I would have done it soon enough. But I have a condition before leaving all my power and knowledge to her," With just his words, Arima received the information directly into his mind out of nowhere. He scowled but stayed silent since he knew that Chronepsis won't tell him more. In the end, he just nodded.
"Good," The dragon nodded too. "I died because of a mistake and had to take refuge within this little girl. She's quite special, her soul that is," He said and his entire body became a pillar of light that engulfed Lanya.
“I know,” Arima nodded at his words which confused his companions since they didn’t know what he was talking about. Even Night didn’t understand.
Chronepsis closed his eyes. "I wish you good luck then. Also, she will not inherit all of my knowledge and power right away. She needs to reinforce herself a little more before that happens… take good care of her…" He added and his voice faded away. The light also died down and Lanya wavered. Arima caught her before she fell.
He then gently laid her down on the ground and checked her state. She had indeed broken through to the Earthen Realm. She even was already in the third sky. She would need to train a lot to get used to this new strength though.
"…This was the most unexpected thing I've ever witnessed in my many years of life…" Chulainn muttered after he recovered from the shock. "To think that a Heavenly God hid from Heaven and lived without anyone knowing about him. On top of that, I’ve actually met a future Plane Guardian."
"You're all saying that but what is a Plane Guardian?" Night asked the Hellhound.
"A Plane Guardian is supposed to be the strongest existence capable of existing. Even above Heavenly Gods."
"'Supposed to'?" Karma tilted her head.
Chulainn nodded. "Yes, I heard about Plane Guardians from a Heavenly God who died and was pulled into Hell. He only knew them through legends," He explained. "To make you understand what it is, do you all know what a Plane is?" He inquired and everyone shook their heads.
"Go on," Arima said and Chulainn shrugged.
"Well then, we'll start from planets. A gathering of a certain number of them around a star makes a solar system. Multiple solar systems, planets, and stars, form a galaxy. Galaxies constitute galactic groups which are contained into the bigger superclusters. All of this together is what we call Universe. And finally, the infinity that is the universe is what we call a World."
"Different Worlds are separate but connected together at the same time. They basically have a sort of ethereal connection that even gods can't really investigate. We call that connection the 'Spiritual Bridge' and the 'zone' which the bridge is built in is what we call a dimension. Dimensions are what surrounds a world in incalculable numbers. They happen to have bizarre environments because of the magic circuits' distortion."
Chulainn looked at Arima. "That's what you do every time you go into another dimension like this one. You build a Pseudo-Spiritual Bridge to go inside a 'copy' dimension of the world you are in. You also select the particularities of the dimensions by changing the spiritual bridge with your magic theory. Ultimately, that's what you call Dimensional magic."
"Now, the important thing is this. There's an infinite number of worlds, or maybe not, but there are enough Worlds for us to say that it's infinite. And, as a whole, those many worlds are what we call a Plane of Reality or Existence."
Arima snapped his fingers and his soul gate that remained within the real world as a bridge between the realms opened again. An inversed vortex was revealed behind the doors. Then, like when they were pulled inside the soul land, everyone felt the same force trying to get them out.
Soon, they all disappeared from the soul manifestation. When Arima returned to the academy’s arena, he looked up at the gate which was slowly closing. But just before the doors were entirely shut, a pair of red eyes peeked out from the vortex and a sinister laugh resounded.
Everyone shivered right then. They felt as if the devil had just whispered in their ears. They rubbed their neck because of the goosebumps.
In contrast to their reaction, Night and Karma stiffened and looked away. Arima clicked his tongue and turned around from the gate. He directly went to the portal to leave. The soul gate then disintegrated into white particles without any additional incident.
"We will head to Cross Island in two days. Rest well until then," Arima said whilst waving his hand.
Chulainn stared at Arima with an odd look as he exited the arena. Arister and Lanya both looked at his back too, obviously noticing his strange behavior. Lanya was greatly bemused. It was the second time she didn't recognize Arima in his actions.
The first time was when she saw him emitting genuine hatred and this time, the emotions she recognized were worry and annoyance. That thought made her falter. She directed her sight toward the now-vanished gate and squinted her eyes. Why would Arima be worried about something originating from his own soul?
"Lanya, come here," She then heard Arima's voice calling her. She trembled and rolled her eyes toward the source. She noticed afterward that Arima had already ‘reset’ his expression and was completely calm. As always, his composure was astounding. Lanya smiled wryly and hurried to follow him through the gate.
Velvet silently watched until Arima's group left. She also sighed in relief when the miniature dragon on her neck jumped off. The small beast also strangely stared at her, it smirked and snorted before turning into silver particles. A vein popped out on Velvet's forehead and even Natsu's expression twitched. Was that the ego of Arima's magic?
The Lawless Tome was actually very demeaning toward her because Arima said that he was craftier than a fox.
Velvet sighed and also left the place soon after.
"This signs the end of the local competition. The winning teams are Sir Blade’s and Miss Venu's classes," The announcer declared.
The images displayed by the recording crystals were cut and the entire academy immediately started chatting and gossiping.
*******************************************
"Okay, let's begin," Arima said after bringing Lanya into another dimension.
Raal and Karia had tagged along because they were curious about what was going to happen. The students had been left to go wherever they wanted though and Arister followed them as well.
"The reason I made you battle Velvet was that I wanted time to analyze your soul during your fight. I could have let you fight Karma or Night, but in those conditions, you’d never really 'open' your soul to the fight," Arima explained and shrugged.
"But, well, when the principal asked me if I could do something about the stage, I thought of my soul realm. I then realized that I may have been able to inspect your soul as long as you were in it, no matter the opponent."
Lanya could only smile bitterly. Night sighed and shook his head. Karma just chuckled. The rest simply thought that it was like Arima, relaxed and laid back. Lazy at times but beyond serious at others.
"So, what do I do?" Lanya finally asked.
Arima smiled and summoned Ira. He ejected the magazine and loaded a new one. He then took a transparent bullet and forcefully put it in the chamber by pulling the slide. Lanya observed perplexed.
"Don't worry. You don't need to anything," Arima declared and pointed Ira at Lanya. He then shot without any warning. Lanya's eyes narrowed but she didn't feel any threat from that bullet. Its speed was also relatively slow for her level.
She didn't move and the bullet landed on her chest and went through her heart. There wasn't any resulting blood or even a scratch on her. But Lanya couldn't reflect on it before she suddenly lost consciousness. Behind her, a huge figure started forming.
Gradually, the body of a hundred-meter-tall silver noble dragon appeared. Night reacted quite strongly at the presence that had just emerged from Lanya’s soul. He abruptly felt the urge to kneel down and pay his respects.
The silver dragon opened his dull eyes that reflected wisdom and awareness. His huge pupils locked on Arima. The dragon sighed as it slowly lied down on the ground.
"You again… So, you noticed after all," The dragon spoke with a sluggish voice but it was strong enough for Raal and Karia to fall on their knees. To their surprise, they couldn’t even control their bodies anymore. Karma and Night could barely withstand it.
Meanwhile, Chulainn frowned as he stared at the dragon.
"You are Chronepsis…right?" He asked hesitatingly. He sounded odd as if he was trying to convince himself.
Arima smiled when he heard Chulainn say that. His guesses had been proven.
"You are Kanryin's son, huh?" Chronepsis muttered when he spotted Chulainn.
The Hellhound was now completely lost. He knew about Chronepsis because, as the Guardian of Hell, he memorized almost all of the Earthen Gods that ever existed. He also knew that Chronepsis was supposed to be a typical Dragon God. But right now, he was under the pressure of an aura even stronger than his own.
"I thought that it was strange," Arima's voice resounded and Chronepsis turned toward him. "I asked Lilis about it before. To be an Earthen God, you need more than simply breakthrough to the Earthen Realm.”
“You also need to have a legend backing your persona and then refine your own body with a certain ritual," Arima paused and smiled. "To then truly become what people call a god," He said and Chronepsis squinted his eyes.
"For example, if I were to take that kind of ritual, my legend could be something like the ‘Kind Demon’ or…" Arima stopped in the middle of his sentence and shook his head. "Well, you get the point. Now, the thing is, I know your legend.”
“You're the Watcher. The outsider who is always looking at everything. Your title carries 'justice' but you don't care about it."
"The main reason I realized that you were not completely fused with Lanya was that the descriptions made of you are a lot more awe-inspiring. Additionally, Lanya lacked the ‘Unblinking Draconic Eyes’, which are your trademark along with your 'vision'.”
“So?” Chronepsis snorted.
“So… you’re a Heavenly God, aren't you?"
Those words not only shocked Chulainn but everyone else except Raal and Karia who didn't know what it signified.
"What's the point in knowing that?" Chronepsis responded. He then stared at Arima and his eyes changed slowly. His pupils became filled with gold light and his irises turned sky blue like sparkling diamond. The dragon gazed at Arima with those peculiar eyes for a short while before closing them. When he opened them again, they had already returned to normal.
"…Life and Death Hunter, Silver Emperor, Wicked One, Arimane R. Blade, Kind Demon, First Eternal Dragon, and Plane Guardian," Chronepsis suddenly listed out a number of titles and Arima's expression changed with each. Chulainn was also stunned by all of that, especially by the last one.
First, he said 'Life and Death Hunter' as if it was a single title. He then followed with 'Silver Emperor' which was actually pretty easy to notice for the higher-level entities. The third title, Wicked One, was something pretty confusing. He then continued by saying Arima's full name but added a middle name that even the concerned person didn't know about.
When he said, Kind Demon, Arima was even more puzzled. Why would he put that title just after those extremely perturbing ones?
The penultimate one, 'First Eternal Dragon', was extremely weird since Arima knew that he was human. But when he heard ‘dragon’ he instinctively thought of Night.
And finally, 'Plane Guardian'. It was something that he had heard from Chulainn when he first met him but didn’t get to know what it was.
Arima repeated all of this in his mind and then raised his head to look at Chronepsis. "Was that what you saw in my future?"
"Correct. But I’m unable to see further. My power isn't sufficient to probe into the life of a Plane Guardian. I only know that you will become one," The silver dragon replied. "But let me tell you, your fate is bound to be chaotic. I cannot say for sure if it will be hard for you or not, but your life is certainly… ‘exceptional’."
Chronepsis sighed afterward and his body started glowing. "Anyway, I suppose your original motive was to wake me up and make me fuse completely with this little girl, right?”
“In fact, I barely have enough strength to stay alive anymore. You didn’t need to force me out, I would have done it soon enough. But I have a condition before leaving all my power and knowledge to her," With just his words, Arima received the information directly into his mind out of nowhere. He scowled but stayed silent since he knew that Chronepsis won't tell him more. In the end, he just nodded.
"Good," The dragon nodded too. "I died because of a mistake and had to take refuge within this little girl. She's quite special, her soul that is," He said and his entire body became a pillar of light that engulfed Lanya.
“I know,” Arima nodded at his words which confused his companions since they didn’t know what he was talking about. Even Night didn’t understand.
Chronepsis closed his eyes. "I wish you good luck then. Also, she will not inherit all of my knowledge and power right away. She needs to reinforce herself a little more before that happens… take good care of her…" He added and his voice faded away. The light also died down and Lanya wavered. Arima caught her before she fell.
He then gently laid her down on the ground and checked her state. She had indeed broken through to the Earthen Realm. She even was already in the third sky. She would need to train a lot to get used to this new strength though.
"…This was the most unexpected thing I've ever witnessed in my many years of life…" Chulainn muttered after he recovered from the shock. "To think that a Heavenly God hid from Heaven and lived without anyone knowing about him. On top of that, I’ve actually met a future Plane Guardian."
"You're all saying that but what is a Plane Guardian?" Night asked the Hellhound.
"A Plane Guardian is supposed to be the strongest existence capable of existing. Even above Heavenly Gods."
"'Supposed to'?" Karma tilted her head.
Chulainn nodded. "Yes, I heard about Plane Guardians from a Heavenly God who died and was pulled into Hell. He only knew them through legends," He explained. "To make you understand what it is, do you all know what a Plane is?" He inquired and everyone shook their heads.
"Go on," Arima said and Chulainn shrugged.
"Well then, we'll start from planets. A gathering of a certain number of them around a star makes a solar system. Multiple solar systems, planets, and stars, form a galaxy. Galaxies constitute galactic groups which are contained into the bigger superclusters. All of this together is what we call Universe. And finally, the infinity that is the universe is what we call a World."
"Different Worlds are separate but connected together at the same time. They basically have a sort of ethereal connection that even gods can't really investigate. We call that connection the 'Spiritual Bridge' and the 'zone' which the bridge is built in is what we call a dimension. Dimensions are what surrounds a world in incalculable numbers. They happen to have bizarre environments because of the magic circuits' distortion."
Chulainn looked at Arima. "That's what you do every time you go into another dimension like this one. You build a Pseudo-Spiritual Bridge to go inside a 'copy' dimension of the world you are in. You also select the particularities of the dimensions by changing the spiritual bridge with your magic theory. Ultimately, that's what you call Dimensional magic."
"Now, the important thing is this. There's an infinite number of worlds, or maybe not, but there are enough Worlds for us to say that it's infinite. And, as a whole, those many worlds are what we call a Plane of Reality or Existence."
