There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language - and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
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I tried to give AI one chance to translate, please let me know if the translation has become worse or better
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Arthur Leywin POV
"Phew," Caera said, ducking as she stepped into the straw hut. "The storm is getting stronger with each passing day."
She spoke while the roar of the wind rushing through the rocky mountains that protected the village of the Shadow Claws drowned out almost every other sound. However, halfway to the secluded little village, the wind had gradually begun to lose its force until it turned into a light breeze, barely noticeable even with the hut doors thrown wide open.
"Looks like you enjoy it there," I said, a little enviously.
Caera grabbed a woven towel from the small table by the entrance and began wiping the sweat running down her neck and arms. "We're going to be here for a long time. So as long as there's even the slightest chance of reaching your and Lucius's level, I'm not going to waste it on training."
I raised an eyebrow. "So that's what you were doing? All I saw was you chasing little kittens around."
Caera frowned slightly. "Says the one who hasn't moved his ass in the last three days."
"I'm not sitting around doing nothing," I corrected her. "I'm learning to filter more efficiently-ow!"
Rubbing my head, I picked up the wooden spoon that had been thrown at me from the other side of the straw house.
Three Steps, who had been quietly stirring something in a stone pot, let out a sharp meow and pointed a paw at her sly eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just replenishing my aether a little," I muttered, knowing she wouldn't understand anyway. Over the last two days, I'd gotten pretty friendly with Three Steps through the exchange of memories.
My vision unfocused, and I cast aside the images of Caera and Three Steps from my mind to activate God Step. Warmth from the rune spread across my back as aether flooded into it from my core.
Against my own wishes, I was growing more and more angry and worried because of the ghostly presence tightly wrapped around his aether core. "Regis. It's already been two days. Either answer me or stop taking all the aether."
I waited for an answer for several minutes and gave up. After arriving in the village of the Shadow Claws, Regis had been dozing in meditation, then suddenly opened his eyes and flew into my body, refusing to come out.
Since then, he had been absorbing an abnormal amount of aether and constantly moving through my body between the core and the God Runes.
'At least there's one benefit to him eating such a huge amount of my aether: now I can take more breaks between training sessions with Three Steps and Lucius,' I thought somewhat grumpily.
The last two days had been exhausting, and I couldn't believe that even with an Asuran body I could be pushed to this state. After Three Steps agreed to teach Lucius and me the aether arts of the Shadow Claws, we had started with her sharing memories of the time when she herself had been learning from a still-young Sleeping in the Snow. They had often and in great detail discussed the aether abilities of their race, which gave Lucius and me a very solid foundation for our own training.
From their discussions, I learned that the Shadow Claws are born with the ability to see aether paths that allow them to instantly move through space. However, for newborns this ability was a true curse. Because of the overwhelming amount of information flooding their young minds, some infants with weak wills died.
That was why the lives of newborns depended on being properly taught by their parents and mentors, whose first task was to help the children learn to shut off their "mind's eye" until they were old enough to begin mastering shadow step-the name they gave to the aether teleportation technique they used.
As it turned out, at the age of two, Shadow Claw children began learning how to filter out the countless aether paths, and by adolescence they did it almost automatically.
At that moment, I realized that only thanks to Lucius and the way he had shown me his understanding of God Step had I reached the level of this clan's adolescents, and that without his help I most likely would have remained below even the level of the Shadow Claws' two-year-old children.
Watching how Three Steps filtered aether paths through her own eyes was both fascinating and humiliating. She always kept around twelve paths within her awareness, so she would be ready at any moment to use shadow step.
With the experience of two lives in different worlds behind me, I considered myself fairly smart and perceptive. But the way the Shadow Claws tracked all the aether paths, predicting where they might carry them depending on their own movements, was mind-boggling.
Even more humiliating was how quickly Lucius progressed. He told me about his system, and I could accept that he was receiving God Runes, since I couldn't do anything about that, and besides, he often explained and showed certain chapters, so I didn't care much about the system.
But how quickly he had progressed from the very first hours after waking up in the sanctuary had nothing to do with the system. The speed of his growth simply defied description: a sixteen-year-old boy, a child in my eyes, who hadn't even known a basic fighting stance, reached a level in a couple of hours that ordinary people would spend ten years or more attaining. In the zone of the giant centipede, I first noticed the pace of his growth and how easily he could ignore pain.
Damn it, in the lava zone he had even burned his body completely, and not once did he lose control-his aether spread evenly through his body regardless of the situation. I couldn't do that. As my legs sank and melted, I sometimes lost focus from the pain. He didn't. I had considered myself a genius, but his talent was simply in another league. I admitted that the moment he began pulling ahead in strength, in understanding of aether, and in combat mastery.
The way he understood God Step helped me immensely, and now, after seeing Three Steps' memories, I was even more inspired to develop this skill to the absolute maximum possible. And after only two days, the result became obvious: thanks to the memories of Three Steps and Lucius, I had increased my distance from the original twenty meters to roughly sixty meters, while simultaneously maintaining eight aether paths-more progress than in all the time I had possessed this GodRune.
As for Lucius's progress, it was... to put it mildly, fast. I didn't understand how his brain worked, but the ease with which he could maintain fifty aether paths in different directions at lengths of up to two hundred meters, while simultaneously fighting and planning five moves ahead, was demoralizing. But I had already come to terms with it. He still showed through memories how he achieved it, although that sometimes only confused me even more.
I didn't stop training God Step even when Three Steps and Caera were asleep, taking breaks only when I needed to replenish my aether reserves. I knew my time here was limited, so it was critically important to squeeze everything possible out of it.
Only when I noticed Caera out of the corner of my eye did I realize that I had spent yet another entire night training my attention on aether paths.
"How's it going, Gray?" Caera asked, sitting down on the ground a meter away from me. It felt strange seeing her dressed in a sleeveless fitted shirt; it made her look far more relaxed. If not for the pair of gleaming horns circling her head like a dark crown...
I mentally bit my tongue, not allowing myself to finish the thought, and answered the Alacryan noblewoman, "Everything's going great. The fact that I barely need sleep definitely helps."
Caera shivered from the cold and immediately took out the snowsuit Lucius had made for her from her spatial ring. "You know, I used to really envy that particular ability. Maybe even more than your and Lucius's absurdly fast regeneration."
I raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"I kept thinking about how much stronger I'd be if I only needed a few hours of sleep a week and still remained completely healthy. How much I could get done, and how useful that would be in the relictombs and outside them." Fully dressed in the snowsuit, Caera tucked her legs in and rested her chin on her knees, looking at Lucius, who sat under a tree ten meters away from us. "But after being with you for so long, I realized it's more of a curse than a gift."
"Why do you think that?"
The Alacryan aristocrat turned her head toward me with a gloomy smile. "At night, you always look lonely or like you're suffering. That's why you train so relentlessly, right? You and Lucius are very alike in that regard, only his face shows what he considers negative changes a little less often."
She lightly tapped her finger against her chin, her gaze not leaving Lucius for even a second. "But... he's probably even more desperate than you are. His voice and eyes in the previous zone after he came out of that artifact were... incredibly sad and desperate." She fell silent for a moment, her brow furrowing with worry and curiosity at the same time, then sharply turned her head, widening her eyes and raising one hand. "Sorry, I didn't mean to belittle your—"
"It's all right, I remember his state in that zone too..." I paused for a moment, staring at Caera, not knowing what else to say. I was carried back to those times when memories of my family and friends in Dicathen gnawed at me from the inside even when I wasn't asleep.
At night, it got much worse. But Lucius's eyes and voice had been so desperate that I was sure even in ten years I'd still remember it. When we first began passing through the zones, we talked often enough that I knew the general situation in his life, and I even knew some embarrassing memories of his younger brother and sister.
I smiled inwardly, remembering the fervor and boundless love with which he talked about his family. His love for them was absolute, and the fact that he couldn't even hear their voices, let alone see them, drove him into despair. He tried to hide it by quickly putting on a mask of calm and making a small pleasant smile, but I myself had lived more than thirty years behind such masks, so I could see how deeply it tore at him.
And Caera saw it too. She quietly whispered, shifting her gaze from me to Lucius, "Eyes don't lie, do they?"
Before I could answer, a stern meowing sounded behind us. Three Steps, who must have managed to fall asleep and wake up again while I was immersed in training, came out the door and gestured for me to follow her.
I followed Three Steps to the far end of the village, away from the curious eyes of the local inhabitants.
Over the night, the storm had calmed, and some of the Shadow Claws had gone beyond the village. It was hard for me to distinguish them from one another, but one of them stood out to me. It was Left Tooth.
Three Steps hissed beside me and, pulling my attention back to herself, sat down on the snow. My mentor looked at me seriously with her sharp feline eyes and spoke in her language. I closely followed her face. Her eyes darted from my face to my chest, she spoke with a slight frown, and her whiskers twitched.
I couldn't understand a single word she said, but I didn't need to. Three Steps extended her paws, and we established a connection, as we had many times before.
Just as I expected, the memory she shared was the exact scene of our recent conversation, except now I saw everything from her point of view, and I could understand what she had said to me as she looked at my confused self through her own eyes.
"I have shown you enough, so with a clear conscience I can ask for something in return. I would like to learn more about your unusual abilities bestowed by the Creators, and it doesn't matter that I won't be able to learn them myself," she said before my vision shifted to a memory she had shared with me earlier, in which she and Sleeping in the Snow discussed the meaning of their lives.
The vision vanished when my mentor removed her hands from mine. She waited without blinking until I nodded and reached my hands toward her.
Three Steps remained stunned even several minutes after our hands separated. Her expression had changed; she no longer looked at me like a child trying to grasp the basics of shadow step. She looked at me with respect, perhaps even with a hint of admiration.
I held back a deep, heavy sigh so she wouldn't misunderstand me. I had already grown used to sharing memories thanks to Lucius. We had exchanged some in Maerin: he showed me his understanding of a God Rune, while I showed him the world of both humans and asuras, as well as how to behave in polite society. But showing someone all my worries, pain, and despair while going through the zones was... like throwing a mountain off my shoulders.
As if sensing my emotions, Three Steps patted me on the shoulder and then gestured once again for me to follow her. This time, with the storm nearly gone, she led me beyond the protected boundary of the village and toward a place not far from the foot of a jagged mountain.
Once again, my mentor extended a paw to me, giving me a mischievous smile. I touched it curiously and felt my consciousness seep into her mind.
I found myself grinning when my mind returned to my own body. Three Steps gave me a toothy smile too, clearly proud of the memories she had just shared with me.
"So that was your secret," I said, my body tingling with excitement.
As if understanding my words, Three Steps pressed a furry finger to her mouth.
I nodded in agreement, thinking over the fragments of memory that Three Steps had just shown me. It was obvious she had held this memory back until she felt I was truly fulfilling my part of the deal, because thanks to it I had learned something important. More than that, I had been able to experience it firsthand.
But the village quickly became uneasy because of one person.
Lucius, who spent most of his time sitting under a tree with his eyes closed, occasionally giving off strange waves of aether while the Shadow Claw children climbed all over him.
When I returned to the village, a cold sweat broke over me when I saw Lucius take out the aether bead he had obtained back in the zone of rats and lava. The aether aura twisted in all directions, flooding the village with aether like a deluge; even now the aura and energy coming from the bead sent a chill through me. Lucius turned his head toward me and, without hesitation, brought it to his mouth and swallowed it at once.
Lucius Zogratis POV
Several days had passed since we entered the village. Every day I tried to better understand the aether abilities of this clan, and it wasn't especially difficult, since I already had the foundation, and with rank 10 intellect, analyzing and reproducing techniques was a fairly simple matter. I had learned to make a simple dagger back in the mirror zone; making claws turned out not to be super difficult, but a sword or a spear was harder. No matter how much I tried, my current understanding and control of aether were insufficient.
So I decided to go further.
The second layer of the aether core.
This could be a little dangerous, since I had never done anything like this before, unlike Arthur, who had previously had a mana core, but... what's the worst that could happen?
I fail and my aether core disappears? Not a problem. I have a system with several more aether cores stored inside it, and even if I can't break through to the next level on my own-which I myself greatly doubt-
I can also use the aether points I've accumulated.
Every time Arthur received a God Rune, gained insights, trained and experimented with aether, or absorbed an aether fruit, an aether crystal, or an aether monster, all of it flowed into my system mailbox.
By this point, more than two hundred thousand aether points had already accumulated there thanks to Arthur alone and to the insights he gained when obtaining God Runes. And then there was also Regis, who absorbed aether both from the atmosphere and from Arthur's core.
To advance Intelligence from Rank 9 to Rank 10, only about seven thousand points were needed. I had been setting aside most of my Intelligence points because I wanted to keep my stats balanced, but quite recently I decided there was no point in holding myself back like that anymore, so I tried to accept all the Intelligence points at once. The system immediately stopped me.
[Intelligence cannot enter the Third Realm while the body remains in the Second. Your body will not withstand such a mental load. Once your body enters the Third Realm, the system will update.]
Yeah, so I had to put it off for a while. It's fine though. As soon as I leave this zone and deal with a couple of problems, I'll catch a few thieves or criminals and, thanks to them, raise the Four-Sided Physique+ to Rank 11.
By the way, about the system and its main function-I was stupid at first.
How?
For some reason, I never thought of extracting the Rank 11 Fighter Talent as well. Even though I had previously extracted God Runes, I somehow ignored the talent.
But that very same night, after I used the system to its fullest for the first time, I realized just how foolish I had been and tried to pull absolutely everything out of the Connection System and transfer it into the Wealth Multiplication System-and it worked. Yes, I spent a whole day without the Fighter Talent, which made me feel naked, but it worked.
Besides, my aether channels are rank 8, one rank higher than Arthur's, and my understanding of aether is better than Arthur's because it's the first kind of energy I've ever worked with-I was like a sponge absorbing every scrap of information.
And while in numbers the difference was only one rank, in reality the difference between rank 7 and rank 8 was like the difference between rank 1 and rank 6. And that became crystal clear back in the convergence zone, when the speed and smoothness with which I absorbed and controlled aether grew exponentially, leaving Arthur in the dust if I hadn't adjusted his talent by x2.
Realizing that now was a good time to break through to the next stage, I glanced at Arthur, who had just returned to the village, and without hesitation took out a rank 7 aether crystal, which looked more like a bead, and immediately swallowed it.
Essentially, rank 6 would most likely have been enough for me, and for Arthur I would probably have given a rank 6 aether crystal. A rank 6 aether crystal could refill an aether core three times before falling apart, but I decided I wanted to try with a shock dose. If something went wrong, I could always just force all that aether back out thanks to my rank 8 aether channels.
At once, a colossal amount of aether flowed toward my core. I exhaled sharply, only now realizing the true scale of a rank 7 aether bead. If this were a game, my aether core could hold a thousand units of aether, but the aether bead contained more than fifty thousand units.
Breathing raggedly, I cast aside all distracting thoughts and focused entirely on the aether flowing into my core like an enormous avalanche.
The aether was pure. Far purer than any other source I had ever encountered before. It was like breathing pure oxygen; my head swam from its strength, blazing like a bonfire in my solar plexus.
When my core filled to the brim, I kept drawing aether from the aether bead slowly dissolving inside my body. I had no choice. If I stopped, I would explode and kill myself, but it felt as though I were trying to drink an ocean. My core was so overfilled that it began to tremble and shudder.
I acted like an open valve, giving the aether an outlet and preventing the pressure from reaching the necessary level. With Rank 10 Intelligence, I was doing several things with the aether core at once: absorbing aether, directing it into the core, and carefully pressing on the core itself.
Crack!
A muffled crack sounded in my sternum.
Looking inward, I saw a dark fissure appear on the surface of my aether core.
There it is! There it is!
Crack!
A second fissure split off from the first, trembling and twisting across the surface of my sphere like slow lightning. It slowly crawled around the circumference, cutting through the smooth shell and nearly splitting it in two.
The aether inside me raged like a storm trapped in a vessel too small to contain it. The pressure increased with every passing second. It felt like just a little more, and the core simply would not hold.
Despite how dire the situation was, I gathered all of my self-control, and my Rank 10 Intelligence kicked into overdrive. It was as if my thoughts began to split apart, allowing me to direct the aether with an iron grip and squeeze the maximum possible result out of the second layer of the aether core.
I gasped for breath, desperately trying not to let the aether completely destroy the core. Gathering the last shreds of my composure, I directed the full force of my will toward subduing the raging aether. Streams of energy tore outward like a wild beast trying to escape a cage, and every moment demanded incredible effort from me.
I did not know how long I spent in that state of absolute concentration. After swallowing the aether bead, everything else ceased to exist. My thoughts vanished, my sense of time vanished-there remained only the struggle for control over the ocean of aether threatening to tear me apart from within.
Looking more closely, I distinguished a clear boundary between the two layers. The first layer was a thin original shell, where an ordinary mana core should once have formed. The second layer, however, was much thicker and denser, like a new carapace made from concentrated aether.
My lips slowly curved as I fully felt the power now present in this body.
"Heh... heheh... hahahahahaha—" It was unrestrained laughter, laughter full of happiness mixed with faint disbelief at such a tremendous increase in power.
Caera Denoir POV
Time in this village dragged slowly.
Because this zone was inhabited by intelligent beings my tongue couldn't bring itself to call monsters, at first I didn't even know what to do.
Usually everything goes according to the same scenario: kill a few waves of monsters, rest a little, then maybe a convergence zone, after that the final and most difficult battle, and that's it.
…But here there was a broken teleportation portal, and everyone I met was intelligent. They could speak, build homes and families, study martial arts-they were no longer simply monsters that had to be killed to move on to the next stage.
The village of the Shadow Claws was peaceful.
Small creatures resembling humanoid cats busied themselves with training, talking, eating, and playing. Though for some reason the little Shadow Claws had chosen Lucius as the one they could climb all over and use as they pleased.
"Careful," Lucius said, still sitting with his eyes closed, deftly catching a little Shadow Claw that slipped from his shoulder and nearly fell headfirst.
Though it was probably clear why they chose him.
Someone who doesn't complain when more than ten children are running and climbing all over his body, while catching them whenever they find themselves in even a slightly dangerous situation, naturally creates a sense of safety-and because of that, more and more children climbed onto him.
A soft smile touched my lips as I watched the care and tenderness with which he looked after those children, who every day spent more than four hours running and jumping over him.
He would be a good father-I blinked when I realized what I had thought without meaning to.
Partly closing my eyes and shaking my head to drive away those thoughts, I was about to once again ask Lucius to train with me when he lightly stretched his hands and then opened his ever-calm eyes.
His gaze shifted to a Shadow Claw standing about seven meters away, after which Lucius looked at the more than ten little Shadow Claws. Exchanging looks and apparently reaching some sort of agreement, the Shadow Claw hissed a few times, after which all the children jumped off Lucius in one swift motion and scattered in different directions, meowing something as they ran.
The scene was beautiful-such harmony and affection. Even if they didn't look like humans, their childish laughter and emotions were so infectious that I found myself smiling unconsciously during moments of rest.
At that moment, Gray approached, and Three Steps padded along beside him.
All my thoughts froze when pressure as vast as a tsunami slammed me into the ground, knocking the air from my lungs. I sprang up, filled my body with mana, drew my blood-red sword, and wrapped it in soulfire.
That awful pressure was coming from Lucius. Panicking as I searched for the source, I saw a small violet sphere in his hand. The violet sphere shimmered softly and cast its own glow. Lucius turned his head toward Gray, who looked shocked, and with a quick motion tossed the violet sphere into his mouth.
The pressure and fear that had frozen my body vanished so suddenly it was as if nothing had happened.
"What happened?" I asked Gray, who had approached Lucius, who stood frozen like a statue, his brows slightly furrowed.
"Second layer..." Gray murmured, barely audibly, more to himself than to me.
"Second layer?" I asked, but instead of answering, Gray straightened up, realizing he had said something he shouldn't have, then took up a protective stance beside Lucius.
Knowing I wouldn't get an answer, I lowered myself onto the ground a meter from Lucius and wrapped myself more tightly in the warm clothing-an amazing creation of his hands, made in barely twenty minutes.
My fingers unconsciously slid over the furry inner surface, feeling its soft, almost living texture, while my thoughts drifted farther and farther into the past.
Aether, ancient mages or djinn and their legacy. Strange runes, strange bodies, and abilities.
Second layer... maybe the core is strange too, a mutated core? No, I still would have sensed even a drop of mana all this time, but no-only aether, apparently.
And then enlightenment struck.
'An aether core!'
My thoughts spun in a whirlwind, one idea replacing another with dizzying speed. How had I not realized it earlier? An aether core plays by completely different rules than a mana core. Instead of changing color, Lucius was most likely-judging by Gray's words-creating a second layer around the core, forming a new physical shell.
"Ha-ha..." A quiet laugh escaped my lips. "Now everything's clear!"
Ah, if this is true, then I've uncovered your shared secret, Lucius... Gray...
…Wait.
A sudden thought pierced my mind like lightning.
If the core is adding a new physical layer, doesn't that mean Lucius's aether core is swelling inside his chest right now, desperately trying to expand?
As if in answer to my thoughts, Lucius's body suddenly jerked-sharp and uncontrolled-and then just as suddenly returned to its previous position. It all happened so fast that I only had time to lean forward slightly, intending to stand, but the movement died before it fully began.
I exhaled shakily, realizing that I had been holding my breath the entire time. My heart pounded wildly in my chest, echoing loudly in my temples. Pressing a palm to my full chest, I felt the frantic beating of my heart and a faint, almost ghostly tightness in my sternum that immediately melted away like morning mist.
Do I have some kind of heart disease?
Lucius's brows furrowed slightly, then returned to normal. His body periodically jerked uncontrollably before freezing again like a statue.
"Heheh... hahahahahaha"
I don't know how much time passed, but after roughly five hours I was pulled from my thoughts by laughter so sincere that it felt out of place in such a tense situation.
But no matter how inappropriate that laughter seemed to me, when I saw Lucius's joyful face, I found myself smiling unconsciously as well.
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Amid the endless sea of planets and the cold distant stars, a male figure drifted slowly, almost indistinguishable from space itself. His silhouette dissolved into the soft iridescence of the cosmic canvas, as if he were not a creature of flesh, but a part of reality itself.
The colors of his body changed together with the shimmer of the universe, repeating the shades of nebulae, stardust, and the deep night sky so precisely that even the most attentive observer would never notice that someone alive was present among that silent majesty.
In a place where space seemed old and worn, like fabric stitched through too many times, sat a hunched old man. His shoulders sagged under the weight of years-or perhaps under the weight of something far more ancient-but on his face there was still a faint smile, fragile as glass.
Before him was a small pond with motionless dark water, smooth as a mirror, reflecting not only the stars but also what should not have had any reflection. In the old man's hands was a small needle glowing with golden light.
Muttering something, the old man waved his hand, and a horrifying scene appeared in the pond, one that made him go pale.
There, in the depths of the waters, on a lost and picturesque island, stood a powerfully built figure over three meters tall. In physique he resembled a human, yet his form seemed to belong to a creature of a different nature: long limbs, a narrow waist, broad shoulders, and well-developed muscles gave him a predatory grace.
His skin was pale, almost ghostly white, yet in places it shimmered with cold blue and violet hues, as though the patterns of ocean tides flowed across his body. Hundreds of tiny bluish lights flickered across his skin, like a scattering of distant constellations come alive in living flesh.
His face resembled a human's, but only in part. It was slightly more elongated, his skull seemed somewhat longer, and his face projected gently forward, carrying in its features a faint, almost beastlike imprint.
His large eyes took up slightly more space on his face than a human's would, giving his gaze at once wildness and depth. His ears were set slightly higher than a human's and had an elongated, almost elfin shape.
And although he was slightly unlike a human, this did nothing to diminish his beauty. On the contrary, there was such perfect, almost unearthly beauty in him that it could not be expressed in words. The aura of calm and quiet majesty surrounding him only strengthened this impression, making his image all the more captivating.
His black hair, more reminiscent of the night sky than of ordinary strands, was woven into a peculiar braid. In its depths, stars and nebulae of a distant universe seemed to drift. Hidden among those dark tresses, at the back of his head, was a long appendage, almost unnoticeable, yet it felt as though the braid itself had been fashioned around it from the very beginning.
Gradually, the man's figure began to lose its solidity, becoming more and more transparent, until the world behind him could be seen through it.
The man raised his multicolored eyes to the sky, and within them the fabric of the night sky swam just as it did in his hair. He took one strained breath, and dark winds surrounded him while the water in the pond rippled and heaved in waves.
"I spent three hundred years on this."
"I already raised everything to rank 16."
"For three hundred years I searched, studied, and experimented, improving all my abilities to rank 16..."
"But... I still can't obtain rank 17."
The dark winds grew stronger.
"Three hundred years of accumulation and endless improvement."
"Three hundred years of traveling through worlds in the hope of succeeding one day."
"I'm already the strongest in this world, and still..."
"Can you understand my feelings?"
"I just..."
"I just want to go home."
The dark winds carried such force that even the strongest inhabitants of that world vanished the instant they tried to resist them.
The next moment, the entire world was covered in dark winds and clouds, massive bolts of lightning struck, and the sea churned as if in the fiercest of storms.
Boom!
One foot broke through the clouds and descended onto the earth. The man's aura sharply defined him within that divine catastrophe.
The winds suddenly parted, revealing a horrifying figure that no longer resembled a man. The figure was so enormous that even the highest mountain peaks barely reached its ankles.
Roarrrr!
Roarrrr!
Roarrrr!
The figure roared, completely scattering the dark winds. Two thousand dark hands protruded from the creature's back in place of hair. Three animal heads gave low growls, and though they were low, those growls completely drowned out every other sound.
The sparse figures of different races below stared upward with their mouths open. When they looked again at those enormous hands, they were dark as the abyss, horrifyingly sinister, and seemed to shimmer. Dark-white fire danced across the entire body like a second skin.
It was only a soul, a soul that had become stronger than the material body. That gigantic soul was already beyond normal form. Beyond everything the world knew.
It stood tens of thousands of meters tall, like a giant. The dark clouds created by its manifestation reached only as high as its knee.
It had two thousand arms, a thousand on each side, dark as night and radiating a disgusting aura of death, and it was there that the black-and-white fire was most concentrated.
Roarrrr!!!
One of the man's soul-heads roared, completely devouring all living beings-their bodies, magic, knowledge, and souls themselves. Intelligent souls tried to resist, but the man's soul paid them attention for only a second before completely erasing their very sense of self.
Roarrrr!!!
The second head roared, after which the entire world around him began to wither, crack, and finally vanish completely, leaving the man's soul drifting weightless in emptiness.
After only two roars, the man's body had grown to more than thirty thousand kilometers. His spectral hand reached out and completely seized the nearest planet, devouring it whole and making his body grow even larger.
The man's soul continued to grow, and the aura of death began to poison the world itself. His body transformed further, becoming like a stellar structure burning with black-and-white flame.
At the very moment when the main head was about to roar, the water in the small pond rippled, and the ancient little pond itself cracked, causing the old man to hurriedly wave his hand and erase what he was watching.
The old man was drenched in sweat. He was no longer smiling. His eyes were filled with horror. At that moment, blood dripped from his lips-blood more like the essence of the universe than blood itself. He wiped away the blood running from his eyes, nose, and mouth, then wiped off his sweat.
The old man looked desperate. He weakly muttered, but his voice was lost in the universe, "Oh, Lucius, why can't you simply come to love this world?"
"Why?"
"Why are you becoming that chaos that seeks to devour all worlds? And go beyond chaos?"
The man let out a heavy sigh, his hands trembling slightly as he reached for the golden needle. "Chaos cannot be defeated. It cannot be tricked. And it cannot be used without destroying the world."
"That's why I will do everything to make you love this world." The old man's voice carried equal parts helplessness and resolve.
He raised his trembling hand, within which rested the golden needle. He extended it, and the golden needle found its target. A female figure who was currently sitting beside Lucius and rubbing her horns had been chosen by both the needle and the old man.
That female figure was the only one who could keep Lucius from trying to break through chaos. At least, the old man and the golden needle hoped so.
"Oh, Caera, I hope-hope-that you can stop him from that horror."
"You are the last hope for preserving this world as we know and love it."
"I sincerely pray that you succeed in this, Caera from Zogratis clan."
With a wave of the old hand, a golden thread was drawn through the golden needle, after which the horned woman's soul and fate became even more tightly bound to the one who would one day break through chaos.
× × × × ×
I decided to end the chapter on this good note. It was a long chapter—six thousand five hundred words.
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions about the plot or anything else, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to explain.
I do not know how well I managed to describe it, but in my head I was using the Avatar form as a reference, just with a slightly different color scheme. I also added a few more colors flowing like waves—cold blue, light blue, and violet.
Why did Lucius take on the Avatar form? Some of you may be able to guess right away by putting together several of the current factors, but many will understand once I add a few decisive pieces in the future Academy Arc.
I'd love to hear your theories.
Also, if you have any suggestions, write to me. I will read them and consider implementing them if I like them.
I have already revised some chapters, and I will revise several more, because at first I did not have a planned plot, internal logic, or clear rules for how the system worked. Because of that, I failed to include some things properly, and now I am gradually correcting them.
I am temporarily stopping chapter releases for ~15 days, as I am going away to spend time with my family. I wish good health to all of you and your families.