Chapter 10: Eighteenth Birthday (3)

~10.3~

*****

After the meeting with Shiro, Kye and Alethea called Layla and James to the room to discuss it. Astraia and Astarte took their human forms as well. Allison was in Arslade, but she received the message and planned to join them soon.

“Shiro Shikigami?” Layla asked. “The same man behind the attack in January?”

Alethea nodded. “He’s very powerful. He could have killed us himself if he was so inclined back then. I expect the only reason he didn’t is that he knows if we die prematurely, we can come back to this world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you aware of Eve’s sons?” Kye asked.

“Sons?”

“Eve has two sons. Azriel and Ezra.”

“Most of our missions are cleaning up after them,” Alethea said after an exasperated sigh. “They’re…”

“A handful,” Kye finished. “They have the maturity of children who have too much time on their hands. One of them is innocent enough most of the time, but the other is a troublemaker. You can imagine what one uses as toys when you’re the child of the one omnipotent being.”

“And you end up cleaning up their messes, usually?” Layla said. “And you return to a world if you die prematurely?”

“We’d re-reincarnate… re… words?” Alethea shrugged.

“I see…?”

“On that note,” Kye said. “Mother, if I happen to die, do me a favor… ahem… You and father… make me another body…”

“…make you another body… uh…”

“I should figure something out, too,” Alethea said, making a classic thinking face. “It’d be an issue if I was reborn and couldn’t get in contact with nobles.”

“You could maybe… no, then we’d be sisters. I don’t want us to be blood sisters… we wouldn’t be allowed to be together. Maybe the Tachibana family? You could ask Kanade, Riku’s mother. We’d be blood cousins, but that’s not a big deal. Michelle and Adele are and it’s fine.”

Layla and James shared apologetic smiles, listening to the two girls coming up with plans. They glanced over at Astraia. She was wearing an exasperated smile.

“You’re going to break my dear sister’s heart, Alethea.”

Alethea gave her an apologetic smile. “I suppose I could ask mother to do that, in case I die. I just didn’t think she’d be willing to since… father…”

Astraia smiled. “Atlan, rest his soul, would have been thrilled to hear you call him that.”

Alethea also smiled. “I wish I could have known him. Do you think mother would do that for me though, without him? I don’t feel comfortable asking that of her.”

Astraia pulled Alethea tight, “Sweetie, Lanti would do anything for you, even if it means pregnancy to ensure you have another body to be reborn into. I do think it’s a good idea to be ready for anything, but I don’t like this morbid thinking. Especially for you and Lanti.”

Astarte sighed and spoke up, “I’ve said this before, but your willingness to die is unhealthy. Not only for you, but for us as well.”

“A parent preparing for their child’s death isn’t something they ever want to do. Especially Lanti. She would do it for you, she would do anything for you, but she would hurt. Your siblings…” Astraia couldn’t finish for the tears in her eyes.

Even Astarte had a tear in each eye. “You recall why we bonded in the first place, don’t you? I’ll talk to Atalante about this, but you must promise us that this preparation will never need to be used. You must live.” She eyed Kye as well. “Both of you.”

“I agree,” said Layla, unwilling to meet their eyes. Kye noticed a stray tear on her mother’s cheek.

Both girls gave them an apologetic smile while everyone recalled the meeting they had soon after Kye recovered from overextending during the Battle for Arslade.

*****

Kye, Alethea, their attendants, and their six guardians met somewhere deep within the Atlantis palace. Only a few days prior, Kye had unleashed Aether Drive and extensively wielded Mana Burst to combat an S-rank demon beast. She even went as far as to cast a spell so massive and holy in appearance that it only served to solidify her moniker of Goddess of Light.

However, it was too much for her body. It was a rare occurrence that could only be performed by a small handful of people, each of which had built up eons of battle experience as a transmigrator. To say that such a thing happening was extraordinarily rare was an understatement.

Yet, there they were, discussing it with one of those people.

“Kye… no,” Atalante shook her head. “Elysia, what you did was both incredible and extremely reckless. Did you know you would harm your body to wield that power?”

Kye hesitated to answer, but slowly shook her head. “I did not.”

Atalante turned to Alethea with the same question.

“If you would allow a longer answer?” Atalante nodded and Alethea began explaining, “There are only a handful of people that are capable of wielding Mana Burst. All are among the original ninety-nine of Eve’s creations. The first ten, in order, are Elysia the First, Maya the Second, Adele the Third, Adara the Fourth, Elias the Fifth, Eliana the Sixth, Katriel the Seventh, Kadmiel the Eighth, Kyra the Ninth, and Liya the Tenth.”

Alethea took a breath and looked around.

“Follow me so far?” Everyone nodded, so she continued. “Before the creation of any plane of existence, Eve conceived ninety-nine beings in her mind. Sometime after creating planes of existence, she began creating those first ninety-nine beings. Our numbers are the order in which we were conceived within her mind, not the order she placed us into the world. Make sense?”

The six guardians took a few minutes to think about what Alethea’s words could mean before one of them, Layla, answered, “Using my own daughter as the example, just because Elysia is the first creation that Goddess Eve conceived, it doesn’t mean she was the first creation placed into existence?”

“Correct,” Alethea said. “And that example is true. There were many things placed into existence before Elysia, and the rest of us, for that matter. Eve knew we’d want a world to live in, so she created a great many things before placing us.” She looked around again. “I apologize for the tangent, but I want all of you to understand some things before I explain the severity of Mana Burst.”

“Keep going,” Atalante said without a moment’s hesitation.

“So, the first ten of us are not the oldest. There are a few older than us, but they were created after the first ninety-nine and did not, to my knowledge, receive a number. The first ten are wielders. The following eleven are weapons.” She eyed Astarte and Astraia. “Like the two of you, except they were created that way, rather than becoming that way later. The difference means nothing.”

“There are elder creations like us?” Astraia asked.

“Yes,” Alethea answered. “The weapon creations are, in order, Azalea, Kaede, Ariel, Adriel, Anna, Matthias, Liora, Lael, Jonah, Aila, and Eila. I’ll spare you their weapon names, that’ll take a while. Adele wields two of them, Ariel and Anna. Anyway, these twenty-one, and numbers ninety-eight and ninety-nine are the only ones capable of using Mana Burst. The remainder of our immortal siblings cannot.”

“Mana Burst is that significant?”

“Yes,” Kye answered. “I created the technique and only ever taught it to…” She held a hand to her head, unable to recall the reason why she only taught it to that handful. “I taught it to them, but why only them?” She looked at Alethea. “I don’t… know? No, I don’t remember.”

“Don’t try to force it, love.” Alethea grabbed Kye’s hand and squeeze lightly.

“Yeah…”

Alethea turned back to the guardians and continued, “That actually helps my explanation a bit. Elysia cannot remember her first life, and as such does not remember every single detail of everything she’s created. Mana Burst is a multi-dimensional technique. It doesn’t work in just the three spatial dimensions. It works through two time dimensions as well.”

“Two?” Astraia’s eyes were sparkling.

“Don’t overthink it. In short, the concept is to channel an immense amount of mana over a period of time and compress not the mana, but that period of time to a smaller period of time. You only compress your own time in this technique, of course, not anyone else’s. To make the most of it, you increase your own time speed to channel more mana, then compress all of that time spent channeling to.”

“That’s what you did?” Layla asked, eyeing her daughter.

“I performed five hundred, one thousand, and two thousand fold bursts. For a five hundred fold burst, I had to speed up my own time five hundred fold to channel that much mana in the same period of time as one fold, but then I compressed that time from one fold to a five hundredth of a second. In short, I spent five hundred seconds of time in the frame of a five hundredth of a second. The difficult part is doing the calculations. The system is not, and will never be, programmed to assist in such a technique, so the user must calculate everything. A mortal mind cannot experience time in two dimensions simultaneously, so the calculations must be done before execution.”

“The problem is that this technique places an immense burden on the body in the process,” Alethea continued. “To experience that much time in a fraction of a second is not a good thing. In most cases, it’s not going to cause any lasting harm and is totally fine, so long as the user doesn’t take it too far. Two thousand is rather far, but that alone won’t cause harm. Taking it to extremes like ten thousand fold or more is where you start getting into deadly-for-mortals territory.”

“So why did her body come out in such poor condition?” James asked.

“Because of Aether Drive. Either alone isn’t too bad. Aether Drive should not be used for an extended period of time, as too much mana for too long will overwhelm the body and eventually kill you. But what did Shi-chan do? Use Mana Burst, a technique designed to spend extended periods of time in a fraction of a second. And you exchanged how many blows that way?”

“For simplicity’s sake,” Kye said with a sigh, “let’s say around five hundred with an average of a thousand fold boost. So five hundred times a thousand seconds.”

All at once, everyone in the room gasped, even Alethea and the attendants.

“““FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND SECONDS?!”””

*****

Revision: 1-3-2024