“I. Did. Not. Sign. Up. For this!” Fray shouted as he desperately pushed against the quaking door that separated him from that dreadful book. The very second Rakna had touched the cross, the book recording Arimane Blade’s life began to go berserk.

“I have to agree on that one,” Higure groaned as she also blocked the door. Rexam and Fenriu were also helping them the best they could. “You’d think that being a dead soul isn’t dangerous then this happens…”

“▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▅▅▅▅▅▅▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂!!”

An indescribable roar spread throughout the entire library and caused several cracks to appear on the walls and floor. The books fell off the shelves and outside, the petals were all unanimously becoming red and silver.

“God, what kind of monster is inside there?” Fray groaned as his ears bled from the noise.

“Didn’t you say this wouldn’t be dangerous?” Higure growled out sassily and the storyteller huffed.

“I was not mistaken! This thing just went berserk because of an excess of power! It is not acting nefariously; it is a natural reaction! It is from that cross! The power of existence contained inside it fused with the book,” he yelled. “How was I supposed to know that Arimane Blade was-!”

“▅▅▅▅▅▅▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂!!”

Higure grunted in pain as the door splintered and sent a shard into her sides. “Forget it! How do we stop this?!”

The nine-tailed wolf supported her query with a loud bark.

“Rakna has to wake up! His mind was shut down by his soul as a failsafe! Paradoxically, this caused the defense system of his soul to allow this… THING to manifest here through the book. And now it is overpowering the soul realm.”

“And?!”

“So! We need to suppress it somehow and wake up Rakna whose soul will then take care of it on its own! Like an immune system!” Fray explained infuriatingly.

“Easier said than done,” the lioness grumbled. “Your library is sturdy and that’s the only reason it hasn’t escaped yet. It’s a creature with enough power to rival a Celestial! Even with just a fragment of divinity.”

“Well, that is the only way! I am occupied maintaining the library. It is a problem for you three!”

Higure clicked her tongue and huffed as the banging door nearly knocked her away. She glanced at Fenriu. “Hey, edgy brat, your Nirvana Skill should have carried over within your soul.”

The wolf glared at her for her appellation but nonetheless nodded. “…weak,” he spoke for the first time with a growl-like voice that seemed a bit juvenile.

Higure didn’t have the time to be surprised about it and she grunted. “I don’t care if it’s weak,” she retorted. “It’s still a Tailed Pearl. It’s an overkill spell with a massively damaging nature to all sorts of energies without exception. If that’s not enough to weaken this thing, nothing is.”

Fenriu scoffed and stared at her with a telling gaze. “Plan.”

“I’ll try to hold it off until you’re ready and with enough luck, the shock of the blow will shake up the soul realm and also wake up Rakna,” she said and distanced herself from the door.

“Talk about a plan…” Fray muttered as the burden on his back increased and another roar echoed.

“What? It’s just luck,” Higure smirked. “I’m sure my devourer will carry us through this with his.”

“Hah! Of course.”

“Open the door when I tell you.”

The fable writer raised an eyebrow. “What are you going to do?”

“Try my best,” the lioness replied and lifted her paw. She looked at it for a while and nodded. “His soul should have grown enough for me to do this…” She mumbled and closed her eyes. Her soul power immediately started leaking from her body and enveloped her figure.

Fray scrunched his eyebrows to observe the thick fog of black-purple soul power. He could still see the rough silhouette of the lioness and that was the very cause of his subsequent shock. The shape slowly began to change into something vastly different.

‘She’s also starting to generate mana…’ Fray remarked internally.

“Now!” A voice more melodious than usual abruptly sounded from Higure and Fray was jolted out of his thoughts. He moved away with Rexam and Fenriu whilst opening the doors and with her body still shrouded in soul power, the lioness rushed inside by tackling the creature that was right in front of her.

The odd beast was furred and had a dragon-like head and two pairs of feathered wings. There was also a spiral of black lightning around it and its eyes had double irises intertwined.

‘Aeter,’ Higure thought as the doors closed behind her. She shoved the creature away with a burst of soul power and jumped back. The demonic beast crashed on the wall and snarled. As for herself, she landed… on two feet and smirked as the drape of soul power dispersed to reveal her eyes.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been in this form,” she said as her golden irises glowed more than ever before. “We have a few minutes. Let’s dance.”

* * *

Rakna was swimming through a space without colors or sound. His mind was half-awake and he knew that something was wrong. But no matter how hard he tried; he was helplessly stuck in it.

While lost in that dilemma, he happened to stumble upon a light. He immediately zeroed on it and did all he could to get close to it. He forced his way across and the next thing he knew, his view had made a full 360° spin and he had landed in a foreign landscape with his mind clear again.

He blinked in surprise at the barren terrain in front of him. The ground was full of fuming craters, ashes, and shells... Corpses littered the area and the sky was entirely gray, only letting a few rays of sunlight pass through, appearing heaven-given.

All in all, it was nothing more than a battlefield slowly being washed away by a very light and weak rain. And in the very middle of it, the place orbited by all the dead bodies, sat a man with a smoking cigar in his mouth. He was perched on top of a large and mysteriously ancient tomb.

Rakna’s eyes widened. That coat, those silver eyes, the sword on his lap… There was no mistake. The man looked young, no older than 25, but he had seen that exact face in history books.

“So, how are you doing, kid?” The man spoke up without looking at the therian. He just huffed a cloud of smoke whilst gazing at the skies. His clothes were tattered and bloodied but there were absolutely no signs of it in his tone or expression.

“…probably better than you right now,” Rakna replied whilst looking up. He spotted fresh wounds still spewing blood from all over the man’s body.

He laughed and the amount of blood increased due to the contraction of his muscles. He grinned and exhaled some smoke. “Don’t worry about that, kid. This place is fake. It’s actually a recollection of one of the moments in my life. It was my greatest battle as a normal human. I would have died in this precise spot if my comrades hadn’t come to rescue me.”

Rakna scowled and looked around. “Is this the infamous field of the Demon’s Slaughter? That one where you supposedly killed five hundred soldiers alone?”

“Hahaha! Five-hundred they say. The actual count was four times that.”

“…and this tomb?”

“Ah… this?” The man hummed tapped on the wood of the cross under him. “I made this. Here rests the man that took everything away from me. I never hated anyone more than him in my entire life and probably won’t in the future.”

“Why did you raise a tomb for him then?” Rakna frowned.

“Why do you think people make tombs, kid? To respect them? Yes. But is that it? No. They’re there to make us remember forever that someone is buried under it and that they were once alive. It is also built to remind you… that they’re dead.”

“I see that you’re still as much as an old man as ever.”

“Right back at you, kid. What a bag of sunshine you are,” the man jested.

“So, how does it feel to be a god, old man?” Rakna asked back with a casual tone. It was as if he was asking the most superficial question ever.

“Hm… fun? I guess. At the end of the day, I’m just a super strong guy that could destroy the entire world. There’s nothing holy or sacred about it. People fear me. Therefore, they revere me. It does not change a lot from Earth honestly.”

Rakna snorted. “What is happening?” He finally asked the pressing issue.

“Hm, good question. You must already know about the ‘words of power’, right? Identities have a certain power in the magic world. That applies to me. However, I can’t be compared to anyone at your level. You could make enchantments and curses with just the power that my name offers.”

“I see,” Rakna understood easily enough. “Your cross and Fray’s book. Both of those things had your ‘identity’ all over them and their encounter caused this?”

“More or less. The main ingredient is actually yourself. Your relation to me is enough to magnify that effect by a hundred-fold. It’s a bit of a bummer though that it got out of control and is now in the process of destroying your soul to smithereens out of instinct.”

“…sorry, what?”

“Meh, don’t worry. Your little friends are working on it. It should be fine. The lady and the puppy are very close to subduing my specter.”

“Right… I have no idea who you’re calling ‘lady’ though. The only one I know is a horny cat.”

Arimane blinked. “Hm, I’ll let you have the surprise then.”

“What surprise?”

“Nothing. More importantly, look,” he ignored his question and pointed at the sky with his chin.

Rakna furrowed his eyebrows and looked up as well. The clouds were slowly gathering at a single point and were gradually fading away.

“Your soul is starting to fight back against my influence. Soon, the wolf inside your soul realm will release an attack that should allow you to leave.”

Rakna didn’t respond right away and watched the clouds for a moment longer before opening his mouth, “And you? Where are you?”

“Far away. It’s frustrating but this System does a good job at hiding itself from me. What can I say; Phantasms are good at what they do.

“Phantasms?”

Arimane smiled. “You’ll learn about it sooner or later. Anyhow, the me that you’re talking to at the moment isn’t real. I’m just a short-lived projection formed through existential power. I’m afraid you’ll have to find another chance to contact me in the future.”

“…how?”

“Easy. Leave the System or tear its stealth apart. In either case, I will instantly detect you. And well, who knows, you might encounter another projection of myself before then. The misadventures of being a god; you can’t help it when specters of your spilling power form randomly. I’m sure there are many weaker versions of myself isolated in other dimensions or realities. Woe me…”

Rakna rolled his eyes. “Whatever, old man. I’ll find you.”

Arimane chuckled. “I’m sure you will,” he said and with a burst of energy, the sky was torn apart by a sphere of raw energy; a Tailed Pearl. It zoomed through the air and exploded.

Rakna shielded his eyes from the shockwave and when he could see again, he was back in a pallid world without colors and Arimane was nowhere to be seen.

“Rakna! Hurry up!” A feminine voice echoed and he looked down where an ever-constricting circle of white light was located. He glanced one last time in the direction where his uncle had been and let himself fall into it before it could close on itself.