"Finally…" Locura sighed after Arimane was gone. He waved his right hand and opened some kind of gateway of which the depths could not be perceived. "We're done here," he said, glancing at the watchful group of Hosts in the distance.
Soledad similarly looked at them, narrowing her eyes at Rakna, and much like her two comrades, wondering what the Kind Demon exactly implied about his importance to their plan.
"Not even gonna taunt us a little?" Zialtra abruptly spoke up, sneering at them. "If you're the big bad guys, at least pretend a bit. Your presence here is so mild that honestly… it pisses me off," she glowered.
Locura gazed at her impassively.
"And what's that bullshit with the Global Quest? You want us to fight your war?"
"…it's equally in your best interest to fight the Téras Empress," Miedo raised his voice to rebut her. "Based on Eternal Night's words, her goal might very well threaten your lives."
"Right… and then after that, we're supposed to let you do whatever you want," the Hunting Queen replied sarcastically. "What stops us from beating your asses right now, huh?"
"Perhaps nothing," Locura said with a blank tone. "Chances are, all of you here are enough to defeat us too. We're not all-powerful even if we are the ones who manage Systema. The three of us would lose to either of your two top Hosts alone, much less all of you together. Though, of course, it's not something I'd recommend since plenty of you here are not strong enough to survive."
Zialtra blinked in surprise at the easy admittance.
"To make it worse, we Phantasms are not as numerous as we were eons ago," he added. "Eternal Night most likely knows this, but our numbers are finite. Phantasms are a race of spirits destined to go extinct."
"And? Do you want us to feel sorry for you?" Kaelith suddenly asked with her arms crossed.
He snorted. "How convenient would that be? Maybe we should have tried long ago," he uttered without a care in the world. "But it doesn't matter; let me ask you something, have you ever held a goal, an ambition, for billions of years?"
The vixen furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
"He means that justifications lose themselves to time," Hans spoke up while giving an uninterested look to the Phantasms. "I understand now how boring you are. The Kind Demon was being far too generous when he called you 'desperate'. At this point, you should envisage expediting your own extinction in order to have a satisfactory resolution."
Soledad audibly gritted her teeth at that, her cold expression twisting venomously. "You're one to talk, Wailful Nightmare! There is no Phantasm in all Existence that does not hold hatred for you! You know very well why! So, how about you follow your own advice!?" She yelled.
Hans scoffed and adjusted his glasses while everyone around him widened their eyes in shock, not expecting to hear something like that. "Unfortunately," the author whispered. "That is an escape I have been denied by an all-too-loving fairy," he said with a humorous tone as if he was aware of a joke no one else did.
"Oi, midget…" Zialtra scowled at the azure-haired boy. "What is that about?"
"You--!" Soledad was about to continue when the cloaked arm of Miedo cut off her sight.
"Enough, Soledad. Fighting the Last Ender is not part of our objectives," he spoke slowly and she clenched her fists until eventually swinging her arms in anger. She turned around and walked into the portal opened by Locura after sending one last glare toward Hans.
Miedo lowered his arm and glanced at the Hosts, a single white dot piercing through the darkness of his hood. Without a word, he followed Soledad into the gateway.
Locura displayed no visible reaction or emotion to Hans' or Soledad's words. However, before he left, he responded to the azure-haired boy's criticism, "You're right. It can't be called desperation. And I don't think someone like me, whose epithet is insanity, has any ground to defend it."
The Espectro turned around. "But I suppose if I had to give it a name…" He stepped forward. "The word 'obsession' would fit well."
On that note, the last of the trio vanished into the portal and closed it right behind him. On cue, the power that Soledad appeared to have applied on the spatial layer was undone and the connection with the Arena was re-established.
⠀
* * *
⠀
The first day of the Arena Games ended with mixed impressions, but the fight that had transpired before the cameras turned off nonetheless threw the whole System and its residents into chaos.
Whether it was the true identity of Rakna Xiorra, the conversations he had with Eternal Night, or his power that surpassed even high-level Hosts; any of these was major news.
In the evening that followed, countless articles and online comments had been made and the cause of it all had just woken up with a bad case of soul-induced nausea.
"I swear I'll punch that old bastard in the face next time I see him," Rakna grunted out as he sat up on the couch of his home. "Actually, I'll just shove another Longinus through his teeth…"
"Heh, will that even do anything to him though?" Higure asked with a smile as she leaned over the couch's back.
The therian huffed and after shaking off the strange side-effects left by eating Arimane's heart, he confirmed that he was in his territory with everyone. "Looks like you guys brought me back all the way here… with extra guests," he uttered as he spotted Merlina, Caer, Zialtra, and Cura. They were sitting at the dining table since there were no other seats.
Caer flashed a friendly smile, his squinted eyes curving into crescents. "Heya," he quipped with a wave of his hand. "I hope you don't mind us visiting."
"Hm…" Rakna narrowed his eyes and glanced at Kaelith, who was sitting next to him. "All right… it seems all of you have something on your mind. Otherwise, foxy would have already started bashing me for doing unnecessarily risky things."
The vixen rolled her eyes. "Wow, look at him, he's learning… but not really," she said sarcastically and the others chuckled. She then pointed at Hans who was nonchalantly eating an apple. "And to answer you, wolfy, we're waiting for him to spit out whatever he knows."
"Well, personally, I'm more curious about our newbie's abilities…" Caer voiced his opinion.
"I won't tell you crap. You saw and heard a lot today. Be happy with it," Rakna immediately denied and he smiled wryly. "So, something happened while I was unconscious?"
"Yeah," Allan nodded. "Want me to dumb it down for you?"
"No need. Give me a second," the therian replied and placed a hand on the right side of his face. On cue, his eyes began to rotate and transfer data directly into his mind. "This thing could record my whole life in video and still have space," he explained. "So, I just let it. It's especially useful for when I'm not conscious."
It only took a few seconds and the transcript of the conversation they had with the Phantasms had already been digested by his brain. "I see…" He casually said and looked at Hans who took one last bite of his fruit.
"I was waiting for you to wake up before saying anything, but I suppose it was not that meaningful with that kind of feature," the azure-haired boy said and leaned back, crossing his legs. "Where to start…" He hummed. "I do not know everything, but I am privy to a few key details."
He mused and eventually tapped the small table in between everyone with his finger. At his touch, a blank book was conjured by his magic and he waved over the cover, manifesting a title on it.
"Let us go back to the beginning," he stated. "Have any of you ever heard of the Lost Era?"
Caer and Astraea were the only ones present who reacted meaningfully. Then, there was Fray who immediately made himself known with a telepathic link from within Rakna's soul.
"{Are you referring to the Original Era?}" The fabulist asked curiously.
"Indeed, some call it that way," Hans snorted.
Astraea spoke up soon after, "The Lost Era… or Original Era, is a hypothesized time that precedes the current Existence as we know it. Before there were Worlds, Realities, or Parallel Planes, there is said to have been a smaller and stabler Existence."
"A hypothesis?" Rakna raised an eyebrow. "Even in Egregore?"
She shook her head. "Not exactly. It is a… half-proven one. There are creatures in our current times that are said to be survivors of a catastrophic end that occurred in that era. Which is why most call it 'Lost'. It was destroyed and forgotten. Egregore may have existed during those times… but the complete eradication of all life by unknown means somehow stopped the information from ever being carried over."
"I expected as much," Hans nodded and the angel threw him a strange look.
"By many theories… a few beings have been marked as potential 'relics'," she said. "But no one has ever found any concrete proof to make it decisive. The suspects generally consist of creatures that have no traceable origin in our current era, and--"
"Save your breath," Hans raised his hand to stop her. "No need to throw around guesses. I will tell you right now; there are two such relics in this room as we speak."
Everyone blinked and only one 'individual' reacted with a laugh. It was guttural and dark, echoing from beside Cura, where King Gulon was propped against the wall.
Hans glanced at the living weapon whose scales grew and whose mouth opened in hilarity. "As you might have guessed… King Gulon is one of them. I had my reservations when I first saw him. I was quite certain of his origin, do not get me wrong, but that he knew exactly what I was made me sure that he is an ancient creature, even by the standards of the Lost Era."
Gul stopped laughing and grinned with a threatening row of teeth. A fascinatingly articulate growl came out of his throat and only Rakna and Cura understood his words.
"'Are you going to confess your failures, Wailful Nightmare?'" The shark man translated the words of his weapon.
Hans huffed and ignored the question. "And, of course, as you might have guessed already, I am the second 'relic' in this room. The nature of my existence is due to my connection with two… 'foreign forces'. King Gulon seems to have witnessed the birth of both of them, so there is no doubt that he is at least more than twenty billion years old."
The eyes in the room snapped to the ancient creature and Gul snarled. "He's saying that he spent most of that time sleeping," Cura interpreted. "And that if you want to look at someone weirdly, the Wailful One is not that much younger."
"I was not exactly alive for most of that time either," Hans retorted with a snicker. "Regardless, this should be enough to introduce the basics of what I am, right?"
Everyone nodded dumbly.
"Wonderful. That will be relevant later. Now, let us move to another race of survivors. However, you will quickly realize that they cannot truly be called as such. Unlike His Majesty and I, they were not born during the Lost Era but rather created BY it. And they… are the Phantasms."