"What do you know about worlds?"
Orion didn't immediately answer as he momentarily fell into his mind. After having gathered his thoughts, he spoke.
"If we only count the pivotal naturally created worlds, there are four levels."
"The first would be what I call the mortal sphere, in that sphere constructs known as universes and verses are created with more minor constructs. They are fundamentally capped by mortality."
"The second level would be what I call the Heavenly sphere, the place where we currently are. It's made of a bunch of heavens that transcend the previous. From what I've learned we are in the penultimate heaven."
"The third level would be the God sphere, the place where gods can ascend to. I don't really know much and that's just a guess."
"The fourth would be where you guys are supposed to be. The Chaos sphere." He concluded, his words a bit hesitant as he spoke about the Chaos sphere.
Hearing this, Eros couldn't help but burst into laughter as Hera struggled to hide her smile.
Embarrassed, Orion's usually unbothered expression broke as he became as red as a tomato.
He didn't even need them to say it, he was wrong. Horribly so.
But who could blame him? In the grand scheme of things, he was nothing but a child. He didn't even truly understand how powerful he currently was.
Eros' mad laughter slowly stopped as Hera repeatedly pinched him.
"Don't be embarrassed. Do you wanna know what your father answered when my father asked him back then?" She asked with a mischievous smile. Not even her husband could embarrass her treasured son.
Eros instantly stopped as his expression became serious beyond belief as if he had heard the most serious thing in the last cycle.
As Hera started speaking, Orion didn't have time to compute anything as his vision blanked then came back to him.
His pupils widened as he noticed the ache of his cheeks and the streams of happy tears that flowed down his face.
He had clearly been laughing at something.
Looking at his father, his pupils widened even more as he saw him evade his gaze.
"Did…did you erase my memory?" Asked Orion in disbelief.
It couldn't be that bad…right?
"Anyways, obviously you were wrong but it's fine." Said Eros, ignoring his wife's triumphant smile.
"Mhm, it's hard to truly understand how wide the world is unless you reach our level." Added Hera.
"The first thing you need to know is that there are thirty one independent hierarchical world levels. Each independent and infinitely transcendent of the previous." She added, her smile fading as she became serious.
This was gonna be one of Orion's most important lectures of his life.
"These thirty one levels are divided into three Echelons."
Orion's pupils wildly shook as he heard this.
'Thirty one worlds? Three Echelons?'
"We'll go in order."
"The first Echelon, the mortal Echelon, contains the first eleven world levels."
"The first world level and the weakest of them all is called The Ash pits."
"The Ash pits are composed of various smaller constructs varying from planets to universes and cosmic verses. All utterly inconsequential."
"I don't think I can even put into words how pathetically weak that place is. You'll see when you eventually travel across worlds."
"The next levels in order are; True realms, World Clusters, Immortal Havens, Myriad Heavens, Myriad Chaos Heavens, Myriad Genesis Heavens, The God lands, Myriad Aisles of creation, Myriad Avenues and Exior folds."
"These are the eleven worlds that make up the mortal Echelon. Truthfully, they're not referred to as worlds but Natural constructs."
"Anyways…"
Hera went into extreme details, explaining the difference in laws, natural environment, the significance of their transcendence in relation to the previous constructs and more.
When talking about the Mortal Echelon, multiple things had to be explained.
Firstly, the ash pit was the only natural construct in existence that wasn't intrinsically infinite in size and energy production. Though it was ever expanding, the energies that sustained the ash pits constantly underwent cycles of decay.
This was shocking considering the fact that all the other natural constructs had infinite energy reserves that only became purer and more powerful as time passed.
In the worlds beyond the ash pits, each generation had an infinitely better environment than the last, this was one of the reasons why wars rarely occurred for resources and why the cultivation world had never ever declined, due to natural reasons at least.
Another known fact about the mortal Echelon is that each natural construct, within the hierarchy, infinitely transcended the previous.
This was hard to explain in mortal terms but in simple words, the higher the world the better the environment and the stronger the laws the cultivator would be baptised by at birth, resulting in higher talent levels.
Higher law complexity also allowed rarer resources to be birthed and stronger natural life forms to be birthed.
The human natives of the Chaos Heavens would never, ever be able to match the average native humans from the Myriad Genesis Heavens, despite it only being one level above it in the hierarchy.
This of course didn't include anomalies that had talents beyond their world.
"The second Echelon, the Divine Echelon, is made up of the next ten natural construct levels."
"They follow the following Hierarchy; Dawn Cradle, Origin Dimensional Plane, Celestial Reality, Myriad Sanctified Origin Verses, Khaos Cosmology, Divine Totality, Oceans of Boundless Truth, Myriad Mythos and finally, The Primordial Nests." Calmly uttered Hera.
Orion felt overwhelmed by such grand names and by the sheer complexity of such worlds but he stayed quiet as he listened to his mother.
"There are three things you need to know about the Divine Echelons that don't apply to the Mortal Echelons."
'Echelons? As in multiple?!'
"Firstly, regardless of the place where you're born, from birth, you'll be a first grade Saint. I'm not gonna go into the details of the Saint realms but as you know, the first grade is the next best thing you can reach in the Saint realm."
"Why is this the case? Well, the Divine Echelons are fundamentally made up of three more types of laws that aren't present in the lower Echelons; Dao Laws, Primordial Laws and Essence Laws." She said, not elaborating.
"Secondly, the Divine Echelon allows for Dao and World families to be born."
"Dao and World families are simply families birthed from concepts, laws, aspects or even natural Daos of the world. Technically, we're a Dao World family but that's a discussion for another time." She continued, lightly chuckling at Orion's ever increasing shock.
The truth was that normally, kids of Orion's age and cultivation should've never been told about the worlds beyond so early but she had no choice. Even she, as intelligent as she was, only learnt about them when she turned sixteen.
"Finally, the Divine Echelons aren't linearly restricted. Meaning all timelines and parallel worlds intertwine."
"The third and last Echelon is the Primordial Echelon."