Aaron opened his eyes and watched as he hovered without gravity in space. His eyes saw a sprinkling of white stars in the sky, making him wonder if he might be in outer space.
"Akh!"
His head felt buzzing, his vision blurred, and his hands and feet shook. Aaron only remembered the last thing that went through his head: When he talked to Lucy's soul before she passed the Dark Dimension talent to him.
"Mom gave her Dark Dimension talent to me."
Aaron's index finger touched his watch, and a system panel showed his profile, current talent, and status.
[Profile Status:]
[Name: Aaron Lewis]
[Age: 18]
[Level: 20]
[Talent: Dark Dimensional Reality]
[Rank: SSS-R]
[Stage: 2]
[Talent Point: 308,540/499,999]
[Efficiency: 301-400tp/hour]
'This is unbalanced. My talent has a higher rank than my level. I hope it doesn't kill me.'
Aaron rose from his back, and to his surprise, he did not float but stood straight up in the sky as if an invisible floor was under his feet.
Red light and a large dimensional rift appeared, causing thunderous sounds to echo and make the surrounding area noisy. Aaron covered his ears with both hands as he watched the dimensional rift.
From within the rift, a girl with rose-red hair and a black dress suit came down, her skin as white as a snowflake, and her figure was not tall or shorter than Aaron's.
Aerith came down with hundreds of red cages with human souls within. Aaron was startled with a pale face.
The young man could faintly hear the sound of screams from the souls trapped inside the cages.
"Wh-What is it?" asked Aaron.
"Welcome to the Dark Dimension. This is the place where evil souls from around the world ended."
"Perhaps you are familiar with it as hell."
"Hell? But it's nothing like what I imagined," Aaron replied.
"I made it the way it is to make you comfortable. If I showed you the true picture of hell, I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully forever."
Aaron swallowed his saliva deeply. There was no gesture or attitude that indicated a lie in every word the girl said. The young man was quite confident that she was telling the truth.
Aerith flew low before Aaron, rubbing the young man's face to make him gasp slightly. Instead of getting angry, Aerith smiled bitterly at Aaron's cautious attitude.
"You may have no idea who I am, but let me make it clear to you."
Under Aerith's feet, Aaron watched as a string of rose stems creeped upwards and formed a throne of thorny red roses. Even so, Aerith did not feel hurt while sitting on it.
"I am the ruler of the Dark Dimension. You may call me Aerith," the girl explained.
"And there's another reason why you're here besides the fact that you inherited the Dark Dimension talent."
A rose appeared above Aerith's hand, created by the manifestation of dark energy. With a graceful move, Aerith passed the rose forward to create Reality Domain.
[Talent Activated]
[Sub Talent Activated]
[Reality Domain]
Reality Domain was a sub-talent of Dark Dimension Reality, where the user of the talent could manipulate the mind and truth of the opponent he was targeting by showing a new falsified truth according to the talent user's wishes.
Currently, Aaron was trapped in Aerith's Domain Reality. His surroundings turned into a projected image of his house just before the burning and Lucy's arrest.
"M-Mom?"
Aaron approached Lucy, who was busy cooking in the kitchen. Yet, when he tried to touch her shoulder, Aaron's hand appeared to pass through Lucy's body, startling him.
"I can't touch her? What is all this?"
He kept watching scene after scene unfold before him. The door opened, a group of men entered wearing red and black military uniforms. Aaron knew who they were.
"Great Ruler's Integrity Knights?"
The five military men arrived in a rude demeanor, slamming furniture and destroying everything in Aaron's home.
Lucy tried to fight back, but her Dark Dimension power was blocked due to the power of their supreme light.
Because of this, Lucy was arrested, and her soul was separated from her body, causing Aaron to be unable to hide his anger.
"Stop it! Let her go."
The five people dragged Lucy's body and imprisoned the woman's soul in a white cage that the military used to imprison souls filled with dark energy.
"Did you already know everything? Especially about the one behind Lucy's soul arrest?" asked Aerith, swinging a hand and dispelling the reality domain on Aaron.
"Great Ruler's Knights of Integrity. I have to kill them!" growled Aaron, the girl smiling with satisfaction after finding her ruse had managed to trick Aaron's mind and heart.
"That's good, but with your current strength, you can't fight them yet, not even to kill them."
"At least they're at the Integrity Knight level while you're still at the Apprentice Mage level."
Aerith snapped her fingers and instantly changed the landscape into a vast land with skyscrapers in Berlin, the capital of the European Union or Euronion as people called it.
"You should at least become a Venerable Sage, the same level as the Union leader. After that, you might be able to fight those Integrity Knights."
"I understand."
The girl stepped down from her rose throne, and the throne faded and disappeared. Aerith moved closer to Aaron until her face was before the young man's, startling him.
"Are you gonna help me defeat those Integrity Knights?" asked Aerith enthusiastically.
'What does she mean by defeating them? Does she also have a grudge against them?'
"If they're the ones who kidnapped my mother, then I'll help you defeat them."
Aerith smiled while clapping her hands, jumping several times, and hovering around Aaron. Aaron's attention was drawn upwards, watching the hundreds of red cages filled with evil souls from the past.
The girl caught sight of Aaron's eyes. She took the young man's hand and invited him to fly into the sky toward one of the hundreds of red cages of souls. Aaron was taken aback and couldn't do anything.
"What are you doing?"
"You want their power? Then I will give it to you."
"Power? What are you really talking about?"
Aerith released her grip on Aaron. She told the young man to touch the cage wall.
At first, Aaron refused since all of this felt strange to him, but Aaron couldn't argue anymore after seeing the obvious confidence etched on Aerith's face.
Aaron's fingers touched the cage wall. Surprisingly, the system panel appeared with a different color than usual, a red panel.
From within it, there was writing explaining the soul's identity confined within the cage. Aaron was shocked to find out whose soul was locked up in the cage.
[WARNING]
[Contacting a pure evil soul can affect the mind and heart]
[Soul Identity]
[Name: Jack The Ripper]
[Form: Soul]
[Soul Lv: 15]
[Talent: Stealth]
[Rank: S-R]
"Jack The Ripper? Are you kidding me? He's the most famous criminal in the world."
"I never lie. He is indeed Jack The Ripper, and he can be your servant," Aerith explained.
"What do you mean?" asked Aaron, confused by every word Aerith said.
"You, Earthlings, still haven't reached the level of summoning knowledge and servant contracts between souls. It's only natural that you know nothing."
Aerith held the cage with her hand, releasing it from the web of red darkness energy connected from one cage to another.
The girl held the cage and made it into a small shape. Letting it hover right next to her, Aerith turned her eyes forward.
"Then what should I do?" asked Aaron.
"You must fight against Jack The Ripper. Defeat him and make him obey you. Then you can make him your servant."