Life Hunter

Arima stood up, stretched a bit and cracked his neck. He casually waved his hand at Evergreen and healed her, "Thanks for the hard work. I don't think he managed to track us down."

The dryad recovered her breath and thanked Arima for the heal, "You're still going to go there even after you saw that?"

Arima shrugged, "Of course."

"He's stronger than you," Evergreen retorted, "By far."

"Hey, don't say it like that. Obviously, at the moment, I'm weaker than him. Additionally, I still need more power to be able to travel that far," Arima then walked toward the wall and halted in front of it.

He slowly turned around, "…How do I get out?" He asked and the dryad laughed for the first time.

When Arima exited the tree, he bid farewell to Evergreen and the two old beasts before quickly leaving the forest. He requested Hieran and Rex to reduce the assaults on the monster continent to balance for Koden's loss.

Arima teleported back in front of the huge dome of the spirit realm because he didn't want to fall prey to the eating flowers in case the dome could affect his teleportation. He entered the barrier by using the same method that Lanya used. He then directly transferred to where Night was.

When he arrived, he spotted Lilis waving a plate of enticing meat in front of Night's nose.

"Alright, you tell me where Arima is right now and I'll give it to you."

Night's mouth twitched, "I can't…do that…"

"Mm," Lilis showed a pensive expression then smiled, "Fine, I'll still give it to you. Here."

She put the plate on the floor and Night's eyes brightened. He approached the plate and started eating while Lilis was petting him with a smile.

"Hey," Arima's voice jolted the two of them.

"Oops," Lilis exclaimed and swiftly disappeared.

Night had his back facing Arima. He was totally frozen and was sweating profusely. Arima calmly walked to him and patted his head once.

"Now, can you tell me why the hell you were letting yourself get tamed?"

Night trembled and dryly laughed, "…I don't know what you're talking about."

Arima stared at him and shook his head, "Where is Lanya?"

Night sighed in relief, "I don't know. Maybe Lilis already went to her though."

Arima sat down on a sofa and brought out some chocolate to snack on, "Did you select some people?"

Night sat down properly like a wolf would do, "Yeah, I told that prince to gather them in two days at the same place."

"Who are they?"

"Most of them are people who profit from others' struggles and deaths. There are also some of them who love to hunt and torment monsters and beasts, not caring about if they are children or not."

Night mused, "The strongest is a middle-class of the ninth level. There are two other ninth-levels, seven eighth, thirteen seventh, and the rest is below that, which is pretty insignificant for us."

Arima pondered for a second, "With just that, one attack should be enough."

Night wryly smiled, "I knew you would say that. Well, it's decided then. By the way, I imparted a telepathic link to that prince. He told me earlier that he will be able to gather all of them but he also said that he couldn't stop certain people from coming on their own accord."

"Certain people, huh? That's not a problem. I'll do the same as always. I take the correct ones in another dimension and then it's done."

After that, Arima and Night kept chatted for an hour or so before Lanya came back along with Lilis and Vinia.

The latter bowed to Arima, "Thank you. I heard of what the prince has been doing now and he even apologized to me before leaving. I'm really grateful."

"You don't need to thank me. Besides, it's Night who did all the work. You should thank him"

Vinia smiled, "I already did so."

Arima snickered and stood up. He looked toward Lilis, "Come for a second. I need to talk with you," He declared and left the room.

"Huh?" Lilis watched him leave with widened eyes as Lanya looked curiously. After a few seconds, Lilis hurriedly got out of the room to follow him.

She went to another room with Arima and sat down. He started telling her about the giant he saw when he looked around the galaxy.

"Oh, I see. So, you saw an Earthen God," Lilis exclaimed and smiled, "You have questions for me?"

"Tell me what you know about that god. Also, I wanted to ask if he actually was the one who sent the asteroid here."

"From your description, the one you saw is indeed the one who targeted you. His name is Errastas. His personality is a bit… let's say unstable."

"…How strong is he compared to me? How many times stronger?"

Lilis chuckled a bit noticing that Arima didn't expect at all to be stronger than Errastas, "Based on your current strength, I'd say he is stronger than you by around twenty folds."

"I see," Arima wasn't surprised.

"If I can improve my undead form and use the 'One hundred parade' with Night, I could reduce that number to seventeen folds…" He muttered and looked at Lilis, "What about you? Compared to me?"

At that question, Lilis lightly laughed, "I'm a Heavenly God, you know? The difference is too big. But well… I should be stronger than you by at least two hundred folds."

Arima nodded, "What's the difference between an H-God and an E-God?"

"What are those abbreviations? And why aren't you more surprised by my power?" Lilis said quietly but she had to admit that she almost shouted those lines. She sighed and mused about how she could explain.

"Well, first, the main difference between us is that we Heavenly Gods live in a unique world that we call Heaven. Our world is not composed of a universe and galaxies. It's just an infinite land that we didn't succeed to explore in its entirety even to this day. Earthen Gods are those who live in normal worlds like this one and can't reach Heaven. They usually keep traveling between universes and worlds."

"Now, to become an Earthen God, one needs to be born exceptionally talented or have the direct benediction of a Heavenly God. Then, to become a Heavenly God, it's another story. There are multiple ways though."

"The first one is to be the child of two Heavenly Gods. There are also those like me, born from the emotions and thoughts of at least a quintillion people. This type of god is born from the numerous different aspects of mortals and are given corresponding abilities and titles. For example, the gods of war, love, happiness, and a lot more."

"The third method is when an already existing Heavenly God gives his life away to a mortal. The fourth way, the almost impossible one, is raising one's strength until he can naturally breakthrough the Heavenly realm. There's only one record of an Earthen One doing that in the last billion years."

Lilis paused and smiled strangely as she stared at Arima, "The last approach… is to be a Life Hunter. Life Hunters can effortlessly climb until the late stage of the Earthen Realm by extracting life force. One way to say it is that they don't need talent. When they reach that point, there is a technique available for a Life Hunter to ascend higher."

Arima frowned, "What is it?"

Lilis chuckled, "I can't tell you that I'm afraid. From what I know, Life Hunters are better off not knowing that information before it really happens to them."

"To finish, what I need to tell you is the difference in power between the realms. Actually, it's pretty simple. The power of an individual is measured on three different realms of strength. There isn't much to think about. "

"They're respectively called; Mortal realm, Earthen realm, and Heavenly Realm. Each basically corresponding to Humans, Earthen Gods, and Heavenly Gods. The Mortal realm is decomposed into the 10 'levels' which you already know about. The Earthen realm is decomposed into 5 'skies' and the Heavenly realm is decomposed into 3 'divines'. For your information, I'm in the first divine."

"All of this kinda resembles the qi cultivation thing you have in your world. It's actually one of the closest descriptions of true power up. And, although qi exists in certain worlds, the one you may be familiar with is wrong, or you could say 'ambiguous', on a certain thing. Cultivation increases one's strength by reaching new stages, pilgrimage sometimes, or enlightenment. That's, in my opinion, a bit stupid. You can't become stronger by just gathering qi in your dantian and become some kind of silly enlightened sage. In fact, you should be gaining a level only when you become strong enough. Not gaining a level and getting strong afterward."

"I'm sure you realized it already but your body has been evolving since the moment you arrived into this world. You must have felt great changes on the first day you arrived. It's because when you stepped into this world, your latent power could already be considered to be at the sixth or seventh level.

"Thus, in a world with magic circuits, the body has to adapt to the latent strength of the owner. So, each time you raise a level, it isn't because you achieved a sort of prerequisite to become stronger, but just because you reached a level of strength at which your body is forced to adapt.

"It has to be able to support more mana, spirit, life force, mind, pressure, aura, and then, with that body, you can aim higher. The biggest changes the body has to undergo is when you go from the Mortal realm to the Earthen realm, and from the Earthen realm to the Heavenly realm."

"For you to understand the importance of that, for example, if you tried to fight a Heavenly God the way you are right now, your attacks would never even reach him. If you were to just touch him, you will get heavily injured even if he doesn't retaliate. It's like trying to hit a three-dimensional being when you're two-dimensional."

Lilis drank some water and exhaled after talking so much, "There you go. You now have all the information you wanted."

Arima stayed silent for a moment with his eyes closed to process all of the information. He opened his eyes after half a minute, "Thanks for teaching me."

"No problem. It's technically my job to assist you right now... I guess. Anyway, what will you do now? Your objective was to fight Errastas, right?"

Arima smiled, "Yeah, it hasn't changed. But I'm still a bit too weak. I'll try to rise to the Earthen realm for now. I'm not sure how long it will take, considering the fact that the life force I get from people weaker than me is useless, but I'm sure I will reach it at some point."

Lilis laughed, "I see. I wish you good luck."

"I only trust the fate I built for myself. Luck has always only been a sympathetic helper," Arima smirked and left the room. Lilis's gaze followed his back and she fully rested her back on her chair when he had closed the door.

She sighed and bitterly smiled, "Seriously… I can't get too attached." She mumbled inaudibly and followed Arima afterward.