CH 71: Eraser
The moment Lex tore the Card and used it on himself to gain the Bloodline of Io, he immediately felt the change.
A wave of energy was released from him, ancient and powerful, and for a moment it almost felt like a roar had erupted from somewhere deep within his body. It wasn't an actual sound, yet Lex could somehow feel it, as though the bloodline itself was announcing its presence to the world. The sensation travelled through every part of him, passing through his bones, his muscles, his organs and even the various supernatural energies that had become a part of his existence.
He immediately felt his power increase by a huge margin.
It wasn't limited to his physical body either. His powers, the abilities he had gotten from the Gacha and Templates, even the ones he had obtained through sleeping with the girls, all of them were enhanced. It was as though the bloodline had reached into everything that made up Lex and strengthened it along with itself.
He could also feel that, if he wanted, he could turn into a Draconic form. He didn't even need to consciously understand how to do it; the knowledge was simply there, buried within the bloodline, waiting for him to call upon it. Doing so would further enhance his overall power and bring more of the draconic nature within him to the surface.
Then there were the concepts.
Or rather, concepts.
Lex could feel the presence of several of them somewhere within his bloodline, but at the moment he could only establish a connection with one. Even then, he couldn't tell what that particular concept was. It was there, undeniably so, but trying to grasp its nature was like trying to identify something while only being able to feel its shadow.
However, before Lex could test it and see exactly what the concept was, he suddenly felt as if someone or something was trying to teleport him.
It wasn't quite like ordinary teleportation either.
There was a sensation of his existence being pulled somewhere else, as though something had reached across space and attempted to displace him from where he stood.
Lex obviously rejected it.
That's when someone suddenly appeared out of nowhere just behind him.
His senses couldn't even notice her arrival. There was no warning, no fluctuation in energy, no movement through space that he could detect. His supernatural senses simply failed to register her until she was already there.
Only his normal senses could perceive her.
Lex turned around.
Yet only he had turned around.
Most importantly, even as he looked at the woman, he noticed that no one else had reacted. Sharon, Donna, Kara, Gwen, Regina, Grayfia, Nanami and Derek were all still going about whatever they had been doing, completely unaware that another person had appeared in the room.
Lex couldn't blame the others, considering how strange the woman was, but even Kara hadn't reacted yet.
That was strange.
“Miss, who are you? And why did you suddenly teleport to my house?” Lex asked politely.
“Lex Everhart, it's been quite some time I've been trying to find you,” the woman in the green dress said.
Is she a stalker?
Lex immediately thought about the possibility, especially considering the daily multiple hook-ups he had experienced during the first three months after coming to this world. Maybe one of those girls had somehow gained powers and come looking for him.
Unfortunately, Lex had perfect memory.
He remembered every single one of those girls.
She wasn't any of them.
Lex used Milim's Eye on her, but for the first time since he had gotten the skill, it actually failed. It simply failed to register her.
That felt quite weird, especially since the biggest improvement he had gotten from the Bloodline of Io in terms of his abilities seemed to be with this particular skill. Yet even with that enhancement, the woman in front of him was simply not something Milim's Eye could properly perceive.
On the other hand, even while Lex continued talking to the woman, none of his team members had looked toward them, asked anything, or even shown the slightest reaction.
“Oh, they can't perceive me,” the woman in green explained, as if that answered everything.
“Hey, you guys, can you not see this woman?” Lex still decided to ask.
Only then did they turn toward him and try to look around.
“What woman?” Kara asked.
“Yeah, I don't see anything,” Gwen also stated.
Her eyes immediately became pink with mana as she tried to see whatever Lex was talking about, but even that didn't matter.
The woman in green simply smiled, almost as if to say, I told you so.
Then she suddenly looked toward the sky and frowned.
“It seems that your Bloodline Awakening has caused quite the stir, and its strange effects on the concept aren't appreciated by some,” she said.
Lex too turned toward the sky.
At first, he couldn't see anything.
Then he pushed his perception further, using Milim's Eye alongside the Divine Eyes of Depth, and finally saw something.
An enormous creature was standing in the sky.
No.
He wasn't in the sky.
He was in space, standing outside the Earth.
The sheer scale of the being made Lex's mind momentarily struggle to properly comprehend what he was looking at. From where he stood, the Earth itself seemed almost tiny compared to the enormous figure, as though the planet could have fit comfortably within its hand.
Yet despite its ridiculous size, nothing around it was being affected. Earth's gravity wasn't being distorted, the oceans weren't being pulled upward, and the planet wasn't being crushed beneath the creature's mere presence.
It was simply there.
The being looked somewhat like what Lex imagined a gigantic golem would look like, with a massive stone-like body and six stone-like eyes staring down toward the planet.
The next moment, Lex saw the golem-like figure raise one hand.
And Lex felt it.
Something was trying to erase him from existence.
There was no sensation of an attack travelling toward him. Instead, it felt as though the very fact that Lex existed had suddenly become something that was being rejected.
Of course, it didn't succeed.
Transcend Self simply refused to allow it.
But the fact that someone could casually attempt to erase another person from existence was still pretty terrifying.
“Do you know what that is and why it's trying to erase me?” Lex asked the woman in green, since she had been able to perceive him even before he had noticed anything.
“That, my dear, is Arishem. As for why he's trying to erase you, I suppose it might be because your bloodline is affecting this universe at extremely deep levels. The very fundamental concepts of it are being rewritten, and he can't stop it. Thus, stopping you from existing is probably the second-best option,” the woman in green explained.
The next moment, Arishem directly attacked.
A gigantic beam erupted from him.
It crossed the distance between space and Earth with terrifying speed, illuminating everything in its path as it descended toward the planet.
Thankfully, this time, the attack was visible to everyone.
“What's happening? An alien attack?” Gwen asked.
“Damn it, who's it this time?” Kara said as she immediately flew toward space.
The others wanted to help as well, but they didn't have an obvious way of reaching something that enormous in space.
Gwen immediately became pink.
No, she literally transformed into an energy being made entirely from pink mana.
Her Anodite form radiated brightly as she thrust both hands forward, and a powerful pink barrier began forming in front of her. The barrier expanded rapidly until it was large enough to stand against the incoming attack, and Gwen flew upward with it, attempting to intercept the beam before it could reach Earth.
Kara had already reached Arishem.
She used her brand-new ability.
Scar Dead.
For the first time, Arishem suddenly felt a threat.
Across his enormous body, injuries that should have been nothing more than distant memories slowly began to manifest. Old scars returned to his stone-like body, cracks and wounds that had long since faded becoming visible again as though the passage of time had simply been reversed for them.
Arishem's attention shifted toward Kara.
Lex, on the other hand, was already using all the cards he had decided on.
H'El.
Yuuki.
Mocking Truth.
The moment Mocking Truth was used, Lex suddenly realized that he could copy the attack being sent by Arishem.
<A new type of Energy has been added to your arsenal. I believe combining it with Nihil Light and Kryptonian Heat Vision should be able to halt that attack for a few seconds.>Raphael replied.
Of course, this was all happening incredibly fast.
Everything was.
It was just that most of the people involved had extremely high Perception, allowing them to process what was happening despite the ridiculous speed of the battle.
“No...” Lex suddenly gasped as he felt it.
Gwen and Kara, who had just gone toward Arishem, both died.
Simply died.
Lex didn't need to see what had happened.
He could feel it.
The connections between himself and his Summons made their deaths immediately obvious to him.
Suddenly, Draconic features appeared on Lex.
Scales spread across his skin, covering parts of his body as his eyes and features became more draconic. He opened his mouth and immediately felt something different, the realization that he could breathe elements coming naturally to him.
His anger was feeding the bloodline.
Lex used everything he had.
Nihil Light, Heat Vision, the new energy he had gained from Mocking Truth, every other energy he already possessed, every element he could summon.
All of it came together.
A golden ray shot from his mouth, directly clashing with the ray fired by Arishem.
The two beams collided with enough force to illuminate the surrounding area, the golden energy twisting and mixing with the other energies inside it as Lex poured more and more power into the attack.
But Lex wasn't done.
He didn't care that people were watching.
He immediately tore his only 5★ Character Card left, the Ben Tennyson Card, together with a Background Creation Card.
The card disappeared.
Someone suddenly appeared beside Lex.
“Ohh... this is certainly something. I couldn't even see how he entered into this Multiverse... such an interesting being you are...” the woman in green muttered.
Lex ignored her.
He looked toward the young teenager who had suddenly appeared before him.
“Save Earth,” Lex said.
Ben simply smiled and nodded.
He lifted his hand.
A watch appeared around his left wrist.
Ben rotated the dial, selected something, and slammed the device.
“Way Big...”
In an instant, his body began expanding.
His clothes and body transformed as he grew larger and larger, until the teenager who had stood beside Lex was replaced by a gigantic white-and-red alien standing roughly a hundred feet tall.
Way Big didn't stop there.
He immediately slammed the same symbol as the watch onto his chest.
“Ultimate Way Big.”
The transformation pushed his appearance even further, and without wasting another moment, Ben launched himself toward Arishem.
The enormous alien crossed the battlefield and moved directly toward the Celestial, preparing to attack.
Only for Arishem to look toward him.
The next moment, Ben was being erased from existence.
“Fuck, he doesn't have my blood,” Lex suddenly realized.
Without Lex's blood, Ben didn't possess the protection that came from the Essence of Transcend Self.
Lex could give that protection to his Summons through his blood, granting them immunity to things such as mind control, temporal manipulation and existence erasure.
But Ben had only just been Summoned.
Lex hadn't given him his blood yet.
Yet looking closely, Lex realized Ben hadn't actually been erased.
Something else had happened.
The enormous white body of Ultimate Way Big was gone, replaced by a dark humanoid figure with stars shining across his body as though an entire night sky had been placed beneath his skin.
He was still there.
But he wasn't moving.
At all.
It was as if someone had pressed pause on him.
Lex didn't know exactly what powers Arishem was using, but he didn't have much time to figure it out. His own beam was powerful enough to resist the Celestial's attack, but Arishem was increasing his power more and more, slowly forcing Lex's golden beam backward.
Should he use Final Resort...?
Then again, he only had around three hundred points, and getting a 6★ Card didn't seem possible with that amount. He didn't even know if a 5★ Card would be enough, since it could be anything: another Bloodline like the one he had just received, another Character Card, a Template, or something else entirely.
Lex then looked toward the calm woman.
She didn't seem to care about anything happening around her at all.
Could she?
Lex sent her a telepathic message, since his mouth was currently busy firing a ray of doom.
“Can you stop him?”
“Sure,” the woman replied. “But in return, how about we both have a good conversation afterward, where you're not allowed to lie? Of course, I'll have to trust you not to lie, since I don't think I can force it.”
Is she really his stalker?
Did she just want a date or what?
<It's highly likely she's curious about your powers and wants to know their origin.>
Raphael, on the other hand, gave a better conclusion.
“Sure, we'll have a talk. Just help me with that guy,” Lex told her.
Suddenly, the world stopped.
Then it turned back.
“There is no possibility of Lex being discovered by Arishem. Lex is immune to all detection,” the woman said.
And the world obeyed.
Lex found himself once again five minutes in the past.
The attack was gone.
The destruction was gone.
Kara and Gwen were both alive and sitting in front of him as though nothing had happened.
Yet Lex remembered everything.
So did the others who carried his blood.
The timeline itself had been turned back, but Transcend Self prevented Lex and those blessed by his blood from losing their memories.
“Who turned back time?” Gwen asked.
“The lady in green I was talking to,” Lex replied.
“Well, thank that lady for me, I suppose,” Kara replied.
Gwen suddenly looked toward the sky.
“Is that Alien X?”
Lex followed her gaze.
Ben was still floating there in his black, starry form.
“Ohh... he came back in time as well,” Lex said, more to himself than anyone else.
Then he remembered that time had no effect on him.
If that was the case, perhaps the Summoning itself had been protected in a similar way.
Or maybe this Alien had some resistance to time as well.
Considering that he had also survived Arishem's attempt to erase him, Lex wasn't going to assume anything.
“Why is he still not moving? That Arishem guy no longer holding him, right?” Lex suddenly asked.
“Oh, that's just an Alien X thing...” Gwen replied.
Lex stared at Alien X for another moment.
“You know... today has been a pretty odd day.”
Donna slowly looked around as she tried to understand what had happened. She was the only one besides Lex, Kara, Gwen, Ben and the woman in green who had possessed enough Perception to follow most of the battle, and even for her, the whole thing had happened so quickly that putting it together was difficult.
“Yeah,” Derek said. “I wanna go back to Japan.”
Nanami nodded.
“True.”