Hi3rd: Achievement Hunter

The two fell silent. It wasn't until Aleph spoke was it broken.

"The crepe is getting colder. Not that it matters, does it?"

"...Um."

Mei could not understand… nor appreciate the deeper meaning behind his words. She wanted to ask something further to him—to ask about their future—but chose to refrain.

'He would have told me if he wanted to.'

The sense of confusion and bewilderment was enough for her to keep those words to her heart.

This was Aleph's intention from the beginning.

"About my departure… I might leave tomorrow."

"So early..?"

For the third time, Mei was surprised. It was a rare occasion for someone like her who became stoic after her father's death.

"I don't belong to this world."

His simple words explained everything. Still, it wasn't enough to calm her down, unlike before. 

"I am pretty sure we will meet again."

She did not respond to these "consoling" words.

"...Thank you for everything, Aleph."

Hearing this, Aleph let out a smile.

"You finally dropped the formalities. Then…" He paused for a moment before continuing, "It's no problem, Mei."

*****

The next day, Aleph silently left the villa he stayed in for an entire month.

Of course, he did not leave directly. He had two options for leaving: either he leaves on his own initiative, as what he did in Shibuya, or he gets kicked out via technicalities.

"I want to see them." He muttered. "It's surprising enough to know that the Raiden Ryoma of this world fought against IX's influence this early on."

The minimum estimation of Izumo's destruction was seven hundred years later. Only five hundred years had passed. The sky was normal. It did not show any abnormalities such as the "Black Sun" that he saw. They remained kept in a veil of normalcy.

It was precisely due to these reasons did Aleph leave behind some things that could offer help at crucial times.

"It's not my style leaving letters and the likes… but I don't know a better way."

He had long accepted that he could only be a passerby to the Raiden Bosenmori Mei of this world. 

Not to mention his world, the rules of this instance stated a limit of "one year" at best amongst a dozen other rules.

Perhaps, their next meeting would be on the Milky Way where Aeons' tangible influence existed.

Zoom-!

Momentarily, an extremely loud sonic boom followed far behind Aleph. In three or so minutes, he had traversed half of this world's circumference, which amounted to 40,000 kilometers.

What greeted his sight was the endless sea. Several islands could be seen now and then. All of them were uninhabited except for a few. Unsurprisingly, the ones 'living' on them were the kamis.

Izumo was larger than Earth, and as such, it made it difficult for the humanity of this world to thoroughly control every corner of the world. Even Earth had this trouble, much less the larger Izumo.

"Ryoma went here…"

His elemental sight unscrupulous scanned his surroundings. Upon seeing something, Aleph paused.

"I see."

The extremely noticeable patch of black amidst the dark blue backdrop caught his eye. It was reminiscent of the background he saw inside the Horizon of Existence.

Simply put, it was a 'plane' existing in a separate dimension. It did not have a fixed location. It was appropriate to say that it was there for the sake of being there.

'Will the colorful lights in my body work? But… I don't have the slightest clue on how to use it.'

Supposedly, the entire Horizon of Existence was something only beings tainted with Nihility could visit. IX's Emanators could use it to pull someone to the said space, resulting in the disabling of their abilities. Their concept itself was related to meaninglessness.

If a thing loses its meaning, disappearance follows.

It was similar to Aleph's Nullification Field, but on a grander scale.

'Concepts and flashy visuals… I may have expectations for complex information battles.'

He recalled his previous fights. From his physical struggles, down to the impact of deforming a city, they were purely physical. With the existence of complex information (i.e., Aeon-level power), it wasn't hard to envision a fight that has extremely drastic and tangible effects.

Just then, he saw a movement on the black patch.

Surprisingly…

"Huh."

…a black shadow with a similar silhouette to Aleph descended.

'A copy? A clone? What will it do next, copy my moves?'

Numerous thoughts ran inside his mind.

In the next moment, Aleph watched as the black figure trembled before reverting to its liquid form. It was akin to a hastily-built sandcastle.

'...There it goes.'

The black patch was seemingly left with no choice. A silhouette of a girl came out of it. Despite having no features, he easily recognized her.

'This odachi style and red blade… Never did I expect I'd see it now.'

The blade on the black figure's grasp was familiar to Aleph. He had seen it on a screen countless times. Its original form was that of a black blade. Only in certain circumstances would it become like that.

'Naught. The blade born from Origin and End.' He mentally added, '...and the answer she arrived at the end.'

Izumo was doomed from the beginning. IX's shadow—the Black Sun—began to influence Izumo hundreds of years ago. If it weren't for Takamagahara that took the brunt of the Black Sun's power, Izumo would have been destroyed a long time ago.

Nevertheless, Izumo was destroyed in the end. 

Acheron, who found the meaning of her struggles meaningless, succumbed to the path of Nihility, ultimately becoming IX's Emanator—the entity known as a Self-Annihilator.

Hum.

Naught produced a unique sound as it cut through air. Consequently, white light emerged from Aleph's radius.

Crack-!

BAM-!

The islands beneath them exploded under impact.

That's right, they exploded. A huge open area was created amidst the blue ocean. Its deepest part was revealed—seabed, corals, and dead marine lives.

The open-area akin to the sea splitting extended until the coastline. Even then, it produced aftershocks comparable to strong earthquakes.

"Nihility. It's not the same as Destruction… at all."

Aleph squinted his eyes before completing his analysis. It was done swiftly this time due to his prior database during the three weeks he observed the Black Sun—that, and his adaptation to complex information.

With these things…

'Aeons.'

…he gained the capacity to face God.

*****

A/N: A quick trivia. HSR global used the term "Milky Way" to denote their setting. It should not be confused with the Milky Way Galaxy. In Chinese, the term "universe" was directly translated to "Milky Way". Some of you might see this case in machine translated novels. If you are curious, they were "Xinhe" (Milky Way, meaning Universe) and "Yinhe" (Milky Way, meaning 'Milky Way Galaxy'). This was confirmed by others when they used xinhe in the chinese version of HSR.