Immortal Kingdoms

"Do you plan on spending your entire cultivation experience from one coma to the next?"

Leonardo woke up with a slight headache. Who knew how many days later?

In his imperial chambers, on his bed, Aria was stretching lazily.

"What happened?" He kneaded his forehead, feeling somewhat on edge after that last attempt at provoking the mysterious black heart in his sea of consciousness.

Everything was fine, but the sealed memories and the heartbeat seemingly clashed, and the one to suffer from the backlash was apparently him, the host of those opposing powers.

"Aiya!" Aria sighed exasperatingly, "Things blew out of proportion, and even the realm king came here in person to investigate the source of this chaos."

"A realm king came in person? What did he do?" Leonardo was alarmed, a bad premonition seeping into his heart.

"He meditated on the war. Took back the people from the higher realms with him as he intended to send them away. He also requested from Eternus to leave this place together with his wife, though judging from his tone, he meant the stellar world as a whole, not simply Arcadia, let alone the middle realms."

"Apparently, everyone who shouldn't be on planet Arcadia or the middle realms at large was escorted away by him. Oh, your student also woke up from the heart trial, but her situation is quite complicated…"

According to Aria, who got her explanation from Wendy herself, there are two souls occupying her sea of consciousness at the moment.

One belongs to her, and the other belongs to the remnant will of the anti-matter star core. During the fight, the latter bluffed her way to absorb the energy from the simultaneous attacks of three incarnations to complete the transformation of Wendy's physique and propel her cultivation to the third cycle of sainthood.

The present Wendy could be said to be stronger than Leonardo in both the cultivation realm and raw physique, the only thing blocking her from becoming a high saint was the deficiency of energy, be it in quality or quantity.

She took the advice of her co-soul and gave up on taking the path of a martial cultivator and instead focused on magic spells as that would make better use of the anti-matter martial intent. Of course, she still considered herself to be Leonardo's student, and she would continue trusting and respecting him in that aspect until death.

This time around, it hadn't been too long since Leonardo fell unconscious, barely three days. During those three days, Aria passed down the cultivation technique of condensing a core to Kieran and Leona, and she even made some time to go back to the higher realms and pass the technique to Nier while emphasizing its importance.

Of course, she kept the part about Nier hidden while informing Leonardo about Eternus' last words before his departure.

"You'll naturally come to understand once you become a world king — …"

Those were his last words, which confused even Aria at the time, until he transmitted the necessary information to her.

Apparently, the realms of mortal, saint, divine, and immoral are considered the foundation cycles.

100 levels split into 10 cycles.

Typically, the general knowledge is that reaching level 91 is the first step into becoming an immortal, with most immortals in the higher realms being around the levels 95 or 97.

That could be considered both true and false, for reasons that have been made clear to everyone in the higher realms by now; the Immortal Kingdoms.

The Immortal Kingdoms within a stellar world are both an opportunity and a restriction.

Eternal life comes at the expense of their future cultivation.

No matter how many years they cultivate, their potential would be locked to level 99 at most.

Everything past that would be devoured as nourishment by the stellar world, allowing both it and the immortals within to live off one another.

Only those who condense an independent embryonic core to enter level 91 after achieving their high divinity can create a rudimentary Immortal Kingdom that relies on their essence, energy, and spirit the same way those Immortal Kingdoms in the higher realms rely on the stellar world to survive and flourish.

This kind of cultivation technique is mostly reserved for the core members of massive organizations such as the Interstellar Supreme Court, and one way to obtain them is by advancing in the ranks as a student in the Interstellar Supreme Institution.

In any case, after advancing from level 99 to the next level, they begin to estimate one's power and cultivation based on ranks.

Level 100, which equates to rank 0, which also translates to the rebirth realm.

The essence, vitality, and energy of the individual would condense and merge into the rudimentary core, undergo a process of sublimation under the tempering of the heavenly tribulation, and smoothly engrave the various martial intents as a spiritual mark in one's core.

Then, the core would rechannel the sublimated energy and construct a new body for the individual, with each fiber of their being representing their compressible laws.

"— …Only after reaching the rebirth realm would you have the qualification to ask about a world king without getting killed outright." Was the continuation of Eternus' message.

"That bastard!" Leonardo clenched his teeth in anger. If he didn't wish to say it, he didn't have to, no one even bothered asking him for answers.

However, he had to leave Leonardo hanging, which frustrated him too much.

As for Aria, she was deliberating over whether or not to simply pay for the quota to send Leonardo and Nier to the Interstellar Supreme Court, but add an extra fee to give them freedom of choice and not be mandatorily conscripted into the Court's ranks.

Knowing Leonardo, he would very much rather be a freelancer.

Knowing Nier, she would pretty much prefer the same.

After thinking about it, she decided to use the two kingdom essences that were supposed to land in Leonardo's and Nier's hands to the Interstellar Supreme Court for the two special quotas, that way she wouldn't be losing on anything.

"Was that everything that happened?" Leonardo asked after getting his thoughts on the right track again, feeling that this shouldn't be all. "What about the elven invasion?"

"Oh right, I almost forgot about that thing," Aria snorted coldly, "Richard was almost done for as the Elf Sovereign didn't wish to offend Eternus. However, after the realm king interfered, chasing that man away, the Elf Sovereign let the matter rest just like that."

"So they think I'm a toothless tiger now that my supposedly powerful support is gone? Interesting, that Richard is truly tired of living." Leonardo muttered to himself, and despite his anger, his eyes were oddly expressionless.

No— they seemed oddly desolate, dark, and lifeless.

"Well, at the very least, Arcadia's will erased some of their memories that were related to some of your core secrets, including Wendy's performance, but that's about everything for the past three days."

Oh, if they had no memories to speak of, this could explain why the Elf Sovereign would act this way. Perhaps the Sovereigns went into seclusion, leaving the people to grasp at straws for guesses as to the actual chain of events.

"Queen Adeline went back to the Sylvian Kingdom, but Valeria stayed behind, claiming that she will take your side for the upcoming war. Since she lowered her head to you once, she thought that she might as well take it all the way."

Aria's softail swayed from left to right as she spoke, even though she knew Valeria's true purpose was to have Leonardo's child after witnessing fragments of the world-shaking battle in outer space.

Well, she couldn't see anything, it was Aria who transmitted those images to the female elf, especially emphasizing how someone as powerful as Eternus was addressing Leonardo as his young master.

After two nights of contemplating, the female elf finally made her resolve.

Leonardo and Juvia weren't a married couple anyway, they were just a man and his servant, she told herself.

Thus, before Leonardo leaves for another one of his incomprehensible war campaigns, his next order of business is to divide and conquer the mother-and-daughter pair.

"Master!"

Speaking of the devil, Juvia who received a secret transmission from Aria was already pushing the door open, her elegant wear of white clothes as remarkable as ever.

Following on her heels was Valeria who was apparently stiff, anxious, and conflicted with her hands clasped on her flat abdomen.

Leonardo eyed the two women in confusion before giving Aria a look that demanded an explanation.

Aria gave him the side eye, commenting lightly, "You're about to go slaughter the current High Elf Lord, the least you could do is put the next one on queue while you still have the time."

Then, she hopped off the bed and disappeared silently from the room, her charming yet chiding voice lingering.

"Who knows when will be the next time you simply drop unconscious."