The Astral soul system-Chapter 130: A grand entrance

Diane was St climbing up, using her wings to cover a few more feet when she suddenly heard a loud boom.

She suddenly looked up and her face paled at the sight of an enormous tornado that had appeared out of nowhere.

She quickly tried turning back but was too late. Debris of the building and gusts of wind crashed down towards her, forcing her to retreat.

She twisted and turned as fast as she could but a few bits of debree still managed to get through her defenses and knock her down.

On the ground, the others were reasonably panicking as they saw her crash to the ground.

Neo quickly pointed his finger at the building, specifically the pieces of debree falling and uttered a small prayer to no one in particular and activated his ability.

A stray stone that was heading for Diane suddenly disappeared, leaving only a few harmless pebbles.

Neo sighed deeply, both relieved and tired,it seemed the farther the distance of what he wanted to destroy, the more energy it used.

Not taking any breaks,he kept firing, getting rid of the debree surrounding her until he was so drained he nearly collapsed.

Maximilian quickly hurried to help him stand

"Good job"

Gritting his teeth, Xavier suddenly went to Zaria who was still a bit frozen.

"Zaria"

"Y-yes?"

"I need you to throw me"

"What?!"

Xavier sighed, looking at Diane who was still falling.

"My ability will negate most of the damage you would do. If you can do it to Zen you can do it to me, now hurry!"

Zaria felt herself gain a bit more confidence Xavier’s words despite the yelling and she grabbed his shoulder, taking a deep breath as she closed her silver eyes. When she opened them again they were glowing golden just like the rest of her body at this point, blinding anyone who looked at her.

Xavier went flying as she swung her arm, using considerably less force than with Zen but still enough.

Xavier left the ground, moving through the air. Opening his palm, he retracted the claws on one of his gauntlets while extending the other, catching the disoriented shape shifter in his arm and with the rest of the inertia, stabbing the claws of the gauntlets into the side of the building and although their descent didn’t halt,it slowed as the blades scraped up the wall, the friction slowing them down. After a few seconds of delayed falling Xavier released the claws, jumping down and crashing into the ground.

Somehow landing on his feet, Xavier let out a few labored breaths, Xavier straightened his knees, immediately checking on Diane first, being greeted with a teasing smile.

"My hero"

Xavier sighed in relief, putting her down and although she was disoriented, she could walk well enough.

He touched the shoulder where Zaria had thrown him and sighed. Although he was completely fine,he could feel it, his bones were under a lot of pressure.

"Where’s Zen? Did you see him?"

Diane shook her head.

"Negative"

"I do, but you’re not gonna be happy "

Maximilian said as he noticed a familiar body dropping out of the sky.

Xavier grit his teeth and was about to meet Zaria to try the same thing again when they suddenly heard a loud roar behind them.

They all turned around and were suprised to notice beasts coming this way.

"The incursion?Wasn’t the academy supposed to deal with that?"

"Tsk. This is really shitty timing. Crazy boy is going to be a pancake in a few seconds,if the debris doesn’t kill him first"

They were all confused. The alert had clearly said it was a class two yellow grade incursion, which was really low since the limit was ten. How did beasts from a class two incursion evade the city’s defenses and get into its heart.

Just when they didn’t know what to do, the box in Jade’s hand suddenly started shaking and trembling.

"Huh?"

She held it down trying to get it to stop but it wouldn’t, like whatever was inside was struggling to get out.

"What’s... happening?"

Jade tried to hold it in place but when that didn’t work she decided to open it and see what would happen. The moment it opened, she layed her eyes on something with a bright golden sheen, but before she could tell what it was,it burst out of the box, flying into the sky.

*************

A few seconds earlier

Sylphie looked at the black hole forming next to her,her carefree expression faltering as Zen urged her to leave.

Zaine groaned as he watched this, immensely annoyed before suddenly yelling.

"Just go! You’ll know it when you see it. Either do that or we all eventually die"

Sylphie looked back at Zen, staring into his eyes for confirmation and he nodded.

With a look of resignation Sylphie turned her back to them, the wind around her starting to swirl and turn for a few seconds before all gathering around her like a protective layer and with a loud boom, she flew off, leaving afterimages behind her as she raced out of the castle, the black hole chasing after her voraciously.

Zen watched her go and sighed.

"If she doesn’t get to him in time it’s over"

Zaine didn’t antagonize Zen at this stage, understanding what he meant. He looked outside the bars at the rest of the castle and saw that the castle was trembling and shaking like it was about to fall. That’s because they were both stuck in here,at least one of them had to be able to take control for the soul realm to stay stable, but now they were both stuck. The soul realm was falling.

Sylphie looked back, glancing at the approaching black hole in terror before increasing her speed even more, leaving the castle in a matter of seconds.

She felt her essence weaken as light particles left her body, getting absorbed by it.

She internally lamented knowing that even if she survived, this thing had taken enough of her essence that she wouldn’t be able to easily reform her physical body again for a while, unless she had help.

Feeling like she’d reached deep enough, she dived into the ocean, descending like a torpedo as she located what she was looking for at the bottom of the ocean.

A bright golden coffin. The same Zen had used to completely destroy Lilith in a fight before, and had allegedly placed here himself.

Realizing she’d have trouble opening it, she decided to improvise and suddenly started spinning, air surrounding her and pushing away the water as she approached the coffin, slamming into it.

A bright blast of light suddenly flew out from the coffin as it exploded, sending it’s fragments everywhere. Destabilized by the explosion, Sylphie was knocked back to the bottom. She glanced up and was about to give up when the dust in front of her cleared and she noticed someone standing in front of her.

The figure turned around, locking eyes with Sylphie who gasped, suprised as she looked at the figure in front of her. He looked almost exactly like Zen and Zaine except for two key details: he was younger, much, much younger, and his eye was-

Before she could finish her thought, the boy suddenly stretched his palm towards the black hole and similar to what happened with Zen,it was destroyed.

"What’s happening?" He asked, his voice also being childish despite the aura coming off of him.

"The castle is falling, the other two are in the dungeon and the body’s about to die"

Hearing that, the boy suddenly seemed to remember something

"Zen..." He muttered with an air of nostalgia.

"We need to go"

The boy suddenly lifted her up into his arms the same way Zen did and the two suddenly started getting propelled towards the surface, and once they were there, the boy started flying towards the castle, passing by the throne room and all the chaos: falling sky, flying walls , exploding glass and so on, going for the dungeon instead.

He touched down in front of the bars immediately speaking to Zen.

"I don’t know who this is but -"

"She’s mine. The mutation is hunting her, give her to me I’ll protect her"

The boy didn’t seem suprised that Zen already knew what was going on and handed Sylphie to him through the bars since they only affected the three of them.

He suddenly looked at Zaine who was in the corner, sitting.

"Zaine....you two... you’ve grown. I’ve been gone for a long time" 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Zen nodded.

"Get to the throne and you’ll understand, but hurry.

The boy turned around immediately, giving one last glance at Zaine before dashing towards the throne room and although he had to continuously dodge debris heading for him and trying to slow him down, he only got faster over time, proving his athletics were just as impressive as those of his counterparts despite his young age.

A few seconds was all it took before he arrived in front of the throne, about to take his seat.

"Zyro?"

He suddenly stopped, recognizing his name and the voice that called it. He turned around, his eyes widening at the sight of Freya.

"Fr-"

The soul realm suddenly trembled once more, the castle falling apart even quicker.

"Don’t mind me. Hurry, save your friends. We’ll have lots of time to talk later"

Freya said, pointing at the window to the outside world and showing Zen’s...his classmates.

"We have... friends?"

Freya smiled nodding,tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.

Zyro nodded and took his seat closing his eyes. The moment he opened them again he felt wind slapping against his face rapidly. He looked down and realized he’d just fell off a huge building and was still dropping.

His eyes glowed, information rapidly being forced into his mind as he quickly realized what was going on.

[Quest completed (sort of)]

[Reward: Full reset: All cooldowns,health and energy will be reset]

"Well this is an interesting thing to wake up to"

He looked down, not panicking about the fall as he noticed his... friends getting surrounded by beasts. He still had trouble saying the word.

"Let’s hope i can still do this now"

The mark on his hand suddenly started glowing and he held out his hand like he was expecting something. A few seconds passed and he was about to try something else , he suddenly noticed something flying towards his open hand, it’s golden body reflecting the rays of the sun.

He quickly grabbed it’s grip, placing it under his feet and steadying it. The item blocked all the debree behind him and when he saw that he was getting closer to the ground he put more weight on it, sliding it onto the side of the building while he used the grip to keep himself anchored while he literally surfed on falling building, sliding and swerving to slow his speed as he approached the ground before he suddenly stomped on the edge, tipping it with him on it as he jumped to the ground, landing perfectly on his feet and stomping on the edge of the shield, causing it to flip up into his hands.

The others looked at him, shocked. Did he really just surf on a collapsing building with a shield?

"Z...Zen? You’re okay! Wait, are you Zen?"

Zyro chuckled and adjusted his hair, tucking the side that covered his eye behind his ears. He never liked it that way and although he knew why Zen kept it like that, he just didn’t like it.

Now that his hair was out of the way, they could all see his eye and instead of Zen’s signature black or Zaine’s red,what they saw was a piercing bright gold.

"That’s not Zen?"

Zyro was about to introduce himself when his eyes suddenly focused completely and he suddenly dashed towards Jade.

"Jade, look out!"

They tried to stop him but they were too slow. Jade herself was too slow to dodge and brought up her arms to block but was surprised to feel a gust of wind pass directly beside her as Zyro swerved, completely dodging her and raising his shield,a loud metallic clank reverberating as he stopped the claw of one of the beasts before quickly manouvering to it’s side and using the triangular edge of the shield to slam into the beasts head, knocking it back.

He quickly retreated, returning to his previous position.

"Are you okay?" He asked a bit too tenderly for them to think it was either of the two they saw before.

"Who are you?!"

Diane asked,her skin already transforming.

’Hmm? Why are they so tense with me? Oh, right Zaine was here first "

He chuckled, thinking of the trouble he must have put them through and tried explaining.

"It’s okay, really,i don’t bi-"

The moment he took a step his legs suddenly seemed to fail,then his entire body as Zyro fell face forward onto the ground to the confusion of the others.

’Wait! What’s going o...oh!"

"Hehe, don’t worry about this, I’ve just been asleep for so long and the body’s grown and changed so much that I’m going to need a minute to get in control " Similar to Zaine’s uncontrollable spasms the first time he took over the body, his consciousness couldn’t just take over immediately.

"Can you guys...buy me a few minutes?" Zyro asked with a nervous chuckle, his body unable to move at all except his mouth and eyes"