Chapter 178 - XV Arcadia Station

After helping her brother escape, Claire walked out of the room while a dozen elders in white robes appeared by her side with smiles on their faces.

"Milady, we've orders to escort you to the ceremony grounds."Said one of the men. From the pressure and density of the aura surrounding each of them, Claire deduced that there were two on the verge of advancing to the ninth spiritual realm while the rest were about seventh realm of different paths. 

The only strange thing was one of the men who stood there while no one seem to notice his presence. Even his aura was missing which was something impossible because every living creature would always radiate with his aura from their soul. Sometimes it could be suppressed by special secret techniques or slowly changing as the person grows but not feeling any aura?

'Could it be?!' As scary thoughts clouded her head, Claire struggled to stay calm and followed the group of elders. Walking by several passages, they arrived at a secret garden Claire has never seen before. Countless rare herbs decorated the garden while the huge sunlit altar could be seen in the distance.

Her grandfather was standing next to the altar. It was impossible to know what was on his mind, but with her powerful spiritual force, Claire could sense some of his feeling as a deep melancholy from the old figure of her grandfather like he was about to lose something.

Entering deep thought, Claire thought of her innate abilities. Given the rarity of her spirit body, it was clear that it should have at least one or two powerful innate abilities.

It was a case, it was three. One to see past and present and two others she could not use it requires too much spiritual force. Because of what they could do, she kept in secret. Spatial Leap (random), the ability to move through the higher dimension of speed. It was countless times better than the crystal she gave her brother but the problem is because it's a random teleport. 

The other was  Spiritual-Time Leap (random). The same as the previous one but to travel in time. Like the spatial leap, I would randomly teleport a person's soul through time, but the spiritual force required is absurd. Who would want to travel in time if the destination would be random?

Stepping into the altar, Claire prepared herself to what would happen when the sunlight faded and a huge black sun stood in the sky. The runes spread across the altar lit up with a brilliant dark light. A huge pillar of black light fell over Claire like sledgehammer hitting her soul several times while a dark energy invaded her, trying to plant a seal in her soul.

Feeling the urgency of the situation, Claire's Space-Time Spirit Body was activated by itself as it converts some of the dark light into spiritual force, activating Spatial Leap to escape this place. As the dark light vanished, Claire's figure was nowhere to be seen. Everyone panicked as they searched for Claire and was when they realized that her brother also vanished while leaving the palace treasure vault empty without any traces.

.....

After what seemed centuries, Elijah removed his hand from Claire's forehead with tears in the eyes.

"I see... You must have suffered a lot my child." Elijah stroked his daughter's face as he spoke with a deep voice. From what he saw, Claire went through a lot. He also understood why she looked at Edward with disgust, mainly because of refining Lucifer's Celestial Core. Lucifer who was also a founder member of Cosmos and the great-grandfather of her mother. A being that Claire being a saint must find really disgusting.

"Your ability won't last much. Take this with you." Elijah took out a ring from his finger and handed it to his daughter while adding a lot of new inscriptions on its surface.

"This is an artifact your father made himself. I upgraded governor to match your current power and gave it new functions. It will manage your use of spiritual force to prevent you from wasting your spirit while it records all your battles to form a folder with all your data. The new function I added is to Formulate and Cast spells in exchange for spiritual force and magical crystals but you must feed it with spell books if you want to cast greater spells."

"Thank you dad. It was good to see you one last time." Claire spoke softly as her body and the chariot vanished into nothing. While gazing at the void, Elijah swore to himself this will certainly not be the last time before returning to Biman's spaceship.

When Elijah returned, everything returned to normal. Biman and Edward continued the journey without even remembering have met Claire on the way. Arriving at Arcadia Station, the biggest space station in the galaxy and the headquarters of the Mortal Alliance. Edward and Biman headed to their personal rooms they reserved in the center of the station, close to the arcadia auction house. Edward cried as he handed countless magical stone at the reception before walking in the teleportation platform.

Because of the amount of people who arrived, the size of each room in the alternate dimension had to be reduced to save space and fit more rooms for other to use. For several days, Edward stayed in his room trying to suppress the evil energy in its attempt to escape. His dark-feathered wings  covered by ink-black flames spread over the entire room as Edward closed his eyes and summoned the silver gate and his Supreme Origin of Frost, a thin icy-blue star hovering above his head. 

With the summoning of the Supreme Origin of Frost, the ink-black flames vanished like a rabbit running away from a fierce tiger. When the wings retracted, a burst of energy clashed with the limits of the spatial pocket containing his room, nearly breaking it which would mean his death. 

On the day of the auction, Edward gathered all the wealth he could. Hours later, he headed to the auction house with 2020 Prime Crystals of Orange-grade, most of which was borrowed from a manager of the Endless Fortune Bank that owed him money because of a deal in the past and a secret that could destroy his life.