Chương 89: Everlasting Cycle of Growth

The rate of usage of Gate Overflow depended on what he was doing with it. In total, he had roughly 4 days of time to play with during one use. He could condense these 4 days however he liked. For exemple, he could choose to use it all in one second to speed himself up to around half light speed for this second. If he condensed it further, he could go faster. He could also extend it to slow down his surrounding, like he did for Barralia empire, which gave an exponential dynamic between slowing down the world and speeding himself up.

Overall, it was not only a trump card, but also a game changer of an ability for him.

Time was malleable, and for him, it only depended on how much EC he had access to to determine it.

Basically, what Gate Overflow did was breaking the limit of transfer if his main and second gate to transform the ocean of mana he inherently had in re-zero into EC. Which wasn't by any mean a 1:1 ratio if an amount of mana could be standardized, but it was a whole lot more than Julian ever had.

While using it, he could not use the magic system from re-zero, because his gate were broken, and using EC for him was skipping the whole process of creating a spell, since the magic in was itself was like a spell. Similar to how PoD as a form of energy destroyed.

All of that to say that Gate Overflow was unique to his self from re-zero since with the help of Kass, he had been remade entirely to fit in in with the rules of this world, as a Nephalem.

As such, his mana reserve was comparable to a greater spirit right from the start.

But this wasn't enough. He was growing stronger day by day very fast, but admitedly, he was far from the top tier of players in re-zero as of now. For his defense, the world was cheating. It granted unlimited power to an individual for the heck of it.

So, since this was the case. Of course he would cheat back. After this, there was not going back. But he didn't care.

This world was rotten to the core.

He would get what he came here for, take the good things and the good knowledge. And fucking throw it on its head.

But for that, he needed time.

—————

Sitting crosslegged in the middle of the manor's garden. Julian heart beat sped up incredibly, yet the world around him slowed to a crawl.

Division of mind and body, while the world was appeared frozen to his eyes, his body seemed to vibrate to his mind.

His perception of time followed the rest of the world, yet in one second, he had effectively aged an entire 4 days.

It was a costly endeavor. But it worked well. After a hundred and two cycle of artificial aging, the day was coming to an end. The more he did it, the more he grew, and the more he grew, the longer and more often his session went. Yet they always last one second.

Like a dragon, the older he was the more powerful he got.

The same principle applied here. To all his direct attribute, meaning his body, mind and mana reserve.

His cheating training regiment went so well that at the end of the day, Gate Overflow didn't give him the equivalent of 4 days of time, but 20.

But it wasn't quite enough, was it? The day was ending, and he hadn't fulfilled Pricsilla's request yet.

That wouldn't do.

So what did he do?

He went back in time a couple hours, to the start of his training.

Rewinding an entire timeline back in time certainly wasn't easy, whatnot with the sheer scale involved and some forces trying to stop him with their own sovereignty over time. But in the end, it was only a couple hours, so he prevailled easily.

—————

He was stuck in an endless cycle of growth, one that he was now putting to an end.

Opening his eyes, his mind and body came back in sync as golden mists flew out from his mouth.

He took a careful, shuddering breath. He felt goddamn feverish. His body, his magical reserve, they felt heavy, mighty beyond measure.

He had taken count, a thousand years of physical growth he had subjected himselt to. His body felt foreign, yet so right at the same time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Essence of: Julian Håberjorgen-Marquis.

Race: Artificial teenager (1 pair of wings) Second-Order Nephalem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His eyebrows shot up as he saw this.

"A thousand years forward in time and I'm considered a teenager? Guess I should've expect it."

Still, he wasn't considered premature anymore but artificial? Interesting, maybe it could be because he used magic to make himself older, something of the sort of an essential missing to make him grow more pairs of wings like he would do if he aged up naturally. It could be pretty much anything, from his mind not having followed the same growth as his body or his soul not being old enough. Maybe even all of the above, which was pretty much a hard cap. Since he wouldn't put himself through a thousand years of speed up time with nothing but his own mind to keep him company. He'd probably crack if he did that.

Having considered all the implications of his change. He gingerly tried standing up. Which proved itself difficult as his hands would just sink into the dirt like it wasn't even there with only the smallest modicum of force applied from him.

After multiple tries, each time applicating himself to restrain his strength. He succeed.

Yet, as he prepared himself to fo and familiarise himself with his changes. His perception that was now quite literally ludicrous as he could sense anything within a hundred miles of himself caught an anomaly in the fabric of space above him.

Lifting his head, thinking that it was perhaps the Holy Empire again. He was proven wrong as he saw an elegant gentleman with blond hair and red eyes step out of a red portal.

The new arrival threw a brief look around him and grimaced before his eyes locked into him and his lips tugged themselves into a self-satisfied smile.

"Ah, what a dazzling smell indeed. Mistress will no doubt be over the moon with such an exotic and exquisite catch."

"Alright, listen. You have two seconds to try to convince me I shouldn't use you as a training dummy after what you just said." Julian smiled slightly at the floating figure.

"Come with me whitout a fuss, and you will experience heaven on earth at the hand of a true goddess as your blood is sucked dry again and again. Force my hand, and this will be less than pleasant." The man sneered, two prominent canines showing themselves.

"Yeah, I'm not convinced."

"You foo-" The vampire' speech was cut short as he suddenly found himself in the high up in the sky along with Julian who was now before him, wings spread behind his back.

Grimacing, Julian said. "More complicated than I thought to move without wrecking everything with this much change to my strength."

"I don't know what trick you used just now, however. They will not work twice." The man unsheat the sword at his waist, revealing a magnificient and sleek blade of black material.

His being beggining to shine with the yellow of yang magic, Julian rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say, dead guy." He sped up his body with his now seemingly boundless magic and swung his fist.

The sky seem to break as a concentric ring of fire and then void like blackness spread outward the impact, seemingly wanting to consume the world. Only to be stopped and reverted by a wave of orange magic.

Julian stood, working his jaw as not even mist remained of the guy. His fist had been faster than the speed of light, and as such, atoms had ignited from the friction his fist produced. If he didn't stop it, the world would have probably went off in flame, magical intervention not included.

That was kinda cool. But overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. Overwhelming for an obvious reason, and underwhelming because he thought the world hopper vampire would offer more of a fight.

Whatever, this meant he was probably ready to face the monsters of this world and swiftly accomplish his goals here.

But before that, he was curious about the goddess and mistress the guy was talking about.

She sounded kinky.

With an unneeded wave of his hand, the atomic dust the vampire was composed of was rewinded and reformed to its alive form.

"You're not a very good training dummy, but you still have some uses. Have you ever been mind searched thoroughly before?.."

—————

It seems troublesome entity started noticing him, first was the holy empire and now this 'Bloody realm', which was a universe dominated by a Primordial Vampire and her kingdom of decadence.

This new faction were nowhere near as powerful as the Holy Empire, but it still could crush the DxD verse, at least the canon one. His own though... That was another story.

Anyway, while he was in Re-Zero, he had no reason to be anxious from this new player. Re-zero did not need his protection at all, as it had the antivirus known as Reinhardt to protect it.

After extracting all the useful information from the Vampire's mind. He killed him again and diriged himself toward the only challenging place he had to go to fulfill the bet.

The pleiades tower.

The place where the true seal of Satella the witch of Envy rested, guarded by three trials, and residence to three of the strongest beings of this world.

—————

Stepping foot into a desert, Julian smiled.

To be frank, he was kinda excited to meet Reid and battle Volcanica, even if the old dragon wasn't exactly all there anymore. All the things he could learn from them...

This wasn't exactly the path he had in mind when coming to this world, but whatever, one had to know to improvise.

"Now, where's the-" Time slowed to a crawl as a needle of light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes. Tilting his head, he let it flew past him and melt a hole through the sand behind him.

"Oh, I guess I'll just follow the direction of the sniper's shot." Grinning, Julian crouched before leaping in the direction he had registered the needle to come from. A veritable tsunami of sand was left in his wake as he chanted a wind spell.

"Ul Fura." Pouring an excessive amount of mana through his gate, the wind surged up into a roar as a maelstrom of sand rose around him as the epicenter and grew seemingly without limits.

His current bet with Priscilla didn't allow him for a sandstorm to occur naturally.

So he just made one himself.

Right now, he was quite literally the sandstorm that was approaching.

He was lucky he had PoD and didn't actually need to see with his eyes to perceive things, because he hadn't brought goggle and sand do get everywhere.

On the way to the quickly approaching and very obvious spatial anomaly in his sense, he was sent a few more needles of light. But he evaded them all the same.

He continued like that until he stepped through something, which left him very suddenly alone under the harsh light of the sun, his artificial sandstorm gone. And in the distance, he could finally see it with his own two eyes.

The pleiades tower.

Oh, and also a whole lot of white magical circles glittering like stars in the distance, thousands of them, to be exact.

(A/N: I did not read the manga or light novel to Arc 6, I'm an anime man. But I DO my research still. However, if there's something incorect or something you'd want Julian to get done, or anything really, say it in the comment.)