When I opened my eyes, Yasaka was already gone from our bedroom. I release a sigh and sit on the bed. However, before I can stand up, a familiar blue screen appears in front of me.
It is already time, huh? I hope to get something useful. The last few rolls are nothing but useless things—a car, a home, bitcoin, and money. Don't get me wrong, all of them are fantastic for a mundane person, but I am no longer a mundane person. Those kinds of things are not useful to me.
I need something that can help me in a fight.
|It has been a week! Your gift is ready! Do you want to take it?|
|Accept?| |Y/N|
Without thinking twice, I press the Y button. I immediately grit my teeth as I feel an immense pain coursing through my body. I can feel my body get hot, so hot that I can see steam coming out of my body.
However, the pain is not only coming from my body. It is also coming from my soul. I can hear the surprise roar from Akatosh and Grandeeney inside my soul. However, I cannot answer them as I am writhing in pain.
The pain lasted for a few minutes. However, it is not done. A second after the pain is gone, the planet creates a connection with me because of my new power. I can feel a massive rush of natural energy and something stronger from the planet, and if not for my new power, I would be dead by now.
What is my new power? Well…
|Congratulations! You become an Ether Liner!|
That. I am now the next step of humanity. Liner is created in a world long dead, but humanity refuses to die with it. It is a version of human that can take Grain or Space Dust, or Ether.
What is Grain? It is the base component of all Heavenly Bodies from the Type Moon universe.
Because of this power, my body is now extremely robust, allowing me to live in both incredibly toxic and radioactive environments and even places humans should not be able to survive in, like the vacuum of space, without any risk of sickness or death.
Not only that, because of the grain, I no longer need to eat or breathe, and I can regenerate by absorbing the grain from the planet itself or from space.
That is the basic ability of the Liner race. Me? I am Ether Liner, a subspecies of Liner. I can contain a massive amount of Grain inside of me, and the ability that lets me manipulate the Grain without any fear of damaging my body.
With enough training and time, I will have enough ability to match Grand Servant in pure power.
However, what makes me different from a regular Liner is that I can create something called Knight Arm: Demonic Sword. Unlike what the name suggests, it is not demonic in nature because it is made of Pure Grain.
The name comes from the fact that with enough Grain being fed to this thing, it can kill a celestial body. Even the Ultimate One from the Type-Moon universe owns a Knight Arm called Real of the World.
Each Knight Arm is unique, and mine takes the form of a tattoo. It takes the shape of a massive tree on my back. It is because of my connection to Earth that it takes the form of a tattoo. When I activate it, it can take two forms. The first one is a massive katana made of Grain, and the second one is a massive cannon.
Two of them have the potential to kill a planet. Potentially. I am not yet reaching that stage. It will take a long time and effort to reach that stage, but I have the potential to do it.
Speaking of my connection to the Planet, it grants me a few things. The first one is that it grants me a massive boost to my reverse of Grain and any other energy. Not only that, I can now contain all the energy that was born on this planet. Ki? Not a problem. Demonic Energy? Sure. They might be in a pocket dimension called the underworld, but it is still tied to the planet. Divine Energy? Of course. As long as it is born from this planet, I can have it.
Taking them is the problem. I need to kill the beings who contain the energy I want to take and condense their souls into a seed for me to grow the energy. There is also a problem of capturing a soul. I don't know any spells that let me do it.
Also, how long until the planet needs me? I know that I essentially become Archetype: Earth, of this earth. Unlike the one from Type-Moon, I do not have any memories of the ancient past of the planet itself. However, I have access to it. I can peer into the past if I want to, but I decided not to do it because I don't know what it will do to my brain when I peer into the memory of the planet.
As an Archetype, I will be granted the ultimate access to any part of the planet itself. Nothing can stop me from visiting. Heaven? I can directly teleport there without any problem. Asgard? Sure. Underworld? It is not a problem.
Only a few things that can stop this authority.
Lastly, it also grants me the ability to create a pocket dimension like what the Primordial Gods do for their pantheon. While I cannot steal the souls that believe in other Gods, I can take all Atheist Souls and place them in this pocket dimension.
I can do what Hades does to stay as one of the Top 10 Beings in the world: use the souls to empower myself instead through faith. That doesn't mean I consume them or anything, but rather all the souls that stay in my pocket dimension will be considered worshippers and give power to me like any other god gets power from faith.
However, this position comes with a responsibility. When there is a threat from outside the Solar System, I need to act on behalf of the planet to defend it. That means, if the planet dies, I will also die alongside it.
So, I'd better defend it with all the power I have.
I blink for a second when something just clicks inside my brain. It is like my power to prepare for a fight with Alien Gods. I know Issei is already dead because of the assassin squad Yasaka. Does that mean there is something that lets those Gods enter this world?
Is it Rizevim? It must be that Chaotic Lucifer.
I really need to kill him. However, I need to talk to Zelretch first. He must know how to help me control my new power. It is coming from his universe, after all.
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Here is the description of the power directly from the CYOA I take it from:
You're a Liner: Human Species, the next step in humanity, created in a world long dead but with humanity refusing to die with it. Different from normal humans, you have both an extremely robust body allowing you to live in both incredibly toxic or radioactive environments and even places humans should not be able to survive in, like the vacuum of space, without any risk of sickness or death. This is because your body is adapted to take in Grain, also known as space dust or Ether, to survive and empower yourself. Because of this, you do not need to eat, breathe, you do not age, and you can heal yourself simply from subsisting off of the (to others) toxic particles that exist both in space and are generated naturally by planets.
But you're no simple Liner. You're an Ether Liner, a subset of the species born with a massive amount of Grain already and able to better manipulate it. This gives you impressive levels of physical capability, enough to match and beat a Grand Servant in pure power. To further show your overall status as the next step of humanity, you have the ability to form the Grain you have in your body into a special weapon called a Knight Arm: Demonic Swords. This allows you to create a powerful weapon that can have various effects unique to you.
The most well-known Ether Liner, Ado Edem, has a Knight Arm that is a seed-like object growing out of his arm that rapidly grows and changes into a double-bladed weapon by consuming massive amounts of Grain. This weapon is capable of killing an Ultimate One if given enough Grain. You can choose to have a Knight Arm similar to this or create one of your own design. The Grain you produce, absorb, and utilize is harmless to the environment or anyone unless you specifically allow it.