Lightning Is the Only Way

"Can you see it?" Arc asked.

Gravis only looked transfixed at something in the middle of the cave. It was like this thing was calling to him. 

He felt the urge to enter. 

He felt like he would receive immeasurable power by entering it.

"Gravis!" Arc shouted.

Gravis shook his head for a second. "Yes?"

"Can you see it?" Arc asked again. His usual joking tone had completely vanished.

Gravis looked back at the middle of the cave. "Yes, I can see it," Gravis said.

"Is it a gate?" Arc asked.

"Yes, it is," Gravis said.

Right now, in the middle of the cave, was a three-meter-high, circular gate. It was made of golden and black materials, but Gravis had no idea what kind of materials they were. He had never seen anything quite like it.

"What color is it?" Arc asked.

"The gate itself is golden-black, and its center is pure black," Gravis said.

In the middle of the gate was… nothing.

It was just like a black screen. 

Arc furrowed his brows. "What's the feeling that you get from looking into the gate?" Arc asked.

Gravis focused on the gate again, and his mind wandered. 

"Gravis!"

Gravis shook his head again. This gate had bewitched him again!

"When I look into the gate, I feel like there's just nothing. It's like the world simply ends. It's like the middle of the gate doesn't exist at all," Gravis explained. "I also feel an urge to enter it. I feel like I would be able to learn something important."

When Arc heard that, he sighed.

"So, it's just as I've thought," Arc said. For some reason, Arc sounded sad but also relieved. 

When Gravis noticed Arc's actions, his brows furrowed. 'What could this gate be that even Arc felt worried about it inside his own world?'

Gravis tried to recreate the image of the gate and sent it to Arc's and Stella's minds.

The two of them received the image and had different reactions.

Stella was confused.

It just looked like a normal gate. She didn't see anything special about it.

In comparison, Arc nodded. 

It was just like he thought.

"What is this gate?" Gravis asked.

"As I've said previously," Arc answered. "The Laws of my creator's Cosmos penetrate my world, and the Laws of the Primordial Chaos penetrate my creator's Cosmos, and, by extension, my world."

"This gate that you see right now is a manifestation of one of the Laws of Primordial Chaos."

"I can't see it because I'm not powerful enough to compete with the Primordial Chaos. As far as I'm aware, only your father and my creator can compete with the Primordial Chaos. So, in essence, only four beings in the entire Cosmos can see this thing, you, Mortis, your father, and my creator. No one else can see, feel, or interact with it."

"Look," Arc said as he stepped forward.

Gravis' eyes widened as Arc walked into the middle of the cave, and when Arc touched the gate, nothing happened.

Arc was simply passing through the nothingness in the middle of the gate like it wasn't even there. Not even the columns of the gate interacted with his body.

"We exist in separate realities," Arc explained. "Only those that the Primordial Chaos deems worthy and those that can compete with it can interact with the gate."

Arc sighed again. "Luckily, you directly contacted me."

Gravis' brows furrowed. "Why? Would something bad have happened if I hadn't contacted you?"

Arc nodded. "Yes, two bad things, in fact."

"First, since I can't feel or sense the gate, I wouldn't know that one of these gates appeared in my world. You might think that there wouldn't be an issue with having such a gate. After all, only a few chosen ones can interact with it, right?"

"Wrong," Arc said. "While only the chosen few can interact with such a gate, its impact on my world and even the entire Cosmos is not insignificant. In fact, if not managed correctly, this thing could swallow the entire Cosmos, leaving only you, Mortis, your father, and my creator behind."

Gravis took a deep breath as he looked at the gate.

'This insignificant gate can end the entire Cosmos? How!?' Gravis thought.

"Has such a gate appeared before?" Gravis asked.

Arc nodded. "A couple of times," Arc answered. "It happens once every couple 100 million years or so."

'100 million years,' Gravis thought. 'That's twice as long as Heaven's Magnates can live! These gates seem to appear very rarely.'

"What does it do?" Gravis asked.

Arc pointed at the floor at the center of the cave. "Do you see the ground below the gate?" Arc asked.

"I can see it!" Stella shouted. "The floor at the center is darker than the rest."

Arc nodded. "The Law of the gate slowly spreads as it continues to exist. Additionally, the bigger it gets, the faster it grows. It might take a thousand years for the stain to become twice as big, but in another thousand years, it might already have swallowed the world."

"Additionally, the gate itself leads to the Primordial Chaos. As you know, my creator's Cosmos is like a small sphere filled with water inside a bucket of mixed liquids. The outer layer of the sphere is a one-way barrier and filter. The barrier keeps the mixed liquid outside while keeping the water of the sphere inside. Meanwhile, the filter filters out the water from the mixed liquids, and the water will be pushed into the sphere."

"The sphere is the Cosmos. The water is Energy. The mixed liquids are the Primordial Chaos."

"With this analogy, you can look at this gate as a small hole in the filter and barrier."

Gravis' eyes widened.

Now, he knew why Arc was so serious.

"So, in essence, the water will escape, and the mixed liquids will enter, right?" Gravis asked. 

Arc nodded. "Yes, the gate absorbs Energy and dumps out Primordial Chaos. As you know, only someone on the level of my creator can survive coming into contact with Primordial Chaos. Anything else that comes into contact with it will die."

"That's why I said that I'm glad that you immediately contacted me," Arc said. "My world has a ton of Energy, and I wouldn't notice the minuscule drop of Energy that the gate consumes. The Primordial Chaos would quickly form a wasteland of death above ground, which would then expand."

"Of course, wastelands appear and vanish all the time in such a big world. I wouldn't even notice this anomaly until the wasteland becomes like 500 million kilometers wide. That would also be around the time I would notice the drop in Energy."

Gravis listened to Arc with interest and a bit of horror. "And how do you get rid of such a gate?" Gravis asked.

"First, I have to cut off this part of the world," Arc said. "I can't banish the gate from my world, and I can't destroy it. However, I can destroy the part of my world that the gate resides in. You can look at it as cutting out a stain from a carpet."

"After that, I need to contact my creator since the gate would still be inside his Cosmos. He then does the same thing as me. He cuts off the part of the Cosmos that the gate resides in."

Gravis nodded. Going against the Primordial Chaos was basically impossible, but it entered the highest Heaven's home turf. The highest Heaven didn't have to win against the Primordial Chaos. It just didn't have to lose.

"What if I enter it?" Gravis asked.

"Remember when I said that two bad things would happen?" Arc answered. "The first thing was what I've described just now, while the second bad thing involves you."

"After listening to my descriptions of the effects of the gate, you should be able to extrapolate what kind of Law of the Primordial Chaos this gate represents," Arc said.

Gravis nodded.

"The Law of Death," Gravis said.

"Correct," Arc answered. "You know the Minor Law of Death, a Law even rarer and more mysterious than the Law of Perceived Reality. In order to comprehend this Law, you basically have to witness the end of the world while being the only surviving being. Obviously, not many beings have been in such a situation before."

Gravis' brows lifted. "The Law of Minor Death is that rare?" he asked.

Gravis had found that the Law of Minor Death was useful when combining it with his Will-Aura, but its effect didn't even come close to the effect of the Major Law of Suppression. It was simply a nice addition of power but not overly significant.

Arc nodded. "The Law of Minor Death is even rarer than the Law of the True World, and I'm referencing the highest version of the Law of the True World."

Gravis' eyes widened even more. "It's that rare? Then, doesn't that mean that there are more Heaven's Magnates than people that know the Law of Minor Death?"

Arc nodded. "Yes."

Gravis was genuinely surprised that this nice but not very useful Law was so incredibly rare.

"Anyway," Arc said as he continued. "Since you know what Law this is, what do you think will happen when you enter the gate?"

Gravis looked at the gate with nervousness.

"I would die."

"Exactly!"

Silence.

After a while, Gravis furrowed his brows. "But that doesn't make complete sense," he said. "I feel like I can comprehend something important by going in there. Additionally, it sounds a bit too simple that this gate simply exists to consume me."

"That's also true," Arc said. "By going into the gate, you can comprehend the Major Law of Death, which is a level seven Law, by the way. As soon as you comprehend the Major Law of Death, you will be immune to its effects. In that case, you would be able to survive."

Gravis scratched his chin as he looked at the gate.

"However!" Arc shouted loudly to gain Gravis' attention. "How do you comprehend the Major Law of Death? What must happen for you to learn such a concept? The Minor Law of Death already required the death of a world. What would the Major Law of Death require?"

Gravis' eyes widened as he realized from what angle Arc was coming from.

"My death," Gravis said.

Arc nodded. "I don't know the Major Law of Death. I know the Minor Law of Death since I've seen my world die a couple of times. I also summoned this gate once before. However, I never entered it."

"My creator said that I would die if I entered it, and for once, I believed him. I don't think that he lied to me in that case. I didn't even know that the Major Law of Death existed and what level it was until my creator informed me back then."

"He also told me that over the long years, thousands of beings had entered these gates, but only two have emerged alive."

"You can guess who these two are."