Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation(1-3VOL)

Vol 3/Chapter 7: The Truth About Crossing Over

"What exactly did you all experience in the human world that allowed you to advance so quickly? I've never seen anyone advance this fast before..." Elara asked with great interest.

"Uh, nothing too special..." I was too embarrassed to admit that I just fell asleep, was knocked out for a bit, and advanced when I woke up. And Casey was one thing, but Elara was a sly old fox who had probably lived for thousands of years. If she heard that she'd think I was messing with her, and that would be a huge misunderstanding.

So I decided to go with Nicola's experience of advancing, combined with some of our own to summarize: "Just fighting monsters, doing quests, stuff like that..."

"Fighting monsters? Doing quests?" Elara repeated, seemingly puzzled. "I can kind of understand fighting monsters, but what exactly do you mean by 'doing quests'?"

"You know, the Adventurers' Guild right?" I explained to her. "We spent most of this past month there taking on jobs to earn money. Lots of the quests involved combat like slaying magical beasts. It was pretty intense training."

"Just doing those kinds of quests allowed you to advance so quickly?" Elara looked shocked. Of course, logically, no amount of training should allow someone's advancement time of decades to suddenly shrink to this degree.

"Um..." At this point I didn't know what else I could say, because that basically summed up my and Nicola's lives this past month.

"The only other possibility is that it has something to do with where we came from..." I said, looking towards Elara. "So what exactly was that Angelic Descent Formation? How did it bring us here?"

Unable to hold back anymore, Nicola jumped in ahead of me to ask the critical questions about our crossing over.

"You've already asked Cyra and the others that before, including Reed if I recall," Elara responded, seemingly frustrated. "And I've clearly explained it to them already."

"But you two weren't there at the time, so since you're asking now I might as well explain again..."

"The Angelic Descent Formation is a ritual we angels use to summon newborn angels. Almost all angels since ancient times have been born through this ritual, including myself. It is also our primary method of increasing our population," Elara explained.

"Then what's the deal with us four... No, I should say what's with all the newborn angels this time? I've heard from Serena that we're somewhat special," I quickly followed up with another question.

The information she had provided so far was stuff we had already roughly guessed from snippets said by the other angels. But it was still far from fully answering the doubts in my mind.

"You're right, you are indeed different compared to previous newborn angels..." Elara readily nodded in agreement.

"Halfway through this latest summoning, some unexpected situations occurred. Monster attacks disrupted the workings of the ritual, causing the connection to the cycle of reincarnation to be cut. The ritual then accidentally connected to another space - specifically, the place you were before being summoned..."

"What is this 'cycle of reincarnation'?" Nicola excitedly cut in. After waiting so long we were finally getting some solid info about our transmigration here, it wasn't easy!

"The cycle of reincarnation, as the name implies, is naturally where the souls of the deceased are reborn..." Elara explained, her tone and expression turning solemn.

"This should be considered an extremely confidential topic. Aside from the High Tower sages who love to research the truths of the world, I'd guess very few humans know of the existence of the reincarnation cycle, including many rulers of nations..."