Astral Realm?

--- Chapter 3 ---

In a moving car toward the hospital, we could see the watase family casually chatting and enjoying their ride.

"Mom, Tomoe-nee, could you please stop hugging me for a moment?" Aoba suddenly asked because it's been two hours since they were cuddling him like no tomorrow.

Watase Fuyumi, who looked at them from the side, only gently giggled because Aoba's presence really brightened their family.

It's not that their family is not harmonious, but more like there is no child in the house anymore, so when Aoba came in, they were delighted.

"Well, maybe you two really have to stop hugging him. It's tough to breathe between your bosoms after all." Fuyumi commented while looking at Aoba, who struggled a little bit.

"Th-Thanks, Grandma," Aoba said while releasing a sigh of relief, to which Fuyumi responded with a nod.

"I'm alone here..." Kyojuro quietly muttered while sitting in the driver's seat.

"You're the one who wants to drive? So bear it for us, hehe." Fuyumi softly chuckled, causing her husband to release imaginary tears.

Kyojuro could only release a sigh and shook his head because no one in this family could drive a car, except for him, which put him in this miserable condition.

They continued their travel for one more hour and finally arrived at the nearest hospital in this area.

"Hah, Finally." Kyojuro released a sigh of relief and parked the car in the parking lot.

As they walked out of their car, a black-haired man in a white lab coat approached them with a smile on his face.

"It's been a while, Kyojuro-sensei." The man greeted Aoba's grandpa with honorifics, to which Kyojuro responded with a slight nod.

"Mm, it's been a while, Yuuto, Five years?" Kyojuro casually responded while forming a smile on his face.

"Haha, right." Yuuto laughed and then shifted his gaze to another member of the Watase family.

"Fuyumi-san." He bowed his head a little.

"You have become quite a man, huh," Fuyumi commented while looking at the man in front of her.

Yuuta scratched his head a little because feeling embarrassed and then noticed a pair of sisters in the side. "Shizuka-chan, Tomoe-chan."

"Yuuta-san." Shizuka politely replied with a smile on her face.

"Hmm…" Tomoe circled around Yuuta and looked at him from different angles.

"Having a wife changed a person. I don't see your former self at all." She bluntly commented.

"Ugh, It hurts." Yuuta grasped his chest while making a painful expression.

"Who's he?" Aoba asked while looking at this unfamiliar man.

"Oh? This boy is?" Yuuta abruptly moved his gaze to Aoba, who calmly looked at him with his golden eyes.

"He's my son." Shizuka confidently answered, which shocked him.

"Eh!?" Yuuta became shocked for a moment.

He's pretty sure Shizuka couldn't have a husband because of her carefree personality, but she somehow already has a son.

"I'm her adoptive son." Aoba cleared the misunderstanding in a flash, and Yuuta accepted his answer with consent.

"Wait.." Yuuta looked at Aoba with a surprised expression because he didn't expect this young boy to answer his question.

This kind of topic is usually sensitive for a child, so he shouldn't ask for it first, but to think, a young-looking boy would calmly answer it.

"Aoba is quite mature for a child his age," Kyojuro looked at Aoba, who had shown his intelligence when he was one year old.

"So, he is an extraordinary child." He continued, making Yuuta aware of the reason why Kyojuro-sensei suddenly asks for his help.

'Because he's special, Kyojuro-sense didn't want this test result to leak, which can be dangerous for him.' Yuuta thought with a solemn expression.

'Since Kyojuro-sensei has asked for my help, I will do my best for him.' He added in his heart and then led the watase family into the test room.

When Aoba got tested, the room immediately became quiet, so the only thing they could hear was the Rontgen machine sound.

This silence somehow made Shizuka and Tomoe nervous, even though they were not the ones who got tested.

"Are you okay, Aoba?" Shizuka asked with a worried expression, and her son responded with a nod.

"Well, it's done." Yuuta suddenly said while looking at the test result, which made him sigh with relief for some reason.

Aoba stretched his neck a little and looked at Yuuta with a curious gaze because he's curious about the test result.

'Even if I'm Quirkless, it won't be a problem because I can just cultivate my strength.' Aoba suddenly thought.

"So… What's the result?" Fuyumi asked with a calm expression on her face.

"There is bad news and good news. Which one did you one hear first?" Yuuta stated while flipping a few papers.

"Bad News." Aoba firmly said while sitting on a chair.

"Okay. Unfortunately for you, your Quirk needs time to be awakened." Yuuta honestly answered with a serious expression.

"Is that even bad news?" Tomoe frowned and noticed that this man was joking in this kind of situation.

"Then, what's the good news?" Shizuka asked.

"Hmm, he's not Quirkless," Yuuta answered while shrugging his shoulders, which made Tomoe's mouth twitch in annoyance.

They released a sigh of relief and looked at Aoba with a smile on their faces. "Good for you, Aoba," Kyojuro commented.

"Mm." Aoba nodded while thinking about something.

"How long does it take to awaken my Quirk?" He asked Yuuta, who suddenly entered deep thought.

"I'm not quite sure. You can awaken it maybe in months, weeks, and days, or even right now." Yuuta answered because there are differences in Quirk's awakening of each person.

"I see…" Aoba nodded his head and suddenly felt really sleepy.

He abruptly fell from his chair, which caused a panic, but Kyojuro hurriedly caught him.

A bright golden light suddenly came out of his body, and Yuuta's eyes widened because of it. "H-He really awakened his quirk a second after I said that." He said.

--- [Astral Realm] ---

Aoba floated in the starry skies and opened his eyes in surprise because he remembered this place when he was about to reincarnate for the third time.

"I have been thinking about it for years, but what's this place?" Aoba looked around and saw millions of stars radiating in this space.

He felt a connection to a particular star out of nowhere, which shone dimly in the corner of this space.

Aoba approached the star and grasped it with his right hand, which surprisingly didn't make him feel any discomfort at all.

When he touched the star, a massive piece of information entered his mind and greatly shocked him because he finally knew this place's name.

"Astral Realm, where millions of astral souls exist, and each of them was a special inheritance of the primordial era," Aoba muttered while looking around.

"There are nine layers of space, and I'm at the first layer now." He continued, which means he's in the lowest layer of this realm.

Aoba thought about this information more for a moment and closed his eyes to meditate.

After an indefinite amount of time, he finally opened his eyes and raised his gaze. "I don't know why something like this happened to me." He said.

Aoba sighed and decided to move to the second layer, which made him experience a tremendous pressure that shook his soul.

"This level of pressure is nothing in front of me!" Aoba suddenly grinned and forcibly moved upward to the next layer.

Aoba kept moving upward until he couldn't move at all and finally stopped in the fifth layer, where the astral soul shone brighter and emanated more substantial pressure.

"I couldn't move more than this." Aoba looked upward, which is the next layer of the astral realm, but he knew his limit and looked around.

Another connection suddenly appeared in his heart. He immediately shifted his gaze to an exceptionally bright star, which has a shape of a spear.

"You're calling me?" Aoba tilted his head as he approached the astral soul and grasped it with his left hand.

--- [Reality] ---

Aoba has been sleeping for an hour, and he suddenly opened his eyes.

"I'm back...?" He looked around and saw his mother sitting on the chair beside the bed.

'The astral soul!' Aoba suddenly felt a huge burst come out of his left hand.

Aoba's entire left arm abruptly turned into a wolf arm, which had white fur and sharp claws.

"Huh?" Aoba looked at his left arm with a frown on his face, and another massive piece of information about this astral soul entered his head.

After a few minutes of disgesting this new information, the name of this astral soul echoed in his head.

[The Supreme Sky Wolf Astral Soul]