“Why do almost all animals only have a singular heart? Why do they only have two lungs instead of three? Why are there only two halves of a brain, instead of four quarters? Lichens are part fungi and part plant, so why aren’t there any similar animals in nature? Or are there and I just didn’t watch enough Animal World when I was a kid? Oh wait… Then there are other planets and shit too… I have a feeling that there’s a reason though. There is a natural way of things. But that has to do with the Nature Element. So in other words… Chaos is merely a divergence of the natural order.”

As Minari’s physical body was being formed, she was constantly thinking about what actually made something perfect in the first place. If it was even possible for a physical body to reach perfection at all… Then what method could be used to determine if her theories were correct?

“Souls will always be much more powerful than the bodies they inhabit… That’s why it’s possible for me to create an entire universe within my Soul Realm if I wanted to… But that’s a pain in the ass! Only some crazy bitch like Arcana would wanna become a fucking universe or planet! What I need to do is focus on making myself stronger on the outside. Unless I wanted to risk my life, or well, my souls, I can’t have a flimsy body. It needs to be practically invincible.

“It’s just like concocting some pills. I have a fuckton of awesome ingredients, but they’re useless on their own. Some of them are even poisonous and harmful. The main ingredients I have to work with are: A Draconic Lava-Fairy, an Ethereal Feline Angel, a Seven-Tailed Fox, a Chaotic Slimy Feline Succubus, a Chaotic Nephilim, a Death Elf and a High Elf… But there’s also Tali’s Dryadic Bloodline and those Rapture Nanites as secret ingredient that could make our recipe reach the next level if used properly. There’s still plenty of Mars left to devour though, so I’ve got lots of time to figure out what I wanna go with…”

***

“Where the fuck is Mike?! Is he hiding?!”

Michael’s brother Adam, and the other members of the Guardians were dropped onto the surface of Mars. However, the planet was close to the size that Earth was in the past. Even if some of them could fly out into space and look down with the vision of a powerful telescope, it was still pointless if he wasn’t on the surface.

Beatrix was wearing a full suit of black combat armor, which also completely covered her head and long elven ears. She walked around with an assault rifle constantly in her hands and a huge sniper rifle across her tiny back. After a few minutes of pacing back and forth, she whispered “I can’t sense any Chaotic mana… But there is a place with an excessive amount of Fire and Earth aura… It’s moving constantly though.”

The huge gorilla wearing a tuxedo sighed, then complained “I’m not going down there! Even if I’m stronger underground… This is Minari we’re talking about! Even if all of us fight him or her together, it’d still be hopeless.”

“This is actually a rather excellent opportunity for us.” The usually expressionless dryadic girl, Uriel, had a slight smirk on her lips. She gazed up into the sky at the tumultuous black clouds and murmured “Arcana has made a miscalculation.”

Hearing that, the giant silver angelic knight asked “Wait, what? Yuri are you serious? I don’t get it though… What kind of miss-”

“Arcana~!” Along with a deafening bellow, the clouds were literally ripped off of the face of Mars, along with the atmosphere! The whole planet nearly split in half from the pressure that was being released from space… By an absurdly large, golden nine-tailed fox!

The members of the Guardians were strong enough to survive, but the unexpected attack had blasted them away into space. The only one who was left behind was Uriel, who had her feet literally rooted deep into the ground ahead of time. She continued smirking, as she gazed up at that enormous monstrosity that had erupted from within the Sun.

“Arcana! We had an agreement!” Even if the massive fox was able to travel the speed of light, it would have still taken it several minutes to reach Mars. However, the gargantuan beast’s target wasn’t that far away.

An ethereal elven woman had suddenly appeared. She seemed small in comparison to the monster, but her form was nearly ten-thousand miles from the top of her head, to the bottom of her toes. Arcana had pitch-black skin, but the edges of her silhouette were like an event horizon. There were entire galaxies seemingly tattooed onto her flesh, which were releasing massive amounts of blinding light. However, her eyes were far more devastating. They were even brighter than the rapidly dimming Sun and pure white.

“This avatar has no knowledge of what you speak, Sariel. Perhaps you should be more specific in your accusations.”

That fox had eyes like small blue stars, though they were still slightly bigger than Mars. As she gazed past the enormous woman’s event horizon, she saw that tiny girl standing on the surface of the red planet.

“I agreed to sell you this universe under the condition that you would allow the people of Earth to go through their lives in peace… But more importantly than that, you promised that you wouldn’t touch Azrael or Uriel!”

“It does indeed sound like something that I would do… Unfortunately, that does not change the fact that I have no knowledge of such a deal and certainly can not agree to uphold such conditions at this point in time. It is already far too late.”

Sariel let out a cosmic sigh, then growled “Fine… If these two avatars of ours fought here, then this entire solar system would be obliterated in the crossfire. I assume neither of us wishes for that to happen, correct?”

Arcana grinned, revealing her glowing white teeth. But she immediately frowned once the fox continued to say “Then let’s make a new deal. This system now belongs to me… And I’ll return your granddaughter’s soul.”

“I am unable to comply with such a demand.”

“Then you’d better get in contact with your true form… Unless you want me to destroy Chaotica’s body and start ripping the mana and memories from her soul?”

“No… I will discuss this with the others… I will return swiftly.”

Before the giant woman could leave, a quiet voice echoed throughout the entire universe “I agree with your proposal… However, I will not return the souls which I have already claimed.”

“Good! Now get out of here!”

“This isn’t over, Sariel.” With those last words, the avatar of Arcana instantly vanished. She retreated back outside of the Solar System, which was swiftly being surrounded by an enormous amount of neutral mana.

This barrier had trillions of huge runic symbols all over it, though it was too far away for anyone aside from the giant fox to see. It pulsated for a few hours, then the fox opened its absurdly large maw and roared. Everything vibrated at a certain frequency, which allowed it to be ‘pulled’ outside of the universe.

What seemed like a moment later, there was an even larger golden fox floating around in the Chaotic Void. This was a place where the distant ‘stars’ were actually entire universes or Eternal Deities.

Across from the fox was a giant ethereal woman. She appeared almost exactly the same as her much smaller and weaker avatar. Within Arcana’s delicate hands was a swirling orb of light, which churned as a stream of stars and nebulae flew out of the edges. They were easily sucked into her mouth, as if she was merely having a casual snack.

From the perspective of someone inside of the that sphere, it would have seemed like billions of years had passed. To the Arcane Goddess however, it was only a short meal. Nearly a trillion galaxies could only momentarily quench her thirst and hunger. The true prize had been the souls she captured through Minari’s aid.

Author’s Note

I wonder if you saw that coming? Maybe you expected it to just end with Minari easily killing the remaining people and capturing their souls, then opening a portal to Arcana and going home? Yeah, that was the ‘plan’, but since when does anything ever go according to plan… Especially around Michael and the rest lol.

Anyway, I actually just finished writing chapter 121. Now I’m working on the Epilogue… So, I’m practically finished with “Hardcore Legacies” lol. It took a lot longer than I expected it to, but at the same time, I’m glad I didn’t try to rush through it and pull a fucking IET. If you don’t know who IET is… Well, he’s the guy who wrote “Coiling Dragon” and “Stellar Transformations”, among many other series. Those are the only two that have been totally translated though, so maybe his endings got better after those two stories?

Regardless, even though “Hardcore Legacies” is almost finished, it’s not really the ‘end’ of Michael and his companions. Since they’re technically coming back in “OP-ness Returns”… The name is tentative roflmao.

Also, there are a few things that I was going to shove into the ending of HCL, but I decided not to lol. They’ll either be going into CC or TDD, depending on what feels right to me at the time. There are a lot of things that Minari did or does, that are less important to HCL and HCOP, but more important to other series. So you should expect to see her popping up in various places every now and then rofl.

I wonder if anyone recognizes Sariel from the other stories he/she is in?

By the way, how do you feel about exclamation points being used by the narrator? I usually try not to use them aside from dialogue, but idk, sometimes I just feel like there should be more exclaiming?

Oh well, that’s enough for one Author’s Note lol. Back to work~…

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