Alright, let clear some things up, showing irrefutable proof and even more importantly, putting to rest decade long hoaxes about Magic Gods and the cosmology of the verse.
All the following quotes are taken straight from Baka Tsuki’s js06’s translation of the series + one translation taken straight from Japanese at the end.
Toaru’s Cosmology is made up of Phases
“Have you ever heard of phases?”
“…?”
“This world was not pure and untouched to begin with. Christian, Buddhist, Celtic, Indian, Shinto, Incan, Aztec, Greek, Roman…and Norse. The various religions have placed layer after layer of various phases over the world like thin veils or filters. There is heaven, hell, the underworld, the Pure Land, Yomi, the abyss, Mount Olympus, the fairy island, Nirai Kanai, Asgard, and many others. At any rate, the world you have seen so far has been viewed through various colors of cellophane.”
The other important thing to consider is what world is in this context.
Magic God Othinus could control everything. Without exaggeration, she controlled the world itself. If she wanted to, she could have galaxies collide to kill Kamijou Touma. Or she could break the bonds between the particles making up his body and cause his very existence to disperse. If she was the slightest bit dissatisfied with something, she could turn back time, re-lay the rails of fate that led to the future, and create the exact result she wanted.
The earth, the universe, and the world were nothing but a giant balloon. And a Magic God was a potted cactus wobbling on top of the balloon. That would cause anyone to panic. Once one learned of its existence, they would be worried around the clock that the cactus would eventually topple over as it moved freely about.
Phases are referred to as worlds and dimensions based on Curtana Original.
That sword was an extreme spiritual item that fully united the three factions and four regions of the United Kingdom; it could draw on a portion of Archangel Michael's power while on British territory. If a qualified user released that power even for a moment, a swing of the sword would sever all dimensions at once and giant ruined materials would be created along the line of the slash.
Yes, all dimensions.
Assuming it could hit, that extraordinary power could penetrate the barrier between worlds and kill a being lurking in a different phase… for example, Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass who stayed in the layer of physical laws at the very bottom.
Also according to Curtana Original, there’s as many Phases / dimensions as what can be counted with whole numbers
"This simultaneously severs every dimension at the coordinates whether they are higher dimensions or lower dimensions. It seems the only cross section objects created that we can perceive are the ones that can appear in a 3 dimensional world."
(What…?)
Kamijou was completely dumbfounded.
If what she was saying was true, that sword was a monstrous weapon that could cut right through dimensions which did exist but were more of a concept than anything. No matter how much steel someone used to protect his body, Curtana Original could cut right through the dimension to cleave him in two.
Even so, Kamijou did not feel any fear. The scale was simply too great. Apparently the universe was constantly expanding due to the big bang, but no one could concretely feel the universe expanding with their 5 senses. Second Princess Carissa was using a power on that level
With a loud impact, Carissa landed near the third princess and dragged her sister off the ground with one hand. By the time Villian raised her head, the end of Curtana Original was already pressed against her throat. That sword had no tip or blade, but it still held the ability to slice through all whole number dimensions.
A chill ran down his spine. After all, his opponent attacked with a strike that could slice through all dimensions that could be represented with whole numbers. If he misread the situation, he wouldn't just lose his right arm. His entire body would be sliced in two.
Quoting one more piece of information again because it’s important for the next part
Assuming it could hit, that extraordinary power could penetrate the barrier between worlds and kill a being lurking in a different phase… for example, Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass who stayed in the layer of physical laws at the very bottom.
This specific part disproves the notion I often hear of the Pure World being the one universe of the setting while Phases are just layers over it. This is blatantly false as Carissa or Queen Elizard within the universe their in are cutting through countless dimensional barriers in order to reach the universe Aiwass resides in. Aiwass in turn is an extra-dimensional Angel who can’t even properly exist in the universe without first being summoned and with preparations to be able to manifest
Coronzon confirming both the main setting’s universe and the Pure World are all Phases too.
"While all those fools are focused on the visible chaos, I will take my time preparing for the end. I am the Great Demon lurking in the Abyss of the Sephiroth. But ascending the tree is not the only way to use it." She pointed her thumb at the center of her chest. "I obtained this physical body and descended the tree. The humans drowning at the bottom level only ever think of ascending it, but the connections go both ways. I started higher up and I can freely come and go, so this temporary level does not matter to me. Having a physical body is not a bad thing since it provides practical benefits in this world. And it allows me to reach the physical and scientific layer at the very bottom where all other phases are folded up."
"The bottom?"
"Yes. Imagine the universe at the point when the geocentric model said the other planets revolved around the earth. That is different from current mainstream astrology, but this is about some simple mental exercise. …But make sure this hypothetical does not confuse you. Now, with that model, the forces storing up mystical and supernatural power pour down on the earth from outside of the planet, but the earth in the center is a perfectly ordinary hunk of dirt. That is the earth's surface where we are standing now. If you removed that, the world would lose its center and it would fall apart, correct?"
Coronzon raised her slender index finger and slowly spun it around.
When she did, a few of the large plates around them began to rotate. They appeared to be representing the view of the world before it was proven that the planets revolved around the sun.
"By passing all that power through this foundational layer, that 'bottom' layer can be broken and removed. From there, all other phases will be destroyed along with this one. Without the core, the other forces cannot maintain their revolutions."
She clenched her fist and took a step from the center.
With their directions from the "core" gone, the large plates scattered blindly and bumped into each other.
A single action caused it all to fall apart.
"Aleister apparently wanted to save humanity by destroying every other phase and leaving just this one behind, but I am the opposite. By removing the 'bottom' layer at the center, the phases for all mythologies and religions will be destroyed. That is the Ceremony of Mo Athair. Nothing at all will remain afterwards."
TL;DR The Pure World is the Phase / Layer at the very bottom / center where all the other Phases revolve around. Coronzon destroying the Pure World would cause all the other Phases to lose their stability and the slight bumps and scapes between Phases from before which already twist the laws of cause and effect and create future changing phenomenon in the series will become full on collisions and simultaneous destruction between Phases
Think this pretty much sums up everything that needs to be known about Phases. Now to Othinus and other Magic God feats:
Othinus controlling every Phase at once, controlling and remaking existing universes or creating new ones.
"Was he really a Magic God who had bloomed some other way than Othinus?
Kamijou's face was pale, but Othinus did not hesitate to speak to him.
"But have you forgotten? How many digits' worth of worlds do you think I made and remade when I was settling things with you? If an equal Magic God existed in this world and this age, they would have interfered back then."
"You mean…?"
"At the very least, there wasn't a Magic God in this world. Doesn't that seem like a reasonable conclusion?"
"Have you forgotten?" Othinus sounded almost utterly exasperated. "This is the Dianoid. The entire building is made of carbon materials. That means you don't need control over every phase, every dimension, and every element to manipulate everything around you. A magician with control over carbon and nothing else can pull that one off."
Stop it. I don't like being praised like that. You saw Othinus at full power, didn't you? If the predicted specs I calculated out are accurate, her power would go well beyond mine which is limited to the world we're in now. How many times was the world destroyed on your way here? In fact, how'd you even defeat her when she had her lance? …No, merely winning in a fistfight wouldn't get you back to this world."
It was true that 100% Almighty Thor would likely be killed in an instant if he faced 100% Magic God Othinus. Thor ruled a single world while Othinus created infinite worlds. That was an obvious and insurmountable wall.
But that was not the current problem.
Almighty Thor stood before Kamijou as a real threat and Othinus could no longer use her power. To move on, Kamijou would have to defeat him with the fists of a puny human.
“Just to be clear, I don’t designate the coordinates. For one thing, coordinates on paper are meaningless in an ever-expanding universe.”
^ To further explain the above context, Thor is comparing his own command over the world as Almighty Thor to the range and scope of Othinus. And Almighty Thor makes him the Magic side equivalent of a Holistic Esper
While normal Esper powers work on the quantum level to create changes viewable to the macroworld, Holistic Espers affect the macroworld to make changes barely viewable at all.
"Holism.
In that theory, the entire expanding universe was treated as a single large system or network and things were viewed at the largest scale that humans could manage.
This once branched off to Gaia Theory which viewed the entire Earth as a single environment or ecosystem, but the life forms on the Earth were also affected by solar winds and the gravitational pull of the moon. If you also added in the time axis and other dimensions to that large 'world', you were no longer dealing with just a single planet. In that way, many had gone back to the origins of the theory and talking in true wholes once more.
Gremlin had used Baggage City as a giant testing ground to complete the foundational theory behind psychic powers that used that holism.
The theory itself was simple.
It was the opposite of the butterfly effect that said the beating of a butterfly’s wings could cause storms.
In other words, a major change on the global scale could cause flames to come from your palm.
Just saying that the large affected the small may make it a little hard to understand.
However, we are constantly undergoing changes caused by large things.
For example, take the theory of relativity.
Setting aside the precise definition, let us focus on the part that says the flow of time slows the closer an object gets to the speed of light.
A human riding in a car and a human riding in an airplane are in different 'times' that would cause a slight immeasurable error.
So let us make the scale larger.
What about a human on Earth versus a human on the moon? What about a human on the moon versus a human on Mars? Due to rotation and revolution, those people would be within different speeds and therefore different times.
Now let us bring the scale up to the whole.
The universe was created in the Big Bang and is constantly expanding moment by moment. Of course, we of humanity live in the universe and are all moving at the speed of that expansion. This puts us in the relativistic time created by the Big Bang.
Now, let us go through a thought experiment.
The universe is expanding equally in every direction, but what if the expansion speed of a single local area changed?
The change in speed would create a change in time.
An exceedingly large phenomenon would change the concept of time for a tiny human.
Of course, that is merely an example.
However, if you could bend or ball up the entire universe, the side effect of that power would cause an exceedingly microscopic phenomenon that would be immeasurable even with an electron microscope.
Does it seem like a rather roundabout method?
Do you think that if someone had power great enough to alter the expansion speed of the universe, they should just use that power to directly crush the planet or the galaxy?
However, a holistic esper would only notice the flames coming from their palm. Even if some distant galaxy was crushed in the process, that would be all they could comprehend. Just like how a person in a car cannot notice that someone standing on the Earth is in a different time.
As such, an esper created from the whole might only reach a Level 2 or 3 on Academy City’s scale. Even if some truly ridiculous thing was occurring in reality, no one would notice it, so it might as well not have been happening. Ironically, this was the same as the concept of zero in quantum theory."
Othinus destroying every Phase at once
As the lance was fired with tremendous force, the “happy world” was smashed to pieces as if space itself was being torn apart. As a fragment of the world approached with the force of a raging wave, it took on the shape of a giant lance. The walls of all the phases were crushed, transformed into a swirl of deadly weapons resembling sharp shards of glass, and approached their pitiful target as if to swallow him whole.
Everything was ripped up.
The black labyrinth, which had used up all of its possibilities, showed itself.
Once more reiterated that she destroyed (almost) every Phase at that the black void left behind is the result of destroying every Phase, meaning she’s done this multiple times throughout NT9
Othinus and Kamijou Touma had been wrong about one thing.
They had thought that world of darkness had been the full extent of the world. They had assumed that pitch black despair had been the product of destroying everything and leaving nothing at all behind.
But in truth, there had been one more layer. It was as uniform as a thin membrane, it had not even the slightest seam, and it could not be detected or destroyed by anyone, but one last phase had existed.
This black world was the place not even Magic God Othinus had been able to destroy.
Rest of the Magic Gods are far stronger than her and reside the last remaining Phase even she couldn’t reach.
"It may have been wrong to refer to that place as dark. In fact, the word “place” was not entirely accurate either. Non-existent things could not be explained. Nevertheless, a few voices lurked within where no one could interfere.
Othinus and Kamijou Touma had been wrong about one thing.
They had thought that world of darkness had been the full extent of the world. They had assumed that pitch black despair had been the product of destroying everything and leaving nothing at all behind.
But in truth, there had been one more layer. It was as uniform as a thin membrane, it had not even the slightest seam, and it could not be detected or destroyed by anyone, but one last phase had existed.
Said Phase is so vast, even the slightest gaps extend infinitely since anything less would be insufficient to contain True Magic Gods
“The concepts of distance and time don’t matter here, remember? And I can’t leave regardless. Even if I did, I’d just end up gathering unwanted attention on a global scale like Othinus. I was a hair’s breadth and an infinite distance away.”
“Does the same go for the others?”
“Old man, did you start forgetting things once you became a mummy? The zombie girl, the chimera, and everyone are here. It’s just in destiny’s hands whether we run across each other in this place where the tiniest gap extends to an infinite distance☆”
The conversation came to an end. In that place that did not exist in the world, they prepared to scatter apart.
“If you think about it, you could call this our way of being ecological. We do it because the world is too small for us to live in, but it isn’t easy putting up with.
Magic Gods need to reduce their power infinitely to put themselves down to such a level where they don’t destroy the universe they step into by moving a limb
Direction and depth were indistinguishable in that black space, but three distinct presences existed there.
“So have we managed to finish in time, Nephthys?”
An old man’s voice spoke in the darkness. More than simply “wrinkled”, the voice was better described as “dried-up”.
The responding voice sounded like a young and bewitching beauty.
“Yes. That zombie girl is useful at times like this. Thanks to her background of actively drawing in a great number of cultures, she has an affinity for most anything.”
“But, High Priest,” cut in a girl’s voice that sounded even younger and also childish. “Miss Zombie’s theory is essentially the same as holding up opposing mirrors, right? By splitting up our power infinitely, we can intentionally weaken ourselves and avoid destroying the world whenever we move an arm or leg.”
“What about it, Niang-Niang?”
“I’m just wondering if the symbol ∞ will really grow weaker when you split it up. I don’t want to smash the world up like stained glass the first step I take. We’re not like Othinus.”
And finally, to put the “Kamachi says there’s only one universe!!” hoax to rest
The following comes from NT13’s epilogue:
Another Possible Beginning — The_End_is_Named...
And it’s when Kamisato confronts Nephthys and uses World Rejector on her and we get this exchange:
“You can’t. You can’t possibly. Parallel worlds don’t-…”
“Yes, the world is ultimately a straight line like the rubber string nailed onto pachinko machines. There is no infinite expanse of parallel worlds.
^ This is the js06 translation that’s been bandwagoned for over a decade now to argue that Kamachi said there are no parallel worlds (completely ignoring every other feat and statements that say otherwise.)
But now we know for sure that no such thing was said.
並行する世界が無限にある訳じゃない.
"Heikō suru sekai ga mugen ni aru wake janai"
“There are not an infinite number of parallel worlds.”
^ It’s not there are no Parallel Worlds that was stated, just that there isn’t an infinite amount of them in the sense that they don’t occupy every spot of the infinite expanse of the settings multiverse. Even with the endless Phases that make up the verse, there’s still unused space in between them.
World Rejectors takes advantage of those still unused spaces between worlds to send people to, and said unused space becomes its own isolated timeline.
"When World Rejecter activated, it held enough power to defeat even Magic Gods by the dozen. Salome’s body would be swiftly “exiled” to the spare territory between related timelines. Basically, a living human being would be sent to another world, never to be seen again."
The unused space becoming it’s own isolated timeline.
Those two were true Magic Gods. So who in this isolated timeline could concern them?
He was watching the very geography of the planet changing. If this was not a timeline isolated by World Rejecter, these attacks would have wiped out the human race several times over.
No, that was wrong.
If the entire "world" was their stage in the truest sense of the word, then perhaps it was lucky that the damage from a clash between gods was limited to a single planet.
Even so, that being had returned.
Avatar Lola Stuart.
And Coronzon within.
With multiple Magic Gods clinging to her like the sludge of a bottomless bog, she had taken one last large step to force her way back from World Rejecter's shifted timeline.
And likewise, Nephthys herself also never denied the existence of parallel worlds, here’s the above exchange translated from the Japanese text
Nephthys: i can't believe it. The parallel world is...
Kamisato: Yeah, they don't exist infinitely.
^ Credit to Piamma for this part
And that concludes my thread. Any questions?
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