Chapter 253: Chess and Intermediate Stage
Sadly, so far, Arthur’s efforts have been futile as Cattleya showed little to no signs of agreeing with his decision.
Returning to the current scenario, the young progenitor was trying to protect his phone from being wiped clean by his mother.
"When did you even start listening to that kind of music?"
"Last month, I guess?
I didn’t really vibe with the metal genre so I just gave it a try and ended up liking it."
"Metal? Are you sure it isn’t the Emo genre you’re listening to?"
Cattleya replied with a sigh as she stared at her son who used the law of space’s power to escape from her grasp, before running over to go and hide behind her father who was speaking with her grandfather’s vestige.
"Well played, Arthur."
Meanwhile, Arthur himself had pushed the matter of his new taste in music to the back of his mind and was now intently staring at the chess board on the table in between Diablo and Lucifer.
"Try White bishop to G4.
It’d put you in a position to take his rook that’s on F5."
"Hmm...if I do that, then his knight would be able to take out my bishop."
"True that..."
Seeing the Grandfather and son who were calmly discussing strategies in front of him, Lucifer’s brow twitched repeatedly in annoyance as she spoke up.
"The two of you do realise that I’m right in front of you, right?"
"Hold on for a sec, we’re busy discussing how to take out your rooks."
Arthur’s reply only served to further heighten his annoyance, especially when he saw the boy turn the chessboard around and moved a few of his pieces as if simulating his possible responses to any of Diablo’s moves.
"So...pawn to D7?"
"Pawn to D7 it is."
Diablo went along with Arthur’s suggestion and placed moved his chess pieces, before pushing the board towards Lucifer and asking him to play his piece.
’They’re messing with me! They definitely are!’
Unsurprisingly, Lucifer was very right in his assumption as Arthur and Diablo were indeed attempting to annoy him on purpose.
The two Vaughns had taken to this little side hobby over the past few weeks, and it all started from Lucifer’s decision not to fill Diablo in about the realm above the monarch realm.
Lucifer glared at the two of them, an idea flashing through his mind as he turned towards Arthur and asked.
"Have you managed to perfect the subspace magic that I told you to?"
"Hmm? Done that since last week."
"What?"
In response to Lucifer’s surprise, the boy snapped his fingers and manifested a small 50cm wide black hole in mid-air, putting his hand into it and pulling out a cold bottle of wine and two glasses before closing it back up.
"I added the time freeze effect too.
Just didn’t tell you ’cus I wanted to laze around a little bit."
Arthur continued as he poured wine into the two glasses and moved one over to Diablo, before the two of them picked up their glasses and simultaneously downed the contents all while keeping their gazes on the very annoyed vestige.
This was the scene that Creusery met when he came into the room, sighing softly as he patted Lucifer’s shoulder and told him to give up before going on to drag Cattleya back to Albelion.
"I can’t leave here.
What if Arthur decided to use that thing and teleport somewhere else while I’m not here?!"
"Come on, mother.
At least have a little more faith in me.
If I was going to do that then I would not have told you about the artifact in the first place."
"He does have a point. Knowing him, there’s no way he’d tell you about it if that was what he planned to do."
Creusery concurred with Arthur’s statement as he used body strengthening on himself before pulling Cattleya off the weirdly sturdy couch she was sitting on and slinging her body over his shoulder.
Before the archdevil could even try to force herself out of his arms, Creusery had already teleported out of the room, leaving behind the trio who turned their attention back to the chess game on the board.
"Oh, just so you know, your time is up.
It’s grandpa’s turn now."
Arthur’s casual statement as he tapped the small digital clock beside the chess board, was followed by the screams of rage and curses of a certain Devil King’s Vestige.
◇ ◇ ◇
In the ’weeks’ that followed, Arthur increased his proficiency in manipulating the powers of the universal laws he recently acquired, along with his comprehension in said laws and his overall battle power level.
If some of the other Geniuses in the academy or other parts of the Hell universe were to discover that it took Arthur a little no more than a few weeks to go from being a Superior Stage Grandmaster to being an Intermediate stage Epic Realm, then they might just give up cultivating their strength in general.
Of course, 60% of the reason for this fast advancement was because of the effects of the ’Third Magic’, while the other 40% lay within Arthur’s own talent, his abnormality, and the increasing amount of the powers of universal laws in his body.
Due to Lucifer’s advice, he had temporarily taken a break from acquiring new laws, at least until he became a Legendary realm existence and his body was strengthened to a whole new level.
This was after he had told Arthur that the previous one-month time limit he had given the young progenitor was just a ruse.
During this time, Lucifer showed Arthur a lot more recordings of memories of the original Lucifer, depicting all sorts of adventures that the Devil King went on, with most of them being memories of him and the Half flugel, Half seraph, Alexia.
As for Diablo, the Devil King’s Vestige finally relented and decided to teach him about the realm above the monarch realm, expressing a bit of surprise when he discovered that the reason why Diablo wanted to know this was that he still hadn’t absorbed the energy in the core that Lucifer gave him more than twelve thousand years ago.
"How did you keep it that long?"
"A bit of time magic mixed with a few other preservative-type law authorities."
"You should have said that first.
Since you didn’t bring it up, I was beginning to think that you used all that energy to do something else.
Glad to know that you actually kept it."
The Vestige was visibly happier when he discovered that the energy core was still relatively intact, before going on to explain about the realm above the monarch realm; the Primogenial realm.
"Primogenial?"
"Yes.
It is the first realm of existence above the monarch realm, and the first realm of existence that requires you to possess Cosmic energy manipulation abilities to achieve."
"So that’s the realm Roseborn is targeting?"
"The body-hopping bastard? Yes.
This is his lifelong dream that he spent a hundred million years trying to achieve.
Oh, the look on his face when I told him I only took a few years to go from the Monarch realm to the Primogenial realm."
Lucifer replied to Arthur’s question while chuckling evilly, with Diablo voicing out the question of who ’Roseborn’ was.
"You know about Alexia, right? The woman I got my first law crystal from.
Yeah...Roseborn’s her dad."
