Chapter 374: Veiled Divinity
With every word, the destruction energy reached closer and closer to their neck, and from the look in Arthur’s eyes, the person saw that the boy was ready to end their life there and then.
Even so, due to the way he was choking them, talking was a chore, but for the sake of survival, they forced a voice out.
"..G..en...Sar..g..on..."
"Sargon? Alvey sent you?"
Arthur spoke as he pulled off the figure’s mask, shattering the inscriptions that prevented such a thing from happening so easily and inspecting the face of the woman whom he was choking.
He appraised her and noted that she was indeed a demon, with a title that stated she was part of Alvey’s ’Shadow Agents’.
At that point, the something in her pocket buzzed and Arthur picked it up and answered the device.
"Well, hello there. Unfortunately, the poor shadow agent cannot come to the phone at the moment.
Would you like to leave a message?"
[...]
Naturally, the person on the other end of the line was silent, but this silence only lasted a few moments.
[You should be Lord Vaughn, right?]
"Arthur. And who on Aeturn are you?"
[Forgive me. I am but a humble servant of General Sargon, who was granted the privilege of leading his Shadow forces.
The agent whose communicator you’re using right now is one of those whom he had sent to Duskhand sometime ago, and recently ordered to return due to your presence there.]
"Alvey pulled out his agents because I’m here?"
Arthur didn’t understand Albey’s reasoning for that, but he didn’t dwell on it too much, instead focusing on the person he was talking with.
Unfortunately, he sensed an approaching presence and had to cut this little conversation short before anyone saw him.
He let go of the shadow demon and tossed her walkie-talkie back to her before saying.
"Lucky you."
The shadow demon caught the device and reactivated her stealth skill, making her body completely vanish from view.
Even so, she could still see Arthur’s eyes looking right at her.
[Apologies for the disturbance, Lord Arthur. If there Is a chance, I’d like us to speak once again, in a more appropriate situation.]
The voice on the other end of the communicator, from the person who could be considered the leader of Alvey’s Mimic subordinates, rang out once more before the connection was cut.
The shadow agent also ran away as fast as she could, while Arthur waved at her.
"What are you doing?"
Arthur turned around and saw Rachel looking at him with raised brows, only smiling lightly as he responded.
"I was talking with a nice older lady."
"...what?"
"Exactly what I said.
This older lady seems to have had her eyes on me for a while so I decided to speak with her."
Technically, the boy wasn’t lying.
That Shadow agent/demon indeed had her eyes on Arthur ever since he entered Duskhand. He just didn’t bother with her until today when he had the time to do so.
"You’ve only been here for four days, Arthur."
"I guess having a handsome face has its perks."
The boy spoke with a shrug before closing the distance between them and continuing.
"You’re quite pretty yourself...haven’t you had any guys trying to toast you?"
"Thank you for the compliment, but I haven’t had any of such occurrences."
Rachel pushed Arthur’s face away from hers, but the boy took the chance to grab her hands and twirled her body around.
"Hmm...it’s either they’re blind or scared."
He shrugged once more, before beginning to make his return to the area where their battalion was while pulling Rachel along with him.
◇ ◇ ◇
The spars were all completed within the day, and then the higher-ranked soldiers took the compiled results back to their superiors who only needed two hours to go through it all and assign platoons to the new recruits.
During these two hours, the Recruits were all going through training drills...the kind that could make even Master Realms tired.
Normal people consider a 42-kilometre run a marathon but for master realms that could run at 100 m/s, that was just a short stroll.
After their two-hour training drills, they all got their assigned platoons, and to no one’s surprise, Arthur and Rachel ended up together.
Starting the next day, they began their introductory training on Military Protocols, learning to work with their new platoon members, some training drills and more combat sparring.
Those were the day’s activities, while in the night, Arthur went to the clock tower to comprehend the law of summoning.
Rachel sometimes came over and chatted with him till dawn, and these frequent night talks helped the two grow a lot closer.
This meant the boy didn’t get any sleep though.
Even during his free time in the day, he left Rachel to talk with Ger and her other old friends while he spent his time surveying Duskhand’s Outer City.
15,000 km2 was not a small area that could be explored in one or two days, especially as Arthur was taking his sweet time.
Since the Outer City was shaped like a doughnut, he started from one district and went around, spending a new day in a different district.
He scanned with his aura and cosmic energy as he moved, searching for anything suspicious.
But looking at it from outside, Arthur was busy befriending a lot of the city’s non-military inhabitants, and the boy’s sociable attitude helped a lot with this.
Within Seven days, Arthur had gone around the Outer City, scanned every nook and cranny, whilst evading detection and nearly getting caught on a few occasions.
◇ ◇ ◇
Duskhand Military City
Githal
November 12th
530th Divine Year
It had been exactly 11 days since Arthur entered Duskhand City, and the boy had long since adapted to the military lifestyle.
Nevertheless, he did not forget his original intentions for coming here, so after leaving Rachel with Ger again, he went towards the Inner City’s direction.
Entering the Inner City, however, was not so easy given the presence of a barrier that prevented unauthorized entry that surrounded it.
The barrier was quite sturdy and Arthur wasn’t too sure he could break it on his own.
’I can do it with Lostvayne...but in that case, I’m sure I’d be detected.’
Him being detected = Game Over; so Arthur didn’t want to go down that route. He needed a means to get into the Inner City without breaking through the barrier.
The boy thought about it for a moment and came to the final decision to use the same means with which he entered the town he was ’conscripted from’.
"I’d hitch a ride in...and I know just whose vehicle to use."
He returned to the dorm areas and saw a certain Major bidding his long-lost orphanage younger sister by, before entering his vehicle with his friends and heading back towards the inner city.
Ger came almost every day to speak with Rachel, sometimes chipping in to watch their training session and advise Arthur on ways to make his divinity stronger.
’I already know 90% of the methods he spoke about though.’
Arthur thought that as he relaxed his back and watched the evening sun from the top of Ger’s car which headed straight for one of the inner-city entrances.
There were various security checks and all, but Arthur could not be detected unless a Sovereign came in person.
Such a personage would definitely not be relegated to gatekeeping, now, would they?
Though this was a Prime World, its level was quite low so Arthur didn’t have to worry about Sovereigns serving as gate guards.
Anyway, he easily gained access to the Inner City by hitching a ride with Ger, however, the instant he completely passed through the barrier, the boy’s whole body jerked with shock.
"What...the...fuck...?"
Arthur’s senses were picking up on certain presences, presences that he could sense due to his unique disposition as a Progenitor.
"I was this close...but I did not notice?"
The boy turned towards the barrier behind him with a dumbfounded gaze, wondering how this barrier was created, and more importantly, who created it.
He couldn’t be blamed, after all, he could sense hundreds, no, thousands of divinity wielders all around him.
The more he spread out his senses, the more divinity wielder he detected.
In just a minute, he had noticed over ten thousand of them.
Over ten thousand beings with divine factors within the Inner City, the TRUE Duskhand Bastille.
As Ger’s vehicle passed through the streets, he could see low-ranked soldiers like Private First Classes and Corporals, and yet these guys had divine factors!
"Then why were they so surprised about my presence? They have tens of thousands of divinity users here.
If this lot were to be unleashed upon the demons..."
