Chapter 450: Failed Attempts at Replication
Underground Training Facility
Demon Army Headquarters
Militopolis
January 17th
531st Divine Year
The sound of weapons clanging rang out in the large stadium-sized arena as two streaks of light darted around at supersonic speed.
Demon General Jack McEnda III, looked at the flashes of silver and blue light—which were actually two being sparring at supersonic speed—a slightly bewildered explanation as he asked the person beside him.
"Hey, Alvey. Are you sure it was a week ago? A month didn’t pass when we weren’t looking?"
"I’m 100% positive it has only been seven days."
Alvey replied to him calmly, however, the man could not hide his brow from twitching as he stared at the scene in front of him.
McEnda’s fiancée, Sigesi Valren was currently sparring with a certain Progenitor from another Universe.
Both of them, however, were perfectly fine. Not a single scratch on their bodies, nothing impeding their energy manipulation and no other physical or spiritual complications.
And that was precisely what bewildered these two Transcendents.
The fact that BOTH of them were perfectly fine.
Arthur had just taken a beating from a Transcendent and had suffered grievous wounds barely a week ago.
Even nonstandard Legendary Realm existences would find it hard to leave the sick bed in just one week.
But forget about one week, Arthur only slept one night and was back to normal the next day!
"Sigesi."
"On it."
Suddenly, the two backed away from each other, heading to both ends of the arena while Alvey and McEnda looked on with curiosity.
"Frostshade."
Ice-cold demonic energy coalesced into Sigesi’s palm, moulding into a sword of dark ice that gleamed with an otherworldly chill.
At the same time, Arthur held out his hand and the space around his palm cracked, heralding the summoning of Lostvayne.
Using her Sword as a catalyst, Sigesi raised the blade and activated her Pseudo Authority of Ice and her Unique skill.
Sigesi conjured a mountain of demonic and ice law energy, fashioned like an inverted cone. Unlike the last time she summoned it, the mountain was far smaller.
However, despite its smaller size, the sheer power it possessed was leagues what it was before.
In response, Arthur raised Lostvayne and calmly coalesces all his powers into the blade.
Time and Destruction law energy, augmented with Null’s power. Space and Gravity Law energy, along with his silver aura and Anti-Divinity. He activated his Progenitor Authority and muttered a small chant under his breath.
"The power of time shall accelerate.
And destruction shall end your very existence."
The massive mountain Sigesi conjured began spinning rapidly as it descended towards Arthur, who swung Lostvayne in response.
"Pseudo-Authority of Ice’ [Great Ice Calamity: Inversed Mountain.]"
"Be reduced to Nothing: Extreme Nothingness."
The combination of his various powers was released in a massive silver slash that tore through space as it flew towards the inverted mountain and collided with it in an instant.
In an explosion of unparalleled violence, the mountain shattered into countless fragments, each piece disintegrating into nothingness as it was consumed by Arthur’s Null, while the powerful ice and demonic energy that had formed the mountain fizzled out into oblivion.
All that remained in the aftermath was a light blue cloud of icy smoke hanging in the air and sparkling ice dust that cascaded gently to the ground.
Despite having her attack destroyed, Sigesi wasn’t bothered. She calmly spun her weapon around and stabbed it into the ground before asking.
"Did you get it?"
Arthur who heard her loud and clear despite their physical distance, frowned lightly and shook his head.
"No."
To put context to his actions, Arthur had been attempting to replicate the ’Slashing Variation’ of his Extreme Nothingness. The same one he had used against Duskhand a week ago.
Unlike then, when he had just chaotically mashed his energies together in the heat of the moment, he arranged everything impeccably and perfectly blended the different powers together.
However, the slash he had just unleashed right now did not even reach half the power of what he had used against Duskhand.
"It makes no sense..."
The boy sighed as he unsummoned Lostvayne while Sigesi did the same with her sword before speaking.
"You seemed to have levelled up quite a bit."
The woman had taken Arthur as her new favourite sparring partner—inadvertently freeing another unfortunate Demon General from torture—and as she had sparred with him before the major battle of a week ago, she was able to discern the difference in Arthur’s power.
"I did get in a few Levels before Duskhand came to spoil the show. But speaking of Levelling...you’re almost a completely different person."
Arthur’s reply and his description of Sigesi was due to the woman’s current level that had risen by leaps and bounds.
She was currently an Intermediate Sovereign, as opposed to the Superior Legendary she was at when Arthur met her two months ago.
"I purposely kept myself at that level, that’s why it seems like I increased by a lot all of a sudden."
Sigesi explained that the reason why she was a Superior Legendary, and had been on for over five years, was because she had sealed her own power and temporarily cut off her path of advancement.
Her reason for doing so was so she could take time to refine her energy over and over to increase the quality. She succeeded in doing so and this made her energy quality 3.5 times higher than the average Legendary Realm.
Well, the average Elder-Breed Demon Legendary, to be exact.
As her energy quality was already higher than normal Demon Breeds on default, it had taken her longer to achieve this. She was taking something that was already high in quality and improving that quality even further.
The higher the quality, the harder it was to improve, so Sigesi had taken quite a bit of time to do so.
Compared to the average joe, Sigesi’s energy quality was about 5-6 times better.
It was only when she had confirmed that further refinement was impossible, that she released her self-imposed seal and advanced to Sovereignty.
Now then, during the five years she spent suck at the peak of the Superior Legendary realm, she had killed numerous existences and had accumulated a fair amount of EXP.
So all that EXP came pouring in when she became a Sovereign, so before the battle a week ago, she was Level 833.
During the battle of Last week, she got into a bit of a precarious situation where she was surrounded by multiple Sovereigns and this gave her the final push she needed to break through to the intermediate realm and her level spiked up to Level 855.
’To have that much accumulated EXP all at once...just how many did she kill? What’s more, she would not have been getting any exp from beings below half her level...’
Arthur was sure Sigesi herself did not know the answer to that question. Besides, he did not have any issues with her having killed tens, possibly, hundreds of thousands—she had been fighting wars since she was 18 after all.
"With the way you’re going, you’d be a Transcendent soon."
His remark had her raising a brow in question, but after a second of thought, she realised why Arthur had said that and why he was so confident that the Level 900 barrier would not impede her.
Hearing his words, Alvey thought about his current level. He was only 9 levels away from reaching the maximum limit of a Lower Existence.
Upon getting to Level 1000, all that would be left was for him to exuviate and then deify.
’I’d like to end this war before that happens.’
"How’s Aravae?"
Arthur’s question snapped him out of his thoughts and Alvey was momentarily surprised to see the amount of concern in his eyes.
’Well, she did take a hit for him so I suppose that’s normal.’
"She’s okay. The divinity in her system has been completely expelled so we’d return her to Rhigor for full treatment.
It may take a month for her to recover."
Aravae Magmyar was a High-Rank Demon Transcendent, and she had been gravely wounded by Divine Human General Duskhand last week.
Duskhand’s divinity was powerful, even more so than other Divines and his attack had damaged some of Aravae’s internal organs.
Thanks to Arthur using ’Stasis’ on her, the wounds did not get worse and she was eventually able to be taken for treatment. However, the powerful divinity that had infected her was preventing the healers from being able to regenerate her internal organs, as such, they had to expel it first.
Care was needed as the Divinity had leeched into her system, so it had taken a while for them to get every inch of it out.
The Magmyar family was grateful that Arthur had helped, regardless of if Duskhand had only been at Cheigh because of him.
"They aren’t highly ranked Noble Demons, and they don’t have any Demon Kings in their family line. Aravae is one of the most talented in their younger generations and their Family head is grooming her to one day become a Race Queen."
"That’s a whole lot of expectations on her head."
Arthur sighed as he thought about the Demoness, before putting on his jacket and continuing.
"I’m heading to Githal now. A friend of mine has been wanting to see me for the past week and I’m afraid she might just come here if I ignore her any lon-!"
"...what is it, Arthur?"
Alvey quickly narrowed his eyes in suspicion when Arthur stopped speaking abruptly and snapped his head in a seemingly random direction.
The response that the boy gave, however, was one he most certainly didn’t expect.
"gods."
