Chapter 452: Artemisia and Beatrix
"""???"""
Arthur, McEnda and Sigesi had dumbfounded expressions on their face as they saw the girl suddenly hug Alvey, and what’s more, the man had actually let it happen.
He was fast enough to either catch her mid-air or simply step aside, so the fact that she succeeded meant he had ’allowed’ it to happen.
"Oh, my goodness, Alvey...she’s just a teen..."
"A teen?!"
McEnda exclaimed when he heard Arthur’s sudden statement, and he turned towards Alvey with a dark expression as he asked.
"You like them...’that’ young?"
"What the fuck is wrong with both of you?"
Alvey’s brow twitched in annoyance as he spoke and immediately, Arthur and McEnda burst out into laughter.
It was plain as day from his expression that despite knowing who this white-haired girl was, Alvey was far from happy to see her.
The man peeled her off him and held her up by her shoulder as he asked.
"What are you doing in this World, Beatrix?"
"I came to see you!"
Her reply was instantaneous, and her friend who saw this sighed with exasperation and facepalmed. Alvey’s brow seemed to twitch in annoyance once more, however, the girl gave him a toothy grin, acting as if she could not notice this.
Seeing this, McEnda waved his hand and used gravity law energy to move her away from Alvey and drop her beside Arty before asking.
"So...an explanation?"
"Yeah, McEnda and I are very curious as to what the story here is."
Arthur concurred with the Archdemon’s request, but before Alvey could even say a word, the white-haired girl whom he referred to as Beatrix suddenly exclaimed.
"McEnda?!"
She turned towards the Archdemon and jumped over to where he was, before grabbing his hand and shaking him as she introduced herself.
"You’re Alvey’s best friend, right? My name’s Beatrix, Alvey’s future wife. Nice to meet you."
"..."
The entire area turned silent after her words and McEnda slowly removed the girl’s hands from his before turning to Alvey with a questioning glance.
"Self-Proclaimed. Don’t forget to add Self-Proclaimed."
The man seemed exhausted; clearly, he was tired of repeating the same thing over and over again.
"Beatrix!"
Arty called out to Beatrix as if trying to remind her of the fact that they were both gods in the midst of powerful demons who could all kill them with a single strike.
The girl, however, didn’t seem to care anymore, seemingly confident that no harm would come to them anymore.
In fact, she even pinched the tips of her skirt and curtsied before reintroducing herself more politely.
"Like I stated earlier, my name is Beatrix and I happen to fancy your friend, Alvey. As much as I would like my feelings to be mutual, he unfortunately hasn’t reciprocated them yet."
"Rephrase that statement and remove that ’Yet’ from there."
Alvey instantly retorted but Beatrix didn’t appear bothered by it. She turned towards him and questioned him calmly.
"You’d really take away that small semblance of hope from me?"
"I’d like to delete the concept of hope from your brain."
"Ow...that hurts."
Despite saying so, she did not appear to be hurt. In fact, she even seemed a bit happy and sensing her ’joy’ Alvey quickly figured that the fact he had humoured her for too long.
"You have not answered my question. What are you doing here, Beatrix?"
Before the girl could cook up a reply, Arthur clapped his hands to attract their attention and then made a suggestion.
"How about we take this conversation elsewhere? And Wrap it up quick too, I do need to be in Tolgue soon."
His words reminded them of the fact that they were currently just a bit outside Militopolis’ borders and if any Demons on patrol were to pass, it’d be a hassle to deal with.
Alvey snapped his fingers and conjured a Tier 6 Spatial Spell; Gate, which everyone entered, including the two goddesses.
They didn’t have much of a choice here.
The gate led straight into Alvey’s office and after everyone sat down, the man put up a spatial isolation barrier around the room before speaking.
"I don’t know why you came here, but I’d tell you one thing. You’re going back."
"Huh? I came all the way here for you, no way I’m gonna go back easily!"
"That’s not my problem.
I cannot have you buzzing around like you did on Omahiri."
Hearing the name of the familiar planet, McEnda raised a brow in light suspicion as his brain began deducing how Alvey and Beatrix knew each other.
"What if I’m not ’buzzing around’?"
"What?"
In response to Alvey’s question, Beatrix proceeded to make the most outrageous suggestion she possibly could.
"Although I’m just an Epic, I am far stronger than any Epic Realm Demon you can put before me."
Arty did not even need her to finish speaking before deducing the meaning behind her words and her reaction was loud.
"Are you insinuating that you want to join this Planet’s War? And side with the Gozonians?!"
"I’m not ’insinuating’ anything, Arty. I’m blatantly stating my desire to join the war on Alvey’s side."
Now this had even Alvey stupefied as he didn’t see this coming at all.
"Beatrix, have you finally gone mad?!"
"Nope. Alvey doesn’t want me disturbing him so I decided to make myself useful to him. Pretty simple."
There was nothing ’Simple’ about her words at all.
"It’s one thing if you were a human, but you are from the god race. Even if Alvey was high on elven weed and decided to accept you, do you think that the other Demon Generals would be okay with that?"
McEnda questioned Beatrix, his piercing gaze on her making her flinch instinctively as the pressure of a Transcendent bore down on her.
"Do you think some of them would not kill you on sight? Alvey and I are fairly tame, but other High Ranked Demons are not so ’accommodating’ as we are.
If Arthur here wasn’t the one who discovered you but another High-Ranked Demon, you’d already be a cold corpse six feet under by now. Daughter of god Queen Xagna."
The girl’s lips twisted into a frown when McEnda called out her name and Arthur slid over to where Sigesi was before asking.
"Who’s that?"
"god Queen Xagna is this universe’s Main Entity who governs Space and Time."
"Ohh..."
The boy pulled out shades from his subspace and put them on, along with a bucket of popcorn which Sigesi took a handful of before pointing at the black-haired girl and continuing.
"She’s probably god King Delgasso’s daughter. Artemisia. It’s said that the two are as close as their parents."
Arthur was genuinely surprised to hear that the two of them were the children of god Race Rulers.
"Are their parents part of the Aramis faction?"
"No. god Queen Xagna has no lack of Prime Worlds under her domain and despite being one of the top dogs of an Intergalactic Hegemon on par with Gozon, god King Delgasso is known for NOT dipping his hands into wars to occupy planets."
It turned out that this girl Beatrix was just like Arthur in a way, the child of one of the Universe’s top powerhouses.
’Her mother is a goddess of Time and Space, that explains her powers. Guess it runs in the family.’
He thought this to himself as he studied the mass of time power lying dormant within the girl’s body. It was ’average’ when compared to him, but from a normal person’s perspective, it was enormous.
She also had spatial power and was skilled enough in using it that she could teleport kilometre-wide distances multiple times in quick succession and even create small portals—all things that should honestly normally leave an Intermediate Epic drained of energy considering she was also using Future Sight to anticipate Arthur’s movements as well.
’Still, this is the first time I used it and it worked as I wanted.’
Arthur thought about the Pseudo-Authority technique which he had used to alter the contents of the ’Future’ Beatrix had seen; Temporal Mirage.
It allowed him to create illusory future events, effectively tricking the target time manipulator’s future sight with false information.
A technique of the law meant to deal with fellow Time Manipulators.
However, like all things, there were constraints.
Arthur could not alter the ’Future Sight’ of someone with a higher comprehension or Authority rank than his.
’It’s still very useful though...’
"god King Delgasso is known as the ’Benevolent One’. He maintains neutrality and has no feuds with other races, even Devils and Demons.
The other god Rulers don’t like that, but there’s nothing they can do to make him change his stance as he’s pretty much the strongest god below the god Emperor.
Only people like Demon King McEnda II and Westley, along with the Supreme Infernal Devil King can match his strength."
While Arthur and Sigesi were chatting, the tense conversation between Beatrix and McEnda continued.
"I understand you and Alvey are ’different’, and that’s why I even dared to come here in the first pla-."
"That does not matter. What matters is that you should be returning to whatever planet you came from."
Alvey didn’t even let her finish before shutting her off and telling her to return. He didn’t want to have to deal with whatever complications would arise if it was discovered that she was present here.
"Beatrix, you’ve heard him. Let’s gooooo-"
Artemisia who was about to grab Beatrix suddenly felt her movements gradually slow until they ceased altogether as Beatrix halted her time to keep her quiet.
Arthur scrutinized her time stop and muttered ’6/10; she’s still conscious and would break out soon’ to himself before returning his attention to his popcorn.
