Chapter 458: January to March, 531st Divine Year
In the weeks that followed after the little trip to the Fake Divine Factory in Aldwell, the Aramisian-Demon War continued, but there were no big battles like the one of January 6.
Most of the fights that occurred on Gledea were just small skirmishes here and there.
Arthur had pretty much moved into the Noble Baron Hotel in Tolgue, given he spent 80% of his time there. He hadn’t gone back to Southern Gledea for over a month.
He was either with his mercenary friends, spending time with Rachel, or he was with Artemisia and Beatrix.
Arthur had extracted some more information from Ger and was investigating some other Fake Divine Factories, trying to find the one where Ger’s successor was.
If Arthur could take out Ger’s successor, then it’d be a serious blow to the Aramisians as the majority of the core knowledge on creating Fake Divines was held by him.
In the small skirmishes that happened on the new North-South border regions of Gledea, Arthur participated as the ’Silver Summoner’—his aim being to get more EXP for levelling up.
He ended up meeting some people on Beatrix’s Mother’s Hitlist and did the girl a favour by taking them out and having their Divine Sparks for Dinner.
When he wasn’t doing that, then he was dragging Artemisia and Beatrix along with him into dungeons.
90% of the time, this usually ended with Beatrix whining about how she wanted to go see Alvey, but Arthur usually ignored her.
In his bid to find EXP for Levelling Up, he ended up entering into a Dungeon formed from the ruins of a lost Aramisian civilisation and they got stuck there in a separate small Dimensional Realm for a week.
During that time, Arthur also studied Artemisia’s abilities which he had been curious about. He discovered the secret to her power and why she was able to somehow increase her Existence Realm stage despite being under the effect of his Progenitor Authority.
Artemisia’s powers were those of Evolution.
She and Beatrix could manipulate ’Law Essence’, a watered-down imitation of Universal Law energy created with magic power.
Both were High-goddesses so their energy quality was higher than normal, and such was their strength and potential; hence why they could use this.
What Artemisia had done to increase her Existence Realm Stage was a temporary Evolution.
Since the process of increasing one’s Existence Realm and progressing to higher levels was an Evolutionary process, she could manipulate it with her powers of Evolution; albeit on a limited scale.
She could increase her stage to a higher one to boost her power, and though there were side effects, they were negligible.
A single health potion or cast of healing magic and she could handle the body strain that came with the boost.
Just as she could ’Evolve’ to a higher Realm, she could also ’Devolve’ it, but there wasn’t much of a use for this on herself.
The real gem hidden in these powers of hers was the fact that she could apply this evolution effect to others. However, the effects were lesser.
For instance, since she was an Intermediate, her powers could give her strength somewhere in the Limbo between the Epic and Legendary Realms.
The gap between the two realms was too much to bridge due to her current level, but if she became a Superior Epic, then she would be able to boost herself to Inferior Legendary.
If she was an Inferior Legendary, she could give herself up to Superior Legendary powers.
But on another person, she’d only be able to take them to the Intermediate Stage. Also, the bodily and soul strain that came afterwards, was higher. It was still easily treatable, though.
While her Evolution was weaker on others, her Devolution was NOT.
She was capable of achieving something similar to Arthur’s Existence Realm suppression, without the limitation to Divines.
Currently, Artemisia was Level 615, and if her target was >50 levels above her, then the Devolution was only temporary.
But if the target was <50 levels below her, then she could permanently Devolve them, and Arthur had her show him this with many monsters in the dungeon.
She turned a great many Superior Grandmaster monsters into Inferior Stages.
Arthur was very intrigued by this and almost tempted to use ’Core Absorption’ on her.
Despite their rough start, Arthur actually got along with Artemisia quite well. At least, more so than he did with Beatrix.
But like he had stated earlier, Artemisia was his main interest and Beatrix was more of a side curiosity.
She didn’t seem to like him stating this, but like always, Arthur ignored her rant.
Just as Arthur was studying Artemisia, she was doing the same to him, trying to gain more details on his Progenitor abilities.
The boy didn’t seem to even make an effort to hide anything from her, however, no matter how much she tried, she could not gain any insight into the Working Process of his Progenitor Authority.
Arthur knew this, as only Progenitors themselves truly understood how their Authorities worked.
What’s more, only the basics were similar, and each one worked with different methods to achieve the same goal.
So even if you knew how the Authority of another Progenitor worked, it didn’t mean you’d understand Arthur’s.
Artemisia was dumbfounded to discover Arthur possessing divinity even purer than hers, which was a lot considering she was a goddess.
She also discovered his Anti-Divinity, something that gave her Existential fear the first time she saw it.
What baffled her the most was the fact that his Pseudo-Authorities were gained from Law Comprehension and not bestowed as everyone else believed.
When she asked him about this, all he said was that it was a Progenitor perk; not even bothering to hide the fact that he was the Progenitor godslayer.
In fact, Arthur wished she sent this information back to her father and let her father spread it amongst his contacts so he could increase his influence in this Universe.
She was a bit scared of him at first, but the boy simply laughed and told her he had no reason to use his powers on her.
Him being the Progenitor godslayer didn’t mean he was going to go around killing gods like a madman. At least, Artemisia and Beatrix hadn’t done anything to antagonize him or piss him off.
Besides, he wasn’t foolish to kill the daughters of two of the most powerful beings in this Universe, knowing fully well he’d be a prime suspect.
He was trying to build Universal Influence and not become a Wanted Man.
When Arthur was done understanding Artemisia’s powers as much as he wanted, the boy proceeded to destroy the entire ruined city-sized dungeon, inadvertently wiping out an entire brigade of Aramisian soldiers who were trying to look for lost relics to aid in the battle against the demons.
He then returned to Militopolis, dropped Artemisia and Beatrix off there, and sparred with Sigesi a bit before making his way to the Whitboro Wharf.
There he joined up with the Demon Admiral Barron Agriker who came back to Gledea to get the last of his stuff and followed the man to Zefesh.
Unlike in Gledea which was relatively calm with only a few occasional skirmishes, Zefesh was in a full-blown War State.
He met with the Fourth of the Four-Star Generals, the only female Demon amongst them. She and Sylvan were the ones spearheading the battle on Zefesh the same way Alvey and McEnda did on Gledea.
Barron launched attacks from sea to deal with the Aramisian Navy there and Arthur joined up with him in the Navy, helping them with a lot of Anti-Divinity Missiles.
Those missiles sunk a lot of Aramisian ships and sent tens of thousands to watery graves.
When they took out the major bases and docked, Arthur joined the land forces and used his summons to wreak havoc.
Using the Divine Dragon Romrintet against the Dragons of Zefesh was very effective in killing morale, while Stelan and the other godslayers had the time of their lives massacring Fake Divines.
Stelan became infamous amongst the Aramisians.
Arthur’s support to Sylvan enabled the Wood Demon to kill some more Aramisian Transcendents, and Arthur gained a lot of Divine Sparks from descendants of some gods.
However, the Aramisians still did not know the reason why Arthur eviscerated these energy cores from the corpses of his foes.
This was because, although they had confirmed from the Triton’s Ark and Duskhand’s visit to Cheigh that Arthur was NOT a Demon, they still didn’t know he was a ’godslayer’.
The Transcendents who knew of matters in the Interstellar Stage, recognized Arthur and Stelan to be part of the new ’Anti-Divine’ race that had cropped up over the past few decades but they didn’t know what they were called.
I mean, even Stelan didn’t know what he was till he met Arthur.
Besides, Arthur’s powers were greater than all records they had from members of these races.
They suspected that Arthur was a ’Slayer’ but no one off Aramis had any concrete proof.
