Chapter 460: Spatiotemporal Displacement
Premier’s Office
Militopolis
South Eastern Gledea
March 31st
531st Divine Year
"You’re saying you want to handle that serial killer case?"
"Yep."
Arthur replied to Alvey’s query as he played a game on the portable console in his hands while the Greater Demon was busy handling dozens of files.
"Alvey, where’s the box with the Zefesh reports?"
"Top left shelf, beside Artemisia."
Hearing her name, Artemisia looked to her side and jumped up lightly, pulling out the box from the shelf there and tossing it to McEnda who asked for it
"Here."
"Thanks."
She nodded in response and got back to helping Sigesi sort out their weapon inventories.
Bringing greater context to the situation, Alvey, McEnda and Sigesi were preparing their reports for the Summit, making sure to keep things concise.
They were arranging all the files cited in the summary and the reports they were to submit for review and Artemisia who turned out to be pretty good at handling paperwork, was assisting them.
On a side Note, Beatrix was simply seated on the couch beside Alvey, playing with her phone. Even she knew better than to try bugging Alvey at this point.
Alvey picked up the folder that had the details on the serial killer case, all the bios of the victims and the like before tossing it to Arthur who ’paused’ it mid-air before speaking.
"To be honest, I’m just curious about the person behind all of this and how they have been evading capture.
So, if another victim pops up within the week, I’d go over to try and see if Retrocognition would work."
Arthur grabbed the folder and tossed it into his subspace, intending to look it over later before giving it to any random Police officer he came across.
He then went back to his game while Alvey silently nodded and picked up his pen to begin writing something down.
The instant he put the pen down after finishing, his eyes widened in surprise as he, along with everyone else in the room, sensed a surge of law energy wash over the entire Militopolis.
"...What?"
Alvey got to his feet and spread out his demonic energy, enveloping the Mega-Military City with it and infusing a piece of his consciousness into it as he scanned to detect the source of the law energy surge.
The moment he found the source, he warped himself over to the area without a word.
◇ ◇ ◇
Alvey reappeared a dozen kilometres away, in the centre of what used to be a playground in the city. He had ordered for this district to be sealed off in preparation for the renovation of the structures here so it was empty.
As he didn’t hide his presence, all the High Ranked Demons in Militopolis sensed him heading towards the source of the law energy surge. Some intended to follow, but when they sensed McEnda moving as well, they silently stood back.
Upon arrival, Alvey looked around with narrowed eyes, not finding anything besides residual spatial law energy that filled the area.
"There’s nothing here?"
His shadow wriggled and two beings emerged from within—McEnda and Sigesi—who had arrived here using the former’s shadow teleportation.
Sigesi’s mere presence reduced the ambient temperature in the area and she stepped out of Alvey’s shadow just as the man posed a question to McEnda.
"McEnda, can you sense anything?"
"Nope. I’m coming up blank as well."
As he replied, Sigesi walked over to the edge of the abandoned playground, looking around to see if she could spot anything ’off’.
"Is this really the place that surge of law energy came from? There’s Nothing here."
"Funny, I had the same thoughts, Sigesi."
McEnda could also sense the huge amount of residual spatial law energy, mixed in with a bit of time and some other laws. However, there was nothing present here that could have caused that law energy surge.
’Seeing as there’s time law energy mixed in...’
"Where’s Arthur?"
"I’m already here."
Alvey turned his gaze in the direction of the voice and saw Arthur’s figure materialize, his gaze trained on the ground right beside Alvey.
’Weird...time is...distorted there?’
Besides that little temporal distortion, Arthur could not sense anything else wrong with this place, and that was exactly what was wrong.
’Such a huge law energy surge and there’s Nothing at the source? That just makes it even more suspicious.’
Arthur walked forward, his gaze fixed to that spot and there was no way that Alvey would miss his actions.
"Did you notice something?"
"I scanned the area. Something really did happen here.
The concentration of ambient cosmic energy here is off the charts.
It’s as if someone just opened a portal into outer space and let the unfiltered cosmic energy pour in for a second before closing it up."
That was the first anomaly that Arthur had noticed, and the reason he had taken a few more seconds to get here.
The ambient cosmic energy concentration in the area was absurdly high in this place, high enough that anyone in the Grandmaster Realm would faint just by being here.
Masters would be half dead and anything lower would straight up die.
Given that the energy levels were usually filtered by the planet’s atmosphere to the point where even newborns without a lick of power could survive, it was clear it was much higher now.
Hearing Arthur’s words about space, Alvey raised his hand and was about to use his Pseudo-Authority but Arthur stopped him.
"Hold on, let Beatrix come over first.
I think she may figure something..."
Alvey was curious what Arthur believed Beatrix would sense that they couldn’t, but he held his hand back and waited.
The girl arrived a few seconds later, breathing heavily as she complained.
"You guys are wayy too fast....ha...ha..."
"You’re the one who’s way too slow."
"Well, forgive me for not being able to teleport as far as you guys can in one go. At least I got here before Arty did."
After she spoke, Artemisia calmly walked into the playground via the broken gates, raising a brow in question when she heard her name being called.
"Am I needed?"
"Yeah. Boost Beatrix’s level for a bit. And Beatrix, scan the area with your power and tell me what you sense?"
The two goddesses did as Arthur said and when Beatrix was done scanning, she shook her head with a strange expression.
"It feels like something’s off, but I can’t tell what..."
Arthur nodded, not surprised at what she discovered. He then turned to Alvey and told the man to use his Pseudo-Authority.
The instant Alvey did so, Arthur activated his Pseudo Authority of Time as well and the two law energies swept across the area in an instant.
Within seconds they had discerned what had occurred here and had caused the surge of power they sensed.
"Spatial Displacement."
"Temporal Displacement."
""...""
Both looked at each other in silence as they simultaneously called out two similar yet very different things.
"What if it’s not one of the two, but a mix of both?"
McEnda suggested this and the two of them glanced at momentarily, before turning back to each other.
"Both?"
"Both.
With a nod of mutual agreement, they concurred.
""Both is good.""
McEnda just sighed and shook his head as he continued speaking, basing his assumption on the discovery of the two.
"So, something was sent through space-time from this place..."
"And what we sensed was the surge of energy that was released."
Sigesi chimed in, adding to his observation and Artemisia nodded in agreement. Alvey and Arthur, however, gave the three of them puzzled looks.
"Why are you guys automatically assuming whatever was ’Spatiotemporally’ displaced was displaced from here?"
When Arthur asked this, all eyes turned towards them with questioning gazes.
"You’re saying whatever was displaced was displaced to here? But if it was, we should have noticed it by now.
However, there’s nothing here."
"Unless it...or whoever it was, was able to leave before we got here."
Sigesi proposed a possibility following McEnda’s statement. However, Alvey dismissed it with a shake of his head.
"Nothing has left this place since I spread out my aura. I locked down the space and the lock is unbroken."
Beatrix’s eyes widened in surprise upon learning about the spatial lockdown, something she had not noticed until now.
"Wait, that means whatever was displaced here..."
"...is still here."
Arthur completed Beatrix’s words, before turning towards Alvey who had already solved the puzzle as to why they couldn’t see or sense anything.
Barely a second later, McEnda channelled a fraction of his demonic energy into the ground and his eyes glowed a bit.
Arthur smiled at this, recognizing that McEnda had also detected the anomaly.
"Concealment is a pretty powerful law. Skill created with it can also be pretty broken sometimes.
However, no matter how much concealment you apply, it’s very difficult and nigh impossible for someone in the third dimension to conceal the space your existence occupies, and the time flow your existence experiences."
Once he spoke, his, Alvey’s, and McEnda’s gazes simultaneously converged in a certain direction—the spot on the floor right beside where Alvey stood the instant he arrived.
The same spot Arthur had sensed a ’time distortion’ earlier.
Simultaneously, the trio unleashed the power of their Pseudo-Authorities onto that location. What happened next left the other three astonished.
The space there glitched and before their very eyes, the figure of a boy down on his knees shimmered into existence.
He sported short black hair with a bit of white highlights in it. There was some sand in his hair, probably from having tumbled onto the ground earlier.
The boy was wearing a dark grey t-shirt with a black undersleeve, and black jeans with similarly coloured sneakers.
A half mask obscured the lower portion of his face, leaving his complete facial features a mystery, while his grey eyes glinted as he tried to move his body but failed woefully.
Arthur had stopped him in time from the neck down, Alvey had frozen him in space and McEnda had tendrils of darkness binding his body to the ground.
Under the trio of constraints, even a Transcendent would find movement impossible, much less this Epic Realm boy.
With a cheerful smile on his face, Arthur slung his hand over the boy’s shoulder and spoke.
"Come on, dear friend, you just arrived. Why the rush to leave?"
In a sudden movement, Arthur’s hand blurred, striking the boy at the back of his head and rendering him unconscious.
Without hesitation, he hoisted the boy onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and suggested.
"Let’s take this somewhere more suitable for a chat."
