Chapter 477: The Law Comprehension Marathon I
Artemisia shrugged nonchalantly, not too bothered by Arthur’s response as she continued walking forward.
"Anyway, where did you and Evan go? There’s this irritating scent of perfume on you two."
"Huh? Really?"
Arthur sniffed himself but he could barely perceive the scent she was referring to. He muttered something about having to take a shower and redirected their route to his suite as he replied to her question.
"We encountered some plant succubi."
"? Oh, that subspecies of dryad.
...
Did you...?"
"No."
The silver-haired teen replied to her unspoken question as he took off his jacket, considering if he should just straight up burn the clothes when she asked another.
"Have you done it before?"
"It’s scary how this conversation keeps changing tangent, but no. I have not."
"Really?"
Artemisia ignored the first half of his statement and focused on his negative reply. An expression of surprise found its way to her face, and she spoke.
"With a face like yours, I assumed girls would be throwing themselves onto you."
She spoke about her assumptions based on her objective assessment of Arthur’s appearance. Clearly, the boy was handsome, and he was also very sociable too.
Arthur agreed with that, self-aware that his appearance could be considered...’flawless’. His features made him a magnet for attention, particularly from the opposite gender.
Unfortunately, he spent the first 13-14 years of his life not giving two fucks about romance so he didn’t respond to any of the advances made towards him.
When he said this to Artemisia, she took note of the time frame he spoke about and asked.
"What made you change your mind after 13-14 years?"
"Would you believe that the guy who says he "doesn’t care about romance", ended up falling for someone?"
Clearly, this ’guy’ he was talking about was none other than himself.
"Oh, so you have a crush. Is it unrequited?"
"No, it’s not. That’s precisely where the problem lies."
Artemisia had question marks floating over her head as she tilted it to the side in question, confused as to how that was a problem.
A few moments of careful consideration allowed her to arrive at the answer.
"Could it be that the target of your feelings is someone you’ve known for a while and has had feelings for you, but since you were doing your ’No Romance shtick’, you didn’t respond, only to end up falling for them in the end and now things are awkward because you don’t know how to tell them you’ve fallen for them?"
"..."
Her explanation hit the nail on the head and drove it deep into the wood. Deep enough that Arthur gaped at her in shock for a good five seconds before he asked.
"Are you psychic or something?"
"I don’t have any abilities related to what you’d consider’ Psychic’, but maybe I could try acquiring some."
Artemisia wasn’t just saying that for fun; the girl could actually manipulate her own Existential Evolution to gain those kinds of abilities if she wanted.
Arthur chuckled a bit at her reply as they stepped into his room where he took the chance to shower and get rid of the scent the dryads left on him.
Artemisia borrowed the other shower in the suite and changed her outfit, having lost the motivation to head to the gym.
The two headed to the restaurant where he had taken Rachel before, had a meal and discussed a lot of things before heading back to her room where they saw Evan lying deflated on the couch
Beatrix was on the bed, humming to herself as she jotted down things in her notebook.
"Looks like someone’s had a rough time."
"I can relate."
Artemisia spoke and nodded with a sombre expression, walking up to Evan and tapping his shoulder as she asked.
"First time, eh?"
"..."
The Rogue Hero nodded in affirmation, and Artemisia proceeded to offer him not words of comfort but words of pragmatism and resignation.
"Don’t worry, you’d get used to it."
"But I don’t wanna get used to it!"
"Haha, you don’t have a choice."
Artemisia saw that Beatrix was satisfied with what details she had extracted from Evan after such a ’short time’.
It was over an hour, but compared to the hours she had spent being hounded for advice despite having zero relationship experience, it was short indeed.
She hounded Beatrix to dress up so they could return to Southern Gledea with Arthur and Evan.
It had been 3 days since the Welcoming Ceremony for the new additions to the Army, so the two goddesses were clear to return to Militopolis without the risk of encountering any random High-Rank Demons.
When they got back, Alvey called them up to his office and the instant they entered the office, Arthur stopped in his tracks.
Alvey, McEnda, Artemisia, Beatrix, Evan and him.
The six of them were in the room alone, and it was as if some sort of ’condition’ was met as Arthur just silently stood there and gazed forward blankly.
Naturally, they all noticed this and called out to him but he didn’t even hear them.
Suddenly, his lips curled upwards and he burst out into laughter.
"I fucking knew it!"
Arthur had noticed a change in the Parallel Paths again, however, this time, it wasn’t his Parallel Paths that changed but the other five.
While his had been reducing slowly over time, theirs had reduced all at once, as if something had started and the cogs had been set in motion for whatever event his Pseudo-Authority had been trying to tell him about that involved them all.
’Would I be able to figure it out if I had comprehensions in the laws of fate and destiny as well?’
He asked himself this before shaking his head and saying that ’what ifs’ didn’t matter now.
Arthur did not know this, but that at that point in time, somewhere else in the Galaxy, a certain Planetary Consciousness was joining the Candidate Selection with Dual Candidacy.
Even if he knew, there was nothing he would be able to do about that.
What he could do, however, was to improve his time law comprehensions so what he was being told about the law would make much more sense to him.
Right now, Arthur’s time law comprehensions were at 59%.
It was around the same level as Alvey and McEnda’s comprehensions in the laws of Light and Darkness respectively.
But that still was not enough for him to get a clear picture of what his Pseudo-Authority was trying to tell him.
So, all he had to do was increase said comprehension level.
The moment he made that decision, the energy of the law of time thrummed in ’joy’ as it began gathering around him as if telling him to start his law comprehension right there and then.
Naturally, he couldn’t pull that off in Alvey’s office.
As for Alvey, the man’s eyes had widened in shock as if his vision wasn’t glitching, he was seeing faint projections of past events that had occurred in this office manifesting around Arthur.
He glanced and McEnda and seeing the Archdemon’s confused face, he knew it wasn’t just him seeing this.
"Alvey, what did you call us for?"
Arthur’s voice seemed a bit strange, like it was devoid of emotions. Others found this weird but only he knew it was a little side effect of suppressing his Pseudo-Authority’s power.
"...I wanted to speak about our plans going forward—the Agenda for Plomux."
"Oh? That..."
The silver haired progenitor placed a hand on his chin and sunk into his thoughts for a few seconds before saying.
"Round everything up into a Memory Gem and keep it for me, I’d go through it when I’m done."
"Done with wh-?"
**VUP!
By the time Alvey could even complete his question, Arthur had already teleported out of the office.
◇ ◇ ◇
The first thing Arthur did the moment he entered the room was to look at the time and date, before moving on to deploy a spatial barrier around himself with cosmic energy.
The barrier was not too large. It was circular and had a diameter of just six metres.
He took out a chair from his subspace and placed it in the centre of the room, before taking a seat and using his spatial law energy to reconfigure the barrier and make it run on ambient energy.
Opening his subspace once more, he pulled out some Artifacts Cattleya had given him, along with a few things from Lucifer’s treasury and placed them around him.
He was using them as...security, to prevent any disturbances during what he was about to do.
Then he took off his contacts, placed them in their case and then leaned back on the chair before taking a deep breath.
At this point, the dense concentration of law energy that was trying to rush into his body had already begun distorting the space around him, and if it got too much, it could even crumble the barrier Arthur just created.
However, it was never going to get to that point as Arthur stopped suppressing his Pseudo-Authority and allowed it to begin sucking in Time Law energy.
The time law energy entered his body and used it as a conduit to flow into the Pseudo-Origin Core within his soul.
Arthur slowly closed his eyes, falling into a trance as his Law Comprehension Marathon began.
