Chapter 478: The Law Comprehension Marathon II
When Alvey and the others came over to where Arthur was, the first thing they encountered was the spatial barrier Arthur had created.
Beatrix raised a brow in surprise when she looked at it, but no one else noticed this little action as they were more concerned about other things.
Like the enormous amount of Time Law energy which was gathering in the room, enough that every single Transcendent in Militopolis knew something was happening here.
It went without saying that they came over to check it out, and McEnda had to go out to explain the situation to them.
The newly arriving High-Rank Demons and other Race Transcendents were dumbfounded when they were told that the phenomenon was a result of one person’s doing.
One of the High-Rank Demons who dabbled with time was completely unable to do a single thing with the law, even with his comprehensions that were nearing the 50% mark.
It was as if all the nearby time law energy had been dominated by someone else and no one was allowed to manipulate it without their permission.
Which was pretty much what Arthur had done...unconsciously.
Back on Alvey’s side, the man saw that the barrier Arthur had created was one to contain his law energy and keep out threats, but the first feature didn’t seem to be doing its job.
It was only when Alvey walked into the barrier’s range with Evan, that he realised that the barrier was indeed doing its job, as what they were sensing outside, was nothing more than 30% of the actual amount of time law energy gathering around Arthur.
Even some Half-Deities couldn’t gather this much time law energy in such a short time.
The time law energy present was so dense and thick that Evan found it hard to breathe after only a minute and had to run out of the barrier.
Alvey stayed longer, infusing spatial law energy into his eyes as he observed the space within a 1-metre radius of Arthur’s body.
’It’s stagnant...? No...space is stagnant by default, however, energies can still flow.’
He added a bit of light law energy and immediately, he discerned what was happening.
’This section of space is frozen. The light emitted is also frozen, hence all I can see is this frozen image of him when he sat down and not his current state.’
Standing in front of Arthur, he could see a book on a table behind him.
However, when he moved to the side and looked at the table, he saw that it had been blown over and the book was now on the floor.
This allowed him to conclude, that right now, Arthur’s body was stopped in time.
The boy had halted his own time flow.
’Still, the time law energy is continuously flowing into him...is this how people with Time affinity comprehend the law of time?’
Alvey didn’t need a second to understand this was not the case and the current occurrence was simply because Arthur was built different.
Heaving a sigh, he turned around and exited the barrier, casting a side glance at Lostvayne which was stabbed into the ground exactly 1.5 metres away from Arthur.
No one needed to tell him that the sword was on Auto-defence mode, and if he made any ’funny’ moves, it would automatically stab him.
Its innate destruction power, plus Arthur’s residual Null energy within it were enough to aid it tear through Alvey’s durability and getting hit by Lostvayne was never a good thing.
When he got out, he noticed that the others there had hardly moved. He could sense McEnda was still within the clustered presences of High Rank Demons as well.
It was then that Beatrix came up to him and posed a question.
"Alvey...how long were you in there?"
"hmm?"
He felt her question was strange, and momentarily glanced at Evan who was drinking what appeared to be a magic potion before answering.
"Not too long. About 5 minutes or so."
"..."
"Kpftt!!"
Evan spat out his potion and looked at Alvey dumbfoundedly, while Beatrix nodded to herself while muttering under her breath.
"What’s wrong?"
Although Alvey posed the question to Beatrix, the girl was lost in her thoughts and didn’t answer him. His answer came from Artemisia who held up her wristwatch and spoke.
"It’s barely been 30 seconds since you went in there."
"...what?"
Such was Alvey’s dumbfounded reply.
He looked at his own watch and saw that it was now about 4 minutes ahead of Artemisia’s. Coupling this with Evan’s reaction and Beatrix’s questioning, it wasn’t too hard to understand what was happening.
"Time Dilation? Time passes a lot slower inside that barrier."
That was the only logical explanation for why his 5 minutes inside there were just 30 seconds outside.
◇ ◇ ◇
Regardless of whatever he wanted to say to Arthur, Alvey knew he could only wait for the boy to snap out of his trance, and he didn’t know when that was going to happen.
He only hoped it was before they began their plans for Plomux.
Evan, Artemisia and Beatrix left Militopolis for Northern Gledea, where they had a little bit of exploration done.
Back in Militopolis, Alvey assigned some Mid Ranked Demons as guards to watch Arthur’s room, and a week later, a Transcendent joined them.
Naturally, this was Aravae whom Arthur had gone to Cheigh with.
She had completely recovered from all her wounds and when she returned to Militopolis, she noticed a lot of foreign Transcendents snooping around the city.
Upon reporting to Alvey, it turned out that these guys were curious why there was a ridiculous amount of Time Law energy surging towards the Demon Army HQ and despite being told to back off multiple times, they still couldn’t hold their curiosity.
Some of them had been trying to spy on what Arthur was doing, even sending out pulses of law energy which could potentially disrupt Arthur’s comprehension.
The real problem here was the fact that faster than these actions of theirs could mess with Arthur, one of the defensive artifacts lying on the floor around the boy could be triggered and after the sight of what he had done with Cattleya’s Grenade Launcher, Alvey did NOT want anything getting triggered.
Aravae then offered to join the Demons acting as guards, and though Alvey had places he wanted to send Aravae to in preparation for Plomux, he just sighed and let her do as she wished.
When he and the Demoness got to the location, they were surprised to discover a change had occurred.
Arthur was no longer seated on a chair but floating in the air, his body curled up in a fetal position.
What’s more, Alvey could now sense spatial law energy gathering in the room as well.
Heck, Arthur was even trying to absorb the spatial law energy he emanated passively.
The boy was using the method of Law Comprehension that Lucifer had taught him, which was very effective when comprehending laws that were either closely intertwined with others or had opposites.
In this case, the two Laws he was simultaneously comprehending were Time and Space.
Granted, his spatial comprehensions were barely at the 30% mark, but this was still enough for him to achieve his desired effect.
The temporal and spatial law energies bathed his soul, half and half, intertwining a little at their collision point.
If it was in the case of opposing laws, like Light and Darkness, then there would have been a collision and repulsion instead.
But since Time and Space were closely intertwined, the law energies intertwined instead, causing the attraction force from the Origin Core in his soul to increase.
The bits and pieces of the laws’ knowledge were being pieced together, saturating the law energy within Arthur’s body and the Pseudo-Origin Core he had, slowly became full.
◇ ◇ ◇
Another week passed, and Aravae was now able to sense the spatial law energy being drawn in without having to enter the room, and along with that, she could sense the laws of Gravity and Destruction as well.
It seemed that Arthur’s ’Law Comprehension State’ was causing him to unconsciously pull in the energies of laws he was best at.
By the time they entered the third week, Aravae could see the energies of the laws of Time, Space, Gravity, Destruction, and Extinction revolving around Arthur’s floating body.
If there was any consolation, it was the fact that the amount of Time Law energy he was drawing in from the atmosphere had reduced drastically, so Alvey guessed he’d be ’waking up’ soon.
Finally, his body stopped soaking up law energy like a sponge soaking up water, and the commotion he was causing across Militopolis came to an end.
He didn’t wake up yet, though.
Arthur just floated in the air silently, with a thin silver layer of energy surrounding his body.
When Evan who had been exploring Gledea with Artemisia and Beatrix in the past 3 weeks came over, the Rogue Hero nearly jumped out of his skin as his Danger Sense skill blared alarms in his head.
He expected that Alvey and the others would sense the ’threat’ he was sensing, but he saw that none of them noticed anything strange.
It was then that a small bird flew in from an open window, flying around the room and having its wing brush Arthur’s skin in the process.
Right before their very eyes, the silvery energy around Arthur took on a crimson hue and lashed out, turning the bird into dust in a split second, right before their eyes.
It went without saying that they were all gobsmacked by this occurrence.
Arthur’s power of Null had reached a whole new level of potency since his comprehensions of Destruction had increased exponentially in the past 3 weeks.
It seemed like a short time for an exponential increase, but it should not be forgotten that within the barrier Arthur created, time passed slower by a factor of 10.
So, 1 minute on the outside was 10 minutes on the inside.
As such, while it seemed like Arthur had only been comprehending laws for 3 weeks, he had actually been doing so for around 7.5 months.
His body, however, was stopped in time, and his consciousness was in a semi-slumbering state, so he had not experienced all that ’Time’.
His hair hadn’t grown even half an inch, his clothes did not get dirty and his cells did not age.
