Chapter 512: Heading to the City [Bonus!!!]
💃🏽🥳💃🏽
Evan sat down on the floor, resting his back on what was left of a tree stump as he sighed.
The scenery around him was one of desolation: scorched earth, shattered trees, with the beautiful forest they met in the morning nowhere in sight.
’Can Arthur reverse this?’
As he asked that question, he was hit by a sudden feeling of lethargy, and he nearly slumped, barely keeping his back upright.
"Artemisia’s boost is gone, my limit break has gone off and so has BoD.
Damn...my body feels like a wreck."
The boy was completely exhausted, with barely any energy left.
Even if he had wanted to damage Idrilla’s soul earlier, he wouldn’t have had enough energy for that.
"But, in the end, I’m the one who got the final hit, huh?"
He gazed at the numerous level-up notifications in front of him, owed to the Level difference between him and Idrilla.
Just as he thought that, he sensed a spatial distortion and upon turning around, he watched the sight of Arthur teleporting in.
"...huh?"
Suddenly, Evan exclaimed in shock and looked down at his hands, confusion washing over his face.
"What’s wrong?"
"I...was able to sense your teleportation beforehand?"
Evan had never been able to tell when Arthur was teleporting before he did unless Arthur told him first.
But he just did.
"?"
Arthur looked at him in confusion, wondering why Evan considered that weird. He had simply used divinity and a bit of law energy to teleport, so to him, it wasn’t strange that Evan sensed it beforehand.
"I don’t have a good affinity for spatial magic, and yet I was able to sense the spatial law energy of your teleportation beforehand."
"??"
Again, Arthur did not understand what Evan was talking about until Artemisia who just finished drinking an energy potion spoke.
"You’re close to the Legendary Realm, Evan. Your soul has started forming nodes which would allow you to fully perceive and manipulate real law energy, not the imitation essence you use.
That’s why."
"Ohh, I see."
Evan nodded in understanding, and so did Arthur. He could perceive and use law energy since his pre-pubescent years, but Evan could not, so in his perception, sensing the spatial law energy of teleportations before they happened has always been the norm.
"Anyway, you got a lotta levels, right?"
"Yeah. Idrilla was higher than me by nearly 100 levels, after all."
As the Rogue Hero responded, he used a little energy to bring out an actual chair from his inventory and sat on it, along with some magic recovery potions and food.
"I’m tired as fuck. Can we postpone going to Iklaque for later?"
He asked that question while looking at Arthur and the other two goddesses turned to him as well.
"Why are you guys looking at me like I want to go there now?"
"Because you’re the one who’s most likely to make such a suggestion."
When Artemisia replied in such a manner, Arthur sighed and glanced around before taking off his concealment ring.
"As you can see, I am just as drained as you are. I want to rest as well."
Arthur did not act like it, but his energy reserves were dried up. Which was shocking to the others since Arthur usually acted like he had infinite energy.
But this was not too surprising if one thought about it.
Arthur had fought thousands of Reborn Adversaries, many of which were Legendries and Sovereigns. He had used Seismic Surge to wipe out thousands of undead and had a rematch with Crarox.
Even for him who had energy reserves that were worthy of resentment, and could also use an equivalent amount of cosmic energy, that was a LOT.
He had exhausted his available cosmic and law energies, as well as his anti-divinity, aura and magic power. There wasn’t much left of his divinity either.
So just like the others, he also wanted to rest and put off going to Iklaque for later, especially since they were bound to encounter 4 more Level 700s in the city.
"They’re probably on guard due to the energy fluctuations of our fight."
Arthur placed a hand on his chin and drew in ambient summoning law energy, mixed it with a bit of divinity and then summoned the Invisible Scout.
He ordered it to go off and scout the city, before looking around and saying.
"I get that we need to rest, but can we do it elsewhere? Like the stream from earlier."
The sight of desolation around them was aesthetically unappealing and Arthur didn’t want to eat here.
On his suggestion, they found their way across the forest and back to the stream, where they set up camp, ignoring the city of Iklaque which was currently in a state of unrest.
◇ ◇ ◇
Unnamed Forest
Iklaque Dimensional Realm
Plomux-North
May 18th
531st Divine Year
The next morning, the four teenagers who had rested well, packed up their camp and began their little trip to Iklaque.
It had to be said that considering the scale of yesterday’s fight, their recovery was very fast—it had only been around 20 hours, after all.
Arthur took them over to the city with teleportation, using the coordinates the Invisible Scout had brought back for him yesterday.
They didn’t bother trying to sneak in or anything and blatantly walked in through their front gates after passing through their crop fields.
As for the welcome they received, it was far from warm.
"I mean, we expected this. But seriously, no decelerations or something."
Evan spoke from behind his Elemental shield which was blocking off the arrows and bullets being fired at them from all angles.
As for Arthur, he was silent, his gaze fixed on the temple in the distance. It had an architectural style he had seen in the past.
Majestic marble columns soared skyward; their surfaces were adorned with intricate carvings that told stories.
The grand archways framed the entrance, leading into an expansive courtyard that hinted at the temple’s vast inner sanctum.
Golden statues flanked the wide steps, their lifelike forms glistening in the sunlight, radiating an aura of divinity and the power of death.
A gleaming, sunlit dome crowned the roof, casting a radiant glow over the entire structure.
The boy rubbed his chin lightly before stepping forward, out of Evan’s Elemental Shield.
All the arrows, bullets and magic fired at him froze mid-air. He then raised his palm and condensed gravity law energy, before pressing it down on the air.
’Localized Gravitation.’
Immediately, the gravity around him increased immensely, slamming down every living being or object that wasn’t the three teenagers he came here with.
With the majority of Iklaque’s warriors immobilized in that one move, he headed down the city streets. He could sense that there were people within the houses and after scanning them with his Pseudo-Authority, he confirmed Idrilla’s words about being the youngest.
"No one here has experienced less than 30 years’ worth of time...
They’re more than old enough to make and be responsible for their own decisions."
He walked towards the city centre, where there was a monument similar to the one they saw outside the Dimensional Realm, just that this one had all the commandments written on it.
Arthur glanced through them with a gaze of disinterest, shaking his head as he walked past it while Evan and the others looked them over.
Although it was called a ’city’, Iklaque was far too small to deserve that title, so with a little bit of teleportation, Arthur reached the temple on the hill that he had seen before.
Evan followed him, while informing Artemisia and Beatrix about Idrilla’s last wish, asking the girls’ opinions on it.
As for Arthur, he didn’t care about Idrilla right now, as he had noticed something that caught his attention.
Right in front of the temple, there was a giant green bonfire with a lot of people wearing priest robes and hundreds of others bowing before the flames while chanting.
They reacted with fear and shock when they saw him, and immediately, they began screaming in a different language.
"Οι ξένοι έχουν φτάσει στο ναό!!"
"Οι πολεμιστές ηττήθηκαν!"
"Παντοδύναμα Θεέ, αποδέξου το ολοκαύτωμα μας και δώσε μας δύναμη!!"
"Θεέ μου, μη μας τιμωρείς!"
Artemisia, Beatrix and Evan frowned as they did not understand what these people were saying. They could see they were performing some sort of ritual or ceremony, and the giant green bonfire in the centre was the altar where they placed their burnt offerings.
Evan checked to see if his language comprehension skill was working, and even though it was, he still could not understand the language they spoke.
None of them did, except for Arthur.
"Olympian."
"...what?"
"They’re speaking a native Olympian language."
Arthur declared this with confidence, that the language these people of Iklaque spoke was the language of another Universe!
"Foreigners have arrived at the temple, The warriors are defeated, Supreme god, accept our holocaust and give us strength, "god, don’t punish us—
—that’s what they’re saying."
The progenitor translated their language perfectly, before pointing at the green flames in the centre.
"That’s Olympian fire. The same type of fire Prometheus stole."
Hades had shown him this before, so he was sure that the green flames he was looking at were flames meant to be on the main Olympus.
Not the Universe as a whole, but the ’Seat of the Pantheon’ where the thrones of Zeus and the other gods were.
"Then...how is it here?"
Evan’s question was one Arthur could not answer, however, people who may have the answer were heading right towards them.
The two goddesses instantly went on guard as they sensed four Legendary Realm presences rushing towards them from within the temple.
Artemisia placed her hands on Evan and Arthur and used ’Evolve Ally’, before doing the same to herself and Beatrix.
Evan did not hesitate to activate his Blessing of Destruction skill to boost his power, slotting in some magic stones from his inventory into the forearm guard on his left hand and activating Limit Break right after.
Immediately, four armoured figures burst out of the temple doors, and the faces of the priests and believers making burnt offerings lit up.
They began cheering and translating their words, Arthur discovered that these four were called ’Holy Knights’.
