Chapter 520: Back to Central [Monthly Bonus 1]
Command Centre
Gozonian Army Outpost
Plomux-Central
May 19th
531st Divine Year
"You sure I’m supposed to be in this meeting?"
"Officially, you’re my aide, so yeah."
"Wait, that’s official?"
"You didn’t know? Alvey handled the documentation."
The Demon Army Generals heard the voices of two boys from outside the room door, and with most of them finding one of said voices very familiar, their gazes turned towards it just in time to see the one who mentioned Alvey’s name enter.
"We’d leave the rank stuff to the Demon Kings, though. They’re the ones who give out the ranks."
He spoke to Evan, who was officially documented as the ’Aide to General Vaughn’ as he entered through the door. Looking at the Generals seated at the conference table, he waved and continued.
"Sorry I’m late guys, I had to deal with the corpse of some dead gods. Corpse disposal is a challenging thing."
Arthur spoke on this as he walked up to the empty seat beside McEnda and Alvey, plopping down on it while Evan silently moved behind him where the rest of the Aides to the Generals present were.
"Just whose corpse were you disposing of?"
McEnda asked this with a half laugh, but his and everyone else’s expressions turned to ones of shock when they heard Arthur’s reply.
"Evan and I encountered a Division of the Aramisian Army heading towards Central as reinforcements from the Northeast so we wiped them out."
"And you didn’t let me get even a single Commander kill."
Evan added on and Arthur just laughed and said he wanted the extra EXP, which quickly turned into a light argument between the two boys on who needed more EXP.
However, their words had all the Generals staring at them dumbfoundedly, until Aravae who was present spoke up.
"Reinforcements from the North-East, you say?"
"Yeah. Don’t worry though, they’re all dead so we’re cool."
Arthur replied to her, but the woman’s incredulous expression remained and questioned once more.
"You wiped out a Division? Just the two of you?"
"Not just us. We had 2 other friends helping out."
The 2 other friends in question were naturally Artemisia and Beatrix, both of which had recently become Level 700s. Arthur didn’t state their names as their presence on Aramis was a secret.
The four teens were still together when they found the Division, and though they originally intended to ignore them, Beatrix spotted one of the gods on her mum’s hit list so Arthur decided they might as well wipe out the Division.
After that, they split up and Arthur and Evan continued the journey to Plomux-Central. Well, it was just a bunch of teleportations.
"Sorry, I’m not following.
Are you saying you wiped out that entire division with four people?"
Aramisian Army Divisions started from 10,000 soldiers and were capped at 20,000. Anything higher than that was a Corps.
"Division Commanders are Level 800s and he’s killed Level 800s before. Why are you so surprised?"
One of the Brigadier Generals present who didn’t understand the reason why Aravae and the other Higher-ranked Generals were looking so shocked asked this, and his reply came from Alvey who had been silent.
"Because we know exactly which Division he’s talking about. There was only one Division currently en route to Plomux-Central from the North-East."
Alvey flipped the pages of the file in front of him and when he got to the place where the intel on the Division’s Commanding Major General his Shadow Demons got him, he continued.
"That Division was led by an Aramisian Coalition Army Lieutenant General. A branch member of a Prominent Family of gods who is Level 884."
"..."
Silence pervaded the area after Alvey’s words.
More than half the Generals present in this room were direct subordinates of Alvey and McEnda, and they had seen Arthur in action many times in Gledea and during the Triton’s Ark. They had also heard about his exploits with on Zefesh, so they knew that the boy could beat Sovereign Relam Existences.
But they also knew from Zefesh, that his limit was the Intermediate Stage of the Sovereign realm, and even then, he’d struggle against more than 3 at once. With his summons, he could at least take on 6.
Anything higher and he’d pull out Cattleya’s grenade Launcher, and the potent destruction energy that thing had was something they could sense even from the other half of the continent so they’d know if he used it. (Plomux has an area of 100 million km2)
A Level 884 was a Superior Sovereign; a power level Arthur had previously admitted he couldn’t defeat.
In this particular situation, the Level 884 was accompanied by multiple Colonels and Brigadier Generals, with Levels ranging from 800 to 866.
From what they knew of Arthur’s strength, he couldn’t beat that...even with summons.
"Mind enlightening us on how you ’wiped them out’?"
"Nothing too special. I just beat the commander-looking guys and killed them while Evan and the others went wild with my summons.
Then when I saw it was getting to the time for this meeting, I pulled them out and nuked the whole place with a ’Seismic Surge’.
Some ran away though."
When Arthur spoke about the runaways, Evan frowned and added to his words.
"Yeah. Kinda hard to catch up with Superior Legendries actively trying to run from you. Those guys were the irritating, second only to the Suicide Bombers."
"Ah, the Suicide bombers pissed me off too. Even Stelan was pissed at them."
The two boys began discussing the most irritating aspects of the enemies while the Generals just stared at them dumbfoundedly.
Despite how casual they seemed, Alvey and McEnda knew that they were serious, and it was due to this that they finally noticed something that they, as well as everyone else, had overlooked.
Arthur looked the same as normal, without a single aura fluctuation coming from him. They knew that he had a powerful concealment method, which was the reason why the Aramisians still hadn’t figured out who he was all this while.
Evan on the other hand, was concealing his energy, and though it wasn’t as good as Arthur’s, it was good enough to prevent one from discerning his strength at a glance.
’That right there, is the first problem. Evan’s concealment shouldn’t be good enough for me to do a double take, but I just did.’
Alvey thought that to himself as he noticed the way the ambient law energies acted around Evan.
’He’s a Legendary now.’
He hadn’t noticed it since Evan was standing beside other Legendries, but after carefully observing, he noted that most of the flame law energy was concentrated around him.
’Wherever they went, Evan gained enough EXP to bridge the 40+ level gap and climb the chasm between the Epic and Legendary Realms.
If that’s the case, then there’s no way Arthur wouldn’t at least get a benefit for himself. It’s safe to assume that Arthur is an Inferior Sovereign now.’
McEnda came to the same conclusion as Alvey did, and they couldn’t be blamed for thinking in this manner.
Although Arthur had shown a ridiculous growth speed, he hadn’t skipped a Stage. Little did they know that it was at this time that Arthur skipped the Inferior and Intermediate stages, becoming a Superior in one go.
"So...should we have not killed them?"
Arthur’s question brought the two High Ranked Demons out of their thoughts and they shook their heads, with Alvey giving a verbal response.
"No. It’s a good thing you did. We can direct the forces we wanted to use for it elsewhere."
The man then glanced at his shadow and spoke.
"Go confirm."
His shadow wriggled and one of the demons within it dashed out at hypersonic speed, heading out to confirm the authenticity of Arthur’s words.
With that, the Strategy Meeting for Plomux High Command finally began.
Midway, Arthur leaned over to McEnda and posed a question while the Lieutenant Generals were arguing on which formation to use.
"Do you know any Demon King good at Spatial Isolation and Size Reduction?"
"Hmm? When you say Demon King and Spatial manipulation, then it’s Demon King Westley."
"That guy again?"
Arthur had heard the name of this Demon King called ’Westley’ numerous times. From the fact that he was the Strongest, bearing the title of ’Supreme Demon King’, to the fact that he was one of those who endorsed Arthur to possess a military rank in the Gozonian Army.
Simultaneously, Evan who was behind him, had his eyes widen in shock at the mention of the Race King’s name.
’Westley? That’s the one Conroe spoke about...’
He seemed to know of the Demon King from the future, but everyone else present was too occupied with other things to notice his reaction.
"Oh well, I might need his help for something so I wanna know if I’d be able to talk with him during the Summit."
"You definitely will. What do you need his help for, though?"
"I wanna move a corpse."
Arthur replied and McEnda raised a brow in confusion, wondering what kind of corpse would need a Demon King to move it.
His mind told him not to ask, but curiosity got the better of him and he did anyway.
"What sort of corpse?"
"A Titan god King’s."
Arthur replied as he brought out his portable game console from his subspace, starting up a game like he didn’t just say something crazy.
Even Alvey who had inadvertently heard their conversation turned towards him with an incredulous expression.
McEnda sighed and pressed his hands to his forehead before deciding to just ignore the whole situation.
’It’s the better option for my mental health.’
He refocused on the meeting happening at present to take his mind off Arthur’s words and very quickly, he was able to push the boy’s statement to the back of his mind.
Tackling Plomux-Central was the most important part of the invasion of the Continent, and only when Plomux-Central fell could they truly add this continent to their list of conquests.
As for Arthur, he wasn’t really feeling like doing much.
Initially, he wanted to test out his new power and get used to it, but the unfortunate Division he encountered served as the perfect punching bags for him.
’Though that guy’s skill...’
He remembered the skill that the Division Commander had and it gave him an idea of a new way to use his Extinction Slash.
’I guess I’d try it out. I also want to meet the Dragonslayers I hear are around too.’
Arthur had never met a member of another Slayer race before so he was a bit curious about the Dragonslayers the Aramisians got on their side.
"Yo, Evan. Would you be good? They’ve got Dragonslayers."
Arthur posed this question to Evan based on the fact that although his Soul was something else, the Rogue Hero’s physical body was a Draconic Human, thus he was susceptible to Dragonslayer abilities.
"Not gonna lie, but I’m curious to see how well I’d fare against them. I’ve only met one and that one was a halfling."
Just because one was a Slayer didn’t guarantee them victory, it only increased the chances. In the end, it was still up to the individual to use their powers wisely, and many unwise Slayers had perished at the hands of those they wanted to Slay in the past.
Considering Evan was a Singularity like Arthur—an Uncontrollable point of power growth/Bug in the Code of the Universe—Arthur doubted that Evan would lose to any Dragonslayers on his Level unless they were nonstandard.
’Even that is tentative. He can just use his Blessing of Destruction (BoD) skill and he’d turn the tides in an instant.’
Evan’s BoD skill which previously let him use Destruction Essence, had the effect of boosting his power by 300% for a maximum of 2.5 hours per day.
He could use it for 30 minutes and deactivate it, saving the remaining 2 hours for later. And since the boosts were percentage-based and not fixed values, the skill granted more power the stronger he was.
Arthur studied it with his Pseudo-Authority and he noted that this extra power came from the ambient destruction law energy, as well as the Pseudo-Authority embedded inside the skill!
Evan, however, didn’t seem to be aware of this fact.
’Wanna see how that skill would fare against a Dragonslayer...’
Arthur had this thought to himself as he returned his focus to the meeting, now eagerly awaiting the day of the decisive battle.
