Chapter 527: Crushing the Hero
Higher powers, such as Sub-Cosmic Candidates of Time, Dimensional Realms they created, Cosmic Artifacts with concealment, or Singularities like Arthur, could block the Planet’s Consciousness from perceiving certain events.
Singularities were literally called bugs in the code of the Universe since they made the laws of the Universe that interwove to create the reality people lived in to bend around them, just like Light and matter bent around a Black Hole to form an accretion disk.
One of the laws that bent was the law of Knowledge which was responsible for maintaining the Records of a Planet where every activity happening on it was stored.
Since Arthur arrived on Aramis, his presence distorted the planet’s database, leaving no accurate record of his existence.
Arthur didn’t do this consciously. He didn’t know enough about his Singularity nature to control his ’law bending’. The most he could do with it was use it to avoid Causality like he did when he cast the Third Magic. (Refer to Chapter 211 for when Causality’s lightning avoided him.)
Unless it was observing Arthur in Real Time, ’Aramis’ couldn’t track his actions.
When Arthur, Evan, Artemisia and Beatrix entered Iklaque, they were cut off from the rest of the planet due to the Dimensional Realm being a product of Kronos’ Powerful Authority.
’Aramis’ itself could not perceive what happened within it, so it did not know Arthur had become a Sovereign there.
When Arthur stepped out, he only deactivated his concealment ring for a second to let Evan appraise him, and ’Aramis’ was not observing that area at the time so it missed this opportunity to find out Arthur’s power.
It only realised Arthur had left Iklaque after he and Evan already wiped out an Aramisian Division and had gotten to where Alvey and McEnda were.
By then, Arthur’s concealment ring was activated and the Cosmic Artifact prevented ’Aramis’ from being able to perceive his strength.
Seeing Arthur defeat the Level 850 Rael, Aramis instantly assumed Arthur had become a Sovereign.
Using prior information—Arthur’s capability to fight Inferior Sovereigns and some Intermediates while still being Legendary—Aramis estimated that Arthur had likely become an Inferior Sovereign. This assumption was logical given the vast power gaps in Sovereign Realm Stages.
Previously, Arthur could easily fight 10 Inferior Sovereigns but struggled against 3 or 4 Intermediates. Against a Superior Stage, just one was enough for him to pull out Cattleya’s Grenade Launcher. ’Aramis’ guessed Arthur was now an Inferior Sovereign who could trash Intermediates and contend with 1 or 2 Superiors, given his tendency to jump power stages like it was the most normal thing.
’Aramis’ picked this Hero who was not a Divine, meaning he could not be affected by Arthur’s progenitor abilities, and infused the Hero with enough power to slightly exceed Peak Sovereign, believing this would suffice. Any more, and the Hero’s body would explode due to overload.
This power boost was also for a limited duration.
The planet believed this Hero could take on Arthur, provided he didn’t use the grenade launcher. If needed, ’Aramis’ planned to send some of its other defence mechanisms scattered across the continent.
However, the planet didn’t know Arthur was now what one might call a ’Semi-Transcendent.’
The gap between Peak Sovereign and Transcendence was vast, like comparing a large country to an entire continent. So, despite being only around 20% of the way towards Transcendence, Arthur could trash anything below him.
Realising that even while buffed by the planet, the Hero could still not match him, Arthur heaved a light sigh.
’Maybe I’d have Alvey or McEnda spar with me. I’m done testing out my abilities, now I want to see what my upper limit is.’
The Hero used cosmic energy and light magic to heal himself while Arthur was thinking this, before charging at the godslayer with his blade coated in aether.
Sound was left behind as Arthur deflected the Hero’s thrust aimed for his head, before deftly twisting his wrist and countering with a powerful downward strike that sent the Hero spiralling towards the ground.
A vortex of ice arising from the ground, however, knocked him back into the sky where Arthur dashed in and delivered a powerful slash across his chest.
The Hero coated his body with cosmic energy at the last moment, allowing him to tank the slash with minimal damage.
Before he could think of retaliating, a giant humanoid knight construct manifested from the swirling currents of Evan’s icy magic power. Its towering form took shape with crimson-gold lamé particles of Evan’s energy shimmering and dancing within the icy behemoth.
The colossal knight of magic power emerged holding a massive sword aloft and it swung this blade down at the hero with breakneck speed.
The Hero crossed his arms in front of his chest and conjured an aether energy shield to block, but Arthur used his Pseudo-Authority of Destruction to destroy the shield at the last second, allowing Evan’s attack to strike him down.
The impact was fierce, sending shockwaves through his body as he was knocked backwards, hurtling towards the ground.
Despite the force of the blow, he managed to regain his balance in mid-air, flipping gracefully to land in a superhero pose, however, Arthur teleported behind him and delivered a powerful kick to his side, sending the Hero flying.
Following up, Arthur used Eradication Torrent to rain down destruction energy projectiles, but the Hero regained his balance mid-air again and dodged them.
Just as he avoided one of the projectiles, Evan appeared beside him and slashed down with his light-sabre-like sword.
’World Sunder. Stoneheart’s Embrace.’
Evan’s unexpected strike was aimed at the Hero’s right shoulder and it collided faster than he could cover his body with cosmic energy, tearing through his armour and knocking him to the side where Arthur dashed in from and attacked him.
The Hero tried to raise his sword to parry Arthur’s strike, but he found that his arm had suddenly become stiff.
A quick glance at his shoulder, he discovered that it had turned to stone!
’That guy’s attack!’
He quickly identified the sudden petrification to be Evan’s fault, but Arthur’s attack hit faster than he could break it.
Arthur’s sword pierced the Hero’s side, and following it was the godslayer’s gravity-infused fist that collided with his face and knocked his body to the side.
Evan appeared in front of the reeling Hero and delivered an uppercut of lightning that flashed back and dealt a double impact, lurching the Hero into the air.
Arthur teleported behind him and kicked his back, sending him back to the ground where Evan used his Vortex skill to knock him back up into the air again with a blast of Prismatic Flames.
Before the Hero could even think, three golden serpentine dragons emerged from the ground behind Evan, swirling prismatic flames in their mouth and launching a trio of breath attacks that blasted him through the air and into a random building inside Plomux High Command.
Like a ghost haunting him, Arthur was already awaiting him at his landing spot with his leg pulled back. The godslayer kicked the hero into the air and Evan used blink to teleport and appear behind him.
Evan’s dragon horns and wings emerged and the Rogue Hero unleashed a full-powered point blank-range breath of prismatic flames that hit the Hero in the back and sent him crashing down with meteoric force.
As soon as he ended his breath, Arthur dropped a literal ’Time Bomb’ on the same spot Evan’s breath attack hit.
It exploded instantly and from the agonized scream that rang out in Arthur and Evan’s ears, the results were not pretty.
Still, the two boys didn’t let up their assault.
"Harbinger of Ice + Hammerfist: Glacial Gavel."
Magic power surged from Evan’s body and pierced the skies. Then, the heavens darkened, and the clouds parted to reveal a gigantic fist construct of crimson ice.
Arthur understood that Evan’s attack needed time, so he charged in and grabbed the Hero who was struggling to his feet and delivered a rapid flurry of punches to his face.
He spun around and flung the Hero’s body into the air where the Hammerfist of ice descended and crashed into his body.
Simultaneously, a massive platform of ice emerged from the ground, and the Hero’s body collided with it.
The giant Hammerfist crushed the Hero’s form against the icy platform, resulting in an explosion of icy energy that cleared the clouds from the sky for kilometres.
Evan contained all that icy energy and compressed it to freeze the Hero in a giant block of ice which Arthur slashed through with Mountain Split a second later.
As soon as the Hero’s body hit the ground, a gravitational vortex formed behind him, pulling his body up. The cracked earth broke open and a stone fist emerged and seized him in its grip.
He was immediately subjected to pressure that aimed to crush his body, but he released a burst of cosmic energy and broke out of it, immediately taking to the skies and conjuring portals to launch aether rays at Arthur who would have attacked him had he spent a second longer on the ground.
A second later, the Hero’s eyes widened as he noticed that despite his Status Effect Resistance, there was a ’Withered’ Debuff applied to him.
It caused him to continuously leak out life force—a side effect of being caught in Evan’s Gravitational Vortex. Even if you broke out of it, once the debuff got you, you were stuck with it.
The only reason it didn’t stick when Evan used it before was simply because Evan chose not to activate it.
Despite noticing the debuff, the Hero could not pay it any mind as he had to deal with Arthur who countered all his aether rays with torrents of destructive energy and was charging at him.
