Chapter 533: Gravity
Satellite Orbit
Above Planetary Atmosphere
Prime World Aramis
June 12th
531st Divine Year
Darkness.
There was no atmosphere to catch the light of the giant star burning hundreds of millions of kilometres away, so everything around him was dark.
But this darkness allowed one to better perceive the twinkles of the millions of other stars in the night sky.
Some of these stars seemed to pulsate, and based on his knowledge of them, he guessed these were neutron stars orbiting each other.
Well, it was just a guess.
He’d need to cross how many million light years away those stars were to determine if this guess was correct.
"Well, getting that close to a Neutron Star would kill me, though."
Those words escaped Arthur’s lips, however, as there were too few particles to carry the sound waves from his mouth, the sounds didn’t travel far.
Arthur didn’t mind this as no one was here with him, after all, he was in space.
The boy had spent some time thinking.
He needed to quintuple the amount of energy he possessed to reach the minimum threshold for him to become a Transcendent.
His minimum threshold was far higher than that of any other Transcendent out there, but given he possessed ridiculous energy reserves from birth, he wasn’t too surprised about this.
The issue was how he was to gain this extra energy.
Levelling up sounded nice, but he was close to the limit of available Levels for the Sovereign Realm. When he left Iklaque, he was 893, and in the battles he fought after, he gained 3 more, becoming 896.
By the time he’d reach 899, he’d need to fulfil the last requirement to become Transcendent: to prove his qualification to surpass mortality.
All the other requirements, Energy Capacity, Soul Power, Physical Body Strength and the like were things Arthur had long since fulfilled.
He just wasn’t sure he’d done something good enough to be considered a ’Proof of Qualification’. The level of difficulty differed from person to person, after all.
Would the laws of the Cosmos recognize his creation of ’Extreme Nothingness’ as this proof? Or would it count his Pseudo-Authorities? Or his Partial Cosmic Superiority?
Arthur didn’t know. He was going to cross that bridge when he got to it.
Until then, he was going to focus on increasing his energy capacity, and the method he wanted to use was acquiring another Pseudo-Authority.
Comprehending laws increased one’s control over their powers, and when one reached the Pseudo-Authority level, their energy capacity expanded to accommodate the energy required to use the Pseudo-Authority.
Arthur’s highest law comprehensions were the laws of Time, Destruction, Gravity and Space.
Time 82%, Destruction 70%, Gravity 48%, Space 41%
He already had Pseudo-Authorities in Time and Destruction, so he was aiming for one in Gravity.
It made him wonder how much more powerful his ’Weighted Impact’ punches would be when he gained it.
Arthur couldn’t say he was creative in his uses of Gravity.
He mostly used the law when he wanted to throw hands (which he did a lot), to create barriers to deflect attacks (Gravity Barriers were top-tier deflection barriers), or to immobilize targets (Increasing Gravity pressure was very effective for pinning someone down).
There was his Accelerated Gravitational Singularity of Destruction (AGSD), and his Gravitational Maelstroms too.
But besides that, he hardly explored other means to manipulate the law. His control was good, but his range of applications was limited, and that needed to be worked on.
Although his affinity for Gravity was good, it wasn’t as good as with Time and Destruction so he was now at a bottleneck in his comprehension.
On one end, this signified he was close to his goal, but conversely, it was a barrier that refused to yield, keeping him from progressing further.
As such, he decided to use the same approach he used with Destruction last year—to experience Gravity.
It only took him a few minutes of thought to decide where best he could truly experience gravity.
Aramis had one natural satellite, its moon, and hundreds of other artificial satellites owned by both Gozonians and Aramisians orbiting it.
Its gravity was also strong enough to hold distant asteroids further than its moon.
Arthur decided to become one of these satellites, so with a little bit of cosmic energy and some top-speed flight for an hour, he pierced the planet’s atmosphere and entered space.
He shut down all his other abilities and wrapped his body around in a skin-tight layer of cosmic energy to keep himself alive in the vacuum, before letting the planet’s gravity carry him around alongside its satellites.
Arthur made this decision on the 23rd of May. The current Date was the 12th of June.
It had been 15 days since he had entered space, orbiting the planet.
Due to having Energy levels that made other Sovereigns look like ants before a lion, he could keep himself in space for weeks, unlike when he was a grandmaster and could barely do this for 2 hours.
The ambient cosmic energy in space was also higher quality than what was on the planet due to its atmospheric filter, so Arthur could use this higher quality energy to stay even longer since he consumed less of it per second.
With the cosmic energy passively keeping him alive, he just let his body float with the planet’s gravity for 15 days.
He could stay for this long without sleep, but Arthur liked his mental health. He didn’t also want mental fatigue to interfere with his comprehension, so he slept a little when he faced the moon and stayed awake when he faced the sun.
Arthur felt both the moon and the planet’s gravitational forces and could differentiate them now. He felt the Sun’s gravity and was even able to trace Aramis’ orbit around it.
He had stayed in space long enough that he’d been able to notice how the planets were all moving around the sun. The positions of the other planets he had seen on the 23rd were not the same as what he was seeing now.
Arthur shut off his control over time, so he wouldn’t be conscious of how long had passed. Even while sleeping, his Pseudo-Authority of time made him know exactly how much time he was experiencing so he shut it off so he wouldn’t know this.
His orbit speed was faster than the planet’s rotation, so though he didn’t know this, he experienced around 3 or 4 sunrises a day (6.3 km/s).
-
On the first day, Arthur was bored as fuck.
On the second day, he wondered if this was how monks felt while meditating under waterfalls.
On the third day, Arthur began noticing a different force acting on his body, and all thoughts of boredom flew out of his mind.
On the fourth day, he could differentiate the moon’s gravity from the planet’s.
On the fifth day, Arthur observed shifts in the planet’s gravity and abnormalities in the orbits of nearby planets.
On the sixth day, he confirmed there was another gravitational force acting on these planets, altering their orbits around the sun which should have been Elliptical, to become Oval instead.
On the seventh day, Arthur pinpointed the planet whose gravity was pulling on Aramis. He could now differentiate the distinct spacetime ripples from the three giant planets in the star system. One of which was strong enough to tug on Aramis despite the distance.
On the eighth day, he could easily differentiate between the gravitational forces of everything in sight, even the passing asteroids—except for one: The Sun, which was responsible for carrying all the planets in the system around it.
On the ninth day, Arthur felt nothing.
On the tenth day, he witnessed a solar storm and watched as the planet’s magnetic field shielded it from cosmic rays.
On the eleventh day, Arthur witnessed an eclipse and had to shield his eyes with cosmic energy to prevent damage to his cone cells. Although he could have rewound the damage, he preferred to avoid it altogether.
On the twelfth day, he began counting how many solar flares he saw while he was facing the sun, and how many craters dotted the moon when he faced it
On the thirteenth day, Arthur felt a force tugging at him. He searched for its source but found nothing; as if this force was omnipresent. At first, he mistook it for the moon’s gravity since he was facing the moon at the time, but quickly refuted that line of thought as he could clearly differentiate the moon’s gravity.
On the fourteenth day, he emptied his mind, focusing solely on this sensation. The ambient gravity and spatial law energy in the void of space rapidly converged around him, granting him a new sixth sense—a kind of peripheral vision that allowed him to perceive faint ripples moving through the fabric of spacetime.
On the fifteenth day, Arthur could fully sense these massive ripples, which dwarfed everything else in sight, even eclipsing the ripples caused by the giant planets in the star system.
Gravity was the result of distortions in space-time created by mass and energy.
Arthur could feel the fabric of space-time due to his comprehension in those two laws, and now, he could perceive these distortions ever so clearly.
The distortions created by the giant ball of plasma hundreds of millions of kilometres away from his position.
Streams of distorted information flooded into Arthur’s mind, quickly rearranging themselves into coherent thoughts before the accompanying power seeped into his soul.
Arthur opened his eyes and looked toward the distant star, a small smile playing on his lips.
|¬Thanks, Sun.¬|
With a chuckle, he waved his right hand, activating the Cosmic Teleporter and tearing open a Cosmic Gate leading directly into the planet’s atmosphere.
He entered the gate and remerged directly into Alvey’s office, where the Demon General was with McEnda and Sigesi.
They were dressed formally, more so than usual. Alvey was stuffing bunches of files into his subspace while Sigesi was knotting McEnda’s tie on his neck.
"Where were you? Any longer and I would have tried contacting you. It’s time for us to leave."
"You wouldn’t have gotten to me. I shut out every form of disturbance so your signal wouldn’t have reached."
Arthur responded to Alvey’s words as he closed the Cosmic Gate behind him, and for a second, the Greater Demon’s eyes widened when he looked beyond the closing portal.
’Isn’t that our satellite in the distance? Was he in space?!’
He turned towards McEnda and saw that the blue-eyed man was staring forward dumbfoundedly as well, confirming that he had indeed recognized the satellite whose launch both of them had supervised.
"Where’s Evan?"
Arthur’s reply came from Sigesi who was backing him and didn’t notice the same sight that shocked the other two.
"He went somewhere with those two goddesses and returned an hour ago. He should be-?"
Sigesi raised a brow as she sensed ripples in space, before completing her statement.
"-right outside the door."
The door opened right after and Evan who just teleported, stepped into the room while fiddling with the cuffs of his clothes.
"This thing is big on me, how’d you make it auto-resize again?"
"Left collar button."
Evan did as Sigesi stated, pressing the left collar button and the uniform he had on resized to fit him perfectly.
"Oh...that’s good."
He glanced around at the people in the room, and an idea sparked in his mind. Reaching into his inventory, the boy pulled out a camera, flipped it around, and held it up.
"Say Cheese!"
*CLICK! x3
He took three photos in an instant, before turning the camera around to see the results.
Alvey in the back was facing his files, McEnda flashed a mischievous peace sign over Sigesi’s head, while Arthur, with a deadpan expression, had pulled out a pistol from his subspace and aimed it directly at Evan.
"Pfft...What sort of chaotic picture is this?"
Evan laughed, activating the camera’s print function to churn out multiple copies of the ridiculous photos. As he handed them out, he had a thought.
’Damn, I can’t wait to see Roselia’s expression when I show her this...’
Meanwhile, Arthur casually created another Cosmic Gate to leave the area.
"You guys go on without me. I’ve got to make up for an appointment with Rachel I missed."
"We’re going to Rhigor in less than an hour, Arthur."
When Alvey reminded him of this, Arthur raised his right hand and pointed at the Cosmic Teleporter on his forearm.
"I’d get there in ten seconds with this. Just let me know when you’ve reached."
Leaving those words, Arthur stepped into the Cosmic Gate, heading straight for Northern Gledea to meet up with his Aramisian friend.
