Chapter 568: Arthur used ‘Meteor’
’Lostvayne, I’d be counting on you soon. Go and devour souls.’
Arthur summoned Lostvayne and sent the sword out into the battlefield. The Ego weapon could use cosmic energy to fly on its own and by Arthur’s order, it started devouring any souls it could find, regardless of affiliation.
It found a High-Rank Demon on the verge of death and stole their soul, then did the same for an angel, then a dragon, and a god.
With each soul devoured, more of its power was temporarily revealed in preparation for Arthur to use.
’Should I use the Full Release?’
Arthur considered the technique he wanted to use in Plomux when they were attacked by a Half-Deity but decided against it.
There were too many eyes on this battlefield, so unless it was a Deity Level threat, he would keep that card hidden.
He couldn’t have people knowing about it and developing countermeasures, after all.
A quick glance upwards and he could feel the gazes of the Deities watching closely, though they were a bit confused about what he was up to.
Arthur returned his gaze to the battlefield that had seen better days, though "better" was a relative term in a war-torn world.
The air was thick with the scent of blood, the distant echoes of clashing swords, and the sporadic bursts of divine and demonic energy that illuminated the blue sky which was quickly darkening from smoke.
"Let’s move with the assumption that this artifact I’m sensing is the Book of Truth.
The problem is that although it is capable of expelling any entity it deemed a threat from the world it is in, it’s not omnipotent; it has to be activated, and only angels can do that."
If the angels had brought the Book of Truth here, it meant they were ready to use it if necessary.
[The Book needs to be activated before you can do a thing. They won’t use it unless they see you as an immediate and undeniable threat. If you want to control or even destroy it, you’ll need to force their hand.]
Those were the words Jamie had told Arthur about the book. The Hybrid had also added something about how the Book of Truth was thought to be ’Indestructible’ as many Race Kings with all their power had attacked it, yet were unable to so much as scratch it.
However, Arthur did not have the desire to control or destroy it—he wanted to take power from it. The raw energy it contained.
But like Jamie said, for him to do anything to it, it needed to be activated.
The angels had used the Book of Truth before, but only after years of sustained threats by demons on this world.
For them to use it on him after only a few days? He would need to be seen as an overwhelming, unstoppable force—something that could cause the kind of panic that would make them expend one of the limited slots of the Replica Book to banish him.
He would need to become a walking apocalypse.
’Even if I don’t have as much of an impact as those demons who’d been expelled previously, if I make them think that I do, then I can bait them into using the Book of Truth.’
But how?
Arthur’s eyes drifted upward, scanning the stormy, battle-scarred sky. The answer came to him like a flash of inspiration—a way to strike fear deep into the hearts of the angels and Divines fighting in the unfolding war.
He would blot out the sky.
He envisioned it in his mind, holding up his hands and beginning to swirl his law energies.
’What should I use? AGSD? Extreme Nothingness?’
A moment later, Arthur’s eyes widened as he caught sight of a streak of light crossing the sky and a new, even deadlier idea surfaced in his mind.
’I’d need the Stellar Guard for this as this has a risk of me being attacked by multiple Transcendents.’
Despite such a risk, Arthur couldn’t stop the smile that formed on his face. If his plan succeeded, then he should be guaranteed Transcendence tod-!
"Ah, there’s that silly extra requirement. Tsk...I wonder what the last two conditions are."
Remembering that he had two unknown conditions left for Transcendence soured his mood a bit, but he put that at the back of his mind and activated the Cosmic Teleporter.
Arthur wanted to go to a distance he could not create a spatial gate for, a distance that the Cosmic Teleporter needed a few minutes to create a gate to cross.
The shimmering portal of cosmic energy materialised before him, leading directly into the cold, dark void, beyond the planet’s atmosphere.
Without hesitation, he flew into the portal and emerged in the vastness of space, thousands of kilometres away from the planet below.
The vacuum of space was silent and cold, but Arthur, wrapped in a dense layer of cosmic energy, was freed from the cold.
Though he wasn’t a deity, his partial Cosmic Superiority allowed him to survive in this environment for a limited time, provided his cosmic energy wasn’t expended.
Right now, he had 75% left so he was good.
Arthur closed his eyes, focusing on the fabric of space-time itself.
Gravity was the curvature of space-time by mass, and with his pseudo-authority over gravity, Arthur could sense every ripple, every tremor caused by celestial bodies within a certain radius of his position.
’Infuse your commands with Cosmic energy...use the cosmic energy to sense, not your anti-divinity...’
He chanted this like a mantra and after several minutes, he detected several massive distortions—asteroids caught in the planet’s gravitational pull, locked in orbit.
"Being a high-level world with a powerful enough gravitational pull to lock asteroids in your orbit isn’t always a good thing."
Arthur spoke with a smile and extended his hands, his fingers splayed. He commanded gravity with his Pseudo-Authority, reaching out to the distant asteroids with his will.
They were far enough that he could not see them with his naked eye from where he floated in space, but with his Pseudo-Authority, they might as well be within arm’s reach.
Clenching his fists, Arthur pulled his hands backwards and used as much cosmic energy as he could. He threw in divinity as well, putting the energy he rarely used on battlefields against gods to use.
Arthur gritted his teeth as he commanded the asteroids to move, trying to add that extra gravity which would pull them out of orbit.
The asteroids responded, slowly at first, but with increasing speed as Arthur opened Cosmic Gates to shorten the vast distances between them.
These allowed the asteroids to traverse a distance that would have taken hours in mere minutes. Arthur could feel their approach, their masses pressing against the fabric of space-time as they hurtled towards him.
Satisfied with his work, he turned back towards the planet, opening another Cosmic Gate.
Without delay, he re-entered the atmosphere in a blaze of light.
The asteroids he had summoned did not follow him through; they lingered in the vacuum of space, just above the atmosphere.
Arthur had planted seeds of gravity energy within them, marking them so he could summon them at will, so they floated there, waiting for his command.
As he hurtled downwards, he activated his Cosmic Teleporter again, creating another portal that propelled him deeper into the atmosphere.
He drew closer to the battlefield he had just left, his eyes glowing as he used his Pseudo-Authority of Time to peek into the future and get glimpses of the results of the devastation he was cooking.
’Let’s see how the Angels would react to this...’
When Arthur finally reached the skies above the chaotic battlefield, he hovered there silently and took a deep breath.
’Pseudo-Authority of Destruction.’
First, he needed to attract attention to himself.
He activated his Destruction Pseudo-Authority, poured his anti-divinity into it, and unleashed half of his maximum destruction energy.
The grey afternoon sky darkened, shifting into a terrifying crimson-silver hue.
Changing the colour of the gray afternoon sky to crimson-silver naturally attracted the attention of virtually everyone both on the battlefield he was aiming for and on other battlefields.
The gods could also sense the threatening anti-divinity that powered Arthur’s destruction law power.
They turned their gazes skyward, and instinctive dread crept into their hearts.
On the angels’ side, they looked up as well and were greeted with the sight of a silver-haired figure hovering above.
The High-Rank Angel General who had been anxiously searching for Arthur earlier caught sight of the sky’s transformation. His eyes widened in recognition, and he shouted, his voice echoing over the din of battle.
[It’s him! The Progenitor godslayer! He’s here!]
Arthur grinned, hearing the angel’s cry of alarm. And as if in response to the collective instinctive terror of every divine on the battlefield, he activated his Progenitor Authority, weakening everything divine on the battlefield.
At the same time, he activated his Gravity Pseudo-Authority, calling the asteroids from outside the atmosphere.
|¬Hey Angels. ¬|
Arthur called out, his faux true voice booming across the battlefield, dripping with menace.
|¬How about you guys try this one for size? ¬|
No one had the chance to ask what he was talking about as the fabric of space above him suddenly tore open to form a Cosmic gate and the first asteroid which had broken through the atmosphere and already turned into a massive ball of flames from atmospheric entry streaked towards the ground.
With his Gravity Pseudo-Authority, Arthur clenched his fist and swung the flaming asteroid towards the angels, accelerating its movement with his Time Pseudo-Authority.
As the blazing rock approached the ground, Arthur poured the power of his Destruction Pseudo-Authority into it, amplifying its destructive potential to a whole new level and turning it into a harbinger of doom.
|¬Pseudo-Authority of Destruction: ARMAGEDDON! ¬|
