Chapter 581: "I wanna see a Black Hole."
Noble Baron Hotel
Tolgue City
Githal Region
North Eastern Gledea
July 21st
531st Divine Year
On a fine July Sunday morning, Evan Eris, a boy blasted from the future, was sound asleep when the door to his hotel room burst open with a crash.
Arthur, silver hair gleaming under the room’s dim light, strode in with the energy of someone who had already been awake for hours.
"Wake the fuck up, Evan! Today we’re going to space!"
Evan groaned, blinked sleepily at Arthur for a solid ten seconds, and then, as if dismissing the absurdity of the morning, rolled over, pulling the blanket over his head.
He was out again.
Not long after, Jamie barged into the room with equal enthusiasm.
"Wake the fuck up, Arthur and Evan! We’re going to space!"
Just like before, Evan peeked out from his blanket, staring at Jamie with bleary, half-lidded eyes. Another ten seconds of silence passed before he sighed, turned his back to Jamie, and buried himself under the blanket once more.
Ignored, Jamie and Arthur exchanged glances, shrugged, and in unison yanked the blanket off Evan and dragged him out of bed.
Naturally, Evan snapped.
"Why?!... Why would you wake me up on a Sunday morning to say, ’We’re going to space?’ My body still aches from yesterday’s world-conquering battle!
Why would I want to go to space?!"
Arthur shrugged. "Because we can."
"Yeah, obviously." Jamie added.
The responses he received made Evan want to flip a table but he barely held himself back. Eyebrows twitching, Evan shouted out.
"Yeah, you can. I can’t survive in space like you two! You’ve got your cosmic powers, and I don’t!"
True. Arthur was a Sub-Cosmic being with a record of being able to survive 15 days in outer space with zero issues whatsoever while Jamie was a Deity with a body built to survive in the vacuum.
Evan had neither of those, so he naturally couldn’t survive in space.
"Don’t worry, I’ll protect you."
Evan stared at Jamie, deadpan.
"Yeah, no thanks. Even if you protect me from the vacuum of space, I still don’t want to go. There’s no reason for me to go to space!"
Arthur only laughed at Evan’s words and continued explaining his reasoning.
"We wanted to check out Aidos, but thought we’d have some fun in space first. You know, see the stars."
Evan raised a brow at Arthur, looking at him like he was crazy.
"I can see the stars from here. With a telescope. On the planet’s surface. Without me risking my life."
However, Arthur only shrugged a casual reply to him.
"I prefer the real thing."
Evan pressed his fingers to his temple, shaking his head as he spoke in a voice filled with exasperation.
"Why are you both like this-?"
Before he could finish his complaint, a thought struck him. Then, another sudden thought flashed through his mind. His eyes changed, a serious look suddenly appearing within them.
Looking up at Jamie, he asked.
"You said you could protect me, right? Can you take me close enough... deep into space?"
Jamie raised an eyebrow, confused that Evan was suddenly on board with the idea. He and Arthur knew they were a bit unreasonable here.
They were just thick-skinned enough to act like they weren’t.
"Sure, but why?"
Evan’s voice dropped and he proceeded to make the most outlandish statement of the morning.
"I want to see a black hole."
"..." "..."
Both Arthur and Jamie froze, staring at him in silence.
"Wait."
Arthur started, blinking in disbelief as he pointed at Evan.
"You do realize that’s the craziest thing any of us have said this morning, right?"
Jamie nodded, a laughing smile tugging at his lips.
"Yeah, by far."
Evan sat up, ignoring Arthur and Jamie’s amused glances.
"Yeah, yeah, my statement’s the craziest thing said this morning, whatever."
He stared at them both seriously.
"Now, can you take me deep enough into space to see a black hole without dying, or not?"
"Well, yeah, we can."
Jamie answered and Evan nodded. Without another word, he tossed off his blanket, pushed them both out of his room and slammed the door.
"Give me exactly 2 minutes and 3 seconds."
Arthur and Jamie exchanged silent glances, then shrugged. They muttered an "Okay." in unison, before casually heading over to Alvey’s office.
Inside, Alvey sat behind his desk, stacks of paperwork surrounding him as he planned how to fulfil the ultimatum given to him by the Demon King of Destruction, Malorum.
His brow furrowed as he reviewed a document about the reinforcements when Arthur suddenly barged in, causing the calmness in the room to vanish like smoke.
"Hey, Alvey. We’re going to space for a bit."
Alvey blinked, deadpanning at Arthur who just dropped that statement out of nowhere. He glanced at a calendar on the wall before asking.
"Why? On a Sunday morning?"
Coincidentally, he echoed Evan’s earlier exasperation.
Before Arthur could respond, Jamie entered the room, and everything changed. Alvey’s expression shifted dramatically.
He immediately dropped to one knee and bowed, his head lowered in deep respect and he greeted Jamie formally, as any demon would greet a Demon King.
"Your Excellency."
Jamie waved his hand dismissively.
"At ease, Alvey. We’re just heading to space with Evan for a bit. We might pick up Artemisia and Beatrix afterwards.
Just informing you so you’re not confused later on"
Alvey slowly rose to his feet, looking from Jamie to Arthur, before nodding.
"Understood."
Not long after, Evan finally entered, looking slightly more alert but still a bit groggy. Jamie, with a grin that screamed mischief, clapped his hands.
"Alright then, let’s go."
In an instant, reality itself seemed to bend and warp around them. That clapping gesture was all Jamie needed to activate his Authority and tear open a portal to space.
Unlike usual portals, this one didn’t appear before them—it opened beneath their feet.
The ground seemed to vanish, ripped from existence, and before anyone had a chance to react, Jamie sent them plummeting through the portal with the same reckless enthusiasm he used when barging into Evan’s room.
They were catapulted into the spatial rift, rocketing through the tunnel as Jamie’s laughter echoed around them.
Arthur’s cosmic energy kept him perfectly safe from the ever-increasing cosmic energy concentrations, while Evan—despite his earlier complaints—was wide-eyed in awe as Jamie’s protective aura enveloped him.
His heightened energy sensitivity allowed him to see it—the ambient magic power here wasn’t just intense, it was staggering.
The levels of energy around them were spiking so high that even a Superior Transcendent wouldn’t want to be anywhere nearby.
And this was just the raw, unfiltered energy of space. He felt his blood run cold at the realization that the atmosphere of a planet did so much to filter out this energy.
What’s more, the Star Stroay, Aramis’ sun, had already done the same on a massive scale before any of it reached the planet.
Due to the abruptness of his trip to the past, he didn’t properly feel the ambient energies in the spatial tunnel that blasted him from the future, but this...
’This is fucking insane!’
Such was the line of thought that entered his mind as Jamie’s spatial tunnel took them out of the Stroay Star System where Aramis was and into deep space.
When they emerged from the other end of the portal, they were greeted with a fantastical sight.
The stars stretched out endlessly before them, the vast expanse of space glittering in all its overwhelming glory.
Jamie snapped his fingers, and a bubble of cosmic energy enveloped them, stabilizing the environment and allowing them to breathe and speak normally.
Arthur gazed at the scene around him and couldn’t help but laugh.
"This never gets old."
He had been on hundreds—no, thousands—of interstellar and intergalactic journeys since his birth. He had travelled across galaxies in his home universe, leapt between planets, and seen the space between galaxies more times than he bothered to count.
The sight of this deep field of stars should have long since become mundane, yet it hadn’t.
When he had made his journey to the Valmone universe, Arthur had seen such vast fields of stars and Universes for so long that he thought he had grown numb to them.
But after spending months grounded on Aramis, that feeling changed.
Even when he’d briefly left the planet to orbit Aramis and unlock his Pseudo-Authority over Gravity, his focus had been solely on the planet and its nearby star, Stroay. He hadn’t cared for the stars beyond that.
Now, however, floating amidst them once more, he allowed himself to fully take in the spectacle—the immense expanse of stars, nebulae swirling in radiant bursts, the soft glow of distant suns reaching his eyes.
And he had to admit, there was a timeless magic to it.
Beside him, Evan was silent, wide-eyed. It was his first time truly witnessing the stars in this way, of his own volition.
Last time, he had been swept through a spatial tunnel, moving through space and time in a blur that stretched over 10,000 years.
This was different.
Now, he was here, present, and seeing the stars not as mere streaks of light but as the glowing beacons of the universe they truly were. Even if partially covered, the awe on his face was unmistakable.
Staring at the brilliance that surrounded them, Evan was speechless. His gaze wandered over the stars and then slowly, the dark patches of space between them began to shimmer.
Stars that were once hidden from view now revealed themselves, their light finally reaching their eyes after untold aeons of travel through the vacuum of space.
These weren’t stars appearing out of nowhere—the three of them knew that well enough. They had always been there, their light simply delayed by the unfathomable distance.
One by one, those hidden stars filled in the gaps, like pinpricks of light in the night sky becoming part of a grander picture.
The longer they floated in space, the more stars blinked into view, forming a tapestry of glittering brilliance.
"Welcome to space.
Hold on tight—we’re going for a ride."
