Chapter 591: Titan god of Time, Novak [Monthly Bonus 3]
Arthur turned back to Rachel with an apologetic smile.
"Looks like I’ll have to meet you before that happens. Pick a date, and send me a message when you’re back in Gledea. I’ll make sure to show up this time."
Rachel was still processing Jamie’s sudden appearance when Arthur stepped forward and pulled her into a quick, unexpected hug, patting her on the back before stepping away.
"All right, Jamie, let’s go."
Arthur gave Jamie the spatial coordinates of their destination and the man snapped his fingers, conjuring a Cosmic gate.
Arthur waved one last time before stepping through the portal, Jamie following close behind. Just before they vanished, Arthur threw her a grin. "Don’t forget to send that message!"
And with that, they were gone, leaving Rachel and her squad standing in stunned silence.
◇ ◇ ◇
After separating from Rachel, Arthur and Jamie headed straight to the abandoned city where Kronos had created a religion, and from there, they entered the temple where the Dimensional Rift leading to Iklaque was.
The seal Arthur had placed on the rift was one that Jamie could remove with a snap of his fingers and the two jumped into the rift without hesitation.
On the other side, they emerged into the same lush, vibrant forest Arthur had traversed during his first visit.
It was a pretty sight but it didn’t enter Jamie’s eyes at all.
The man’s focus immediately turned toward the distant ruins of the city Arthur had razed in his battle with the Chief Priest of Iklaque and a name left his lips, laden with disbelief.
"Novak?!"
"??"
Arthur looked at him with confusion, but Jamie didn’t elaborate. Without another word, he warped them across the vast distance, straight to the veil that shimmered behind the devastated city.
Jamie stepped forward, his palm resting on the shimmering surface. Unlike Arthur who was barely able to pierce an opening large enough to walk through, Jamie’s Authority was far more powerful and the veil began to ripple violently under his touch.
Within moments, the barrier twisted and contorted until it formed an opening wide enough for several elephants to stroll through with ease.
Without a second thought, Jamie teleported inside, unaffected by the distortion in space, and reappeared hundreds of meters above the ground. He looked down at the corpse of a Titan god, Novak, whose body remained unaged since the day it had fallen.
"Bahahaha!!!! It’s actually Novak! Kronos actually got him!"
Jamie bellowed, clutching his sides with laughter and Arthur started doubting his theory that this dead god might’ve been a friend of Jamie’s in the past.
"You know him?"
"Oh, I know him alright! Novak was just as famous as Kronos back in the day.
People used to say they were the rising stars, real contenders for the Candidate Selection. Then, Novak disappeared, and everyone assumed he was dead. No one knew who did it. Turns out, it was Kronos all along!
Ha! That means I won the bet I made with Ranus 300,000 years ago!"
Without warning, Jamie switched to his True Voice, the fabric of space itself trembling as his voice resonated through the Dimensional Realm.
|You hear that! Ranus! Don’t forget to pay up when I get back to Zanerth!!|
The sudden shift startled Arthur, causing him to flinch as Jamie’s voice reverberated like thunder.
[...]
Moments later, a blank notification materialized in front of Jamie. This Dimensional Realm’s barrier could prevent even the Demon and god Kings who had scanned Aramis in the past from detecting the corpse of this Titan god, Novak.
Yet Jamie had managed to easily send a message through the veil. Even more shocking, someone on the outside had responded.
’Who the hell is Ranus?’
The Eternal of Space and Reality, that’s who.
Jamie, in his real body, had once made a bet with the Eternal about Novak’s fate, wagering that Kronos was responsible for his demise.
Now, that long-standing bet had finally paid off.
"Anyway, you said you wanted to get this into your subspace, right?"
Jamie, still clearly amused, pointed at the Divine Spark sticking out of Novak’s chest and Arthur nodded in confirmation.
"I can handle the spatial compression but there’s a catch. It’s a one-time deal. So unless you’re ready to use it, don’t open it.
You’d need someone with High-Rank Spatial Authority to compress it again if you do."
Arthur had no intention of messing with the Divine Spark until he reached at least the Mid-Tier Deity realm, so the restriction didn’t faze him.
Initially, he’d considered using it once he became a Low-Tier Deity, but if Novak truly rivalled Kronos, then the raw power within the Spark would be too much for a Low-Tier Deity to handle without risking catastrophic overload.
"No problem. It would be decades before I use it anyway so I have no plans to bring it out."
Arthur replied as he descended onto Novak’s chest, carefully picking up a shattered fragment pulsing with Transcendent-Level energy.
His Progenitor Authority no longer reacted greedily as it once did, recognizing that absorbing such immense energy now would be pointless.
Arthur was already at 95% Semi-Transcendence.
The only thing that could push him past that final threshold was creating the third variation of Extreme Nothingness. If he absorbed the Divine Spark now, most of its energy would be wasted.
’I’ve almost reached the limit of body strengthening as well, so I can’t even use it for that.’
With a sigh, he let the crystal fragment slip from his hand, watching it fall back to the ground.
Hovering above, Jamie got to work.
Novak had been a Titan god, and his Divine Spark was colossal enough to power his immense body. Yet, the enormous crystal visible on Novak’s chest was barely half of the Spark’s true size.
Jamie first unearthed the huge Divine Spark from his chest and Arthur marvelled at its sheer size.
The Divine Spark was far larger than he’d anticipated, and the dense energy caused space to shimmer and distort around it.
Arthur felt his Progenitor Authority stir faintly in response, not desiring to absorb it, but desiring to annihilate it.
’Like you can even do that...’
The boy shook off the instinctive reaction as he watched the golden blood drip down, flying up to avoid being drenched in the liquid before speaking.
"Hard to believe something this enormous can be compressed enough to fit into my subspace."
"You’d be surprised what can be done with the right Spatial Authority. But like I said, once it’s in there, don’t go cracking it open unless you’re ready to use it."
With a nod, Arthur backed away, giving Jamie room to work. The man raised his hand, his fingers glowing as spatial energy coalesced around the Divine Spark.
|Azure Void Authority|
Arthur remembered Jamie using this same Authority when they were outside the Galaxy with Evan, and the boy wondered just how many Ultimate Skills the man had.
Slowly, the massive crystal began to shrink, its immense size gradually compacting under Jamie’s influence. Despite its reduced size, the power within remained just as potent, almost suffocating in its intensity.
Even as the Divine Spark became small enough to handle, Arthur couldn’t shake the feeling of awe he felt.
Jamie stuck his hand into his own subspace—more of a pocket Dimensional Realm than a Subspace—and pulled out a rune-crafted box which he tossed the Divine Spark into.
"Here."
He tossed it to Arthur who used his gravity powers to catch it mid-air, feeling the ’mass’ and nodded in satisfaction as he saw that it could now enter his subspace without issue.
With a nod of satisfaction, he let the Spark slip seamlessly into his subspace, the surge of power vanishing from the physical plane in an instant.
"Perfect."
Arthur muttered to himself, before glancing back at Jamie, who was still floating casually above Novak’s enormous corpse.
Without a word, Jamie descended, his eyes scanning the titan god’s lifeless form and with a single gesture, Novak’s entire body began to shimmer, enveloped in a faint azure glow.
"No point leaving this behind."
Jamie said with a shrug, as though snatching a dead god’s body was as casual as collecting a trophy.
Within moments, Novak’s massive form dissolved into particles of light and vanished into Jamie’s subspace.
Their task complete, neither Arthur nor Jamie spared a second glance at the remnants of the Dimensional Realm. They returned to the entrance and left Iklaque in the blink of an eye, without looking back.
◇ ◇ ◇
With the main task at hand completed, Arthur’s mind began to wander and he recalled the group he and Jamie had encountered earlier—particularly Rachel.
As Arthur had stated then, Rachel wasn’t supposed to be on Plomux; she was stationed on Gledea. Why was she here?
He hadn’t dwelled on it before—more focused on the task at hand—but now, curiosity gnawed at him.
To sate it, he decided to look for her. This wasn’t too hard for him. As the Progenitor godslayer, all he had to do was expand his aura a little bit and he’d be able to detect the divines that were in her squad.
After all, no divines could hide from the senses.
And it was precisely because no divines could hide from the senses that the moment he spread out his aura to try and find her, he also found someone else.
Arthur’s eyes widened in shock when he detected this presence, and immediately the corners of his lips curled upward.
"Well, well... this is going to be interesting."
The boy felt his pulse quicken.
He’d tested his mettle against Transcendents on the three worlds he went to recently, but this one... this one was different.
His excitement flared as the thought of a true challenge ignited a spark in his chest and he immediately turned to Jamie.
"Jamie—"
But before Arthur could finish, Jamie waved him off with a nod.
"I know. Go on ahead."
Jamie already knew who it was that Arthur had detected, so he didn’t mind.
Arthur quickly reached into his subspace, pulling out a black featureless mask, the one he donned when he dealt with Aramisians.
Rachel was far from the location he was headed, so he knew she wouldn’t be around to recognise him even with the mask since she knew what clothes he was wearing, but he still changed.
His jacket was swapped for a long overcoat bearing the Gozonian Demon Army insignia. He infused a touch of magic into his clothes, altering their colour to complete the disguise.
Then, with a burst of energy, Arthur kicked off the ground, launching himself forward in a blur. The landscape around him whizzed by as his figure tore through the air at supersonic speed.
Jamie, watching Arthur disappear into the distance, sighed with a smile.
"Kids... always so playful."
With those words, the man’s body slowly shimmered out of existence as he teleported to Arthur’s destination to watch the little battle that was about to unfold.
