Chapter 610: Uncovered!
Arthur’s AGSD required him to expel the energy he absorbed with it.
This Devouring Singularity, however, was meant to send it to wherever in the universe things that were eaten by black holes got sent, but since Arthur was not strong enough to control it, he failed to erase the energy and had to use his Null to do it.
Sighing at his own impatience, Arthur raised a finger to the sky and called out, his voice booming across the island.
|¬Airstrike! ¬|
The word echoed like thunder, and for a moment, the demons manning the airships above the clouds were still.
Then they snapped out of their dazes and acted immediately, filling the air with missiles, a streaking barrage of destruction raining down on the islands below.
Each one was an Anti-Divinity missile, trailing with blackened energy that corroded the air around them—McEnda III’s power.
They crashed into the Aramisian weapons depots, exploding in violent blasts of dark energy, erasing entire sections of the island in an instant.
Demonic energy missiles followed close behind, obliterating clusters of Aramisian airships mid-air, their remains spiralling into the ocean below.
And then came the nuclear missiles—conventional but devastating in their own right—each one crashing into the other islands of the Archipelago, tearing the landscape asunder and leaving it smoking and barren.
Back on WA-O3, Arthur, with his bloody right hand, grabbed the limp body of the barely conscious Kalon and lifted him up with ease.
Blood trickled from the man’s blinded eye, and his body trembled as he fought to stay conscious.
And seeing this struggle, Arthur laughed and spoke.
"You know your master isn’t actually dead."
"?!"
Kalon’s body stiffened, his one good eye widening in horror. Despite his pain, he forced it open, staring at Arthur with disbelief.
Arthur then reached into his subspace and pulled out a small cube. Inside, Ger’s faint figure could be seen, trapped and powerless.
"I sealed him the day I destroyed the Duskhand. I never killed him."
Arthur continued explaining, his voice casual but filled with dark amusement.
"How else do you think I found your location? Your master had clues, of course. He didn’t know exactly where you were, but he led us right to you."
Kalon’s body trembled even harder as Arthur tossed the cube back into his subspace.
"Now that you know your master’s alive, I wonder... how do you feel?"
Kalon couldn’t muster a response. He didn’t even know how to feel at this point. His mind was spinning in a spiral of shock, confusion and despair.
Evan who was watching this burst out laughing as he spoke to Arthur.
"You’ve got bad taste, Arthur. There was absolutely no reason to do this."
In response, Arthur laughed as well, shrugging and he explained his reasoning.
"Of course, there was no need. But I did it because, well, I can."
Evan just sighed, shaking his head, a wry smile creeping onto his face under his mask.
But the humour faded fast.
Just as Arthur turned back to Kalon, the ground beneath them cracked open with a sudden, violent force. Deep fissures split the earth, and from these fissures, a thick cloud of dust, steam, and smoke burst forth, enveloping the entire area in an instant.
"?!"
Arthur’s eyes widened as he sensed something muddling his spatial perception. The smoke was more than just a smokescreen; it was a deliberate attack on his perception abilities.
Despite being so close to him, Evan’s presence flickered in and out of his range, his location distorted.
Arthur scowled and called upon the ambient cosmic energy to try to stabilize his senses, but the smokescreen held strong, dulling even his spatial and gravity law energies.
Suddenly, five sharp blades pierced through the cloud, ripping into Arthur’s right arm—the arm holding Kalon which was already injured due to him using a Law Technique above his league.
Pain shot through him as Ger’s disciple slipped from his grasp, falling back to the ground as Arthur instinctively let go.
The moment the blades pierced Arthur’s arm, the Aramisians hidden in the smoke wasted no time. They lunged for Kalon, dragging him away into the thick fog.
The blades then retracted back into the smoke before he could even see their source.
Arthur cursed under his breath, clutching his bleeding arm. Due to the residues of the gravity energy from his failed technique execution, he couldn’t use time power to rewind his wounds just yet.
Still, a wounded arm wasn’t enough to deal with Arthur. The smoke also only dulled his perception, it did nothing about his command over the laws of the Universe.
’Be St-"
"Ice Nova!"
In this case, Evan was faster. Or rather, Evan had simply acted before Arthur did.
His Harbinger of Ice skill released a surge of crimson gold ice that spread out in a wide radius. The ground beneath them cracked as the Ice Nova erupted, sending jagged, glimmering spikes of ice shooting in all directions.
Everything within a hundred meters froze solid—enemies, debris, even the swirling smoke—all encapsulated in layer upon layer of thick ice.
Arthur then waved his left hand, summoning a gust of wind that blew the smoke remnants away and revealed the frozen Aramisians, motionless, trapped in a crystalline prison.
It turned out that when Kalon had called for Transcendents earlier, one had heard him and sent this squad to retrieve him.
Unfortunately, Evan’s powerful Ice Skill made him drop the temperature to near absolute zero in seconds, enough to shut down even the bodies of beings capable of withstanding nuclear blasts.
It was a cold so intense that even their powerful bodies as Legendary Realm existences that could endure extreme conditions, temporarily ceased all function.
Muscles and tissues froze; energy flows halted.
The drawback of the instant freezing, however, was that Evan couldn’t maintain it for too long. He disengaged it in an instant, and the jagged ice shattered into a thousand pieces.
The frozen Aramisians collapsed to the ground, their bodies limp, shut down by the sheer cold. It would take time for them to recover, but Evan wasn’t done yet.
"Everlasting Chains."
Crimson-gold chains of energy shot out from the earth, wrapping around the fallen Aramisians. The chains gleamed in the faint light, binding tighter as they fed on the energy of their captives.
The more they struggled, the stronger the chains became, drawing upon their own power to restrain them further.
Satisfied, Evan turned his gaze to Arthur, who was calmly inspecting the holes the blades had caused in his arm.
"I see...they used curses and debuffs."
His silver blood was mixed with some unidentifiable black liquids, and Arthur sighed before using destruction energy to expel everything.
He stepped over the fallen bodies, ignoring them, and approached Kalon, who lay unconscious on the ground.
Silver blood from Arthur’s wounds had dripped onto the man’s body, staining his clothes and seeing the blood on his clothes, Arthur paused, a mischievous idea entering his mind.
Kneeling down, he dipped his finger in his own blood and began tracing a mark on Kalon’s chest. The blood quickly dissolved into the man’s skin, but that didn’t matter—Arthur had already infused his energy into it.
Standing up, he snapped his fingers, exerting faint control over the energy and he grinned as he felt the connection.
His blood, now inside Kalon, was under his control.
The man was in obvious pain as Arthur’s blood which was like poison to divines was within him, but Arthur didn’t care.
Instead, his focus was on the powerful presence fast approaching him.
These Aramisians who had tried to make away with Kalon were sent by a Transcendent, and now, that Transcendent had arrived.
Without turning, Arthur activated his time Pseudo-Authority, foreseeing the attack. Just as the strike came, Arthur pivoted smoothly, raising his left palm and concentrating dense gravitational law power around it to form an invisible barrier as the Transcendent’s weapon crashed against it.
The attacker poured immense law energy into the strike, but Arthur’s gravity law energy was stronger than their own law energy, so the Transcendent’s weapon struggled to pierce through the gravity shield, and even bent under the immense pressure.
"AGSD"
"?!"
The sound of Arthur’s words was distorted over the powerful gravity wall between them, but the Transcendent knew that anything Arthur said couldn’t be good.
He was proven right in a second as a small singularity formed, and the energy from the Transcendent’s attack began to drain into it, along with the weapon itself.
The force was overwhelming, and soon, the weapon dissolved, breaking apart as it was consumed by the singularity.
Realising the danger, the man let go of his weapon and leapt back to avoid being drawn in by the powerful gravity.
Arthur followed up, condensing the singularity into his palm before firing it out as a beam of pure energy directly at the retreating figure.
The Transcendent barely dodged, the beam grazing their armour and leaving a deep, glowing scar in the earth behind them.
Just then, another Transcendent descended from above, her voice heavy with urgency.
"You can’t take him alone. Not while his power weakens us. We need to group up against him."
Within seconds, Arthur and Evan were surrounded—multiple Level 800s and another Level 900 had arrived.
The second Transcendent shouted out to one of her subordinates who was wearing a visor that emanated faint cosmic energy.
"Use that artifact. Find out his skills now!"
Her intention was to find out exactly what skills Arthur had and what they did so they could devise means to deal with them, but hearing this, Arthur laughed dismissively.
"Ha! Like hell you can find out my skills. Appraisal doesn’t work on me."
Evan, who teleported right beside Arthur nodded in agreement and he advised the Transcendents.
"Yeah, it doesn’t work. I speak from experience, so good luck with that."
But the Transcendent paid no mind to Evan’s words, her focus entirely on Arthur who spoke again.
"Even though appraisal doesn’t work on me, I’m not about to let you do whatever you want."
With that, Arthur activated his Gravity Pseudo-Authority and the gravitational field around him intensified, sending a powerful gravitational downforce rippling through the area.
The weight of the pressure forced every Aramisian within the radius to their knees, even the Transcendents. They struggled to stay on their feet, their bodies trembling under the overwhelming force.
Suddenly, a voice broke through the strained silence, weak and strained against the oppressive gravity.
"WHAT?! H...HOW... COULD IT... B-BE... YOU...?!"
Arthur turned toward the source of the voice, confused. It was one of the subordinates who had been ordered by the female Transcendent to use "the artifact".
His face was pale, his eyes wide with shock as he stared at Arthur like he was looking at a ghost.
Arthur frowned, unsure of what the man meant. He had no recollection of him—how could this stranger recognize him?
’The main issue is the fact that I can see recognition in his eyes...’
Arthur’s Concealment Ring was active at full power, and his mask was on. The only person who’d seen through the Concealment ring was Jamie and that was because Jamie was a Cosmic Being.
This man was not, yet, Arthur was sure this man was seeing his Status Board.
The man’s voice was barely audible under the crushing gravity, his words coming out in jagged gasps.
"R...Rec...cruit... 659... Arth... Arthur... V...Vaughn?"
