Chapter 685: Choices
No matter how many angles Rachel tried to view the situation from, no matter how much she wished to dismiss it as a cruel joke or a twisted dream, the reality before her was unchanging.
So, Rachel made her decision.
She chose between her cold desire to avenge her loved ones and the warmth of her memories with Arthur.
Besides, she had little in the way of choice.
Her reactions, the way she zoned out, and her expressions.
From those three, it was clear to even a blind man that she recognized the Silver Summoner’s real identity.
When she heard Arthur’s name and let out a dumbfounded "Eh?", it drew the attention of the Lieutenant General.
With his experience in reading people, he quickly discerned what Rachel was feeling from her reaction, her expression, and the look in her eyes.
’Shock, disbelief...and recognition.’
And something else he had discerned with clarity.
’She didn’t know.’
Rachel had been entirely in the dark, blindsided by the revelation.
Unbeknownst to her, she had been under scrutiny and suspicion of treason in the past week.
The memories retrieved from the previous wielder of the Defective Cosmic Lens Replica revealed that Arthur had been sneaking into Aramisian Territory.
No, sneaking wasn’t the right word.
He had walked into their cities through their front doors and left the same way.
Almost as if he was mocking them.
He entered Duskhand as a recruit and destroyed the place from within. He toured the Triton’s Ark just days before the Demons Attacked.
He even registered as a Mercenary and joined Aramisians to fight against Demons.
If that wasn’t mockery, then they didn’t know what was.
What infuriated them most, however, was his sheer audacity. He hadn’t bothered to change his name, his appearance, or his habits.
It was as if he wanted them to catch him—if not, it certainly didn’t matter to him.
When they saw the ’SS-Tier Mercenary’ title on his partial status, they immediately sent intelligence operatives to the Mercenary Guild.
The Guild Grand Master, ever eager to curry favour with the Army, traced Arthur’s registration down to Tolgue City. From there, the City Guild Master readily divulged all known details.
Because of the way the Intelligence operatives handled it, the Mercenary Guild thought the Army wanted to recruit Arthur because of his Divinity—a logical action.
That assumption led to a receptionist letting slip that Arthur was already ’close to some soldiers’.
When pressed further, the receptionist easily responded, name-dropping Rachel.
"I think they call her Seargent Cassowar?"
Rachel had visited the Tolgue City Mercenary Guild countless times, overseeing the flow of commissions from the Army.
Her frequent presence made her a familiar face to the Guild officers, who quickly learned her name and rank.
And then there was Arthur. His appearance alone made him impossible to forget, even more so when they realized he wielded divinity—a hot commodity on Aramis.
The connection was soon made. When the officers cross-referenced their records, they discovered that Rachel and Arthur had been part of the same platoon in Duskhand.
It didn’t take long for them to place her under surveillance.
Had she been any other soldier, she would have been hauled in for questioning without delay. But Rachel wasn’t just any soldier—she came from the Cassowar Military Family, and that meant she wasn’t to be handled lightly.
Instead, they kept a close eye on her movements, watching as she visited the Noble Baron Hotel to inquire about Arthur.
This whole meeting with all those transferred from Duskhand was orchestrated just to gauge Rachel’s response and assess how much she knew.
And it worked.
Though she was cleared of any suspicion of treason, her situation hadn’t changed.
She was still seen as a crucial link to the ’Silver Summoner,’ the very target the Aramisians were desperate to eliminate.
Rachel’s roommates were interrogated, and because she had been open about her outings with Arthur, the Aramisian Army quickly learned just how close they were—enough that she could simply call, and he’d come.
With that knowledge in hand, the Aramisians set their plan into motion.
A special team was formed, one with a singular mission: eliminate Arthur.
For starters, this team had zero Divine Humans or gods. Knowing Arthur’s Slayer Race powers, they weren’t foolish enough to risk it.
Secondly, the team was made up entirely of Transcendents—ten at the Inferior Stage and two at the Intermediate Stage, for a total of twelve.
From the reports gotten from Duskhand, whom Arthur had fought in Plomux, the Aramisians had a rough estimate of his strength.
"At least, Inferior Transcendent."
The idea seemed outlandish, but they had no choice but to trust Duskhand’s word.
It was the reason they were sending twelve Transcendents—more than enough for any regular foe, but the most they could afford to spare without raising suspicions among the Demons, who were always watching their frontlines.
Some argued it was overkill, but the rest remembered the other details from Duskhand’s report.
Arthur wielded an artifact, a mysterious power or tool that shielded him from fatal blows.
During their fight in January, Duskhand tried to exhaust its use, but he failed to do so by the time Alvey intervened.
But Duskhand also saw that Arthur received normal damage, and he quickly figured out the Stellar Guard’s weakness.
If the Attack cannot kill him, it wouldn’t activate and he’d take damage like normal.
Moreover, Duskhand hypothesized that it had limited uses. No universal law would allow such power without constraints.
The plan was to wear down that artifact’s power.
Rachel was key to that strategy. She was the only one who could get close enough to lower Arthur’s guard.
She had been given a dagger, inscribed with elven runes, designed to inflict paralysis, poisoning, and disrupt his divinity circulation, causing him internal injuries.
All that was left was to wait for the perfect moment to strike.
◇ ◇ ◇
"I see...so that’s it what happened, huh?"
Arthur muttered as his gaze dropped to the dagger lodged in his chest.
It was undoubtedly infused with a potent poison that’d make even a Poison Dragon keel, strong paralysis powers that would stiffen the muscles of the most flexible eel and possessed an energy disruption rune designed to mess with the flow of divinity in one’s body and cause them internal injuries.
Against an Inferior Transcendent, it might not kill outright—Transcendents possessed ridiculous vitality—but the combined status effects would undoubtedly leave a lasting mark.
However, such a weapon’s strength also depended on its wielder. In the hands of someone weaker, it could never show full power. The blade had pierced Arthur’s body only because of its innate properties, not the strength of the one who wielded it.
Bottom line, a blow to the heart by a weaker foe couldn’t kill Arthur instantly—even more so if he’d foreseen it.
Then there was the poison and paralysis. Surely, those would take effect, right?
No.
Like Arthur had claimed time and time again, he was immune to ALL MORTAL STATUS EFFECTS.
Poison and Paralysis designed to deal with a Transcendent fell squarely within the domain of afflictions his Sub-Cosmic Body could shrug off.
With the dagger still lodged in his chest, Arthur calmly raised his hand, seized Rachel’s arm, and slowly extracted the blade.
"?!"
At the sight, Rachel froze, her eyes wide with disbelief. This wasn’t what she’d been told.
She had witnessed the poison tested on a Transcendent Realm monster—watched it writhe in agony within moments. How could Arthur remain utterly unaffected?
To her growing horror, the wound in his chest began to close, the flesh knitting itself seamlessly the moment the dagger left his body.
"All this effort... just to kill one teenage boy."
Arthur’s voice was calm, almost conversational, as he spoke. His left hand gripped Rachel’s wrist firmly, preventing her from moving an inch.
"Then again, no one knows better than I do the chaos I’ve caused—and why you’d want me dead."
He continued speaking, his tone carrying a trace of bitter amusement.
Rachel tried to respond, but her words caught in her throat. Her attention was suddenly drawn to Arthur’s left eye.
The black contact lens covering it melted away, revealing his blue iris which was giving off a dull glow.
Pseudo-Authority of Time: Memories of the Past.
Arthur had two Time Techniques that had ’Memories’ in the name.
Memories of the Future and Memories of the Past.
Two similar sounding techniques with functions as different as night and day.
The first allowed Arthur to glimpse the ’Memories’ of his ’Future Self’. The Second, however, allowed Arthur to view the ’Past Memories’ of a target entity.
Though sifting through someone’s entire past was beyond even him, Arthur could search for specific memories provided he had the right keywords.
Reaching 1% Low-Rank Time Law Comprehension had unlocked this ability.
He used this on Rachel, and the sheer disparity in their power meant there was no resistance as he viewed all her recent memories related to ’Arthur Vaughn’.
And like that, he had uncovered all parts of the plan that Rachel knew of.
Like the fact that not a single civilian soul was in Sloklens, and everyone around them was either a Mercenary or Soldier in camouflage.
Rachel tried to move, tried to speak, but she couldn’t.
It was then that she realised that her world had been drained of colour.
Time was stopped.
’...since when?’
She hadn’t noticed Arthur halt time.
With a mental command of the ambient cosmic energy and the temporal laws that bent to his will, he had frozen everything—and everyone.
Even the twelve Transcendents poised to attack him were locked in place.
After removing the dagger and rewinding the wound it caused, Arthur sighed.
"This is rather troublesome."
Logically, Arthur could understand why Rachel had stabbed him. After going through her memories, he pieced it all together.
He didn’t expect that Alvey was the one to kill her real parents. His association with Alvey, coupled with his hand in killing her ’older siblings’ in Duskhand, had solidified him as her target for revenge.
BUT!
However logical her reasons may be, it didn’t change the fact that Rachel had tried to kill him.
Nor did it erase the reality of the twelve Transcendents hurtling toward him in frozen stasis. They had moved mere seconds after Rachel’s strike, a second after the poison should have taken effect.
Their intent was unmistakably lethal.
And Arthur was not one to easily let go of anyone trying to take his life.
The boy rubbed his chin, letting out a frustrated sigh.
"Very troublesome..."
Arthur drummed his fingers on the table, his gaze sweeping the frozen reality as he addressed Rachel, the sole conscious being alongside the 12 immobilized Transcendents.
"Not gonna lie, Rachel, I did fancy you a little. But, you see, I’m someone who follows my whims—my pleasure and displeasure.
And right now..."
He turned to meet her gaze, the crimson glow of his right eye piercing through the faint veil of the contact lens as he concluded.
"...I’m very displeased."
