Chapter 696: One and only one
Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness collided with the man’s temporal beam in a clash of raw, volatile power. The man poured more energy into his attack, attempting to overpower Arthur, but the balance quickly tipped against him.
Clicking his tongue in frustration, the man forcefully detonated his temporal energy. The explosion offset Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness, unleashing a shockwave that sent both Evan and Beatrix who tried to attack from his flanks hurtling away.
Arthur, sensing the imminent danger to his Bounded Field, instantly dispelled it to avoid a catastrophic backlash that could wound him.
But, doing so inadvertently freed the man from its confines.
The violent collision of temporal energies caused a flux in the surrounding time laws. The chaotic energy rippled outward, slamming into both Arthur and the man.
For the man, the temporal disruption caused parts of his body to shatter like glass, flaking off into fragments of time energy. These shards collided with Artemisia, still draped over his left shoulder.
As they touched her head, a torrent of fragmented images surged through her mind like a filmstrip unravelling in fast-forward.
The shock jolted Artemisia awake.
Her eyes shot open, wide with horror as she processed what she had just seen.
She coughed up the blood pooled in her mouth from her earlier injuries, her body trembling with instinctive dread.
The scattered time-law energy had merged fragments of the man’s ’time’ with her consciousness.
Through these fragments, she glimpsed flashes of his past, piecing together his purpose for capturing her and his intended destination.
’I need to warn them!’
Panic gripped Artemisia along with the thought.
’I need to warn Arthur!’
She raised her head, her gaze locking onto Arthur, who was swinging his sword downward, releasing an Extinction Slash.
With all her strength, she screamed.
"HE’S BAI– mmpfh!!"
Before she could finish, the man’s left hand clamped over her mouth. His magic surged through her nose and mouth, overwhelming her brain and forcing her body to shut down as a defensive reflex.
She went limp again, unconscious.
This act ignited Beatrix’s fury. Divinity surged around her as she charged forward with rage, unleashing a barrage of spatial and temporal attacks.
Time Bombs, Spatial Blades, Spatial Chains, Spatial Collapse.
All four came in at once, and faced with this, the man first avoided Arthur’s Extinction Slash by the skin of his teeth.
Then, he phased his body through the Time Bombs, distorted time enough to warp space and deflect the spatial blades, and used his superior time power to halt the movements of the spatial chains, as well as the collapsing space before jumping out of its range.
Just as the man landed, Evan launched an attack from the side, aiming to exploit the opening of his defences.
In response, the man unleashed a new power from his arsenal.
[Law of Slaughter: Blutbad Täuschung!] (Carnage Deception)
Immediately, an intense wave of bloodlust erupted from the man’s body.
The sheer potency of it triggered an immediate, primal response in Evan, Arthur, and Beatrix. Their senses—both physical and spiritual—were overwhelmed, perceiving the bloodlust as a tangible, deadly attack.
Evan instinctively summoned his shield, Arthur activated Stellar Guard, and Beatrix hastily retrieved a defensive artifact from her inventory.
For a fleeting moment, all three were paralyzed by dread, their movements frozen in the grip of pure survival instinct.
This was no ordinary bloodlust.
It was the kind of bloodlust that could only come from someone who had slaughtered millions—no, billions.
R̸̹͂̃E̸̘̘͔̽̍͊͐͝Ṱ̸͓͔͂̒̀̒͒̕S̶̤̕Ä̸̡̧̻̜M̸̭̩̱̍̋R̵̨̭̖̿̓̑́̿̌U̸̯̞͗́́̚̕͜T̷̲͋̂̐͑̂̈́H̴͍̺͛́͂R̴͚̜͉̣̾͊͑̎̾́Ą̷̛̣̥͖̟̔̒̀!̷͖̒͗̋͑̿̓!̴̼͔͍̰͖̮̍̓͛͠͠!̵̧͕̞̍͗̂͘͜!̵̡̞̺̤̻̞̖͓̝̾͐!̸̫͗́̍̉̚!̵̗̘̣͇̯̌̏̈́͂̂̇̾̌͜͝͝ͅ
Suddenly, a screeching noise tore through the air, a piercing, unintelligible sound that drilled into the ears and minds of the three teens.
The noise jolted them back to reality, snapping them out of the instinctive terror that had rooted them in place.
Only then did they realize they’d been deceived—there had been no actual attack. It was a psychological assault, a manipulation of their survival instincts.
Lostvayne had screamed at Arthur, taking advantage of the fact that mortals like them couldn’t fully hear its words.
But that split second of hesitation was all the man needed. He’d gained kilometres of distance in the time they were frozen.
Arthur clicked his tongue in frustration, reminding himself that this bloodlust was nothing compared to an angry Cattleya as he immediately charged forward in pursuit. Evan followed close behind, while Beatrix struggled to keep pace, relying on teleportation to cover the gap.
Though Evan’s senses had been affected by the bloodlust, the strength of his soul allowed him to recover quickly. Beatrix, however, was still breathing heavily, her body trembling.
Yet her determination burned stronger than her fear.
The only thing keeping her on her feet was her unyielding desire to save her best friend. That desire overpowered the instincts screaming at her to flee from the killer of billions.
Returning to Arthur, the boy’s brain was working in overdrive, a second stretching into eternity as he tried to piece together what Artemisia had been trying to say earlier.
Evan had noticed that as well and was also trying to think of what Artemisia could have been trying to say.
But both of them drew blanks.
Arthur’s left eye glowed with an azure light as he pursued the kidnapper, noticing the man’s ’time’ was fractured.
Cracks laced his temporal existence, and fragments of his shattered ’time’ had merged with Artemisia’s due to their proximity as the man carried her over his left shoulder.
Thinking of the moment he locked eyes with Artemisia, understanding instantly dawned on Arthur.
She had glimpsed fragments of this man’s past and had been desperately trying to warn them—was his final conclusion.
Time snapped back to its normal flow in Arthur’s perception, and with gritted teeth, he channelled his power over time, accelerating his movements to close the gap.
But the man’s head start, gotten through his Blutbad Täuschung technique was too great.
This left Arthur with no choice but to draw on an ability he rarely used.
Arthur Vaughn liked his mastery over time. No, he loved it.
He understood the immense power it gave him, but there were facets of it he avoided whenever possible—abilities with exorbitant energy costs that also risked minor disruptions to causality.
Now, with the situation dire and an opponent whose Existence Realm was indiscernible, whose energy he couldn’t even sense, Arthur had to make a gamble.
He drew upon the ambient cosmic energy, channelling it into his Time Pseudo-Origin Core.
This decision wasn’t made lightly. Expending such energy recklessly could backfire, especially against an enemy they had little information on, but there was little choice now.
Arthur tapped into the 0.2% of Low-Rank Time Law Comprehension he had achieved.
Against an adversary wielding time powers on par with his own, relying on Basic Rank Laws could be futile. Low-Rank Time Laws, though incomprehensibly costly, offered the leverage he needed to compete.
It was worth noting that Low-Rank Laws were concepts typically reserved for Half and Low-Tier Deities to comprehend.
For the Transcendent Arthur, manipulating them burned through his reserves at an alarming rate—half of his cosmic energy vanished in an instant.
Then, Arthur spoke his command to the world.
|¬Pseudo-Authority of Time¬|
Hearing Arthur’s Faux True voice, the man turned his gaze back toward the boy chasing him, his body already sheathed in time law energy as he prepared to counter whatever Arthur would throw at him.
But Arthur wasn’t about to throw anything.
He reached forward, his hand grasping at something unseen in the fabric of reality, then pulling it back as he commanded.
|¬Oh World, Turn Back. ¬|
[?!!!]
Everything froze.
A monochrome filter was applied to the world.
Time halted in its tracks before reversing.
Arthur’s decision to invoke Low-Rank Time Laws, despite their punishing energy cost, had paid off. The man’s temporal power was incapable of resisting the command.
Even a mere 0.2% of Low-Rank comprehension eclipsed 100% mastery of Basic Rank Laws.
Though conscious, the man couldn’t stop his body from being pulled backwards through time. In this grayscale world where Arthur alone retained colour, he breathed heavily.
10% of his magic power... per second of reversal.
The cost was staggering, yet it was expected when manipulating Low-Rank laws.
Arthur didn’t hesitate, sacrificing 50% of his reserves to rewind the man by five seconds.
One second.
Arthur summoned Lostvayne.
Two seconds.
He infused it with destruction energy.
Three seconds.
He stepped forward.
Four sec—KrAaNCcCK!!!
The strange sound reverberated in Arthur’s ears, and his Pseudo-Origin Core so burned as if aflame.
A crack split the monochrome world, offsetting Arthur’s power and forcing the flow of time forward again.
The three seconds Arthur had rewound unravelled as if they had never been.
Shock.
It painted both Arthur’s face and the man’s.
Arthur froze in disbelief, while the man stumbled, nearly falling before quickly regaining his footing and resuming his flight.
That moment of hesitation was all Evan needed to close the gap, his prismatic flames surging forward to strike. The man was forced to defend, and the brilliant display jolted Arthur from his stupor.
Despite his lingering shock, Arthur continued his pursuit, his mind racing.
Why had Arthur and the man reacted with so much shock?
It was due to what they had both sensed at that moment.
Arthur’s Time Rewind was broken.
But it wasn’t the man who broke it. It obviously wasn’t Arthur either.
The one who shattered Arthur’s command to rewind time was TIME itself.
The law of time had rejected Arthur’s control. That was why they both reacted so strongly.
Dread tightened its grip on Arthur’s chest. He pushed forward, activating his Pseudo-Authority once more despite the searing pain in his Pseudo-Origin Core, and summoned his Parallel Paths Vision.
This morning, at 6 a.m., Arthur had checked the futures ahead and had seen five possible futures, the same five he had been seeing for months.
Now, it was 6 p.m.
And before Arthur, there was only ONE inevitable future.
