Chapter 697: Calculated Bait
’It’s already begun?! When?! What triggered it? This guy?!!’
A flood of questions surged through Arthur’s mind, but even then, his body continued moving forward.
As he sprinted forward at supersonic speed, an unfamiliar sensation washed over him. It felt as though his body had passed through an invisible barrier—a film of some kind.
Evan and Beatrix who were ahead of him, hadn’t reacted to it, and he quickly realised why.
The film wasn’t something they could perceive since it was made of cosmic energy.
The instant Arthur crossed that threshold, his eyes widened in shock as the pieces clicked into place.
Now he understood.
Now he knew what Artemisia had been trying to warn him about.
The ground around him began to glow, intricate runic inscriptions emerging to form a massive teleportation circle.
Arthur’s heart sank as he realised what Artemisia must have seen when the man’s ’time’ fused with hers.
’He’s Baiting You! —that’s what she was trying to say!’
The man’s target wasn’t Artemisia.
The man’s targets were all four of them.
Capturing Artemisia had been a ruse—a calculated bait to draw him, Evan, and Beatrix to this location.
It was a strategic move.
Capturing Artemisia would undoubtedly make Beatrix’s emotions overpower her calm, making her predictable.
Going after Arthur directly would have triggered his Memories of the Future.
Ambushing Evan would have activated his Danger Sense.
So instead, the man had gone after Artemisia, knowing it would lure them here without setting off their unique abilities.
And now, they’d walked straight into his trap.
The teleportation circle, prepared in advance, was ready to activate, its destination unknown. What Arthur did know, was that it wouldn’t lead anywhere good.
Who knew what had been prepared on the other side?
Determined to stop it, Arthur swirled cosmic energy around his sword, intending to strike the ground and destroy the circle before it could activate.
But then, the man—still locked in combat with Evan—suddenly shifted his gaze. His eyes moved toward Arthur’s sword as though drawn to it.
That shift didn’t go unnoticed by Arthur.
’He can see cosmic energy!’
To anyone else, Arthur’s sword should have appeared devoid of energy. No magic, aura or law energies.
But the moment Arthur commanded the ambient cosmic energy, the man’s eyes shifted toward the blade instinctively.
Then, raising his hand, the man surprised Arthur for the second time.
A stream of cosmic energy erupted from the man’s body, surrounding Evan and Beatrix, freezing their movements completely—a Temporal Stop.
Arthur’s eyes widened in realization.
The man hadn’t simply commanded the ambient cosmic energy—he had released it directly from within his own body.
That single action made it clear to Arthur what kind of being the man was.
He wasn’t a Sub-Cosmic like Arthur. He was a full, Complete Cosmic being.
In that instant, the man capitalized on the inherent advantage that full cosmic beings held over Sub Cosmics.
He asserted his dominance over the surrounding cosmic energy, bending it to his will and forcefully dispersing the cosmic energy infused in Arthur’s sword.
As a result, when the blade struck the ground, it lacked the power necessary to completely destroy the teleportation circle, managing only to inflict some damage on it.
This little damage wasn’t enough to interfere with its activation.
The man then turned his attention to Arthur, using his cosmic energy and spatial manipulation to lock Arthur in place, knowing full well that a Temporal Stop would be useless on the boy.
He aimed to keep Arthur from making any further moves, especially with Lostvayne in hand.
But Arthur wasn’t so easily held down.
Lostvayne’s cosmic energy surged through his body, and Arthur tapped into it to break free from the spatial lock. He activated his Pseudo-Authority of Space, delaying the teleportation as long as possible.
Arthur had a choice—he could try to escape, and move faster than the man could react. After all, the man appeared to be immobilized during the teleportation circle’s activation.
But Arthur didn’t flee.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward the approaching presences—the High-Rank demons.
Arthur, Evan, and Beatrix had been chasing the man for kilometres, fighting, deploying bounded fields, and causing explosions.
There was no way these High-Rank demons, who were overseeing the battlefield clean-up nearby, would have missed all this commotion.
Those aware of Arthur’s presence in the area quickly realized that the blasts originated from his direction. Sensing Arthur’s destruction energy and spotting Evan’s prismatic flames, they hurried over, trying to figure out what was happening.
However, it should also be remembered that the teens and Artemisia’s kidnapper were moving at supersonic speeds.
From the time Artemisia had been incapacitated to the moment Arthur stepped into the circle, barely 90 seconds had passed.
The High-Rank demons, positioned much farther away, needed more time to catch up to Arthur and the others.
On top of that, they had been delayed when the kidnapper used Carnage Deception.
Some eventually managed to break free from Carnage Deception and resumed their pursuit to uncover what was happening, and more rushed over after sensing the bloodlust, including some Superior Transcendents.
However, they arrived just in time to witness the light of the teleportation circle engulfing Arthur, Evan, Beatrix, and the unknown man with the unconscious Artemisia slung over his shoulder.
It was clearly the sight of a kidnapping.
A few demons made attempts to act, hoping to save them, but Arthur knew it was futile. No matter what they did, they would never succeed in stopping the teleportation.
His gaze locked onto one very familiar figure—Aravae, who had previously come over when Artemisia was experimenting with corpses.
To her, he shouted two words.
|¬GET ALVEY! ¬|
As the words left his mouth, his hands dipped into his subspace and pulled out a missile—one of his anti-divinity missiles.
This was something he had created on a whim with Alvey and Jamie, an experiment to see how much cosmic energy he could stuff into an anti-divinity missile.
The kidnapper attempted to use his cosmic energy to hold Arthur down once more, assuming that Arthur’s intention was to destroy the teleportation circle with the missile.
But that could not be any more wrong.
With all his strength and gravity powers, Arthur hurled the missile high into the air.
Time power instantly accelerated it, shooting it upward at hypersonic speed before it exploded in a brilliant burst of energy.
At that moment, Arthur’s ability to delay the teleportation faltered.
His Pseudo-Authority of Space couldn’t stop the process anymore, and the light of the teleportation circle swallowed his body.
All five of them vanished.
◇ ◇ ◇
As Arthur, Artemisia, Evan, Beatrix, and the Unknown Man vanished before their eyes, the High-Rank demons were left in shock.
Their attacks and energies sliced through the empty space in an attempt to reach them, but it was too late.
Immediately, Aravae turned and shouted to the others,
"Contact High Command now! General Vaughn has been kidnapped!"
The High-Rank demons scrambled into action. They all knew the importance of Arthur to the Demon Kings.
And now, Arthur had been kidnapped—not alone, but with Evan.
For the demons familiar with the interstellar landscape, they recognized Artemisia and Beatrix as the daughters of the ’Supreme’ god Rulers.
Did they care why the two girls were here? No.
What mattered was that they had been taken, alongside Arthur Vaughn, someone deeply favoured by the 72 Demon Kings, despite their differences.
Without wasting a moment, the demons began transmitting messages to Militopolis and the Rhigor continent.
Aravae activated a Spatial Gate Artifact and jumped through the conjured portal, heading straight for the Demon Army Headquarters in Southern Gledea.
But this spatial movement wasn’t instantaneous—It would take several minutes to reach Militopolis.
Who knew what could happen in that time?
What if they were too late?
But thanks to Arthur, that concern was resolved a bit.
He had launched an Anti-Divinity Missile into the sky.
The kidnapper had been puzzled by Arthur’s action. In fact, no one understood why Arthur had done that—not even the High-Rank demons, nor Evan or Beatrix.
Only Arthur himself understood the reason.
It was a signal.
A signal that he knew would not go unnoticed by a certain someone on this planet.
In the heart of Militopolis, in Southern Gledea, a certain Demon King sensed the surge of cosmic energy detonating in the sky.
He turned toward the source of the energy, recognizing that it was mixed with Anti-Divinity—an energy he had only ever seen with Arthur.
"What’s Arthur up to this time?"
He raised a brow in confusion, then expanded his spatial perception to locate him.
But when he reached the area where the energy originated, he found not Arthur’s figure, but a flurry of High-Rank demons scrambling about, with one of them trying to cross through space toward him.
There was no sign of Arthur, Artemisia, Beatrix, or Evan.
Scores of the land lay in ruin, devastated by attacks laced with Arthur’s residual energy.
Jamie immediately sprang to his feet, his expression changing as he expanded his perception. He first searched the entire continent, but he couldn’t sense any of the four teenagers.
Next, he reached out to cover the entire planet, but still, there was no trace of them.
Without hesitation, Jamie used his power to rip apart space, creating a spatial gate and leaping through it.
Alvey and McEnda, who had been speaking with him, were stunned by the sudden action. But then they remembered Jamie’s mention of Arthur and realized something had gone terribly wrong.
They quickly followed him into the open gate which he hadn’t bothered to close in his haste.
In an instant, Jamie emerged at the other end of the gate, arriving in the area where the High-Rank demons were trying to determine what had happened.
The moment Jamie appeared, all their attention was drawn to him. They immediately dropped to one knee and greeted him, but Jamie didn’t acknowledge them.
His gaze immediately went to it.
