Chapter 751: Interlude 8 – 3: Calm Before Storm
"...what...the hell happened?"
"??"
Arthur blinked, genuinely confused. He walked up to her, puzzled, asking what was wrong, but the moment he stepped within arm’s reach, Cattleya grabbed him and yanked him closer in a blur.
"How long were you there?"
Her voice was calm, but Arthur knew his mother was the type who could be completely expressionless even while seething with rage, so he knew she was anything but calm at the moment.
"...about a year and two months..." he replied after a slight pause.
But that response only made Cattleya’s expression worsen.
There was shock, disbelief, worry, and anger in her eyes—but the only emotion actually directed at Arthur was her worry.
"Again, I ask. What’s wrong?"
The answer didn’t come from Cattleya, but from Lostvayne.
[Master...your concealment ring is deactivated.]
’Oh!’
And then, Arthur understood.
The moment she laid eyes on him, the first thing Cattleya had done was scan him using one of her Authorities, checking to see if he was completely fine.
Naturally, she had discovered that he was now a Half-Deity, and that was the source of her shock.
Arthur had left Hell as a Superior Epic on the verge of reaching the Legendary Realm, and now, after just a little over 3 months, he had returned as a Superior Half-Deity?
She had been worried about how long Arthur had spent at his destination, but when he told her it had only been a year and two months, her expression understandably worsened.
Cattleya simply could not imagine what he must have gone through to reach the level of Half-Deity in such a short time.
Now realising the reason behind her shock, Arthur raised both hands and tried to calm her.
"Wait, mum. Nothing crazy happened."
The moment those words left his mouth, both of his Ego Swords sighed simultaneously in his mind.
[[Master, you’re going to regret that statement later.]]
Arthur’s brow twitched at their comment, but to Cattleya, who could not hear their voices, it only looked like he had suddenly remembered something that contradicted what he had just said.
"Wait, nothing crazy like you’re probably imagining happened. I didn’t go through any extreme events. I just ended up in a few dimensions and had to fight a planet. Nothing too serious," he added quickly, attempting to clarify.
Unfortunately, that attempt only made things worse.
[Master. Stop talking.]
’I probably should,’ Arthur thought, deciding to take Lostvayne’s advice to heart.
It was already too late, though. The damage had been done.
Still holding onto his arms, Cattleya dragged him straight into the spatial crack she had come through, and Arthur’s vision immediately blurred.
When his sight cleared, he found himself in a strange laboratory, and the first thing he noticed was a hundred-metre-long dragon suspended inside a massive cylinder filled with green liquid.
"What in the Nine th—"
Halfway through his exclamation, Arthur noticed the woman currently injecting a syringe into a giant eyeball that clearly belonged to the dragon.
"Oh, hey Grandma," he casually greeted.
"Huh? Arthur?"
Inglis blinked in confusion at his sudden appearance. She turned to Cattleya for an explanation, but before she could ask, Cattleya spoke first.
"Mum, where’s Aunt Aurora?"
"She just stepped out for a bit. Why?" Inglis replied, still clearly surprised.
"I need her to run a complete check on Arthur," Cattleya said as she began pulling Arthur out of the lab again.
Arthur sighed when he heard that.
"Mum, I’m completely fine. There’s nothing wrong with me."
Unfortunately, Cattleya wasn’t listening.
To her, the idea that Arthur could have grown that much stronger without experiencing some sort of extreme ordeal that would almost certainly leave lasting side effects was simply inconceivable. That was why she insisted on having the Royal Family’s best medic examine him.
Meanwhile, Inglis, finally noticing that Arthur’s energy levels were literally worlds apart from when she last saw him, nearly dropped the dragon eye in her hand.
"Wait, what the fuck happened to the boy wherever he went?!"
"I fought a planeeetttt...!" Arthur called back weakly as Cattleya dragged him out of the lab.
Fortunately, they ran into Aurora just outside the room, and Cattleya immediately had her perform a thorough examination of Arthur—body, soul, and spirit. After a complete scan, Aurora finally confirmed that there was, indeed, nothing wrong with him.
Once the check-up was over, Arthur turned to his mother and said,
"Didn’t I tell you? There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t even have those previous energy issues anymore. They got completely resolved when I exuviated.
Someone I know broke the True Name Seal. I didn’t give him the name, but he sacrificed his law comprehensions to do it. I kind of owe him for that, but it’s no biggi—"
Cattleya cut him off by suddenly pulling him into a hug. Arthur blinked, surprised, then quietly hugged her back.
"I was totally fine, mum. Everything went pretty smoothly, honestly, thanks to all the groundwork Lucifer laid beforehand.
He made sure the entire demon race in that universe owed him, so I was in good hands the entire time."
Just as those words left his mouth, the lab door opened, and in walked his Half-Phoenix, Half-Devil uncle.
"Oh, Uncle Creusery. Thanks for the healing flames, they were really use—"
[Master! STOP talking!!]
Celestia’s warning came far too late.
Cattleya immediately pulled away, her eyes narrowing as she spoke to Arthur in the calmest voice he’d ever heard from her.
"Open. Your. Subspace."
’...fuck.’
Arthur should NOT have brought up the healing flames. By doing so, he had inadvertently revealed that he’d used them—items Cattleya had extorted from Creusery for him to use only in life-threatening situations.
’Celestia, how many of those crystals did you break in the Infernal Dimension?’
[Master, the number doesn’t matter. You’re already fucked.]
Arthur was, and Celesitia sure as hell wasn’t holding back from spelling it out.
"Arthur..." Cattleya called out again, and under her intense gaze, he silently pulled out the ’Survival Kit’ she had given him.
Cattleya snapped her fingers, and the items inside the bag floated out, arranging themselves in the air around her.
Her eyes darted across the contents, and she frowned when she spotted something.
It wasn’t the damaged energy amplifier. It was the grenade launcher she’d given him, now bearing a noticeable dent in the barrel.
Knowing the materials she used to craft it, the dent alone was concerning. And that wasn’t even considering the fact that half the ammo she’d provided was gone.
Her focus quickly shifted to the pouch with the healing flame crystals. She counted them, her expression darkening when she noticed one was missing.
Slowly, she turned her gaze back to Arthur, her expression blank as she spoke.
"You’re going to tell me every single thing that happened, right from the millisecond you arrived in that place."
’Hahaha, I made one wrong move and now I’m done for.’
[This is why you should have kept quiet.]
◇ ◇ ◇
Arthur spent the next hour detailing every significant event from the year and two months he spent in the Valmone universe.
There were a few interruptions along the way, mostly with Cattleya wanting to smack him for some of the reckless things he’d done, but thankfully, Creusery held her back.
By the time he finished explaining how he’d somehow come to own two planets in a different universe, Cattleya was too stunned by the absurdity of it all to even consider smacking him.
Creusery, Aurora, and Inglis were all equally astonished by his tale.
From how the synergy between the Third Magic and Valmone’s Devour Class System had caused Arthur’s power to increase at an unreasonable pace, to him destroying a Book of Truth Replica, meeting a soul fragment of the Progenitor Angel, battling a Tree of Creation, a Rogue Planetary Consciousness, and encountering the Eternal of Space and Reality—honestly, owning a planet seemed like the least outrageous part of that list.
It was one hell of a story.
Not long after he finished and while they were all still trying to digest the information influx, Creusery’s watch beeped. He tapped the screen, reading the incoming message, before turning to Cattleya.
"Dad’s calling for Arthur, so let’s move this to Aeturn."
Without waiting for a response, he extended his right hand and clenched his fist, activating his Authority of Space and tearing open a rift in spacetime. A fiery red Spatial Gate formed, and Arthur glanced at it before letting out a sigh and shaking his head.
’I feel like I’ve known nothing about my family until now.’
It was the same feeling he’d had after seeing Cattleya again, reminding him just how little he understood the depths of power his family members wielded.
With Nonstandard existences possessing power far beyond what was typical for their Existence Realms as relatives, it wasn’t surprising that Arthur had turned out as ridiculous as he had.
Anyways, Inglis returned to her experiments on the unfortunate dragon, with Aurora helping her keep the creature alive long enough for the tests to be completed. Meanwhile, Arthur, Creusery, and Cattleya set off for Aeturn.
Creusery’s gate took them to a secret location in Varona, one of the few places with a Dimensional Gate that led directly to the Devildom’s Capital Planet.
Using this gate, the three of them travelled across millions of light years, leaving Varona behind and entering the Burning Realms Cluster, where Aeturn was located.
But just as they had entered Aeturn’s gravitational field and were about to exit the dimensional gate, a voice echoed through the spatial tunnel.
[Let me borrow the boy for a bit.]
In the next moment, the wall of the spatial tunnel beside Arthur tore open, forming a diverging path. From within, a powerful gravitational force surged out, seizing his body and pulling him toward it.
Arthur’s instinctive reaction was to summon Lostvayne and strike its source, but the moment the Sword of Destruction appeared in his hands, Celestia screamed out.
[Master, wait!]
"?!"
Her voice made Arthur freeze on reflex, and in that instant, the force yanked him into the diverging tunnel, just as Cattleya’s hand reached out, narrowly missing him.
