Chapter 779: “Shh... No Witnesses.”
The Planet Lord lay at the bottom of the crater, stunned by how easily Arthur had knocked him down.
Despite the immense power he was currently wielding, Arthur’s attack had broken through his multi-layered barrier, wounded him, and worse yet, the wound refused to heal.
On a side note, Arthur hadn’t even used his Progenitor Authority. He had simply attacked with pure anti-divinity, this time putting actual intent behind the strike instead of casually throwing out a punch.
The power of his Unique Authority had then gone on to negate the temporal energy that had previously allowed the Planet Lord to recover from Arthur’s earlier punch.
Still in disbelief, the Planet Lord tried to say something, but before he could open his mouth, he caught a flash of silver in the sky and immediately rolled away, just in time to avoid Arthur descending on the spot he had occupied a second earlier.
He wanted to borrow even more power from his future self, but the potential consequences of going over the limit he’d been allowed made him hesitate. However, the moment he felt Arthur’s gaze shift toward him, that instinctive fear for his life overwhelmed all hesitation.
Gritting his teeth, he drew on more power and charged at Arthur with his spear.
Temporal light swirled within the flames of his spear, lending the weapon a ghostly afterglow as he thrust it at Arthur.
Arthur tilted his head slightly, letting the flaming tip pass by his ear, then stepped into the Planet Lord’s guard and drove a fist into his stomach. The blow lifted the god’s feet off the ground and sent him skidding back, his boots tearing through the stone floor.
Recovering quickly, the Planet Lord swung his spear in a wide arc, releasing a crescent flame slash, but Arthur simply raised his palm, blocking the slash with just his default gravity barrier.
While the Authority the man had borrowed was at least equal to Arthur’s, his own flame Authority was of a lower Rank, making it easy for Arthur to overpower his attacks.
After easily blocking his slash, Arthur closed the distance, dodging another spear thrust and delivering an uppercut to the god’s chin.
The Planet Lord staggered backwards but managed to stay on his feet, using his spear as a support to keep himself from falling.
He quickly raised it and stabbed it back into the ground, channelling divinity through it. Pillars of flame erupted in a circle around Arthur, each one swirling with time distortions that bent space around their bases.
Arthur silently watched them, waiting until the moment they began collapsing inward before moving forward, speed-blitzing the Planet Lord.
The god barely registered the blur of movement before Arthur’s elbow struck the back of his head. He stumbled, but whipped around with a reverse sweep of his weapon, forcing Arthur to step back.
The spear transformed, expanding along its shaft and sprouting mechanical ridges near the tip. This was followed by a sharp hiss as a beam of compressed flame and time energy shot from its head.
Arthur raised his forearm, the beam striking the barrier around his skin and splashing across it like boiling water on stone. The temporal power chipped off layers of his gravity barrier, but eventually failed to pierce through.
The godslayer then shook off the lingering aura and dashed forward. He evaded the Planet Lord’s spear thrust, then caught the shaft of the spear under his left arm, yanked it off course, and drove his right knee into the Planet Lord’s side.
An audible cracking sound echoed as Arthur’s attack broke the man’s ribs, and still holding the spear shaft, Arthur pivoted and used the Planet Lord’s own weapon to flip him over his shoulder, slamming him into the ground.
The god let out a pained grunt, unleashing a divine wave of flames in retaliation. Unfortunately, his divine flames were harmless against Arthur, whose anti-divinity nullified it entirely.
Rolling away, the Planet Lord jumped to his feet and raised his hand. Dozens of fireballs formed above them, immediately falling with meteoric impacts.
Arthur didn’t bother dodging. He simply walked forward as the fireballs crashed down one after another, each explosion meeting his gravity barrier and disintegrating on contact as the layered Authority within them shattered.
Using the divinity-infused smoke from the impacts as cover, the Planet Lord charged again, his spear stabbing and slashing at hypersonic speeds, but Arthur blocked all the attacks with his bare hands.
Sometimes he used a palm to redirect a strike, other times a knuckle to knock the spear aside.
Pouring more divinity into the spear, the Planet Lord swung in a wide arc, unleashing a swirling torrent of fire that Arthur teleported behind him to avoid.
’?!’
The Planet Lord leapt upward the instant he lost sight of Arthur, his eyes scanning rapidly in all directions in search of Arthur.
When he finally spotted him, standing with his hands in his pockets, the god immediately thrust his weapon downward, sending a focused beam of time-laced fire shooting from the tip.
Arthur jumped and met him mid-air, catching the spear shaft with one hand and smashing his fist into the god’s ribs with the other.
**CRANCK!
Subconsciously, Arthur applied too much force in his grip, accidentally crushing the spear’s handle as the Planet Lord was sent flying by his punch.
"Ah..."
He looked down at the broken weapon in his hands, briefly contemplating what to do with it, then casually tossed it aside and flew after the falling god.
The instant the Planet Lord hit the ground face-first, Arthur’s heel descended onto his back, smashing him deeper into the crater.
The man tried to rise, but Arthur dropped beside him and kicked him in the face, sending his head bouncing off the rock floor. Flames erupted around the god again, but Arthur stepped through them, grabbed him by the neck, and hurled him across the broken land.
The Planet Lord regained his balance mid-air, shouting loudly as he swung his hands and sent a wide arc of golden flames that burned a trench across the battlefield.
Arthur simply leapt over it, landed in front of the god, ducked under a stab from a flame-forged spear, and hit him with a one-two punch across the ribs and jaw.
The god stumbled back, fire and temporal energy pouring out of him in uncontrolled waves, but Arthur ignored that and rained down punches on his body.
Punches to the gut, jabs to the throat, uppercuts to the chin.
Every strike ignored his defences, and Arthur continued landing hits to vital points until the god collapsed to his knees, head bowed, gasping for breath.
Arthur then grabbed the back of his skull and slammed his face into the shattered ground.
"Hmm? Not enough?"
For the first time since this...fight began, Arthur finally used a power besides gravity, coating his fist in temporal energy and punching down on the god’s back.
The blow pushed the man’s body past its limit, weakening it to the point where it could no longer sustain either the borrowed Authority or the power drawn from his future self.
Both dissipated like mist, his True Form Release was undone, and the glow that had covered his body faded completely.
"Good."
Arthur retrieved a chair from his subspace, took a seat, and grabbed the man by the hair, lifting his head.
"Oy, wake up. I’ve still got questions for you."
He gave the god a few light slaps until his half-conscious eyes finally opened, dazed and filled with fear.
"Answer my questions or I’ll slowly crush your skull.
Where did you keep your archives with information about other planets, specials realms and dimensions? Stuff like that. You have 5 seconds."
The god coughed, wheezing through broken teeth as blood trickled down his chin.
"U-und...underground... it... it’s all... destroyed... everything... gone..."
He winced, struggling to breathe.
"N-nothing... left... y-you... blew it... all up..."
At this, Arthur raised an eyebrow and took a long look at the devastation surrounding them.
It was true—everything had been annihilated, from the beginning of their fight even.
The Planet Lord’s estate had been reduced to nothing but fine dust and fractured stone. Craters gouged into the earth, stretching for kilometres, leaving deep, hollow scars across the continent.
There was nothing alive within miles, save for Arthur and the Planet Lord.
"I can see that everything’s been destroyed," Arthur said calmly, "but I still asked because that won’t be a problem."
Then, lifting his palm slightly, he slowly turned his wrist anticlockwise, as though adjusting some invisible dial.
|Turn back.|
With that command, the planet’s rotation came to a halt.
Then, without any build-up or noise, the world began to rewind.
The broken terrain smoothened out, fractured earth closed and flattened, charred soil grew green again, and scorched plains were rapidly replaced by thick carpets of grass.
Rubble leapt into the air, reforming into walls, doors, and towers. What had once been vaporized material instantly reconstituted, rebuilding the Planet Lord’s estate from the ground up.
Entire buildings reformed in seconds, and the sky above lost its smoke and ash, returning to the clear hue it once held before Sector 1 was reduced to ruin.
The Planet Lord’s eyes widened as he watched the world piece itself back together. He trembled, not from pain this time, but from something far worse, understanding.
If Arthur could do this, then he’d never stood a chance. Even with his reinforcements, they would’ve all been turned into bloodstains on the floor if Arthur got serious on them.
They were now at the exact spot where their confrontation had first begun, just outside the grand entrance of the Planet Lord’s mansion, the twin staircases rising behind them.
Arthur, completely composed, turned to the man whose bloodied face now paled further.
"You said it was underground, right?" he asked.
"Let’s go underground, then."
◇ ◇ ◇
About ten minutes later, Arthur had extracted all the information he needed from the wounded Planet Lord, who now lay twitching in the corner of the room.
Arthur had increased the gravity acting on the man to 50x that of the planet’s natural force, pinning his wounded body to the floor. Despite this, he exerted an absurd degree of control to prevent the man’s mass from simply tearing through the ground and sinking toward the core.
As a result, the Planet Lord could do nothing but writhe and twitch in agony, barely conscious.
Meanwhile, Arthur calmly scanned the archives, sorting through files and data until he came across what he was looking for.
"Well, it’s in the direction we’re heading," he said, pointing at an icon on the projected star map.
"Restricted Realm RE-248. What’s with this place and naming things like this?"
Shaking his head, he read through the details.
"This realm can’t be entered at all. There’s no record of anyone ever making it past its gate. They even tried nuking it with a collapsing star, but that didn’t work either.
Because of that, they sealed it off and abandoned it. Just a basic seal, no guards or anything, since they’ve concluded entry is impossible."
As he finished reading, Celestia, floating at his right side, spoke.
[That sounds like good news, then.]
Arthur nodded toward the sword. "Yep. Good news."
From his left, Lostvayne gestured to the god on the floor and asked, [So, Master, what are you going to do with him?]
Arthur slowly turned to face the Planet Lord, who was still twitching under the heavy gravity, barely clinging to consciousness.
He walked over, extending his left hand and calling Lostvayne into his grasp.
Standing over the wounded god, Arthur raised the sword, and the moment the Planet Lord saw his shadow stretch over him, panic set in.
He opened his mouth to beg for his life, but before the first word could leave his lips, Arthur lifted his free hand to his own mouth.
"Shh," he whispered. "No witnesses."
And with that, he brought Lostvayne down, and the god’s vision went dark, permanently.
