Chapter 787: Adapt or Die
[Mas...! Yo... hu...!]
[Ar...! Answ...!]
Lostvayne and Celestia both called out to him, but his ears were ringing, and their voices came through in broken fragments he could barely make out.
The beam that had struck him after it disrupted his grip had hit a vital—his heart.
Arthur didn’t waste time thinking. He immediately reached out and grabbed Celestia again, and without hesitation, forcefully absorbed ALL of her remaining cosmic energy in an instant.
It was far more than what his body could safely process at once, but at the moment, he didn’t care.
[Ma...ster... n’t bl...ock th... ...ll...!]
Celestia shouted something, maybe a warning about her inability to block the side cannon shots while he was drawing all her power, but Arthur couldn’t focus on that. He could barely hear anything anyway.
His left hand grasped Lostvayne, and he stabbed the sword into the ground, angling it to intercept the central laser beam. He simultaneously channelled Lostvayne’s destruction energy, using the sword’s Weapon Authority to reinforce the layer of destruction energy around his body, shielding himself from the burst shots coming from the side cannons, while the blade itself blocked the laser beam.
The cosmic energy flooding into the gaps within Arthur’s wounded heart, while actively healing the damage, was still far too much for his body to handle.
As a Sub Cosmic being, Arthur’s existence simply couldn’t accommodate cosmic energy within his body for extended durations, yet despite that, he was forcefully retaining it, using it to repair his internal injuries.
The unstable mixture of that energy with the traces of lingering creation law energy within the wounds catalysed a forced evolution.
The overwhelming cosmic energy coursing through his body was simultaneously damaging and regenerating him. It did manage to heal his heart, helped by Arthur momentarily activating his Authority of Time to accelerate the process, redirecting the magic power he had been using to shield his internals from the creation energy toward his Authority for a short burst of acceleration.
Arthur, taking a deep breath, began forcing his body forward again, despite the constant pain in his chest.
His cells continued to break down and regenerate repeatedly, the cycle occurring countless times in rapid succession, making him feel as though his flesh was squirming beneath the surface of his skin.
Even as that sensation persisted, Arthur kept his eyes wide open, refusing to blink despite the blood partially obscuring his vision.
Using Lostvayne to block the laser of cosmic energy that was steadily increasing in intensity, and channelling the power from Lostvayne’s Weapon Authority to maintain the layer of energy around his body that was shielding him from the waves of creation-based cosmic energy crashing into him from every direction, while also relying on Celestia to intercept and cut down as many of the burst shots from the side cannons as possible, Arthur continued his advance.
And as he moved forward, that forced evolution was steadily progressing inside his body. The overwhelming amount of cosmic energy he had absorbed from Celestia was being rapidly consumed as his body continued to break down and regenerate, again and again, in a continuous loop of destruction and repair.
The cosmic energy surged violently through his veins alongside his blood. It moved with equal intensity through his energy circuits along with his magic power, flooding every channel inside him with pressure far beyond anything his body was meant to endure.
His veins began to bulge visibly against his skin, overcharged with far more energy than they were designed to carry, and the markings of his energy circuits appeared on his skin like some kind of strange, glowing tattoo.
The veins on his face bulged as cosmic energy surged through them, rising up to his eyes, and the moment it reached them, his vision instantly went blank.
In that instant, he was hit with the most vile, repulsive sensation he had ever experienced in his life.
It was as if his eyeballs had rotated in their sockets, and his body recoiled instinctively as he let out a strained scream at the nauseating discomfort.
But just as that became the most disgusting sensation he had ever felt, its record was instantly broken by a deeper, more violating feeling, one that made the first pale in comparison.
Arthur suddenly felt as though someone had pushed a hand directly through the back of his skull and was now pressing down on his brain itself, massaging it, causing his entire body to twitch and convulse as he vomited black blood and nearly lost his grip on Lostvayne.
The Seed Engine targeted his wrist again with a precision shot, aiming to completely break his hold on the sword, but Celestia moved and intercepted the blast, placing herself directly in the line of fire to protect his grip while he was temporarily immobilized.
The strange sensation went on for a duration Arthur couldn’t determine. But once his vision finally returned and he no longer felt as though something was directly massaging his brain, he looked up through his bloodied sight at the Seed Engine, now roughly thirty meters away.
Without hesitation, he pushed Lostvayne forward and simultaneously activated all of his Low-Rank Authorities.
He felt pain like his head was being split apart, but he still forced the activation through, using AGSD.
The singularity formed in front of him, devouring everything around it, from the ambient cosmic-creation energy in both the waves surging from the Seed Engine, pressing at him on all sides, and the laser beam that had been directly firing at Lostvayne.
The moment the singularity reached its limit, Arthur detonated it in a massive burst of crimson-silver light that was visible even from space.
The resulting explosion erupted outward in all directions, shattering the terrain for miles and rupturing the surrounding space, effectively vaporizing the ambient creation energy that had been pressing in on him from every side.
Arthur, grounded at the epicentre of the explosion, remained untouched.
Utilizing Lostvayne’s energy, he enveloped himself in a dense barrier that harmonized with the destructive blast, so while the violent expulsion of energy raged around him, it did not harm him.
His AGSD’s destruction couldn’t destroy Lostvayne’s destruction, so the force of the detonation passed over him harmlessly, reduced to background noise.
And that was the opening he had been waiting for.
With the surrounding energy forcibly cleared, Arthur leapt forward, opened his subspace mid-air, and the Seed Engine’s key dropped out.
He caught it immediately, his eyes already locked on the small exposed opening atop the kite-shaped device, and he drove the key straight into the slot.
The moment he did, he sensed a powerful surge of cosmic energy racing up the Seed Engine’s length.
Without delay, he began twisting the key, rotating it, trying to align it with the internal patterning of the locking mechanism. The resistance was heavy, the fit not immediate, but he kept turning, adjusting the angle slightly with each motion until finally, he heard a distinct click.
The instant that sound reached his ears, Arthur slammed the key downward with full force.
Immediately after, the Seed Engine released a final, immense burst of pure cosmic energy, an uncontrollable surge that exploded outward with overwhelming force.
The wave struck Arthur head-on, and the impact sent him flying backwards, his body thrown through the air as the uncontrollable flood of cosmic energy swept across everything in its path.
That cosmic energy that blasted him away was absorbed directly into Arthur’s body and soul. He crashed onto the floor moments after the impact, clutching his chest tightly as his body convulsed uncontrollably, twitching like an earthworm that had salt poured on it, while the overwhelming cosmic energy seemingly rampaged inside him.
It forcefully expelled every lingering trace of creation law energy in his body. Following that, strange, black, gooey substances seeped out of the pores across his skin, a physical manifestation of the impurities being purged from within, like a complete bodily cleanse.
But even after that, the volume of cosmic energy left inside him was still far too much for his body to handle, far too much for it to know what to do with.
And that energy wasn’t going anywhere.
His energy core was already filled to the brim. His energy circuits were filled to the brim. His soul, likewise, was filled to the brim.
There was nowhere else for the power to go. And so, in that adapt-or-die situation, Arthur’s existence had no choice but to evolve, no choice but to make space for the energy that had nowhere else to go.
His Existence Realm was forcefully elevated from the Inferior stage to the Intermediate stage of the Low-Tier Deity Realm.
The process consumed a portion of the cosmic energy to strengthen his body and soul, and another portion was used to expand his energy core, creating room for the remaining energy to pour in. His realm stage kept rising as his energy core continued expanding, creating more space for the remaining power to flow into.
Simultaneously, the energy that was already present was being compressed, increasing its quality and making additional space for further energy influx.
And the more cosmic energy that was used in the process, the less his body convulsed, and the less he twitched on the floor like an earthworm sprinkled with salt.
Eventually, his existence realm climbed to the peak of the Intermediate stage and began to step beyond it. However, the excess cosmic energy was fully consumed before it could carry him through the second step and set him on the path toward the Superior stage.
With the last of the energy expended, Arthur’s heavy breaths gradually lightened, softer and softer, until they finally evened out as he slipped into unconsciousness.
