Chapter 789: Ego and Identity
Although Arthur was excited and very much wanted to test out his new powers right away, there was a more pressing matter that needed to be dealt with first.
That matter was the fact that his body stank, quite terribly.
As such, Arthur pulled his spaceship out from his subspace, entered it, took a shower, changed into fresh clothes, and then disintegrated the worn ones with a bit of his destruction energy.
Only then did he step back outside, now clean and refreshed, to stand before the Seed Engine.
"I came all this way to get this thing so I could artificially induce my evolution into a Cosmic Being... but who would’ve thought that in the process of trying to get it, I’d actually become one," Arthur muttered with a sigh.
"Oh well. Even if I’ve already accomplished the reason I came for this thing, it doesn’t mean I’m just going to leave it here after all that effort."
Lostvayne immediately chimed in.
[Master, if you said you weren’t going to take it with you after all that effort, I would have quite literally smacked you with my blade.]
Arthur chuckled at the sword’s words and shook his head as he began walking toward the Seed Engine. Not too long ago, attempting something like this would have triggered a violent retaliation from the device, but now it sat quietly, inert and harmless.
The planet had calmed down too, though Arthur remained on guard. He didn’t know when the planet might decide to act again in defence of the Seed Engine, so he kept his guard up just in case.
But back to the Seed Engine itself, he planned to take it with him for one simple reason.
"If I end up going to another universe and I create some sort of base for godslayers or anything like that, I can use this to terraform the planet I make the base on to suit my preferences. I can also take some uninhabitable planet, slap this thing on it, and turn it into a place people can actually live on."
Lostvayne replied, [That does sound like a practical application of the Seed Engine. And I highly doubt that Lucifer really needs this thing anymore, so you should be able to get away with keeping it. Even if he does want it back, we can try to strong-arm him into letting you have it.]
Arthur immediately raised an eyebrow at the sword’s words. "You mean you can try to strong-arm him, because I’m pretty sure I can’t strong-arm Lucifer into anything."
[Fair. I would be the one doing that.]
Arthur continued walking towards the Seed Engine, and Lostvayne spoke again.
[Master, when you leave this place, there’s a high chance that those gods outside are going to try to make you show them what you took from here. Are you actually going to show them the Seed Engine?]
"Fuck no," Arthur replied instantly. "No way in hell I’m going to show them this. I’m under no obligation to show them anything, so I won’t. It’s as simple as that."
He paused, then frowned. "But come to think of it...how the hell did those bastards even find me in the first place?"
It was a question Arthur hadn’t given much thought to before now since he’d been entirely focused on reaching the Seed Engine. But now that the job was done, and the device was within reach, he turned his attention to that mystery.
"I made sure to kill every single person who saw me on that last planet I stopped on," he muttered. "I used destruction energy to completely mess up the planetary records, leaving no single trace that would show I was there. So how did they still find me?"
Lostvayne then offered a suggestion.
[Could it be from the planet you stopped on before that one?]
"Really? I didn’t wipe my traces on those earlier planets, but even then, they shouldn’t have been able to see me. Last I checked, my nature as a Singularity meant my existence doesn’t properly register on planetary records anyway. That’s how it works, right?"
When Arthur turned to Lostvayne with that question, the sword explained,
[Well, your existence does register on planetary records, it’s just that if anyone tries to view those records, they’ll likely only see a distorted mass or a blank void. Basically, your entire body ends up censored in those records.
It’ll still take some time before you reach the level where you don’t appear in them at all.]
Arthur nodded in understanding, but the question still remained.
"How did they track me? I’ve quite literally left no trail. Unless they saw my ship and just followed that?
But no—that god of Permanence guy specifically mentioned that I killed his subordinates. The only place where I killed anything in this galaxy was that last planet I stopped on. So that’s probably where he found out about me. But still... how?"
Arthur thought back, trying to recall every detail of what he had done on that planet. He was certain he’d thoroughly wiped all traces of his presence.
It was then that Lostvayne spoke.
[There is one thing you didn’t touch, Master.]
Arthur blinked. "What is it?"
[The thing that was embedded into the core of that planet,] the sword answered.
Arthur’s eyes widened as realisation hit him.
"Right... I didn’t touch that. I didn’t want to risk alerting whoever placed it there in case they had some kind of connection to it."
He pressed a hand to his chin, sinking into thought. If that device had been placed by the god of Permanence himself, then it was entirely possible that it had recorded something about Arthur while he was on that planet.
"And if the god of Permanence had gone to check that thing out, then that might be how he had found me. Maybe I should have destroyed it after all."
But just as that thought formed, Arthur dismissed it.
"No... that thing was connected to the space around the planet in some weird way that I honestly don’t even understand."
As Arthur mentioned that, Lostvayne, connecting the dots, spoke.
[Master, that man in that library on the second planet you went to mentioned something about a Permanence Anchor. Maybe that was one of them.]
Upon hearing this, Arthur nodded in agreement.
"That would explain the strange temporal law weave it was linked to in space. That web of temporal energy I saw must’ve been the permanence they were making such a fuss about on that planet."
Arthur felt fairly certain that this was the case.
"Oh well. Doesn’t really matter to me now. What matters is this Seed Engine."
When he looked back at it, and then at the organic appendages connected to it, Arthur recalled Celestia’s earlier analogy and chuckled.
"Celestia’s analogy really does fit this current situation, especially with those organic extensions connected to it and all."
[Lady Celestia was quite correct in her analogy.]
Hearing Lostvayne’s words, Arthur’s mind briefly wandered to something completely unrelated to the matter at hand.
"Lady Celestia, huh? You tack honorifics onto Celestia’s name..."
But he paused almost immediately after saying that, and after thinking for a moment, he turned to the floating sword and asked, "Hey Lostvayne, this is probably pretty late for me to ask this but, exactly which gender is your Ego classified under?"
In response, Lostvayne turned the flat of its blade toward him and said,
[Master, that question is thirteen years late. And the answer is: neither.]
Leaving aside how late Arthur was in asking that particular question, Lostvayne’s response caught his curiosity.
"Neither?"
Lostvayne elaborated.
[Yes. Neither. Most Ego Weapons, myself included, don’t really care about such things. We prefer to remain in our weapon forms most of the time, only adopting humanoid forms when absolutely necessary.
The ones among us who do care tend to identify themselves in ways and with forms that either match their wielders or cater to their preferences.
I’ve seen quite a few Rule Breakers over the years who have fallen in love with their wielders and adopted humanoid forms tailored to match their wielder’s preferences—at least the parts they knew about— in hopes of having their feelings reciprocated.]
Hearing this, Arthur was visibly dumbfounded.
"Wait, wait wait! You said you’ve seen Rule Breakers fall for their wielders. You used plural! So it’s not just one or two?"
Lostvayne calmly replied, [Dozens of them.]
Seeing Arthur just stare at him in blank silence, Lostvayne continued speaking,
[Master, we Ego Weapons have sentient minds just like you do. We’re perfectly capable of having feelings for other beings, just like humanoids do. So it really shouldn’t be strange to discover that this has happened before.]
Arthur nodded to himself, understanding and admitting that, yeah, that actually made sense.
Then he looked back up at Lostvayne and asked with narrowed eyes, "Have you ever fallen for any of your wielders before?"
[Never. Not even once.]
Lostvayne replied immediately, with not a hint of hesitation.
[Most of my relationships with my previous wielders have all been fairly...solemn, in the truest sense of the word.
You and Lucifer are very rare exceptions, and the reason for that should be fairly obvious.]
Their powers were deeply aligned with Lostvayne’s nature, after all. Besides, like Lostvayne had once told Celestia during the incident on Cruotis Prime, part of the reason it was friendly with Arthur was because Arthur was her wielder.
[But anyway, back to your original question. I identify as neither. I’m part of the group I mentioned earlier that simply caters to their wielder’s preferences.]
