Chapter 826: Mysterious Message [Monthly Bonus 2]
Arthur woke up with a scream.
A loud sound burst from his mouth as a screeching noise echoed through his skull, his head throbbing as if something was being forcefully drilled into his brain from everything and everyone all at once.
Both Lostvayne’s and Celestia’s worried voices were drowned out by the screeching and the sound of his own screams as he rolled off the bed and hit the floor.
The noise lasted exactly 7 seconds before it finally went silent, leaving Arthur clutching his head in silence, his clothes quickly becoming soaked with sweat.
[Master?! Can you hear me!?]
Celestia’s voice at last reached him, and he felt her trying to channel cosmic energy to do something, though he was still too disoriented to recognise what it was.
Lostvayne, in humanoid form, lifted him from the ground and set him back on the bed, and after several deep breaths, Arthur finally managed to regain his bearings.
As he sat in silence, four lines continued to echo voicelessly in his mind, the sound gradually fading with each passing moment.
Arthur quickly reached into his subspace and retrieved a simple pen and notebook, opening it and hastily jotting down the lines that still echoed in his head.
By the time he finished writing, the echoes had already diminished to the point where he could barely make them out, and soon after, they disappeared entirely.
However, the words he had written on the paper remained, naturally drawing the attention of his two Ego Weapons, who were just as curious about what he’d been in such a hurry to write.
From a space untouched by time,
A fragment of the end slips through unseen.
And now, as the child of destruction matures,
Death begins to reawaken.
"...what the hell is this?"
Arthur muttered, his expression slowly contorting as his mind began to latch onto familiar patterns in the style of writing.
More than that, there was a particular title in the middle that he couldn’t overlook.
’Child of Destruction.’
He immediately thought about the second ’prophecy’ that the Cosmos had sent out before his birth.
An uneventful spring night, it was,
when the paths of two beings converged.
One was a god, the other, a foe of the gods.
From their union shall be born a child of destruction,
One who may bring about his father’s end.
That prophecy, no, that Cosmic SOS, had called him the ’Child of Destruction.’ And now, this sudden passage that had forced its way into his head and rudely awakened him from sleep also mentioned the same title, ’Child of Destruction.’
Even more concerning was the line that followed.
’Death begins to reawaken...?’
It had only been hours since Arthur had admitted to himself that he was a survivor of the Previous Era and concluded that the ’Death’ that had been ’Left Alive’ referred to a person.
And now this passage, written in the same manner of speech as the Cosmic SOS messages, entered his mind and was speaking of ’Death’ reawakening?
[Master...this...]
Lostvayne’s voice trailed off, his expression darkening as he seemed to arrive at the same conclusion Arthur had.
As for Celestia, she remained silent, but when Arthur turned to her, she quietly mouthed two words.
’GREY ORB.’
"...?"
Arthur was confused at first, but a moment later, realisation dawned.
"...!"
The dark space he always found himself in whenever his future self was pulling off his antics. The same place he’d found himself in after the Nemo Galaxy Auction incident.
That dark space had an unidentified grey orb within it.
And now, the first line of this passage.
’From a SPACE untouched by time...’
If that was the space being referred to, if he was the ’Child of Destruction’ it spoke of, and if ’Death’ was who he believed it to be, then what was the ’fragment of the end that slipped through’?
Slipped through what?
Slipped into where?
No, before anything else, there was one major question Arthur still hadn’t addressed.
"Why the hell did this end up in my head in the first place?"
That was question number one.
Arthur was 99% certain that this was a Cosmic SOS.
But he wasn’t a Main Entity, nor was he a member of any pantheon in any universe, not even Hell’s Devildom.
So why was he the one receiving it?
Why wasn’t it being sent out to the Main Entities of every universe as it had before?
[Most likely because it’s a repeat of what happened before your birth, Master,] Lostvayne replied, answering the question that had formed in Arthur’s mind.
When Arthur met the Rule Breaker’s red eyes, Lostvayne continued.
[Something, or someone, interfered with the SOS that was sent out before your birth.
That same thing or person probably acted again, and this time, they redirected the SOS...to you.]
"Redirected? Or simply added me to the list of recipients?"
[I doubt that’s the case. Cosmic SOS messages have specific conditions for who can receive them.
There always has to be a common factor among all recipients, and in the previous case, they were all Main Entities tied to universal aspects like Fate, Destiny, Foresight, Time, and similar things that involve the ’Future.’
You possess powers of a similar nature, but so do quintillions of others across the Cosmos.
In fact, there are more such individuals than there are universes. It would be wasteful and inefficient to send the message to all of them, so the SOS narrows its range to the Main Entities of universes that wield such powers and delivers it to everyone in that category.
But you’re not part of that category, Master. And as I said, sending it to every being with temporal-related powers would be wasteful.
Yet you still received it, which suggests either that the category of recipients this time was something different, one I don’t yet know of, which you unknowingly belong to, or the message was sent to you alone.]
After speaking, Lostvayne turned to the only other person in the room and asked,
[What do you think, Lady Celestia?]
[I agree with Lostvayne.]
That was all Celestia said, and upon hearing her, Arthur heaved a deep sigh before falling back onto the bed, his left hand resting against his head.
"Why?"
If someone out there had the power to delay and even redirect Cosmic SOS messages—
Why direct it to him?
Because he was a survivor of the Previous Era?
Because he was the Child of Destruction?
Because of his connection to ’Death’?
Or because of all of those reasons combined?
Arthur couldn’t figure it out.
Someone out there clearly had designs on him, but he had no idea who they were, what they were, or what their goal could possibly be.
He sighed again, rising to his feet and pulling on a random jacket before conjuring a Cosmic Gate to another part of the planet. He stepped through and emerged beside a garden of human-sized venus flytraps, where a clone of Gervod was busy watering them with some greenish liquid Arthur had no desire to identify.
Arthur shifted his gaze in another direction, and there, stretched between two palm trees at the centre of an artificial lake that hadn’t existed six hours ago, was a hammock. Resting on it was a short blue-haired dragon with a mole beneath his right eye.
Arthur leapt across the lake and landed on the small island, and the moment he did, the dragon’s eyes opened.
"Hmm? Oh, you’re up."
"Yes. What about your siblings?"
Barda only shrugged at Arthur’s question.
"Probably in some other galaxy. Who knows?"
The Levites had been keeping themselves occupied with the endless new experiences waiting for them after a billion years of slumber, taking their time to go through everything carefully so they wouldn’t exhaust the novelty too quickly.
Arthur had seen them come and go from Chazat countless times over the past month, so he wasn’t surprised to hear they were off in another galaxy.
Crossing intergalactic distances took them no more than an instant, after all.
Arthur quietly considered asking Barda about the SOS he had just received, perhaps to see if he could check whether this universe’s Main Entities had gotten anything similar.
But if they hadn’t, then he would be exposing the fact that there had been another SOS.
When Arthur suddenly went quiet, Barda waved a hand in front of his face and called out,
"Earth to Arthur."
"Huh? Earth?"
Arthur snapped back to attention, deciding not to question Barda about the SOS and instead latching onto his words to steer the conversation elsewhere.
"Earth, as in the element, or Earth the planet?"
"Earth the planet, of course."
"The original one?"
At that, Barda blinked, not quite grasping what Arthur meant.
"There are fake planet Earths??"
From that response, it was clear Barda had no knowledge of the ’Replica Earths,’ so Arthur gave him a brief explanation of how the location of the Original Earth was unknown and how Replicas had been scattered across countless universes to throw people off.
"Ohh! So that’s why they left Adam’s universe and started terraforming planets in other universes!"
And with that casual remark, Barda offhandedly revealed the location of the Original Earth.
"But isn’t that kind of pointless?" the dragon added, and before Arthur could even ask ’what,’ Barda continued.
"Anyone with a brain can figure out that the ’Original Earth,’ as you call it, is in Adam’s universe."
"No. Not just anyone with a brain can figure it out. That’s why there are countless people across the Cosmos willing to go to war just to uncover its location," Arthur replied before asking another question.
"Also, when you say ’Adam,’ I assume you mean the Progenitor Human, right?"
