Chapter 829: Reflections on the Beach
Crashing waves rolled across the shore of the white sand beach, the foamy water sweeping forward before receding back into the sea.
The beach was completely empty, which was only natural considering what dwelled in those waters, mighty sea dragons who had long claimed this stretch of coast as their territory.
In spite of their dominion, someone had boldly set up a reclining chair on the sand, lying back with hands folded behind his head.
Beside him sat another figure, both shaded beneath a beach umbrella, conversing lightly while the rhythm of the crashing waves played on in the background.
[When do you plan to head back home, Master?]
"Hmm? Not sure. I don’t have a time limit like I did in Valmone, so I haven’t really thought about that."
The young man replied to the woman’s question with a light yawn, his right hand reaching out to take a cold glass of wine from the stool between them.
[Is that so? But you do have to go back soon enough. It’s been years, and your family might be worried.]
When she said this, the man paused for a moment, blinking as he calculated the time in his mind before nodding.
"True. It should be around Year 748 or so there now. It was 731 when I left."
[At this point, you’ve spent more years away from them than you have with them.]
Her words made him nearly choke on his drink, his eyes widening in sudden realisation.
"I...never thought of it like that. More than half my life has been away from home..."
A wry smile appeared on his lips as he placed his glass back down, and at the same time, the woman beside him rose and moved to his chair, sitting sideways across his legs as she took strands of his shoulder-length silver hair between her fair fingers and began curling it.
"You know this isn’t going to last, right? I plan on cutting it within the hour."
[I know. We’ll just match for a little while,] she answered, gesturing toward her own curly golden hair streaked with silver, and he simply shrugged, allowing her to do as she pleased.
It was a rare day of rest, a well-earned moment of calm following his recent success in the last life-threatening trial he had endured.
He was no longer jumping through the forests of a sky continent on an Apex Planetoid with nothing but a spear and the clothes on his back.
As he rested in the calming atmosphere, his thoughts drifted back to the words of his companion from earlier, and he raised his right hand, faint blue strands of energy curling around his fingers as he ran a few calculations.
"76 years, 31 days."
[What’s that?]
"My subjective age now. That’s how much time I’ve lived through, based on the count back on Aeturn. Out of that, about 45 years have been spent away from home."
It was something he never would have imagined himself doing in the past, but here he was, lying on a beach on an Apex Planet in an entirely different multiverse.
[Done! Now it looks just like mine.]
Her words pulled him from his thoughts, and before long, a mirror was held up before him, showing his new hairdo.
His face remained the same youthful, fair-skinned, and somewhat gentle one he had seen every day for the past 50+ years, unchanged since the day he had turned 18. His vertical pupils were set within obsidian irises so close in shade that they were nearly indistinguishable without close inspection, and above them were a pair of well-defined eyebrows slightly darker than his now completely curly hair.
"Why do you always want us to match?"
The young man lowered the mirror, meeting the silver eyes of the woman seated on his lap, and at this, she blinked, tilting her head slightly so that a strand of her curly hair slipped across her face.
[I’m not sure. Maybe it has something to do with a memory I haven’t regained. But...]
She trailed off, turning her head back toward him as she continued.
[Does it really need an explanation? I want us to match and that is all.]
Hearing her, the man raised his hands in mock surrender, choosing not to press the matter any further as he set aside the mirror and warped a box into his hands.
As he did so, there was a faint distortion in space some distance away, and his eyes turned to meet the figure of a blue-haired man materialising with a giant surfboard nearly as tall as himself.
He had short, messy hair, a mole beneath his right eye, and was dressed in a casual, flower-patterned shirt with baggy shorts, appearing every bit like someone prepared for a day at the beach.
"Oh, Arthur. Whatcha doing?" he asked, his gaze soon falling to the box in Arthur’s hands before adding.
"What’s that for?"
"A power source."
When Arthur answered, Barda raised an eyebrow, and then a look of realisation crossed his face as he spoke.
"Right. You mentioned being able to absorb Divine Sparks. You plan on absorbing that one?"
Arthur silently nodded as he opened the box that held the spatially compressed Divine Spark fragment of the deceased Titan god Novak, something he had obtained decades earlier during his first trip to Valmone.
"I’ve been considering whether to take it now and use it to push quickly through my current realm, or to wait until I meet all the requirements to become a High-Tier Deity and absorb it then to fulfil that final energy condition."
Hearing his dilemma, Barda set his surfboard down and lifted the box, examining the divine spark in silence for a brief moment.
"Hard to say," he murmured, closing the box and handing it back to Arthur.
"This would definitely make things easier for you, but you’d miss out on the energy accumulation experience needed for your Stage breakthroughs, which could affect your patience when the time comes to do it on a much greater scale, since advancing through the High-Tier Deity Realm and into the Monarch Realm will require a hundred times more effort.
Thinking about it carefully, I believe you should wait and use it to break through that final Realm barrier. Don’t use it now."
With those words, he picked up his surfboard once more and began walking toward the ocean, calling out as he went.
"Who put that thing in that box for you anyway?"
He had naturally noticed that the divine spark was far larger, but had been spatially compressed so it could be carried within the box.
"Remember that Immortal Anomaly guy with your former sword? He’s the one."
"Oh. He’s good," Barda replied, tossing his board onto the ocean and climbing on top as he allowed the waves to carry him out.
"Hey, Barda."
Arthur called out casually, but his voice still reached the dragon’s superhuman ears even though he was already hundreds of metres away.
Barda lifted a hand to show he was listening, and Arthur went on.
"So, you remember the real reason I came to this universe. Getting Celestia’s fragments."
He motioned toward the Ego Weapon resting on his lap, who was busy mixing two different wines, before adding.
"Well, she had two fragments in this universe."
The moment Barda heard those words, he froze, the waves crashing over him as he turned back toward Arthur with a look of disbelief and shouted.
"Why the fuck didn’t you say that all this time?!"
Arthur chuckled at his reaction, but the dragon wasn’t having it. He immediately teleported back to the beach, leaving his surfboard drifting on the water as he questioned Arthur.
"It has been four decades, and you never thought to mention that even once?!"
"I did. I just forgot."
"..."
Barda silently sighed, pressing his fingers against his temple as he shook his head.
|Berlal! Come here for a moment!|
A few seconds after he called, his elder sister appeared, her long black hair trailing so low it nearly brushed the ground as always, and before she could speak, Barda pointed toward Arthur and said.
"You know this guy’s Rule Breaker has another fragment in this universe?"
Berlal blinked in surprise, then turned her gaze to Arthur with an eyebrow slightly raised.
"It has been four decades, Arthur."
Arthur only laughed at her response, which was almost the same as Barda’s, and like him, she wasn’t having it.
"Where is the other fragment?"
In answer to her question, Arthur shifted his gaze toward Celestia, and she replied without lifting her eyes from the bottle whose label she was examining.
[Somewhere within the ’Alpha Sirus’ Galaxy Cluster. That is the general direction I sensed it from.]
As had been agreed upon at the beginning of Arthur’s training under the Levites, he was to undergo trials with the weapons they had trained him on.
The mere memory of said trails gave Arthur goosebumps, as they were all experiences he never wished to relive.
First, they had him acquire the weapon laws for those weapons and comprehend them to at least Low-Rank Authority, their preferred method of comprehension being direct usage and practical experience.
After that, they sent him into dangerous locations with all of his Authorities sealed, except for the law connected to the trial he was undertaking. Oh, and his subspace was sealed as well.
His task was simple: get out of the area within 30 days.
Of course, Arthur FAILED miserably.
The first six trials all ended in failure, and as a result, Arthur was sent back to square one of training, starting again from the most basic weapon swings and working his way through to the more complex techniques, before being sent on the trials once more, after another two decades.
This time, he managed to scrape by, barely passing Barda’s Sword Trial, finishing with about three days remaining in Raikis’ Hammer Trial and Gindry’s Bow Trial, and only a single day left on Berlal’s Polearm Trial.
On a side note, he had been prohibited from using either Celestia or Lostvayne during Barda’s Sword Trials.
He hadn’t yet undergone Wyndella’s Whip Trials or Gervod’s Axe Trials, and truthfully, Arthur didn’t hold much hope for them.
Anyways, it was during his journeys to these trial sites scattered across the universe that Celestia had gradually mapped the location of her fragment, ultimately tracing it to the Alpha Sirus Galaxy Cluster, and if Arthur’s memory served him correctly, that was where Draco Sirus’ Seat of the Pantheon was located.
Celestia told Arthur that the fragment she was sensing was a plain Power Fragment, so there would be no memory recoveries this time.
As for the ’power’ contained in the fragment Celestia had acquired here on Chazat, she had chosen to manifest it as her Integrated Armour.
Her additional mass was integrated into whatever Arthur wore, greatly enhancing his defences.
