Chapter 843: Just ‘Different’
15 years and 4 days ago, Arthur had been abruptly awakened from sleep by a Cosmic SOS message that was forcefully stuffed into his mind.
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.
Right now, Arthur’s focus was on the last two lines of the message.
No, it was the final line in particular that held his attention.
Death begins to reawaken.
That was 15 years ago.
Now here he was, standing before a child born on the same day he’d received that message, an Ancient-Breed godslayer who possessed Anti-Divinity like he did and who bled silver as he did.
She was the only other existence he’d encountered with both of those traits.
Arthur wanted to believe it was simply a shared trait among Ancient-Breeds, but her gender, the strange emotions she stirred within him, and most importantly, her name, all pushed that thought aside.
He remembered his dreams from the time he’d hovered between life and death after being hit with soul poison during the Nemo Galaxy Auction.
Among the memories of the events leading to the end of the Harmonia Era that he’d uncovered, there had been one line he hadn’t understood for decades. (Chapter 188)
[Elaine. She’s waiting for you. Get stronger so you can find her.]
’Elaine’, was Number ’I’.
’Death’, who had been ’Left Alive’ at the end of Harmonia, was also Number ’I’.
Arthur didn’t yet know what the numbering meant, but there wasn’t much else he needed to confirm they were the same person.
If that wasn’t enough, then what about Celestia’s reaction to Elaine’s face?
Why had Celestia hesitated to confirm Arthur’s statement about Elaine bleeding silver?
The same Celestia who’d already been proven to know more than she let on?
Taking a deep breath, Arthur pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the girl in front of him.
First, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers, and in an instant, all her wounds vanished, the pain Elaine felt slipping away.
Her unevenly cut hair was restored to its natural shoulder length, and the dust and grime clinging to her face were completely cleared.
Arthur then sat down on the platform, a light chuckle escaping his lips as he watched Elaine rub at her arms, which had been covered in bruises and cuts just moments before, her expression filled with confusion and disbelief.
When she heard his laughter, she turned her wide, shocked eyes toward him, and as he kept his smile as friendly as possible, he suddenly spoke.
"godslayers."
"...eh?"
"That’s what we are," Arthur said, pointing first at his chest, then at her.
"You see, gods aren’t higher beings to be worshipped the way people in this world do. They’re just a ’race’, the same way humans are."
Elaine blinked in silence, her eyes shifting to the frozen crowd around them, then back to Arthur as he continued.
"There are other worlds beyond the sky above," he said, pointing upward. "And there are many races out there. Humans, gods, dragons, and more."
At the mention of dragons, she tilted her head slightly, her expression wordlessly asking, ’Dragons exist?’
Arthur nodded with a hum.
"Yeah. Dragons are real. I know a few of them."
Elaine’s eyes widened quietly, surprise and wonder mixing in them, and seeing this, Arthur went on speaking.
"Like I was saying, gods are just a race as real as dragons and humans. And the thing is, the number of gods doing bad things became so high that there was a need to reduce them."
Arthur kept his explanation simple, making sure Elaine could follow without struggling.
"Because their numbers had to be reduced, godslayers like us were born. We have the power to kill gods, not cursed to it or anything."
"!"
The moment he mentioned the word ’curse’, she flinched, and Arthur sighed inwardly as he raised his empty right hand and spoke.
"You’re not a devil or some spawn of evil like they must’ve told you."
He formed a small blade of energy and cut across his palm, letting silver blood seep out as he continued.
"You’re just a normal girl who happens to be from a different race."
Her eyes went wide at the sight of Arthur’s blood, the same strange colour as hers, and though she opened her mouth to speak, no words came out.
The shock dulled her senses, leaving her chest hollow, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe, only staring at Arthur with wide and vacant eyes.
The silence dragged on, and memories from the past few weeks flashed through her mind. The priests branding her an evil omen, the failed blessings, the stones thrown by the townspeople.
’No curse. No devil. Just... different?’
The thought slipped into her mind unbidden, and she struggled to understand it despite how simple it was.
"It used to be red, didn’t it?" Arthur suddenly asked.
"...mhmm..."
Elaine nodded at his question, and Arthur, keeping his smile, replied.
"Same here.
Divinity doesn’t work on you, too, does it?"
"...di-divinity?"
Elaine finally managed to speak, and hearing this, Arthur blinked, quickly using Memories of the Past on the land before rephrasing.
"Divine Power, I mean. Does it work on you?"
Now understanding what he meant, Elaine shook her head quietly, and Arthur nodded in confirmation.
"It doesn’t work on me, too."
He had no intention of revealing that he possessed divinity just yet.
"The gods don’t really like us, you see. Their divine powers are weaker against us, so they try to kill us before we can grow strong.
Strong enough to do things like this..."
Arthur gestured toward the frozen people around him, and Elaine shifted her gaze in the direction of his hand, finally whispering.
"...e-every-one i-is frozen."
"Yeah. I froze them," Arthur answered.
"...how?"
"Power. It’s what makes the world go round.
They tried to kill you because they were afraid of your power. But since I’m stronger, I can easily freeze them like this."
Arthur leaned a little closer as he spoke, resting his elbow on his lap and propping his chin up on his palm.
"You also have great power. But you can’t control it because you’re young, and there’s no one to teach you.
What they called a ’curse’ was simply the power you have because you’re from a different race."
Arthur then allowed his regeneration to work, and the silver blood dripping from his palm began to recede, the wound closing up before Elaine’s eyes.
Then, with his right hand, he reached out and caught hers faster than she could pull away, holding it up before her as he spoke.
"If you learn to control it, you’ll be able to touch anyone you want without anything happening."
Elaine’s eyes stayed fixed on his hand holding hers, and the longer it went without Arthur’s hand withering, the more light returned to her blank stare.
"I won’t lie and say that controlling your power will be easy. But if you learn to manage it and strengthen it, you won’t have to suffer like this again."
As he said that, Arthur roused his Anti-Divinity, the silver energy flowing through his hand and seeping into Elaine’s palm.
"!"
She immediately pulled her hand back, and this time Arthur let her go. But as she clutched her arm and edged away, heat spread through it, and when she looked down, a faint black mist was leaking out.
Her eyes widened in shock just as Arthur spoke.
"That’s your power."
When she looked back at him, she saw Arthur silently shaping the silvery mist flowing from his hand into different forms before pointing at his hair.
"Mine’s silver because of my hair. Yours is black because of yours. It’s completely normal, nothing strange about it."
He kept shaping his manifested energy into random forms, turning it into a bird, then a butterfly, a cat, and many other animals.
After a while, he extended his palm toward her, the energy condensing into a silver orb that slowly grew brighter as he infused life law energy into it.
"Here. You can touch it if you want. Nothing’s going to happen."
"..."
Elaine’s eyes shifted back and forth between Arthur’s hand and the black anti-divinity streaming from hers, stirred awake by the energy he had released.
Her curiosity gradually pushed against her fear, and she stretched her hand toward it, only to pull back at the last moment.
She repeated the motion several times, wavering between hesitation and the pull of her curiosity, while Arthur quietly waited without pressing her, saying nothing until she finally touched the orb of anti-divinity.
The moment she did, part of the energy seeped into her body, racing through her veins and expanding her dormant energy circuits.
She flinched and pulled her hand back at the sudden pain, but soon the feeling of her own anti-divinity spreading through her body overtook it, and she blinked as her eyes fixed on the black energy drifting from her arms.
Even though it looked different from Arthur’s silver, her instincts whispered that they were the same.
But there were things her instincts couldn’t perceive, effects Arthur was aware of and had deliberately allowed to take effect on her.
The potent life law energy he had mixed into his anti-divinity and sent into her body magnified her innate life power.
Indeed, life.
