Chapter 853: The Road Ahead
Arthur had called the Levites so strict that they made Spartans look cute.
He wasn’t lying or joking in the slightest.
The very next day, Elaine found herself up at 5 am, sprinting around a 400m race track that Berlal had constructed right before her eyes, with Arthur cheering on her from the stands.
Right now, Arthur was kind of a mental pillar for Elaine, and it wouldn’t take five seconds for her to start panicking if he wasn’t in her field of vision.
Even though Arthur had basically deprogrammed her to not think of herself as ’Cursed’ but simply ’Different’ the previous day, her trauma of the past month wasn’t gonna heal itself in an instant.
So, his presence was basically for mental support.
According to Berlal, Arthur had kind of made things worse when he pulled off a ’disappearing act’ to make her choose between killing or freeing the priests who wanted to burn her at a stake, adding separation anxiety into the mix, making her even more scared to be separated from the only person who was ’different’ like her.
The first part of her training plan, Berlal also said, was Endurance training.
The most work Elaine had done all her life up to this point was taking care of farm animals. There was no way she had the endurance to handle combat training.
As such, Berlal wanted her to build not only physical, but mental endurance.
As for Aleksas and the other Levites, they were all, save Barda and Berlal, in another part of the universe, doing some dragon-related business Arthur didn’t care to know.
Raikis was still outside the universe, by the way.
According to Barda, the red dragon had ended up discovering something interesting somewhere else and was now fully invested in that.
Barda was with Arthur, brows furrowed as he tried to take down the final boss of Souls of the Dark III on Arthur’s portable console, only to fail repeatedly.
Of course, he was deliberately suppressing his physical capabilities to make it more challenging, which was the only reason those failures were even possible.
Berlal was at the centre of the racetrack, working on a training plan for Altrishia that mainly involved her and Gindry.
Since Altrishia’s primary weapon seemed to be a bow and her main attributes were dark-type, it was only natural that Gindry and Berlal took the reins of her training. The others would only pitch in on the sides to make her more ’versatile’.
At the moment, she was with Gindry and Gervod, who were schooling her on non-combat disciplines.
Unlike Arthur, her training went far beyond combat, extending into governance, diplomacy, economics, military strategy, crisis management, politics, administration, law, and the art of leadership.
"It would’ve been nice if you guys added that to my training curriculum, you know?"
That was what Arthur had said when he’d heard the full scope of Altrishia’s training under the Levites, to which Barda had simply asked, "Didn’t you learn all that back in your home universe? I mean, for a Prince, they’ve got to teach you stuff like that, right?"
"Yes, they did," Arthur replied. "But you and I both know you’re far more experienced than anyone I learned from, so it wouldn’t have hurt to learn from that experience of yours, you know?"
"Fair point."
The end result of that conversation was that Arthur was now to become a part-time student in some of Altrishia’s classes.
It was a good way for him to pass the time while Berlal turned Elaine into a capable combatant.
Unfortunately, Elaine couldn’t join him and Altrishia, since the gap between their current knowledge levels was far too wide, and placing her in a class on something like ’crisis management’ would only leave her staring blankly with both physical and virtual question marks hanging over her head.
Not long after Barda finally managed to defeat the game’s final boss, Arthur retrieved the box he’d obtained after killing Baruuk and opened it, revealing the black-gold metallic card inside.
Holding it up for Barda to see, he asked, "You know what this is about?"
"Hmm? Where did you get this?" the dragon asked, swapping the console in his hands for the card.
"That Demonic Dragon Candidate I fought a few days ago."
"Oh..." The light of remembrance flashed in Barda’s eyes as he read the words etched onto the invitation. "You are cordially invited to the 78th ’Ember’ Reign Alpha Sirus Grand Festival? They’ve got festivals?"
That response alone told Arthur that Barda was just as clueless as he was, though unlike Arthur, Barda had a simple way to find out what it was all about.
"This Alpha Sirus place is where this universe hosts its Pantheon Seat, right? Then we might as well go ask the head of that Pantheon. No way he wouldn’t know what it’s about."
Barda was about to warp himself and Arthur away, but just before he did, Arthur reached out, grabbed his arm, and shouted for him to stop.
"Wait!"
"Huh?"
Seeing Barda’s confusion, Arthur gestured toward the racetrack in front of them and spoke. "It’s not going to end well if I disappear right in front of Elaine."
"Oh..."
The dragon turned his gaze toward the girl running laps around the track, and as if sensing it, she glanced in his direction, which immediately caused her to slow down and get scolded by Berlal.
"You’re gonna have to do something about that," Barda said.
"I know," Arthur replied, pressing his hand against his chin. "I think part of the problem is that I’m the only person besides her who is of the same race she knows. Considering she almost got killed for being different, my presence is basically a mental pillar for her."
Sighing, Arthur glanced at Elaine and could see her visibly fighting the urge to turn around, afraid of being scolded by Berlal again, and then he muttered, "I’ve got even more reason to go to Valmone now."
"How do those two relate?"
In response to Barda’s question, Arthur snapped his fingers and projected light images of two planets.
"I happen to own two planets with thousands of godslayers on them, remember? If Elaine meets others who are ’different’ like her, it might help her mental state and deal with her separation anxiety... maybe."
Arthur didn’t have any experience handling someone with trauma, so at this point, he was simply winging it.
Part of the reason he shared his thoughts with Barda was to hear the more-experienced man’s opinion and see if he was heading in the right direction or not.
"That sounds fine. Though I think it might be hard for her at first if she gets too attached to you and suddenly finds herself surrounded by other godslayers.
It’s unlikely, but if those other godslayers don’t share traits like your Anti-Divinity or silver blood, then your plan might not go as well as you hope."
"Well, that’s a problem..."
Arthur frowned as he considered the fact that he hadn’t found any Ancient Breeds in Valmone yet, so he couldn’t tell if the traits he and Elaine shared were common among all Ancient Breeds or unique to the two of them.
"Well, there should be at least a few Ancient Breeds in Valmone by now. According to Aleksas, universal influence affects probability, and besides my home, Valmone’s the next universe where my influence is strongest.
If my calculations are right, it’s been 44 years of Valmone time since I was last there, so the number of godslayers should have increased."
"Sure, that might be the case, but you won’t know for sure until you get there. When are you planning to leave?"
"After I get Celestia’s fragment from that Alpha Sirus place...and Elaine is at least a Master Realm."
Arthur replied as he switched the game on the console to one called ’Pluto’, following the demigod son of an underworld god as he fought his way out of the Underworld to reach the surface world.
Barda glanced at Arthur’s screen just in time to see his character die, and when the game-over screen vanished, Arthur was back at the start.
Seeing this, Barda was understandably surprised.
"Wait, did you just get sent back to the start because you failed the game once?!"
"Yeah. That’s how roguelike games work. The whole point is that no two playthroughs are exactly the same," Arthur replied with a shrug as he moved the character across the screen, collecting items along the way.
Barda quietly watched him play for a while, noticing how another death sent him back to the beginning, where he chose a different path, picking up weapons, armour, and power-ups as he went.
"Hmm... I like the concept," Barda muttered, before raising his head just in time to see Elaine sprinting toward Arthur with renewed energy the moment Berlal dismissed her for the day.
Arthur set the console aside to focus on her, and Barda picked it up, beginning to play the game himself while Arthur sat Elaine on his lap, praising her for completing her training and gently rubbing her head.
Several deaths later, Barda finally put the portable console down and picked up the Alpha Sirius Grand Festival invitation from the nearby seat, holding it up as he spoke.
"So? Can we go deal with this now?"
"Hmm? Yeah, sure."
At Arthur’s response, Barda snapped his fingers and instantly teleported them from Mekiria to the Comae Galaxy within the Alpha Sirus Cluster.
He took them straight into the main council hall, where the Draco Sirus Main Entities just so happened to be in the middle of a meeting.
The vast hall contained several massive dragons of varying colours and sizes, some as small as 5 metres from head to tail, others reaching up to 50, all gathered around a circular hologram projector displaying three-dimensional star maps in the air.
Of course, the trio’s sudden arrival immediately put the dragons on alert, all but two bursting with cosmic energy the moment they sensed a foreign presence appear within the chamber.
Before any of them could even finish acting on their reflexes, time stopped completely, freezing them in place, though they all remained conscious.
The only one unaffected was the giant red dragon seated at the north end of the hall.
His eyes widened in shock when he recognised Barda’s face, and turning to the others, he quickly noticed their eye movements and realised they were still aware, then spoke using his True Voice.
|Stay your hands. All of you!|
He immediately turned his gaze back to Barda, lowering his head in apology.
"My deepest apologies for their discourtesy, Lord LEVITE."
He placed clear emphasis on the last part to make sure the unaware dragons understood exactly who Barda was.
In the past 15 years, the Levites had only interacted with this one red dragon, the Master of Draco Sirus, and only on a handful of occasions, so the other Main Entities didn’t even know they were around.
