Chapter 858: A Year of Growth
The planet Chazat completed another orbit around its star, marking the passage of a year, and soon Arthur found himself not-so-celebrating his 77th birthday.
It was the 24th of Fourth, 9440 D.Y., a month after Arthur had turned 77, and as he sat watching the now year-older Elaine carefully modulate the concentration of anti-divinity within the orb in her palm, his thoughts drifted to the events of the past year.
As he had expected, the Levites had quickly become very busy, with Wyndella being the busiest of them all.
She’d been out of Draco Sirus for the past 8 months, so Arthur hadn’t even seen her during that time.
The others were also occupied with many tasks, with their mentoring of Altrishia being the least time-consuming on their list.
Sometimes, they even took her along when they left the universe, continuing their mentoring sessions wherever they went.
Berlal was the only one who didn’t leave Draco Sirus even once. She remained behind, overseeing most of Altrishia’s and Elaine’s training.
As for Arthur, since his Whip Trials had been postponed indefinitely, he had decided to devote more attention to Draco Sirus’ affairs, using the opportunity to initiate his Universal Influence experiment here as well.
He started by searching for galaxies where ’Divines’ caused problems for the local ruling powers, inserting himself into conflicts wherever he could find them.
His goal wasn’t just to acquire divine sparks for himself to continue building energy and accelerate his progression toward the Superior Stage of the Mid-Tier Deity Realm, but also to obtain lesser divine sparks for Elaine so he could teach her to wield her godslayer powers more effectively.
Even after a full year, he still hadn’t revealed to her that he possessed divinity as well.
Most of his focus had been on instructing her in the use of anti-divinity, which made sense since he was, to his knowledge, the only other being who possessed that energy and therefore the only one capable of properly guiding her.
He taught her how to use it and also how to control most of her godslayer racial abilities, with particular emphasis on Divine Spark Absorption.
Like Esna back in Hell, Elaine had almost absorbed too much energy the first time she attempted Divine Spark Absorption.
Fortunately, Arthur had expected this and was there to guide her, preventing her from overloading and allowing her to safely control the energy.
He then properly taught her how to use Divine Spark Absorption to absorb divinity and convert it into energy that boosted her physical abilities while simultaneously expanding her energy core to increase her capacity for both magic power and anti-divinity.
She also proved capable of using Divine Spark Attraction, so Arthur taught her to control that with her anti-divinity as well.
Additionally, he taught how to control the weakening/Realm suppression effect her presence had on divines, which he now called godsbane.
Elaine learned to modulate its intensity, reducing it when necessary or amplifying it to its maximum when required. Arthur even developed a method that allowed her to overclock this weakening effect using anti-divinity, though the process carried severe side effects, and he warned her only to use it as a last resort.
Back to Arthur, his travels across galaxies and involvement in various interstellar conflicts, especially those involving divines, inevitably drew attention from the major powers in that part of the Draco Sirus universe.
It didn’t take long for word of his actions to spread, as Drifters, always eager to trade information, carried tales of his exploits from galaxy to galaxy.
Since Arthur refused to give his name to anyone who asked, revealed no racial traits that might identify him, and never disclosed his status as a Progenitor or Candidate for any of the Eternal Seats, people eventually created a nickname based on what little they knew—his silver hair and his mastery of Destruction.
It was in such a manner that Arthur came to be known in Draco Sirus as ’Silver Destruction.’
"Another nickname to add to the list," he had said dryly the first time he heard someone call him that.
As for Arthur and Altrishia, although the two had not started off on the best of terms, they were now much more amiable.
They had become frequent sparring partners, each serving as the other’s constant source of motivation and growth.
When Berlal had first suggested Arthur spar with Altrishia several weeks after she began her weapon control training, he had agreed without giving it much thought.
As before, he won, even without using his Chronoslash this time, having learned more about her abilities from their first battle and developed countermeasures to handle them.
Altrishia had unveiled new tricks up her sleeve during that second spar, making it more difficult than the first, but Arthur still prevailed.
The third spar, however, was a completely different story.
It had been so close that Arthur was forced to break out his Aspect Manifestation to win.
Because of that, Arthur realised he had to lock in, before the one-in-a-billion-years genius caught up to him, for she was very incensed at the fact that she had lost to the same person three times and was very determined to overturn her streak of losses.
If Arthur allowed himself to slack and Altrishia closed that small gap, he knew he was in for the beating of his life, so he couldn’t let that happen.
Still, that gap was closing faster and faster with each passing day.
"Geniuses... very frightening," Arthur muttered as he recalled that close shave of a fight, a remark that would have made any ordinary person want to punch him squarely in the face, since he was speaking about geniuses as though he weren’t one himself.
Then again, Altrishia’s talent truly was abnormal, almost terrifyingly so.
On a side note, Arthur had stopped calling her "Miss Pedigree," much to the Levites’ surprise. They had fully expected him to torment her with that nickname indefinitely, until they discovered that he had stopped because it was losing its comedic impact.
He had decided instead to reserve it for special moments, just so he could extract the perfect reaction when the time came.
Classic Arthur.
As for her actual name, he had deemed it ’too long’ and had simply cut it down, saying it had too many syllables, leaving her with the shorter ’Rishia’.
Again, Classic Arthur.
Did Rishia initially protest his unceremonious shortening of her name? Of course, she did.
Did she eventually give up after months of realising that Arthur was not going to change? Naturally.
That was the current state of things between them.
As for Celestia, her fragment fusion had been a resounding success, and the weapon was now even more powerful than before. Because of this, Arthur could now temporarily change Lostvayne’s State of Being, concealing the Rule Breaker’s true nature from onlookers.
With this ability, he could wield Lostvayne openly without worry that anyone would figure out he was hurling around a Rule Breaker, and observers merely assumed that the two weapons he carried were a matching pair, never realising that they were separate weapons disguised by the same semi-transparent cloak of power.
He’d even won several battles against divine dragons because of this, since the translucency made it hard for them to gauge his true range in close combat encounters.
As for the relationship between those swords and the young godslayer girl before him, it was as turbulent as ever.
Lostvayne was almost indifferent towards Elaine, treating her like every other person. Celestial still openly disliked Elaine and made no effort to hide it.
Elaine, in turn, had grown to dislike Celestia, not because she had any real reason, but because Celestia’s unexplained hostility irritated her.
A year’s passing had Elaine now in a much better state mentally. Her separation anxiety had eased considerably, so she no longer panicked the instant Arthur left her field of vision, though she still stuck close to him most of the time.
Physically, she had matured noticeably, mostly because of her ascent through the first for Existence Realms under Arthur and Berlal’s guidance. She was already approaching the Grandmaster Realm, and her body had simply grown to accommodate that increase in power.
Of course, her rapid advancement was largely due to Arthur’s efforts in collecting divine sparks for her to absorb, but that made little difference in the grand scheme of things.
"Hey, Elaine, wanna go out to play today?" Arthur asked suddenly.
Elaine’s eyes lit up immediately, and she turned toward him with an eager nod. But in her excitement, her concentration slipped, and the orb of anti-divinity she had been stabilising began to tremble uncontrollably, its internal structure tearing apart as the water suspended within spilt onto her legs.
"Ah," she muttered softly, just before the orb burst entirely, drenching her from head to toe.
Arthur, utterly unfazed, pulled out a notepad and jotted something down. "Still gets distracted," he murmured under his breath.
Realising that he had timed that question deliberately to test her concentration, Elaine turned toward him with an indignant pout.
"It’s fine to be excited," Arthur said without looking up, "but you’ve also got to learn to keep your power stable, even through emotional fluctuations."
Raising his gaze to meet hers, he continued, "You know better than I do how much your emotions affect your power control."
At that, Elaine’s expression fell, her lips curving into a faint frown as she remembered the first time Berlal had pitted her against an opponent in live combat.
A real opponent, not an energy construct like she’d been using to train or Arthur, who was very obviously holding back against her.
Her opponent had been a hostile kobold monster that saw her as nothing more than a threat to be eliminated.
That first battle had ended horribly.
She’d been scared, made unnecessary movements, got far more injured than she should have, and though she’d eventually won the fight, she hadn’t been able to finish it.
The moment she’d considered killing her opponent under Berlal’s orders, old memories had resurfaced, PTSD kicked in, and she lost control of her death magic power.
The ensuing burst of death-attributed energy from her unstable emotions had overwhelmed the wounded creature, killing it instantly.
Rather than help, that situation had made things worse as she’d passed out when the realisation that she’d taken another life with her power had dawned on her.
Even now, despite her increased overall strength and improved composure in battle, despite her heightened readiness to face the hostility of other existences who sought nothing but her death, Elaine still hadn’t been able to cross that final threshold—the act of taking a life deliberately.
She had never intentionally killed anyone, not a humanoid, not a monster, not anything.
Whenever the situation demanded it, hesitation would seize her, and sometimes her emotions would spiral out of control.
This had long been a point of contention between Berlal and Arthur, as Arthur had always opposed her being pushed to such extremes, while Berlal maintained that he couldn’t coddle her forever, pointing out that in a true fight to the death, an enemy remained a threat until they were gone for good.
Elaine had once overheard one of their arguments and, in a desperate attempt to stop the argument from causing cracks in Arthur’s relationship with Berlal, had tried to force herself to take a life of her own will.
Unfortunately, her own power and sensitivity caused that attempt to backfire, as the moment she perceived the lifeforce of the poor creature fading, she broke out in hives and couldn’t stop trembling.
Time healed wounds, they say, and time had indeed done its part in mending many of the scars in Elaine’s life.
But not everything could be so easily healed by time, and this—this was one of those things.
