Chapter 870: The Pirate’s Bait
The sound of metal clashing rang through the abandoned colosseum as Layla met the man’s descending scimitar with the barrel of her bayonet, their movements blurring across the cracked stone.
Her long ponytailed braid whipped behind her as she shifted her weight, catching another strike before throwing a kick into his cloaked torso, sending him flying across the dust-covered arena floor.
The darkness flickering across his muscular frame wavered like unstable flame, but he managed to balance himself just as Layla aimed the business end of her bayonet and fired a rapid sequence of shots that tore through the air in bright streaks.
The Pirate Leader swung his scimitar quickly, cutting the bullets apart before they reached him, shards of light scattering across the colosseum’s broken pillars.
Seeing this, Layla charged toward him, her bayonet morphing into a spear mid-step, and she hurled it toward him without hesitation.
He moved aside, the spear slicing past him, and she conjured two pistols in her hands, infusing both with darkness law energy before firing in rapid succession.
"!!"
The man’s feet scraped across stone as he frantically dodged each luminous shot, the wound in his side constantly reminding him of the danger of allowing even one of those attacks to land.
Behind him, the spear changed mid-air, returning to its original form as a bayonet and releasing a single bullet wrapped in dark green lightning, its shrill hiss echoing across the colosseum’s chamber.
At that same moment, the ground trembled beneath Layla’s feet as Nicole entered from the far side of the arena on a horse clad in dark blue armour, and she vaulted from the saddle before driving her lance into the stone, causing the earth to rupture outward as a tremendous wave of water rolled forward, sweeping into the Pirate Leader and colliding with his chest just a breath before the lightning bullet reached him.
**BOOM!!
The impact sent crackling energy spreading across the arena, and the Pirate Leader’s body convulsed from the water-lightning mix.
Without wasting a moment, Layla lifted her left hand, the gear symbol surrounding her pupils glowing as the pistol she held was transformed by creation law energy, and she fired toward empty space, the bullet bursting to create a portal that she and Nicole immediately rushed into.
Before the portal could close, the Pirate Leader’s scimitar pierced through the shrinking tear, and he dragged the blade downward to pull the opening wider as he forced his way in, while his other hand snapped forward, the hooked chain attached to his wrist shooting out at hypersonic speed and tearing straight through Layla’s torso.
"Guhk!"
"Layla!"
"Lady Eryrth!!"
The voices of her companions who had been waiting in formation on the other side echoed across the space as the man grinned behind his iron mask and pulled back on the chain, drawing out the hook along with a glowing white box that had been embedded in her body.
Layla clamped her hand around the box and pulled it back toward herself even as blood streamed from her chest, and while her friends tried to reach her, the Pirate Leader’s shadow peeled away from him, creating dark clones that rushed forward to hold them back.
Even as her expression contorted in pain, Layla reached for the chain, her bloodied fingers wrapping around the metal links while creation law energy started to pulse through her blood, ready to race along the chain toward the wrist controlling it.
However, a violent tremor rolled through the ground, and a wave of destructive energy moved across the land from behind her.
The waves moved at hypersonic speed, phasing through all of them like they weren’t even there and rushing toward the Pirate Leader, colliding with his body before crystallising, locking him in layered masses of solidified destructive energy before he could react, freezing his body in an instant, high above the colosseum floor.
"!"
"...what?"
Layla blinked in shock, and everyone else did the same, since this was most definitely NOT part of their plan.
The moment she noticed the silvery tints around the crimson crystals, Layla’s eyes widened, and a small smile appeared on her face just before a True Voice rang out.
|The situation looked dire, so I interfered...|
Footsteps echoed across the concrete floor, and all eyes turned toward the source, where a young man with his hands in his pockets walked into the area, his gaze tracing the giant magic circle that had appeared on the floor in the same instant Layla grabbed the chain extending from the Pirate Leader’s body.
|But it appears my interference was unnecessary.|
He raised his gaze, crimson eyes meeting Layla’s green eyes with a light smile, but his vision was instantly filled by another face as Nicole rushed toward him and pulled him into a close hug.
"Haha, good to see you again, my dear."
Chuckling lightly, he returned the hug and spun her around lightly, and while everyone else was stunned by his sudden appearance, the Pirate Leader’s frozen body began to tremble.
Cracks spread across the crimson crystals, and his darkness law energy erupted in a violent burst that shattered his confinement.
|WHO TH—!!|
|Silence.|
Arthur cut the man’s roar of rage off with a single word, snapping his fingers and sending spears of time-accelerated destruction energy that riddled his body with holes in an instant.
All of his clones crumbled to puddles of darkness and then dust as the man was sent flying into a wall and pinned there by the crimson-silver spears.
Then, turning to Layla, Arthur asked,
"Do you wish for him to retain his head? Or is it now an unnecessary body part?"
Layla blinked in silence at the question, then chuckled as she rose to her feet and shook her head.
"Let him keep it. I need to turn him in alive," she said.
At this, Arthur clenched his fist and activated his Temporal Authority, sealing the man with an Eternal Prison before turning toward Layla and rewinding her wounds.
"I understand you had a plan, but I’m not sure how I feel about that plan involving you taking near-fatal damage," he said, setting Nicole down as he walked toward Layla and rewound the tear in her clothes.
"It was a last resort I only decided to use because he was stronger than estimated," she replied, reaching out and hugging him lightly.
Arthur returned the hug, waving at the other men and women in the area, faces he recognised from his time in the Royal Academy.
Then, he turned his eyes toward the skies above, his gaze piercing through the planet’s crumbling atmosphere and into space where the Pirate Leader’s forces clashed with Layla’s subordinates.
"Need help ending that quickly?"
"Don’t worry about it," Layla responded, summoning a pistol in her left hand and shooting empty air. As the bullet burst a few metres away and created a swirling portal, she added,
"Their Leader was the only one stronger than estimated."
She glanced at Nicole, who silently nodded, before turning to Arthur and speaking.
"Give me half an hour."
After saying that, Nicole kissed him on the cheek, then turned to follow Layla into the portal, her lance glowing as she infused it with an egregious amount of law energy.
Sensing the concentrated energy, Layla chuckled and shook her head as she thought,
’Nicole, dear. You don’t look like you wanna spend even half a minute on those guys.’
◇ ◇ ◇
What followed was the complete wipe-out of all the pirate forces besides their leaders, whom Nicole encased within several inches of ice.
In the time Arthur had been away, 18 years by Hell Universe standard time, Nicole and Layla had exuviated and advanced past the Half-Deity Realm and reached the Low-Tier Deity Realm.
The energy accumulation stage of progressing through Existence Realms wasn’t much of a challenge for the two women, whose fathers were Nobles ruling entire galaxies, since they were provided with an ample amount of opponents to fight to grow stronger, along with an ample amount of magic stones and energy cores with magic power to absorb and condense within their bodies and souls.
As for comprehending laws, while not as fast as Arthur, they’d both taken their main attributes to the Low-Rank level.
For Nicole, it was obviously water, and her AquaGenesis ability that allowed her control over virtually all kinds of water had naturally evolved into a Unique Authority when she became a Deity.
Layla, on the other hand, was once again reminded how wrong she’d been about what her ’main attribute’ really was.
For the longest time, she had thought the law of Darkness would be her forte, but after the incident on Planet Gade where her body underwent a Creation law energy infusion that affected her eyes in a similar way Arthur’s eyes had been affected by the laws of Time and Destruction, that thought was turned over on its head.
"I ended up with something called ’Imaginative Creation Authority’? That’s the name that popped up in my head when my Origin Core formed."
After saying that with a shrug, Layla pointed her pistol at empty space and shot open another portal, where she kicked in the last of the restrained servants of Nobles she’d captured from one of the pirate ships.
Arthur, however, was less focused on what she was saying and more on the pistol she’d been using to shoot open portals for a while now.
Unlike normal Spatial Gates that were rooted in Spatial Authorities and Law Manipulation, these ones seemed rooted in Creation Law energy, utilising the law to directly ’Create’ the spatial channel through the space-time fabric instead of carving or folding space to do it.
’The initial burst of energy tears space apart, and gives Creation the opening it needs.’
Arthur was just about to ask Layla about it when some of his former classmates from the Devildom’s Royal Academy came up to him.
"Thank you for your assistance earlier, Your Highness."
"Hmm?" Arthur raised an eyebrow, turning to them before waving his hand.
"No biggie. I only chipped in because my dearest little sister..."
Arthur trailed off, and just as Layla snapped her gaze towards him, he teleported in front of her and lifted her from her underarms like one would a child.
"...needed her big brother to save her!"
"Art—! Put me down!!" Layla screamed, struggling to pull herself free from Arthur’s grip with no success.
Soft chuckles echoed through the area at the sight, and as Arthur began spinning her around, Layla’s brows began twitching in annoyance.
"I said...!"
"!!"
Arthur’s eyes widened as dark green lightning sparked around her fingertips, and faster than he could let go of Layla, her hands clamped down on his shoulders.
"Put! Me! Down!"
"Ow! Ow—I’d put you down!"
