Chapter 884: Explosive Corpses
Arthur took a whole day both to tend to his injuries and prepare for the coming battles, still having around 9 more floors to go.
He purged as much of Orjool’s residual creation law energy as he could, so his slow regeneration could finally begin, though Arthur was sure his wounds weren’t gonna heal by the time he was done here.
Several thoughts ran through his mind as he expelled the foreign energy, and the start of those thoughts was that he lucked out against Orjool, otherwise, that fight would have been far longer.
He didn’t want the coming battles to be decided by luck, and as he looked at the blood dripping from his wounds, he had an idea.
On Day 4, Arthur finally stepped onto the second floor, where he met a race of rat-headed beastkin who were all at least 6 feet in height.
He took Orjool’s corpse along with him, keeping it aside before engaging in any battles and continuing to drag it along when he was done.
Due to the seal on his Authorities, he couldn’t use his subspace, so hauling it around like this was his only option.
Arthur kept going, and whenever he defeated any of the berserk ratmen with their corpses left relatively intact, he added them to the list of bodies he was dragging along with him.
By the time he’d found the gate to the final floor three days later, Arthur had about 15 corpses strung along like clothes on a clothesline by the holes in their skulls through which his whip pierced.
When he found the gate, Arthur didn’t immediately enter. Instead, he sat down, forming a knifehand and coating his palm with cosmic energy as he cut open Orjool’s body, performing an autopsy to remove the orc’s internal organs and hollow out the corpse’s torso.
Arthur then generated cosmic energy whips and stuffed them into the hollowed body, before sewing it all back with tiny threads of whip law energy.
For the ratmen, he carved their chests open and dropped some of the blood from his arm wounds into their hearts, then covered their bodies with broken pieces of armour he’d stripped from the corpses of defeated ratmen.
Only after he was done with this did he finally step into the gate, and unsurprisingly, a larger variant of the ratmen was waiting on the other end.
Like Orjool, this one wasn’t berserk, but before it could say anything, Arthur swung the elongated whips in his hand, sending both Orjool’s and the other ratmen’s corpses to the presumed former Ratman? Lord’s feet.
For a moment, there was silence as the ratman looked down at the corpses lying at its feet, whatever words it had for Arthur completely forgotten.
It then looked back up at Arthur, who was staring at it without a word, before finally opening its mouth to speak in a high-pitched voice.
[What...is the meaning...of this?]
"Nothing. Just that some of your subordinates were screaming ’My Lord’ while attacking me, so I brought them to you," Arthur responded, pausing a moment before continuing.
"They’re your subordinates, right? The orc over there," he said, pointing at Orjool’s corpse, "told me the berserk orcs I killed before getting to him were his subordinates."
The ratman stared at Arthur silently, not understanding his thought process at all, and in that moment of silence, Arthur added.
"On a side note, I happen to be very skilled at manipulating the energy in my blood."
Holding out his left hand, which had the whip stringing the heads of the ratmen, he spoke.
"Here see."
He then snapped his fingers, sending a spark of energy down the whip and straight into the corpses, igniting the cosmic energy in his blood with a bright flash of light.
[!!]
***KAAABOOOMM!!!
He simultaneously detonated all the energy-generated whips he’d stuffed into Orjool’s corpse, the enormous blast consuming the ratman faster than it could properly react.
The ratman released a burst of law energy to try and create a shield to block the blast, but just as it did that, Arthur’s voice echoed.
|You’re not as thick-skinned as the other one, are you?|
Spinning around to the direction the voice came from, the ratman’s nails elongated into claws, and it swung them wildly, mouth opening to declare an Authority technique.
|Authority of Cr—|
|Got ya.|
|gukg!?|
The ground split open, and a whip shot out from between the ratman’s legs, wrapping around its body like a snake as its sharp tip pierced into its open mouth, drilling upwards into its brain and then curving to burst out from its right eye.
Silence pervaded the area as the ratman’s body froze, then went limp and crashed down onto the ground amidst the flames.
Arthur, the one responsible, casually picked up the ratman’s corpse, slung it over his shoulder and then walked towards the now-open door at the other end of the hall without a word.
He headed down to Floor 3, this time encountering a bunch of ice elves with blue skin.
Like the orcs and ratmen before them, they were all in berserk states and couldn’t properly use their Authorities, so he made short work of them, strangling, snapping necks, blowing them to pieces, and tearing off limbs after wrapping them with his whips.
Of course, he took corpses with him, and when he got to the tentative boss area, he cut open the ratman’s corpse and stuffed it with energy-generated whips, turning it into an explosive that would detonate with a single spark of cosmic energy.
He may not have been able to use his Destruction Authority, but Arthur still had his comprehensions in his head, and he could use them to optimise his energy usage and consumption in a way that he’d squeeze out the most destructive power from each explosion of his generated whips, as well as the corpses stained with his energy-infused blood.
Like how a matchstick could burn with a small flame and then turn into a massive blast when dropped into a bucket of fuel, Arthur’s blood was the matchstick igniting the bucket of fuel that was the corpses of the elves filled with residual energy.
It took him another 3 days to reach the former Elf Lord at the end of Floor 3, and after blowing them up without giving them the time to use the ice constructs they created, he strutted off to the next floor to meet another beastman breed.
The former Race Lord at the end of the floor was enraged at the sight of his brethren’s corpses being strung together like clothes and charged at Arthur the instant they saw them.
Arthur just chucked the former Elf Lord’s corpse at them and knocked them back, then swung the line of corpses at them and blew everything up.
He generated another whip and swung it at their eye mid-blast, and as they screamed from the damage, he swung the whip again and sent it piercing into their mouth.
Then, he jumped on them, wrapping the whip around their neck and creating a small spiralling wave of cosmic energy around the thong, shredding their head off their neck with it.
After that, Arthur picked up the pieces of the corpse and strutted off to floor 5 with it, with every intent of turning it into an explosive.
That was how Arthur proceeded to deal with all the floors, ambushing the mobs, then blasting the floor bosses with corpse explosions that prevented them from being able to properly fight or use their Creation Authorities.
He took his time to traverse the floors, moving leisurely, not engaging any opponent directly for even a split second, and completely avoiding being on the receiving end of any Creation Authority techniques.
The most difficult battle he had after that was against the former Troll Lord on Floor 10, and that was because of the Troll’s regenerative capabilities, which were abnormal, even for trolls.
But even that battle came to a quick end when Arthur hit the troll with a whip strike directly below the belt, the tip of his whip rigged with some of his blood, which exploded on contact.
After that, all Arthur had to do was generate whips from every direction to latch onto the troll’s limbs and pull them in different directions at once with enough force to move planets.
Arthur made a mental note to carry umbrellas just in case he had to split trolls apart. They spilt a lot more blood with a lot more force than he’d expected.
When he killed the troll, the same dark portal he’d entered the Labyrinth through appeared, and he jumped in.
After another bizarre drop, he landed on a wide grassland, but this time, he managed to land on his feet.
Getting up, he was met by two of the three Ancient-Breed dragons who had been present when he jumped into the labyrinth, and understandably, the white-haired one was frowning.
"30 days, 23 hours and 47 minutes," Arthur said, giving the exact amount of time he’d spent inside the labyrinth, but Wyndella didn’t care about that.
"What the heck was that?!" she demanded, and Arthur blinked in confusion.
"What the heck was what?" he asked.
"Don’t play dumb with me, Arthur. You know what I’m talking about. Why didn’t you engage any of them directly?!"
Hearing her words, Arthur nodded with feigned realisation, then tilted his head and said, "But that wasn’t the goal, was it?
If I recall, you told me to ’get out of this section of the labyrinth,’ not ’fight every living being I see.’ So I ’got out’ using the most efficient means possible.
What’s the problem with that?"
Before Wyndella could snap back at him, Barda, who had been chuckling in the corner, spoke up.
"You have to admit, he’s got a point, Wyndella."
"Barda!" she shouted, turning to glare at the blue-haired dragon, who just shrugged.
"You didn’t tell him to fight any of the Race Lords at the ends of the floors, did you? You just told him to get out, and that’s what he did, so I say he passed."
Barda snapped his fingers, lifting the restriction on Arthur’s power and healing his wounds, earning a quiet thank you from the godslayer, who immediately conjured a cosmic gate with the cosmic teleporter and stepped through it.
Left behind, Wyndella snapped at Barda.
"You saw what he did, and you’re fine with that? I’m not even mad about him wasting time on purpose. He practically ran from every fight!"
"What’s wrong with avoiding direct engagement against an opponent who wields your weakness? I see no problem with Arthur’s actions," Barda replied, slipping his hands into his pockets as he added, "Besides, you know I was against this from the start, so I would have sided with Arthur no matter what he did."
With that, Barda vanished, leaving Valmone completely, heading to the next universe over, where he sensed an Ancient-Breed Angel snooping around.
