Chapter 886: Resistance Foundations
"Sect Master Chang, huh? It’s been almost a century since we last spoke. I’m not sure how accommodating of me he’d be."
Arthur hadn’t had any dealings with Denerth’s Sect Master the last time he was in Valmone, so the idea didn’t appeal much.
"Chang is aware that you cooperate with us. He would be hospitable for our sake, provided you don’t overstep."
Malorum’s words made Arthur chuckle lightly, shaking his head as he activated the Cosmic Teleporter to begin creating a gate.
"I already have god Kings after me and my planets, so why would I misbehave and have a Cultivator King and his subordinates come after me too?"
As Arthur spoke, he released a small amount of anti-divinity, using it to envelop the twelve unconscious godslayers before him as he continued.
"Well, it’s a suggestion worth considering. Could you let Chang know I’m coming? He’s more likely to read his mail if you’re the sender."
Malorum nodded silently, and Arthur muttered his thanks before lifting the twelve High godslayers into the air with a touch of gravity law energy.
"I’ll take this set and leave the rest to you all. Thanks in advance."
With that, Arthur stepped into the gate he had created, the twelve unconscious godslayers floating in behind him.
◇ ◇ ◇
While Arthur was with Malorum, Wyndella was deep within the core regions of the Abyss Labyrinth, a place even Valmone’s strongest Deities approached with caution.
She moved casually through the thick concentrations of chaotic cosmic energy radiating from the Dark Young slumbering at the centre, and just as she was about to step directly into the domain of the Cosmic Horror, Barda appeared behind her and grabbed her arm.
"Alright, timeout."
With that, he enveloped them both in cosmic energy and warped them out of the entire Valmone universe, and the moment they reappeared in the vacuum of space outside, Wyndella shook off his arm with a frown.
"What’s your problem?!"
The irritation in her voice was unmistakable, and noticing it, Barda raised an eyebrow.
"Are you still upset about that stuff with Arthur? It’s been days already."
"Yes, I’m still pissed off, and you know why! You think coddling him like this is for his own good?! He’s on a straight path to death if he keeps going like this, and you know it! So why the hell are you against me!?"
Barda sighed at Wyndella’s outburst, his reaction only making the Creation Dragon even more irritated.
"What’s that sigh supposed to mean, huh?! I’m trying to help him build a strong resistance foundation while he’s still just a Deity, a foundation that’s going to grow with him when he ascends to the Sub-Cosmic Realms and beyond.
You know how absurd his growth speed is. It won’t be long before that happens. A few centuries, maybe a millennium at most. By then it’ll be much harder for him to develop a resistance to Creation since his Destruction powers will be far purer, so I’m trying to have him do it now, and you’re siding with him in running away from it?!"
"Calm down a second, Wyndella. You might have good intentions, but your methods carry serious risks to his well-being, so he’s definitely not going to like that," Barda said, but Wyndella cut him off before he could continue.
"Well, obviously there’s a risk! What, you think I’d just hand him what he needs on a silver platter? He has to work for it!"
Barda opened his mouth to respond, but Wyndella raised a hand to stop him. "Wait, hold the fuck up. Why am I the one most concerned about Arthur’s glaring weakness? Why aren’t you and Raikis more worried?"
The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
"I mean, Raikis is the one teaching him to control his Destruction powers. And you," she added, pointing at Barda, "You’re the one who said you wanted to groom him to become the next Eternal of Time so Ranus would stop bothering you every cosmic cycle about it.
Why aren’t you the most concerned?"
"Because Arthur already has a viable way to handle his weakness to Creation," Barda replied.
"He already has a plan, and it has a high chance of success, so I’m not as worried as you might expect. Besides, while his weakness to Destruction is a serious issue, it’s not serious enough to justify the level of effort you were about to put in just now."
He was referring to her heading straight into a Cosmic Horror’s lair, but the moment he said it, Wyndella’s expression went blank.
"Do you take me for an idiot, brother?"
The Creation Dragon’s voice grew colder with every word she spoke.
"I just recently left Arthur’s home universe. I can put two and two together and make four.
Arthur’s weakness to Destruction is far more serious than even he realises. The purity of his Destruction power is far higher than he thinks, and you know that, don’t you, Barda?"
As she spoke, Wyndella’s eyes widened slightly as realisation dawned on her.
"No, you’ve known since day one. From the very first moment you saw him, you used your power to look through his entire life. You already knew the anomaly that made Arthur a Grade 7 Singularity, didn’t you?"
Barda had no answer, because Wyndella was entirely correct. He had known since day one.
Singularity existences were beings whose souls had been used to host extracted cores of errors from the working processes of their home universes, errors that couldn’t be fully eliminated and could only be contained.
The greater the level and severity of the error, the higher the Singularity Grade of the existence whose soul contained it, and nine times out of ten, those existences were born with powers connected to that error.
For example, a routine wisp of unstable cosmic power released from the currently ungoverned Concept of Destruction caused an error in the Valmone universe’s fabric of space, affecting a constellation of seven massive stars.
The universe contained the error within the soul of one of the naturally occurring superior breed godslayers, and as a result, a godslayer with powers tied to those stars had been born somewhere in Valmone.
Their Grade was the same as Arthur’s: Grade 7.
Grade 7s were the rarest, and it wasn’t just because of the severity of the errors required to spawn them, but also because of the type of errors themselves.
Errors could occur in the working processes of Universes, Multiverses, or even the Cosmos, with their number and frequency becoming rarer the higher one went.
Every Grade 7 traced back to a higher power, a Cosmic malfunction strong enough to ripple down to the universal layer of the system. Only errors of that magnitude could result in Grade 7 singularities.
And Arthur was one of them.
"I always found it strange," Wyndella said. "Arthur’s Destruction affinity was high enough, but the purity of the energy he generated was absurd. There’s also that limited Nothingness manipulation ability he calls ’Null.’
But then I went to Hell, and it all clicked."
Wyndella floated closer to Barda as she spoke, her voice filled with certainty.
"Because there’s no dedicated Eternal governing the Concept of Destruction, it isn’t fully stable. It occasionally releases unstable bursts, like the solar flares of a star, the same kind that happened a couple of months ago.
Around the year Arthur was born, the Concept of Destruction released a similar burst that affected the First Multiverse.
Normally, that energy would have dispersed evenly across all universes, not concentrating enough in any one to cause severe errors, but Arthur’s universe isn’t in its proper position in the Multiverse, so it sticks out from the grid, a level above the cosmic web’s base layer where all other universes sit.
It’s like a mole that hasn’t been fully whacked down, a result of the universe being relocated, which caused it to absorb more of the energy than the others.
I browsed the Universe’s Records after talking with Belphegor, and that’s when everything made sense.
To handle the extra cosmic destructive energy that had built up in that universe because of its irregular position, Hell rerouted some of it through one of the existences within it with the greatest ’pure’ Destruction power, untainted by anything else, taking advantage of a moment when she was attempting to improve her comprehensions.
She happened to have just conceived a child at the time, so part of that energy was infused into her child, who was the perfect sponge to absorb some of it since the Destruction affinity had already been present in the blood for at least five generations.
The child was already destined to be born with a strong affinity, and that incident made it even stronger and purer."
Reaching out to grab Barda’s arms, Wyndella tilted her head and asked, narrowing her eyes, "We both know who that mother and child are, so tell me, Barda, with that knowledge, why aren’t you concerned? What else do you know?"
At this point, Barda could only sigh, running a hand through his hair as he answered, "I already told you that Arthur has a plan to counter his weakness."
"And what is this plan that leaves you so unbothered?" Wyndella pressed.
Barda was silent for a moment, but he finally relented and spoke, revealing the plan Arthur hadn’t yet shared with any of the Levites.
As Wyndella had observed, from the very first moment he met Arthur, he had used his power over Time to scan Arthur’s life across the temporal axis, so he already knew that Arthur intended to use—
"—Gaia’s avatar. He wants to absorb a fragment of its power through a spell that draws out latent potential from the blood of one’s ancestors. In his own terms, he’s vaccinating himself against creation."
Wyndella blinked at Barda’s explanation, her grip on his arm loosening slightly as she floated back. Her pupils darted rapidly, and then her eyes widened as she muttered, "He’s gonna die."
"What?" Barda asked, brows creasing.
"No, no, no, no, no," Wyndella continued, muttering to herself as she floated further away. "Ancestral Regression? That’s what he’s planning, right? Arthur is going to die if he attempts that. His current self can’t handle it."
"What the hell are you talking about, Wyndella?" Barda demanded. "Why are you so sure—"
"Listen, Barda," Wyndella said, cutting him off. "I’m the creation expert here. I know more about Gaia’s power than you could ever uncover, which is why I know that Gaia’s conceptual power will kill Arthur if he tries that in his current state."
Wyndella pressed her fingers to her temple as she recalled something about Gaia that someone had told her billions of years ago.
’Bahamut said it, didn’t he? Gaia’s cosmic power has multiple cosmic force attributes. Arthur’s only a Mid-Tier Deity. He can’t just dive straight into opposing Cosmic Force attributes without some kind of preparation.’
Looking up at her brother, Wyndella continued, "If the avatar you’re talking about is the same one we sensed with Ranus’, Julio’s, and Hyperion’s avatars in that universe near Hell, then Arthur will almost certainly die if he tries to absorb any of its power through blood in his current state. He needs to have a..."
She trailed off, lips curling into a smug smile as she continued, "A resistance foundation. He doesn’t have any resistance right now, so he needs to at least have a baseline level before he can tack that whole vaccine plan on top of it."
Wyndella closed the distance between them, grabbing Barda by the collar and pulling him closer as she said, "I was right, wasn’t I?"
Her smug expression practically screamed I told you so, and Barda’s brows twitched in mild annoyance at the sight.
Wyndella laughed at his reaction, pushing him away as she spun around.
"It turns out I was right again. You should be owing me for how many times I’ve been right about things like this. Geez."
Still laughing, she faced Valmone and continued, "Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to continue what I was planning."
Wyndella was about to descend back into Valmone when Barda reached out and grabbed her, forcing her to turn towards him with a frown.
"What? Are you still going to be against me?"
Barda shook his head. "I’ll help you... but."
"But what?" Wyndella asked, frown deepening.
"Let’s remove the mortal risk in this."
"Huh?"
Wyndella blinked, clearly confused, as Barda continued.
"For starters, we can’t do it here in Valmone. Let’s use Rishia’s evaluation grounds we’ve been working on. And finally, we’re going to need Harlamagne for this to succeed."
As Barda outlined the details of his plan, Wyndella silently floated away, her expression growing slightly apprehensive as she realised whatever Barda had in mind was far more extreme than anything she could have planned.
