Chapter 888: Secret Realm Oversight
"Crim! Nice to see you again!"
"...wha—Arthur?!"
The vampiress was understandably taken aback when Arthur suddenly appeared in front of her as she arrived at the Sect Master’s Pavilion in response to the summons she’d received.
It’d been over 80 years since she’d last seen him, but the three months she’d spent in his company remained some of the most memorable moments of her life, making them impossible for her to forget.
More than that, there was another reason she couldn’t forget Arthur, and the memory of it caused her eyes to narrow for a split second at the sight of him.
She quickly brought her expression under control and greeted the Sect Masters present, after which her own Sect Master, Feng Wuhan, began explaining the situation to her, along with the task she’d been assigned.
Naturally, she wasn’t doing this without compensation and would be paid in Sect Merit Points, the virtual currency used within the Blood Moon Sect’s grounds.
Once he’d gone over nearly everything, Wuhan sent a telepathic message to Crim.
[Keep an eye on him and report anything strange you notice.]
Crim responded with a silent nod, her expression revealing nothing of what she was thinking.
The Sect Master’s actions didn’t seem all that strange, since even Arthur had expected the Blood Moon Sect wouldn’t allow him access to one of their Secret Realms without some level of oversight.
He’d also guessed Crim would be instructed to keep an eye on him, though he behaved as if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, continuing to chat with Elaine as usual, talking about the kind of hairstyle she planned to wear throughout their time in the realm.
He even began braiding her hair right then and there, much to Wuhan’s surprise, as he wasn’t familiar with Arthur or his randomness and unpredictability.
Crim was hit by a wave of nostalgia, while Shaoting, having dealt with Jamie for centuries, wasn’t baffled in the slightest.
"When are you free to enter the Secret Realm?" Shaoting asked, and Arthur immediately tapped Elaine on the shoulder, prompting her to answer.
"Anytime. I’m free."
"In that case," Shaoting said, turning toward Wuhan, who nodded and called for a servant to fetch the prospective disciple who was meant to enter alongside Elaine.
Arthur and Elaine were moved to a separate area to wait, with Crim accompanying them to catch up with him.
"Oh, right. What about your succubus friend, Hibiki?"
Arthur asked while deftly twirling strands of Elaine’s hair between his fingers, the motions showing clear familiarity with it, and Crim only glanced at Elaine, who was humming softly while swinging her legs, before answering.
"She’s in her sect."
"Oh, right. She was in a different one," Arthur said, nodding as the detail came back to him. "You guys still close?"
"Yes, we are," Crim replied briefly.
"Good to hear. Friendship endings are a sad thing. I hope you two never have to go through that."
Arthur’s expression didn’t change when he spoke, but there was a hint of melancholy in his voice, something that made Elaine pause before turning toward him.
"What’s up?"
"You...did you lose a friend recently or something?"
Elaine’s question made Arthur burst out laughing as he shook his head and replied, "Nahh. It’s been 83 years since then. It happened right after the event where Crim and I met."
"...what happened to them?" Elaine asked, and Crim, also curious, turned her full attention to him.
"I made them a godslayer."
Arthur’s reply left both females blinking in confusion as they looked at each other, then back at him after realising they were both just as puzzled.
"Mind explaining?" Crim finally said, and at that, Arthur, finishing the last tie in Elaine’s hair, leaned back and spoke.
"It’s nothing much. She just stabbed me in the heart, trying to kill me because she thought I’d killed her childhood friends and worked with the guy who killed her parents."
"That’s NOT nothing much!!" Elaine shot back immediately, making Arthur laugh lightly as he waved his hand while responding.
"Nahh, you guys are making it way more serious than it really was. Anyway, I went on to actually kill that childhood friend right in front of her, then I turned her into a godslayer while making sure she felt every bit of the pain from the transformation process, after which I sent her to Nienope to serve as a soldier in my godslayer army and made sure she couldn’t unalive herself."
""...""
Crim and Elaine stared at Arthur in stunned silence for several seconds after he finished speaking, and they stayed that way until the room door opened and the prospective disciple they’d been waiting for walked in alongside Wuhan, who looked confused by the pin drop silence he encountered.
"What’s going on?"
"I dunno," Arthur replied with a shrug, acting as though he wasn’t the reason they were both frozen in shock.
"Arthur..." Elaine muttered, finally finding her voice, and at that, Arthur quietly turned toward her with one eyebrow raised.
"If it ever feels like I’m even inching toward pissing you off, even a little, please tell me."
Arthur burst out laughing at her request, which only left the two newcomers even more confused, but after Crim’s short explanation to Wuhan through telepathy, the man wasn’t confused anymore.
In fact, he was mildly surprised to learn about Arthur’s ability to forcibly alter another’s race, and he found himself curious about what conditions had to be met for something like that to happen.
Arthur didn’t give him time to dwell on it, though, as he teleported directly in front of the prospective disciple he’d brought along, a young man who’d only just reached adulthood, with rust brown hair and ordinary brown eyes.
"High Human, huh?" Arthur muttered, identifying his racial breed with a glance before extending a hand.
"Nice to meet you. I’m Arthur."
The young man immediately narrowed his eyes, but likely due to Wuhan nudging him, he reined in his expression and accepted the handshake.
"Yijun," he said, offering his name.
Arthur nodded once, then extended his hand again and warped Elaine to his side as he spoke.
"This is Elaine. She’ll be training with you for a while."
"Hello," Elaine said, offering only that single word before immediately looking away from him and returning her attention to the lights of the gems on her bracelets, her lack of interest in him made obvious without effort.
Yijun looked mildly surprised by this reaction, but neither Arthur nor Elaine paid it any mind as Arthur lifted his gaze to Wuhan and spoke.
"Shall we get going?"
The man nodded without a word, snapping his fingers to teleport them all to the entrance of the Secret Realm, a spatial rift turned Dimensional Gate.
The guards stationed nearby saluted Wuhan before stepping aside, and at his command, the gate activated, shimmering momentarily as space folded in on itself.
Wuhan gestured toward it, and the four of them entered the rift in silence, immediately greeted by an entirely new world beyond it.
A barrage of scents assaulted their noses before their eyes could even fully capture the scenery, a disorienting, calming, and strangely grounding blend that put the mind at ease even as they all sensed unseen eyes watching them.
Arthur snapped out of it almost immediately, his eyes narrowing as he expanded his cosmic spatial perception, spreading it outward in concentric waves until it covered the entire realm.
The positions of every entity inside it revealed themselves to him immediately, laid out across the land like stars forming a constellation, along with every road and pathway winding through the realm.
Far in the distance, a flock of feathered creatures had been clashing with a cluster of dragons over territory, but the moment Arthur and Crim registered within their senses, both sides halted and turned to watch the newcomers with open caution.
"Transcendents? Isn’t this place meant to train newbies?" Arthur murmured, frowning at the levels of the distant combatants.
"Hmm?"
Crim tilted her head slightly, confused for a moment, but when she understood what Arthur meant a second later, she shook her head.
"Those Transcendents are behind a special barrier. We won’t run into them unless we deliberately pass through it."
Arthur shifted his gaze back toward them as he listened, scanning again and noticing that there really was a faint barrier that his spatial perception had glossed over earlier.
"I see... okay, then," he said, turning away from the distant clash to look at Crim. "So, where do we start?"
Crim raised her right hand, a thin stream of blood shooting from her fingertip, winding through the air before coiling around the legs of a massive shoebill-like bird.
She yanked the creature down, slamming it into the ground with bone-crushing force, the impact cracking the earth and shattering nearby rocks, leaving the beast half-dead, gasping and bleeding from multiple fractures in its legs and wings.
Though surprised by her sudden attack, Yijun quickly summoned his sword, kicked off the ground, and dashed forward, stabbing his blade through the creature’s head and ending its life instantly.
The act of finishing the monster triggered several Level Ups in rapid succession, and Elaine silently clenched her fists, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
’Would I be able to...?’ she asked herself, but barely a moment later, she glanced at Arthur, who was studying the corpse before her with curiosity, then shook her head.
’No... I have to.’
Deep within her heart, a faint fear began to take root, the fear of disappointment and being abandoned if she couldn’t overcome her inability to consciously kill another living being.
