Chapter 893: The Barrier Loophole
"Very well, I suppose I’ll accept," Arthur said, but before Miacav could respond, he added, "But..."
Glancing at the Supreme King’s second-in-command, he asked, "I wonder why you’d reveal such a prime location so easily. The higher the purity of the energy I absorb, the less time I have to spend refining it myself, and the less I need to absorb. The same goes for you, so it makes me curious why you wouldn’t keep this a secret.
There are many other ways to secure my partnership, after all."
Arthur’s suspicion was natural, and the answer he received was just as reasonable.
"Simple," the Infernal Devil replied. "The source I mentioned is just one planet. It generates and expels far more cosmic energy than any planet in this universe due to special circumstances I haven’t fully investigated, but it’s useless to me since the amount it produces is far too little to matter at my level. But for a Mid-Tier Deity? It should be useful until you start approaching the end of the Superior Stage."
"Is that so? Then I’d like to have the coordinates for this planet once I’m done talking with your boss."
Arthur returned his gaze to Miacav, taking a sip of the wine he’d poured for himself before saying, "Now then, let’s discuss business."
◇ ◇ ◇
The conversation-turned-negotiation between Arthur and Miacav concluded far faster than expected, and to prevent the older, more experienced Miacav from gaining the upper hand, Arthur relied on Lostvayne to provide advice when necessary.
While Lostvayne’s speciality was destruction, the sword’s previous wielders had done far more than just that in their lives, and through their experiences, Lostvayne had accumulated a wealth of knowledge in various matters, one of which was the art of negotiation.
After securing the maximum benefits he could, Arthur finalised the deal with the Infernal Devil King and received the coordinates for the planet containing the literal cosmic energy well Miacav had mentioned, a High-Level World in the mid-ranked regions of the Infernal Dimension called Choth.
Year 1139’s January 4th was when Arthur’s ship reached the star system housing the planet, and as he approached, he reviewed the details Miacav had provided.
Due to an event that remained unidentified, the planet Choth had been damaged, much like Taemia had been 83 years ago, though the destruction here was even more severe.
The planet now had an entire lake of pure cosmic energy so dense that it had liquefied, forming a lake so massive it was approaching the lower limit of what could be called a ’sea’.
This cosmic energy naturally didn’t appear out of thin air.
It leaked from the planet’s core toward the surface, excess energy far too great for the planet to contain.
Specifically, it was escaping from ’something’ embedded in the core, which had been overloading the planet with cosmic energy. The planet had been attempting to expel the excess energy through the fissure created on its surface by that item when it landed millions of years ago.
High concentrations of cosmic energy, the source of all other energy types, usually caused a build-up of these offshoot energies, particularly magic power, which was the most common.
For those on the planet’s surface who weren’t cosmic superiors, the lake appeared as a massive well of magic power being expelled by the planet for reasons they couldn’t understand, and if left uncontained, this energy would erupt from the fissure at the bottom of the lake with such force and speed that it would literally shoot straight into space.
This pure magic power, however, wasn’t something they wanted to lose.
The Infernal Devils on the planet waged war against its other races to monopolise it, and one by one, those races fell until only the dragons remained.
The powerful dragons had to be defeated for there to be no one left to challenge the Infernal Devils’ sovereignty over the planet.
Sensing that the energy of the magic power lake was still rising, the Infernal Devil Deities refrained from absorbing it, choosing instead to keep it contained until as much as possible had flowed from the planet, and only then would they begin absorbing it, dividing the energy equally among themselves.
Now, this planet had been expelling concentrated cosmic energy for millions of years, and although it was the only inhabitable world in its star system, beings from other star systems within the Infernal Dimension had naturally discovered it, leading to wars between those seeking to conquer the planet for its energy and those aiming to steal it from its inhabitants.
The last of these wars wiped out all the High-Tier Deities who had called the planet home, and in the aftermath, the remaining Deities created a barrier around it to block other foreign Deities from entering, while also limiting the amount of magic power the planet could release and how much of it could be detected from interstellar space.
Naturally, this barrier, created and maintained by multiple Superior Mid-Tier Deities, was strong enough to keep Arthur out, and even with his Aspect of Destruction, breaking through would be troublesome—not because he couldn’t do it, but because by the time he had cracked it open it wide enough for its power not to repel him from the atmosphere, the Deities sustaining the barrier would have long since detected him and would likely intervene.
It was a barrier that weaponised the weak repulsive force of the High-Level world and amplified it using the powers drawn from the corpses of the dead High-Tier Deities, operating so that the stronger one was, the greater the repulsion effect.
They had essentially made the planet a ’Pseudo-Low-Level World’, causing the High-Level planet to be perceived as a Low-Level world by the universe’s system.
"I’m curious how they managed this. I’m sure that some serious sacrifices or prices must have been paid..." Arthur muttered to himself as he studied the glowing hologram of the planet.
For existences with Race King Authorities, this barrier couldn’t last long under their might, and Miacav had even offered to have his second-in-command break it, but Arthur had other plans.
’Barriers like this, which are very good at keeping things out, are often equally weak at keeping things in.
The stronger it is on the outside, the weaker it is from the inside, since it’s meant to keep things from entering, not from leaving. The universal laws of equilibrium make this inevitable.’
Barriers like this had a loophole Arthur intended to exploit to get onto the planet.
’Being summoned into it by an existence already inside.’
If they exploited the barrier’s weaker interior and carved a hole through it to reach Arthur outside, he should be able to enter through that channel without much trouble.
Arthur had no one on the planet’s surface, but he could send someone in and have that person summon him onto the planet.
The ’someone’ he had in mind was naturally the teenage girl currently being lectured by Berlal about how impractical it would be for her to wield a comically large scythe like the one a grim reaper character had in a movie, due to logical concerns like the ratio between her body and the weapon’s size.
Elaine.
’She’s been under close watch for several years and hasn’t faced any threatening situations alone without the guarantee of assistance from either one of the Levites or me. It’s high time I let her experience the beatings of society. Perhaps this will improve her situation in an unexpected way.’
Such were Arthur’s thoughts as he tapped the armrest of his chair, his eyes moving from the star map the ship was following back to her.
"Elaine. Come over here for a bit."
The girl looked slightly puzzled at the seriousness in his voice, jogging over with raised eyebrows.
"What’s up?"
Arthur casually lifted her onto his lap, rubbing her hair as usual while he spoke.
"You’ve spent a lot of time growing your power, so how about you put it to use and gain real experience with it?"
"...eh?"
Elaine’s eyes widened at the words Arthur spoke, her brain automatically translating their meaning.
Before she could say a thing in response, Arthur continued speaking.
"I want you to go out and live alone for a while, to learn to use your strength to protect yourself. Berlal, I and the others wouldn’t stick around you at all times forever, after all."
Berlal narrowed her eyes slightly at Arthur’s choice of words, while Elaine slowly shook her head, her expression darkening as she instinctively clutched his arm tightly.
"Well, I might call it ’gaining experience’, but I actually have a mission I want to entrust to you."
Elaine froze at Arthur’s words, her grip on him not loosening in the slightest as she asked, "A mission...for me?"
"Yeah. How about it?" Arthur said casually, as if he was completely unaware of the emotional turmoil Elaine was currently feeling.
"Really... really? No, I mean... I... I..." Elaine stammered, biting her lips in silence before finally summoning her courage and saying, "...okay. What’s the mission?"
Arthur pointed at the star map hovering in front of him and explained, "We’re approaching this planet, but because of the barrier around it, I can’t enter it myself.
Your mission is to find a way to summon me into the planet using the energy from one of several special locations across its surface called ’energy hotspots.’
Planets have ’veins’ in their surfaces that act as channels for energy to flow like the veins in our bodies that serve as pathways for blood, and where these veins intersect beneath the surface, the energy concentrates into hotspots."
It sounded simple, but when Elaine glanced at the details of the planet in the corner of the map, including its surface area, she frowned.
’I’ll have to search all that? Alone?’
Arthur had told her he couldn’t enter the planet, and although Elaine knew Berlal probably wasn’t restricted in the same way, she also knew Berlal was strict enough that she wouldn’t lift a finger even if she were on the verge of death.
"So, what do you say?"
Arthur’s voice pulled Elaine from her thoughts, and she turned to meet his eyes, which calmly stared back at her.
It was one of those moments where she couldn’t even guess what Arthur might possibly be really thinking.
She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t scared, but remembering Arthur’s conversation with Berlal about how her inability to kill limited her potential, one of the reasons he had brought her from her home world and had Berlal train her, she silently clenched her fist.
’I...don’t want him to be disappointed in me...’
That thought had been one of her major sources of motivation throughout their time in the Secret Realm, and it persisted even now.
Taking a deep breath, Elaine steeled herself and responded,
"I’ll do it."
