Chapter 909: Choth’s Inevitable Fate
The moment the contract was finalised, Arthur turned toward Lostvayne and Celestia, snapping his fingers and opening a cosmic gate that led straight to the Energy Lake’s location.
Celestia rose to her feet, lifting the unconscious Elaine into her arms, while Lostvayne reverted to her sword form, an action that sent a wave of shock through the Devil Lords, who only then realised she’d been an Ego Weapon capable of assuming a humanoid form.
While they’d known from commonly available interstellar information that Arthur wielded an Ego Weapon, they’d never imagined it to be one of such a high tier.
Arthur ignored their reaction and exerted his Authority over gravity to lift the devils lying on the ground as he stepped through the cosmic energy gate.
Emerging on the other side, Arthur was greeted by a massive opening carved into the planet’s surface, completely filled with a dense, multicoloured liquid. The substance was thick and viscous, its many hues churning and sloshing within the depths of the several-kilometre-wide crater.
At irregular intervals, enormous geysers erupted from the lake, the liquefied energy violently expelled upward into the sky. Each eruption slammed into the planetary barrier before crashing back down into the lake, sending vast waves rolling outward toward the shores.
Those waves washed across the surrounding land, saturating it with energy and turning the area into a lush expanse of greenery, teeming with life that had flourished due to the constant infusion of cosmic energy over hundreds of years.
As he looked at it, Arthur shook his head, lamenting the inevitable fate of this planet while also wondering what could possibly be injecting such an enormous amount of cosmic energy into its core that the planet was being forced to expel it in this way.
For context, the amount of energy Arthur required at his current stage exceeded what tens of thousands of Prime and Apex Worlds combined could provide.
And somehow, he could obtain all of that from a single High-Level World.
Something was infusing this planet’s core with more energy than even thousands upon thousands of other planets contained.
"Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous," Arthur muttered as he observed the scene before him.
By all rights, this planet should have exploded long ago. How was it still maintaining its structural integrity?
While he asked himself this, Lostvayne returned to her humanoid form, stepped closer to the shoreline, and dipped her hand into the liquefied energy.
The energy was so densely condensed that it behaved like water, flowing smoothly between her fingers before splashing back into the lake as she lifted her hand.
She shook her head silently before turning to Arthur.
[It’s faint and barely perceptible, but there’s an immense Cosmic Authority acting on this planet. That Authority is what maintains the planet’s structure and prevents it from blowing apart.]
’Really?’ Arthur asked in response to the telepathic message.
His senses couldn’t detect a thing, and if there really was an Authority that was ’barely perceptible’ even to Lostvayne acting on this planet, then Arthur doubted Miacav’s adjutant would have noticed it either.
[Master, that Authority won’t last forever. Take what you need and leave as quickly as possible. The day that Authority ends will be catastrophic for this galaxy.]
Lostvayne didn’t care at all about preventing such a disaster, even though she could see it coming from more than a mile away.
Arthur didn’t particularly care either. His only concern was absorbing the cosmic energy and leaving.
If anything, his actions might even help the planet by removing what it was desperately trying to expel and prolong its life.
’But because I’m indirectly helping it, it might try to force more energy into my body than I can handle.’
Just as that thought crossed his mind, a voice spoke beside him.
"Oh, so that’s how it is."
Arthur calmly turned his head, and there, standing beside him, was the black-haired Ancient Dragon he had known over the past few decades.
Her hands were crossed behind her back as usual while she inspected the lake before them.
Naturally, the Infernal Devil Lords reacted with shock at her sudden appearance, but before any of them could speak, Arthur turned toward them and addressed them first.
"It’d be in your best interest not to make any sudden movements or try to provoke her," he said calmly. "If you do, I can assure you that not even all the Race Emperors combined would be able to save you from her wrath."
Berlal turned toward him with a raised eyebrow, about to ask what he was even talking about, when she noticed something that made her frown.
Her gaze moved from Arthur to the leader of the Devil Lords, and the moment her eyes landed on him, his heart sank. His soul screamed in terror as he staggered backwards and collapsed onto the ground, unable to bear the weight of Berlal’s casual gaze.
"What kind of contract did you make with them?" she asked, her eyes following the lines of the contract binding Arthur and the Devil Lords together.
Arthur gave her a brief explanation of the situation, and after listening, she nodded.
"I see. Well, I don’t really care."
And she truly didn’t care in the slightest about whatever contract Arthur had made. She waved her hand, and in an instant, the Devil Lords vanished, leaving behind only their shadows on the ground with nothing casting them.
Without offering any explanation for what she’d just done, she glanced at the unconscious Elaine for a moment, then looked up at the sky and spoke.
"Barda, send Altrishia here."
A few seconds later, space tore open as a portal swirled into existence, from which Rishia stepped out, her gaze snapping straight toward Berlal.
"You called, Lady Berl—!"
Her words cut off abruptly as her senses picked up the cosmic energy flooding the area, her eyes widening in shock as she turned toward the lake before them.
"Sit down," Berlal instructed. "Use the energy here to complete your advancement."
At the mention of "complete your advancement," Arthur raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Rishia.
A moment later, his eyes widened as he discerned her current Existence Realm, sitting somewhere around the midpoint between the Intermediate and Superior Stages of the Mid-Tier Deity Realm.
In terms of Realm, she was already above him, since he hadn’t reached that midpoint himself.
"She’s catching up fast," Arthur muttered as he shook his head.
He sat at the lake’s edge, lowering his legs into the liquefied energy before scooping up a handful of it.
"It’s already condensed to the absolute limit," he muttered. "There’s nothing more I can do to refine it. The quality’s perfect. It’s even better than mine. All that’s left is absorption."
After that, he took a deep breath, removed all his external artifacts except for the Stellar Guard around his left wrist, then took another deep breath.
Almost immediately, the energy around his legs began to spiral into a whirlpool, slowly evaporating into a faint gaseous state before being absorbed into his body.
Rishia glanced toward him as he began, but before she could say anything, Berlal spoke.
"Join him, but go to the other end of the lake so your energy fluctuations don’t interfere with his."
Rishia nodded and turned as if to leap across the lake, but she froze when she saw one of the energy geysers erupt. Choosing to be cautious, she went around the lake instead, making her way toward the opposite shore.
As the two of them began draining the lake of its cosmic energy, easing the planet’s burden little by little, Berlal turned her attention to Elaine, who was still unconscious in Celestia’s arms.
Stepping closer, she asked,
"Why is her soul fragmented?"
She’d already noticed that a portion of Elaine’s soul had been removed and hadn’t regenerated, which explained her unconscious state.
[She created a soul-bound weapon,] Celestia replied.
Berlal blinked, then lowered her gaze to the ground, delving into the planet’s records and uncovering everything that’d taken place during the three weeks she’d been absent from the universe alongside Barda and Wyndella.
Despite reviewing everything within seconds, she still failed to notice the exact moment Elaine altered the chant Arthur had given her during the summoning.
That lapse was understandable, since most of Berlal’s attention was focused on the weapon Elaine had chosen as her soul-bound armament.
A scythe.
"I warned her it was impractical," Berlal muttered quietly.
Shaking her head, she added under her breath, "Children."
Hearing that, Celestia raised an eyebrow, then looked down at the unconscious Elaine in her arms as she thought to herself.
’Was it really nothing more than a childlike fascination with something that simply looked cool, or was it an instinctive desire to wield something the real her possessed?’
At this point, it was impossible to deny that Celestia knew more about Elaine’s origins than even Arthur did.
She knew exactly how Elaine’s existence had come to be, and like every other Rule Breaker in the Cosmos, she knew precisely what the scythe Elaine had recreated, Requiem, truly was.
Because of that, it went without saying that Celestia believed Elaine’s choice hadn’t been influenced by surface-level fascination alone, but rather stemmed from an instinctive attraction toward something she was already familiar with on a spiritual level.
As this passed through her mind, Berlal raised her hand, cosmic energy flowing from her palm as she placed it against Elaine’s chest.
The laws of life and death gathered around the unconscious teenager, and slowly, the severed portion of her soul began to regenerate.
Of course, the portion that’d been used to recreate Requiem didn’t vanish.
