Chapter 923: A Drop in the Bucket
Berlal’s short pause made Arthur give her a questioning look, but he chose not to push the issue since it was obvious she didn’t want to elaborate.
"What I can say is that she wouldn’t suddenly sense your location just because you’re in the same multiverse, or even within the same general hemisphere of it," Berlal continued. "But if you’re within the same cluster, then yes, she probably would."
"Cluster?" Arthur asked, lifting an eyebrow. "You mean a universal cluster, not a galactic cluster, right?"
Berlal gave him a look that made the answer clear even before she spoke. "Obviously."
That meant Luka could detect him even if he was a dozen entire universes away.
"And if you were to enter one of her sanctums, you’d certainly be detected immediately," Berlal added.
The mention of that term left Arthur confused.
"Sanctums? What the hell are those?"
"To put it plainly," Berlal replied, "they’re her Divine Territories. She has locations scattered across the Cosmos that are saturated with her power.
Elder and Ancient Breed gods who aren’t part of the Imperium and don’t have a direct call line to her can use those places to contact her, even when she’s within the Origin Multiverse, by ’praying’ to her.
You should be able to recognise them right away, since they’re completely steeped in her divinity, so you’ll know to avoid them. Entering one would immediately inform Luka of your presence, because she knows everything that happens within them."
That explanation made Arthur heave an exhausted sigh before asking another question.
"And Luka, considering how casually everyone’s been saying her name, I’m guessing she doesn’t have the Unspeakable Name effect active."
That question caught Layla’s attention, but before she could speak, the usually silent Nicole spoke first.
"Unspeakable Name? What’s that?"
She’d heard Undine mention it before but had never gotten an explanation, and hearing Arthur bring it up in relation to the Progenitor goddess made her curious.
"It’s something higher-dimensional Cosmic beings can do. If you say their name while referring to them, they can tell you’re speaking about them, and in some cases, they can even tell where you’re saying it from."
Nicole blinked in surprise, while Layla’s expression contorted.
"That’s scary as fuck," she said.
"Yeah," Arthur said, "it really is. And it’s apparently pretty common among many existences, which is why I’m wondering whether Luka uses it too."
He turned toward Berlal as he said this, but the dragoness shook her head.
"That’s not something I can know."
Arthur frowned. "How so? Can she hide the effects?"
"Yes, she can," Berlal replied, nodding once. "While there’s always an energy transfer when the universal laws detect a name being spoken and send that signal, along with the speaker’s location, to the one who bears that name, any sufficiently powerful existence can conceal those transfers and signals from others.
And Luka is more than sufficiently powerful."
This was one of the strongest entities to ever exist across the cosmos, after all.
Arthur pressed his fingers against his temple and sighed again.
Normally, he wouldn’t be thinking about things like this at all, digging into knowledge he didn’t strictly need.
He’d always believed that knowing too much when it wasn’t explicitly necessary caused more harm than good, which was why he hadn’t wanted to learn how many Existence Realms lay beyond the Monarch Realm, or the methods required to surpass them, until he actually reached those points himself.
Arthur didn’t want to burden his mind with that kind of information, which would only make him feel as though he’d accomplished nothing on his own path.
And yet, while living his life casually, he’d crossed paths with a probe that contained a Divine Spark Fragment of an Ancient god tied to the Imperium, a group that was likely searching for him under the orders of the Progenitor goddess Luka herself.
Even now, Arthur still had no idea why Luka was after him.
Did she want to kill him to eliminate a potential threat? Did she want to place some kind of control over him so she could control the race capable of threatening her while they were still in their nascent stages? Or was there some entirely different purpose, something so cosmic and higher-dimensional that his brain couldn’t even begin to compute it?
Arthur had no answer to any of that.
Looking up, Arthur asked, "Hey, Berlal, what are Luka’s movements like? Does she leave the Origin Multiverse often? Is she the type to wander randomly, or is there some way to predict where she might be at a given time?"
The question came from a place of fear, and Berlal immediately saw through it, shaking her head in response.
"That’s the worst possible question you could ask. Trying to predict Luka’s movements, her actions, or even her inaction is completely pointless.
Luka’s a lot like you when it comes to unpredictability, except she’s far worse.
She acts on impulse frequently. To put it plainly, she lets her intrusive thoughts win more often than not.
The problem is that because everyone knows she does this, she uses it as a mask, concealing when she’s actually making calculated decisions and hiding monumental actions or layered plans behind the appearance of ’impulse’.
That’s why so many beings on her level refer to her as a snake."
"Well, I’ll be damned," Arthur said, slamming his hand against the armrest of his chair as he stood.
"I need time. I’m not even a century old, and yet I have opps that are trillions of years older than me, with power that eclipses mine on so many levels I can’t even begin to fathom the bottom of it.
It’s frustrating to think about, honestly. I understand that every journey has to start somewhere, but why am I starting mine when others have already finished theirs and are on part two?"
He shook his head as he waved his right hand, conjuring a cosmic gate, and before Berlal could speak, he continued.
"And don’t give me that spiel about how all of life is unfair. I already know. That’s exactly why it’s so irritating."
With those words, he stepped into the cosmic gate and vanished without bothering to tell anyone where he was going, though Berlal could determine his destination instantly with a single glance across the universe.
◇ ◇ ◇
The place Arthur went to was the Danger Zone: Abyss Labyrinth.
Specifically, the planet where he, Jamie, and Evan had spent their last month in Valmone during his first trip there in Year 1054.
This was where he had first trained to wield the power of the Aspects of Time and Destruction that he now possessed, and thinking back, he had come a long way since then.
At that time, he had been a Sub-Cosmic and could barely keep one Aspect active for long, but now he’d attained full Cosmic Superiority and could simultaneously use his First Concretization on both Aspects, even if only for a limited time.
’Selective Destruction’ and ’Slowing to Near Stillness’.
Those were the facets of the Concepts of Destruction and Time expressed through the masses of conceptual cosmic power in his soul.
His Selective Destruction allowed him to exclude unintended targets from his destructive energy, funnelling all the attack’s power into a target and effectively amplifying the damage since none of the energy dissipated elsewhere to cause collateral damage.
As for the Aspect of Time, it was highly useful for handling foes faster than himself and for restraining opponents, and his range on that was massive.
His Extreme Nothingness Authority’s constituent techniques had increased, from having just the Base Extreme Nothingness, Seismic Surge, and Chaos to now include his Remastered Seismic Surge for AOE and World Collapse for dealing with large-scale targets.
Compared to back then, the level of comprehensions he had in universal laws was on an entirely different tier.
The laws he’d comprehended to the Mid-Rank—Time, Destruction, Extinction, Space, and Gravity—were at 84%, 92%, 43%, 72%, and 85% respectively.
Just below those were the Low-Rank laws: Swords (96%), Languages (90%), Life (85%), Death (85%), Knowledge (84%), Summoning (70%), and the elemental and other weapon laws, all hovering around the 70–75% range.
Arthur had experienced nearly 61 Hell Universe years since leaving Valmone for the first time, and his progress was outstanding, to say the least, especially given the immense amounts of power involved.
"But it’s still not enough..."
It all felt like it didn’t even amount to a drop in the bucket.
The battle against Valkalonex’s Aspect Fragment reminded him how far he was from the High-Tier Deity Realm, after all, that Aspect Fragment wasn’t even at that level, and he was 100% sure he would have lost if the circumstances hadn’t aligned in his favour.
Every single percentage of comprehension in the last stretch of the Mid-Rank Law of Destruction had been immensely difficult to attain, yet it provided only a minuscule amount of insight on how to reach full completion.
What’s more, he still needed to acquire at least one High-Rank Authority to qualify for the High-Tier Deity Realm, and above that was the Monarch Realm, followed by the Primogenial Realm, which required him to achieve completion in at least one Monarch-Rank law.
Knowing all of that, it was hard for him to feel proud of his progress so far.
A sigh escaped his lips at the impatient thoughts stirring within him.
"I need to wrap up my business in Valmone before this month ends. After that, I think I’ll become a shut-in within Barda’s pocket universe for a while."
At least until the currently out-of-sight High-Tier Deity Realm came within reach.
