Chapter 924: A Hidden Treasure
Arthur quickly put his plan into motion, without a hint of hesitation.
Thanks to Barda and Berlal, the collateral casualties from his fight with Valkalonex’s Aspect Fragment had been effectively zero, leaving him with the same number of issues with Miacav.
Upon returning to the Orithyia Galaxy, he went straight to Nienope and began executing all the policies and plans he and Stelan had drafted over the past 2 years he’d spent in Valmone, while also preparing the planets under his rule for another extended absence of their Lord.
He informed his allies in Gozon about his planned departure, holding firm to that decision even after being warned that his repeated long-term absences would create cracks in the power base he was trying to build within Valmone.
For now, Arthur wanted to focus solely on strengthening his personal power.
Fifteen days after his encounter with Valkalonex, Arthur was in his office at Nienope’s Administrative Complex on the Cruafen Continent when he received news that got him out of the office for the first time in a week.
It began when Layla arrived in the afternoon of the 24th of March, finding him leaning back in his chair with an open book covering his face.
She blinked in light surprise and tilted her head as she asked, "You okay?"
"Hmm? I’m fine," Arthur replied, sitting up as the book slipped from his face and landed on the floor.
Seeing this, Layla raised an eyebrow and asked, "You sure you’re okay?"
Arthur sighed and said, "Yeah, I’m fine. Physically, at least. Mentally, I’m exhausted."
He picked up the book and tossed it onto his desk, continuing in a tired tone.
"I’ve been working two years straight, trying to build a network in this universe. Just finished a business deal with one of this universe’s strongest beings, and had another of those beings try to kill me about a month later for something I did 85 years ago.
On top of that, I came back to deal with over a month’s worth of backlog on my planet, so yeah, I’m mentally exhausted."
Arthur heaved a deeply exhausted sigh, leaning back on his seat as he muttered.
"I get why Mum finds her work to be a pain. I’m only handling two planets, and it’s already this stressful. I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to manage entire galaxies.
I can’t even begin to comprehend the amount of logistical work she has to handle every standard 24-hour day."
"That’s why you have subordinates. And that’s why the concept of ’delegation’ exists," Layla replied, picking up some of the papers that had fallen off his desk when he tossed the book onto it.
"Yeah, but there are certain tasks I’m not exactly comfortable delegating.
Stelan and the other godslayers I knew first are fine, but the godslayers under them, and their subordinates? I don’t trust them that much."
Arthur collected the papers Layla had picked up, scanning them as he raised an eyebrow.
"Oh wow, this has already been cleared up by my miracle."
"Your miracle?" Layla echoed, her expression one of confusion.
"Yeah," Arthur said, placing the papers in a floating drawer. "Esna’s my miracle."
Layla’s look of initial confusion transitioned into one of further confusion, and she asked him to explain why he was calling Esna his ’miracle’.
"Well, I didn’t know she was getting into administrative work while I was in Draco Sirus, and her expertise is helping me immensely on Nienope."
Just as Arthur said that, a third voice echoed through the office.
"You should start appreciating me more, then."
Arthur and Layla turned toward the office door at the sound, catching it sliding open just as the jewel-eyed godslayer they’d been talking about stepped inside.
Immediately, Arthur rose from his seat, closing the distance in an instant and pulling her into a hug as he said,
"Hello there, my miracle. Thank you for all your help."
Esna rolled her eyes and chuckled at his actions, pushing him back as she rubbed her thumb and index finger together.
"I want material thanks, not just words."
"Material thanks?" Arthur asked, turning to the holograms of Nienope and Shoisan hovering at the centre of his ceiling. "Well, I have two planets full of untapped resources... that I can’t use carelessly because I have to expend them to make deals with Intergalactic powers."
He heaved a tired sigh again, slumping his shoulders as he trudged back to his seat.
"What brings you here anyway? Weren’t you supposed to be on break?"
"About that. I was about to go on break, but then I saw a report I couldn’t afford to ignore," Esna replied, producing a tablet and tossing it over to Arthur.
When he caught it and glanced at the screen, his eyes widened in shock, and he immediately snapped his gaze toward Esna.
"Coordinates!?"
"Bottom of the page," she replied, pointing at the tablet in his hands.
Arthur quickly scrolled down, and the moment he saw the coordinates, he input them into the Cosmic Teleporter and opened a Cosmic Gate to the location, stepping through without hesitation.
Layla turned to Esna with a questioning look, wondering what could have been written to make Arthur react that way, but Esna simply gestured toward the still-open gate.
"Let’s see for ourselves."
◇ ◇ ◇
On the other side of the gate was a planet at the outer edges of the Orithyia Galaxy, just a little bit away from the edge of its host star’s goldilocks zone and being condemned to eternal cold.
It was a planet Arthur had never known existed, and yet it had instantly become a literal and figurative gold mine for him.
"They’re actually real..."
Those were the words that escaped his lips as he watched the people moving about in a small town in one corner of the planet.
They were humanoids with small horns, patched scales, and scaled tails that identified them as dragonoids, however, each and every one of them made Arthur’s Progenitor Authority react.
In other words, they all possessed anti-divine—godslayer—factors.
The report Esna had given him was about one of the many scout ships that had been sent out to find other godslayers decades ago by Gozon in Year 1090, when Arthur was last present, and had carried some godslayers native to Nienope on board to make any other godslayers they came across easier to detect.
That scout ship had gone radio silent and was presumed lost for years, but recently, Nienope’s satellites detected an SOS from it originating on this planet, and when Stelan dispatched forces to investigate, the findings were astonishing.
"The ship was attacked by space monsters and crashed on this planet, but those on board survived.
They lived alongside the dragonoids who originally inhabited the planet, and after several decades, children carrying the blood of both races were born.
Before us are the first Draconic godslayers."
Esna’s brief explanation to Layla made it immediately clear why Arthur had reacted the way he had.
Compatibility with other races was something about his godslayer race that Arthur had very little knowledge of.
He knew vampires were fair game, as shown with Stelan, and humans were too, as shown with Esna, and demons, as shown by Gozon’s attempts to create Demon-godslayers over the past 85 years.
And now, dragons have been confirmed to have zero compatibility issues as well.
"Pfft...bahahahahahahaha!!!"
Arthur burst into laughter as he floated in the sky, the loud sound drawing the attention of those below.
But he didn’t care.
He descended to the ground before the wary natives of the planet, and when they raised their weapons against him, he simply raised an eyebrow and spoke in his true voice.
|Put your weapons down.|
"!"
Immediately, every single one with anti-divine factors who had held a weapon dropped it, shocking both them and the others.
"I see. My Race Command works on them. Is it because they have greater anti-divine factors? Or would Aleksas’ Race Command work on them just as easily?"
Arthur rubbed his chin as he spoke to himself, ignoring the dragonoids who were charging at him with their weapons, having deemed him hostile.
However, he froze them all in time, sitting down on the ground and sinking into his thoughts.
"This is going to be useful," he muttered.
"How?" Layla asked, prompting Arthur to explain his reasoning.
"The Levites may fancy me, but they’re still under Aleksas’ Authority as their Progenitor. While I have a good rapport with them, I have nothing in terms of a relationship with Aleksas.
I need something to increase my value in his eyes, to make things a lot easier for me. After all, while Aleksas doesn’t care about Luka looking for me right now, I don’t know when he’ll stop ’not caring.’
That’s why I want something that would guarantee that even if he does stop ’not caring’, it would work in my favour."
When Arthur explained this, Layla and Esna understood what he meant, but they didn’t see how this discovery was going to be that ’valuable thing’ Arthur was after.
He could tell from their expressions, and he elaborated.
"Of course, they’re not enough to be that ’valuable thing’, but they’re enough to plant the seeds.
I don’t know the full details, but Aleksas is preparing for the possibility of some sort of Cosmic War..."
Arthur trailed off, remembering when he had followed Berlal and Wyndella to the bottom of Yggdrasil to retrieve the sealed Nidhoggr.
"A war of that scale would involve gods, and while I know Aleksas has his share of experience fighting them, he’d certainly benefit from dragons of his own equipped with anti-divine abilities by default."
Rising to his feet, Arthur turned, scanning the entire planet and detecting several Transcendents on its far side.
They were likely the demons who had been on the ship that crashed here, as his spatial perception located the wreck not too far from where they were. He also identified the original godslayers, the ancestors of this frozen group, with them.
’They managed to repair their ship enough to send out an SOS, but I’ll like this place to be out of Gozon’s sight for now.’
With that in mind, Arthur generated a barrier of cosmic energy around the planet to protect and conceal it, one that would continue sustaining itself by absorbing the ambient cosmic energy in space.
Afterwards, he returned not to Nienope, but to the Abyss Labyrinth where Berlal was with Rishia, and after explaining the situation, secured a return trip to Draco Sirus where Aleksas was.
Unfortunately, Aleksas had left Draco Sirus mere seconds before Arthur, Berlal, and Rishia arrived, his destination being the Origin Multiverse, for a reason even the Levites could not call him back for.
All of the Primordial Progenitors had been summoned for a meeting.
Berlal simply sent him a message to let him know that Arthur had something important to discuss, to which he replied that he would handle it after finishing his meeting.
Arthur chose to remain in Draco Sirus and wait for Aleksas, and in the meantime, decided to occupy himself with an event that had caught his attention years ago, one he had completely forgotten until he visited the Alpha Sirus cluster, where Barda and Wyndella had been during his time on Valmone.
It was time for the 78th ’Ember’ Reign Alpha Sirus Grand Festival.
