Chapter 940: "I Choose You!"
"Wrong choices come with consequences," one of the Altrishias said.
Another spoke up immediately, "Yes. While you are certainly stronger than Altrishia, you are not so much stronger that you would win 10 times out of 10."
"Four times out of 10, she will defeat you in combat if you’re not careful."
"The gap in strength between the two of you isn’t that large, after all."
"Indeed. And that’s just one Altrishia."
"I wonder how it’d be if there were two?"
"Or three?"
"Or four."
"Or five."
"Or six..."
"""Or twelve."""
When they said this, Arthur immediately understood exactly what the penalty for choosing wrongly was.
"If I make a wrong choice, you’re all going to start attacking me one by one."
At this, they all clapped their hands at the same time and spoke in unison.
"""Glad you’re quick on the uptake."""
The chorus of voices was truly disconcerting to hear, but it helped him confirm the rules.
Arthur rubbed his chin in silence for a moment as he considered the situation, then said, "Well, this would have been quite difficult if I came in completely blind. However, thinking about the one responsible for this floor, it’s going to be quite simple."
Hearing this, one of the Altrishias asked, "Quite simple?"
Another said, "You seem to be overestimating yourself, Arthur."
"You may have been able to detect the differences due to the buff your Aspect of Time grants you, but..."
"That’s about as much as you can do."
"There’s no way you’re going to be able to notice the minute temporal differences that come from only a single decision."
The Altrishias were confident he would miss it, but Arthur was equally confident he could tell the difference.
"Obviously, I don’t expect to notice it using my Authorities. But it’s still going to be easy for me to figure out which one of you is closest to the main pathway since I know Barda designed this floor.
He, more than anyone else, should understand just how great my power over the law of Time is, probably even better than I do.
So he knows that if he truly wanted to fool me, if he really wanted me not to catch on immediately that the Rishia I was with wasn’t the real one, he would have used the one closest to the real one to try to deceive me."
The moment he said this, some of the Altrishias narrowed their eyes.
Arthur immediately raised his left hand and activated his Gravity Authority. Then he clenched his fist, and instantly one of the Altrishias was pulled toward him by a massive gravitational force.
He turned around, his hand reaching out to grab her, but she was faster, catching his hand before he could reach her.
Still, he didn’t mind, simply pointing a finger at her and saying, "You."
It was the same one he had held in a chokehold earlier.
He knew that one’s temporal presence better than any other in the room, because that was the one he had spent the most time analysing.
So he simply focused on her and used his Gravity Authority to draw her toward his hand.
"I choose you. You’re the one who’s closest to the original."
For a moment, there was silence.
Then one of the Altrishias said, "This may seem out of place, but do you have a choking kink or something?"
"I was about to ask the same," the one to her left immediately added. "You were about to put her in a chokehold just now, weren’t you? And you did the same earlier as well."
Another then turned toward both of them and said, "I think we should warn our main pathway self. She should be cautious of this guy."
Half of them nodded in agreement, with one speaking in a serious tone.
"He’s clearly doing things with that purple-eyed devil that appeared in the Valmone universe, but he might have his sights on her as well."
Hearing all this, Arthur turned to the ones who started the conversation with a deadpan expression and said, "Seriously?"
At this, all three shrugged, and then the first to speak said, "Well, we’re not the ones putting people in chokeholds. You are."
"But anyway," the one he pointed to said, "you are correct. I am the one who’s closest to the main pathway."
She vanished from his sight, reappearing from his shadow with her back to him as she continued, "I am the Altrishia who chose to collect the first Authority runestone you found on Floor 1, who unlocked my Authority of Darkness instead of you unlocking your Anti-Divine Gravity Authority."
"Only that small a difference, huh?" Arthur muttered.
"That ’small difference’ is the reason you both didn’t die on Floor 1, you know?" she replied.
The moment she said that, her body turned into a black, shadowy mist and vanished instantly, leaving a few runestones falling to the ground behind her.
By the time Arthur bent down to pick up the runestones and looked back up, all the other parallel Altrishias had disappeared as well.
The doors leading out of the hall opened, and Arthur walked through them silently while infusing energy into the runestones, unlocking his Anti-Divinity and Sword Weapon Authority.
He stepped through, and instead of finding himself back in the corridor outside, he entered a small circular room about three meters in diameter.
The walls on both sides appeared to be mirrors, and he saw reflections waving at him.
However, he soon realised that those were not his ’reflections’.
Arthur turned his gaze forward, moving toward the edge of the room, and saw that he was on an elevated platform looking down at a twelve-sided hall.
At the centre of the hall stood Rishia, the real one this time.
A wry smile formed on his face as he shook his head and muttered, "Really, Barda?"
All around Rishia, just as it had been for him, were twelve mirrors on each side of the hall, and within each of those mirrors was a different ’Arthur’.
Previously, there had been 11 of them, and with his joining, there were now 12.
"It seems that I am now part of Rishia’s own trial."
