Chapter 952: Harlamagne’s Modifications
Climbing the Tower again from the bottom proved far more difficult than their first ascent.
As Arthur and Rishia had anticipated, the order of the Floors had changed, and this time they were thrown directly into Gervod’s Rainforest Dimension as Floor 1.
As expected, the conditions for clearing each Floor were slightly different, and the enemies they encountered were stronger than before.
They also received no additional rewards upon clearing the Floors apart from the runestones dropped after defeating monsters on each Floor.
All of that had been within their expectations.
What wasn’t within their expectations were the special conditions they uncovered midway through Gervod’s Floor.
While battling the plant-manipulating creatures of the rainforest, they were suddenly attacked by entities completely out of alignment with the Floor’s theme.
These new enemies wielded the powers of Creation and Light.
They targeted Arthur and Rishia individually, with the creation-aligned creatures ignoring Rishia entirely as though she didn’t exist, while the light-based ones didn’t even register Arthur’s presence.
To make matters worse, Arthur couldn’t kill the light-based enemies, and Rishia couldn’t kill the creation-aligned ones.
Rishia decapitated one of the creation-wielding creatures, a gorilla-like monster that conjured firearms with each wave of its hands, and right before her eyes, it created a brand-new head and resumed attacking Arthur as if nothing had happened.
Arthur cleaved one of the light-based enemies into two halves, and it simply dispersed before gathering particles of sunlight from the sky above and reconstructing its humanoid body.
Only when Rishia attacked the light-aligned enemies did they dissipate permanently into scattered light particles, and only when Arthur struck down the creation-aligned ones did they fail to regenerate.
That, however, wasn’t the worst part.
That distinction belonged to what they sensed after eliminating the first wave of enemies.
It was faint and almost imperceptible, but Arthur felt a slight loosening in the seal placed upon his Destruction Authority.
He lifted his eyes toward Rishia, and the troubled look on her face confirmed that she had sensed something similar regarding her Umbra Authority.
Arthur instantly had a bad premonition, and he didn’t want to accept what that implied.
Rishia, on the other hand, leaned more toward the pessimistic conclusion.
"Arthur, I think the order of the Floors and the strength of our enemies aren’t the only things that changed..."
Arthur didn’t respond to Rishia.
He proceeded to ignore the massive timer hovering in the sky and actively searched for another group of the same enemies, and after defeating them, he felt another portion of the suppression on his Destruction Origin Core fade.
A third encounter followed, and this time it was the Aspect of Destruction whose seal loosened slightly.
At that point, Arthur had no choice but to accept the reality before him.
By the time they reached the end of Gervod’s Floor and cleared Floor 1, not a single runestone they obtained unlocked anything connected to Arthur’s Destruction Authority or Aspect, nor to Rishia’s Umbra Authority.
It became painfully clear what the greatest alteration in this second ascent of the Tower was.
"The only way for us to unlock our Authorities is by fighting creation and light-based enemies..." Arthur muttered through clenched teeth as he crushed a runestone within his palm.
This change now forced both Arthur and Rishia to actively hunt the enemies that wielded their weaknesses, while being unable to wield the powers that would allow them to counter those enemies most effectively.
They had to battle and defeat these foes to regain the abilities necessary to counter them, all while remaining completely vulnerable to the powers of those enemies.
Arthur had to fight creatures whose every successful attack felt as though a heated branding rod was being pressed against his skin, while Rishia faced opponents whose pure light slipped through the gaps in her scales and burned the flesh beneath.
"Who the fuck thought this was going to be a good idea?!" Arthur shouted in frustration.
Rishia was silent, as she could discern the reasoning behind it, especially in light of Harlamagne’s final words on Floor 6.
She was certain Arthur understood it as well, and that was precisely what was pissing him off even more.
"It doesn’t matter who’s behind it," she said after a while. "What matters is that this is our only path forward. You need your Destruction Authority, and I need my Umbra Authority. If the only way to regain them is by fighting enemies who wield the laws we’re most vulnerable to, then we don’t have a choice."
Rishia’s words laid out the only route available to them, one that Arthur disliked completely.
Even so, they had no alternative, so they continued upward through the Tower, clearing Gindry’s Trap Hell next, followed by Barda’s Hall of Reflections, Raikis’ Hall of Horrors, and finally Berlal’s Armament Training Grounds.
They spent twice as long as before on each Floor because they had to deliberately search for the special enemies present on every Floor and eliminate as many as necessary to loosen as much of the seals on their Authorities as possible before moving on.
By the time they cleared Floor 5, they had restored the full extent of their Authorities, but they didn’t proceed directly to Floor 6.
Instead, they remained on Floor 5 for months, putting into action the plan they had devised back on Floor 1.
Arthur began by dismantling World Collapse before starting the process of reconstructing it from the ground up.
He devoted time to comprehending spatial and temporal laws so he could better understand how to define the coordinates of an actively expanding pocket reality, and he pushed himself to raise his Destruction comprehension level in hopes of gaining even the smallest increase in destructive output.
Rishia constructed a new Bounded Field modelled after Pure Fiction and used it to replicate its deployment phase, allowing Arthur to test and refine the reconstructed version of World Collapse.
They experimented with more variations than they could keep track of, and only after several months had passed did they finally stand before Harlamagne once again on Floor 6.
"You sure took your sweet time getting back here," Harlamagne remarked the moment Arthur and Rishia stepped into the spotless throne hall.
"Was it truly so difficult for you to accept that you needed to seek out enemies who wielded your vulnerabilities?"
When Harlamagne posed the question, Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly as he asked, "Wait...that was you?"
"Of course," the ash dragon answered without hesitation. "I’m not foolish enough to believe you could discard the cowardly mindset of hard counters that has governed your thoughts for decades on command.
If you are to grasp that your Destruction can overcome Creation and cease limiting its own strength, a continuous exposure to Creation where you have no option but to oppose it with Destruction is necessary, so I took it upon myself to modify the settings of this Tower."
Harlamagne’s words made it clear that he was the one behind the appearance of the special enemies on every Floor, forcing them to confront their weaknesses in order to break the mental limiter that subconsciously restricted Arthur’s Destruction whenever it was pitted against Creation.
"Now then," Harlamagne said as he rose from his throne.
"Are you any different from the last time you stood before me, or are you doomed to fall back to the start once more?"
Arthur summoned Lostvayne into his right hand, destruction energy igniting across the blade like flames, while Rishia conjured her Tsukikage with darkness, purple lightning running along the length of the naginata.
Without a word, the two moved toward opposite sides of the hall, flanking Harlamagne as he calmly stepped down from the dais and approached the centre.
The silence was shattered when Arthur and Rishia dashed forward simultaneously, curving around Harlamagne as they swung their weapons toward his neck and lower torso.
Cosmic energy poured into Harlamagne’s arms, coating them in ashen-grey light as he extended both hands and caught their weapons barehanded, the collision of their powers triggering a massive explosion that sent cracks spreading across the throne hall’s walls and ceiling.
As the dust settled, Harlamagne stood unmoved, holding their weapons back with little effort, one brow slightly raised in a look that seemed to question whether that was all they had to offer.
Rishia exhaled softly as the cosmic energy pumping from her dragon heart erupted in a burst of purple lightning, and the shadows cast by the light wrapped around her, solidifying into a dense armour of darkness crackling with violet energy.
’Umbra: Half Moon: Coronant Regalia.’
Unlike her full body transformation, Arthur showed no outward change beyond his obsidian eyes turning a deep crimson as he released the power of his Destruction Aspect in silence.
All three moved in the same instant, their clash triggering another tremendous explosion, and in the next moment they shot out from the blast like streaks of light arcing through the air, blades colliding with palm and fist in rapid exchanges that sent sparks scattering in every direction.
Rishia’s naginata flashed toward Harlamagne’s neck, only for his hand to intercept it, and in that same breath, he swung his other arm toward Arthur, who ducked beneath the incoming blow, summoned Celestia to intercept the follow-up strike, and then countered immediately as Lostvayne slammed into Harlamagne’s side and sent him skidding away.
Arthur and Rishia immediately pursued Harlamagne, who landed on his feet and assumed a martial arts stance, the energy around his arms intensifying as he blocked Arthur’s first slash, parried Rishia’s naginata with his arm, avoided Celestia that flew in from behind him, reached out and grabbed the sword by the blade and swung it toward Arthur, who simply unsummoned the weapon and swung Lostvayne, which Harlamagne blocked again while simultaneously jumping to avoid Rishia’s sweeping strike aimed at his legs.
He launched a kick toward Arthur, who intercepted it with Lostvayne, then stomped down on Rishia’s naginata, pinning the weapon to the floor and unleashing a right straight to her face faster than she could release it.
A wall of lightning appeared in front of her to block the attack, but the impact shattered it, and the following burst of cosmic energy knocked Rishia back several metres, scattering pieces of broken tile and rock into the air as her feet carved grooves across the floor.
Immediately afterwards, Lostvayne shot toward Harlamagne’s head like a projectile, but the dragon easily evaded the sword, a frown forming on his face.
’Why is he using his swords like projectiles? Doesn’t he have ranged attacks?’
