Chapter 958: Worst Case Scenario: Multiversal Edition [Bonus 22]
"...weren’t you trying to experiment with your universal influence and how it affects the births of godslayers?" Wyndella asked, her expression lightly confused.
"This could help you progress significantly, and if the drifters spread this enough, you might start cultivating a seed of cosmic influence that could serve as a base for you later on," Gervod added, seeing only the benefits and not understanding why Arthur was upset.
"Well, I would have liked to keep this ’Cosmic Influence’ thing for ’later on’," Arthur immediately shot back. "Right now, this is the worst possible outcome.
Those drifters have already spread that information as far as Valmone, and do you know what’s common knowledge there? The fact that I’m the Progenitor of ’godslayers’! That’s information I hadn’t revealed here, but the drifters reached Valmone, discovered it, and are likely already sharing it with other universes.
Do you have any idea how many targets that puts on my head?"
There was no shortage of gods who, upon learning about the existence of a Progenitor of godslayers and estimating that he was still weak and far less powerful than the other Progenitors, would want to eliminate him to end the threat to their race before it could grow.
"Let’s put this multiverse aside for a moment and focus on my home multiverse. I don’t know how fast the drifters are spreading this, but if it reaches my home region in the First Multiverse, Olympus, Asgard, and the lot of them are going to find out!"
Wyndella immediately raised a hand to interrupt Arthur, her expression clouded with confusion as she asked, "I remember that Asgard place, but what’s an Olympus?"
"It’s where my dad is from, the universe ruled by my uncle, one of the many god Kings who sent assassins after my mum while she was pregnant with me, and even more for up to 10 years after I was born.
If there’s one thing about Olympus I don’t want to change, it’s their perception of my power level. As far as they know, I’m barely a Low-Tier Deity, and I want them to keep thinking that way until I’m strong enough to kill my uncle if he tries any bullshit."
Arthur held up his hand, displaying the headline from the disk he’d taken from Malorum before leaving Valmone, pointing at a specific line in the article below the headline.
"The drifters are spreading the fact that ’Arthur Vaughn beat up a Mid-Tier Deity Realm young Elder Breed Vampire’.
If Olympus hears this, they’d either think the information is completely insane or that it’s true, and I’ve been hiding my level of power from them. I highly doubt they’d assume it’s insane since Olympians have a history of assuming worst-case scenarios and taking extreme actions in response.
I mean, my grandfather ate almost all his kids alive because he was scared that one of them would overthrow him. FIVE kids. Do I need to say more?"
When Arthur finished, Barda silently raised his hand like a student in class and asked, "I’m curious, how did he eat them alive? And was his stomach okay?"
Immediately, all the Levites turned to Barda with deadpan gazes, and even Aleksas couldn’t help but give him the kind of look one would normally reserve for a madman.
"What? The mood was all down, and I wanted to liven things up a bit," Barda said with a shrug, leaning back in his seat.
He held out a hand, and the disk Arthur was holding flew over to him. After reviewing all the holograms recorded in it in an instant, he spoke.
"Arthur, I don’t think these Olympians are your biggest problem. Last I checked, you said Syndra knows what you look like, right? These headlines have pictures of you..." He paused, rubbing his hand on his chin with a contemplative look before continuing. "Ah, I think the expression was ’caught in 4K’, wasn’t it?"
The mention of Syndra made Aleksas, who had been busy reviewing the report he received from another Ancient Breed dragon, raise his head.
"Syndra? What business do you have with her?"
"Hmm? Ah, right. You don’t know," Arthur muttered with a sigh before briefly explaining his encounter with Syndra’s soul fragment and how he’d absorbed a portion of her Progenitor Authority.
After hearing it, Aleksas had no words to respond with.
"Of all people you had to get entangled with, it was Syndra?" he finally said, his incredulity bleeding into his tone. "I don’t know whether to call you bold or reckless."
"It’s not like I chose to get entangled with her, okay? It was just a very unfortunate series of circumstances. Rather than bold or reckless, you should just call me a kid who was trying to survive," Arthur said as he plopped down onto an empty chair.
For a few moments, silence filled the area before Berlal finally spoke.
"Syndra isn’t that much of an issue, because unless Nash personally informs her, she wouldn’t know about your location or actions. She’s not the kind of person to let her subordinates know about something like losing a fragment of her Progenitor Authority, so they likely wouldn’t be on the lookout for you.
The problem is with Luka..."
She trailed off, and Gindry clicked her tongue quietly.
"The Imperium is full of fanatical loyalists. Any of them catch wind of ’god’ and ’slayer’ in the same sentence, and you can be certain that Luka will be at your door the next morning."
"But all of this can be mitigated if we stop the spread of the information," Raikis said. "Unfortunately, the damage is already done, so the most that can be done now is minor patching that wouldn’t guarantee Luka or Syndra would never hear about it."
"Yeah, I’d take that patch over leaving an open wound any day," Arthur immediately cut in, his tone heavy with exhaustion.
A moment later, he blinked and looked up at Aleksas with a puzzled expression as he asked, "Also, why did the drifters go about spreading stuff with your name and face in it? Vlad too.
Are they that audacious, or do you both just not care?"
To him, Aleksas wasn’t a minor figure on the cosmic stage, so drifters should tread carefully when it came to spreading information about him.
But with how unhesitant the drifters were about mentioning Aleksas and Vlad, it seemed like they didn’t have a care in the world.
"They’re only that audacious because they have permission," Aleksas said calmly.
"Permission?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow. "From who? You?"
His question was answered not by Aleksas, but by Berlal.
"Even the unscrupulous drifters need rules to keep them from going too far. Information about Progenitors is only shared across their multiversal network if and only if they have permission from their own Progenitor."
It was often overlooked, but the Progenitor of Drifters, Nash Finley Davis, was a Primordial Progenitor just like Aleksas, Luka, and Syndra, although he was much younger than they were.
"So you’re saying Nash gave the go-ahead for all of this?"
Arthur took a moment to search his memory for the face of the man he had encountered decades ago during the Nemo Galaxy Auction, shortly before his first near-death experience, where he was shot with soul poison on the orders of a celestial Candidate of Time.
Their interaction had been short and completely one-sided, but from that and what he had heard from Lucifer back home, he didn’t doubt that Nash saw the headline with him in it as something ’amusing’ to spread around.
The drifters had the audacity to share headlines with Aleksas’ face because they had Nash’s permission.
"This is quite the predicament," Aleksas muttered, closing the files he had been reviewing and sinking into his thoughts.
He was silent for a moment, dozens of thoughts crossing his mind, and then he stood and spoke to Arthur.
"Come with me, we need to have a word with Nash."
"Huh? You know where he is?"
To Arthur’s question, Aleksas gave an answer that made his eyes widen.
"Yes. He’s in the place you just left."
The ’drifter’ Aleksas had mentioned when they were on the dragon-godslayers planet, the one who had been waving at Aleksas from several billion light-years away and had been the one to start the new headline about Arthur and Aleksas, was none other than the Primordial Drifter himself.
Nash Finley Davis was in the Valmone Universe.
