Chapter 961: The Tenth Primordial
"Nash can wait. We’re going straight to Origin."
The moment Aleksas said that, Quinn reached out and grabbed Arthur by the hand, pulling him toward the hole in reality that revealed a starry expanse beyond it.
"Can someone explain what the hell is going on?!" Arthur snapped, wrenching his hand free from Quinn’s hold and immediately firing rapid questions at the other two Progenitors.
"What was all that about? How is any of this Primordial Breed stuff important? Where do you want us to go? Why aren’t we heading to Nash anymore?!"
Arthur’s priority was stopping Nash from letting the drifters spread word of his encounters with Vlad and his meeting with Aleksas, not whatever unexplained issue Aleksas and Quinn had with him being the Primordial godslayer.
He would have at least appreciated his requests for an explanation being fulfilled, but they didn’t even do that much and just began dragging him toward an unknown destination.
His annoyance was rising, and it was evident in his gaze and expression.
Seeing this, Quinn sighed and said, "Look, kid, the full explanation is so long it’s boring. The bottom line is that you may be the last Primordial Progenitor we’ve been searching for over a trillion years."
"I’d like that full explanation, please," Arthur shot back immediately. "You know, the one that tells me how the hell you arrived at such a conclusion."
Arthur had some ideas based on the bits and pieces he’d heard, but he wasn’t about to make any assumptions, especially after a single assumption had almost put him on Vlad’s bad side just minutes ago.
"Aren’t you Primordial Progenitors the oldest Progenitors in the Cosmos? I’m the exact opposite. The youngest. How could I possibly be one of you?"
He wanted more answers, but before Quinn could speak, Aleksas interjected.
"We’ll answer your questions on the way, so for now, just come along. If we’re right, it could help persuade Nash to stop spreading information, and even get him to actively prevent news of your whereabouts from reaching Luka or Syndra."
Aleksas’ second statement made Arthur pause before voicing what he had been about to say.
He considered that Aleksas might just be saying it to get him to follow willingly, but after remembering Aleksas was strong enough to make him go even if he refused, he sighed and spoke.
"Fine. But I want a complete explanation from the start. Even if you have to talk about the birth of the Cosmos or something."
With that, he stepped toward the portal, following Aleksas and Quinn into it.
◇ ◇ ◇
’Is this some kind of special Cosmic Gate?’
That question crossed Arthur’s mind as he looked at the bright expanse filled with countless stars surrounding the three of them on all sides of the spatial channel.
Even the spatial channel created by Barda’s Cosmic Gates, which led from the Second to the First Multiverses, had shown the Cosmos outside, with universes, planets, and galaxies near the layers of space being folded to shorten travel time.
But this looked like an endless sea of cosmic energy on all sides, with stars floating through it like fish, reminding Arthur of overhead displays in an aquarium.
Shaking his head, he pushed the thought of the spatial channel aside and focused on the two Progenitors flying ahead of him as he asked,
"Where are we going, and can I get that explanation about this Primordial stuff now?"
"We’re going to the Origin Multiverse," Quinn replied. "And about the ’Primordial stuff’, as you call it, it’s pretty simple.
Progenitors are all ’Origin Breeds’ of their respective Races. There’s a reason the place where the first of us came into existence is called the ’Origin Multiverse’.
But there are a select few of us, most of whom happen to be the oldest, who aren’t ’Origin Breeds’ but ’Primordial Breeds’.
Hyperion, Luka, Aleksas over here, Adam, me, Zane, Syndra, Astrel and Nash. We’re the only Progenitors who are Primordial Breeds, or at least, we were the only ones until you."
Her words made it clear to Arthur that the title of Primordial Progenitor the nine Primordials held wasn’t just about age and power, but a fundamental difference in Breed between them and the others.
"For example, there was a time when Vlad, the one you just met, was twice Nash’s age. That’s how much older he is, but Nash is the Primordial Drifter, and Vlad is the Origin Vampire."
After saying that, Quinn turned to Arthur with a faint smile and added, "Oh, and most Progenitors, Vlad included, take being called a Primordial Breed as mockery, so watch your words in the future."
No one needed to tell Arthur that twice. He’d only made that mistake because he assumed all Progenitors were Primordial Breeds.
"Anyway, we Primordials know there’re supposed to be 10 of us in total. We realised this when we finally stopped fighting among ourselves and decided to gather in the Origin Multiverse for a civilised meeting. After counting ourselves, we saw there were only 8.
A couple billion years later, Nash was born, and we became 9, and we’ve remained 9 ever since.
We haven’t found our tenth, so now that you’re saying you’re the Primordial godslayer, it’s only natural we’d want to confirm whether that’s true."
From Quinn’s explanation, Arthur concluded there wasn’t any instant sensing method Primordials could use to identify one another, otherwise Aleksas would’ve realised long ago that Arthur was a Primordial Breed.
"And how do you plan to confirm that?" he asked, curious.
"You’ll see soon enough," Quinn replied. "We’re close. It’s a relic from the Previous Era."
The mention of the Previous Era immediately brought Celestia to Arthur’s mind.
’Any ideas?’
[A few. It might be an item the Primordials of Harmonia used, something that resonates with the...Primordial Factor, I suppose.]
Arthur nodded to himself, then looked back at Quinn and asked, "So this relic is the reason you know there’re supposed to be 10 of you, right?"
"Yep."
"So could it also be what determines who becomes a Primordial and who doesn’t? Maybe the Primordials of the Previous Era were your predecessors, Progenitors of your races, just in that Era."
When Arthur said this, Quinn lifted her eyebrows and laughed.
"Do you have any idea how long we’ve thought about this? What you just said is a possibility we considered over 900 billion years ago. It’s the most likely one, too, since Hyperion, who we all know survived the Previous Era, confirmed he was a Primordial in that Era."
Their speed through the spatial tunnel began to increase as she spoke, and Arthur looked ahead to see the end of the tunnel already coming into view.
"If only we knew which races to look for, things would’ve been much easier," Quinn muttered, exhaling in frustration as she remembered how difficult it had been to find the young Nash.
"For a while, people thought Drifters were just another breed of humans since they looked human and didn’t have any external physical traits we could use to tell them apart."
Arthur glanced at Quinn when he heard that, his gaze moving from the top of her head down to the soles of her feet, about to point out that she didn’t seem to have any visible traits different from humans, when he noticed what he had first taken for a black belt on her dress was actually a tail extending from her lower back.
’Wait, there are two of them?’
Just as he realised there were two tails instead of one, Quinn’s voice rang out.
"Oh wow. I’ve been checked out before, but never this openly."
Arthur immediately sighed, looking up and explaining himself calmly.
"I was just surprised to see you had tails," he said, and before Quinn could make another quip about him looking at her behind, he quickly added, "Anyway, you said Drifters didn’t have any external characteristics, right? Does that mean their internal characteristics are different?"
"Hmm... Yeah," Quinn replied. "The insides of a Drifter are very different. For starters, they have several extra organs, one of which is responsible for their ability to resonate easily with the laws of space and the reason they’re almost all born with the exceptional spatial affinities they’re known for.
These organs also move around inside their bodies sometimes. Drifting, you could say."
"Yeah, now’s NOT the time for me to have a crash course on the anatomy of Drifters," Arthur said quickly to stop Quinn from explaining further. "I’m more concerned about meeting the first of those Drifters."
