Chapter 967: Celestia’s Breakdown
[Master...how much of Harmonia do you remember?]
Arthur blinked in surprise, certainly not expecting Celestia to suddenly be so...forceful.
Still, he didn’t forget to give a response that was nothing more than a veiled taunt.
Tilting his head slightly, he asked her in return, "I wonder. How much do I remember?"
Celestia frowned at his words.
She knew Arthur had memories of his time in Harmonia, but his words and actions were so unpredictable that she could never truly tell how much he recalled.
One moment, she was certain he didn’t know something, then he would say a word or two that completely overturned that conclusion.
Other times, it could be that he genuinely didn’t know, but acted in a way that made her think he did, with the goal of getting a rise out of her.
Celestia had been holding herself back because she didn’t want to make Arthur remember anything unnecessary.
But over the past few hours, he had chipped away at her restraint until it broke.
Before she could respond, Arthur spoke again.
"How about I throw that question back to you, Celestia? How much do you remember?"
Celestia said nothing in response, only biting her lips in silence, and seeing this, Arthur adjusted his words.
"How much can you tell me?"
The moment he spoke, Celestia’s grip on Arthur’s arms tightened slightly as she muttered, [Master, the end of Harmonia was horrible enough to make all the tragedies that have ever happened in this current Cosmos seem like nothing but child’s play.]
She lowered her head, her hair falling over her face and hiding her expression as she continued.
[The things responsible for those horrors, for that disaster that was the end of Harmonia, still exist, Master.
They always have. They always will.
Rule Breakers were an exception only because of our special existences.
None of you was supposed to survive, not you, Master, not Elaine either.]
Celestia finally lifted her head, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes as she shouted, [So why?! Why do you still insist on trying to know what can bring you closer to THEM?! Why do you still insist on trying to remember bits of information that can make THEM realise that you’re still around? Why?!!]
The sight of Celestia in tears didn’t feel real to Arthur until he felt the teardrops fall onto his face and slide across his skin.
It was in that moment that Arthur finally understood that his little passive-aggressive pokes here and there had affected Celestia far more than he had realised.
[I knew you had a plan to survive. But do you understand how terrible I felt knowing you were going to face that thing? Do you even realise how much dread I felt at the mere possibility that your plan could have failed and you might have been completely erased from existence?
You think Elaine was the only one who didn’t want you to go through with that?!
I detest the existence of that failed experiment from the depths of my heart, but that is the one thing in the entire cosmos that both of us ever agreed on. Master, you...!]
Celestia couldn’t hold back any longer and broke down crying, her head falling onto Arthur’s chest and her grip on his arms loosening.
As she silently shed tears, Arthur reached out his hand, but it froze in the air, and he clenched his fist.
Upon feeling Celestia’s sobs, he finally moved his hand, running his fingers through her hair and patting her back lightly as he whispered, "I’m sorry."
He knew he had pushed her too far at this point.
Celestia, on the other hand, silently gripped the fabric of his shirt and then spoke, [I’m sorry, Master, but I can’t tell you anything.
Not with your current level of power. Not when merely knowing is enough to put your existence at risk.]
◇ ◇ ◇
When Quinn arrived to pick up Arthur, she found him seated on the ground, his back resting against one of the stone monuments on the grassy plain in the northern nation that Celestia had transported them to earlier, and Celestia herself leaning on him with her head against his chest.
"Oh wow... I did sense that you had another Ego weapon besides Lostvayne, but this one... she’s a little different, isn’t she?"
The Primordial Devil instantly sensed something unusual about Celestia’s presence, something... transient.
"Mhmm. My Celestia is a little bit special," Arthur replied, running his hands through Celestia’s golden hair.
Her body soon became translucent, then dissipated into particles of energy that faded with the wind.
Just as that happened, someone else warped into the location, and upon seeing him, Arthur raised an eyebrow.
It was a man with curly blonde hair and brown eyes, wearing a cold expression and radiating an air of indifference toward everything around him.
"Hey there. You must be Adam, right?" Arthur said, calling to him. "I’m Arthur. Nice to meet you."
The man, Progenitor Human Adam, ignored Arthur’s greeting and immediately questioned him.
"Do you have any idea what it is you’re leaning on?"
Arthur blinked, then turned to look at the pillar behind him before glancing back at Adam.
"I believe it’s a stone monument that the people of this world called ’Stonehenge.’ Any detail about it I cannot detect is probably higher dimensional, and I can neither perceive nor interact with whatever that is, so I think I’m fine."
Quinn immediately shook her head at his words, walking forward as she said, "You can’t perceive or interact with higher-dimensional matter, but the reverse is entirely possible."
She took Arthur by the arm and pulled him up. Arthur shrugged with an unconcerned expression, brushing the grass off his trousers as he looked up at her.
"Luka’s gone?"
"Aleksas took her to the 8th Multiverse," Quinn replied.
Arthur silently nodded at this, and Quinn continued, "He explained the full situation with Nash. Let’s go meet him."
She conjured a cosmic gate after speaking and stepped through it, and as Arthur followed, he waved at Adam and said, "Thanks for letting me stay on your planet. See you again... whenever."
With that, he stepped through the cosmic gate, travelling across multiverses through a spatial channel, and emerged from another gate in the middle of a desolate field that had once been a verdant forest.
"What’s this place called again?" Quinn asked, having no idea where they had arrived.
She had simply teleported to the planet where she had sensed Nash’s presence, without really caring about ’where’ that planet was.
"Apex World Taemia," Arthur replied, stepping forward and looking around with a faint trace of nostalgia.
"You’ve been here before?" Quinn asked, falling in step beside him, and Arthur nodded silently.
"Yeah."
He glanced up at the giant blackened stump of a tree in the distance and added, "I helped burn the World Tree of Creation that once stood there."
They were in the remains of Triffid’s forest, destroyed during the great battle for the Iohodis Continent 94 Valmone years ago.
Surrounding the forest were hundreds of humanoids, all mechanical lifeforms, their metallic bodies and the wires visible within their joints confirming their nature.
Standing in front of the burnt stump of Triffid was a tall man holding one of these mechanical lifeforms, one of Valkalonex’s automations deactivated when Arthur and Rishia defeated Valkalonex’s Aspect Fragment ’E’ years ago.
He had fair skin and a slightly muscular build, with very long purple hair tied in a low ponytail at the upper back. He wore a black suit with a long black overcoat and a fedora.
As they approached, the man tossed the automation aside and turned around.
"Quinn?" he asked, then noticing Arthur beside her, his lips immediately curled into a wide smile, his purple eyes glinting in the light.
"Well, well, well. If it isn’t our youngest!"
Seeing his smile, Arthur clenched his fist as cosmic energy gathered around it, and he said, "You have no idea how tempted I am to punch that smile off your face. But I’ll hold myself back since I’m more likely to break my own arm instead."
At this, the Primordial Drifter, Nash, burst out laughing as he leaned forward and presented the side of his face while replying, "You can try. There’s only a 50% chance you would break your arm."
Arthur’s brow silently twitched at this, but before he could say anything in return, Quinn immediately cut in.
"We didn’t come here to mess around, Nash. There’s a serious matter at hand."
"Serious matter?" Nash echoed as he straightened back up.
Aleksas suddenly appeared right beside Nash at that moment, and Nash immediately turned to him and began complaining.
"Aleksas! I waved at you earlier, and you ignored me!"
"So you went on and started spreading information about my location and activities?" the dragon shot back.
"What? It’s not like you were trying to hide it or anything," Nash said, immediately defending himself.
But Aleksas, speaking through the clone he was using here, wasn’t having it.
"Just because I wasn’t hiding it doesn’t mean I want the rest of the multiverse finding out."
Before Nash could even get another word in, Aleksas stepped forward and stared the other man down as he said, "Why did you authorise your Ancients to spread news about him," he pointed toward Arthur, "and Vlad.
Thanks to you, Luka may find out where he is."
"Oh...about that," Nash said with a sheepish smile on his face. "Him being Luka’s slayer was an unfortunate surprise..."
"Lies," Quinn immediately replied. "Everyone knows the youngest Progenitor is Luka’s slayer. She’s been harping on about it for decades now. There’s no way you didn’t know, Nash, especially since you’ve been to Hell and met him before."
