Chapter 972: 16,125,748
|With that said, attack me.|
"Huh?"
The man immediately made a sound of confusion, but in that moment of surprise, his arm lifted on its own, a bow appearing in his hand while an arrow of anti-divinity formed in his other hand and pulled the bowstring.
The officers inside the hangar attempted to intervene, but Alexia raised a hand and stopped them.
"Wait, sto—!"
The godslayer couldn’t even finish his words before his arm released the arrow, sending the projectile of anti-divinity flying toward Arthur at hypersonic speed.
With only a few metres between them, it took less than a second for the arrow to reach Arthur’s position.
By the time that second passed, Arthur was already holding the arrow in his bare palm, completely unaffected by its powerful energy.
"Hmm... The quality is a few levels lower than Elaine’s, whose anti-divinity quality is already below mine.
But that’s expected considering the differences between a Progenitor, an Ancient, and an Elder-Breed."
Alexia walked closer, curiosity in her voice as she asked, "Who is Elaine?"
"An Ancient-Breed I discovered recently. Well, it’s been several years now, but it’s still fairly recent."
Arthur looked at the arrow of anti-divinity in his hand, and with his superior control over the energy, he took command of the arrow from the godslayer who fired it, reshaping it from an arrow into a cube, then a sphere, and then back into an arrow.
"It’s malleable, but quite rigid. Less like water and more like some sort of thick fluid," he muttered, observing it before crushing the arrow and looking toward the others.
|You should do the same. Attack me with your anti-divinity alone.|
Once again, against their intentions, they drew their weapons and rushed toward him.
Spears, swords, axes, and daggers swung toward Arthur, but the moment they came within a metre of him, every one of them froze.
Arthur casually walked through the frozen godslayers, touching their weapons and examining the energy surrounding the blades and arrows with an inquisitive expression.
"This is quite good," he said, nodding thoughtfully to himself.
As for Alexia’s subordinates, their view of Arthur had gone a complete 180.
Not long ago, they had believed he was simply another godslayer Alexia had recruited, but he had gone on to display one of the abilities granted by a Progenitor’s Authority over their race: Race Command, and had instantly stopped several Mid-Tier Deities in time.
This was in addition to the fact that none of them could sense his Existence Realm.
Alexia, on the other hand, immediately realised that Arthur hadn’t actually stopped time, but had slowed it to such an extreme degree that it appeared frozen.
’Is this the power of his Temporal Aspect?’ she wondered, though she didn’t voice the question aloud.
After finishing his inspection, Arthur snapped his fingers, dispersing the anti-divinity surrounding the godslayers’ weapons. Movement returned to them, and their charging forces were immediately neutralised by equal gravitational forces acting in the opposite direction, causing them all to halt and fall to the ground.
"My apologies for the rough handling. I only wanted to confirm something," Arthur said, then turned to Alexia.
"I assume these godslayers are far from the only ones you’ve gathered, considering you said you’ve been travelling across entire universes. I’m curious about how many of them are Superior Breeds—High, Elder, and Ancient Breeds, and how many of those you’ve discovered possess anti-divinity."
Alexia, hands still crossed behind her back, responded with a single number.
"16,125,748."
Arthur tilted his head in confusion, wondering what that number represented.
"That’s the number of godslayers I’ve gathered over the past 150 years," Alexia explained before he could even ask.
The hangar fell silent for a moment, and then Arthur blinked. "16 million, you say?"
"Yes," Alexia nodded. "The number may still be increasing even while we’re here. Who knows?"
Arthur didn’t respond immediately. He glanced at the twelve godslayers who were still trying to process everything that had just occurred, and then he burst into loud laughter.
The sound of his laughter echoed through the otherwise quiet hangar, earning confused looks from everyone, including Alexia.
Arthur didn’t mind their gazes. He continued laughing for nearly half a minute, shaking his head before muttering,
"Years in Valmone, and I only had thousands gathered. But you managed to find 16 million."
He shook his head once more, an amused chuckle escaping his lips as he added,
"I suppose that’s to be expected since you’ve already established your power base on the cosmic stage. Searching universes for godslayers wouldn’t be difficult, and once you locate a few, they can help track down others."
Nodding, he concluded, "Now I understand what you mean by having invested a lot of time and effort."
Alexia’s earlier words no longer seemed so exaggerated to him.
His last statement earned a silent nod from Alexia, who stepped closer and spoke in a low voice that none of those around them could hear despite their enhanced senses.
"What I want you to do is practically saving my life and preventing me from falling into an eternal hell where I would be nothing more than a puppet of a man who refuses to die. Giving you a map of action only counts as the baseline level of investment."
She walked past him, her voice returning to its usual pitch as she continued, "Since I want you to make the rest of my days easier, I decided it was only right that I make the rest of your days easier as well."
Pausing her steps, Alexia turned around and explained how it all began.
"I found one shortly after I left Hell, and that gave me the idea to gather more of them. Within a few years, I was able to properly begin searching for them across universes, gathering them and training them into a combat force that would aid you in the future."
Her words about making the rest of each other’s days easier held true. Arthur eliminates her curse with his power of Null, and in return, he gains an army of trained godslayers to command.
Of course, transferring command wouldn’t be completely smooth or without friction, but it would still save Arthur a significant amount of time and effort and allow him to skip several stages on his path to multiversal influence.
Arthur rubbed his chin in silence for a moment before looking up at Alexia and saying, "Selective Destruction."
When she gave him a confused glance, wondering what he meant, he continued, "That is the facet of the Concept of Destruction I possess."
"..."
"Doesn’t it seem best suited to helping you out?"
Alexia was dealing with a situation where something was fused into her soul, and erasing the curse would require her to take some level of soul damage, whether she wanted to or not. A 100% guarantee of survival was simply impossible.
But if the one assisting her possessed Selective Destruction and could precisely target only the affected portions of her soul, the risks could be reduced to the lowest possible level, and the amount of soul damage she would suffer would be minimised.
Arthur had initially had no intention of revealing the nature of his Aspect to Alexia, but after hearing that she was gathering godslayers on his behalf, he changed his mind.
Showing her that he had a power capable of lowering the risks to her was his way of demonstrating that her investments were not wasted, and also a way to give her even more reason to continue gathering godslayers.
He walked toward her, raising a finger as he spoke, "One more Realm. When I reach the High-Tier Deity Realm and achieve a High-Rank Authority in Destruction, I should be able to deal with your little problem.
I’d like you to continue ’gathering oppressed children from different universes and training them’ until then, at the very least."
Alexia met Arthur’s composed gaze in silence for a moment before nodding.
"That won’t be a problem. Just keep the law crystal I gave you with you so I can know where to find you if necessary."
Arthur was slightly surprised by the latter part of her response, and a few moments of thought made him realise that there was likely a tracker embedded in the Temporal Law Crystal Alexia had given him decades ago.
’Well, she did say she created the law crystal, so it isn’t strange if she put something like that inside it. I, on the other hand, just stored it in my subspace and completely forgot about it, not considering the possibility that it might have been bugged.’
He mentally scolded himself for that careless oversight, while outwardly showing an expression of curiosity as he asked Alexia,
"Still, there are a few things I want to know. godslayers don’t have any obvious external traits that distinguish them from the many humanoid races across the Cosmos, so how did you locate so many?"
"You said it yourself, didn’t you? I used the first few I found as trackers to locate others. I also had connections with a certain Slayer Race specialist who helped design a spell formula capable of detecting existences with the anti-divine factor."
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Anti-divine factor? That’s a much cooler name than just ’godslayer factor’."
He continued, "Out of the 16 million you found, how many possess anti-divinity?"
"A little over 10 million."
Arthur’s eyes widened slightly at Alexia’s response. Besides Rachel, whom he had turned into a godslayer via Race Creation, none of the thousands of godslayers discovered in Valmone possessed anti-divinity.
He had begun to theorise that anti-divinity might only appear among Ancient and Elder-Breeds, but that theory immediately faced complications due to the existence of Esna, an Elder-Breed who did not possess anti-divinity.
It was very unlikely that all of Alexia’s 10 million were Elder-Breeds, still, he asked, just to be sure.
"How many of them are Elder-Breeds?"
"The last report I received confirmed around 100,000."
"That’s not even up to 1%..."
Arthur’s mutter earned a short laugh from Alexia, the woman shaking her head as she spoke, "You have no idea how fortunate it is to have discovered that many superior breeds.
Compared to the vast scale of the Third Multiverse, our search radius is small, and considering how far away from your physical location it is, where your influence would be strongest, finding that many is already a fortune."
Taking a moment to think about it, Arthur saw the sense in Alexia’s words. The higher up the breed, the rarer they were, so 100,000 Elder-Breeds in 16 million was already a remarkable result.
"What about Ancient-Breeds?" he asked.
"None."
Alexia’s answer was instant.
Arthur nodded slowly, running some statistical analysis in his mind.
"So the remaining 9 million plus are normal and High-Breeds who possess anti-divinity, huh? Do you know of any Elder-Breeds who don’t have anti-divinity?"
