Chapter 975: Dread and Delight [Monthly Bonus 3]
Luka Jane Chandra.
Those were the known names of the woman who was the Primordial goddess.
Anyone who had met her personally could confirm one thing about her—she was as unpredictable as she was cunning, as she was impulsive.
Now, that woman stood before Arthur, not in her true body, but in the body of a clone.
However, Arthur instinctively knew that this was no autonomous clone. He instinctively recognised that the mind controlling that clone belonged to the real Primordial goddess.
It seemed that going to the Origin Multiverse had been a bad idea in the end.
Even though Aleksas had led Luka away from the Multiverse, she was still suspicious and had sent a clone to trace their movements. One weak enough to slip past Aleksas and Quinn’s senses, arriving when not a single Levite was present in the Second Multiverse.
What unsettled Arthur most, however, was Luka’s gaze on him.
It wasn’t filled with curiosity, hostility, or hiding any sort of nefarious intent.
It was a gaze filled with delight.
Pure joy.
Luka was genuinely happy to see him.
Arthur recoiled instinctively at the thought.
His fingers on the Cosmic Teleporter slowly inched toward one of its buttons, but before he could touch it, Luka’s eyes darted to the artifact, and she spoke.
"I want to talk, so I’d rather you not use that thing."
As she spoke, the surrounding reality fell under her control, and Arthur was faced with a repeat of the situation that had occurred when he first encountered the Levites.
The Cosmic Teleporter couldn’t exert any influence on the surrounding space to open a gate.
The entire area of reality around him now belonged to Luka, and Arthur’s Cosmic Teleporter was blocked from affecting or altering it.
Luka glanced around casually, then looked toward the table with double benches not far from Arthur. She took a step forward, heading toward it, and Arthur instinctively stepped back.
Seeing this, Luka raised an eyebrow, her expression genuinely curious as she asked, "Where’re you going? Didn’t I say I wanted to talk?"
She spoke softly and gently, raising her hand and summoning a fat bottle as she approached the bench.
"I have wine."
Arthur followed her with his eyes as she waved the bottle, then finally raised his gaze and said, "...I don’t think...we have anything...to talk about."
Luka, however, didn’t seem to agree.
"Nahh. I’m sure we’ll find lots to talk about," she said, waving her hand and wiping the dust off the abandoned wooden table with a simple magic spell.
She sat down and set the wine bottle, summoning two glasses and sliding one to the opposite end of the table from her. She gestured to the bench and said, "Come sit, let’s talk."
Her face still wore a gentle smile that radiated happiness, but there was a subtle pressure behind it, one that told Arthur that the next time she said to ’sit’, it would no longer be a suggestion.
Luka kept her gaze on him in silence for over a minute, saying nothing as she patiently waited for him to comply with her request.
She didn’t seem concerned about the possibility of Aleksas, Quinn, or any of the Levites coming here, as if she were confident that none would be arriving on Draco Sirus anytime soon.
Arthur considered his options, but he didn’t take long since there weren’t many available in front of him.
All paths led to the same outcome.
Biting his lip silently, he closed the distance and quietly sat down on the bench opposite Luka.
The woman’s smile brightened, and suddenly a look of realisation flashed in her eyes. She extended her right hand to the side and condensed cosmic energy.
With a flash, a longsword appeared in her hand, a weapon intricately designed, its hilt a mixture of black and gold, with the gold bleeding into the weapon’s double-sided blade.
Arthur tensed the instant she summoned the weapon, but Luka didn’t hold it by the hilt. Instead, she grasped it by the blade and placed it on the table between them.
She removed her hand from the weapon, then gestured to the empty space between the wineglass in front of Arthur and her blade, saying, "Since we’re talking, I suppose the weapons should be put aside for now, shouldn’t they?"
Luka was indirectly asking Arthur to reciprocate her actions, and like before, she waited patiently as the seconds stretched into minutes until Arthur summoned Lostvayne without a word and placed the sword on the table, making sure the handle faced his right side for easy access.
Luka blinked as he did this, then shifted her gaze to his left hand, but she shrugged, not concerned by Celestia’s presence.
"Trillions of years of living," she began, picking up the wine bottle and pouring some of the maroon liquid into her glass.
"The influence of my progeny has dominated most of the known Cosmos. The god Race has become synonymous with power, and somehow, despite Aleksas, Syndra, Astrel, Zane, Quinn, and even Nash all having Slayer Races created by the Cosmos to be their antithesis, I was the exception.
They have beings born solely to kill them, a constant threat to their rule, their power, and their very existence."
Luka’s voice rose to a fevered pitch as she spoke, and then, with a soft sigh, she continued in a low tone, "I was happy I didn’t have one of those at first, but over time, I became envious.
I even considered creating one for myself, but that Authority belongs only to the First Progenitor. All my other attempts to artificially create something similar never met my standards. They never showed powers that could make me feel a genuine threat. They always fell short.
So you can only imagine my joy when I woke from my slumber and heard about this little cosmic SOS about someone with the power to bring an end to the gods."
Clearly, Luka was aware of the true nature of the Prophecy that had circulated throughout the Cosmos before Arthur’s birth, and she even knew of the First Progenitor, known across the greater Cosmos as the ’Judge of the End’.
She placed her palms on her chest, her expression turning ecstatic, but it quickly changed to irritation as she clicked her tongue and spoke.
"Unfortunately, the logical part of my brain just had to ruin the fun and remind me how bad the mere existence of a Slayer Race is for me.
The birth of a godslayer Progenitor leads to the birth of more godslayers, more people who’d be threats to my progeny. You may not understand it yet, but Influence is a vital component of one’s Existential Magnitude, and the mere existence of a Slayer Race diminishes the influence of the gods.
Your very existence weakens the god Race as a Cosmic Faction, it weakens me. And that’s...pretty bad."
Luka chuckled as she spoke of this, as if it wasn’t a serious problem for her at all.
"I put a lot of effort into building my Cosmic Influence, like what you’re doing with those planets in that universe with Kalonex’s probe, or what Alexia’s doing for you all the way in the Third Multiverse.
My Ancient-Breeds all told me you were a threat that needed to be nipped in the bud, trying to get me to give the order to have you killed on sight before you could kill any gods."
