Chapter 987: A Tool or a Threat?
Stepping out of the building, Arthur came face to face with Quinn, who was just about to open the door.
"Arthur! How are you—"
"Holding up?" Arthur said, cutting her off as he finished her question. "Terribly well."
"Terribly...well?"
"Indeed," Arthur replied. "I’m filled with so much rage it’s gone far past its boiling point, but throwing a tantrum and breaking things would be pointless, so the rational part of my mind is telling me to convert my emotions into fuel to push me toward gaining more power to prevent a repeat of what I went through yesterday."
Arthur started walking toward Gervod’s garden after he finished speaking, with Quinn following a few steps behind him.
"I already have a plan in motion, and I do need your help with a part of that plan. What’s mor—"
He suddenly went quiet mid-word, stopping where he stood as he rubbed his chin and sank into his time-accelerated thoughts.
’Alkosh’s plan works fine on its own, but after everything, I’d still want to land a hit back in return. I’ve built up grievances from everything that’s been done, even from before I was born.’
He clenched his fist lightly, a soft breath leaving his lips.
’I can get a hit in, but the target is a Monarch Realm Existence. I can’t deal fatal damage even if I burn all my soul, even after my Geass runs out.
Meaning I’ll have to wait until Phase 2 of the Script.’
"But aside from that, the target cares about his reputation, so a public place would be the perfect choice...and the perfect distraction...!"
Arthur’s eyes lit up, his lips curling slightly as he began weaving another plan of his own into the ’Script’ he and Alkosh had prepared.
’Filling up my Numbers is the next phase of my plan. If I create a large enough distraction, then I can get Fenrir!’
Just as this realisation clicked into place, Quinn spoke up.
"Sorry to interrupt whatever thought bubble you’re in, Arthur, but I need to ask you something important."
Arthur turned at her words, his right brow lifting slightly in question. Seeing that she had his attention, Quinn released a pulse of cosmic energy, and in an instant, the space around them became disconnected from the rest of the universe.
"? What did you just do?" Arthur asked, looking around in confusion, and seeing his reaction, Quinn responded.
"You noticed that? Your cosmic energy sensitivity seems to have increased more than I expected."
"Of course, I noticed whatever you did. My connection to my Ego Weapons just became weaker," Arthur replied with a hint of annoyance in his tone.
However, Quinn didn’t appear bothered by his reaction.
"Which is all you should have noticed. However, your eyes followed the pulse of cosmic energy I released just now."
Arthur was about to respond to that, but Quinn continued speaking before he could.
"We’ll get to that later. For now, I have a question."
The woman’s voice lost all traces of its usual light-hearted tone as she narrowed her eyes and asked, "Do you understand exactly what happened to you? In regard to your connection to the Concept of Destruction."
"...I do have some instinctive level of understanding," Arthur replied after a moment, his expression somewhat difficult to read.
Hearing this, Quinn continued.
"You were directly connected to the Concept. Far too deeply, in fact. Your existence was at risk of being completely assimilated, and the Concept had already started overwriting parts of you."
Arthur was just one Mid-Tier Deity Realm Existence, nowhere near vast enough to truly grasp the scale of a Concept that governed what it meant to ’Destroy’ across a great portion of the endlessly expanding Cosmos.
Coming face-to-face with its manifestation was an experience that was just as dangerous as it was fortunate.
His hair and eyes turning ’red’ after that experience wasn’t simply the aesthetics, or his own power influencing his body. That was the Concept of Destruction itself, ’overwriting’ the existence known as ’Arthur Vaughn’.
"And your Ego Weapon pushed back that Conceptual Influence," Quinn said coldly.
Now, Arthur understood why Quinn had done what she did to weaken his connection to Lostvayne and Celestia. She didn’t want either of the two Ego Weapons to hear this conversation.
As if noticing the understanding dawn on him, Quinn continued speaking.
"I could understand if it was Lostvayne. But that other Ego Weapon of yours should neither have the power nor the Authority required to do something like that. So how?"
Arthur was about to respond, but Quinn raised her hand to stop him.
"I’m not asking you to explain whatever secret it is to me. I just want to know how much of that weapon you actually understand.
A weapon capable of making a Concept’s power recoil is soul-bound to you, but... is it really on your side?"
At Quinn’s question, Arthur fell silent, thinking back to what Celestia had done when he had still been overwhelmed by the power of the Concept of Destruction after leaving the Conceptual Space.
Finally, he opened his mouth and replied.
"I understand enough to know Celestia’s not a threat," he said, then paused before continuing. "But also enough to understand she has a lot of secrets."
"Secrets, you say?"
Quinn turned her eyes toward the building where Celestia and Lostvayne were, and as she looked at it, she said, "I’m an advocator of ’freewill’, and I really don’t like actively influencing the decisions of others."
Turning back to Arthur, she spoke in a cold voice.
"But if I were in your position, then I’d force that weapon to spit out every last secret."
Arthur didn’t respond to her words, and she shrugged lightly before adding, "But that’s just my opinion. You do you.
Just remember, Ego or not, a weapon is a tool, and you’re the one meant to be using the tool, not the other way around."
After saying that, she withdrew the cosmic energy she had released earlier, and the space around them reconnected with the rest of the universe.
His connection to Celestia and Lostvayne returned to normal, and when neither of them started asking him questions about what had just happened, Arthur suspected that they hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
’Just what exactly did Quinn do?’
Quinn didn’t give him the chance to start analysing as she continued speaking.
"Now then, about your cosmic energy sensitivity," she said, raising a finger and flicking at the empty air.
However, Arthur found his eyes instinctively following the small bullet of cosmic energy she sent flying into the air.
The moment he realised what had happened, he chuckled and shook his head.
"Oh, how the tables have turned. I once did something similar to someone using magic power," he muttered.
"You can reminisce later," Quinn replied, leaning forward slightly as she asked, "For now, can you explain exactly what you did to get pulled into the Conceptual Space? To begin with, do you even know what the ’Conceptual Space’ is?"
Her second question made Arthur pause for a moment, and then he shook his head.
"When I think about it, I’ve been pulled into it twice, but I don’t know what it actually is. Mind explaining?"
"...did you just say you’ve been pulled into it TWICE?"
Quinn’s look of disbelief as she asked that question made Arthur exhale softly as he immediately realised he’d said something that would normally sound ridiculous.
"...yeah."
The Primordial Devil remained silent for a moment after hearing his answer, and after suppressing her urge to scan his memories herself, she asked, "Mind explaining how you got in there both times?"
Arthur thought back to his fight with Valkalonex’s Aspect Fragment ’E’ in Valmone’s Infernal Dimension at that question, and after skimming through his memories of that incident, he summarised it as briefly as possible.
"I was fighting a probe of the Imperium, a mechanical lifeform created by some guy called ’Kalonex’."
"Ah, that bastard," Quinn muttered, recognition appearing in her eyes. "Go on."
"Yeah, well, the thing tried to overload my Origin Core with destruction law energy, to make it rupture and blow up my soul from within. I fought back to expel the excess energy, but my energy circuits were fried, and I was injured, so my resistance was failing.
What’s more, my physical body was also at risk of being crushed between the fingers of the planet-sized mech, so I was quickly pushed to my limit. Suddenly, the flow of destructive energy increased, and the sudden spike overwhelmed my resistance.
My vision went black, and when I regained consciousness, I was staring at some giant star engulfed in cosmic destruction energy like fire."
"Oh, so that’s how it appears to you, huh?"
Quinn’s little interjection made Arthur pause for a moment, then he tilted his head and asked, "It’s different for everyone?"
"Indeed," she confirmed. "Just as everyone understands laws differently, even if it’s the same thing we’re all comprehending, the manifestation of a Concept would differ for each person."
Arthur nodded lightly at her explanation, then continued with his own.
"Anyways, I think that thing remembered me from the first time I was there, because it was screaming the words ’NO’, then ’ASPECT’ and ’YOU’ many times until I got dragged out by my Ego Weapons."
Quinn’s brows narrowed slightly at this, but she didn’t comment and allowed Arthur to keep speaking.
"The next time was against Luka, obviously, and I was trying to push back her...Dawn, she called it?"
Hearing Arthur mention ’Dawn’, Quinn immediately clicked her tongue in disgust.
’That crazy bitch! She used ’Dawn’ against him!’
For Quinn, who knew just how powerful Luka’s ’Dawn’ was, she found it ridiculous that the goddess had used such a move against Arthur.
As an aside from that, she didn’t need Arthur to explain how he ended up getting pulled into the Conceptual Space the second time.
"You were trying to resist Dawn’s ’light’ and ended up pulling out so much power from your Aspect that you connected to the source of that Aspect’s power and got pulled in?"
"Basically," Arthur answered with a nod. "Now, here comes why I said that it remembered me from the first time. The moment I realised I was in the Conceptual Space again, it started screaming ’ASPECTYOU’ in my head again and again.
Then it brought out these strange tendrils that pierced my body and began pouring cosmic energy into me..."
Arthur paused there, blinking as he thought about the situation, then corrected himself.
"I guess that was my spiritual body since my physical body was still trying not to die to Luka again."
He shrugged lightly before continuing.
"Anyway, it forced cosmic energy into me, and also imprinted the High-Rank Law of destruction into my mind, all while screaming ’ICHOOSEYOU’."
"It chose you, huh? Well, your willpower was strong enough to force a manifestation of an abstraction into reality, so it’s only natural that the Concept of Destruction chose you in return and tried to give you the power you sought...even if its methods were rather forceful."
