Chapter 989: Threads across Space and Time
"Explain," Alexia demanded, and before Arthur could begin speaking, she added, "And start from the part where you said you died and came back to life. What does that mean?"
It was simply impossible for her to ignore that statement as if nothing had happened, and she wasn’t going to listen to anything else until Arthur elaborated on it.
Understanding this, Arthur sighed, taking a step back and sitting on the table behind him.
"Luka found me."
Those three words were enough for Alexia to understand that when Arthur said he died and came back to life, it hadn’t been by his own choice.
"Look, I’m not exactly in the mood or state of mind to go over all of that again, so I’ll summarise: in the process of trying not to die a second time, I tried to draw power from the Concept of Destruction, and it seemed my willpower was strong enough that the Concept actually listened to me. As a result—"
"You entered the Conceptual Space," Alexia said, cutting Arthur off before he could finish his explanation.
When she said this, Arthur paused, blinked, then tilted his head as he asked, "How’d you know that?"
Alexia’s response was something Arthur’s mind had already begun to consider before she even spoke.
"Because I’ve been to the Conceptual Space before, except it was with the Concept of Time."
The woman exhaled softly as she spoke about the incident that had led to her first encounter with the Concept of Time.
"In your case, your desire was to gain the power to prevent yourself from dying, but in my case, my desire was to go back thousands of years in time, to the moments after my birth and remove the curse a certain bastard placed on me before it melded into my soul."
Of course, Alexia was referring to the curse Arthur had just told her he was now capable of removing.
When Arthur heard this, he took a moment to think about it and realised that before Alexia began searching for the extreme method of finding people with Selective Destruction or Erasure-type abilities to deal with the curse Roseborn Vladi, her father, had placed on her, she must have tried other methods to remove it, methods that involved using her innate temporal manipulation powers.
’Going back in time, thousands of years, to try and remove the curse right after it was placed,’ Arthur thought. ’If her desire was strong enough that she entered the Conceptual Space and received power directly from the Concept of Time, then it should have worked, but...’
He stopped his thoughts at that moment, then looked up at Alexia and asked, "Why didn’t that work?"
"Why? Well, clearly, reincarnating into the bodies of your own children over 14 generations, over the span of a hundred million years, all with the goal of attaining Full Cosmic Superiority, while also being the Supreme Ruler of an Inter-Universal Empire with quintillions upon sextillions upon septillions of existences serving under you and worshipping you, is enough to give you a Casualty Index so high that even after acquiring power from the Concept of Time itself and going back in time, a young Deity who hadn’t even lived a minute fraction of that time would be unable to change the effect of your actions in the past."
Temporal Manipulation was influenced by a variety of factors, with the manipulator’s affinity to the laws and Concept of Time being the first and most important factor.
The manipulator’s Authority level was another, as was their Existence Realm, the amount of energy they possessed, and the type of energy they used. All of these were factors that affected the success or failure of any form of temporal manipulation.
In cases of temporal manipulation that didn’t affect just the present but past times, alternate possible timelines, and future timelines, the casualty indexes of all involved existences were also factored in.
How much cause and effect was tied to your existence?
The higher that value, the harder it becomes for another existence to alter your actions in the past, future, or even interfere with possible futures and pasts that couldn’t come to be.
Roseborn’s index was high enough that even after Alexia had been boosted by power received from the Concept of Time itself, she had been unable to change his actions in the past.
She had also been unable to undo the effects of his actions, as the cause-and-effect ratio wasn’t balanced. The things resulting from the actions of existences related to her and Roseborn over the thousands of years that followed the curse being placed on her that would change simply from her not being cursed were innumerable.
It was even more so since she had become even more actively involved in the Candidate Selection and had killed thousands of other Candidates in her quest to accumulate as much power as possible without reaching the Monarch Realm, many of whom were existences holding positions of power and Authority across various universes and Multiverses.
The threads of causality were too entangled for her to safely unravel them without unravelling her own existence as well.
"That was why I decided to go for my current option of removing the curse, having someone erase portions of my soul to get rid of it," Alexia said, concluding her explanation.
Arthur stayed silent after hearing Alexia’s words, taking a few seconds to think about how long she had lived.
Over 50,000 Years.
Out of that time, she had spent at least 40,000 years with the knowledge of a curse placed on her by her father that would turn her into a puppet if she grew stronger, and had no choice but to find other means to gain power without increasing her Existence Realm.
’If she had been able to grow without this restraint...’
Arthur couldn’t fathom what Existence Realm Alexia would have reached by now.
"You’ve been through quite a lot, Alexia," he said. Then his lips curled into a light smile as he added, "But rejoice, your salvation is here."
Pointing at his chest, he continued, "My encounter with Destruction has empowered my Aspect multiple times over, and an unintended but very welcome benefit of that was my Existence Realm increasing to the High-Tier Deity Realm.
In other words, I now possess enough cosmic energy to use my Aspect’s power on your soul long enough to completely erase all traces of whatever curse is merged into it without running out of energy midway."
This was the main reason Arthur had told Alexia he couldn’t deal with her curse before. He simply hadn’t had enough energy to complete the process in one go, and his Destruction Authority hadn’t been strong enough either.
But now, those conditions had been met.
Arthur now had more cosmic energy within the energy cores in his heart than the galaxy they were inside had generated over the past century.
"The only issue would be my level of skill," he said. "With the abrupt increase in power, it’ll be a lot harder to control it."
"That’s a given," Alexia responded.
Arthur nodded once and continued. "Besides that, it seems my senses are currently scrambled due to overexposure to the Concept of Destruction’s power, so I’m having a hard time even detecting how much my power has actually increased.
I didn’t notice my own increase until someone told me, so it’s going to take a while before I can recalibrate my perception and begin training to control this extra power and reach the level of control required to work on your soul while leaving you with the least possible damage."
Alexia slowly nodded at Arthur’s words, and after a few seconds of silence, she looked up at him and asked, "What do you want?"
The way Arthur had rushed over here, even placing himself in a rather risky position upon arrival, made Alexia feel that it wasn’t simply because he was grateful she had spent years gathering godslayers for him, nor because he wanted her to continue doing so, or because he felt indebted to her.
She was certain there was something else Arthur wanted, and she was right.
"Remember how I said that even after I deal with your curse, I’d still very much like us to continue working together?"
Alexia nodded silently, and Arthur continued, "Well, let’s just say I may need your help with something, so I want to clear my first debt first before I ask that from you."
"What exactly do you need my help with?" Alexia asked, her curiosity clear in both her tone and expression.
"I’ll explain it fully in due time. Right now, I’m still structuring the plan.
Just know it won’t be now, in a year or two, or even ten. I’ll need your help about a century from now, give or take, using Hell’s time flow. It’ll involve you going to certain places with some very ’watchful’ guardians."
Alexia narrowed her eyes slightly at his words, then said, "Get straight to the point."
Arthur chuckled lightly at this, shaking his head as he replied, "Yeah, all that roundabout talking isn’t really my style. To put it simply, I want you to get someone for me from the Asgard cluster, and do it while avoiding Heimdall’s sight."
Now Alexia understood why Arthur had mentioned very ’watchful’ guardians.
Before she could speak, Arthur raised a hand to stop her and continued, "Wait. I’m going to create a distraction, something big enough to draw Heimdall’s attention, or at least that’s the plan.
Again, I’m still working out the details, and since it’s a plan for decades in the future, there’s plenty of time to adjust things depending on how the situation looks at that time. I just wanted you to know in advance so you understand exactly what I need from you.
And if I deal with your curse now, a century from now you’ll be far stronger than you are currently, even stronger than Heimdall."
At Arthur’s words, Alexia scoffed and stood from her seat, saying, "I’m already stronger than Heimdall."
She turned around and walked toward the holographic star map behind her chair, then asked, "How long do you think it’ll take you to get your new power under control?"
"I can’t say," Arthur replied. "As I said before, my senses are scrambled, so I can’t even properly gauge how much stronger I’ve become.
"I need to fix that first before I can control it properly. I plan to stay in that training pocket universe Barda created and make use of the fact that time flows three times faster inside it. In the meantime..."
Arthur trailed off, then hopped down from the table, glancing at the star map Alexia was studying before continuing, "Why don’t you get everything ready on your side of things and, I don’t know, prepare for the curse removal process?"
He slid one hand into his pocket and lightly scratched his hair with the other as he asked, "What else do we need?"
