Chapter 1058: The Power of Both Worlds

Appearance-wise, the goddess before them was a carbon copy of the woman Arthur had met more than a century ago in Bracken. She had a divinely beautiful face, a perfectly shaped nose, and perfectly placed lips that paired well with the upturned silver eyes above them.

Her hair was as white as snow, and just as Arthur remembered, she had no expression on her face.

Suddenly, she raised an eyebrow as she lifted her giant hand and reached toward Arthur.

"!"

Her fingers tore through space and, to Arthur’s shock, broke into his own subspace, something only he should’ve been capable of accessing.

She casually searched through his subspace, picked something from inside it, then pulled her hand back and raised the item she’d picked up.

It was a small piece of paper resembling a movie ticket. However, that piece of paper radiated Cosmic Conceptual energy.

After silently looking at it, her lips parted, and the dry, almost emotionless voice of the Eternal of Creation echoed out.

|Ah. Now I remember you. You’re the one Ranus was talking about. The one who stole the Aspects Akasha used in that experiment.|

She flicked the ticket, sending it back into Arthur’s subspace.

Now finally able to speak, Arthur took a deep breath before replying,

"Correction. I didn’t steal anything. They came to me of their own accord."

The woman didn’t bother responding. Instead, she looked toward Lostvayne.

|Cosmic Sword of Destruction.|

Then her eyes moved to Celestia, and she added, |And unknown Rule Breaker with the power of Nothingness.|

Looking back toward Arthur, she asked, |The both of you simply stood by and watched your owner try to kill himself?|

Lostvayne exhaled softly, pressing two fingers against her temple before replying,

[There are some things that one wouldn’t understand by simply being told, but only through personal experience, Gaia.]

The Eternal of Creation stared at Lostvayne for several seconds before quietly replying,

|Is that so?|

She then looked toward Arthur.

|I don’t want Ranus constantly... yapping in my ears about how I caused your death, so it’d be in your best interest to return that to where it belongs.|

Naturally, she was talking about the Aspect of Creation in Arthur’s hand.

Make no mistake, this woman was one of the most powerful beings that could ever possibly exist, regardless of what Era it was. She could’ve taken the Aspect of Creation back from Arthur whenever she wished.

She simply didn’t care enough to do so.

The one who cared enough to make Arthur let go of it was Celestia, as she immediately closed the distance and grabbed Arthur’s wrist.

[Master, please... let go of that thing. You can do whatever you want with the Divine Spark shard, but let go of the Aspect of Creation inside it.]

Arthur looked up at Celestia, meeting her pleading eyes, then exhaled softly.

"Oh well, that was going to be biting off more than I can chew anyway. Trying to absorb an Aspect of Creation would literally kill me," he said with a chuckle.

Raising the glowing shard toward Gaia, he asked, "I can keep the Divine Spark shard, can’t I?

It’s not exactly what I asked you for, but it’s still got the blood you gave me permission to use on it, doesn’t it?"

Gaia heaved a soft sigh upon hearing him, shaking her head lightly.

’This much audacity should be expected from someone Ranus took an interest in and even gave a tool capable of summoning his true body to.’

However, while she was having those thoughts and wasn’t answering Arthur, and while Arthur still held the Aspect before his eyes, he noticed something.

"Hm? Wait a second."

The instant he spoke, Celestia flinched.

She immediately reached toward the Aspect, cosmic energy wrapping around her hand as she tried to take it away from Arthur.

That reaction made Arthur immediately move his hand out of her reach, snapping his eyes toward her.

|Don’t move,| he ordered, making Celestia freeze where she was.

A moment later, he added,

|Both of you.|

The second command was directed at Lostvayne, who’d reacted at the exact same moment as Celestia.

Arthur then turned his attention back to the Aspect of Creation, silently studying it.

"Don’t even try it," Hades warned as he walked up to him, casting side glances at the silent Gaia.

"You already know it’ll kill you, so why are you still holding that thing?" Alexia finally said, breaking her silence.

Arthur slowly shook his head in response to both of them.

"No. It’s not that I’m trying to kill myself. It’s just... there’s something about it that’s bothering me."

He pulled the Divine Spark Shard closer, the Cosmic Creation energy radiating from it making his face hot as his skin began to scald, but Arthur didn’t mind.

"The last time I saw Aspects of Concepts physically manifest, the cosmic energy flowing through them was wild. To put it bluntly, it was chaotic.

But this one..."

He narrowed his eyes at the Aspect within the shard before continuing.

"This one is too calm. It’s just been sitting quietly in my hand, not reacting at all, even though I possess the power of Destruction. That’s very strange."

Even with the Divine Spark Shard containing it, Arthur expected the physically manifested Aspect of Creation to have had enough power to melt all the flesh on his arm by now.

It was the Aspect from an Eternal’s Avatar, after all.

But aside from the scalding on his flesh and some slight bleeding, he was fine.

"Looking at it closely, the flow of cosmic energy within it is calm. It’s just... perfect."

The instant those words left his mouth, Gaia, who’d been repairing the tear in her avatar’s chest, turned toward Arthur.

Feeling her eyes fall on him, Arthur suddenly remembered something. A memory of the Previous Era’s tragic end... a memory of how Gaia supposedly came into existence.

Goosebumps spread across his body as he tried not to think about that thing, instead focusing on something else.

"Oh... I see. The shard of Cosmic Creation... It wasn’t Chaotic."

He raised his head and met Gaia’s gaze.

"It was Ordered."

The instant he said that, the indifference in Gaia’s eyes vanished, and a hint of interest took its place.

Noticing that slight change, Arthur smiled.

"Now I see. You’re just like the other Eternals. You actually govern over two Major Concepts..."

He glanced at the Divine Spark shard in his hand, then, with a grin, slammed it against his chest and activated his Progenitor Authority.

|Divine Spark Absorption!|

Alexia, Hades, Celestia, and Lostvayne all called out to Arthur, but Arthur tuned out the sound of their voices as he devoured the divinity within the Divine Spark in his hands.

Cosmic energy flowed from his feet, carving the ancestral regression spell circle into the ground around him.

From his subspace, the vials of the special magic ink fell out, shattered, and poured their contents into the carved grooves in the ground, completing the magic circle.

As Arthur reactivated the spell to complete the process, his blood quite literally grew hot, silver liquid dripping from his nose.

However, Arthur didn’t care as he absorbed more of the divinity from the Divine Spark, even as some of the Cosmic Creation energy within it seeped into his body as well.

Seeing this, Gaia shook her head in disappointment.

|How foolish.|

The interest in her eyes vanished, and she slowly lowered her head back onto the giant mountain, intending to disconnect herself from her avatar.

However, just before she closed her eyes, she heard Arthur laugh.

She intended to ignore it, but a small thought in the corner of her mind, a lingering trace of the slight interest she’d taken in Arthur moments earlier, made her open her eyes again.

When she did, she saw Arthur down on one knee, silver blood dripping from his eyes.

Lucifer’s energy core, the blood on it completely consumed, fell to the ground and rolled away, while the Divine Spark shard in his right hand had been completely absorbed.

As for Arthur himself, he breathed heavily, a maniacal laugh escaping his lips as he fought to suppress the pain from his boiling blood. Wisps of steam rose from his body, and before Gaia’s eyes, a section of Arthur’s silver hair glowed before turning white with the power of Creation.

|!|

For the first time, genuine surprise appeared in Gaia’s eyes.

She immediately raised her body, reached out, and grabbed Arthur, lifting him up and bringing him close to her face as she studied him in silence.

Arthur, though slightly surprised, didn’t really mind. He held up the Aspect of Creation, now without the Divine Spark shard to contain it, in front of her and said, "Here, you can have this back."

Gaia, however, didn’t care about the Aspect. She simply stared at Arthur in silence before asking, |How are you not dead?|

The reason for that question was something only she should’ve understood. But the knowing look Arthur gave her made it seem as if he also understood why she was surprised that he wasn’t dead.

With a small shrug, Arthur replied, "Who knows? Maybe you aren’t the only one around with the power of both worlds."

A crack appeared on Gaia’s hand the moment he said that, and she immediately released Arthur, allowing his body to fall to the ground while the others rushed toward him in concern.

Gaia looked at the back of her palm, where cracks had spread across it as the energy balance of her Avatar had been disturbed, and exhaled softly.

|I still have uses for this thing,| she muttered.

Clenching her fist and reabsorbing the Aspect of Creation floating in the air, she looked toward Arthur and asked, |You, what is your name?|

Alexia was stunned still by Gaia’s question.

The Eternal who was known to be Indifferent to almost everything was actually taking the initiative to ask for the name of a young Progenitor who was supposed to be beneath her notice.

Even more surprising was Arthur’s response.

Instead of answering with his name, he leaned back on the ground and said with an exhausted breath, "Ask Ranus. He’ll tell you everything."

His eyes closed, and just before he completely lost consciousness, he muttered, "And say hello to Hyperion for me. Tell him I’ll soon be coming for my Rule Breaker."

After saying those words, Arthur completely lost consciousness.

Gaia stared at him in silence for a moment before completely disconnecting her consciousness from her avatar.

The giant body fell back onto the mountain with a loud noise, clouds of dust and smoke spreading in all directions.

The pocket universe they’d been temporarily moved into crumbled, and they returned to the space-time of Olympus.

Immediately afterwards, Gaia’s avatar was encased in multiple layers of stone once again as the seal reactivated, with the rest of Olympus none the wiser that, for several minutes, the most dangerous of their Primordials had been awakened.