Chapter 1082: Moral Tethers

"Moral tethers."

The three women had different reactions to Arthur’s words.

"Huh? What’s that?" Layla asked, her expression visibly confused.

Esna raised an eyebrow in question, seeking an explanation, but Nicole silently frowned, as she was the first of the three to immediately understand exactly what Arthur meant by that answer.

Lowering his gaze, Arthur sighed once more and explained.

"The reason you’re all looking for is simple. I want you three to be my moral tethers. The ones who stop me before I’m too far gone into the deep end, so I don’t lose my..."

Arthur paused to think about what word would best fit, before finally adding, "Principles? I guess."

He lowered his head onto the table, facing downward as he said, "I’m not unaware of the fact that I’ve changed over the past few decades. I’m not unaware of the fact that I’ll change as time goes on. But there are certain things that I don’t want to end up doing, certain lines that I don’t want to cross."

A dry chuckle escaped his lips at that moment as he thought about the fact that not too long ago, Echidna had advised him to do the opposite of what he was saying now.

"I want you guys around as constant reminders of those lines that I don’t want to cross, so I don’t lose myself," he continued.

Raising a finger into the air, he added, "It’s not just sentiment. There is a logical reason behind it. I don’t want to get caught up in this mental crisis of crossing lines and principles, since it’s going to inhibit my ability to make a Declaration of my existence when the time comes."

"Declaration of your existence?" Layla echoed, a questioning expression appearing across her face.

Arthur didn’t need to look at her to know that she wanted to know what he meant by that, but he simply shook his hand and said, "Don’t worry about it for now. It’s something that has to do with a much, much higher Existence Realm that I probably won’t be attaining for at least another couple of centuries, I guess."

Lowering his hand down onto the table, Arthur then concluded, "Well, that’s it. That’s the ’why’ you guys wanted to know."

The room fell silent after he spoke, but that silence was eventually broken when Nicole posed a question.

"You’re going to do something like this again, aren’t you?"

Arthur tilted his head to the side to look at her, and she repeated the same question. "You’re going to do something like this again, aren’t you? Faking your death?"

Arthur didn’t immediately reply, remaining silent for a few seconds before he exhaled softly and then said, "I’m not sure."

He shook his head before repeating himself, "I’m really not sure. I don’t have any intentions of doing anything of the sort in the near future, but I may find myself in a situation where I may need certain people to believe I was dead.

In the event of such a situation, I wouldn’t lie to you and tell you that I would inform you beforehand, because I may be counting on using your reactions to this news to fool my targets."

Nicole’s expression contorted into a deep frown at his words.

Right now, she couldn’t even find any form of solace in the fact that he was being truthful with her instead of lying about what he would do if a situation like this happened again.

He was being honest, but that honesty didn’t necessarily make what he was saying easier to accept.

The only thing occupying Nicole’s mind was the grief she had felt when she first heard about what had happened in Olympus.

No person with a sane mind would want to feel such grief upon hearing the news of the death of someone they loved, but Arthur was now telling her that if the situation called for it, he was going to put her through such a thing again.

"You’re a fucking asshole. You know that, right?" Layla said with a flat look.

Her voice seemed calm, but there was an undercurrent of anger within it that she couldn’t completely conceal.

Arthur noticed that anger, and a wry smile appeared on his face as he replied, "I guess I am."

Layla clicked her tongue in annoyance before getting up from her seat, turning around, and leaving the room without saying anything further.

Seeing this, Esna exhaled softly before looking toward Arthur and then saying, "You should really take a moment to think things through and try to understand the effect your actions have on others."

With that, she got up and left the room, going after Layla and leaving Arthur and Nicole in silence.

The moment the door closed behind Esna, Nicole got up, picked up her chair, and dragged it across the ground until she was beside Arthur before sitting down next to him.

Leaning her head on the table and facing him, she asked, "Why are you so desperate?"

Her question made Arthur’s eyes go wide.

Nicole, however, didn’t repeat herself, simply staring at him in silence until he controlled his surprise.

"Desperate? Huh? I guess... I guess I do seem desperate," Arthur said, drumming his fingers against the table.

"Things are happening, Nicole. Not just in our region of the multiverse, not just in our multiverse. Things are happening across the entirety of the Cosmos, and I need power to be able to get involved in those things."

His hand slowly moved toward his chest, and even though more than a century had passed, he could still feel the phantom pain from when Luka’s blade pierced his heart.

Clutching his chest lightly, he said, "The Progenitor goddess being after my life for her entertainment is really just one of the many things. There are other great, perhaps even greater threats out there. Things that I don’t comprehend, things that I need power to comprehend, so that I can properly face off against these Forces that may seek to end our iteration of the Cosmos whenever they feel like it."

Death was something virtually all beings that possessed life feared, and even for those few existences in the Cosmos who had somehow managed to detach themselves from such Concepts, they still feared their existences ending.

They still feared the Cosmos itself being reduced to nothing.

Arthur thought about the story of one of the Dragon races’ Four Great Sinners, the Dragon of Despair, Bahamut, about how the man had despaired at the knowledge he’d attained, believing that all life might be pointless in the end because the Void would one day consume the entirety of the Cosmos, and how he’d tried to end everything with his own hands first.

Arthur could actually relate to Bahamut, especially now that he was certain that he was an existence from the Previous Era that had survived into this one.

He didn’t know how he’d managed to survive against that thing responsible for the Previous Era’s destruction. He didn’t know how he’d managed to survive long enough into this Era, nor did he know how those things still hadn’t noticed that he’d survived, but he wasn’t counting on being so lucky anymore.

Arthur wanted power. No, he didn’t just want it. He needed power, and he needed it fast, before things completely spiralled out of any possibility of control.

He needed power so he could change the fate of this Era, so things wouldn’t end up as horribly as they had in the last one.

’And maybe, just maybe, there might actually be a way to slay those true godly beings who are the architects of all of existence as we know it...’

The moment Arthur had that thought, sparks of universal law energy flickered around his head, and Celestia’s voice immediately echoed inside his mind.

[Master, stop your thoughts.]

Nicole’s eyes widened as she sensed the sparks of causality law energy, faint sparks that nevertheless carried such potent amounts of law energy, far greater than anything she’d ever witnessed before.

Seeing her expression, Arthur wore a wry smile before saying, "My power may seem great from your perspective, but I’m still so weak that I can’t even think about certain things without there being a risk to my life.

With such knowledge, isn’t it only natural that I’d become desperate?"

Nicole stared at Arthur in silence for a few moments before reaching out a hand and pushing back the bits of his hair that had fallen in front of his face.

As her fingers gently rubbed through the white strands of his hair, she said, "I don’t like pain, Arthur."

Arthur’s expression immediately turned confused, as he didn’t understand where she was going with this, but she continued speaking.

"I hate physical pain, and I hate emotional pain even more."

"!"

Arthur’s eyes widened in shock as he finally understood exactly what Nicole was getting at, and then, with a soft smile on his face, he said, "Then I guess it’s up to me to do my best to make sure you don’t have to feel such pain e—"

"Don’t," Nicole said, her finger sliding down over his lips as she cut him off. "Don’t make a promise you wouldn’t be able to keep."

Something about her words struck a chord within Arthur’s heart, and he barely managed to stop the frown that was about to appear on his face.

Instead, he simply exhaled and silently nodded.

Nicole then moved her finger away from his lips, leaned in, and kissed him lightly before whispering, "I’ll try not to bring you down."

She got up immediately afterwards and then added, "For now, go talk to Layla. She’s a lot more hurt than you think she is."

Nicole vanished immediately after speaking, leaving Arthur sitting there for another moment before he finally sat upright in his chair and looked around the room.

"So that’s where she went," he muttered, his eyes peering through space and time.

Cosmic energy wrapped around his body, and he teleported, reappearing atop the roof of a building on another planet, where Layla was seated at its edge.

"Did Nicole send you?" she asked, her back still turned toward him.

"Yep," Arthur answered candidly as he walked toward the edge and sat down beside her.

A dry laugh slipped from Layla’s lips as she softly shook her head.

"And here I thought I was keeping things under control."

"Clearly you weren’t," Arthur quipped. "Didn’t fool me either."

Layla didn’t respond, only rolling her eyes in silence as she stared out at the vast grounds of the Devildom Royal Academy on Planet Kriez.

"Feeling nostalgic?" Arthur asked.

Layla nodded once in response.

"I remember those times, when things were a lot simpler and easier, and we didn’t have to dwell on such complicated topics," Layla said quietly. "I really miss those times, and I’d love to have them back."

At her words, Arthur raised his hand, swirling temporal law energy around his fingers as he said, "It’s not impossible."

Layla cast a glance at him before lowering her gaze toward his fingers, watching the blue energy spin round and round around them without saying a word.

Finally, she moved her hand and slapped his hand away before saying, "Don’t even bother."

She got up from where she’d been sitting and moved slightly backwards as she then said, "Risk and reward come hand in hand, huh?"

"Most times, yeah, they do," Arthur replied.

"Is that so, huh?" Layla muttered with a light nod.

Her hands landed on Arthur’s shoulders, and she drummed her fingers against them in silence while thinking about what she should do.

Then, without any warning, she pushed him lightly, sending him flying from the roof of the tall skyscraper with dozens of floors.

Arthur fell with the speed and force of a bullet, slamming directly into the ground below and creating quite the commotion down there.

He silently stared up toward the sky above him, where the three stars the planet orbited shone their light through the gaps between the clouds, as Layla casually walked over and crouched beside him.

"I guess I’m willing to take the risk that comes with following you then," she said.

Hearing her words, Arthur laughed lightly before responding, "I’ll make sure the reward is well worth it."

"You better do."

Arthur merely smiled, returning his gaze to the sky above him before asking.

"Was this necessary?"

Naturally, he was referring to the fact that Layla had pushed him from the roof, even though she knew that doing so would cause absolutely zero damage to him.

Flicking his forehead, Layla replied in a sulky tone, "I’m just venting."

She stood up straight after saying that and turned around before vanishing in a flash of light, just before the security personnel of the academy rushed over to the scene.

Arthur shook his head lightly before tapping his finger against the floor, and in a flash of blue light, he was gone.

The crater he’d created in the ground vanished along with the members of the Academy’s security who had rushed over to investigate the commotion.

Everyone and everything in the area was rewound through time, returning to their original positions from the seconds before Layla had pushed him off the roof.