"No, I don’t. On the contrary, it’s actually the opposite."
The mont she spoke, Beatrix’s ears perked up and she turned towards Artemisia, her ’tears’ completely vanishing as she asked.
"What did you just say?"
"What did I say?"
Artemisia gave her a look of confusion and Beatrix drew in closer before demanding.
"Repeat what you just said."
"I don’t follow. Exactly what do you want to repeat?"
"You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?!"
"Like I said, I don’t follow."
Beatrix unsuccessfully tried to get Artemisia to repeat her words, all while Evan and Arthur watched the two goddesses with warm smiles.
Seeing their interaction, the two boys glanced at each other and shared a thought.
’Yep, definitely best friends.’
Artemisia skilfully dodged Beatrix’s constant inquiries, shifting the focus to Arthur who was the last to go for their ga.
"Arthur, you’re up next? Your turn for 2 Truths and 1 Lie."
Despite recognizing that Artemisia was using him to avoid having to deal with Beatrix, Arthur only chuckled as he began.
He raised his right hand and pointed to himself as he spoke.
"First, I’ve never been to my dad’s house."
Next, he crossed his arms and looked thoughtfully at the sky.
"Second, the you’re speaking to is actually a ’Soul Clone’ and my real body is back in my Ho Universe."
Finally, he grinned mischievously.
"And third, my grandpa has a pet Three-Headed Hellhound."
"Wait...what?"
Evan was the first to react, and Arthur’s grin widened at the boy’s expected reaction. The third option was one he picked specifically to throw Evan off.
After all, Evan seed to be familiar with the history of the Olympus Universe and knew that his father was Hades, the Olympian King of the Underworld. Saying that his grandpa had a pet Hellhound which sounded a lot like Hades’ famous pet dog, Cerberus, threw Evan for a loop.
His first thought was that the third one was the lie, but then the second one ca to mind, and then the first.
Artemisia and Beatrix were also stumped by Arthur’s statents, completely lost on which one was the Lie.
"This is an interesting mix you got there, Arthur..."
"Tell about it."
Beatrix concurred with Artemisia’s words as she racked her brain trying to decipher which statent was the lie.
"I’m gonna go with the first one!"
"I pick the Second."
"..."
Beatrix and Artemisia gave their answers but Evan remained silent, glancing at Arthur with skepticism in his eyes.
"What? Did you think I’d make it so easy? You know a bit about my family, I phrased things that way to throw you off on purpose."
"...is that allowed?"
Evan began questioning the rules of the ga and Arthur only laughed dryly and replied.
"I brought up the idea, so I make the rules.
And I say your ti is running out..."
He tapped his wrist where his watch was ant to be repeatedly, putting silent pressure on Evan who eventually caved and made his pick.
"Number 3.
One of us has to get it right."
His additional statent was one Arthur agreed with.
"True, one of you did get it right."
Arthur turned his gaze to Artemisia and the goddess nodded to herself with a satisfied expression on her face.
"Wait, what?! How have you never been to your dad’s house?!"
Beatrix questioned with a loud voice, completely baffled that she had lost and Arthur just shrugged and gave a brief rundown of how things were over in the First Multiverse.
"My Dad’s a god...from a Universe ruled by gods who don’t want a ’godslayer’ like around, especially with the whole prophecy of being able to bring an end to the god race and all.
As such, I stayed with my mum in her ho Universe—Hell.
Valmone is the first other Universe I’ve been to."
Hades did want to bring Arthur to Olympus, but he couldn’t do that without making sure that Zeus wouldn’t try anything funny.
So, it had to be a ti when Zeus was not in Olympus and it had to be completely secret too. Hearing this, Evan sympathized with him.
"...damn, that’s rough."
"I guess It is? I’ve grown up knowing my Uncle’s been out for my head so It’s normal for ."
"Awwn...poor Arthur."
Beatrix pulled Arthur into a hug and started patting his back while Artemisia once again internally questioned the dynamics of Arthur’s family.
"Wait, dude. Explain how the third is a lie.
Isn’t Hades the one with the Three-Headed-Hellhound?"
Evan voiced out his question and Arthur nodded in affirmation. But before the Rogue Hero could say any other word, Arthur continued.
"But my Grandpa from my mother’s side—the King of Hell—also has his own pet Hellhound."
He placed a lot of emphasis on the word ’Hell’, spelling out sothing obvious that Evan had missed because of his prior knowledge of Cerberus.
The fact that it wasn’t out of the question for the King of Hell to have a Hellhound for a pet.
Naturally, the Hellhound Arthur was talking about was the one who guarded the Restricted Library in Galaxy B-67 of Hell.
◇ ◇ ◇
As twilight deepened into night, the four teenagers settled into a serene calmness around the crackling campfire.
Beatrix, the first to surrender to sleep, leaned against Artemisia’s shoulder, her breaths steady and peaceful amidst the flickering shadows cast by the fire.
Noticing this, Evan erected their tents, activating a basic protection and detection spell around the camp.
Artemisia gently guided Beatrix into her tent, but before she could retreat to her own, Beatrix, in her sleep, pulled her inside and coddled her like a body pillow.
Arthur and Evan, witnessing this scene, exchanged amused glances.
The two chatted a bit more before finally retiring to their tents, with the crackling fire burning in the centre gradually dimming as Evan was claid by sleep.
As it went out, its light gave way to the tranquillity of the starlit night.
◇ ◇ ◇
As dawn’s light filtered through the canopy of trees, casting a dappled glow across their camp, the four teenagers roused from their slumber.
They broke camp efficiently, packing away their gear into their inventories and subspace before setting out towards their destination: the last set of Pre-Historic Ruins in this section of Plomux-North.
It didn’t take them too long to get to their destination, the imposing ruins of a long-destroyed ancient city.
When Arthur used his Ti Powers to date it, it went over his 1,000-year limit, showing these ruins had existed for at least that long.
They entered through a crumbling archway connected to stone walls covered in moss and ivy.
Moving deeper, they saw that the walls were adorned with faded carvings depicting battles and rituals.
Arthur wanted to see these carvings, but he could not rewind their ti as there was ’too much’ information there.
Evan and the others didn’t understand, so Arthur had to share a bit of his comprehension in the law for them.
"The more a place changes, the more power you need to turn back ti there.
For example, think of cities or the houses people live in... When a place is constantly in a state of flux, its ’ti’ accumulates a greater amount of information. More information requires more energy—energy that may sotis be over one’s limit.
That’s why you can hear stories of people giving their lives up to turn back ti and all.
Conversely, wastelands, fields, and empty ruins—such locations accumulate very little information. You don’t need as much power for places like those. You can go back even further."
Arthur further explained that too long had passed, plus many other people had explored these ruins in the thousands of years it had been there so he could not turn back ti in this area to see how things were before.
"A LOT of them have interacted with these carvings, accumulating a lot of information."
Left with no choice, they had to try to study the faded carvings as they were, which took quite so ti.
In the end, they were able to discern that the carvings seed to be religion-related—or at least that’s what they glead from the faded images of people bowing before a glowing humanoid.
From the carvings and the parts of the text that had not faded completely, they could tell that there was so sort of ’deity’ that these people worshipped.
They found a monunt in the centre of the city with the religion’s commandnts, and though most of it was faded, they could still see so of them.
One was about rejecting all outsiders, another was about not having children outside the specified holy years, and the last was about not killing one of their own.
The three didn’t pay these commandnts much attention since the city was destroyed anyway, so they ventured towards the Temple-like place in the centre, and monsters of various shapes and sizes erged from the shadows.
Unfortunately...for the monsters, they posed no challenge to the group of four.
Arthur didn’t even lift a finger, as Beatrix, Artemisia and Evan handled everything. He didn’t need to, as the monster’s levels were so low that he could not gain any substantial EXP from them.
When they got to the central hall of the temple, Arthur and Beatrix halted abruptly, their senses attuning to a strange spatial fluctuation around them.
They exchanged puzzled glances before Arthur closed his eyes, channelling his cosmic energy to scan the area.
"Oh, it’s a Dinsional Rift."
"Wait...there’s a rift here?"
Evan was surprised at the existence of a rift on this continent that the Aramisians still had supre control over until recently.
"Yep, I’m sure of it."
The group paused to deliberate on this unexpected discovery of a rift similar to the one on the Rhigor continent that the Demons used to enter Aramis.
After a brief discussion, they decided to explore the rift, driven by their collective curiosity.
Descending deeper into the ruins, they navigated winding corridors and ancient traps until they reached the lowest floor.
The air there was thick with dense spatial power, a faint hum reaching their ears from the rift up ahead.
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