"Put! ! Down!"
"Ow! Ow—I’d put you down!"
Arthur scread and imdiately released her, jumping back while rubbing his smoking shoulders.
Layla stumbled and nearly fell, but she managed to regain her balance and imdiately glare at Arthur.
A mont later, however, she noticed a trace of silver liquid on her fingertip, her head tilting to the side in confusion.
’Wait...isn’t this Arthur’s blood?’
For a mont, she blinked in confusion, then in the next, her eyes widened as realisation dawned.
"That’s right...you had a destruction law affinity, didn’t you?" she muttered.
"!"
Arthur flinched at that question, and noticing it, Layla’s lips curled into an evil grin, the concentration of creation law energy crackling like lightning around her fingers, increasing as she pressed her fists together.
"What a wonderful discovery..."
"Wait a second, Layla! This could be counted as attempted—!"
Arthur’s words cut off as Layla dashed toward him, but even though he tried to jump to the side to evade her, his body froze and refused to respond to his commands.
’Fuck. I forgot her eyes can induce paralysis!’
Layla could only paralyse him for a second, but considering she moved at top speed with wind laws boosting her, that was enough for her to close the distance and throw out a fist, aiming at his face.
**WHOOSHH!!!
A fierce gust of wind blew across the area, pushing everyone back as Layla’s fist barely missed Arthur’s face, grazing his cheek as he managed to move his head just enough and then jumped away.
At this, Layla turned her gaze to the side, her brows raising as she muttered, "Ah, you dodged? Bumr."
"Layla?!"
"Relax. I wasn’t actually gonna clock you...probably."
"Probably?!"
Arthur and Layla’s banter brought nostalgic smiles to the faces of their forr classmates, but the truth was that Arthur was genuinely scared of Layla’s creation law energy.
Creation and Destruction were interconnected in the Cosmos, while also standing as polar opposites to one another.
Creation was as effective against Destruction as Destruction was against Creation in every aspect of the Cosmos, down to the way the energies of the laws derived from the Concepts interacted.
It was like a black paper being stained with white ink, or a white paper being stained with black ink.
Either way, the stain was going to stand out in a glaringly obvious way.
Also, the greater soone’s affinity for one of the two, the more effective the other beca against them, since the whiter or darker the paper, the more striking the contrast caused by the stain.
Arthur had a strong destruction affinity, an obvious result when one considered his ancestry, since from Lucifer’s father to Lucifer, then Diablo, then Cattleya, destruction had consistently flowed through the Vaughn family blood.
Because of this affinity, he was even weaker to Creation law energy, and this weakness was one of the reasons he wanted to conduct the Ancestral Regression spell using Gaia’s blood.
It was a risky endeavour, but he wanted to use her power of Creation like a vaccine of so sort, hoping to increase his resistance to creation even if only a little bit.
Layla was nearly an entire Existence Realm below him, and even so, a casual burst of creation energy from her had been able to burn his skin and draw blood, even though any other attack from her wouldn’t have dealt even the slightest bit of damage.
’I’m too vulnerable to Creation...’
Arthur was reminded of this again as he felt the burn on his skin slowly close up, and at the sa ti, Layla cancelled her energy infusion and placed a hand on her waist as she spoke.
"You know you brought that on yourself, right?"
"Excuse ?" Arthur imdiately shot back. "I was just reminding you who the ’little sister’ was."
"Arthur, I’m not that much younger than you are..." Layla retorted while rolling her eyes, and at this, Arthur grinned, chuckling as he replied.
"Oh, my dear, you ARE that much younger than I am."
"What are you on ab—" Layla froze mid-speech, her eyes narrowing as a gust of wind swirled around them, blocking the sound of the next question she asked.
"How many years has it been for you?"
"45, I think?" Arthur replied, rubbing his chin, and at his words, Layla’s eyes widened in shock.
"What?! That’s not fair! You keep going to places with ridiculous ti differences!"
At Layla’s protest, Arthur blinked, then burst into laughter.
"It’s not fair, she says. Oh, please, Draco Sirus doesn’t have that much of a difference from Hell. It’s only been that long for because of the dragon training ."
"Dragons training you?" Layla blinked in confusion, and at this, Arthur sighed and muttered, "It’s a long story. Let’s move elsewhere."
Hearing this, Layla dismissed her wind barrier and then turned to the others, telling them to handle the aftermath before shooting open another portal with her pistol.
"Right. I wanted to ask about that," Arthur said, pointing at the pistol.
"Hmm? Oh, this? It’s my way of making up for my lack of spatial abilities," Layla replied.
"Huh? Explain."
Layla casually strolled into the portal and Arthur followed behind, re-erging in a cosy lounge aboard one of the spacecraft orbiting the nearest star.
It was the flagship of the fleet that Layla and Nicole had co with to this galaxy, and where they’d been staying for the past few weeks while tracking the pirates.
Layla tossed the pistol towards Arthur as soon as she entered, scratching her hair as she spoke.
"I’m not as good as you or Nicole with spatial laws, so I had to improvise to get around since there’s a limit to what I can do with artifacts in terms of speed and energy efficiency."
Arthur caught the pistol, looking it over in silence, and just as his finger moved to the trigger, Layla, her back still turned to him, spoke.
"Right now, I’m the only one who can use that thing, so don’t shoot it or it’ll explode in your hands."
"...eh?"
Layla turned at the sound Arthur made, and when she saw his finger on the trigger, she deadpanned him.
"Maybe I should have kept quiet a little longer..."
"Miss Layla, why are you saying so many dangerous-sounding things lately?"
"It’s your imagination," Layla muttered, snapping her fingers and making the pistol dissolve into wisps of magic power and law energy.
From that display, Arthur understood that the pistol’s creation itself was a technique of her Imaginative Creation Authority.
Just then, a spatial gate opened in another corner of the room, and Nicole stepped out, dropping the boxes in her hands before she blinked over to Arthur and pulled him into another hug.
As Arthur returned the hug, Layla opened a bottle of wine and asked,
"What were you saying about dragons training you again?"
"Ah, that. Well, I encountered a bunch of Ancient Dragons who have teaching as a hobby, and due to circumstances, they ended up making a bet with as the subject.
Basically, each of the six of them would train on a particular weapon, and the one I end up the best with wins."
Hearing Arthur’s explanation, Layla blinked and then tilted her head.
"Sounds like you’re the one benefiting the most out of that arrangent."
"I sure am," Arthur replied, sitting down and placing Nicole on his lap. "Well, like I said, it’s a hobby for them, so their benefit is in the process of teaching, or whatever the winner of the bet is going to get."
He added that last part with a shrug, thinking about the fact that he honestly had no idea what the grand prize of their bet was.
"What weapons were they training you on?" Nicole asked, and Arthur raised his free hand, counting off each one.
"Polearms, bows, axes, whips, and hamrs, plus my default sword. The one who brought back was the Sword guy. We’re waiting on the Whip dragon. I’ll have to take her trials and the Axe guy’s trials in Valmone soon."
Hearing this, Nicole’s brows furrowed slightly.
"You’re leaving again?"
"Yeah," Arthur replied, a faintly sad smile crossing his face. "Wyndella—the one teaching the whip—went off sowhere, so Barda—the Sword guy—and I are waiting for her to get back before we head to Valmone."
"Oh..." Nicole murmured, her expression falling as she gripped him a little tighter.
"How long...?"
She didn’t finish, and Arthur pressed his lips together, unable to answer either of the two possible interpretations of her question.
He had no idea how long he’d be in Hell or how long he’d stay in Valmone.
Just as he was about to say that he’d co back when he was done in Valmone, another voice echoed through the room.
"If you’re that sad about it, why not just tell them to co along with you?"
Arthur turned toward the voice with a raised eyebrow, but Layla and Nicole both activated their Authorities and summoned their weapons, pointing them at the blue-haired man who had suddenly appeared, holding the boxes Nicole had dropped—the bait crystal and the law crystal core she and Layla had co to retrieve.
"Calm down, guys. He’s one of the dragons I was talking about," Arthur said, reaching out to grab Nicole by the waist and pull her down.
Then he turned to Barda and added, "And please don’t just spontaneously appear, Barda."
He used the na to reassure the two won that he wasn’t hostile, and Barda, without taking his eyes off the boxes he was holding, replied.
"I didn’t. I teleported into the room like any normal person would."
"Dude, if your teleportation is ’normal,’ then the rest of the Cosmos has been doing jack shit for aeons," Arthur said with a sigh.
Looking at Layla, he said,
"et Barda, one of the oldest and laziest dragons you could ever find."
"Can you not make sound like so kind of deadbeat?" Barda said, finally lifting his gaze from the boxes and setting them down as he turned toward Arthur.
"Anyway, like I was saying, why not take them along with you?"
The man asked it like it was the most obvious solution, and Arthur sighed.
"It’s not like I didn’t consider it, but unlike , who weaselled my way out of here due to special circumstances and being the lowest-ranked and least busy Royal Family mber, they’re heirs to their respective families and have work to do."
Barda glanced at Layla and Nicole after Arthur spoke, then nodded and asked, "Then just tell their parents you’re taking them sowhere they could get stronger faster. The Valmone universe does have a Devour Class System that can achieve that effect."
Arthur was silent for a mont, then turned to Layla and asked, "What do you think? Wanna co with to Valmone?"
"I’m coming," Nicole said before Layla could even speak, and Layla sighed, pressing her fingers to her temple as she said,
"Arthur, you know I’m not the one you have to convince, right?"
At that, Arthur’s expression grew complicated.
Indeed, if he wanted to take Layla out of Hell with him, she wasn’t the one he had to convince, and neither was her father, Conrad.
The real obstacle was her mother, the Grand Duchess Iberis, the strict kind of person Arthur didn’t get along with.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t just take Layla with him without telling her, but for the sake of the relationship between the Eryrth Grand Duchy and the Royal Family, he simply couldn’t.
"I don’t know what else you gotta do, but make sure to figure it out before Wyndella gets back," Barda said, his body fading as he added, "I’m gonna go check out this realm a bit. Law crystals as planet cores aren’t sothing you see every day."
With those words revealing the identities of the items in the boxes Layla and Nicole had co to retrieve, he vanished, leaving the three friends alone in the lounge.
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