When Berlal said Arthur and Rishia would be there ’for a while’, she ant an entire month.
The Valmone General Calendar’s Date moved from the January 31st that it was on when Arthur entered Choth, to March 2nd before the godslayer finally finished his Realm advancent.
The energy level within the lake didn’t appear to have dropped, but that was because the planet was releasing energy at the sa rate Arthur and Rishia were absorbing it, leaving no visible change.
Rishia had completed her own absorption and breakthroughs a few days before Arthur, and she wasn’t pleased about it.
In fact, when Arthur finally finished and opened his eyes, he found Rishia standing there, frowning at him in silence.
"Um...?"
He was understandably confused, but Rishia said nothing and looked away, unwilling to admit that her irritation ca from the fact that Arthur had taken longer due to his larger reserves requiring more energy to fill.
Arthur shrugged and stood up, stretching as he activated all his Authorities simultaneously.
His Temporal Authority inford him of how much ti had passed, and after a few more stretches, he lowered his gaze to his chest, inspecting the energy cores within.
"I’m still a long way from the High-Tier Deity Realm, huh?"
Rishia caught his mutter and turned toward him with a raised eyebrow.
"Of course, you are. Don’t you know how much energy you need for that?"
"I do," Arthur replied, clenching and unclenching his fist again and again. "But part of couldn’t help hoping I’d closed that gap a little."
For reference, Arthur had entered the Superior Stage of the Mid-Tier Deity Realm and was now around the sa level as the leader of Choth’s Devil Lords.
Even so, the High-Tier Deity Realm was still, both literally and figuratively, thousands of light-years beyond his reach.
A Realm where even the weakest existences possessed energy comparable to the cosmic average of an entire functioning galaxy wasn’t sothing that could be reached easily, after all.
◇ ◇ ◇
After Rishia and Arthur finished their short exchange, Berlal appeared alongside Barda, and after scanning the two of them, the elder of the two dragons showed a satisfied expression.
"Good, your strengths have risen by reasonable levels."
After saying that, Berlal turned her gaze toward the energy lake before them and extended her left hand without another word.
Seeing this, Arthur raised an eyebrow and asked, "What are you doing?"
"Satisfying my curiosity," Berlal replied candidly.
For a mont, everything was quiet, and then the surface of the lake began to ripple as the energy within sloshed violently, droplets of liquefied power splashing against the shores.
Then, the ground began to tremble.
’No, it’s not just the ground.’
Arthur looked around, expanding his spatial perception as he realised that it wasn’t only the surface shaking, but the entire planet itself.
Every layer of the rocky world quivered all the way down to its core, where the source of the disturbance lay.
Barda tapped his foot against the ground, and the instant he did, the trembling intensified dramatically.
The energy at the centre of the lake began to bubble violently, and then, with a deafening sound, sothing shot out of the lake, sending waves of energy racing toward the shoreline and splashing outward in every direction.
A bright light filled their vision, though it quickly dimd to a level where they could look without squinting.
Hovering at the centre of the lake was a tre-long object that resembled a shard of shattered glass, radiating an absurd amount of cosmic energy and bearing the sa signature as the lake beneath it.
Berlal turned her hand over and curled a finger, causing the shard to drift closer.
As it moved, Arthur asked, "What the hell is that?"
"The thing that generated the energy you just absorbed," Berlal answered.
Arthur sighed and replied, "I can sense that much. I’m asking what it actually is."
Berlal had just freed the planet from its burden by extracting the object lodged within its core, the source that had been flooding it with far more cosmic energy than it could endure, energy it had been forced to vent through the lake that Arthur and Rishia had spent the past month absorbing from.
Answering Arthur’s question, Barda stepped forward and said, "Yeah. Foreign Foundation Fragnt. Sa type as the other one I saw."
"Foundation Fragnt?" Arthur repeated, recalling Barda ntioning sothing similar when speaking with Wyndella years ago, though that had involved an entirely different planet.
"To put it simply," Barda said, turning toward Arthur, "what you’re looking at is a fragnt of the core of a dead universe."
A deafening silence followed his words.
Arthur blinked in shock, then asked again just to be certain he’d heard correctly, "A fragnt of the core of a dead universe?"
Barda nodded calmly and replied, "Yeah, that’s right."
Rishia, just as stunned, asked quietly, "How did sothing like that end up embedded inside this planet?"
"That," Berlal said, "is what we’re about to find out."
She guided the floating fragnt toward Barda, who caught it in his hands as sparks of cosmic energy crackled down his arm.
He ignored them and activated his Dictum to examine the fragnt while he spoke.
"Just as rocks drift through space and sotis get pulled in by a planet’s gravity, crashing down as teors, fragnts of dead universes drift through the multiverse. When they pass too close to a universe, they can be pulled in by its gravity and crash down onto it, much like teors.
These impacts are naturally far more destructive, but the damage is usually limited to the universe’s barrier. It’s rare for fragnts to breach that barrier and enter the universe itself unless circumstances align perfectly or the event is artificially caused."
His eyes flashed as he said that, his lips curling into a grin as he continued, "Just like this one. I was right. Soone dragged it into this universe."
Barda scanned the fragnt’s records across ti and space, tracing its history until he understood how it had ended up lodged in Choth’s core.
"Who’s responsible?" Berlal asked.
To her question, Barda sighed and answered with a single na.
"Syndra."
Hearing the na, both Arthur and Rishia showed expressions of recognition.
""The Progenitor Angel,"" they said simultaneously.
Barda nodded as he continued tracing the records. "She pulled this thing in from outside the universe and made it bypass the barrier completely.
As for why she did it," he trailed off, then lifted an eyebrow, "this planet wasn’t her target."
He raised his right hand, creating a hologram of the Valmone universe, which quickly zood inward, passing galactic clusters and their galaxies until it focused on a single planet.
Arthur glanced at it, then blinked as recognition hit. "Wait. I know that planet."
"Of course, you do," Barda replied.
The hologram displayed a massive superplanet surrounded by 285 smaller planet-level satellites, which it called moons.
It was the demon-ruled world of Gozon.
"The larger fragnt Syndra pulled in crashed into Gozon," Barda explained. "The impact was violent enough that broken pieces scattered across the universe, through dinsions.
One of those pieces crashed into this planet and went straight toward its core through the hole in front of us."
The rest had collided with other planets, moons, and stars throughout the universe.
"As for why this planet didn’t imdiately explode, it’s because of the one Syndra was with," Barda continued, then shook his head. "No, not with. Definitely against, at the ti."
He let go of the fragnt and turned to Berlal as he said, "It was Astrel. Why am I not surprised?"
Hearing the na of the Progenitor Demon, Arthur quickly put together what had most likely happened.
"So, Syndra and Astrel were fighting, and for so reason, Syndra chose to drag that thing into this universe and crash it into Gozon.
There’s no way Syndra lacked the power to destroy Gozon directly, which ans the reason she took such a roundabout approach was probably because of sothing Astrel did on Gozon that forced her to handle it this way."
Barda shrugged after listening to Arthur’s reasoning.
"That’s probably how it went, but we won’t know for sure unless we ask them."
As he spoke, he lifted his hand and began gathering cosmic energy to create a gate.
Seeing that, Arthur imdiately shook his head and waved his hands. "Oh no, no, no. We’re not doing that."
Barda paused and turned toward Arthur with a raised eyebrow, wondering why he objected.
"What? If you’re worried about Syndra leaking your location to Luka, don’t be. Syndra doesn’t really care that much, even if she and Luka are functionally allies," he said.
That did nothing to ease Arthur’s unease.
"What? No. That’s not what I’m worried about. Syndra might kill on sight. That’s what I’m worried about.
At Arthur’s words, silence fell.
Berlal, who’d already stored the foreign universe fragnt within her shadow dinsion, looked at Arthur with a flat stare and asked, "What did you do?"
"Well, I may or may not have absorbed a fragnt of her Progenitor Authority that was inside a Book of Truth replica."
Barda imdiately facepald, the cosmic energy he had been gathering dispersing as he asked, "Why would you do that?"
"Don’t look at like that," Arthur shot back. "I didn’t have a choice. I was in the middle of a war against angels who were trying to use a Book of Truth replica on my demonic allies.
Destroying it was the only option, but I had no idea it contained a fragnt of Syndra’s Progenitor Authority and soul. I also didn’t know that destroying the book pulls you into a special pocket space where the soul fragnt exists."
After Arthur said this, he paused, then rubbed his chin while muttering, "Now that I think about it, that must’ve been the soul fragnt’s Soul Realm."
He shrugged right after and continued his explanation.
"The most I could do at the ti, even with Lostvayne, was destroy the coordinate module attached to the soul fragnt. At least that way, when it returned to Syndra, she wouldn’t know where it ca from. I couldn’t erase its mories, though, so she knows what I look like, and she knows the Authority fragnt anchoring the soul fragnt to the replica was removed.
That was the only way I could get out of that special space, after all."
"So, to sum it up," Barda said while rubbing his face, "Syndra’s going to kill you."
It had been more than 80 Valmone years since it happened, but for a Progenitor who’d lived for over a trillion years, that was basically the sa as 80 seconds.
"If I gave back the Authority fragnt I took," Arthur asked, "that wouldn’t stop her from trying to kill , would it?"
"It’s not about giving back what was taken," Berlal replied imdiately. "It’s about her ego."
"A younger, unknown progenitor stealing a fragnt of her Authority? Syndra’s not gonna let that slide," Barda added with a sigh.
"Great," Arthur said, rolling his eyes. "So now I get to spend my life hiding from the Progenitor Angel."
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