'I did encounter sothing similar with Craitid, but the levels are not even the sa. The only way to equalize it would be if I had faced 100 Craitids then.'
He rembered his encounter with Craitid last year, but the power disparity was negligible compared to what Arthur had faced.
"Thanks to his unique ability to weaken Aramisian Divines, even affecting their Transcendents, many of our battles have been much easier in the few months he's been around.
With all that, it's kinda hard NOT to like the guy."
This Demoness—a mber of Arthur's secret Fanclub—spoke with a dreamy look as she gazed at the boy who was busy doing sothing with the Law of Ti's power.
Looking at her expression, Evan couldn't help but shake his head.
"The Demons like him so much and he's not even one of them…"
When he muttered this, the Demon on his left side raised a brow and asked.
"I heard sothing about that recently, but is it true? Appraisal doesn't work on him, so we can't verify it."
'Haa?'
Evan almost let out a surprised sound but managed to contain himself at the last mont.
'Appraisal doesn't work? I just appraised him this morning, how does it not work?'
He turned to Arthur, attempting to use Appraisal again, only to be t with the ssage: [ERROR #33; CANNOT APPRAISE].
That was the only result he got.
'How?'
He was sure that Arthur's status was visible this morning, so what had the boy done to make it un-appraisable?
'Is it the sa way he hides his Existence Level?'
Evan asked, recalling that despite being able to appraise Arthur earlier, he couldn't detect Arthur's Existence Level with his senses.
The reason was that Arthur possessed an artifact called the 'Concealnt Ring'.
With it activated, it was impossible for any form of Appraisal—even Perfect Appraisal—to work on him. This was what started the rumour that Appraisal didn't work on him, as he always had the ring activated when he was in public places.
Besides the six Evan t on Day 1, no one else knew of its existence.
"Oh well, it doesn't matter what race he is as long as he isn't a god. The Demon Kings wouldn't have given him a General rank otherwise."
Evan nodded in agreent, finding logic in her words. Just then, Arthur's commanding voice cut through the chatter, drawing everyone's attention back to him.
"All right, I'm beginning. Protect yourselves with your energy."
The Silver-Haired Progenitor slamd his palms together, and an overwhelming wave of magical power emanated from him, buffeting everyone in the vicinity with its pressure.
Next, was his Faux True Voice.
|¬Pseudo Authority of Ti: Visions of the Past. ¬|
Evan winced upon hearing the Voice, while most of the Demons frowned as it resounded in their heads despite having protected themselves with Demonic Energy.
'This…it's the sa as how Artemisia's voice sounded sotis. EOTD did that thing too!'
Arthur's voice just now was sothing that Evan had only ever heard from Deities or Forr Deities. It held the power to command Universal laws to do his bidding and as far as Evan knew, only Higher Existences should have this kind of voice.
But there was a catch. Arthur's voice wasn't a 'True Voice' but a 'Faux True Voice'—a masterful imitation created with cosmic energy.
While Evan was theorizing Arthur's voice, the godslayer used his ti law energy to create projections of the past within a certain radius of his position.
The initial projections depicted the scene from a few minutes ago, just before he had instructed everyone to give him space.
Arthur rotated his left hand anti-clockwise, causing the projections to blur and rewind like a video being played in reverse. A surreal scene unfolded before them as he spun his hand four tis before coming to an abrupt halt.
|¬Got him. ¬|
The Inspector's eyes sparkled with anticipation at Arthur's words but hesitated to move, concerned about disrupting the process of Arthur recreating projections of the scene, four hours and thirty minutes ago.
Every eye was riveted on the display, so demons even pulling out notebooks to docunt every detail as the scene of the murder began to unfold.
◇ ◇ ◇
The scene starred a figure clad in an all-black coverall, their face obscured by a hood and a gas mask.
The figure attacked the soldier, who was already weakened and bleeding, overpowering him and rendering him unconscious.
The assailant then summoned a peculiar magic circle and erected a spatial isolation barrier—revealing the reason why no one noticed when the cris were being perpetrated.
Everyone silently observed as the Killer summoned a large 3-ter-tall half-humanoid spirit, with a skull-shaped head, glowing reddish-brown eyes, no nose, and a half-torn mouth.
While the spirit's upper body was humanoid, its lower half was a black, tail-like mass that connected to the back of the Killer's chest.
Hovering silently, the spirit watched as the Killer severed the soldier's tongue, torturing him for nearly 30 minutes with divinity—a harmful energy type for demons that intensified the soldier's suffering.
Arthur chose to silently fast-forward through this brutal segnt and no one objected.
After this, the Killer stepped back, wiping blood from their visor, and directed a gesture toward the spirit.
With a flash of its eyes, the spirit extended its sharp claws and began to shred the soldier's chest. It extracted the heart, displaying it before the dying soldier's eyes with a grotesque sense of triumph.
The spirit then squeezed out the blood, opened its maw wide, and consud the organ before slowly dissipating.
"So, the Killer is actually this spirit…"
Arthur muttered as he watched the coverall-wearing person bring out an artifact from an Inventory and activate it, releasing a pulse of law energy into the area.
Simultaneously, the projection glitched, evidently affected by whatever that was, but Arthur simply chuckled and exerted the power of his Pseudo-Authority to overpower the law energy and stabilize the projection.
'What sort of artifact is that? I want one.'
Evan silently made this wish as they watched the 'culprit' of the murders, having finished the job, begin to make their escape.
The figure leapt onto a nearby roof with agile precision, prompting Arthur to instantly expand his law energy, enveloping a 500-ter radius around him.
Without hesitation, he jumped onto the roof, pursuing the projection with a single-minded focus. Evan, the Inspector, and several others followed closely, weaving through narrow alleys, bustling streets, and various buildings in their pursuit.
As they moved as one, civilian demons and subjugated Aramisians watched in bewildernt, their confusion evident as the group of pursuers darted through the city. Yet, not a single one stopped to satisfy the civilians' growing curiosity.
After a relentless five-minute chase, they finally tracked the culprit to a secluded back alley where they crouched low and began to conjure a Tier 5 Teleportation spell circle.
However, this wasn't just any teleportation spell—the circle was adorned with strange, unfamiliar runes, symbols that neither Arthur nor anyone present recognized.
These strange runes were the sa as those found in all the spell circles the culprit had used to evade detection during their escape, suggesting that this mysterious Rune Magic was their primary casting style.
Arthur paused the projection, his gaze narrowing as he knelt down beside the image of the teleportation circle. Spatial law energy swirled around him as he began to work to decode the runes with the goal of replicating the spell.
At that mont, everyone had their backs to Evan, so none noticed when his Mystic Eyes ca active and he scanned the spell circle.
"Give a few minutes and I shou-"
"Here."
Evan's sudden words prompted all eyes to turn to him, and when they did, Arthur and the Inspector blinked in confusion.
Floating above Evan's palm was a flawless replica of the teleportation spell circle they had just been about to begin studying. The intricate details were identical, down to the unfamiliar runes that had confounded even Arthur.
Arthur's eyes flickered between the two circles—the one in the projection and the one Evan had conjured. Even without having fully deciphered the original, it was clear to everyone present that the two were perfect copies.
"Did you just copy that…in an instant?"
"It took about 3 seconds. I'm not really good with Spatial Magic."
"…"
All the Demons present looked at Evan like he was so sort of alien when they heard his reply. Well, he actually was, but that wasn't the point here.
Evan looked at them with a raised brow, his eyes asking 'Wasn't this what you wanted to do?', as if completely oblivious to the ridiculous nature of what he'd just done.
'It took him 3 seconds because he 'isn't good' at spatial magic? Then what if he was good at it?!'
The Inspector only took a mont to understand that Arthur's deduction via fate had co to pass. Evan's presence had saved them the ti they would have spent to try and extract the coordinates from the spell circle.
As for Evan's words, he did not lie. If it was a fire magic spell, then Evan would have copied the circle in an instant. He'd have even be able to cast it himself despite its higher Tier.
But since it was spatial magic, it took him 3 seconds, and he also could not cast it himself.
Arthur just laughed as he used his spatial law energy to hijack the circle floating over Evan's palm, marvelling at how neatly the spell had been recreated.
"This is impressive."
Evan didn't see it as much, simply shrugging in response.
"Taking other people's stuff is kind of my shtick, nothing new there for ."
He acted like it was a given that he was able to pull such off, and everyone just looked at him with incredulous expressions.
Arthur placed the magic circle on the floor, double-checked everything, and then manipulated so invisible energy they could not perceive to envelop them all.
'What's he doing?'
Evan asked, curious since he didn't sense Arthur putting magic into the spell circle, but the godslayer just told the Inspector not to 'resist the teleportation', before activating the spell and sending them through space, straight into the hornet's nest.
Well, the hornet's abandoned nest, in this case.
'Huh? Did he just use a teleportation spell without any magic?
Is that Spatial Law Manipulation? No, even with law manipulation, I should sense his magic power or sothing move, but I didn't pick on a thing.'
Evan thought, confused. He glanced around and saw that so of the demons were also confused about how Arthur had teleported them, but they quickly shifted their focus to their new location.
They reappeared in a shed that was in the middle of a forest. It looked derelict and seemingly untouched for years. Nature had begun to reclaim the structure, with vines creeping up its sides and foliage encroaching on its periter.
Without a mont's delay, Arthur reactivated his Pseudo-Authority and tried to use his 'Visions of the Past' technique again, however, there was great interference, making it difficult to conjure the projections.
"This is troubleso…"
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