|Did you really think I wouldn’t be expecting you, Craig?|

’Aspect Manifestation: Time.’

|!|

The god Emperor of the Valmone Universe frowned and immediately turned to counter Arthur’s destructive energy with his own Monarch Authority, but the fabric of space-time suddenly trembled and the flow of time slowed to near cessation, his movements becoming snail-slow.

Arthur’s Temporal Aspect, now empowered several times beyond what it originally was, had become capable of slowing the movements of multiple Monarch Realm Existences, giving him enough time to generate a temporal projection of Roseborn from the image he had just taken seconds earlier in the space directly in front of Craig.

’Soul Devouring Oblivion!’

Temporal and destructive energies erupted from Arthur’s blade, swirling together into a concentrated silver light and without hesitation, Arthur unleashed his most powerful attack.

’Extreme Nothingness: Chaos.’

The silver stream of energy split through Roseborn’s Temporal Image and descended upon the slowed Craig, cutting into his right shoulder and tearing through flesh and bone down to the centre of his ribs, causing golden blood to spill out amid the exploding planet beneath them.

Roseborn’s body, still being pulled toward the planet’s core, had his vision fully obscured by molten magma, and because of that, he couldn’t see the temporal projection Arthur had created, nor could he see when Arthur attacked it with Extreme Nothingness.

He only felt an attack suddenly bypass every one of his defences and directly damage his body, splitting flesh, carving through bone, and drawing immense amounts of blood.

|!!!!|

The man barely held back the groan of pain that threatened to escape his lips amid his confusion, but Arthur didn’t even give him time to properly process the situation, instantly generating a Gravitational Maelstrom that dragged both Roseborn and Craig along with the fragments of the exploding planet toward a single point before detonating everything with a burst of destruction law energy.

He immediately teleported outside the blast radius, and just as he raised Lostvayne in preparation for a follow-up, he sensed a strange flow of cosmic energy reach his body.

’huh?’

Something flickered in his vision, tugging on the connection he had to Valmone through his godslayer Lord Authority.

He blinked, and a stream of system messages appeared in his field of view.

[Indirect Messaging System Activated.]

[’Candidate Selection Watcher #072901’ says to stall Rosebő̷͚r̸̡͌n̶̈ͅ—]

The message glitched out midway, and Kelly’s voice suddenly echoed in Arthur’s head.

[Arthur! Stop Roseborn from leaving where you are! Alexia’s in her final phase, and he wants to interfere! We can’t let his clones recombine!]

"!"

Arthur’s eyes widened at the sudden warning, and Roseborn’s actions from a minute ago immediately made sense.

’That moment he looked away!’

Kelly’s message implied Roseborn had more than one clone currently in the Valmone Universe, with another one in the Abyss Labyrinth, and that one seemed intent on recombining with the clone Arthur was currently fighting.

The result of that recombination would likely be unfavourable, hence why Kelly had hijacked the System to send Arthur a warning.

’I see. He likely split the original clone he brought to this universe into two and sent one after me, while the other is in the Abyss Labyrinth. I doubt adding this clone’s power would shift the situation there, considering Alexia has Primogenials working for her, so that only means it isn’t raw power he’s after.’

[An Authority,] Lostvayne said. [He likely can’t use some of his Authorities while the clones are separated. His soul must be too fragmented to activate them properly, so he wants to recombine them to restore the full mass.]

Arthur was already moving by the time Lostvayne spoke, his Temporal Authority accelerating his movements as he dove back into the cloud of destructive energy left behind by his attack, heading straight toward the centre where space was fragile.

’Anti-Divine Gravity Authority: Gravitational Chaos!’

Anti-divinity erupted wildly from his body, further distorting the already fragile space and disrupting the formation of a cosmic gate Roseborn had been attempting while hidden within the blast.

"!"

The man immediately realised what Arthur had done, and he turned and swung his arm in Arthur’s direction, black-blue energy bursting out and consuming everything in its path.

However, Arthur had already teleported before that even occurred, reappearing above Roseborn and closing the distance in an instant via time-skipping, before reaching out and wrapping his arms around Roseborn’s neck from behind.

"What are you—!?"

The man almost cursed as he reached out and grabbed Arthur’s arms to free himself from the godslayer’s hold, but Arthur used his Gravitational Authority to generate pressure from all directions that kept his body pressed against Roseborn and squished his feathered wings behind his back.

The Cosmic Teleporter on his right arm activated, forming a massive cosmic gate below them, large enough for entire planets to pass through, and the destination of that gate was a Danger Zone.

The Abyss Labyrinth, where a Dark Young, a literal Cosmic Horror, lived, was only the Number 2 Danger Zone of the Valmone Universe.

Arthur’s cosmic gate connected to a place considered even more dangerous than that.

The Valmone Universe’s Dead Zone.

A zone filled with a strange grey fog that consumed the fundamental universal laws that intertwined to make up reality.

From the cosmic gate Arthur opened, the grey fog, a watered-down residue of nothingness from the void layer beneath reality, spilt out of its containment and into this uncontaminated part of the universe.

The moment Arthur made that move, he met the conditions to be expelled from the universe by the universe’s sentience.

Cosmic energy wrapped around Arthur’s body, and sensing the repulsion force suddenly acting on him, Arthur spoke close to Roseborn’s ear.

"How about we outsiders of this universe take our matters outside?"

"!"

Roseborn released powerful curse law energy in an attempt to force Arthur off him, but it was already too late.

’Valmone’ didn’t hesitate to expel Arthur from within its space-time continuum, and Roseborn, whom Arthur was holding onto for dear life, was expelled alongside him.

The two were thrown outside Valmone’s barrier, into the clouds of cosmic dust, rock, and debris surrounding the universe.

The immense gravity of the universe itself immediately pulled their bodies back down toward the surface of its cosmic energy barrier, and they slammed against it with enough force for their bodies to bounce back upward before being thrown through space by the immense pressure of the cosmic energy clouds surrounding the barrier.

Roseborn’s body rag-dolled across the surface for several thousand metres before he finally regained enough awareness to activate his Spatial Authority and stabilise himself.

He was down on his knees, both hands pressed against the dense multicoloured cosmic energy barrier beneath him, his skin lightly burning from the barrier’s heat.

His body heaved heavily as he controlled the surrounding cosmic energy and wrapped it around his palms, while trying to understand exactly what had just happened.

’This is outside the universe... and that repulsion force. He made the universe itself expel us. But how?’

It wasn’t strange that Roseborn recognised what Arthur had done, since he’d dealt with similar situations during his long life, but what he couldn’t understand was how Arthur had managed to do such a thing at will.

His train of thought was abruptly interrupted as the pain from his injuries suddenly intensified, causing a groan to escape his lips uncontrollably. He reached up and touched the gash in his shoulder from which blood still poured even now, and more questions appeared in his mind.

’How did he manage to attack me? He should’ve been occupied dealing with that god. I purposely called him here so he could stall Lucifer’s brat long enough for me to recombine with my other clone.’

Roseborn didn’t even seem to have the peace of mind to insult Craig’s incompetence like he normally would, because Arthur’s attack, which had completely bypassed all his defences unlike the previous attacks that only ignored portions of them, had literally appeared out of nowhere and inflicted an absurd amount of damage on him, damage far beyond the upper limit a High-Tier Deity should’ve been capable of unleashing.

What’s more, despite the dense concentration of cosmic energy surrounding him, his wound showed absolutely no signs of healing, and Roseborn didn’t need to be a genius to understand why.

He touched the gash in his shoulder that extended almost toward his heart, and mixed in with his blood, still wreaking havoc throughout his body, was a strange silver energy that he could barely suppress, even with the help of the ambient cosmic energy.

"Nothingness..." he muttered aloud, instantly recognising it. "The brat has the same power as Lucifer!"

The soul fragment within this clone hadn’t been damaged too badly by the attack, but the damage to his physical body had almost completely impeded the proper use of his left arm, and forcing out that silver energy so the wound could finally heal was going to require a massive amount of time and ambient cosmic energy.

And just as that thought crossed his mind, Arthur’s voice echoed around him.

|Now then... exactly how did he say it?|

"!"

Roseborn looked up in alarm since he hadn’t sensed Arthur’s approach at all, and the godslayer, casually floating through the high-pressure clouds of cosmic energy, slowly closed the distance while tapping Lostvayne against his shoulder with a pensive look on his face.

|I believe it was something along the lines of, "Who allowed you to use cosmic energy in my presence?"|

Arthur pointed Lostvayne toward Roseborn while he spoke, a taunting smile on his face as he echoed the exact same words Lucifer had spoken to Roseborn tens of thousands of years ago.

And what immediately followed was exactly what happened after Lucifer had spoken those words.

A powerful force of will instantly usurped Roseborn’s control over the ambient cosmic energy, preventing him from suppressing the power of Arthur’s Null as that rampaged in the gash on Roseborn’s shoulder and worsened the injury.

All the ambient cosmic energy around them immediately began swirling violently, the high-pressure cosmic energy clouds parting apart as they joined the enormous vortex of cosmic energy gathering around both of them.

Seeing this, Roseborn’s expression contorted.

"You...!"

Because Arthur had only been fighting with ambient cosmic energy this entire time, Roseborn had been unable to notice that Arthur was not a Sub-Cosmic existence.

Arthur, now wearing a wide grin, then spoke.

|A hundred million years and you still haven’t reached this level. I’m not even up to a hundred years old, and I’ve been there for decades already. Man, you really are a talentless bastard.|

|You fucker!|

Roseborn roared in rage, curse, extinction and death law energies violently erupting from his body as he lunged straight toward Arthur.

Faced with Roseborn’s charge, Arthur coated his sword with the silver light of Null as he spoke.

|Come at me, you body-stealing bastard. Let’s finish this.|