Chapter 96 - Phirex And Girex

The spies sent into Girex by the two brothers, captured a duo of master realm humans they found and brought them back to Phirex.

They interrogated these humans they found and tortured them severely, however the two humans repeatedly claimed to know nothing about Girex.

They said they were sent there to join in the construction of a certain structure, one that they barely knew anything about. Due to their uselessness, the two brothers killed them both.

Normally, the deaths of the two master realm humans would be insignificant, as the two brothers had killed hundreds of master realms of various races personally during the wars they waged.

With power at the superior stage of the grandmaster realm, they believed they were unmatched by anyone, save their late father who had stepped into the legendary realm, hundreds of years before his death.

This was why they dared to kill the two humans they found, as they believed that even if their actions were found out, they could simply defeat whoever came for revenge.

Unfortunately, the one who came for revenge was one of the existences in the Hell universe they should have never offended.

◇　◇　◇

Arthur had been searching the crystal realm for a planet with 'crystal rain' for years.

He was searching for the key to fulfilling the first condition required to cast the spell in Lucifer's memory gem.

The planet Girex was recently found to have experienced this crystal rain, as such Arthur had set his sights on it even before he went over to Cattleya's territory.

Phil's reports to him were reports on the specifics of the crystal rains that the planet Girex had experienced in the past few months.

He sent his subordinates over there and they began to make the preparations for Arthur to come and check if the planet was the one he was looking for.

In order to do this, a certain structure needed to be constructed. This construction of this structure was handled by his subordinates, ones that even Lute barely knew anything about.

After all, Lute was originally his mother's subordinate and was with him on her orders, the same with his team.

Therefore, Arthur found subordinates of his own, ones who swore oaths of loyalty to him and him alone. Most of them were handpicked by Arthur himself.

As for the others, they were similar to a large mercenary force that worked for money, just one that took orders from him alone.

The two master realm humans, who were killed by the two emperor brothers, were part of his second group of subordinates.

They were tasked to conduct checks on the area around the dimensional rift with a few devices. This was to make sure there were no problems for Arthur's arrival.

However, the report that was expected of them never arrived.

This was when their superiors noticed something wrong and sent out groups to find them.

The search parties, found no one. That was natural; they had already long been murdered.

Due to this, Arthur's subordinates pleaded with him to delay his arrival long enough for them to discover the cause.

They only dared do this, as Arthur was usually lenient with them. However, even with that, they still feared his wrath.

Surprisingly, Arthur agreed and gave them a week to find the culprits of the disappearances. Grateful for this, they put their best effort in investigating and it did not take them long to find out the culprits.

All of this information was then reported to Arthur, who nonchalantly replied.

"Then that planet is done for."

And with that line, they knew that after Arthur was done, the chances of Phirex and Girex continuing to exist, were null.

◇　◇　◇

Arthur woke up from a deep sleep. His eyes were glowing as he opened them, he then looked around to confirm his location before nodding and speaking with a deeper voice than usual.

"Seems like this is before I reached Phirex. Perfect timing."

He stood up and waked to the window of the spacecraft. Looking at the passing space junk, he sighed before speaking.

"My decision to spare them cost me greatly, to think that a survivor of Phirex would become such an existence."

He whipped out his phone and opened up a camera to look at his appearance.

"Thirteen year old me huh?"

His scattered hair that looked as if it was torn between being silver or platinum blonde. Just beneath his bangs were eyes with his weirdly shaped pupils, an elegantly straight nose, and a pair of thin lips. All came together…perfectly.

However, instead of the usual dark obsidian eyes, his eyes were a vivid blue color.

And unlike whenever he was influenced by the power of the law of time and only one eye glowed, the two were glowing this time.

He put his phone back in his pocket and held a hand up to his chin. 

"In order to prevent the unnecessary setback, it seems I have to increase the influence that 'I' have on myself.

In a way that mum or Grandpa would not notice. And definitely in a way that I would not notice what 'I' am doing to myself."

He then shaped his hand into a gun and pointed his index finger to his own temple before chanting.

[c0^ↄ3 ¶ ⊥ [Time]—Release [r3qq@)E#omn: Memories]

[Invoke: Passive Personality Alteration]

His right hand shone with a blue light that shot into his head. His eyes went blank for a moment before regaining their vigor in the next.

"Good, that would make me more cold and brutal but it is necessary. At least while I am still mindlessly chasing greater power."

He held his right hand up again and blue lights twirled around it, looking at these lights he spoke with a tone filled with disappointment.

"The road to the top is fun, but being at the top…is definitely not. One becomes disillusioned with reality after obtaining great power after all."

He walked back to the seat, he reminisced about a past event.

"This should be the second time that 'I' am altering my personality huh?"

Looking into the void of space outside the window, he voiced out one last statement before falling asleep once again.

"Sorry Alkosh, I won't be following the script."

◇　◇　◇

"Your highness, we have arrived."

Arthur opened his eyes hearing Tasha's voice and stood up from his seat.

"Being woken up by a beautiful woman really does get me motivated."

Tasha lightly chuckled at Arthur's words, however seeing the actions he took next, her laughter ceased.

'Celestia'

[Yes master]

With a bright flash of light, a semi-transparent blade appeared in Arthur's hand.

'Can't you make it less flashy?'

[Can I? I cannot remember. I would try next time.]

While Arthur was conversing with Celestia, Lute and his team of transcendents had all come out of the shadows. 

Seeing the blade in Arthur's hands, they all understood one thing.

A massacre was about to occur.

Arthur had hinted on his plan of murdering most the royal family members of the two Great Empires of Phirex.

Hints that they had caught on to, however Tasha's words that they heard earlier, confirmed this. They even found out that Arthur intended on destroying both planets completely.

'There are enough transcendents here to destroy both planets, so it would not be an impossible thing to achieve.' -was what they thought.

"Kill everyone else you see, leave the royal family members to me.

We would take the northern empire first, then the southern.

Make sure the south does not catch wind of our actions at all until we are done with the north.

As for Girex, its fate would be decided when I go over there."

They all nodded at his words as the space craft that had long entered into the planet's atmosphere, reached the airspace of the capital city of the Great Northern Empire.

The Great Northern Empire's capital city was located in the country that the two brothers were originally from.

The night city was calm and quiet, many had gone to sleep so they could rise early the next morning when the celebrations to send off the soldiers to war would begin.

"Lute, an opener."

Lute nodded and stretched his hand out, a giant ball of flames appeared and lit up the dark night sky.

It was like a small sun rising in the night, many woke up, thinking that it was daybreak.

However, the mages and knights who were more sensitive understood: that was not daybreak.

It was an attack.

One aimed at the centre of the city, the location of the imperial castle.

The guards and knights rose up from their slumber and prepared defences.

The mages casted barriers upon barriers, yet they still felt it instinctively.

They could not survive that attack.

"Tone it down a little, and make it not hit the castle, I want to fight the emperor one on one.

Also prepare the space isolation artifact so he cannot escape."

Lute complied with Arthur's words and gestured to his team members. 

He then stretched out his hand once again and reduced the amount of magic power in the small meteor.

Making a swiping gesture, the attack deviated from its original path and crashed a few tens of kilometres away from the capital.

***BBBBOOOMMM!

With a loud 'boom', the city it crashed on was wiped off the map. The surroundings were not safe either.

The shockwaves from the attack threatened to spread towards the capital but Lute did not let it.

He waved his hand again and the shockwaves were reflected by a gigantic barrier that appeared at the capital's borders.

The explosion created a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke, one that could be easily visible, thousands of miles away.

As for the reflected shockwaves, they helped propagate the effects of the explosion towards the opposite direction of the capital.

"Wow, that area is easily an entire country. If the southern empire's capital wasn't on the other side if the planet then I'm sure they would have seen this."

Arthur remarked while looking at Lute's work.

He turned to the rest of the transcendents in the group and said.

"Wreck the two continents as much as you feel like, just don't sink the one closer to the south."

The northern and southern empires spanned two continents each.

They had completely dominated most of the countries on all four continents or Phirex.

Tasha and the rest of the team nodded before moving to carry out the assigned destruction.

As for Arthur, he looked towards Lute and told him to scan for the emperor.

"He's at the south gate of the castle, I sense some spatial disturbances there so there might be some sort of teleportation gate over there.

I'm destroying it now."

Arthur nodded and Lute stretched out his hand once again, this time a small ball of black light gathered around his finger, it increased until it had a diameter of about 15 cm, then shot out towards the gate that the northern emperor was trying to escape through.

**BBOOM!!

The teleportation gate, alongside the mages who were powering it up, were all blown to bits.

Arthur then spread out his wings and flew over to the fallen emperor who had already sensed him and was preparing himself for an attack.

He landed on the ground and looked at the emperor who was holding a battle-axe, ready to pounce on Arthur at any time.

"Devil, I always disliked you vermin, this is why I told Ursan that we should just kill you all."

The Northern Emperor seemed to hold quite a lot of hatred towards devils. 

Arthur ignored his words and spoke with a cold voice.

"Two humans, master realm, caught and killed near the rift two weeks ago.

I have come to collect the debt in blood."