Chapter 106 - Extreme Nothingness’ Extreme Power Up

"I know, but it's just too bizarre. I've only ever come in contact with a basic law crystal so although I felt it didn't make sense, it wasn't that much.

But compared to this, honestly all I can say is what the actual f*ck?"

"There's a reason the laws have ranks separating them, a basic rank law is quite small compared to its low rank counterpart."

Arthur nodded at Lewis's words as he tried to make sense of the information in his head but to no avail.

The information in the law crystal that was passed on to him was not meant to be understood immediately.

It was all over the place and made little sense, this was why one had to first comprehend a law before they could use it.

If the information made sense from the start, then anyone who picked up a law crystal might just gain an authority with no stress.

"It's like a 10000 A2 page textbook had all its pages ripped out, then shredded to pieces.

Then someone picked up the pieces and randomly stitched them together.

If what I'm looking at when I open the book is page 1 chapter 1, paragraph 1, the next paragraph would be from page 3592 chapter 234 paragraph 61.

Then the next paragraph is from page 8755 chapter 590 paragraph 3.

That's how bizarre it is to me."

Lewis and Lute stared at Arthur in shock for a few moments, until Lute broke the silence saying.

"This is the first time I've seen someone equate the knowledge of a law to a textbook."

"Not just a textbook, but one that was torn out, shredded and then stitched together randomly?"

"There's not much of a difference my Lord."

"Huh? You can read textbooks that were torn out, shredded and then stitched together randomly."

"No, it's- never mind."

Lewis gave up on trying to explain to Arthur, he then looked at the crystal in his hands and asked.

"It still has a whole load of charges left, about a few thousand could use this before it runs out. What should we do with it?"

"Hmm....you and Lute should use it, give it to Tasha too.

I'd give the crystal to mum afterwards."

Lewis was surprised, he thought Arthur would keep the crystal to himself, hearing that he would give it to Cattleya was not what he expected.

"Mum can somehow read the traces of a law left in a certain area, she can also somehow scan my entire body in a few moments without me noticing.

Also she has a high rank authority in the law of destruction, it'd be weirder if she can't tell I came in contact with the law crystal."

Lewis and Lute nodded in understanding, Lewis didn't really know Cattleya as much as Lute did, but after seeing her son, Arthur who could somehow comprehend a law while being below the transcendent stage, he knew she just had to be as ridiculous, maybe even more so.

"Good thing your body blocked the guys in the spacecraft from seeing us, space isolate it.

I won't tell mum, unless she asks first, that is."

Lewis nodded and grasped the crystal in his hands tightly, as if he was scared it would disappear at any moment.

[Authority of Space: Spatial Isolation]

With those words, a small purple coloured dome materialized around his hands and covered the crystal, after a few moments, it disappeared alongside the crystal.

Lewis Authority of space was what allowed him to break into Jarox's pocket realm.

Although he could have isolated it with a normal space isolation spell, using his authority was far safer.

He didn't want to take any chances as this was a law crystal so he used his authority.

"Good, now take me to what's left of Phirex, you guys didn't wreck the second capital city as much as the first right?

I wanna go do that now, you can destroy the planet afterwards, can't leave any traces that we were here."

Lute complied with Arthur's words and grabbed him, before floating away to what was left of the Planet Phirex, as for Lewis, he stayed behind to eliminate any traces of them that had remained and was floating through space as space junk.

◇　◇　◇

"All right, let's do this."

Those were Arthur's words as he stared at the least wrecked city in all of Phirex.

'Lute's team did their jobs a bit too well, there was barely anything left in other major cities.'

More than 90% of the surface of Phirex had been destroyed by the group of transcendents, as such Arthur had to spend a whole day searching for a suitable place to test out Extreme Nothingness.

'Well, they searched while I just relaxed in my room on the spacecraft.

Found one yesterday but I had to wait for my energy to recover, and I was even able to comprehend a bit from the basic part of the law of destruction.

In textbook terms, I finally understand the first line.'

Of course, even for Arthur, comprehending the law of destruction was not going to be an easy task.

'At least until I cast 'The third Magic.''

He had ordered Lewis and his forces to continue the search for another planet with the criteria he gave them but he felt it would take far longer than expected.

'Took them nearly two years to find this after all, and they even split up into multiple groups.'

The requirement for the 'The Third Magic.', was a law crystal, the size of a planets core.

The element; Time.

'It pains me to sacrifice a perfectly good law crystal but I have no choice.

Speaking of which, why is it called 'the third magic', that's like saying there's a first and second.

I really wonder what they are.'

With such thoughts on his mind, he summoned Celestia and pointed the sword towards the city.

'Their gazes at stinging!'

Lewis, Lute and Tasha were watching him intensely, he carelessly said he wanted to test his 'Annihilation' and they all gathered to see it.

'Fine, let's just get this over with.

If I use this method I can tell how much destructive power it has.

Or should I use the chant?'

Spells had chants, skills had chants, some secret techniques and unique abilities also had chants.

But this did not mean they were compulsory.

The chants were mostly there to make one have a better image of the ability, skill or magic they were using, or grant them better control and power over the ability in question.

One may need to use it when they are not proficient enough in using the spell or skill but as they get better the need for the chant reduces.

For the Devilian royal family, the unique ability of theirs; Annihilation, also had a chant.

It was short and to the point, and it was more of them stating what their Annihilation was than a chant.

After all, the current royal family members were all proficient enough to use it without a word, except Arthur that is.

For someone like Creusery, his would be;

"My Annihilation is the flame that burns all."

For Cattleya, it would be;

"My Annihilation is destruction itself."

As for Diablo, I do not think we should talk about that at this point in the story.

Even I, the narrator, am scared of that guy's Annihilation.

Moving back to less scary things, Arthur was wondering if he could somehow deduce the true nature of his Annihilation.

'Mom said it was similar to hers and hers is simply pure unrestrained destruction that completely reduces the target to almost nothing.

When I made extreme Nothingness, my intention was to be able to destroy my target on a subatomic level.

I was only half confident but it worked out somehow.'

The concept behind Arthur's extreme Nothingness was an attack to annihilate his enemy down to the very last atom, when making it, he did not think it would actually be a success until he tried it out.

Ever since then, he had been unable to make any other special techniques or skills like it.

'Probably used up all my luck with that one'

As he thought that, he spread his wings and flew up into the air, Lewis, Lute and Tasha trailed behind him.

Pointing his sword to the city once again, he decided to go with 'Nothing'.

Violet coloured magic power began gathering around his sword, his left eye turned blue and the power of time began to flow into the sword.

Seeing this, he remembered the day he began attempting to create his extreme nothingness.

◇　◇　◇

Long after Arthur became a superior stage master, about a month after the little fight against Jenson; the event that made him begin training to use his magic and aura without his divinity or that other negative energy reacting.

Since he had spent far too long (Arthur felt it was too long when it was actually quite short) as a master realm, he attempted to further increase his strength by making some sort of not so secret technique or finisher.

He wanted to make something powerful while not exceeding the limit of the amount of energy he could freely use.

Unlike other normal superior stage masters, he decided to make something law based that relied on the two laws he was more attuned to due to his heritage.

The law of time he inherited from his grandfather, Kronos. 

The law of destruction he inherited from his mother's bloodline.

The last push Arthur got was when Creusery showed him how the latter used his 'Annihilation'.

First, he thought about the two laws he wanted to utilize and tried to understand as much as he could about both of them.

From what Arthur knew, time was simply the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.

As for destruction; it was the state or fact of being destroyed.

Seeing as the technique he was planning to create would obviously be focused on destroying his opponents, he wanted to incorporate the law of time into it somehow while keeping the two laws balanced.

As for why he wished to destroy his targets on a subatomic level...that was simply because he felt that it would be impossible for them to revive or be revived from that.

There were obviously ways to still be revived in that case but Arthur had little to no knowledge on them.

He then thought of another thing he noticed when Creusery took him out on a small excursion to a realm whose name he had forgotten.

Seeing Creusery burn a monster with basic flame magic, he realised that the monster did not turn to ashes immediately.

It was a deity realm beast with great resistance and would naturally not die so easily from basic flame magic but it did not change the fact that the monster could escape within the time it took for it to burn and possibly quench the flames, either by itself or with the assistance of other monsters. Provided that Creusery let it do so, that is.

This made him think of a way he could solve this problem with the power of time. To accelerate the process of the destruction of his target.

This was relatively easier as he understood more about time than he did about destruction. Even so, he was only tapping a bit of the power of the two laws, a power he did not understand properly so he felt it was not going to be too strong and would be easy to control.

However the reality was different as the action of using the two laws in tandem created something with a similar effect to the Annihilation ability that lay dormant within his body.

As such, he ended up also attempting to control this dormant power without knowing. 

Naturally, he failed.

Multiple times.

He even got injured a few times in the process. Lute ended up healing him most of the time only for him to end up blowing up the magic in his face over and over again.

At one point he even reconsidered his approach but still failed.

He gave up for a while but re attempted it as he could not live with his failure.

And then one day, right as he was in the process of failing and having his magic blow up in his face again, he felt something strange.

The ambient law energies around him thrummed wildly for a moment.

The next; he does not know if he heard it with his ears or it it only sounded in his mind but a voice seemed to say something to him.

"How in tarnation do you fail so spectacularly at using what you already have?"

Then he heard something like a gear clicking in place and a new path opened up to him.

Without waiting for Lute to heal him from his injuries, he attempted to use the power of the two laws in tandem and succeeded.

Using the law of destruction to the 'extreme' limit of what he could use to intricately destroy every part of the training dummy that he could perceive until there was 'nothing' left and using the law of time to accelerate that process so it happened almost instantly.

And like so, 'Extreme Nothingness' was born.

◇　◇　◇

Extensive amounts of magic power kept gathering towards the sword and spiralling around it.

'This is enough.'

Arthur then took a deep breath, before opening his mouth to speak.

'Here goes nothing!'

"My Annihilation turns all to Nothing."

And then, in the next moment, it happened.

A beam. A Hyper Beam.

The laser of energy that was fired from the sword was so thick and dense with power, if one did not know better, they would have thought it was an attack from a legendary realm existence.

The air shook.

The atmosphere trembled as the thunderous roar that accompanied the blast flooded the surroundings with noise.

Not a single one of the buildings or structures hit directly by the attack remained.. There were not even ashes.