CH 295

“The time for punishment is over.”

Arthur began to speak. Despite using a low, subdued tone, his voice could clearly be heard, and regardless of the distance, it seemed to resonate in the souls of anyone listening.

“We apologize for our shortcomings! We were wrong!”

“Forgive us!”

The anti-Arthur protesters prostrated themselves and apologized profusely.

Arthur spoke once more. “I do not resent you.”

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“But we-!”

“We are sinners!”

It was abnormal to see these people desperately apologizing as if they’d completely forgotten what they were feverishly shouting just ten minutes ago. They said things like, [Dirty murderer! Evil Korean, disembowel yourself!] However, after being exposed to Arthur’s overwhelming, intrusive spiritual pressure, the protestors didn’t consider their current actions irregular.

“… I forgive you.”

“But-!”

Arthur sighed deeply as he looked at those gathered, who seemed like they were about to harm themselves at any moment. His eyes appeared full of worry and remorse.

However, Yongno knew this was all part of an [act]. Arthur was deliberately creating this situation.

In the end, Arthur looked at the protestors and stated,

[I forgive you all for your sins.]

People began to emotionally cheer, shedding tears of joy after hearing Arthur’s spirit speech. His words seemed as though they were being deeply engraved in the protestors’ souls.

And in that frenetic and joyous atmosphere…

“What the hell….”

Yongno muttered to himself with a thoroughly perplexed expression.

“What are you doing, Seyoung hyung?”

***

The physical world. The Union, the largest organization in the universe, prohibited its members from contacting or interfering with planets at the 2nd Stage of Civilization or below. This Union Law was implemented so that lower civilizations wouldn’t be harmed or unduly influenced as they developed. Furthermore, the purpose of this guarded approach was to protect the development of diverse cultures throughout the lesser worlds.

However, this law wasn’t created arbitrarily.

Was cultural diversity so important? Since the current universe was 14 billion years old, all the different cultures had already emerged.

No, apart from that fact, the Union wasn’t a naturally benign and benevolent organization. Why would they protect the development of a lower-staged civilization’s cultural diversity?

It would have been more reasonable and logical to force civilizations to join the Union or to colonize individual planets under the Union umbrella rather than implementing a relatively hard-to-enforce law.

However, this prohibition wasn’t made for any of the aforementioned reasons but for a more practical motive.

The Planet God.

When a civilization arose on a planet, the respective Planet God was born in parallel with the civilization. This sort of Planet God could be said to be the [most common] high-ranking god.

Despite being the most common type of high-ranking god, a Planet God was by no means easily ignored. From birth, a Planet God possessed a high divine position, so it could be said that a Planet God started at the same level as a Demon King.

Since a Planet God was not meant for combat, its fighting strength was weaker than that of a mid-rank god, but it was endowed with powers from the Creation God. As such, it possessed almost all the powers of a true [God].

And amongst its collection of abilities, the most powerful one was the Great Heavenly World.

A Planet’s God could [ignore the worldview] outside of the planet under its control or forcibly lower its planet’s stage of civilization.

In other words, if someone brought a space battleship of the 3rd Stage of Machine Civilization to a planet below the 3rd Stage of Civilization, the Planet God would remove or disable the battleship. Likewise, if a transcendent with enormous power appeared on a lesser-developed planet and interfered with its civilization, the Planet God would use its divine power, Great Heavenly World, to make the transcendent utterly powerless or drop their [rank] by one level.

Unsurprisingly, this was a severe penalty. To put it simply, a general low-level transcendent would revert to being a mortal and would have to worry about their lifespan once again. As for a middle-rank transcendent, that is, an existence of the Emperor Rank, they typically wouldn’t fear anything in the physical world, but the Planet God would make them lose a rank and become a low-rank god.

In terms of DIO’s level formula, beings between levels 30 to 39 would drop to levels 20 to 29. Therefore, when a resident, someone born and raised on a planet, transcended, it was virtually impossible to interfere with or influence them from the outside. After all, the respective Planet God would mostly protect that individual.

If one was unlucky, even a middle-rank transcendent could be killed by a lower-rank god. So, why would a transcendent recklessly enter a lesser-developed planet? Those in the Emperor Class had more to lose, as there were less than a hundred of these beings in the entire universe.

In the end, the Union Law [prohibiting contact with planets at or below the 2nd Stage of Civilization] was mostly followed. The only exceptions were cases where someone had a rank high enough to directly contend and overpower a Planet God. Additionally, the law was put in place to avoid infuriating a Planet God.

However, not all planets had a Planet God. An accident may have caused the Planet God to disappear, the Planet God could have abandoned its planet, or the Planet God faced an issue and may not have performed its role properly. In these cases, alien beings would often plunder the lesser, unguarded planet.

‘Those damn Planet Gods are always in the way.’

Tan had recently recovered a sizable portion of his previous strength and power and regained his mid-rank transcendent status. However, that wasn’t enough to fight a Planet God. The Planet God usually didn’t preemptively deny access to its planet, though, so Tan could still enter Earth.

‘The problem is, taking such an action is dangerous.’

The Watcher’s Bell had rung toward Earth, meaning it was highly likely a transcendent had been born there. Tan’s current level was 34. If he were to be ranked down due to Great Heavenly World, Tan would drop to Level 24.

Obviously, even if his level dropped to that extent, he would be stronger than a spring chicken who had just become a transcendent. However, Tan had to remember that Yongno had defeated Igniz, who went to Earth with a considerably powerful transcendent weapon in tow.

The difference between Level 19 and Level 20 was huge, but the disparity between Level 20 and Level 26 was not as wide.

Of course, it wasn’t a small difference, but it could be overturned depending on each combatant’s mindset, luck, circumstances, or the surrounding environment.

Due to this, the Noblesse couldn’t do much when DIO, and consequently, the astronomical resources put into it had been stolen from under their noses by a mere human.

The only reason Igniz didn’t face the Planet God’s penalty was that the surface of Earth’s moon was not yet recognized as Earth’s human domain. If Igniz had descended upon Earth, its magic power would have been limited by more than 90 percent. So, the type of magic spells Igniz could use would be reduced to Class 5 to 6, and the humans would’ve killed Igniz while the latter couldn’t properly launch an effective attack.

To some extent, Igniz could have exerted some of its natural draconic body’s powers, but a dragon that wasn’t supported by considerable amounts of magic power was nothing more than a gigantic monster.

“Hahaha. I’m having so many useless thoughts….”

Yet, even so, as Tan looked down on Earth from outer space, he smiled bitterly.

A dark blue aura began to revolve around him.

And at that moment…

“I should have done this from the start.”

His figure disappeared without a trace.

*** Surprise Attack and Copying ***

Seyoung, Arthur, the Knight of Light or the Knight of Brilliance, traveled all over the world. And this wasn’t an idiomatic description - Arthur quite literally went around [the entire world] many times over.

He had already visited most countries. In fact, in less than an hour, Arthur even went to more than ten nations to reveal his existence and make his presence known.

This was possible because he could go anywhere on Earth in an instant. With his Body of Light ability, he could turn his body into photons.

“I heard that, in China, around a million anti-government protestors took to the streets in one city. This was solely because the Chinese president said that Arthur was nothing more than greedy….”

After Eunhye spoke, Yongno nodded as visible beads of sweat rolled down his brow.