Chapter 350: Mantis Stalks the Cicada III

Arthur - Twelve Days After The Destruction of the Primordial Humans’ Round Table

Two broken wings, one annihilated leg, and a completely ruined set of tail feathers, unable to automatically heal due to almost completely exhausted energy reserves, these were Arthur’s remaining injuries after killing the Lady of Laws and the Eldritch Terrors’ elder god, but they barely registered in his mind.

He’d finally done it. After planning for dozens of trillions of years, he’d finally eaten the Lady of Laws. And he was going to grow so much stronger with her power making up for his weaknesses.

Compared to Primordius or Quandra, Arthur’s talent with Laws was abysmal, even lower than Corinon La Mor, the weakest of the Prime Material’s five elder gods. He’d just always made up for it with his powerful body, his one middle grade True Law of Absorption, and the extremely high quality of his energy.

His seven sin Laws, still at the early grade True Law level, had required him to eat at least three gods with each Law to achieve. And his Law of Chaotic Emotions had required a mix of the powers of five different gods.

Quandra, however, had at least twelve True Laws, eight of which were at the middle grade level, and they were mostly Laws she shared with her spawn, who he’d also eaten.

By devouring the two of them together, he was almost certain to gain at least a half dozen more True Laws, and, with the Law of Fire, which he was already quite advanced with, it was even possible he’d reach the middle grade True Law level.

And, even more important, with Quandra gone and Primordius still having to deal with the undead elder gods, Arthur would have a lot more free reign.

Everything was coming up him.

Then, however, he felt something, and he had to dodge a blast of electrified flame which shot at his middle head, a flame empowered by two middle grade True Laws of the fire and lightning elements.

“Damn.” A jovial feeling mana wave came from behind him and Arthur turned to see a human man with dark skin, long orange dreadlocks, and eyes ringed by electric blue irises. “I guess I need to get better at my stealth game.”

Corinon La Mor, the self-styled Sage King of the West, was wearing a gold and silver robe along with a red gem inlaid silver crown, and he kept sending blasts of fire Arthur’s way as he tried to keep out of range of Arthur’s best attacks, but Arthur, with his much higher stats, was easily able to dodge.

Then Arthur rushed at him. “Trying to take advantage of me? You’re just going to end up another snack.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that.” Corinon smiled and, while Arthur still didn’t feel any threat from the man who’d become an elder god on the basis of a cultivation technique using only two Laws, without any of Arthur’s monstrous advantages, the complete lack of fear in the man’s aura made him feel like he was missing something. “You’ve exhausted yourself while I’m fresh.”

Arthur got close enough and released a blast of fire of his own at the man, one filled with all seven of his sin flames. “Good. I like my food without preservatives.”

There was an explosion in front of Corinon as their two flames met and the other elder god managed to ride the resulting blast backwards, getting out of range again. Then, as Arthur became nervous as he realized Corinon wasn’t trying to kill him but exhaust him more, the man kept quipping. “Wasn’t Quandra filled with those. She must have been what, at least seventy trillion, eighty?”

Corinon kept blasting out his electrified flame blasts and then, as Arthur had started to expect would happen, another elder god joined the fight, an elder god rank telekinetically controlled sword appearing and severing the head controlling his lust flames with a surprise attack.

Elandra, the Elder Goddess of Emotions, had medium toned skin, brilliant brown eyes, and long silk-like curly black hair, the beautiful goddess wearing a simple robe that still did nothing to distract from the fact she had the type of figure human males tended to lust after.

Where she’d gotten the elder god rank sword, he had no idea. But, still, Arthur wasn’t too worried.

Elandra’s skills were less combat focused than Corinon’s, only really having telekinesis, the woman instead focused on charm magic. And—even with five emotional Laws before she’d reportedly lost two by severing her ability to feel fear and any form of passion—charm magic didn’t work well at the god level, where everyone had at least some control over faith energy, let alone against him, who was arguably the second best user of charm magic in the known multiverse.

“So, the two of you have decided to team up against me.” Arthur’s nine heads all grinned demonically, his head of lust having already regrown from the energy he’d managed to recover during his fight with Corinon. “Well, there’s only one option for me then, huh?”

And Arthur ran away.

Even with his energy levels low, he was still faster than Corinon, and definitely faster than Elandra—at least he should have been.

The two human gods moved together, Corinon using his electrified fire to empower himself and somehow also Elandra, and Elandra used her telekinesis to move them both, somehow flawlessly.

Their energy didn’t seem to interfere with each other at all, like they’d been training together for trillions of years, and Arthur belatedly realized they probably had been, somehow.

Blasts of fire kept trying to set his tail aflame, and the blaze was difficult to put out due to Corinon’s control over the fire element. Meanwhile, that sword kept attacking, first completely severing one of Arthur’s wings, then the other one, and only then starting to try and cut off his heads.

But by that point Arthur had realized he wouldn’t be able to escape, so he changed strategies.

He turned around and charged at Corinon, completely disregarding his defense, before sending a good chunk of his remaining energy toward the man in one final burst of chaotic absorptive sin flames, which started to devour the elder god.

Sure, Arthur lost both his legs and five of his heads in the process, and he didn’t have enough energy to immediately regenerate them, let alone protect himself from Elandra’s blade, but, with Corinon dead, he thought he should be able to escape, make it back to his home universe, and then hopefully hide for the thousands of years he’d need to fully absorb Quandra and her spawn’s powers.

What he didn’t expect, however, was that his sin flames were unable to burn Corinon’s soul, unable to affect it at all and only able to eat through his body. Then he was almost completely stunned as Corinon soul flew toward Elandra and merged seamlessly with the woman’s own soul, the Elder Goddess of Emotions finally showing an expression, a wide smile, as her aura showed enjoyment and began to radiate not three middle grade True Laws, not five, but seven, all based on emotions, not the elemental Laws Corinon had been known for.

Corinon, it seemed, had been a clone of Elandra’s the entire time, his two elemental Laws just a subset of combinations of four of her emotional ones, and Arthur was royally fucked.

Without being able to defend himself, he lost three more heads with one attack of her sword, then another, and then his final head, each lost part of himself then marked with some kind of seal created from Elandra’s energy, energy in such amounts that Arthur was sure she’d been saving up her power and storing it somehow for trillions of years given just how compressed and potent it was.

While he could barely think due to his heads not being attached to his body, his chest was also marked, and he quickly felt his energy regeneration completely stop.

Then his mind, normally split over his nine heads, slowly, ever so slowly, started to be taken over.

With a few more swipes of her blade, each of his heads was split in two, making it even more difficult for him to fight back, and, for the first time since back when he’d been a little mortal bird protected under the wings of a loving flock, Arthur Algebrute, Kinslayer, Destroyer of Life, Manipulator of Manifold Lives, the Great Devourer, felt fear.

Charm magic was almost useless at the elder god level, but there was a reason he’d always used the word ‘almost’ and not ‘completely’.

If you took away an elder god’s energy, as Elandra had done with him after he’d wasted most of it killing Quandra, and if you stored far, far more energy than an elder god would normally be able to hold in their soul structures, which she’d done, it wasn’t impossible to use charm magic to place an enslavement mark on another elder god, at least theoretically. And this was what Elandra was doing to him.

“How does it feel, Devourer?” she asked, moving close to the right side of his main head. “How does it feel to be manipulated and have your life in someone else's hands?

“How does it feel to have your power taken to be used for someone else’s purposes?”

She reached out her right hand and patted his severed brain a couple of times.

“You shouldn’t have helped manipulate the destruction of my family, Devourer. And you shouldn’t have eaten my husband.” She smiled down at him, a wide manic thing, accurately reflecting the unrestrained happiness radiating from her aura. “The technique for controlling your soul will take hundreds of thousands of years to complete, the process causing you unimaginable pain. And I am going to enjoy every single minute of it.”