Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 520: So Be It

(3rd Person POV)

At the Demon Castle, Arthur looked over the five Angels standing before him, and smiled. He nodded to Thalgrin and Lorelin first.

"Good work, both of you. Three out of the Ten brought over in a single night, and the council never got as far as sending word out." He looked past them at the survivors. "Not bad at all. I take it the ones who wouldn't yield have been dealt with?"

The two of them warmed under the praise like men who had waited for it.

"Without a doubt," Thalgrin said.

"We did a clean job," Lorelin added. "Nothing left to bury."

"Beautiful." Arthur's smile widened. "Killing those Angels is the same as cutting the arms off the Five Heavenly Pillars. They'll reach for something and find the hand isn't there."

A chill went down the spines of Kessengrimm, Nimuel, and Ysolde. They could not make it fit. This ordinary-looking mortal, sitting there pleased with himself, was the one who had schemed the deaths of five Angels.

Nimuel found some courage. "Fo-forgive my insolence, my lord. But do you truly have what it takes to bring down all Five Heavenly Pillars? And beyond them the Origin itself, which no deity in the history of this world has ever—"

Arthur's eyes came up, and the order came with them.

"Your mouth is silenced until I say otherwise. «So Be It»."

Nimuel's eyes went wide. His jaw would not move.

"Mm! Mm!"

He could not believe it. An Angel of his standing, hushed like an infant.

'I... I can't speak! Wait, what is this!?'

[You are silenced by the «∆». Unable to speak until the «∆» says so.]

The panel hung in the air in front of him, and he had never seen anything like it.

'What is this? It's telling me I've been silenced by this «∆». Is that the symbol of this Outer Deity?'

It was a small thing. Silencing one Angel, nothing more. It was the depth of what had to sit behind it that put ice into Ysolde and Kessengrimm.

Kessengrimm's heart went hard in his chest. 'That's the power Thalgrin and Lorelin described. His words alone are power.'

He swallowed, and heard himself do it.

Then he knelt. "I shall serve you the whole of my life, my lord. Without question and without conditions."

Ysolde went down beside him, head bowed. "Th-the same for me. Whatever my lord requires."

Thalgrin and Lorelin watched their colleagues fold and did not trouble to hide the smugness. Two weeks ago it had been the pair of them on that floor, saying much the same words.

"That's the attitude." Arthur looked satisfied. "Kessengrimm and Ysolde, isn't it? And Ysolde, you were serving the Goddess of Harvest until recently."

"Yes, my lord." Ysolde said it fearfully. "But having seen you, I decided you were the more worthy to serve."

She was quietly panicking. Everything she had been until an hour ago was on the wrong side of this room.

Fortunately for her, Arthur waved it off. "I don't particularly care whether you're loyal to me. I care about results. What I want is the Five Heavenly Pillars weakened; not just their power, their reach. Their temples, their tithes, the villages that send them prayers out of habit. Hollow all of it out and put my own people in the space it leaves." He tapped the arm of his chair once. "Beating the Five is easy. It's their influence and their standing forces that will give me a headache, and that's the part I'm handing to you."

Ysolde let out a breath she had been holding since she knelt. "I understand."

Arthur finally turned to Nimuel. "And you. You can talk now. «So Be It»."

The shackles came off Nimuel's jaw all at once. "I-I thank you for your grace!"

It had been nothing. A single order, one Angel kept from speaking for the length of a conversation. And it was more than enough to convince Kessengrimm, Nimuel, and Ysolde that the man in front of them could take the Five Heavenly Pillars off their thrones, and the Origin with them.

Power that lived in words was a broken thing. Whatever he said became true.

---

A year passed with Arthur living in this other world.

By the end of it, the name Arthur Pendragon had gone past the demon realm entirely. The human realm knew it. The elven realm knew it. Realms that spoke to neither knew it. The Lord of Entertainment.

The one who had remade what entertainment meant here, with films and video games, and dragged the technology of the world forward alongside it.

And it was that turning point that brought about the standstill in this world's Realm of Gods.

Arthur stood facing the Five Heavenly Pillars.

At the front was Xylia, Goddess of Night, beautiful and wrapped in a grim aura. Beside her, Morgenchild, God of Earth, upright and handsome and stiff with it.

Grimmhardt, God of Iron, in armor that had been forged rather than granted, a hammer in his right hand. A blacksmith by every depiction, built like a dwarf who had kept growing.

Erdmuthe, Goddess of Harvest, wearing nothing but leaves.

And the creeping shape of Halvern, God of the Grave.

All five of them were struggling, because the man in front of them had visibly grown in a single year in their world.

Arthur had been fighting them for ten days.

Now he finished it. "There's nothing left in the five of you I haven't already learned and surpassed. «So Be It»."

The power that came out of him met every Divine Spell the Five Heavenly Pillars had left and unmade them where they hung in the air. It stopped being a battle. It became ants under an elephant's foot.

Morgenchild shook where he stood. "His power isn't believable! How did something like him get into our world in the first place? With that strength he could stand against Solarus himself—"

"You're right." Grimmhardt was quivering and hated that he was. "But Solarus can't set foot in our realm. The Origin's law forbids it, that's the whole reason we've slept at night for centuries. So why is it different for this one? What makes him the exception!?"

"Enough of that!" Erdmuthe rounded on Xylia. "Xylia. You fought him yourself, through your Fragment. You've had his measure closer than any of us. How do we kill him?"

"I-I have no idea!" Xylia's eyes had gone wild. "Do you think I'd be standing here if I did? Those Angels of ours betrayed us. They sat in our halls and told us nothing. Not one of them reported that this Outer Deity wields his own words as a sword, and never mind that, he bends time and space like it costs him nothing at all!"

Halvern seemed to accept it before the rest of them. "It's no use. I looked ahead, and I have only ever seen our own graveyard on the other side of him. There was never anything else in it."

"Do-don't say that!" Grimmhardt shouted him down. "We summon the Origin. That's what it's for. The thing in front of us is an Outer Deity standing against the laws of this world, which makes this exactly the hour—"

"Ye-yes!" Erdmuthe seized on it. "Every scrap of power we have left, all of it into the summoning. Call up the Great Origin!"

"Yes!"

Arthur simply let them do it.

They poured what remained of themselves into a single point, an amount of power that should have cracked the realm, and out of it came one clean strand of light.

Then a humanoid figure of white.

"Origin!"

It had no face. It was light held in the shape of a person and nothing more.

Even so, the power in it was such that a wave of its hand looked capable of ending the world and setting chaos loose through the universe behind it.

The Five Heavenly Pillars were overjoyed and started to explain themselves over one another. The Origin cut them off with a voice that never rose.

"There's no need to explain. So this is the Outer Deity I've been watching." The light turned toward Arthur. "It has been an entertainment, following you as you grew. I'll admit that much. But this is where it ends."

The Five let out their breath as one.

"We're saved," Xylia said, the despair going out of her all at once.

The Origin moved. It said a simple thing.

"Absolute Magic: The Realm of Nothing."

Arthur's eyes widened as everything went white, himself and every god and the Origin with them, transported into a space that seemed to contain everything and nothing at once.

There was no meaning in it anywhere.

"Urg! I c-can't breathe—"

The gods could not breathe. They went down, and then they faded out of the white.

Only Arthur and the Origin remained standing.

The Origin studied him. "Still upright. Outside any reality you understand, and still upright." There was something like approval in it. "I knew you weren't a simple Outer Deity the first time I looked at you. Your level is past reality itself, which puts you at that brat Solarus, or above him."

Arthur's brows drew together. "Brat? Are you telling me you're above Solarus?"

The Origin laughed softly. "Above him? No. He gathered thousands of Origins into himself; an Origin like me doesn't pass a thing like that. I call him a brat because I'm older than he is, and that's the only claim I'll make. As for how I turned back his invasion, I have more tricks than he does, and I'm strong enough to hold my own world. That was always the whole of it."

Arthur's eyes stayed confident. "Then if you never surpassed him, you can't beat me either."

"That's right." The face of light gave the impression of a smile. "But you're forgetting where you're standing. This is my world. Your power may sit at Solarus's level, and I can still take you out of it."

The voice that came next was not one voice. It was billions, every voice this world had ever held, gathered and speaking together.

"Absolute Magic: The World Denies You"

Arthur's eyes widened as the whole world turned against him and began to push. "Oh? So I'm being forced out."

"It's unfortunate." The Origin's tone stayed level. "I'll have to rebuild the Five Heavenly Pillars now that they're gone. And the Ten Angels—"

Arthur cut across it, and put his words into the world.

"This is my world too now. I was born into it the moment they believed in me. «So Be It»."

The Origin felt it land. "Wh-what!? You repelled my law?"

The world accepted Arthur, and the command of the Origin itself passed over him without finding purchase.

"And now that I'm native." Arthur did not stop. "I command the world to recognize that I stand above the Origin. «So Be It»!"

The words were barely out when the Origin felt what it held drain away, dropping and dropping, until the man in front of it was the master and it was not.

"I-it can't be!!!" The light shuddered. "Your «Words» are powerful, I grant it. But not this powerful. Nothing is this powerful!"

Arthur smiled. "You're right. They aren't." He let it hang. "The reason it took hold, the reason your world came over to me without a fight, is that I already had the world's approval before I opened my mouth. The world's, and the people in it."

The Origin took a step back. "This..."

"I gave your world a comfortable life. I gave it entertainment. And more than either of those, I gave it peace; I sat the Demon Realm down with the Human Realm, and the rest of the realms after them, and I made the agreements hold." Arthur's voice did not rise. "Under my care this world has had a thriving era, and it's had it for a while now. Long enough that they've stopped remembering it was ever otherwise."

The light did not answer.

"And you, Origin. The Absolute Consciousness of the World. You never did any of it. You never made them peaceful, you never answered them, you never cared what happened in your own house. You let them suffer and you watched, because watching was entertaining." He shrugged. "So I came in and took the world from a passive, cruel ruler who wasn't using it."

The Origin could not accept that. "It was for their sake as well! Everything was for their sake! H-how could they do this to me? Have they forgotten me? Me, the sole ruler, the Consciousness of the World!?"

Arthur snorted. "Yes. They've forgotten you. And your world is mine." He looked at the flickering light. "As for you, you'll be the manager of my world. You're going to work under me."

The Origin staggered, the light through its body going unstable.

Time did not exist in that place. Even so, it seemed the Origin stayed silent for a minute, or a day, or something past a year.

"I shall accept you as my lord."