Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2445 An offer to the Behemoth

"....!" Helmor felt an intense and deeply unpleasant sense of humiliation when Robin simply lowered his gaze and returned to his drawing, continuing with a steady hand as though everything happening on the other side of that golden doorway had absolutely nothing to do with him.

The Soul Shard fell completely silent as well, offering Helmor no further words to respond to, while high above them, that bastard Zavaros didn't utter even a single word to break the suffocating silence that had settled over the situation... Helmor merely continued holding Theo high in the air with one hand, staring ahead while Theo himself had already lost consciousness from the sheer accumulation of pain and damage he had suffered, along with the crushing feelings of humiliation and failure weighing upon him.

Helmor genuinely didn't know what he should do next...

If he simply lowered Theo and released him now without receiving something substantial in return, especially after everything that had just been said between them, then that would amount to an even greater humiliation against him.

But if he stubbornly continued holding Theo like this until the young man eventually died... there was something inside Helmor telling him that Robin's words from moments ago had actually been true. That person sitting calmly on the other side of the doorway possessed tremendous power that he was concealing extremely well, power that might genuinely be capable of killing Helmor the instant Robin stepped through that doorway, even if Helmor immediately used his secret weapon against him.

So what exactly was he supposed to do in a situation like this? What was he supposed to do while this unbearable silence continued?!

"...Hmm?" The young man sitting cross-legged on the ground beside Robin finally opened his eyes after sensing that the atmosphere around him was no longer as stable and undisturbed as he had become accustomed to.

"Huh?!" His attention immediately landed upon the strange golden doorway nearby, and he quickly rose to his feet in confusion, trying to understand what was happening. Then, the moment he saw what Helmor was holding in his hand on the other side, his expression changed and he shouted, "Big Brother Theo!!"

Without thinking twice or wasting even an instant considering the danger on the other side, he charged straight through the doorway, passed directly through Robin's golden-white Soul Shard, and then stopped in front of Helmor with an extremely serious expression. The aura of a Soul Master fully prepared to enter battle surrounded him, while beyond that aura there was another dangerous presence that appeared ready to be activated at any moment... Then he stared directly at Helmor and shouted, "Give me Second Brother!!"

"...." Helmor's eyes slowly widened as his attention shifted away from Theo and settled completely upon the young man who had suddenly appeared before him. "First-stage Spacetime?"

This was far from the first time Helmor had personally witnessed Spacetime being activated before him. Throughout his long life, he had killed several Spacetime users with his own hands before they had been given the opportunity to mature, finding and tracking them through the cosmic rejection they attracted, so he didn't need any prolonged examination or complicated analysis; with a single glance, he immediately recognized exactly what the young man standing before him was using.

Then Helmor abruptly turned toward Robin in shock, his eyes moving through the golden doorway because he wanted to see Robin's reaction after the young man's true nature had been exposed so openly in front of him.

But Robin was still sitting there and drawing with the same steady hand, without even the slightest visible disturbance in his movements, as though he hadn't heard a single word of what Helmor had just said...

"How long are you going to continue pretending that you don't care about anything?" Helmor slowly raised his head, and the look within his eyes became increasingly dangerous as Robin's continued indifference irritated him even further. "Don't you understand what showing this little respect toward someone might eventually drive that person to do?"

"...." Robin finally stopped moving his hand, then leaned his back comfortably against his seat instead of showing the reaction Helmor had apparently been waiting for. "Let him go, and I'll refrain from interfering in your battle against Hedrick. How about that?"

"....." Helmor gritted his teeth with such force that the irritation within him became increasingly difficult to suppress.

Wasn't that exactly what Robin was already doing right now? Wasn't Robin's original intention from the very beginning simply to remain exactly where he was, stay out of that battle, and continue drawing whatever he had been drawing? Only moments earlier, Robin himself had explicitly told Helmor to return to fighting Hedrick and stop making matters personal... So was the agreement Robin was now offering him in exchange for Theo's life really nothing more than returning everything to precisely the same situation it had already been in before Helmor captured Theo?!

Then Helmor's eyelid twitched slightly for a brief moment as a new realization suddenly crossed his mind...

Robin's offer... was he actually offering to simply forget everything that had happened moments ago, overlook what Helmor had done to Theo, and refrain from punishing him for it afterward?

Was Robin really looking down on him and treating him with this level of contempt, to the point where merely promising not to retaliate for what had already happened was supposed to count as something Helmor received in return?!

But...

No matter how humiliating it sounded when he thought about it that way, it was still an offer, and Robin had finally placed something on the table rather than simply demanding Theo's release for nothing.

Poof

Helmor finally loosened his grip and released Theo without saying anything else, allowing the unconscious young man's body to fall heavily downward until it slammed into the sand beneath him with considerable force.

"Second Brother!!" The young man reacted in the blink of an eye, moving toward Theo almost immediately after Helmor released him, snatching his unconscious body from the ground and rushing straight back toward the golden passage without the slightest hesitation, while Helmor merely watched and made no attempt whatsoever to stop him.

Whoosh The instant he crossed through the doorway and reached the other side, Robin's golden-white Soul Shard also transformed into a stream of power and rushed back into Theo's head. There was no longer an anchor remaining for the Shard to attach itself to on this planet after Theo had crossed through the passage, so naturally, it had no choice but to leave along with him.

That entire chain of events, from the moment Helmor released Theo until both Theo and the Soul Shard disappeared through the doorway, had taken less than a single second, leaving Helmor standing there completely alone before the golden passage, staring through the open doorway toward Robin on the other side.

"Asir." Robin gave Theo's condition a quick examination without wasting unnecessary time. "Take him to the field hospital and bring people from the Life Forces and the Genesis Forces to work on treating any difficult injuries they find, while you personally take responsibility for dealing with any spiritual problems... His injuries are minor and external. If he's properly taken care of, he'll be completely fine within a few days."

"Yes!!" Asir immediately lifted Theo securely into his arms and jumped down from the mountain without wasting another moment, clear signs of panic still covering his face as he hurried away with him.

"Heh~" Robin watched Asir as he rapidly disappeared with Theo, making sure the two had left before turning his attention back toward Helmor through the still-open golden doorway, his sleepy half-open eyes once again settling upon the Destruction Behemoth. "It pains me to let the person who did this to my son simply walk away without paying any price for it, but an agreement is an agreement... You can go now. Continue your fight with Zavaros... or whatever it is you've been doing."

Then, apparently considering the matter completely finished, Robin bent over his drawing once again and calmly resumed what he had been doing before, returning his attention to the paper in front of him.

"Wait!!" Helmor suddenly shouted with considerable force before the golden doorway could close and cut off the connection between them.

"Hmm..." Robin merely responded with a quiet hum without bothering to lift his head from his work. It was obvious from his posture and the continued movement of his hand that he was occupied with whatever he was drawing, but at the very least, he didn't immediately close the doorway after hearing Helmor call out to him.

"...What exactly does the Seer want?" Helmor finally asked in a deep voice, his attention now focused entirely upon Robin rather than the battle he had been fighting moments earlier. "Why is he putting everything on the line during this cycle?"

"Heh." Robin released a small chuckle after hearing the question. "It's a secret. Whoosh." Then, while continuing to draw without lifting his gaze from the paper, he raised one finger and placed it over his lips in a gesture of secrecy. "But I'd actually like to hear... why do you think he's doing it?"

This wasn't the first time Robin had heard someone claim that the Seer was responsible for everything he possessed and for the power he had accumulated, but there was absolutely no reason for him to become angry about such an assumption. It was far better for all of them to place their explanations upon another person and convince themselves that the Seer was the one weakening, the one planning behind the scenes, and the one responsible for everything that was currently happening, rather than allowing their attention to shift toward Robin himself and begin examining him too carefully.

And it wasn't merely them whose attention needed to remain elsewhere... the same applied to their masters as well.

What exactly would their reaction be if they discovered that Robin had already undergone Transcendence and that his body itself had begun to change as a result?

Tsk tsk~ Something like that absolutely couldn't be allowed to happen, at least not now.

"My opinion?" Helmor narrowed his eyes slightly as he studied Robin through the golden doorway. It was obvious enough that Robin wanted to draw him into speaking and extract more information from his words... but Helmor wanted exactly the same thing from this conversation, so neither side had any reason to end it just yet.

"...My opinion is that this is one final, desperate attempt to remain in a position that never belonged to him in the first place." Helmor spoke with obvious mockery in his voice, no longer hiding what he thought about the matter. "After losing his Seals during two consecutive cycles, it's obvious that he wants to gamble absolutely everything on this cycle in the hope that he might recover at least some of what he's already lost, but in all likelihood, he'll simply fall to the lowest of the low, exactly as those who came before him eventually did."

"Oh..." Robin's eyebrows rose slightly for the first time as his hand finally stopped moving across the drawing, apparently finding what Helmor had just said interesting enough to deserve his full attention. "Is the Seer really in that much trouble? He always talks to me as though he's the king of the entire world... Have I actually been deceived about him all this time? Tsk tsk~ And those Seals he keeps losing... they sound extremely valuable."