Chapter 385: Zephron Exposed Pt.2 (Compensation)

Aiden glanced at Thera beside him. She was still watching the battlefield, but she hadn’t reacted to the strange fellow at all.

Which is how Aiden knew she and the rest of the other gods hadn’t even noticed him.

Without a word of warning or consent, Aiden extended a small fragment of his consciousness and slipped it into Thera’s mind. It was the subtlest form of possession, so gentle that even the Archon herself didn’t notice.

This was part of Aiden’s power over the Authority of Mind, his dominion as Lord of the Mind Sea. Through her eyes, Aiden looked at the battlefield again.

And in Thera’s sight, the strange fellow wasn’t there at all.

Where Aiden saw a flickering figure, Thera saw nothing but empty space.

Aiden withdrew his consciousness from her mind and whispered, “That’s strange.”

Thera didn’t react. His influence over her awareness had been so light that she remained unaware of what had just happened.

Aiden narrowed his eyes at the flickering figure.

Then, suddenly, a memory surfaced. He had seen this person before. The black and white hair and those sunglasses

A thought came to him, a brief flash of a memory. A demon lord adjusting his glasses over his nose.

It was Zephron.

But the version Aiden remembered was older and fully grown. This one looked alot younger, almost like a reconstructed version of the same person.

But it was unmistakably him.

Aiden had clashed with the demon lords more than once to remember them by their faces if anything. And in that moment, his eyes widened in realization.

Without warning, Aiden disappeared and reappeared directly in front of Zephron, whose form had just flickered back into view.

He shot his hand forward and grabbed Zephron by the neck in that fraction of a second before the demon lord flickered out again.

Zephron’s eyes went wide with terror and the other Uweron mages around him gasped in shock.

But right then, time stopped. The Dragon King had just invoked his power as the Eternal Arbitrator, the title of authority he held over time itself.

The entire dimension froze.

The champions on the battlefield, the gods in the Citadel, even the wind stopped moving.

The only person unaffected by the time stop was Zephron.

And this was owing to Aiden’s grip on his neck which pulled him out of the time freeze, but it also acted as an anchor, forcing Zephron’s flickering form to remain steady. He could no longer phase in and out of view.

Zephron was sweating as his hands gripped Aiden’s wrist weakly.

“H-hi, sir Dragon King,” he stammered.

Aiden said nothing as he let everything within Zephron’s mind become revealed to him.

Flashes of memory played out in Aiden’s sight; Zephron bowing before an ethereal figure of a woman with greenish lipgloss.

A tear in space opening before him as he steppedthrough into the Seventh Universe.

Entering Delheim, becoming a demon lord and gathering among the others

Aiden saw it all. Then his gaze dropped to the green pendant around Zephron’s neck.

He moved his hand forward and pulled it off, and the moment it left Zephron’s body, the glow faded slightly.

Aiden held the pendant up to the light, studying it. “Hm… I see.”

He looked back at Zephron. “So this is the power within the necklace that bears a level of strength similar to the Herrscher that sent you.”

He paused, then added, “You’ve been in this universe for over a hundred years. But in truth, you were just an emissary of another Ruler from another world. The Ninth Universe.”

Aiden’s voice was calm, but there was this edge to it. “So you are the hidden scout I’ve been looking for.”

Zephron’s face went pale. “Wait—wait—wait—please, I have some explanation—”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But Aiden ignored his plea. He stared at the green pendant in his hand, turning it over slowly as the glow pulsed.

Zephron remained frozen in his grip, sweat dripping down his face and panicking.

Aiden didn’t need the former demon lord to speak. Everything was already laid bare before him.

The pendant had been crafted with a specific purpose. It was designed to conceal its wearer from certain beings within the Seventh Universe.

Dragons, Gods and Angels.

That was why, when Zephron had first stepped into this world over a hundred years ago, none of them had detected him.

Not even the Angels whose duties were to check for such threats.

The necklace had hidden him perfectly.

But it had not accounted for something higher.

Aiden was more than a dragon, an angel or a god. He existed on a level beyond what the pendant’s magic had been designed to counter.

That was why he had been able to see Zephron at all.

But the flickering, that strange phenomenon where Zephron phased in and out of view, that had been the necklace struggling against Aiden’s dual nature.

When Zephron flickered out of sight, it was the pendant responding to the part of Aiden that was still, technically, a dragon. The magic recognized that fragment of his existence and attempted to conceal Zephron from it.

But when Zephron flickered back into view, it was because Aiden was a Ruler, something that overrode the concealment’s effect.

This created the contradiction.

The necklace tried to hide Zephron from one aspect of Aiden while failing to hide him from another.

But there was another mind boggling problem with this pendant.

It had had been specifically crafted to hide from gods, dragons, and angels. But not from a higher-level Ruler.

Which meant one thing, the Ninth Ruler, had known that this universe lacked a supreme authority. She knew there was no Ruler presiding over the Seventh Universe when she sent Zephron here.

Which begged the question; If the Ninth had known there was no Ruler here, why hadn’t she attacked directly? Why send a scout at all? Why wait over a hundred years?

What was her goal?

None of it made sense.

Aiden’s gaze dropped back to Zephron, whose face had gone pale.

Aiden’s gaze dropped back to Zephron, whose face had gone pale.

“I don’t think you’re the only one your ruler sent” Aiden said. It wasn’t a question, but he simply stating a suspicion right to Zephron’s face.

Zephron stammered, his voice shaking. “I—I’m not sure. I was only sent by my Ruler. I don’t know if there were others—”

Then, suddenly, his eyes widened, and he blurted out, “But—but I betrayed her!”

Aiden’s expression didn’t change.

Zephron continued, his words tumbling out in a rush. “The moment I was sent here, I severed my connection to her. I haven’t used this necklace in over a hundred years.”

He gasped for breath, then added, “I used the opportunity to escape from her control. I hated being her servant and didn’t want to be part of her plans anymore.”

Aiden knew this as well. He had looked through his mind enough to know that Zephron wasn’t lying.

And about how Zephron had survived this long. Aiden saw that the demon lord had abandoned Korvax in their battle against the Archon Vynthis. It was around that time that he put the necklace back on.

Aiden exhaled slowly and turned towards the battlefield. He had to fix this.

Removing Zephron from the field would create an imbalance. Uweron would be down one champion, and that would disrupt the integrity of the war.

But at the same time, he couldn’t let the demon lord continue. So he came up with the idea, “His existence had to be erased.”

Aiden closed his eyes and invoked his authority.

As the Dragon God, he held dominion over the Mind Sea. He was the Lord of all consciousness, all thought, all memory within the Seventh Universe.

And now, he reached out, extending across the entire world and touching every mind that had ever interacted with Zephron.

Every person who had seen him, spoken to him, fought alongside him, or even passed him on the street.

One by one, Aiden erased their knowledge of him. He didn’t simply remove memories, he rewrote them.

In the minds of the Uweron champions, Zephron had never existed. The leader who had brought him to the Holy Grail War no longer remembered selecting him. The mages who had fought beside him no longer recalled his presence.

Aiden replaced every instance of Zephron’s existence with adjusted memories. To the world, he had simply never been.

But that left another problem.

Uweron had fielded 35 champions today. Removing Zephron would leave them with 34.

The numbers had to be balanced.

Aiden’s gaze shifted to the Valaross side of the battlefield and made his decision.

As Dominator of the void, he reached out with his authority over space and forced Kayden out of the field. Sending him back into Dragonhold’s hall within the Valaross fortress.

The King of Dragons extended more of his influence over the battlefield.

He touched the minds of every leader, every champion, every observer, and every god in the dimension.

In their awareness, both Valaross and Uweron had each lost one additional slot to their total number of champions available for selection.

But Aiden made Dragonhold take the fall for that reduction on Valaross’s side.

In everyone’s minds, Dragonhold could only field five champions today, not six. And Kayden had never been part of the lineup in the first place.

The logic settled seamlessly into their thoughts and made perfect sense to them.

Valaross now had 35 champions on the field.

Everything was now set in place as Aiden opened his eyes and looked down at Zephron one last time.

The former demon lord stared up at him, trembling.

“What—what are you going to do with me?” Zephron whispered.

The King didn’t answer. He simply disappeared.

And Zephron vanished with him.

—

Time resumed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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