[MA] 443. Straightforward (Patreon)

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Shen's spear stopped a few inches from Habnor's face. His entire One Self froze in place as the high elf's Realization clenched him. The gap between Realizators and Dominators was already big enough; Shen was not even a proper Demi-Dominator. He could do nothing to free himself.

Habnor took another sip from his tea and said calmly, "If it weren't for your current mental state, I would kill you where you stand for daring to attack me. I'll overlook this. Mostly. I'm not a big softie like the Gardener, as thankful as I am for this trait of his that leads him to protect holins. I originally meant to explain to you what is this Cylek you're currently at, but you lost the privilege.

"I'll leave this door to my house anchored in this place, and you may return after you've mastered your entire Path to beg my forgiveness. I might forgive you—but not explain anything. That is permanently lost to you. Do not return before mastering all your Path—truly mastering it—or I will kill you, regardless of your mental state. Do not advance to the Seeker Realm before begging for forgiveness, either. I will hunt you down and kill you."

He paused, looking at Shen's eyes, trying to see something in Shen. Shen stared back defiantly. Habnor sighed. "The Gardener shared a few things about your situation. Boy, my last mercy to you will be this advice: you got too used to people seeing you in a positive light because the Heavens ever-so-subtly influenced their disposition towards you. That is not a thing any longer. The best you can hope for is for a strong cultivator's scheme to coincidently be temporarily to your advantage, like what happened to your woman. You'll ultimately fall battling the Divine Mandatary, and both you and she will die. But you get to live a little longer, at least. Welcome to real life."

He made a gentle shooing gesture with his hand, and his Realization shot Shen out of his home. The door closed behind Shen. The Realization never left the door, as the Overlord Realm had rules against it, but the message was clear: going back would mean death.

Not that Shen thought of going back. He was left flying above Cylek, and his mind was undergoing existential shock. His domain was still deployed, but it was behaving erratically in that layer of Phasespace. He felt the world around him, but not as he should. There was no up or down, left or right. Space didn't just feel stretched but also twisted and wrong. It affected his own One Self as his Laws instinctively mimicked the wrongness outside. He felt positively sick.

He had to retract his domain before he vomited.

So that was why Habnor had told Shen to stop using his domain before following him to this place. Phasespace... Shen only knew it was a deeper layer of Space somehow, and that the Axioms behaved differently there. What he had felt fit that description because the world was very odd, as if the Axioms were far away and had lost some of their properties before reaching it. Still, Shen didn't expect it to affect his domain or his very One Self. Domains were supposed to be exceptional abilities, only beneath Realizations, and he was Severed from Reality.

How could the Laws in his Path automatically change to fit what he felt? That's not how things worked. E'livia had spent months adapting her Path to fit the Shaft.

The good thing was that the shock he received helped center his emotions. Temporarily. Shaft had started influencing him more than his other Laws so he could become more stable. So, he didn't feel like barging into Habnor's house.

Shen's reasoning was straightforward: he didn't want to die. As nonchalant as Habnor had been while threatening him, he didn't think it had been a bluff. The guy was very powerful and had a very high status in the Overlord Realm. Shen doubted he hadn't killed someone he sympathized with but acted like a prick.

So, Shen flew away as fast as he could before he might decide to attack the high elf again. He didn't think he would do it, but he was starting to wonder if something was wrong with him.

Why had he attacked a damn Realizator at all?!

He went through the veil to the other Cylek—or maybe a shallower layer of Phasespace—where he had initially arrived. He was back to that place where Space felt a little less stretched. He had twenty-four hours to figure things out before he was attacked by CIPD again.

Leaving the city might be safer, but it might also be more dangerous. Shen felt that going anywhere before learning how Phasespace worked was a terrible idea. This place evidently worked in mysterious ways. Cylek at least operated under rules, and he felt safer in a city where no one else had a domain. Even if CIPD might have an artifact capable of killing him—their self-confidence had to come from somewhere—they had shown they would try to reason with him before using it. That was better than he would have in most places.

So, Shen landed before a fancy corporation skyscraper, approached a CIPD officer—coincidently, a lavil—politely cupped his fists before himself, and asked, "Officer, would you mind pointing me to any place where I might get information about the city rules?"

The Conceptualizer lavil looked at him with no facial expression, as usual for lavils. But his soul did tremble a little. It seemed Conceptualizers only felt bold before an Overlord with mastered Laws if they were inside their armored vehicles.

"You can read the Compendium in any CIPD station, sir," the man replied, using his Path to produce sound.

Shen cupped his hands again and nodded, "Thank you, officer."

He left to seek a CIPD station. It wasn't hard to find one at the top city level. Half the people in the station were Overlords, but only a couple had mastered a Law. Shen wondered whether beings in Phasespace were weaker than those in Main Space or if something was wrong with Cylek.

A few questions later, he was given a free copy of Cylek's Compendium of Laws, a hefty, thick tome with the smallest-sized letters Shen had ever seen. The city he had come from had nothing of the sort. The rules had to be brought from unofficial sources or learned as you lived in there.

An hour later, Shen left that same CIPD station with a black token that functioned as his ID. This Phasespace Overlord Realm had nothing like the global Shaft ID system from Main Space. Local IDs determined your identity, and he had to pay a fee for not having any ID at all—the contents of Octo's spatial artifacts helped with that.

Shen was merely a registered tourist and had one year to pay the fee to become a citizen. If he failed to do so, he would become an illegal alien and be hunted down by CIPD and the corporations and the gangs. This Cylek was an isolationist city-state.

Shen also used Octo's riches to book a room in an inn on Street Level Six, in the middle of the twelve street levels above ground. The defensive formations in the room were strong enough to stop a single attack from an Overlord with a single mastered Law, which should give Shen enough time to react. The room also had a window with a view of a bustling commercial area, including an arena. The arena had anti-eavesdropping enchantments, none of which blocked Shen's Allvision.

As soon as he was inside, he sat down and started meditating.

The back of his mind kept focusing on Habnor's words about truly mastering his Laws, and it felt like a very sensible thing to do. Time to work on that.

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Something must be said about psychological pressure aiding a cultivator in progressing faster. Without a sense of impending doom over his girlfriend, Shen's mind felt slower and less focused. The Laws in that place were twisted, but there were enough hints to point to the correct thing. Shen simply didn't feel as engaged in cultivating anymore, despite it being his primary goal before doing anything else.

He wondered if Phasepace made cultivation harder, but the truth was that his slowness was on him. Knowing E'livia's essence might be suffering under the Mandatary's influence wasn't as pressuring as her impending doom had been. It would ultimately take him at least decades, likely thousands of years, to become strong enough to even become an Ascender, not to mention becoming strong enough to challenge a Divine Mandatary. A few extra years now would make no difference.

So, it took Shen a whole three years to gain control of the Laws he had already mastered and completely master the last two. 

He only ever left his room to resolve his immigrant status and deal with minor inconveniences. He became a de facto resident of Cylek after not causing too much trouble for a few months and paying a small fee of one low-Overlord-tier weapon.

A resident he might be, but he hadn't purchased any real estate; he lacked the funds to do so. The Doombringer's card couldn't be used in Phasespace Cylek, and Octo's items couldn't buy a nice place in the higher city streets, the only ones where Shen would feel safer than in the inn. In fact, four of Octo's eight spatial artifacts were empty, and the four with anything weren't full of riches.

One such artifact used to have a few cultivation resources to make one's mind more open to the Axioms. Octo should've used most of his funds with that because he had been focusing on breaking through to the Seeker Realm. Shen had already consumed everything, but even then, he had progressed slower than before.

Another spatial artifact used to have fifty low-level Overlord weapons that Octo used as change money, of which forty remained—that was Shen's current wealth. Octo had likely kept unique treasures somewhere else, but those were beyond Shen's reach.

The third artifact still had cyberware maintenance tools and spare parts, which Shen was saving. He wanted to learn more about cyberware before dismissing their usage.

The fourth spatial artifact used to have cultivation manuals and techniques that Octo probably gifted to the most talented gang members. Although admittedly excellent, they could only be used by beast people. Shen lacked the genes to make them work, and forcibly changing his Persona might bring undesired results. So, he had made copies and sold them for money, all of which had been used to stay in that inn for three years.

His money should've run out long before then, but the inn owner gave Shen a sharp discount. The owner wanted Shen to stay there as a containment measure for trouble. He saved money by not paying the local gang for protection fees—the gang gave up on insisting after Shen interjected the third time, destroying their closest base—and in the added feeling of safety that attracted more customers. Shen only had to pay at all because the maintenance from running the room's protection enchantments non-stop cost a lot. Even then, the owner took a non-insubstantial loss that he felt worth it because he felt safer with Shen's presence—especially after Shen made an agreement with the local gang's boss in which Shen wouldn't ever attack or bother them as long as they left the inn, its owner, and its people alone.

Three years was slow, but at long last, Shen had done it.

He mastered his last Law.

That day, Shen felt the owner shiver and guessed the poor human had reviewed all his life choices as Cylek's anti-tribulation enchantments triggered. Space was expanded and twisted. The five-story inn was still where it had been, but suddenly, it was also floating high above Cylek, close to the gathering of dark clouds full of tribulation lightning.

Shen had just mastered his Path's last Law, Conductivity. He didn't even need to invest time in getting control over it; the Law instantly surrendered to him. It was a small mercy; he would need it to survive the incoming tribulation.

He rushed out of the inn, hoping not to cause so much destruction to it and the people inside. Time passed, and he realized he needn't have bothered. The hours came and went by, and no lightning fell upon him.

The Low Heavens couldn't locate him. He had been Severed. He was beyond the Low Heaven's reach.

Shen wondered if the High Heavens would interfere, but after a day passed, the clouds simply started dissipating. The Low Heavens had given up, and the High Heavens couldn't care less about Shen mastering his Path's Laws.

That wouldn't do.

Every Heavenly Tribulation rewarded those who overcame it. Shen would need every advantage he could to kill the Divine Mandatary. A single extra sand grain of strength to build upon now could be the difference between E'livia's life and death in the future. He couldn't let this chance go to waste.

So, he flew into the clouds and punched the lightning.

He couldn't stop himself from smiling as he did so. He was a Mortal punching the Heavens. A cultivator defying the natural order.

That's how it should be.

To make matters better, there was no psychological factor to this tribulation. No unexpected shenanigans. No hidden traps, mental limitations, or illusions. The worst this tribulation would bring would be that each of his mastered Laws would be tested individually at some point.

This was a straightforward test of strength; Shen punched the Heavens, and the Heavens punched back. Heavenly Lightning ignored his qi as it infiltrated his every cell, bringing him blinding pain.

He laughed as he delighted himself in the sheer simplicity of it all.

He cried as he marveled at the simpleminded fairness of this test.

After all he had gone through, this was precisely the kind of obstacle he needed in his life.

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[A/N: Special thanks to our A-rank patron, Gordon Freeman!]

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