[MA] 446. Biological Weapon (Patreon)

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Cylek's strongest one hundred Overlords, only twenty of which had a full mastered Path and fifty with a single mastered Law, had watched the tribulation from further away than the floating vehicles surrounding Shen. When the tribulation ended, they approached, floating amid the cars. One of the three CIPD Board Sheriffs—something that only existed in Phasespace Cylek—approached further.

The yamanari kept two of his four muscular arms behind his back and crossed the other two on his chest. His five cyberware eyes occupied his forehead. He had no hair but a few dozen curved horns no longer than one inch each. His brownish-red skin was filled with black tattoos, and he wore a cultivator robe over high-tech-looking thin plate armor. The letters "CIPD" were written on his back.

"I don't want to kill you," he said through his pointed teeth. He spoke the Overlord High Language. "Leave Cylek peacefully."

Shen raised an eyebrow at that. "Why should I? I broke none of the rules I agreed to when I became a citizen."

The yamanari didn't reply immediately. His soul and that of a dozen of the Overlords present, likely those who could understand High Language, showed confusion, surprise, and suspicion.

Eventually, he said, "Are you truly ignorant of which rule you broke?" Shen nodded. "How did you get in the Third?"

"What is the Third?"

The question made the dozen Overlords more suspicious, some heavily hostile. Apparently, Shen being in this "Third" without knowing about it was ridiculous. He could guess it had something to do with phasespace, but not exactly what.

The yamanari's soul flared with anger before he reigned in his emotions, turning into a black slate. "If you don't know about it, it's not my place to tell. Leave Cylek. Now."

Shen sighed. "Usually, I'd comply with the rightful rulers of a city asking me to leave." He smiled. "But this is Cylek. You're not more its ruler than any random thug who might brute-force their way to the top. Everyone in Cylek understands that. So do I." He deployed his domain, covering the entire city. "I'd like to see how a mere Proven Overlord means to kill a Demi-Dominator."

The guy shook his head. "A shame. You had a bright future ahead of you." He flew calmly back into the globe of flying vehicles and cultivators surrounding Shen. "Activate Protocol Space Stretcher."

Ancient formations etched on Cylek's grounds came to life. Hidden formation nodes at the top of countless buildings flared with energy. The flying vehicles themselves became a formation that had been hidden from Shen's Allvision before now. The cultivators present pushed an endless stream of qi into it all.

Space was locked around Shen, skin-tightly. Then, the Space he occupied twisted. It was torn apart. Ripped to shreds. Expanded until each photon-sized piece was galaxies apart, separated by a nothingness that wasn't quite like the Void, yet devoid of a Space for Shen to exist in.

He stepped ahead, leaving the confines of the locked Space, and looked at the yamanari as if he were an idiot. "Is that it?"

To be fair, Shen was immune to that attack only because of three factors: his One Self, his True Boundlessness, and the tribulation he had just overcome, which anchored him firmly to Reality without nullifying his Severing. Without any of those three factors, he would've died. With all three in the fold, he didn't need Reality's Axioms of Space to exist. The Aspect of Space had still been present, else the Void would've filled the gaps, and that was enough for him.

He was an existence onto himself in a way he didn't quite understand.

"Deploy the Biological Weapon," the CIPD leader said calmly, but a shiver escaped his tight control over his soul's emotions.

New formations activated, and qi was ripped off of all of Cylek's inhabitants to fuel them. A circular curtain rose from the earth to meet the skies, filled with all sorts of golden runes and mystical symbols. A massive red line appeared in the sky, and it started bleeding. The drops didn't fall but moved sideways.

Shen's blood burned inside him, but it wasn't enough to hurt him. His domain, with a mastered Path, was deployed. Hurting him wasn't impossible without another domain, but it wasn't that easy either.

The line widened in the middle, revealing itself to be an eyelid. It opened, and a gigantic eye appeared. The whole eye was made of Void except for the sun-sized globe of blood it had for an iris, reeking of madness and despair. It stared right at Shen.

Shen stared back.

The name "biological weapon" was a decoy. The first attack used the Laws of Blood from the Axioms of Life, but the actual attack was a mind one. That huge blood drop was made of the blood essence from countless Overlords accumulated over time, not unlike what the drow had manufactured in their home world to fight against the Dreamer. Fragments of different Overlords' willpower had united into an incohesive but mighty whole, tortured for eons, and forced into a single purpose: to kill whoever it was thrown at.

The centermost drop of blood forced all others into submission with the assistance of countless formations. That drop reflected Yin and Yang through Fire and Water. Shen didn't need to be a genius to connect it to the aquasols.

While the Blood Laws distracted him, the actual incoming attack would be a Willful Decree.

Shen's smile widened. The infernals had hunted him down in the Alliance for using his Absolute Horizon. Here, it had another name, but other assholes hunted him down for having the ability, the aquasols.

Shen would murder the hell out of them.

Before the eye attacked him, he forced his domain through the portal. His Will followed. His mind connected to theirs.

Willpower was thrown at willpower. Anyone should lose against that many fragments of minds, even if they weren't properly working together. Shen was no different. He could throw his essence at his attack but felt that sending it through the portal would be a terrible idea. He didn't know where the blood drop was located or what he would find there.

There was no need to do it, either. Shen didn't need to face all those crazed mind fragments. He went for the drop of blood essence in the middle of the globe, the Will in the center controlling everything. Every other piece of fragmented mind was moving erratically, flying crazily, all more or less in his direction. They could be controlled, but not precisely; at least, not at such a short notice. He moved on. Dozens of them brushed against him, and he prevailed. Individually, they were weak. The issue was that dozens became hundreds, and hundreds became thousands.

When Shen reached the controlling drop of blood essence in the middle, less than two-thirds of his willpower remained.

That would suffice.

He touched the mastermind. Willpower clashed against willpower. That drop of blood essence had been given a measure of sapience by its owner, including an actual Phantom of its Will. It was more potent and substantial than every other willpower fragment together. Shen expected an epic battle.

His Will bulldozed against it like it was made of thin crystal.

The thing had never been meant to be directly attacked. Shen guessed the portal had countless traps for living beings coming through, hence his sense of danger. However, the aquasols had a monopoly over Willful Decrees, so they needed not to worry about a counter-attack from an enemy Willful Decree. Or perhaps Cylek hadn't paid enough for them to add such precautions to this weapon they had purchased. Whatever the case, the blood eye needed time to properly garner its power for the mental strike it was meant to release, and Shen had foiled all its plans by attacking before it was prepared.

Shattering the central Will Phantom caused countless hidden formations to record Shen's Will. The aquasols hadn't cared to protect that weapon, but they had added precautions in case an unknown foe destroyed it with a Willful Decree of their own. Who knows? Perhaps that thing was meant as a trap to identify rogues like Shen from the beginning.

Be it as it may, the destruction of the Will Phantom also caused the countless formations keeping the blood eye whole to unravel. They required a central Will Phantom from an aquasol to function. Without it, the formations weren't enough to keep the tortured and active blood essence of countless Overlords in check.

Shen didn't retreat yet. He doubted the aquasols would be that wasteful and just let go of all that. He wanted to see what they had in stock when this blood eye was destroyed.

The answer arrived swiftly, in two parts.

First, the portal linking Phasespace Cylek to this place blinked out of existence—or tried to. Shen kept it open enough for his Absolute Horizon to stay connected to this place, but it would keep consuming his willpower.

Second, three aquasol Demi-Dominators appeared beside what remained of the portal. The fire and water elementals looked like liquid fire in humanoid form, their colors in all shades of blue, red, and yellow. They were mesmerizing beneath the heavily enchanted plate armor they wore. All three of them were accompanied by floating spheres that looked like crystal, but Shen's domain told him they were as hard as the most robust Overlord-tier steel, as malleable as air, and with heavy Space affinity. The spheres were connected to the aquasols' minds.

As soon as they arrived, they deployed their domains, sought Shen's mind for a battle of Wills, and turned their spheres into thin blades with which they struck against the dimensional opening that Shen was maintaining.

Shen felt confident in a battle against them, but he didn't know what would happen if his Absolute Horizon was cut off by beings who had studied Absolute Horizons for longer than he was alive. It wasn't worth risking his life to deal with three Demi-Dominators, considering the aerosols had hundreds of them. He retracted his domain back into Phasespace Cylek.

Everything happened in a few instants. Back in Cylek, the blood eye in the skies blinked out of existence almost as soon as it appeared.

Shock and dread spread through one-third of the Overlords, those who had an idea of what had happened. Everyone else was confused, though a few smart ones started to fear Shen.

"Anything else?" Shen asked.

The yamanari started to turn to flee. Shen acted at once. Everyone outside a flying vehicle died.

They dropped from the skies like dead flies.

These poor sods had no domains. Their souls couldn't protect them against Shen's domain with mastered Laws. That was the unbending truth of the tyranny of power. Shen himself couldn't resist a Realization any more than these people could resist his domain. Reality wasn't about equality. Reality was all about power.

Shen didn't regret killing all those people because they had come to kill him first. Many were following orders, but this was Cylek. Living here and joining any force meant accepting the harsh fact that your force might offend the wrong enemy at any time. Some of them might dream of justice and be nice people, but walking a Path was about choices. They had made the wrong one.

Shen didn't regret killing them, but he regretted living in such a shitty Reality where conflict seemed inevitable to progress. His desire to change it was fueled further by the blood in his hands.

He would definitely change all of existence one day... He looked up. Starting with this damn Shaft.

Shen collected all corpses into his spatial artifacts, then turned to the flying vehicles with anti-domain enchantments, clenching Un'Re. Everyone had been involved in attacking him today, and his Allvision had revealed no one showing any hesitation until he killed their leaders. No one would survive.

He struck faster than lightning, and in a few seconds, some deformed vehicles and their dead former passengers were also stored away in his spatial treasures.

Finally, Shen looked at the bases of the strongest forces in Cylek, all of which had come for him.

Payday had arrived.

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

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