[MA] 142. Not My Call to Make (Patreon)

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[A/N: 1/3 this week. Next one in a few minutes.]

Earth was too weak to withstand an S-rank for too long. The rift's artificially crafted space, fortunately, wasn't. The portal blinked out as an overwhelming presence descended upon the world.

The Universe's Superintendent wouldn't want anyone to witness or feel them. Earth was on lockdown, and the rift had a delicate balance of power. If they merely glanced at him, things would change for better or worse for everyone involved—such was the grandness of an S-rank.

Liya was frozen because she had been the one to call him. Fortunately, as a half-step B-rank—a C-rank only a purchase away from ranking up—she could protect her Path from the intrusive presence of the Superintendent's Realization as long as it wasn't weaponized against her.

However, she couldn't see past the blinding light and the outline of a giant four-pointed star descending from the skies. The being glanced at her, and she felt wholly exposed. She had directly analyzed Shen's body and actions, but this being was a Law unto themselves. They were Reality incarnate and could pick apart everything she was with ease.

The light dimmed quickly, but it felt like an eternity to her. She was witnessing something too grand for her mind to completely follow. Eventually, she saw the skies again, and the being was revealed.

The Universe's Superintendent was a male kyrt, his sex evidenced by him having four metal limbs instead of six. His was a race of darkness-metal elementals, a ball of pure darkness surrounded by metallic limbs. The shadow and the metal transitioned so smoothly that it was impossible to tell where one started and the other ended. He kept his four limbs equidistant from each other, forming a four-pointed star.

Not all kyrt had faces, as it wasn't part of their intrinsic existence, but the Superintendent had one. It looked like a child had painted him one with white paint. He had two beads for eyes, two curves above for eyebrows, a tilted V for a nose, and a thin line for a mouth.

Some in the Alliance took such faces as mockery, but Liya knew it ironically marked that kyrt as part of the pro-Alliance faction. They created faces, as imperfect as they were, to help others understand where they were looking and to feel less weirded by a ball of darkness releasing sound. Most high-ranked beings had no trouble with that, but a Superintendent sometimes had to deal with weaklings such as Liya.

The Superintendent glided down slowly until it was a few feet above Liya. He wasn't too big, only about thirty feet from one point to the other.

After glancing at her and seeing whatever it did, he looked around. His face betrayed no emotion until he found Feng Shen. When he did, his eyebrows got further away from his dot-eyes in surprise.

He turned back to her and asked, "You're a dark elf, are you not?" His mouth became two lines as he spoke, like a mouth. His voice was jovial, a little high-pitched.

The Multiverse Alliance was present in dozens of universes. The exact number was a secret for security purposes, but the drow believed it to be thirty-seven. Each universe usually had at least seven races as part of the Alliance, and some races were present in billions of star systems.

All things considered, the drow were but a small race in a single universe. They had more B-ranks than most races, making them strong but still below the elite level in the multiverse—that status required an A-rank. It was no surprise the Superintendent was asking for confirmation of her identity instead of affirming it. He probably wasn't from their universe and had only seen a picture or read about the drow somewhere.

"Yes, your eminence," Liya answered without offering further information.

She wouldn't volunteer any word unless she had no choice. Although his attempt to make itself more relatable to Alliance citizens was an indicator of him not being an asshole—no pun intended—she wouldn't bet her life on that.

"I understand your race is new and sheltered by necessity," he said. "I don't believe you would have the knowledge to understand what's going on with that... human, I believe that race is called, isn't it?"

"Yes, your eminence."

"It makes me very curious to hear what you think is happening here," he said with amusement. "Tell me, child, why did you call me?"

"I believe the system has been hacked, your eminence."

"Oh? That was your supposition?" He sounded even more amused now. "Explain to me how you reached it."

Liya explained her thought process from beginning to end. She told him what made her suspicious, her initial assumptions, the entire process of drawing a conclusion, and her findings.

When she was done, the elemental's drawn face moved up and down as if nodding. "I see. An interesting tale. You have a very logical mind—if lacking the right information to draw the correct conclusion." He turned to Feng Shen. "Such an interesting race. Did you know they have dragon genes? And this."

He pointed a metallic limb his way. A tiny, golden point left the human's body and came floating until it was a few inches from the limb.

Liya opened her mouth to ask if that was the strange energy she had felt, but she stopped herself in time. Speaking out of turn might be the last thing she ever did.

The Superintendent seemed to guess her confusion. "No," he said, "this is not the psychic energy you felt. Instead, this is a sneaky, sneaky A-rank Path that you wouldn't be able to feel no matter how long you tried, not even on Earth. It's part of the boy's very existence as a human, of his genetic build, of his identity.

"It's obvious to me that the human race produced a still-alive—yet unregistered—A-rank in the past, the one that modified their genes and left this strange Path in all of them. Curious, isn't it?

"Not even other S-ranks would notice it without examining a human for long enough, as I just did, which would be impossible on Earth. The rift makes it possible, but which S-rank, or specialized A-rank investigator, would care to look at any member of the human race before it survived a few standard years, thus proving themselves worthy of the time?

"Whoever did this was a skilled A-rank who knew how the Alliance worked."

He turned in a random direction. "This boy is a cultivator, and I see human cultivators in this same galaxy. That would be an obvious connection, yet the United Republic of Imperia told a tale—" He stopped talking. "You don't need to know that."

The golden ball returned to Feng Shen, and the Superintendent turned to Liya. "The Guardian System wasn't hacked. The System Administrator herself locked the information because she was ordered by a being with a higher power and authority than her. No one will dare risk their lives for a D-rank, no matter how much they would like to remedy this unlawful situation. I shall do nothing about it. That is my final decision." He started rising to the skies. "The rift portal will remain closed for a couple of hours until the echoes of my Realization are weakened enough to not damage Earth."

Then he simply disappeared without another word. The world started moving again, projectiles and spells striking Feng Shen with no mercy.

Liya's mind started working fast.

The kyrt had left no room for negotiation, but he had talked a lot about seemingly inconsequential things. Liya knew better. An S-rank didn't waste their time on monologues with unaffiliated C-ranks for no reason.

One of the things he had said was that the rift was closed and would remain so for a while. That was very important. Rifts connected to a planet were considered part of that planet for all purposes, but closed rifts were exterior spaces. Just by being in a closed rift outside Earth, Liya was already disobeying the rules of being an Observer.

And yet, she had not received any notification revoking her status.

That meant this was a gray area—or was being treated like one. The Universe's Superintendent and the System Administrator—she had never even known there was an official administrator!—had agreed on giving her a chance to save her charge. The kyrt had said he would like to remedy this unlawful situation, but this was probably the furthest he was willing to go, considering the risks he had mentioned.

Liya couldn't even imagine something that risked an S-rank's life, so she didn't waste time on that. She would do what she could for her charge. That was the drow way.

She kept going through everything the kyrt had said and done and concluded the chance had to do with the "United Republic of Imperia" she had never heard anything about. An A-rank human was supposedly hiding there—and for some reason, their Path could be found inside all humans. They might be willing to help the Human Rising Star.

An Observer couldn't contact the outside world without losing their status. Yet, that ship had obviously sailed, so Liya said, "Send an official message in the drow name to the United Republic of Imperia representatives: Feng Shen will die unless someone is willing to remove the... psychic energy from his mind. An A-rank is needed."

She had also never heard of psychic energy before. Today was a day of great discoveries.

| Message sent.

She watched Shen's HP—

This time, the world didn't stop, but everything slowed down to a crawl. Space twisted, and a being stepped into the world, coming from her charge—probably from the alien Path inside him.

The newcomer was an enormous Abyssal Dragon the size of a few stars, too big to fit into that rift.

Despite his actual size, he twisted space around himself to be no larger than the fortress and touch no one. It was as if he was there yet not; the gnolls didn't truly superimpose on him, yet she couldn't explain it in any other way.

His scales were darker than the night, and his light blue eyes released an eerie shining fog.

He looked around as if confused at first. When his eyes met Feng Shen, they showed surprise, followed by understanding and delighted laughter.

"You old bastard!" he bellowed to the skies. "I see, I see!" He laughed harder. "That was smart, but no plan survives first contact with reality, does it?"

Liya was glad someone had come but felt only B-rank power coming from that being. "We need an A-rank to deal with the psychic energy," she said.

The dragon looked at her, his warm smile becoming a cold stare that could freeze stars. Literally. Liya felt herself freezing and had to use her domain to prevent that.

"Psychic energy?" he harrumphed.

Suddenly, he wasn't B-rank anymore. For a split second, something else became part of Reality. She had felt it once before and knew that for what it was: an A-rank was imposing their Path on it.

And just like that, the strange energy in Feng Shen's was gone.

"They dare touch a dragon now, do they?" the Abyssal Dragon growled. "We lost the war last time, but it looks like they forgot the price they had to pay."

He harrumphed again. Reality twisted; Feng Shen's brain was changed into something closer to a drow's, and his body was fully healed. More importantly, the A-rank Path, which she had learned to identify after feeling it directly, was also erased. Feng Shen had lost his connection to whatever being had been keeping tabs on him before.

Liya felt no mana being used. Instead, she recognized what she was now sure to be qi.

That, more than anything, startled her.

Dragons...

Dragons couldn't cultivate. That was common sense. In fact, she was aware of at least three enormous incidents that had been solved without galaxy-wide bloodshed because the evidence pointed at a cultivator being the culprit, and there was only a dragon around.

That was huge. Enormous. That changed everything.

Suddenly, Liya felt fear, for she had just been let in on something she was absolutely sure she wasn't supposed to know.

"Kid, listen well," the dragon said. "Revealing my power sacrificed a lot of leverage and destroyed many plans. This is the last thing we'll do for the boy; this is enough to repay what his father did for us. He's on—"

He was interrupted when Reality itself started shaking quickly as if it had been put into a supersonic blender.

The dragon looked up and said, "Was the Bridge always this efficient?" He turned back to Liya. "As I was saying, you'll receive no further help with Feng Shen; this is already more than even I would sacrifice for the boy. Fortunately for him, this was not my call to make. Either way, he's alone and has no backing now. You helped the boy, so I'll let you live, but keep quiet about my power, or I'll come for you.

"I checked this place's recent past and heard what you told the kyrt. Don't investigate what happened to the boy, and don't let him tell you. If you do, your entire race may be implicated for the help you just provided. Just teach him that sometimes bending is better than breaking, and let us all hope for the best."

As soon as he finished, he broke the spacetime continuum. Liya felt it like glass shattering. Looking at that place's past, as the dragon had just done, became impossible without spending a lot of time and resources to repair spacetime.

Then, a black line appeared in thin air and widened into a large slit of pure blackness. The dragon went into the Void. At the exact same moment, the trembling of Reality reached a peak, and three cthulhus simply materialized high in the skies. The massive tentacular A-rank beings glanced at the Void where the dragon had escaped before disappearing again.

A few instants later, the opening into the Void was mended by the Laws of Reality.

Time sped up, returning to its normal pace.

Feng Shen, fully healed, acted at once.

[A/N: Yes, cthulhus are a race in this novel.]

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