[MA] 178. Embryo (Patreon)

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[A/N: When I said this arc is almost finished, I meant the Rift War sub-arc. Earth Arc shall continue for roughly a few dozen chapters more.

Chapters this week: 2/3

Late chapters: 3

Next release: Saturday.]

Shen's and the gnoll's aura slipped through the cracks of the unstable portal.

They touched each other.

Shen was instantly slammed by overwhelming willpower and instinctively stepped back midair. He could barely resist—if the prospect of losing his aura in a couple of seconds could be called resisting.

The gnoll took the opportunity to act. They moved slower than Shen, but Mach 20 was still fast enough to do plenty of things in a short period. They tried to step ahead but were stopped by the portal. They touched its boundaries with their gauntleted hands and met an invisible barrier.

They seemed to consider things for a split instant...

...and then were consumed by a burst of liquid darkness.

The change was instantaneous. One moment, the gnoll had been clad in impressive armor; the next, they became a Void Spawn, and the system blinked a red warning in Shen's sight.

| WARNING! VOID GENESIS DETECTED!

| LEAVE THE AREA AT ONCE!

Shen tried to comply, but even as he turned at top speed, what happened was much faster than him.

First, a hole in Reality appeared in the distance in the rift. It felt strange, unnatural. The closest description Shen could make of it was as a black hole.

However, black holes were called such because they didn't let light escape after it entered its absorption range. That thing didn't let anything escape. It consumed everything, and quickly. The mountain, the gnolls, everything all the way to the portal was gone faster than Shen could've blinked.

His Path-enhanced D-rank mind with D-tier learning ability struggled to make sense of what he saw. He quickly classified it as the Void for lack of any other possibility and, on an intellectual level, knew it was nothingness.

Yet, actually seeing the complete absence of everything was something altogether.

It wasn't dark—the Laws of Darkness weren't just the absence of Light as modern humanity claimed. It was the lack of color, matter, energy, everything. It didn't even have boundaries, yet it had been small and was growing somehow. Trying to make sense of it worsened the already pounding headache caused by the losing aura-will battle.

When the growing Void touched the portal, Shen's headache worsened even further. The Void didn't go through, though. The portal, sensing it, started closing quickly.

Then, suddenly, absolute darkness descended upon the world.

He felt that darkness came from Reality rather than the Void, yet he felt overwhelmed all the same. He immediately understood how insignificant he was before true power. The sheer vastness of what he felt invading his aura was such that his mind hurt harder just for glimpsing at it than it had at witnessing the Void. He almost fainted but managed to barely hold on.

Less than an instant later, the Void Spawn's arm pierced through the darkness, grabbed Shen faster than he could think, and pulled him.

Into the Void.

Yet, it wasn't the Void that Shen had just witnessed.

Shen found himself in the rift that should've been consumed, but almost everything was still there. The Void Spawn was back into being the strong gnoll he had seen, and the D-ranks were alive. The environment hadn't been utterly eradicated.

There were some differences, though. A huge Void hole occupied where the fortress had been, and tendrils of sickening darkness connected it to each D-rank, all of whom were now frozen in place.

The strong gnoll held Shen by the neck, and although he wanted to resist, he felt that every last bit of stamina and qi had been drained from him. He also found he couldn't regenerate either. Furthermore, having his aura completely suppressed, he learned, was painful. He felt dizzy, and thinking was a chore, especially after everything he had gone through.

The only saving grace was that the portal was gone.

Earth, at least and at last, was safe.

Shen would resist whatever was coming as best as he could. However, even if he died, he would do so by walking his Path.

It would've been worth it.

= - = - =

Liya cut down the last offender and absorbed his corpse into her Inventory. An instant later, the system flashed with a warning.

| WARNING! VOID GENESIS DETECTED!

| KILL THE EMBRYO BEFORE IT ESCAPES TO ITS VOID INCUBATOR!

A direct red-lettered command. It overruled any other order or regulation, including the one that prevented her from leaving Earth.

Liya moved at once.

She let her domain encompass Shen's aura then—he would have to deal with it—and felt it stop at the edges of the portal, blocked by the Void that had consumed the rift. She ran at her top speed, but a figure stood in her way. The wisp had teleported itself to her path and yelled, "I won't let you hurt a human!"

The annoying thing! It was trying to use the rules against Liya, pretending Liya was about to attack Shen! It was ridiculous, but the wisp wanted the drow to stop in confusion or waste time considering her options, thus giving the Void Embryo just enough time to leave with Feng Shen.

The wisp had miscalculated, though. A direct red-lettered command overruled anything, including rules about murder. If anyone tried to prevent the order from being fulfilled, she had every right to kill them. In fact, Liya was surprised the wisp was willing to ignore the order to attack the Embryo like that but guessed it knew a loophole she didn't.

Liya had a choice to make. She was confident she could kill the wisp before the Void Embryo disappeared into the Void. The alternative was circumventing the wisp to get to the rift.

However, even without the wisp's interference, she wasn't sure she could reach the portal in time. Moreover, the annoying thing wouldn't have attempted to stop her without some confidence—not after witnessing her kill the other Observers.

Reaching the portal in time was an unknown, but killing the wisp was a certainty.

The choice was obvious.

The gains from getting rid of the annoying being were also excellent. It would make Liya safer, all but guaranteeing the drow race would survive with her even if the rest of her people were already gone. And if Feng Shen survived, he would be much safer on an Earth without other Observers.

Officially, the Alliance didn't condemn those who were swallowed into Void Incubator and lived to tell the tale.

In practice, they were killed on sight by most that knew their identities.

The wisp was annihilated in three quick thrusts, much to its surprise—it had thought some stupidly weak B-rank defensive treasure would've been enough to stop Liya.

The portal and her charge disappeared immediately after.

= - = - =

The world shifted, and Shen found himself in a cavernous room with a smaller Void hole in the middle.

His spear and clothes were gone. He was protected by nothing but his skin. The gnoll's hands held him in the air by the temples, and their arms were turning dark—

"PAYMENT," a voice demanded from everywhere.

It was both as loud as the scream of a million people and as low as the whisper of the shiest lover. It painfully slammed into Shen's skull and filled him with a pleasure that made all his pain disappear. It was male, female, both, and neither at the same time.

The gnoll tsked. "The burden of prophecy," they complained, threw Shen to the ground, and disappeared.

Unfortunately, the lack of physical contact with the gnoll didn't make Shen's energies return. The system wasn't giving him any stamina, and he realized the area had not a single ounce of qi for him to absorb. Thus, he couldn't absorb qi from the air to store in his core or turn it into stamina.

As he lay motionlessly on the floor, he wasn't surprised to find out he could see through the walls and the earth. He was inside the mountain, in an underground area, yet from the outside, it all had been consumed by the Void hole. Reality wasn't working as it should.

So he watched the strong gnoll materialize in front of one of the frozen D-ranks outside and place their hands on the D-rank's head. Their arms turned into liquid darkness. The liquid invaded the poor sod's ears, nostrils, mouth, and eyes. Shen could only guess how painful that was.

Eternity and a second passed. The D-rank turned into a Void Spawn, then was consumed by the Void tendril, which faded away.

The strong gnoll moved to the next victim.

Shen was barely processing everything. Seeing the Void had hurt, but his mind was still overwhelmed by things he had felt when the darkness came. The world had felt so endless then. And he felt so insignificant.

The power he had been so proud of a few moments ago was nothing. His willpower was that of an ant compared to the gnoll, but his existence was worth absolutely nothing in front of that darkness.

Shen was nothing.

The realization was humbling, yet the more Shen thought about it, the more focused he felt.

Before now, he sought absolute power in a mostly abstract manner. He had known his father was powerful and had watched some cultivators spar but never witnessed a genuine battle. The Immortal Emperor was the strongest being he had ever seen, but he had never witnessed him release even a drop of his power.

Now, Shen had glimpsed at what awaited him much further ahead in his Path.

He still felt humbled but also excited. If he survived and had the time to grow powerful, he would one day wield such power, the kinds of which his current self couldn't even begin to comprehend.

The biggest issue was surviving.

As if on cue, a new voice came from the Void hole a dozen yards away from Shen. "We can save you," it said. It was male and comforting without sounding familiar or caring.

Shen instinctively knew it spoke the truth; it could save him. Unlike the whispers from Void Spawn that tried to confuse him, this voice delivered nothing but facts.

Shen wanted to reply but had no—

Suddenly, he was full of qi and stamina. He wouldn't waste the opportunity. He stood up quickly and got as far away from the Void hole—

Suddenly, he was sitting on the ground, with nothing but a single bit of stamina, probably to let him speak. He didn't try to run away this time; it was useless, and the Void might take even that much stamina from him in retaliation. Shen would rather keep that little stamina in hopes of a better chance to use it effectively.

The only movement he made now was to turn his head away from the Void hole to avoid a headache from staring at it.

"The gifts of energy we give you are ours to take at a thought," the Void said.

Shen used the opportunity to speak the words of wisdom that Alicia had shared with him many times before: "What the fuck?!" The Void didn't answer. "What's going on?" he tried instead.

"Payment must come before we answer any question or fulfill any bargain unless you become our Prophet," the Void replied.

So the gnoll was a Prophet and had used the Void's power to overcome the rift portal's restrictions. The payment was the lives he was reaping.

Shen considered his options and concluded his best chance had to do with talking to the Void.

"You said you can save me," he prodded.

"Yes. Give us your life in exchange."

"I want to be saved," Shen replied disbelievingly. "Dying would be anathema to that."

"Ah, you want to be saved and live. You currently have nothing you can give us to pay for that."

There was no following haggling or suggestion; the Void simply didn't care.

Shen frowned. That couldn't be all. "You wouldn't start a conversation unless you had a purpose."

"We tried to consume you," it pointed out.

"And you failed," Shen countered.

"We did," it said without any hint of anger or frustration in its voice.

Shen recalled his master talking to him once about the races the Eternal Empire sometimes found in mystic realms. "Aliens are aliens in every sense of the word," she had said. "A human, a dragon, and a phoenix of the Eternal Empire all function differently and have their own considerations despite belonging to the same world and culture. Aliens push that truth further; they think their own way, sometimes beyond our understanding. We might want to trade, and they will deliver nothing but war. We might want to train and pretend aggression for a reaction, and they will give everything they have to us out of their own volition."

The Void was alien. It didn't have the same emotions as a human, didn't think the same way. In fact, how could a thing that should be the absence of everything even think?

Directness would help him here. "I'm willing to negotiate—" he started saying but stopped himself.

Was he willing to negotiate?

The Void was anathema to all creation. It had consumed humans in the Pioneer Tutorial that were only still alive because the Alliance had saved them. It supposedly swallowed worlds and would've consumed Earth without the Alliance. Shen didn't think Earth's impending doom had been a lie; such a powerful entity as the Alliance didn't need to lie to some mortals to get cooperation in their war.

So, was Shen willing to give something to his enemy for a chance to live another day?

No, he wasn't.

Anything he gave the enemy would be used against those he cared about. The fight between Reality and Void was an existential one. He would never aid the enemy of everything in any way if given a choice.

Silence descended upon the room.

Outside, the strong gnoll went from one D-rank to the other.

Shen couldn't move, so his thoughts returned to the power he had felt and his Path. There was nothing else for him to improve at a Conceptual level. He had mastered all his Concepts, and they had become a stable whole.

The next step was attempting to understand a Law.

Unfortunately, Concepts were drops of water in the sun-sized oceans that were Laws. He didn't know how much of a Law he had to comprehend to get linked to it—or even if he would get linked to the "pages" containing the rules of Reality as had happened with Concepts. His life as a cripple Keeper of Knowledge in training hadn't prepared him for it.

Shen didn't recall which of his Concepts were related to the Laws of Spear, but he knew four were. What now? Should he touch on other Concepts from the Spear? Could he even do that despite having already defined his Path would have no other Concepts?

Or should he somehow seek to push his Path to a point where it went beyond each Concept's limits and blurred with the vaster Laws?

The best way to attempt the latter would be to work on his spear art, then his cultivation method. Adapting his entire martial arts to his Path would give him a greater understanding of his limits. That would give him an actual objective to—

His musings were interrupted by the Void's voice. "We can save you and let you live," it suddenly said.

Shen almost unconsciously turned to the Void hole but stopped himself in time. "I won't refuse a free ticket out of here," he said. Not negotiating with the Void didn't mean he had grown stupidly suicidal.

"Not for free," the Void replied. "You'll need to kill the one who brought you here."

Shen raised an eyebrow. "So you turn against your people at will."

The gnoll was still paying the Void, who had demanded said payment, yet it was already plotting to have them killed. Shen didn't think that bode well for his chances.

"He's not part of us yet, only an Embryo," the Void countered. Whatever that distinction meant, it at least revealed the gnoll was a male. "Regardless, he gave himself to us to do as we see fit when we accept his plead. We never promised him a long life, only the power to overcome the portal's restrictions and a chance at invading your mind. In exchange, he offered the lives of his people and eternal serfdom."

A chance to invade his mind. That sounded less than ideal.

"Yet you throw him away at the first opportunity," Shen insisted.

"We struggle to understand time," it said, "but we can tell his time is much longer than yours. We struggle to understand the power of Reality beings, but we can tell you have similar power to our Embryo. That seems to suggest you have higher growth potential. We won't kill our Embryo, but if you do, it'll be the proof we need that you can kill many more than our Prophet could."

"I'll not kill for you," Shen immediately replied.

"You will kill your enemies, and they shall be stronger than the ones our Embryo will be able to touch. That suffices."

That was the last piece of the puzzle that Shen needed to understand something that didn't quite make any sense:

The Void Spawn.

The Alliance claimed to need Guardians despite its highly advanced technological means because only Concept- or Law-infused energy could hurt some Void Spawn. And only living minds could understand and employ said Concepts and Laws in battle.

Yet, that didn't explain why the Void sent warriors to kill people instead of consuming everything.

The answer was simple: it couldn't. Not because of Alliance defensive technology but because sapience prevented it. When the Void hole in the rift touched the portal, Shen's head hurt more. His very existence fought the Void when it tried to consume everything.

The Void's way of working around that was sending Void Spawn into Reality to get rid of the sapient life there.

The rift had been consumed regardless of the gnolls in there, but if Shen had to guess, communing with the Void made one less resistant to it. His guess didn't sound entirely correct, but it was the best he could do with his limited knowledge.

Speaking of limited knowledge, Shen didn't know why the Void could send its spawn into a place it couldn't consume. He also didn't know how many minds were too few before a part of Reality could no longer resist the Void.

But he knew he had no choice but to indirectly help the Void as he walked his Path.

Shen never doubted he would kill many as he grew stronger. He wanted absolute power to protect his people, and that would inevitably put him at odds with others who wanted the same power for themselves. Some would try to take what was his, and he would defend himself. Strife was inevitable.

He didn't care how powerful Valentina and whoever allowed her to mess with his mind were, but he would kill them regardless of whether it aided the Void.

"The Embryo's payment is complete," the Void said. "He shall be given a chance to invade your mind, as agreed. If you survive, you two shall fight to the dead. We shall have the best champion we can."

Suddenly, the Embryo materialized before Shen, and liquid arms held his head.

Shen's stamina disappeared again, and the firm grip became inescapable. The black liquid was sticky and cold to the touch and moved slowly toward his head's apertures.

The ooze reached his ears, nose, mouth, and eyes—

—and stopped there.

It tried to invade Shen's body, but he was a perfectly whole entity. He was his Path, and it bore no outside interference it didn't allow. A knife might penetrate his physical being, but the Void liquid was only the physical manifestation of something aiming for his mind.

Only then did Shen realize he also wasn't hearing any whispers from the Void trying to convert him. He didn't believe he had become immune, but it would take longer expositions to the Void for him to even start getting affected by invading thoughts.

"No," the gnoll said disbelievingly. "No!" he yelled in rage.

His entire upper body turned into black liquid. The substance covered Shen's whole body and tried to invade from all his holes, yet his Path held true.

"Give me more power!" the gnoll demanded. "You promised!"

"We promised a chance," the Void countered, "not the power to overcome his defenses."

"Ahhhhh!" the gnoll screamed.

He kept trying.

Shen's Path was never pierced.

"That is enough," the Void said with a calm voice. "You had your chance. You failed."

Suddenly, Shen was standing in one corner of the room, fully healed and brimming with energy. The pain and confusion in his head were gone. His clothes and weapon had been returned to him.

The Embryo was on the other side—far enough for their auras not to touch each other.

"KILL!" the all-encompassing yet intimate voice commanded.

Shen rushed at the gnoll.

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