B- and A-Ranks: Change in Chapter 196 (Patreon)

This won't be relevant if you read chapter 196 after Nov 2nd.

After feedback, I noticed something was missing at the end of chapter 196 and changed it to:

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Shen would still obey the rules whenever possible, though. He was sure they were there for a reason. He had learned to accept she was much wiser than him regarding his training.

So, he would go on the Rupture Pilgrimage—while doing something he wanted to. No, needed to. He needed it even more than growing more powerful to survive the Summit.

Shen needed closure.

He had previously considered how he constantly had to deal with urgent matters and kept pushing his own things for later. That "later" never came. That had assisted in making him see himself as nothing more than a tool.

His humanity, sense of self, and identity; they required him to find his clan's ancestral home. He needed to stop wondering about it. He needed to find out whether there was a message left for him there or if he had been thoroughly forgotten and abandoned.

The answer's content didn't matter as much as having an answer, any response.

Shen wasn't a weapon or a tool. He was a human being. Controlling his feelings also meant respecting them sometimes and acting accordingly. And those feelings demanded he dealt with that when he had the chance. Who knew when he would return after the drow took him away?

He had twenty-four days, not a single one more.

He willed his aura to bring him the sheets of paper the drow had given him. He changed his perspective so the magically created paper wouldn't disintegrate on his touch and sorted through them.

He decided the one with "Sharpness" would be the easiest to deal with because it was manifest in a physical object. Unfortunately, it required his spear, which he wouldn't use anytime soon.

"Combat" came second because the drawing of two people going against each other seemed like something he would constantly do.

"Unidentified Gentle Breeze" and "Unidentified Electric Arc" came third. They also appeared to be physical but seemed to contain movement, so they were ephemeral. They could exist one moment but disappear the other. He would need to actively seek them.

Lastly, "War" needed too many people and grand-scale thinking, while "Flow" and "Boundlessness" felt too abstract. He would leave those for last.

Shen would keep all that in mind. He would also carry the sheets with his hands to constantly look at them as he moved. Finding other sheets of paper to copy them and keep the copies safe also sounded like a good idea.

That was it, then. Time to move.

He pulled his aura back into himself, picked a random direction, and ran, naked, toward the horizon.

Sooner or later, he would find a road and abandoned cars. He was confident there would be clothes in one of them. Then, he would follow it until he found a town and localized himself. Once there, making sure no one saw him—so they couldn't inspect him—would be straightforward with his new abilities.

The odds of finding something other than a road first were so flimsy he hadn't considered it.

He had been wrong.

Two minutes later, Shen found two twelve-foot-tall blue E-rank ogres. They wore terribly maintained leather armor and were sitting around a firepit.

A human corpse was being spit-roasted on it.