[MA] 197. Five-Inch Cubes (Patreon)

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[A/N: Chapters this week: 1/3

Late chapters: 3

Next release: Thursday ]

The Drow Maiden had hammered down on Shen that he was too quick to jump to wrong conclusions. Paradoxically, she had also made him realize, without saying a single thing about it, how he often took too much time to act.

He wouldn't do either now.

The dead human might've been a criminal that deserved to be eaten. Shen didn't care. Humanity was not food in his book. No sapient being could be eaten in the Eternal Empire, and he agreed with the wisdom in that. Accepting otherwise would set a dangerous precedent.

He would go against the Alliance to stop that if needed.

Fortunately, there was no need yet. The laws Earth was subject to had been pushed into his mind when they came into play. Marzia had opted-in on a law against consuming humans and sapient aliens on the planet.

The only question that remained was what to do about it. Shen had no time or the will to take them to justice. He had to deliver his judgment right now.

Was eating humans terrible enough to justify killing two sapient beings? Probably not. That meant he would have to investigate if he wanted to do something about it. Which, in turn, meant communicating with those two, and that went against his Rupture Pilgrimage.

Thankfully, another law that Marzia had opted-in, or rather, kept on, was that anyone could see the charges the system levied against someone. Said charges only disappeared if they were judged not guilty by a tribunal with official Alliance authority or after paying for their crimes however the tribunal saw fit. On Earth, that meant any person appointed as a judge by Marzia until someone rose to B-rank and shared that authority with her.

Thanks to that law, the same inspection that let Shen find the ogres' ranks let him know of their crimes.

| Akarumor (E) — 119 / 119

| Race: Tartus Ogre

| Charges: Murder x12, Torture x2, Pillaging x7, Sapient Consumption x44

| Bounty: 518,800 SC

| Takumavov (E) — 112 / 112

| Race: Tartus Ogre

| Charges: Malfeasance x215, Sapient Consumption x86

It was his first time seeing race and Bounty during an inspection. Back in the tutorial, Shen had only gotten information about a being's race or name, never both. As for the Bounty, one only received information about it by checking it up in the system or after killing someone who happened to have a Bounty on them.

Laws couldn't change before one Standard year passed, so Shen guessed Marzia had used some Management Points to increase how much information humans could get from the system.

That was good. It let Shen know the first ogre was fair game. Their crimes had been enough for the system to generate a Bounty on them. The second ogre, however, had no Bounty.

Shen would kill them anyway.

It was clear they had a scheme going on. The first ogre committed the worse crimes to feed the second one, who did nothing to stop it—and Guardians were required to act when seeing an illegal act, hence the malfeasance charges. If anyone came for the first ogre's Bounty, killing the second would be considered murder. Unfortunately for them, Rising Stars were exempt from murder.

The many charges of malfeasance proved this wasn't the first ogre the second leeched on. This was going on for a while. It was probably related to their hierarchy.

Whatever the case, their crimes ended now.

Shen deployed his aura and willed it to cut them into bits.

He had learned that some enemies might have special techniques or treasures to survive even lethal damage to their vital organs. The higher their rank, the more likely it was. Some treasures might even fool the system.

Fortunately, he had been taught what to do.

The Drow Maiden had said that burning enemies into ashes, to their last drop of blood, was the only way to ensure they were dead—except for a few races like fire elementals and phoenixes. However, that took time, and most people didn't have that privilege in battle.

So the drow race had researched the subject. They found out that turning any enemy into five-inch cubes while ensuring their vital organs were not left whole was as good as burning in almost all situations. They deemed it the most effective method.

Those ogres could not probably survive being beheaded and having their hearts crushed, but Shen couldn't get identified and wouldn't get a kill confirmation from the system. Better not to take any chances.

The Drow Maiden's wisdom proved true right then, right there.

The first ogre was thoroughly cut with little resistance. The second was suffering a similar fate until Shen's aura was about to cut through what felt like a piece of their stomach.

Suddenly, Shen felt Law-filled mana coming from the ogre's thigh. He had never felt that Law before and had no idea what it aimed to do.

The answer came quickly. The mana formed a translucent golden shield that exploded from the ogre's innards. It went through flesh and bones without trouble, but Shen's aura was firmly pushed away.

The golden ball also pushed the very earth below the ogre while keeping their body suspended.

It stopped expanding when it was twenty yards wide.

Shen had many ways of attempting to destroy it, but he didn't. Not yet.

He had a plan.

"Always beware of survival treasures," the Drow Maiden had taught him. "The very best ones, which we call revival artifacts, will let your target die for an instant, then return from the dead. You'll even get AP or SC for the kill if your target has a Bounty on them or is a rift dweller,. Then, your target will return to life with you none the wiser.

"Fortunately for you, revival artifacts are peak B-tier or higher because they require mastered Laws and a lot of knowledge and power to work. You likely won't have to deal with them before reaching peak C-rank—in the unlikely chance you ever reach it. Instead, worry about the more common survival treasures and techniques.

"They will be C-rank because they still require Laws to keep something alive when it should be dead. That, however, requires a lot of mana. Only C+ survival treasures have enough power and energy to recreate a body from a single blood drop.

"Therefore, the overwhelming majority of survival treasures you'll find will need considerable amounts of organic matter to regrow the body.

"The well-built ones will have a failsafe that will trigger when they detect they are about to get left without enough organic matter. The finest triggers will teleport your target away. It's not as good as having you think you killed an enemy, but it guarantees their safety.

"Lucky you, teleporting someone also requires a lot of mana and knowledge. Almost always, the survival treasure or technique will merely try to protect your target while sending a signal for someone stronger to come help.

"If that happens, kill your target quickly if you can. Leave otherwise. Don't loiter around the area.

"Only an idiot weakling would give a C-tier survival treasure to someone even you can kill. Instead, expect a rich C-rank or higher to come, and no one can be rich in the Multiverse Alliance without the power to keep their riches to themselves."

To sum it up, someone strong was likely coming.

Shen looked at his paper sheets to confirm his plan. He could barely recall what he had seen the last time he checked, not long ago. His mind kept mixing the words and images with the entirety of his Path.

He found "Combat" and "War" there, and both looked like they might benefit from him fighting someone stronger than these E-ranks.

That confirmed it for him; he disregarded the drow's warning.

If a C-rank came, he doubted they would let him go no matter how far he ran. He might as well try to sneak attack it instead. And if it weren't a C-rank...

Shen was really curious about how well other D-ranks would fare against the drow techniques.

He stopped a few hundred yards away from the ogre, pulled his aura back to seven feet around him just in case, and didn't attack the ogre again.

He would keep it as bait for the stronger one that hopefully was already coming this way.

Whoever was coming to save this bastard deserved no less than Shen had delivered to the first ogre.

Then, he pushed qi a single inch around him and willed it to bend Reality. There was very little of his Path involved in what he did. Instead, he used sheer strength and willpower to brute force his desire upon the physical world. More specifically, on the photons in it, just like he had learned with the Drow Maiden.

He had been told that affecting the world like that was easier with mana, but enough willpower and mastered Concepts could make up for it up to a point.

Light bent around him, turning him invisible to those outside. Unfortunately, he also couldn't see through the cocoon of bent light, only a world of blurry colors.

So he created openings for his eyes and a kind of one-foot-long qi binocular in front of the openings. It gave him a limited field of view, only letting him look straight ahead, but the benefit made up for it. It would also make it so only those who looked straight into his eyes from the right angle would see them.

Shen's eyesight wasn't even that significant, though. He would mostly use his hearing and energy senses to ascertain what was happening around him.

Everything on Earth was made of qi, including most people, even the mana-filled Guardians, who only became fully made of mana at C-rank—and even then, he could feel their mana, too. Shen would feel everything around him. The openings for his eyes were there only to let him see things beyond his energy sense range.

Everything he did and thought about happened so fast that only then did the cubes that had once been the first start falling.

The second ogre's head and upper body had also been sliced, but only the feet were gone in their lower body. The survival treasure had activated in time to protect the rest.

The second ogre's cut-off bits also fell. They weren't frozen, floating, like the still-alive lower body.

Meanwhile, the survival treasure regenerated the ogre at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Five seconds later, the ogre was fully healed. They didn't move, however. They were still frozen inside the golden bubble, awaiting whoever was coming to assist them.

The rescuers arrived ten seconds later.

Exactly one thousand and one D-rank ogres came from his right, moving at Mach 30. They wore what should've been standardized white plate armor, but many had been damaged and mended with inferior materials or outright replaced with differently colored plate or scaled armor.

About a third had Bounties on them.

They weren't rift dwellers, so Shen immediately assumed they were invaders. They might've come in the guise of security or diplomacy, but such a criminal force could not mean well for humanity. That they had come to protect another individual who had been part of a scheme to eat humans—they likely grew stronger from it—was further evidence of that.

Yet, Shen shouldn't involve himself in external matters. He was supposed to be alone with his Path.

Fortunately, this situation was a classic example of killing two fire hounds with a single strike.

Or was it?

Shen looked at his paper sheets again. Almost half a minute had passed since the last time, and it had been enough for him to forget the words and images again.

"War," "Combat," and "Sharpness;" he was confident the incoming strife would assist him with Rupturing those Concepts. That meant he should await. He should fight. It would be good for him, his Path, his Rupture Pilgrimage. Earth benefitting from it was just a happy coincidence.

He took his spear from the spatial ring—also making it invisible—and awaited.

As soon as he felt an aura touch his, he attacked.

[A/N: Oh, no! This is the end of this chapter! How about reading my other novel, Lost in the Future? It's fun! Probably! ]

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