[MA] 207. Fragments (Patreon)

Previous Chapter — Table of Contents — Next Chapter 

[Chapters this week: 2/3

Late chapters: 3

Next release: Saturday ]

Hundreds of cultivators stood guard around a giant white dome erected over a huge crater.

Liya could tell the hole had previously been filled with sand-like earth. However, the humans dug deep, concentrating their efforts on the centermost point until they reached half a mile into the ground. That's not how deep Feng Shen was, only where they found the first fragment from the Law of Speed from the Laws of Lightning.

Feng Shen's body was leaking Law fragments to all sides like radioactive material, creating a sphere around him.

His enemy had feared he could recover from the final attack, hence the Law fragments. They weren't natural occurrences; they had to be purposefully manufactured. Shen's enemy had willed his Law-filled attacks to break down inside Shen and stay there.

However, while that enemy wasn't dead, she was in another universe and had lost her hold over those fragments. Her lingering willpower kept them from dispersing too quickly, but it was eroding over time. Therefore, the fragments slowly got away from the boy's body.

The unlucky person who had first touched a Law fragment was probably dead.

After the first incident, the cultivators had dug around the sphere, including underneath. They hoped to expose the fragments' source and had achieved the goal. Regardless, they still couldn't recover Feng Shen and the woman's upper body after they fell down. The latter was connected to the boy through the firmly stuck sword and tightly clenched fist. Touching anything invited an electric attack.

It didn't matter if you were using a stick or a remotely controlled drone to try to move the bodies. The Law fragments could detect the willpower behind any action. They gave birth to lightning bolts that disintegrated both the object being used and struck at the living being controlling it.

It wasn't as powerful as an actual Law-based attack but enough to be a danger to most humans; to survive, you either had to have D+ resistance, protect yourself with D+ magic ahead of time, or be a True Path Walker.

Only the woman's legs had been retrieved because they had been separated from what remained of her body. They had been brought to a hidden underground base, where Liya guessed they would be studied until the researchers realized their only purpose was to be used as a low-C-tier lightning-based material. Earth rules forbid using human bodies for anything useful, including crafting. She wondered how long it would take those people to break that law.

Or rather, she wondered whether they would break the rules, craft something, and take it away before disaster struck.

They had six months before Middle-East China became a death trap for anyone below peak D-rank.

The more time passed, the further away from Shen the Law fragments would reach and the less strictly they would keep to themselves. For now, they didn't create electric fields around themselves, but it was only a matter of weeks. Yet, what truly made the fragments dangerous to the nearby people was that the expansion would be steady until the willpower erosion reached a breaking point. Then, a vast range would become filled with Law-fueled lightning bolts and electricity, lasting from fifty to a thousand Earth years, depending on how humankind took advantage of it.

That's also when Feng Shen would die.

The fragments inside him were there to keep him from healing, as had been their creator's intention. Even when they dug underneath him and he fell down, touching fragments that had already left him, they merely got stuck inside him again without causing generalized damage. However, he would be electrocuted to death when the female cultivator's willpower lost all hold over the fragments.

His resistance, qi, and True Path wouldn't matter; that many fragments striking at once would be beyond him.

So, Liya didn't think twice before saving a fellow drow from impending doom. She willed it, and the fragments inside him ceased to exist.

She didn't touch the ones that had left his body, though. A few D-ranks were meditating close to the fragments, trying to get enlightened to the Law of Speed or related Concepts. They might profit from it if they weren't around in the sudden expansion, which would be only a few dozen miles wide now that most fragments had been Annihilated.

Liya looked at her charge, wondering whether she should stop her assistance now or invest another 10 million AP in him. Or 500 million SC, she supposed. It was a considerable sum even to lower B-ranks.

Entire minutes passed as she calculated all scenarios, from risks to rewards, from low to high yields, and from losses to the worst cases. Ultimately, she reckoned Feng Shen was still bound by his ideals of honor, and she would benefit the most by letting him use a favor to protect himself and not charging for it.

She created an illusion so the humans wouldn't see what she was doing and stood beside her charge, waiting for him to heal and wake up.

Things got curious as his body healed. As a True Path Walker, his body was his Path; Rupturing a Concept or two would naturally affect his physical build. Yet, while his body hadn't been completely overhauled, there were way too many different details from before.

She estimated he had Ruptured at least three Concepts; first-class talents were even better than she had expected.

His consciousness returned an hour later, evidence of how extensive the lightning damage had been. It took him another hour to recover all his mental faculties and be able to move around.

He didn't move much, though. As trained to do, Feng Shen first defensively stood up, removed the sword from his arm, grabbed his spear from nearby, then checked his enemy's condition. Upon finding a dead body, he stored the spear away and sat down to meditate on his mistakes and improve himself.

Liya approved his actions and inaction—like not caring that he was naked. She had done a good job in teaching that boy. She even felt a little proud.

Half a day later, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, stood up, clasped his fists behind him, and nodded. "Thank you."

= - = - =

The Drow Maiden nodded. "I won't interfere much with your Rupture Pilgrimage. I only stuck around to warn you about this one." She lightly kicked the cultivator's body. "She's alive."

Shen was about to correct her about the Pilgrimage when he was alerted about his enemy. He immediately took his spear from his spatial ring. It materialized already mid-swing to cut Yinhu Lanfen down. His aura told him she was dead, and he even managed to cut it into cubes with his aura, but he trusted the Maiden's assessment more than his.

She waited for the woman's head to get splattered before clarifying it to him, "Not this corpse; she's elsewhere."

He stopped, looking at what remained of his enemy.

Shen had won. He knew it. His preparation, foresight, and superior techniques had brought him victory.

Yet, knowing his enemy lived felt like a defeat.

He stored the spear away and picked up the sword. "Inspect."

=

Sovereign of the Azure Skies (D- / C+)

Enchantments: Electric Conduit (C+), Resistance (C), Showy Runes (D-)

A non-standard sword forged to be used as a focus for lightning attacks.

=

This was the first weapon with a ranged classification he ever saw. It only had three enchantments instead of the four or five a C-tier item should have, one of them the useless D- Showy Runes.

"What garbage," he said.

"I've seen worse," the Maiden countered. "It has a core Law, at least. It will sell for a good price."

Shen shrugged and used it to point at the thinly sliced remais of his foe. "If this isn't her, what is it?" he asked. "An avatar? A clone?"

Liya smiled slightly. "This is her. Or was. My domain allows me to ascertain she wasn't Annihilated. That fits her body; the damage she received wasn't enough to kill her. However, it was enough to scare her or, most likely, trigger an automated safety mechanism. My best guess is that she used a body-swapping technique to leave this universe."

Shen frowned to show he didn't find that word strange and was thinking about it.

A moment later, he widened his eyes to show he got what she said and its implications.

All the Alliance laws which humans were subject to had been uploaded into Shen's mind, including general Alliance rules that applied to every race. In that mix, he had received the name of every illegal technique and a broad explanation of what they did, just so they weren't missed because they had been rebranded. One of them was body-swapping.

Body-swapping rituals, techniques, or treasures were similar to revival artifacts in that they foiled the system into believing someone had died. However, their soul was transported to a new body somewhere else, usually previously built with great care. Nothing wrong until there. The issue was when that somewhere else was in another universe.

Shen didn't know the specifics, but souls became vulnerable to the Void when moving between universes. While getting intercepted usually meant death, sometimes it also ended up with the Void corrupting them in some manner or even replacing them entirely. Therefore, it had been outlawed as going directly against the fundamental tenets.

Alliance law came in tiers or ranks. For instance, A-ranks had to obey A-tier laws but could ignore B-tier laws or lower.

And then, there were the fundamental tenets.

Those were absolutely inviolable to anyone. They stood even above S-ranks and dealt with existential matters related to the Void or high treason.

Everyone was obligated to report cases where they suspected a fundamental tenet had been violated. Now that Shen had been informed, he had one Standard day, about forty Earth hours, to make a report. If he didn't, and it was later found out, he would be hunted down and punished.

The silver lining was that reporting it was a way to earn a system favor.

Not that Shen knew what that was. The laws uploaded to his mind only referred him to annexes when they touched on something regulated by external entities. In this case, it told him to refer to the Guardian System workings. Then again, if you gained it by reporting things related to the highest laws, it shouldn't be anything too shabby.

What he did know was that after someone reported something of the kind, there was another Standard day period in which the Alliance would accept new reports on the same matter. If one of the reporters was directly responsible for having the traitor reveal their colors, they were given credit. Otherwise, the favor went to whoever reported first.

Shen quickly checked the system time. He had been out of it for five days. Therefore, whether he would be rewarded depended on a single thing.

"Did you or the B-rank monitoring me report it?" he asked.

If they did, Shen would be way beyond the time limit. At least he wouldn't be punished because he hadn't been aware of the technique and had been barely conscious, thus incapable of reporting it.

The Drow Maiden shook her head. "No. Body-swapping techniques foil the system, and the B-rank is using the Guardian System to monitor you. I myself only identified it half a day ago." She smiled slightly. "I want to report a fundamental tenet violation: Yinhu Lanfen used a body-swapping technique five days ago." She paused. "Your turn."

Shen repeated her words. "I want to report a fundamental tenet violation: Yinhu Lanfen used a body-swapping technique five days ago."

| Report received

| There are currently 3 beings vying for a system favor in this matter

| A verdict will be announced in 39 hours, and 40 minutes

Now, only one question remained. "What are favors?"

Her smile widened as if she had been waiting for that question. "Favors are the most valuable coin in the system and the hardest to get. Statistically, one in every trillion Guardians can get themselves a favor at least once, and the Alliance claims 250 trillion new beings become Guardians every Standard year. That means at least 250 favors are distributed every twelve Earth years or 21 per year. Even if everyone gets two favors, that's still a little over 40 per year in the entire Alliance."

The drow paused to let that sink. Shen had expected favors to be good, but now, it looked like he had severely underrated them. She was only using new Guardians to make the estimates easier, but even when considering old ones, favors would still be rare.

The elf continued, "Getting your first favor requires you to distinguish yourself against the Void. That's usually accomplished on the front lines, but as you know, reporting someone who broke a fundamental tenet also counts."

Then, she explained how favors could be freely exchanged between people, how increasing the "favor wallet" limit required him to do enormous deeds for the Alliance and already have a full wallet, and that he should keep his wallet full unless he was sure he was about to get another favor.

Shen paid attention, of course, but what he truly cared about was left to last: what he could do with the damn thing.

"Favors can be exchanged for multiple things in the Guardian System. You only have a single first-tier favor, so I'll limit my explanation to what you can buy with it. So, five options.

"I'll list them in the order they are most sought after.

"First, you can use a favor to increase the monitoring priority of anyone you care about, including yours. Higher monitoring priority means the system uses more and better resources to monitor someone, thus making it harder to cut them off the system for assassinations. Some enemies will kill them anyway, but most will back off, and you'll know the culprit when they don't.

"Second, you can exchange favors for access to special places and opportunities. You can help someone bypass all sorts of requirements: money, achievements, titles, race, rank, stats, age, universe and galaxy of origin, and so on. I expect to find many second-class talents at the First-Class Summit because of this."

Shen found that interesting. As a clan leader, he would definitely want to use favors to protect his people and unlock opportunities for those who showed great potential—not to mention unlocking them for himself.

"Third, you can use it instead of AP for sub-system unlocks, and it ignores rank limitations. Whenever it's used for this purpose, it's often to get an Inventory before C-rank, extra Inventory space, or B-rank teleportation privilege before B-rank. Any other usage is a waste.

"Fourth, you can exchange a favor with the Guardian System for 10 million AP or 500 million SC. It's usually not worth it, but it might help if you don't have the time to acquire points or coins another way."

The Drow Maiden didn't have to state the obvious truth for Shen to understand the implications. The modern human saying that "there ain't such a thing as a free lunch" rang true in the entire Alliance. Now, she was letting him get a favor by informing him about the tenet violation instead of swapping it for 10 million AP at least.

She was also letting him earn the favor instead of giving it to him from her wallet, which he bet had some other implication. At the very least, he expected it to look good on his records.

The cultivator swore to himself that even if she asked for nothing in return, he would add it to the list of many things he owed the Drow Maiden.

And Shen would repay her one day.

"Most noticeably," the drow continued, "AP and SC exchanges are primarily done in the front lines. You might find yourself with a full wallet but believe you're about to get another favor by distinguishing yourself against the Void. And when you're about to fight Void Spawn, you rarely care about anything other than a power boost to help you survive, which usually means AP or SC."

Shen nodded; that made sense, just like the opposite situation. If he believed he was about to die instead, it would make more sense to spend the favor to help someone he cared about.

"Lastly," the drow maiden concluded, "you can use a favor to make the system less strict. Nothing illegal, though borderline so at times. For instance, the system automatically generates Bounties depending on how many and which laws you break. You can increase your automatic Bounty generation threshold by ten percent for every favor, up to thirty percent. Only complete morons spend their favors like this, but it's possible."

Shen could see where this was going. There was one way a less strict system might assist him: in ascertaining whether he was a disguised Void Prophet. He was being monitored by a B-rank because the system couldn't fully authenticate his identity.

He was surprised to find he was wrong.

"In your case," the Drow Maiden continued, "you'll want to buy the B-rank teleportation privilege. It'll make any in-world teleportation free, give you priority in the teleportation network, and significantly decrease outworld teleportation costs."

"Did you also buy it?" he asked curiously.

She shook her head. "Maidens are considered B-ranks and get it for free, though some stupid loophole prevents us from getting the priority function. Waiting for weeks to complete a teleport that should've taken seconds is not fun."

"Oh, so Marzia has it too?"

"Yes. Go ahead, buy it. I'll reform your disguise in the meanwhile."

Shen raised his hands quickly. "Wait, wait! I already Ruptured all my Concepts!"

He was fortunately fast enough; the Maiden didn't work on his disguise. However, she also said nothing. She only looked at him.

He thought she might be waiting for him to ask the right question, so he said, "Speaking of which, how do I touch a Law? Last time I tried, my Path got in the way."

There was a very, very long pause before Liya asked, "You did what?"

Previous Chapter — Table of Contents — Next Chapter