[MA] 208. Humbled (Patreon)

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[A/N: Sorry I'm late. On the bright side, I'll release one of the late chapters next week! \o/

Chapters this week: 3/3

Late chapters: 3

Next release: Tuesday ]

"I touched a Law?" Feng Shen repeated unhelpfully.

Liya stared at the boy, doing her best not to tear into his soul and glimpse what was inside.

There were only a few ways of analyzing someone's Path, none healthy. As they went, soul rendering was relatively harmless in that it could even be reversed if she perfectly memorized everything inside the instant she was in and didn't leave it open for too long. Then, it only became a matter of healing his soul and smoothing the edges correctly to remove external influences.

"Did you Rupture all your Concepts?" she asked.

"Yes?" he replied, confused.

Not as informative an answer as she'd like, but good enough to guarantee his survival.

"When was that?"

"I finished when I was fighting Yinhu Lanfen, if that's what you want to know."

"So, less than three Earth days from the moment you started your Pilgrimage. And you didn't try to Rupture a Concept before that?"

"I didn't even know it was possible."

Liya nodded as she revisited everything she knew on the subject and understood what was going on.

His reveal had surprised her enough that even her controlled emotions had spiked a little. The boy didn't know what he had done in three days took others years or decades. Second-class talents took months to years. She had expected the process to take at least a few months, even for a first-class talent.

But while shocking, the truth was simple enough. "I never told you what the Alliance means by 'talent.' It's basically the unique ability to bridge gaps regardless of the odds. An unexplained statistical error that cannot be trained or reproduced under controlled circumstances. It truly comes to bear in real-life situations.

"That made you forget you're a human being. You had a goal of becoming one with the spear or some other such nonsense and were pursuing it. Your talent worked against you. Then, it worked in your favor when I pointed you in the right direction. Your training was faster than someone with your rank and learning ability could achieve, but not overwhelmingly so. Your talent helped a little, but it doesn't shine in controlled environments.

"Or maybe it did shine in a way I hadn't noticed: it helped you reverse the advances toward becoming a spear, which might've run much deeper than I expected. I wasn't controlling the reversal, only pushing you. Thus, your talent was in full swing.

"Just like it shone out here. You knew where you wanted to go and reached for it. I didn't hand-hold. You Ruptured your Concepts faster than I thought possible."

What she didn't mention was that he was also Void-tainted. She knew it made it impossible to read his future unless the one attempting it had a much higher rank than his. She had never researched why, though.

Now, she guessed it: the taint made him less firmly anchored in Reality.

Space, Time, Will; he could ignore some things very subtly. In the grand scheme of things, the difference from a hundred years to a hundred hours was nonexistent. Touching the Laws of Reality wasn't such a hassle when your own willpower was more malleable. As for Space...

Her best guess was what humans would call "peer pressure," except much deeper and more realistic.

Expectations from strong enough beings could passively affect the world. It wasn't enough to compare to Laws, but if an entire race expected a Rupture Pilgrimage to take years, if this race had more B-ranks than any other they knew of, how could a D-rank resist?

The drow lived and died by statistics. They understood Reality and improved themselves through statistics. And, Liya realized, they hindered their growth through statistics.

One in every five thousand C-ranks became B-rank every Standard year in the Alliance. The drow had beat the odds because they needed it to happen. They believed it was possible; it had to be. They had found a way.

They didn't change Reality to conform to their views; they merely didn't let their beliefs and common sense hinder them.

They were always researching, always learning, always testing their viewpoints. But what happened when that viewpoint had been cemented over their entire existence, and no one else seemed to have a better answer? How polluted did their perspective become when it didn't advance for a thousand Standard years, regardless of spying, stealing, pillaging, blackmailing, and bribing others for new data on a subject?

What if their belief that A-ranks were statistical miracles had slowly turned from a data point to be improved—like they did everything else—to a hard, cold truth set in stone, and all they could do was hope a B-rank would magically find enlightenment?

The drow didn't deal with the Void. It went against their most fundamental beliefs. Yet, hadn't the Void offered Liya the answer to become S-rank when Feng Shen returned from the Incubator?

The Void didn't lie. She could become S-rank, much less A-rank. It wasn't an uncontrollable mystical matter.

What if A-ranks were all Void-tainted? What if the reason they called it a taint was to keep people from it? What if it was the reason any Void-tainted drow that returned from the front lines always died in mysterious circumstances, and they couldn't elucidate it?

They had thought it was due to the True Enemy's machinations, but what if they had been attributing to the bogeyman something that was done by a much greater demon?

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Liya realized the hole might go even deeper.

Didn't her guess of Void-tainted precisely match the capabilities of a first-class talent?

No. They couldn't be the same. Or could they?

It might all be a coincidence. Liya doubted it. She also doubted she was right in her every assumption, but she would have to investigate, and she was confident she would find something new there.

Speaking of investigation... She smiled.

Wasn't she going to a place where she would find all living first-class talents in the Alliance—together with second-classes like her to contrast her findings?

Her focus returned to Feng Shen. Suddenly, his existence didn't look as dangerous to her anymore. Suddenly, it felt like the keys to the kingdom.

There was, of course, another possibility. That the Triarchy knew about it already but was keeping her in the dark. That there was a reason to keep the drow without an A-rank of their own.

But even getting an answer about something they were keeping hidden would require her to show she could find the truth on her own.

She had told Feng Shen that some knowledge had to be earned, and this fit perfectly.

"Was my Pilgrimage that much faster than usual?" the boy asked.

To no one's surprise, he had taken an eternity to understand what she said, then think of a simple question. Meanwhile, she had questioned her race's entire Path and figured out different fronts to approach the subject. It wasn't fully his fault, limited as he was by his learning ability and D+ agility, but Liya didn't have to like it either.

"Yes," she replied but didn't elaborate.

Liya would have to be very careful about any information she shared with him from now on. She might be right in her assumption of his talent possibly working against him. So, she would keep quiet unless she was sure something was entirely correct and still believed it after internally double-checking it.

"Watch out for anything you believe," she alerted. "Or you might once more twist your Path into becoming something you shouldn't."

Shen nodded seriously.

"As for touching Laws, isn't the answer obvious? If the rest of your Path gets in the way when trying to turn a Concept into a Law, you just have to touch on multiple Laws simultaneously. Seven Concepts? Four Laws, so the barrier will be weaker than your forward momentum. Three Concepts will remain, so you touch on two new Laws the next time. And finally, the last Concept. There's only one caveat: your core Concepts must be in the first batch, or you'll kill yourself."

Then, Liya smiled sadistically and teleported them back to their previous training grounds.

"Now that you Ruptured your Concepts, let me beat some bad Coalesced Path habits out of your techniques." She was absolutely sure this was the right way to go. "I don't care whether your talent won't be properly utilized in training. You just gave me twenty days. I'll make it enough."

The boy had the gall to frown in displeasure. "I wanted to deal with a matter first. Can't we train afterward?"

Liya laughed mockingly. Did he really think he could talk back to her again? That she was his equal? That he could make suggestions to change her mind?

She was still peak C-rank. He was still her designed D-rank charge. He was still pathetically weak and needed her guidance.

"I'll let you go if you catch this," she said

Liya punched the air, and the energy wave threw his body backward. He was way too slow, and this was the most obvious statement she could make without speaking: she believed he could've dodged or blocked that in his current state, yet his present self couldn't.

"Training first. Work hard and learn fast, and you'll have a few days for yourself." She looked at his waist and snickered. "Just cover your pitiful self first, will you?"

= - = - =

"Good enough, I suppose," Shen's tormentor said at last.

His body was filled with intricately woven Laws. They made his body an inefficient, slow, deformed machine. The Drow Maiden had claimed he needed that for better progress.

She had been right, but he didn't need to like it.

With a wave of her hand, the Law filaments inside him ceased to be. His torn muscles and misplaced bones popped back into place. It hurt, but in a relieving way. He was turning back to himself.

The ogre leather armor he had taken from his spatial ring had been too large for him, but the Maiden had at least cut it for him without the thing's enchantments blowing up. It was black with interwoven golden metal rings that filled his body like a sleeveless robe or dress. It had no enchantments, so only the D- material's resistance was in place. Naturally, the drow had also made it part of his training to ensure none of his moves or attacks damaged it, to ensure he always did precisely what he aimed to.

Well, damn her for it, but it had also helped him improve.

"We're done," she said. "You have seven days remaining to sort through your matters. The thing you're looking for is on South Korea's east coast. Underwater, in a crater." She waved her hand again. "Get out of my sight."

Shen didn't even waste time greeting her respectfully, or he risked her changing her mind.

He turned north and ran—at Mach 55.

Damn her and her torturous yet unbelievably good training methods!

= - = - =

Liya dropped her facade when Feng Shen was gone.

She had also dropped her preconceptions about his limits thirteen days ago. As a result, he had progressed by leaps and bounds and in record time. Ultimately, he reached a point she believed belonged to D++ stats—without using qi to temporarily go past any threshold.

Liya had humbled the boy. He had hidden it at first, but she could see it now.

The boy had humbled her back.

How much did she really know about anything? Which of the things she knew were hard truths, and what was a matter of perspective? What evidence did she disregard, and what falsehoods did she take as an unbreakable postulate?

She had seven days to find out, for she refused to leave the safety of this planet without a completely overhauled understanding of her strengths and limitations.

Liya sat down and meditated.

= - = - =

The last leg of Shen's journey was positively horrible.

Back when most of the world's population had gone to the tutorials, South Korea had been ravaged by nuclear strikes. The west and, surprisingly, the north, where their capital was, had been fine, but the center, south, and east were full of destroyed cities, big craters, and radiation.

"Underwater, in a big crater," had not been a helpful hint at all.

Shen found no corpses anywhere, but he knew the place had been filled with them when people returned from the tutorial. The Drow Maiden had taught him that only mid-E-rank Guardians could use the proper mana techniques to protect themselves from nuclear radiation. Anyone below that level had no chance against it. That meant almost everyone who had returned had died.

The lack of corpses was explained a little after he entered the country. There were some magically cleansed and protected havens here and there, cities or properties that hadn't been destroyed and were now taken care of. The Guardians who had done that had also dealt with the bodies.

That was very honorable of them.

However, the safe havens were few and far between. Shen primarily saw ghost towns. It was a silent tale of an unimaginable death toll.

Seeing such wanton destruction was enlightening in its own way. One day, Shen would have the power to accomplish the same with a twist of his will. One day, he would have to protect himself and his loved ones from others with similar power.

He was still a mere ant in the grand scheme of things, but he would never be satisfied with that state of affairs.

In a somber mood, he reached his destination, the nation's east coast. He used his Blood Resonance technique for eight hours and got a qi dagger from the south.

Seconds later, a qi link came to him on its own. He was close enough to his clan's package. It was now reacting to his blood.

As foretold, Shen stopped by the edge of a big crater on the coast. It was what remained of a nuclear power plant. It explained why his clan's magic receptor was out of energy.

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