[MA] 216. Everything Aligned (Patreon)

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[A/N: An epilogue twice the length of the average chapter =D

Chapters this week: 1/3

Late chapters: 2

Next release: Thursday]

The Void watched and waited.

Sentient beings focused too much on ploys and schemes. The Void also partook in such plays, but only because it could, not because they were crucial. Even if the machinations of its Prophets, Heralds, and Paragons failed, the Void would still consider it a success. Anything ceasing to exist, even the parts of itself in those beings, was a non-fulfillment of its inexistent purpose.

It also wasn't impatient for results, for it non-existed outside Time. It didn't need to arrange things to its advantage. Time was merciless to all, including its own continued existence.

Eventually, everything aligned perfectly for the Void.

Now was such a moment. It heard Reality's cry of outrage as the Primordial Rising Star gave its life to further the thieves' hold over existence. Their grand plan was coming to fruition. How many more Voices did they need to hoard? Two? Two hundred? Either way, not many, not to the Void.

Not that it would've cared even if they had already succeeded and, thus, could make Void itself cease not-being. It would've non-fulfilled its non-existent purpose, too.

What mattered now was that the Primordial Rising Star was gone. Thus, the Primordial Bridge's commander would also be gone. The Bridge was leaderless and weaker. Old enmities were resurfacing, pawns were breaking free and upending the board, and unexpected movements changed all predictions. The Alliance swiftly grew in turmoil, a considerable portion of it sparked by its newest Void Herald.

Everything aligned.

It pushed, and everything started falling apart.

= - = - =

Suddenly, Karma trembled, and a thread snapped.

The Grand Senator opened his eyes. Nothing was visible in his cubic silvery cultivation room except the constantly moving, fluid violet enchantments on the walls. However, he looked beyond the physical, between the Concepts and Laws affecting the world around him, to find his Realization.

The thread that had snapped wasn't a true one. It was a potential thread connected to a possibility. Enough of a Karmic debt had accumulated that a thread should exist, but the other party had been outside his range of influence ever since the seed of Karma had been taken from his body.

Carl Jones hadn't expected Shen to cut the ties of Karma between the two of them. Much the opposite; the boy was one of his many lines of attack against the Alliance, and he didn't want to lose it. While Shen wasn't particularly more likely to succeed than others, the Grand Senator had lost enough agents and venues of approach by now that he valued each one.

There was a reason the Alliance was around all this while, and even the Association had bowed to it in the end. He hadn't believed at first that he couldn't wrestle it, but more and more, his plans were foiled. He still was far ahead of them in their invisible struggle, but not as much as he had expected.

The Grand Senator reviewed the snapped thread, trying to find what had gone wrong.

Back in the day, he had wanted to control the leader of the Feng Clan, so he did a lot for the man's son. It accrued him a lot of Karmic merits. However, when Feng Yang repaid him a millionfold, even indirectly as it was, he found himself in Karmic debt instead. Before the Emperor could do anything about it, the man died.

Bad Karma disappeared upon death, but good Karma lived on, flowing into others according to specific rules.

Most of Shen's father's Karma poured into the boy.

Thus, the Emperor did many things for Shen. The wiseheart he had sent to Earth was the last part of a plan to keep them mostly even. The boy would owe the Emperor just enough to keep the potential thread in place. It wouldn't let him manipulate the boy but give him a hazy, general reading of what was happening with and around Shen.

Now, that plan had failed. Instead, enough balance was reached that the potential Karmic connection couldn't sustain itself through such a distance.

Reading Shen's snapped thread wasn't easy. Carl couldn't gather much information from whole Karmic threads, to begin with, and potential ones were even worse. Still, he understood the wiseheart was involved. The boy had benefitted from it but had also been harmed somehow. The Emperor's expensive investment turned out to be a poisonous gift instead of the wonder he intended it to be.

According to everything he knew, that should be impossible. He reviewed countless data points time and time again to confirm it. Only two things could explain what he was experiencing.

First, his expectations and projections had been terribly wrong because he had miscalculated. He would usually accept that conclusion but stopped himself from doing so this time. Way, way too many calculations had turned out wrong recently, and Shen's thread should have been one of the least likely to.

Which brought him to the second possibility: he had based his assumptions on inaccurate information.

Espionage had been tricky ever since the Republic was pulled into the Alliance, but Shen's situation, specifically, evidenced the very roots of his knowledge might have been rotten. He used this new fact to review every other failure since he started planning for the Alliance. A more thorough search than ever, now aided by hindsight, made him absolutely sure nothing was wrong.

More than anything, finding nothing wrong was proof that either he was a complete moron or the Alliance had infiltrated the Eternal Empire before he ever learned about the Alliance.

All his assumptions and certainties about his people had to be questioned. Every piece of knowledge he had, had to be reviewed, reanalyzed, and recategorized. Trust and doubt had to be recast anew.

The infiltrator had to be an A-rank or a specialized B-rank to go unnoticed by him and his Realization. Or the group of infiltrators, he supposed.

The Emperor had gone through something similar in the past. When Feng Yang's actions led him to find out the true danger of the Void Prophet in his lands, calamity struck. The Empire survived by a hair's breadth, but even then, they had to abandon their homeworld.

He had thought hard about what he could've done differently and even discussed it with others. Therefore, he wasn't caught so off guard this time. He knew what to do to deal with infiltrators quickly and effectively.

Carl Jones stood up and broadcasted a declaration to the entire Republic—the main world and multiple attached mystic realms, "I have detected foreign influence in our lands. I'll present the evidence to the Senate in five hours. Martial Law is in effect. The world is closed; anyone who tries to leave, no matter who, including me, is to be executed on sight. All agents working outside are to return at once. Voting privileges are suspended, except to depose me, which requires a vast majority. Everyone is to remain in their homes, except military personnel, health workers, or any high senator attending the Senate in five hours. Drafting quotas will increase. I'll start killing enemies now."

Then, he swung his sword at those in the Republic who stood on the other end of severe Karmic debts to him or his country.

Hundreds of known spies had their souls shattered without the chance to protect themselves. Thousands of generally bad people ceased existing. Some survived, and he used their Karmic threads to teleport to their locations and behead them in person.

The episode with the Void Prophet had taught him the limits of his Realization. It had also let him conclude the best way to find a spider hiding in a mess of tangled webs was to turn the entire thing upside down.

Many people with deep connections to others died at once, and the tapestry of Karma trembled while his own Karma merit to the whole Republic grew stronger. Likewise, some innocents were caught in the crossfire, and he accrued Karmic debt instead. The enormous and fast changes would soon let him find fake, hidden, or incorrectly weighted threads.

The inconsistencies would pave his way to his enemies.

This chaos would, of course, foil some of his plans. It didn't matter. He had created a utopia for times of peace, but he had learned well the price of freedom in the Chaotic Era: constant vigilance and the willingness to do what was needed when the times called for it.

The only time he forgot it, the Void Prophet forced him to remember it or die. Since then, the ploys of clans and senators had kept the memory fresh.

And so, the Immortal Emperor teleported again and again.

He swung his sword, and people died.

He killed anyone he even suspected of being despicable people, except children. He also didn't touch those close to them to prevent future acts of revenge against him. Learning from the Chaotic Era was good, but destroying his hard work with his own hands would be stupid.

His Path of Karma was one of justice; if he died being true to himself, so be it.

The more innocents he killed, the worst he felt, but he kept going. They were an unfortunate but necessary loss. If he had been willing to do something like this to uproot the Void Prophet, he would have lost only a tenth of what he did during the Cataclysm.

Sometimes, one had to blow up a continent to get to an anthill that had the potential to consume the whole world.

And yet, a few dozen thousand kills into his massacre, he realized things were much direr than he had expected.

He accumulated much less positive Karma than he had expected, yet a lot more negative Karma. Once, he killed someone he had seen murder another, yet no merit was accrued. The web of Karma trembled, but it didn't change as much as he expected.

The only thing that explained that was a widespread, broadly disseminated method to foil his Realization.

So, Carl Jones started acting on paranoia.

Being unable to trust his own Realization meant his entire Path was contaminated. The only good news was that if he could reach that conclusion, at least his mind was still his own. He ignored feedback from his Path as he reanalyzed the situation and found things started making sense.

His new predictions on how his Karma would change after each kill turned out perfectly accurate.

So, he trusted the last bastion of his existence, his mind, to determine everything. He killed faster and wider. He expanded his reach. He upturned any stone that, in the past, he had suspected yet never destroyed because Karma told him it would be a bad idea.

And then, when he erased the Feng Clan from his Republic, he laughed, for his potential Karma thread to Shen returned.

Suddenly, he had a considerable debt to the boy.

That was the first thing his mind didn't predict after he changed his perspective. The boy shouldn't feel connected in a positive way to the ones he had just killed. Rather, the Emperor should've accumulated merit with the boy instead.

That went against most of what he knew about the boy.

So, that also went against what other people knew that he knew...

Suddenly, the web of Karma trembled, and everything made sense again. It was just logical. Those threads didn't connect to the places he had thought. His mistake. Or was it his Realization's mistake? Yes, that had to be it. Now, things were right, and so, he swung his sword...

He stopped, frowning.

His Path's information-gathering abilities and mind were at odds. When he stopped trusting his Path's information, everything made sense. The one time it didn't, it suddenly did. What was there to think about?

However...

However...

Hadn't he started all this because he couldn't trust what he knew? How had he concluded he should be ruled by what he knew instead? That didn't make any sense...

Or maybe...

There was only a single split instant in which Carl Jones believed his mind might be compromised. He used it to decisively shut his mind down and let instinct take over.

That was irrational. Crazy. Illogical. Instinct was greatly influenced by one's Path. Giving in to a poisoned Realization didn't make sense. He risked his mind being forever consumed by a corrupted Realization. He risked a corrupt Path taking over his existence.

But he did it because that would help him save his people.

The moment he couldn't trust his mind anymore, he had to find another way to kill the responsible, thus, letting his instincts take control. Failing that, however, he also had to send a message to the Republic's one thousand B-ranks with domains. He had to show them that he needed to die. Not even he could survive them all if they united against him. Probably.

His Path of Karma was one of justice. He believed in it with his all. But until it became a Law, he partly stood above his Realization. If neither the justice system nor its overseer could be trusted, if either wasn't enough to deal with the current threat, he would rather die than turn into a tool of injustice.

The only mistake the puppet master made was not to believe the words he once uttered: an Emperor might need to sacrifice himself for the good of his empire.

The woman he loved the most in Reality, with whom he had shared all his hopes, dreams, and fears, never expected him to let go of himself in a potentially suicidal action.

His sword cut through her existence in a sneak attack, and his Realization obliterated her from past, present, and future in its area of influence.

His childhood friend, lover, and fiancée never saw it coming.

For a split second, he saw the surprise on her face and felt her true power. She was a Destiny Realization cultivator like him. Her Realization was something about not needing to be the strongest, only capable of manipulating the strongest. It wasn't a Realization that sought to become a Law, to change Reality, but a mediocre one focused on ruling what Reality already was.

Fortunately, it also had flaws, like his own Realization. She could control what her target saw, but changes had to be done live. She couldn't make him see something too different from Reality, only change his perspective.

That would've let him figure things out much earlier, but she had found a way around that limitation by thoroughly knowing her target. She knew almost everything the Emperor knew. Actually, probably much more because she could filter his knowledge somehow. That information-gathering ability was likely also part of her Realization, though not "automated."

So, she manually prepared the changes beforehand from what she knew and expected to happen. He had even helped her with it as he shared his plans and expectations with her! That made the changes set in place right before he could see or feel the true things.

But then, Shen happened.

As a Void-touched, one needed to be A-rank to fully predict his moves. Like the Emperor, his fiancée had been hiding her power. And so, like had happened to the Dreamer, Shen had done something she couldn't foresee. For a split second, when he accrued unexpected debt to the boy, the Emperor had glimpsed what his Karma should really look like, not the version she manipulated him into seeing.

His Realization tried to give Karmic merit to the Void. It failed, just as it had failed when it tried to make the Void owe him for the Cataclysm.

The Immortal Emperor laughed as tears fell from his eyes.

As his fiancée's Realization disappeared with her, his mind broke free, and he saw his land's actual Karmic web. His eyes opened to the chaos and mess his beloved country had become.

The most glaring inconsistency with everything he had believed was the big vacuum where the Feng Clan had stood before he destroyed it. It left a clear trail for him to follow to figure out the source of the rot, as had been his original goal.

The second most glaring inconsistency was his Karmic debt to Shen; it was as heavy as a star.

Good Karma passed on; bad Karma died with the perpetrators. The boy wasn't responsible for what his former clan had done, but he took the credit for being the trigger for the Emperor to rid himself of the puppet master. Once more, Shen indirectly saved his nation. Once more, the Emperor owed the boy.

The Immortal Emperor would deal with that later. Now, he took his second sword from its hidden scabbard and donned his armor.

He had an old war to finish.

He could see it now. The Alliance wasn't responsible for this state of affairs. His fiancée had been a plant from an enemy that had survived the Chaotic Era. She had been blaming the Alliance for her own side's doing, preventing him from seeing the truth.

The true responsible was a man he had believed dead.

The culprit's exact location was still beyond Carl's sight, but not for long. He had been at a disadvantage because he had been fighting a war alone against an army of enemies. But wars weren't fought alone, and now that he knew he was in one, he would bring his allies to crush all opposition, as he had done in the past.

"Send a message to Long Hao: the dry petal flows down the red river. A sunset still basks the encroaching darkness. Who can delay the inevitable? To live is to die slowly."

| Message sent

| Long Hao (B): 2 minutes

About half of his remaining ploys against the Alliance would shatter as he mobilized the dragons and their allies, but getting rid of his archenemy came first. Gaining a stronger position in an organization only mattered if you had a house to call yours and feel safe in. If that house wasn't safe, you first had to kill the vermin or die trying. There could be no half-measures to ensure that. At the very least, you had to burn the house around yourself and hope the vermin died with you.

So, the Immortal Emperor stopped using all techniques and items that hid his Realization from the system.

"Buy A-rank upgrade and A-rank learning ability," he said.

The Alliance could do two things his Republic couldn't: improve one's learning ability and heal certain soul conditions. The Republic's mind enhancements only made one think faster, not better. No matter how much he tried, he could never steal or develop those pieces of Alliance technology.

| Attempting to increase rank to A

| Requirement met: Realization

| Purchased: Rank Up (A) | Free | Rank-Up Token used

| Purchased: Learning Ability Upgrade (A) | Free | Upgrade Token used

No tribulation fell on him as he ranked up, for he had already entered the Destiny Realization realm long ago. He merely waited for the learning ability upgrade to improve his mind—it was truly outstanding! With it, he would've been immune to his late fiancée's Realization!—then purged the little mana that B-rank cultivators had to allow into their bodies to improve their stats and ranks through the system.

At last, as his stats broke through the shackles of the B rank, he let all his true power run through his body, soul, mind, and world.

As his power grew, so did his Karmic debt to Shen. Nurturing a Realization to eventually become a Law paradoxically also meant it became grander than him in some ways—which should've been a sign of his mental manipulation. Right now, Karma itself understood better than him how crucial revealing his power now was.

The Grand Senator took it as the sign that it was.

He didn't hold back at all.

He marched to war with everything he had.

= - = - =

| Anu Thirty-Two (B): The Drow Maiden had two favors. She bought a command block interpreter. I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Tun Three (B): The B-rank monitoring Human Rising Star was killed for an unauthorized attempt to leave his post. He sent a message before dying. Unsure if it was intercepted. I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Kisu Four (C): Abyssal Dragons and allies are mobilizing. I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Ys One (D): The Republic of Imperia's Grand Senator is A-rank. I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Tun Four (C): I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Ys Seventy-Seven (C): I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Tun Four (E): I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

| Anu Nine (B): The Triarchy— ERROR, CONNECTION LOST

| Kisu Seventy-Six (D): Infiltrators found in— ERROR, CONNECTION LOST.

| Ys Two (B): The Primordial Bridge closing in and mobilizing. I'm exposed. Long live the Queen.

The Queen of Spring and Autumn had been relaxing on her terrace when nothing less than three hundred of her spies were exposed and killed almost instantly.

Spring, it seemed, had ended; the time had come for Autumn.

Her Realization turned, and the vibrant vegetation in the star system turned brown. Warmth was replaced with chilliness. They all took it for what it was: a warning of an all-out war to come.

The queen then stood and looked at the black metal world in the star system.

Allies supposedly occupied that world, but they killed three of her spies. Those allies were also supposed to have many handicaps, but they had had two favors all along. That was vital intelligence she had missed.

What else had she missed?

She instantly reviewed all data on their joint war effort. She found the drow were always, always, one step away from doing something she would see as a true betrayal. They did what she expected they would after she had demanded some things from her but never crossed the critical lines.

She instantly reviewed her conversations with the drow. They always, always, did exactly what she expected of them. The only points she had been wrong about had only made her sure of how trustworthy her gathered intelligence was; if everything had been too perfect, she would've suspected something.

So, the drow had mastered the art of controlling perspective and predicting expectations. They also sat in her front yard. For now, they were obedient guard dogs, but for how long?

And how strong was her leash, really?

Her musings were interrupted by a message she couldn't ignore.

| Alufar Sint (S): The Primordial Rising Star just died. The Void intensified all attacks on the front lines. You owe me. Go to Samir-33 and stabilize it for the next six Standard months, and I'll call us even.

Saelihn Herfie would've liked to stabilize her realm instead, but she couldn't deny Alufar Sint. Her race wouldn't exist if not for him, and this was a unique chance to repay that debt hanging over her head. She could only hope she had trained her people well enough to survive her absence.

Still, she took a second to review everything she knew about the drow, from facts to rumors. She figured out a way to keep them faithful in her absence by throwing them a bone. An expensive bone, yes, but it would be worth it, especially because it came with the added benefit of curbing their numbers a little.

"Send a message to drow triarchy: double your war assistance, and I'll give you three World Tree Fruits."

| Message sent

| Drow Triarchy (B): Refused.

She frowned. That couldn't be correct. It went against everything she even considered possible.

"Send them a new message: it wasn't a suggestion."

| Message sent

| Drow Triarchy (B): Acknowledged, but we want six fruits. Two in advance.

That was also outside her expectations but still acceptable. She really had a lot to learn about her watchdogs. But dogs could still be outsmarted.

"Reply: Five. One now, another one every Standard month." One month less than the length of her absence.

| Message sent

| Drow Triarchy (B): Accepted. We hope you have a successful crusade against the Void.

So they had enough spies to quickly learn she would leave. That was their way of telling her not to go back on the deal. They couldn't destroy the high elves, but they could—

Her frown deepened.

Or could they destroy the high elves while she was gone? She had just found out her intel about the drow was severely lacking.

| Alufar Sint (S): It's urgent.

Not even two seconds had passed, but the S-rank was insisting. The situation on Samir-33, a relatively peaceful front line against the Void, was probably terrible.

Yet, she would have to dare delay one last time. She had to make sure of something.

"Use two favors to get the exact numbers of drow B-ranks," she said.

| Favor used

| Favors remaining: 0

| Drow B-ranks: 3,672

No. That couldn't be. It was impossible.

They had ten times the numbers she had thought they had!

She... She had been dealing with someone overwhelmingly stronger than the high elves, including herself. The only reason they hadn't ultimately killed the Dreamer by themselves had been a matter of not having the unique toolset that only an A-rank could have. But they had a lot more power than they had displayed against the Dreamer!

In fact, if she faced them head-on, she would die.

She had been treating them as dogs, and they had accepted it. They had taken heavy losses for her without batting an eye, only to protect their secrets. Or was that the only reason?

In fact, she recalled being absolutely sure of her previous intel on their numbers. She had even got confirmation from the Triarchy in a roundabout way, but one that let her know whether they were lying. They hadn't lied—or at least, they hadn't thought they were lying.

Could the drow leadership be lying to themselves?!

How deep went their schemes?

No, that wasn't even the worst part. They had accepted being betrayed by much weaker races in the past. Some only had a few B-ranks and still stood. In fact, the drow had never, ever, killed the last B-rank of a race or committed genocide. That would be against Alliance rules that only an A-rank could ignore. Crossing that line would've forced them to show their true power or risk terrible retaliation.

They were fat snakes patiently honing their fangs. If they got a single A-rank of their own, they would become flying serpents instead, dragons. They would become at least three times as strong as the high elves.

And they had so many enemies...

Could the Alliance even survive if those many races were killed when it came the time for drow reckoning?

She would have to talk to old allies and mentors. Maybe a coalition against the drow now would be the best for everyone in the long term. Or maybe not; if the system knew about their numbers, so did S-ranks. If the drow were still around, they weren't that much of a threat.

Instead, it might be wiser to provoke her enemies into also becoming the drow's enemies. Then, the queen would sit down and wait for their eventual demise.

But that would be for the future. Now, she had a battlefield to visit.

As strong as the drow were, they couldn't destroy her people during her absence. An all-out attack would be terrible, but she could thwart it a little with a single message.

"Send a message to drow triarchy: I'm sure your many, many, many, many B-ranks will take care of my garden while I'm away. I'll have someone deliver the fruit within the hour."

| Message sent

A show of intelligence of her own. Not displaying her cards but evidencing she knew more than they probably expected. A bluff, telling them that they didn't have such a good position as they thought. That she knew of their power and still dared to treat them like dogs.

It worked.

| Drow Triarchy (B): Four fruits will do. The first can come within a month.

Or did it work? Were they just managing her expectations again? Was she being outplayed somehow?

Something to think about while killing Void Spawn.

History was on her side. The drow never betrayed anyone. Her people had six months of extra protection, and she had agreed to pay a somewhat fair price for that.

Now, she had to go.

She couldn't leave Alufar Sint waiting anymore.

She got a consort to give her two favors to replace the ones she had just used and teleported away.

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