[MA] 235. Balance (Patreon)

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Liya laughed alone at the irony: the things she had beaten out of Shen for almost one year were similar to what a Realization was—at least at first sight.

Shen had lost himself in his Path. He had been close to becoming a puppet of his Concepts, just as C and B-ranks might become puppets of their Laws. If that happened, he would die, his individuality consumed by Reality.

Liya had done almost the same, yet it was also completely different. Instead of losing herself in her Path, she had pulled her Path into her own image. Liya and her Laws mixed in perfect harmony, bridged by her domain, to turn into a singular goal that demanded a place as a set of Laws of Reality.

Liya had found herself, yet she had also become more than herself.

She wasn't a G-rank realizing her place in life. She had mastered some of the intrinsic rules that defined all that existed. Now, she mandated her place to be equal to theirs.

She wasn't someone deciding her long-term prospects. She had only one goal, herself, and would never accept anything else.

In that aspect, it was also similar to becoming a True Path Walker, except the opposite: in a way, her Laws now walked her. They were still under her control but also part of her journey. Just as she had been aided by the Laws to learn of Reality, she would now aid them to learn of herself.

In understanding her place in the multiverse, Liya had turned herself into more than herself.

She had become a force of nature.

She had heard Shen call his Path the Path of Feng Shen—or Path of Only Shen, she supposed. He was close, so close, yet so far away.

Because Shen was still what he had always been, while Liya had given a step ahead. She was no longer a mere living being. Shen could decide whether to take a right or left, but Liya was now bound by her own self.

Could Fire decide not to burn? Could Ice decide not to freeze? Could the Wind turn still, or the Earth be lighter than Light? A Spear was a Spear, and a Saber was a Saber. They might share Concepts, but they were their own unique identities and could be nothing else.

That was Liya now.

A Realization was realizing who she was, what she lived for, and making that real—realizing that into Reality. Cultivators called the realm equivalent to A-rank "Destiny Realization." In hindsight, it was pretty telling.

It wasn't just intellectual enlightenment about what she wanted to do or who she wanted to become. She had concluded those things long ago. It was a complete overhaul of herself.

Liya now had incomparable certainty in the single-minded pursuit of her Path. She would accept only a single result from her actions and nothing else. In fact, from now on, if she tried to move against her Realization, she would die. If Fire started consuming heat instead of producing it, it wouldn't be Fire anymore. One of its core definitions wouldn't exist; thus, Fire would cease to be. She was now the same.

Even that certainty wasn't enough to Realize one's Path, though.

One needed more than figuring oneself out and deciding never to deviate from who they were. A Path turned Realization had to perfectly fit one's identity. Liya even understood why Paths were called Paths. She had walked one and learned about it and herself throughout the journey until its culmination. Everything was a perfect system with an ultimate goal.

Yet, once again, there was more.

A Realization required an act of unstoppable momentum, a confirmation of oneself against all that was anathema to it, a show to Reality itself that it was lacking something that would make it better. She had accomplished all that. Even willing to die because she was certain cosmic justice would one day rise, that it was inevitable, had been part of that. Henceforth, the Laws in her Path recognized it and thoroughly submitted to her. At the same time, she became one with them to build something new.

That second to last point was one of the hurdles on the drow way. A Realization was unique to oneself's singular existence, unique among the entire multitude of universes, pushed to the utmost extreme. Hiveminds could reach A-rank because their form of individuality was collectivity. However, that didn't hold true for the drow.

Even being free wasn't enough, or the Alliance would be brimming with A-ranks everywhere. They had to go beyond freedom and into a self-assured and omnipotent singularity. They had to believe with their entire self that they would reach A-rank because their Realization could accept nothing more. Because pursuing it would make Reality wholer.

They had to be willing to reach the pinnacle of Reality for themselves and their beliefs before anything or anyone else.

A Realization was so intimately oneself that, at least for individualistic races, it was the ultimate act of selfishness.

So, paradoxically, Liya understood the A and S-ranks at the top of the Alliance now. They didn't truly care about weaker races because such considerations were beyond their self-definitions. They might not even care about their own races much except as a form of weak gratitude, as servants that cared of irrelevant matters, and as a show of might to keep other irrelevant beings away and warned—who would dare to touch their people while the strong beings behind them lived?

Liya's unsuppressed emotions flared, and she smiled without care.

Oh, how she would love to reach those beings' level only to bring the unworthy down!

For she now Realized she walked the Path of Karmic Balance.

Her justice would be blind and perfect. Good and evil repaid in equal measure. None would be spared.

Many races had similar beliefs, but she first saw the concept of a cosmic will caring about one's deeds in a random book on Earth. Only mortals who understood nothing about Reality could birth such an outlandish yet marvelous notion. It conveyed that all good and bad deeds accrued positive or negative karma that would be repaid until balanced, even if only in the afterlife. Unfortunately, no one in the multiverse could prove the afterlife existed—souls appeared from nowhere and disappeared after death if not captured—so her Realization would bring everyone's deeds to bear while they lived.

Liya had all the tools to deliver perfect karmic justice. Absolute Darkness wouldn't be enough to hide one's bad deeds. Annihilating their actions would fool her eyes. Like a Spear, she would strike all who deserved it.

The only issue was determining what marked them as deserving of it.

Any justice system, even one enacted by Reality itself, needed a base set of principles to follow. She knew the rules of multiple races. And in the end, she decided to go with the most basic of them all: private property.

Everything that one was or rightfully belonged to them shouldn't be damaged or taken without their consent. Coercion would also not be tolerated. Whoever disobeyed these tenants would accrue negative karma with the one they had sinned against. Those who helped another would accrue positive karma with the one they helped.

The Laws of Karmic Balance would be watching—and judging.

Her Realization, limited as it was on its current means—Annihilation, Darkness, and Spear—would directly kill the undeserving in a way that indirectly repaid the good karma some people were owed. Her Karmic Balance would also make it harder for bad deeds to be hidden and easier for good people to go unnoticed by pursuers.

Yet, what was private property when it went beyond oneself? What made something rightfully belong to another? What was considered helping? She had many things to decide.

Liya felt her Laws mingle together to create that new set of Laws inside her. She found herself lacking, and not only because her justice system wasn't built. She had to properly define how Karmic Balance would communicate with other Laws, too.

Was a sword—and Sword itself—as guilty as the living being who used it? Was Fire itself guilty of burning someone to death? If so, how could Karmic Balance punish the very Laws of Reality? Was that even possible?

Liya wasn't yet A-rank, far from that, but she suddenly understood that the A-rank was all about defining those things.

C-rank was working on mastering the Laws in one's Path. She was done with that.

Then, B-rank was mastering all related Laws of the same set—all the Laws of Annihilation, Darkness, and Spear in her case.

Every set of Laws shared Concepts with every set of Laws. That's how they defined Reality and what happened when different Laws interacted. Annihilation would share at least one Concept with all other Laws, just like Darkness and Saber. She would learn all Laws from her sets at B-rank, including their Concepts.

The moment she understood all Concepts that she believed Karmic Balance needed, she would start removing the surplus Concepts to sculpt the Laws of Karmic Balance.

The system's requirement to rank up to A was "beginning to realize one's Realization." It was purposefully cryptic, but only to those without a Realization. Liya was sure that from the moment she removed the first Concept for her Path, she could go higher than any other drow.

A-rank would be about removing unneeded Concepts, modifying others, and building each of the Laws of Karmic Balance. Deciding which Concept was where. How her Realization interacted with everything else. In the end, she might even need to create new Concepts and find a way to link them with other Laws.

The Concepts had to be the foundations because they were shared among other Laws. She would use them to define the new set of Laws of Karmic Balance and they would interact with Reality. That was crucial because if she ever managed to turn Karmic Balance into one of the sets of Laws of Reality, any oversight in their interactions would be defined by the existing sets of Laws of Reality itself—and to their benefit, not Karmic Balance's.

And that was it. Really simple. Logical, even.

Yet so beyond all drow to date.

The weight of the True Enemy and indoctrination in the wrong things poisoned drowkind's Paths. C-ranks might walk a True Path yet not be willing to see it to the end if it cut them from the herd. They might think they knew themselves, yet how could they when they suppressed parts of themselves, their emotions? How could they, when they had to perfectly fit the drow mold or be indoctrinated?

Even free, could B-ranks ignore such enormous portions of their built identity to find what truly sang true to them?

Even if they did, how many, at their innermost intimacy, believed in turning into something as rigid as a set of Laws to make Reality a better place? Going against her Realization would be lethal to Liya from now on, but that wasn't the only danger. She also had to subject herself to its rules. If she accumulated too much negative karma, to the point that she became sure she deserved death, she would end up with her killing herself—and she found that perfectly fair.

How could she turn Karmic Balance into one of the undeniable Laws of Reality if she denied it herself?

Another point that went against drow Realizing their Paths was that, while karma wasn't a novelty, Liya had been walking towards it before she found the name on Earth. How many would sacrifice everything to see a theory become true and affect the entire multiverse? How many merely believed that ideal was so perfect that it deserved that?

Liya admitted that there was also a trace of megalomania in believing she deserved to be elevated to the realm of Laws.

To be fair, maybe many did believe those things, but mostly on lower ranks. Only those who had mastered all Laws in their Path were worthy of pursuing the Realization of their Path. And by that point, they had already been tainted and pulled by so much!

Then again, who knows? Maybe there was even someone else in the multiverse who shared her views. Perhaps another A-rank was pursuing a similar Path of Karmic Balance right now. What would happen if they tried to push their Path into Reality?

She had no idea, and she didn't care. She believed in herself. If she didn't, she would never have Realized anything.

Back to the difficulties of Realization, hers was the easier path, too. Someone had put Karma into words somewhere. But what about creating something new out of nowhere? A theory or ideal that one hadn't encountered before?

Liya knew so much about her Laws—Annihilation, Darkness, and Spear—that she couldn't extrapolate them into anything else that she believed with all her being. That was a hidden, devious trap. She had picked them for her Path because she believed in them! How many would ever think they needed to extrapolate it into their very selves, into a new set of Laws?

She also couldn't just craft a random new weapon and believe in it so much that she would be willing to die to force a set of Laws from it to affect all Reality. Maybe some could, but how many?

Creating a new element to stand beside Fire, Darkness, Light, and others was also beyond her.

Lastly, one's Realization must be true to themselves and new. Some people's self-identity might just not be novel enough to be recognized by Reality. If the Laws of Karmic Balance already existed, why would Reality care about her believing in it with all her might? She might as well just lose herself in it and die.

Liya didn't believe in fate, but it was hard to refute that something else was at work here.

After all, what made Liya different from every other drow? She was sure other drow before her had worked harder and had more talent than her. They had more opportunities and extra luck. They had unique personalities and beliefs, had found ways to show their worth to Reality, and had died for them. Some had been younger, others older.

She refused to believe no B-rank had ever found the way forward—

Suddenly, she halted her thoughts.

Liya widened her eyes, stopped blocking the system, and said, "Send a message to drow Triarchy: Hi."

| Message blocked

That was all the evidence she needed. Other drow had found the way before. But other races could tell somehow, and they were jealous.

Now, they were coming for her.

Liya took hundreds of spatial rings from her Inventory—it blessedly wasn't blocked—kept them floating around her, and said, "System, I want to sell every spear inside these rings, rank up, push all my stats to B+, and get the B-tier learning ability upgrade! No confirmation needed! Just do it, now!"

The system was still there,  she felt it giving her mana, but there was no answer this time.

It had been slowed down.

Liya clenched her spear and prepared herself for whatever was coming.

Her Realization made her unbeatable against B-ranks—if they had no Realization of their own. Her unique, absolute certainty made her Path overwhelm any domain holder without similar confidence.

But she had just thought about how she wasn't that special. If the little her could reach that step, how many other B-rank also did but never felt confident enough to start removing Concepts from their Path and move forth to A-rank? How many of them were close enough to get to her before she could leave?

"Every drow on this planet, leave it right now!" she commanded through her echo plate and tried to do the same, telling the system, "Teleport to Shar'Talon!"

Once more, there was no answer. However, slowed down or not, the system would come through eventually.

She only had to survive until then.

As if on cue, a green barrier enveloped Planet Seventeen, and she felt space twist in three spots around her.

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