[MA] 295. I'm in Your Way (Patreon)

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[Notice: There will be no chapters on next month's last week-ish (09/23 to 09/29)

Chapters this week: 3/3

Next release: Tuesday]

"...and you're among the elite fighters on Earth—and one who cares about the weak, on top of that," Shen said. "Your arguments are absurd. The world wouldn't be better off without you."

Alicia, by his side, was instinctively trying to make herself small out of fear even as she ran, and her soul was trembling. She was terrified.

The girl was already speaking low, but now, she whispered, "You would be better without me. I remember how you looked at me when I mentioned my bikini. You're tempted, but it would mess up your Path. I'm in your way. I'm always in everyone's way. My uncle and aunt were just the first people I inconvenienced." She teared up. "I should just die already."

Alicia wasn't herself. Shen could see how the ring affected people's souls. He could also see D-ranks behaving like puppets, which painted a terrible picture. But this was the first time having a real talk with a D-rank. For Alicia to reach such a low point, the ring had to be squeezing her mind much more than he had assumed.

Seeing her like this was heartbreaking. From the day he met her, she had been a fighter, always troubled but always doing her best. Not just for her, either, but for everyone. For instance, she had been willing to give up on the Pioneer Achievement in the tutorial's last stage for the greater good of humankind, as she perceived it.

Now, her empathy was getting twisted into something horrible. She cared about others and concluded that the best she could do for them was to get rid of herself.

Shen shook his head. "I can say a lot of things about that," he spoke softly. "For one, I can use logic. You're helping me by tempting me. As I keep resisting your charms, my willpower continues to be honed. And even if we... What do you call it again? Ah, yes. Even if we hook up, it would only make my Path harder, not impossible. There's even an argument to be made about how it would hone my willpower even more. If I did it, it would be because I believe it's worth it. Regardless of whether I then had to deal with my regrets or kept an unbreakable resolve, it would sharpen my willpower. Actually, it might even strengthen my Path somehow."

He sighed, then added, "But I prefer to argue with my heart. Alicia, in the past, I had some trouble interacting with you. I wasn't thankful enough. I wasn't a good friend. When I noticed it, I realized I wasn't walking the Path that best reflected myself. I was too focused on combat, and that's not who I truly was or wanted to be. You, just by being you, helped me identify the issue, and I shifted my very existence in a brighter direction. You're an important part of why my Path isn't already messed up. You're not getting in the way; you're helping me stay in the right way. And your relatives were monsters. You never owed them anything. You know that."

Alicia didn't reply, but she relaxed a little. Shen squeezed her shoulder and kept running beside her.

Zyn's orders were to talk to people about voices in their heads, not their fear of Karlov's domain. However, speaking to Alicia also helped Shen overcome the latter. It was an important finding.

Yet, before ordering his troops to discuss Karlov's tricks with each other, he turned to Staff Lieutenant Uya, who had arrived a little after Alicia. Alicia's survival took priority over listening to new orders unless Uya herself claimed otherwise, so she kept silent until now.

When Shen turned to Uya, she said, "Commander's orders: no tips on how to better deal with the Stress Discipline training," then immediately left.

So, they knew about it. Zyn had left it out of their orders by design. He and Karlov were purposefully handicapping everyone.

That almost broke a regulation. Almost. It was on the very boundary of refusing to give aid to someone in need, but not really because it was an exercise. Although the leadership book had said nothing about this Stress Discipline thing, any training or test scenario changed the regulations at least in one way: the trainers would only be held accountable if someone died or suffered significant harm because of it. Until the worst happened, Shen's lips were sealed, even if it was an obvious disaster in the making.

Or not, he supposed. Alicia was faring terribly, yet neither she nor anyone had turned into Void Spawn. Maybe his earlier assumption was correct, and there was more going on than met the eye.

Whatever the case, at least Alicia was beside him, and she had justification for that—obeying orders to talk to someone she trusted. He would keep her at arm's length. While Shen would do his best to keep as many people safe as possible, he would obviously focus on people from Earth, especially Alicia and Sai.

That said, he really hoped things never became as dire as for him to have to decide whether to save Alicia at the cost of disregarding orders. That would almost certainly be taken as treason in a deployment.

Shen had no idea what he would do then.

Alicia didn't notice it, but she was very important to him. She was her first real friend ever. He had almost gotten her killed, had killed innocent people, and she had felt terrified of his Path. Yet she remained by his side. She accepted or forgave his failings.

She wasn't perfect, not even close to it, but she was a fine damn good girl if he thought about it.

So, it would be one thing for her to die out of his sight. It would be saddening, but he understood people walked different Paths.

It would be something else altogether to let her die within reach so as not to be branded a traitor.

Heavens, he really hoped he never had to choose.

* - * - *

An hour before they reached the farm, the Voided Continuum became a real problem. There were so many interruptions to Shen's passive Law feedback that they overloaded his mind—and he had a C-rank mind, too!

It didn't trouble him to feel the beginning and the end of Gentle Breeze with a hole in the middle. However, tiny interruptions started happening everywhere. It felt like his Laws were sieves with countless holes throughout. There were often more holes in his senses than anything he felt with his Laws.

Making sense of the shattered, scattered, disconnected bits he felt all around him became impossible.

His seven Laws actually worked against him. While someone with a single Law in their Path only had to "patch the holes" in it, he had to do it to seven Laws. Unfortunately, he had the same C-rank mind as any other Ethereal Harmonization cultivator. The C-tier learning ability didn't help here. Anyone with fewer Laws didn't struggle as much as him.

Shen also couldn't focus more on one of his Laws than another. He had felt during his breakthrough how he would have to improve them together, and he found out that it also prevented him from temporarily trying to "disconnect" or "pay less attention" to a Law. He was his entire Path, and while it was made of seven Laws, it was a single whole, as evidenced by his Image. He couldn't dismember it.

So, Shen was forced to decrease how much attention he paid to all his Laws in his surroundings. It was similar to deafening himself a little in a noisy environment. Doing that allowed him to once more make sense of the Laws' feedback at the cost of significantly lowering his reach.

If he had up to two Laws in his Path, he would've kept a reach of a little less than a mile. A C-rank mind was that good. That was, however, also a C-rank mind's ultimate limit, and pushing the envelope became exponentially costly.

With seven Laws, Shen's energy-less Law reach was limited to thirty yards. His aura was also constricted, but at least it could fill the entire thirty-yard range instead of just half as much.

It was a small silver lining, all things considered.

* - * - *

Half an hour before they reached the farm, his seven Laws became a considerable advantage instead. They found one of the phenomena the military had introduced, a Law Exclusion Zone.

While each Voided Continuum space denied every Law of an Axiom, it was just one Axiom per space. Law Exclusion Zones, on the other hand, affected every single Axiom from Reality. These zones only allowed a few Laws of each Axiom to exist within; all other Laws were Voided.

The allowed Laws could range from one to thirty-three, seemingly at random, and it was different for each Axiom, also apparently randomly.

Similarly to the Voided Continuum space, the zones didn't affect physical objects, but any attempt to use an excluded Law outside of an object would fail, even if one used mana or qi.

Law Exclusion Zones were usually vast, and their rules changed at random. At one moment, it might be impossible to use Gentle Breeze because it wasn't part of the Laws of the Wind allowed inside. The next, you might be able to, while other Laws became inoperable. You never knew when that change would happen.

"Think of these zones as the Void finding a way to deny most of Reality's grasp on an area without fully erasing it," Zyn had explained. "I don't understand its inner workings, but you and I only need to know that no Law remains usable for longer than exactly four Standard days, three hours, two minutes, and one second. The excluded Laws in the zone always change after that long at the latest, and the ones allowed before always get excluded. There's no way to determine which previously excluded Law will become available."

Karlov had chuckled, then said, "The time is a message. There is no depth to the Standard time system; it was simply what the Founders used. Still, the Void uses our time system in Law Exclusion Zones. It's a countdown, a warning, telling us the time to exclude all our Laws will eventually come, and us with them."

With seven Laws, Shen had seven chances to have one of them be usable in the Law Exclusion Zone. It gave him his Path's versatility back.

An Etheral Harmonization cultivator with a single Law, or a mana-wielding Guardian who mastered their only Law, might luck out and be able to kill all Void Spawn up to C-rank in a vast range. Or they might be all but useless except in close range. Well, or they might wield long-range weapons.

In fact, this was the first time Shen saw people who wielded long-range weapons have a considerable edge over close-combat fighters.

When it came to energy guns, the edge only held true if they produced energy beams or projectiles through physical means. So, it depended on the technology or enchantments it used. For instance, if an enchantment made a gun barrel so hot the air inside became plasma, it worked without issue. However, if a gun operated by having an enchantment just turn mana or qi into plasma, and the Law of Plasma—or something of the kind—was excluded, it would never materialize.

On that subject, enchantments still worked because they were within physical objects, and their influence extended to whatever they were directly touching. For instance, bowstrings enchanted to make an arrow move faster or reach further were still useful. Likewise, the rings to produce oxygen started working only inside people's lungs. It caused some discomfort as they breathed unusable air that became breathable only afterward, but it wasn't a huge deal.

Anyway, as long as the physical medium existed or could be created, a Guardian could touch their projectile, fill them with mana or qi containing their Laws, and shoot. Those were physical objects, and the heightened Laws within them would persist while supported by metaphysical energy.

The downside was, of course, the fact that the enemy could just use physical means to protect themselves. Void Spawn didn't wear equipment because their very non-existence wasn't compatible with it, but they started employing tactics after a Breach had been open for long enough. Building defenses and using the environment to protect themselves was within their capabilities.

That was the primary reason not to provide all troops with such weapons. The secondary one was not having anyone get overly dependent on it. A Voided space might very well have other phenomena preventing long-range guns, and then everyone would be screwed.

Zyn hadn't said it, but Shen was confident it had more to do with people's Paths. Fighting Void Spawn was a psychological challenge, too, and who knew what might happen to Shen if he realized his spear was useless while longbows were perfect?

Whatever the case, fighters with long-range weapons would literally have a shot at it even if their Laws were excluded, while everyone else would be limited to close-range combat.

Shen reckoned he had a few spears to throw but would only do it if he had no choice.

* - * - *

Ten minutes before they reached the farm, long-range weapons became even better. The pockets of Voided Continuum started superimposing on each other and often became large again. Not as large as the giant trees around, but up to a few dozen yards wide.

The upcoming battle was becoming a worse tactical nightmare by the second. Even if you could use your Law in the Law Exclusion Zone, your enemy might be inside a big pocket of Voided Continuum that countered the Axiom your Law came from. Your greater reach would be useless, then.

That was a cunning scheme. As far as the Alliance knew, the Void didn't always seem capable of choosing where strange phenomena occurred, but it sometimes was obviously no coincidence.

The new obstacle didn't affect Shen too much on one front, but it made it harder for him on another. His Laws' reach was so short that having an enemy in a pocked of Voided Continuum wasn't as big a deal to him. That said, a greater Law reach included feeling things far from you, so you could better perceive the battlefield and choose where to apply your strength with maximum effectiveness.

He supposed they would see how things turned out soon enough.

* - * - *

The farm's region was surrounded by a brigade. Guardians ranging from E to C-rank were posted over a vast perimeter, ensuring no Void Spawn escaped the isolated region.

Zyn didn't stop to talk to anyone. He just kept going. The stationed brigade also barely gave Zyn's brigade a second look. It seemed this was just another day at work for them.

Zyn's troops followed, and less than a minute later, they finally spotted their first Void Spawn.

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