[MA] 299. Clues. Words. Poison. (Patreon)

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[A/N: This is yesterday's chapter. Sorry for the delay again. Hectic week.

Chapters this week: 2/3

Delayed chapters: 1

Next release: In a few seconds]

To survive, Shen had to pretend nothing was wrong. That  he didn't see through everyone's masks and wasn't aware of the evil beneath. The ploys. The schemes. Their true hearts.

His plan started with being a good little soldier.

"Retreat!" he ordered his people, forwarding the command he had just received.

Wu Bai didn't leave to send the order onward. He did the opposite. He got close. Too close. He would stab Shen; Shen knew it.

Shen wanted to preemptively kill him, but it would give Zyn an excuse to execute Shen. Shen wanted to defend himself after Wu Bain attacked, but he had no doubt Zyn would pretend to kill the Acting Staff Lieutenant and use it against Shen later.

No. This approach was a well-thought trick. They knew what they were doing. He wouldn't bite.

Shen jumped away from the wide man, who pretended to look surprised. He was good. Better than Shen had noticed until now. Shen could only detect shock, fear, and worry in his every move, even the ripples of his soul. He was the best actor Shen had ever seen.

"Retreat!" Shen commanded again, but Wu Bai's answer was to point at his ears.

Ah, the Acting Staff Lieutenant wanted to approach under the guise of being incapable of hearing Shen. Pathetic. Absurd. Too obvious.

But Shen wouldn't show he knew what was going on. He knew how to remain safe without looking too out of place.

When sound communications were cut off, a commander could give orders another way. The best alternative, using qi to write, was currently also beyond Shen. With the Voided Continua and Law Exclusion Zones changing so quickly, even using qi outside his body was impossible without a domain. Shen had never heard of the Axioms of Qi or Energy, but they had to be a thing, and the Void had to be repelling it occasionally as it changed what it repelled countless times every instant.

So, instead, Shen used his spear to write his retreating orders in the air. Wu Bai nodded and rushed to pass the word to the other Staff.

Shen retreated first. No enemy was close to his Staff, so he didn't have to wait for them. He did have, however, to touch the D-ranks pretending to be unconscious.

He had to pick people up. He was the Battalion Commander and wasn't supposed to fight if the Void Spawn re-approached. His Staff would do that. He was meant to carry wounded troops unless he was fighting.

Alicia was directly in his course.

Looking at her reignited the certainty of his demise. If he touched her, it would be over for him. If he approached her, she would crush him so thoroughly that not even an atom or a slice of his soul would remain. She was anathema to him, to everything he was. Merely running her general direction filled him with wrongness and terror.

Yet, he laughed in sheer madness as he faced his fear and grabbed her and one of her Acting Staff Sergeants.

There was no reason for that. No justification other than him being Truly Boundless. He wouldn't be limited by fear. He wouldn't be limited by death. Part of him simply felt like saving the one who had the power to unmake him.

Oh, he wanted to see it erase his Will of Omnipotence!

"Come, Alicia!" He yelled to the girl. She was good at pretending to have fainted. She didn't react at all. "Come! Kill me! I dare you!" Still nothing. "Coward!" he bellowed.

Shen's laughter grew louder and unruly. A life without limits. A life without motives. How he had hoped for that. Boundless had been his first Concept for a reason. How had he failed to notice before that being free was as simple as distrusting everyone and not caring about his life?

He and his Laws doing what they felt like. He didn't have to work for omnipotence; he was already it. It was his Will. He just had to live the way he had been born to live.

If he died, it just meant he had failed to achieve his existence's purpose. That he was as much of a lie as everyone's masks around him. Steady progression was a limiting lie.

He was Omnipotent, True Boundlessness. He could ignore Time too. Power was everything in the grand scheme of things. His current perceived power was meaningless.

Maybe he should just kill all the traitors around him, after all. Show them he didn't fear them. He didn't fear Alicia, and she was about to unmake him at any moment now. If she could. She could, but he was stronger. She couldn't, but he knew she could.

A face materialized before him as he ran with two people in his arms. A dragon? No, it was humanoid. A half-dragon. Karlov, the most dangerous of all his enemies, for he had a domain.

The Lieutenant Specialist was running backward in front of Shen.

"What is this Law?" Karlov asked with a frown, looking deep into Shen's eyes through the drow armor.

Shen went around the man. He wouldn't stop. He didn't need to. His orders came from Zyn, and Zyn told him to retreat. Unless Karlov claimed there were new orders, Shen was bound to keep obeying the previous ones.

Shen had to pretend for now. He just knew it. He was omnipotent but not suicidal. Karlov had a domain. Shen knew he could ignore it but also knew he couldn't.

His mind hurt when he thought of opposing things, but not too much. He could just not think about them. One truth was a lie the next instant. Like Alicia. Like Liya. Like his father. He had believed they liked him. Now he knew it was a lie.

Everyone was a treacherous liar.

Zyn was the worst. He had said he could kill traitors. He had killed no one yet. He had betrayed Shen.

Shen stopped laughing, but he smiled. He had an idea. He had been ordered to retreat and could use it as an excuse to flee from the Voided Subnode. All he needed was to get away from the brigade.

That sounded smart and feasible. He had to run fast. Faster than ever. He had to break through his every limit and boundary and achieve a speed like never before. He could do that.

Once he was far enough, he could claim to have separated from the brigade while following orders. He would be justified in leaving this place.

There was just one problem: there was only darkness behind Karlov.

The Voided Subnode was gone.

During a Wild Shift, there was a random chance every invading Reality being's existential anchors were also shifted. Shen and the others were no longer anchored to Reality. They were now part of that farm's superimposed space. He was almost Void Spawn. The Void only needed to keep one Void Spawn in the Voided Subnode for the farm to keep existing, and every other being in the farm was cut from it.

Only those with domains could leave.

Shen could leave.

He smiled. That was it. His answer.

He had been ordered to retreat. Instead of stupidly withdrawing into the dark boundaries of that space and the Void, he would retreat into the Voided Subnode. It was believable. This was an emergency. Wild Shifts were huge deals.

He would escape and run so far away that no one would ever see him again.

Shen chuckled as Karlov's frown deepened.

It didn't matter that the dragonling had a domain. He wouldn't be able to go after Shen. Shen was a Void Harbinger.

He hadn't known before, but suddenly, he was sure that he would survive in the Void even if his body had no energy. The Void would embrace him. He could step into the Void and wait.

Wait for a bit. Wait forever. Wait until the end of times. Wait until Karlov was long dead. Then, and only then, he would return to Reality.

Who would remember him then? The system? He just had to wait until the system was also gone. Nothing was eternal. The Void would eventually come for them all.

He prepared to do it—

NO.

The denial wasn't yelled, but it was mighty. It was a word of order from existence itself, a command so powerful it shook the entire farm, even if it was officially disconnected from Reality. Shen's soul trembled under the pressure. His mind was almost unraveled. His existence was on the brink of ceasing.

Karlov somehow remained in front of Shen no matter how much the latter tried to go around him. Shen laughed as the Lieutenant Specialist's soul also shook. Shen had felt no pain, only the threat of ceasing to be. Karlov's eyes exploded, and blood left his ears and mouth. It made for a terrifying visage.

Still, he remained in front of Shen as he got closer and closer to the place where the gray ground gave way to utter darkness.

What was Shen thinking about again?

Ah, yes. Escaping. Shen would use his domain. He was still too weak; his soul would hurt, and foreign Laws would get in through the cracks and change him.

It didn't matter. To become someone else was better than to die under Zyn's schemes. And whoever he became, his Will would remain. Omnipotence would be accomplished.

That's all that mattered.

But before he started to try again, Karlov spoke. It was upsetting. It interrupted thoughts he had no right to.

"This Path Image doesn't even make sense," the Lieutenant said, his voice unbothered by his condition. "I can't sense the weird Law you skewered your Path with, but I can feel its effects on the Image. This shouldn't be possible. You're piercing your Path with it!"

Shen didn't want to her. Liya had said an enemy might reveal weaknesses by talking. She wasn't wrong. But she was wrong. An enemy's words were poison. Poison.

Poison.

All knowledge was potential poison. He shouldn't listen. He should deafen himself.

And so he did.

His qi destroyed his eardrums and every nerve in his body. He would walk without those. Henceforth, he wouldn't feel any vibrations. His own qi shattered parts of his brain. He wouldn't understand words anymore. His own qi sealed parts of his mind in his soul—

"This is a deployment, Lieutenant," Karlov said, and Shen found an unsurmountable obstacle in his mind. "Making yourself incapable of taking orders would be illegal. You're welcome for preventing you from making a mistake."

Shen couldn't deafen his soul to however Karlov was talking to him. Worse, the half-dragon forced his qi into Shen's body and healed his self-inflicted injuries.

It didn't matter. Shen couldn't even explain why he had deafened himself. There was no reason to.

He was leaving anyway.

Shen's domain would only affect his body. Even if Karlov's domain was inside Shen, Karlov wasn't preventing Shen's qi from being used. They were both C-rank. Karlov's mind could not be perceptible or fast enough to stop Shen's domain from activating.

Shen's domain was the epitome of his ability to live in denial. He denied parts of himself, his feelings and senses. He had rejected the system when it tried to make him incapable of feeling mana. According to Karlov's poison, he even ignored what shouldn't be possible as he walked his Path.

Now, he would refuse to remain in this place, under Zyn's command, in a devious scheme.

Shen poured his heart and soul into the qi in all his body and activated his Limitless Denial.

"Ah, that's what Reality's warning was about," Karlov sighed, but his face twisted into a cruel smile. "What other secrets are you hiding?"

Somehow, the words came to Shen instantaneously. Before his will could reach his qi. Before he could escape.

That was all Shen heard.

He wasn't fast enough. He couldn't activate his domain before Karlov used his.

Shen fainted.

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