[MA] 310. Such a Fool (Patreon)

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[A/N: Chapters this week: 3/3

Next chapter: Tuesday]

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Over 3,000 deaths. All of which could've been saved by Abbav. Shen resented each one of them.

Sure, the front lines were dangerous. The military wasn't kindergarten. The Captain wouldn't always be around to save everyone.

But Abbav was there this time.

This was a waste of lives. Saving them only required Abbav to flex his domain a little. Even from a utilitarian point of view, it was stupid to lose Guardians just to show them how dangerous the front lines were. Any additional D-rank who survived today might become C-ranks, and C-ranks might break through to B rank and help more.

Didn't the Calamity make the front lines less secure than usual? Didn't the military need as many people as possible? Why let people die in a Void Stampede? Most of the ones dying weren't traitors or stupid. They weren't even necessarily unskilled. The majority simply got unlucky.

Shen wasn't an altruist like Alicia, but this crossed his bottom line.

The worst part was that he didn't have the strength to ultimately save anyone. The way the battle was going would only end with everyone dead unless Abbav acted. There were only 100,000 Void Spawn, but 20,000 were C-rank Warrriors, while only 500 of the 900 remaining C-rank Guardians had at least an arm and enough energy to keep fighting. This was doomed to end in disaster.

Shen would fight to the end just in case a miracle happened but had to preserve his energy the best he could and pick who to save. Alicia came first, Sai second.

But he was omnipotent, and accepting there was nothing he could do to change the outcome didn't sit well with him. His Will wasn't like his Truth that couldn't be challenged, but it also couldn't just accept circumstances—even if he had to paradoxically humiliate himself to show he wasn't powerless. Not all power had the same form, and the ability to convince a heartless monster to help also had its value. The realization, of course, changed something inside Shen, though he didn't know what yet.

Therefore, Shen glared at Captain Abbav.

Sure, he would kneel and beg if needed, but he would try something a bit silly before resorting to that. He guessed unhidden anger might help.

Maybe.

Wasn't Shen a somewhat interesting ant? Perhaps his fury would make Abbav decide not losing his test subject's goodwill was more important than letting everyone die for whatever reasons his sick mind had concocted. Shen's plan was more likely to end with him dead or punished, but he was out of ideas.

Lo and behold, it worked. Abbav never visibly acknowledged Shen, but Shen's armor shook a few moments after he started staring.

"Don't do anything stupid," Abbav said, vibrating Shen's armor with his domain. "Let me rectify that: don't do anything more stupid than an unsanctioned and pathetically executed Channeled Expansion in a Stillborn Phasespace. I reckon First Lieutenant Zyn was right; the Investigation Department must pay for their cowardice and laziness this time."

So, the thing Shen had attempted with the Law of Shaft was called a Channeled Expansion, and this special space was officially called Stillborn Phasespace. Also, Zyn and Abbav had wanted the Investigation Department to check on Shen, but it refused?

Shen filled all that new information in the back of his mind but didn't let it distract him from the matter at hand. Those deaths went against everything he believed in.

He kept glaring.

Abbav continued, "Think about it, O enlightened one with a working but apparently unproductive mind. Has any official training or test you read about in the tier-1 leadership book ever allowed non-traitors to needless die? Trust the process. That is all I'll say on the matter. Now, focus on fighting instead of acting like a chick who was denied something they wanted."

Shen frowned at the word "trust" coming out of the manipulative cretin's mouth, but it seemed he wouldn't get more than that, so he analyzed the other sentences.

The less important part was that the Captain used the word "chick" instead of "child." In the Eternal Empire, dragons used that terminology, too. Abbav might indeed be half-dragon.

Then came the critical bits. Abbav had used the word "non-traitors." It sounded awkward at first but was an official designation. In a deployment, traitors were primarily those who attacked others, willingly put others in needless danger, or defied orders. Everyone who had died before this final assault fit the definition. Even the altruistic saints did; Zyn had told them that getting out of position to save the same individualistic fool they had saved before would be considered treason, but they insisted on it.

On the other hand, during this Stampede, only a few had betrayed the military, including those who were overtaken by despair and stopped fighting. Abbav had mentioned the leadership book, suggesting he was acting within the boundaries of military law. Said law demanded that any military member save another in most circumstances. From the little Shen knew about domains, it would cost Abbav next to nothing to save every combatant present. The Captain had no justification not to save the non-traitors unless the Expeditionary Training allowed it, and he had just said it didn't.

So, unless the half-dragon was betraying the military himself, he was rescuing most of the people Shen thought dead, and their corpses were an illusion. It wasn't even hard for him to do it, considering he was responsible for recovering the corpses for their families.

It seemed Shen had been tricked.

He could see how the narrative had been constructed until now to ensure everyone fought to the bitter end while the traitors were filtered out. The desperation during the Wild Shift, the desolation in the darkness, disposing of traitors when everyone returned to the farm, and the cadence of repeatedly fighting under Zyn's orders. With their minds pressured and debilitated, everyone got used to obeying and fighting for their lives without questioning silly things.

And now that Shen thought about it, one such silly thing would be: why were fresh troops dying in droves in the last phase of their basic course while another Brigade was surrounding the farm and ready to assist?

The ruse shouldn't have worked on Shen. He had been trained by Liya not to fall for such tactics. And yet, it hadn't mattered. Although he was no longer paranoid, the pressure on his mind made him slow enough to get caught in the moment. On top of that, Abbav's every interaction with Shen was probably also to keep him fooled to some extent. Maybe even the way Zyn had reported how Shen's willpower was too strong for Stress Training.

In fact, if it wasn't for the risk of Shen fleeing into the Void, Shen would likely continue to be kept in the dark—as he was sure was done to any random person who couldn't be misled by mental pressure alone.

Of course, maybe the Captain and the First Lieutenant were lying, but Shen didn't think so. Any non-traitor who had "died" should still be alive. The two had no need to lie to Shen like this. They could just make him unconscious—unless the rules of the Expeditionary Training insisted they didn't for Shen's benefit.

Shen felt like such a fool.

This was an amateur's mistake. His mind was mostly functional, and he had reaped so many benefits from the Will-Path Merging that he unconsciously thought himself invulnerable to being manipulated again. He had forgotten that the Alliance and its military had been around for eras, and he wasn't unique. Even assuming an S-rank failed to predict the existence of someone like Shen, another person similar enough to him had undoubtedly been in a comparable situation. Whatever the military had done about it, they had learned from it and adapted the rules to keep the Expeditionary Training helpful for such people.

Merely finding out the truth now was imparting to Shen essential lessons about humility and not overestimating himself. His Having Limits Truth had never been so stimulated or felt so... true. What if, on top of that, he had remained angry and feared for his life yet didn't betray the military? That would've driven the lesson home even more effectively and maybe even honed his willpower a little more.

Arrogance, Shen's old nemesis, struck again.

And so, at that point, he decided to just stop thinking altogether.

He wasn't giving up on pursuing those matters for good, but now wasn't the time. All evidence showed again and again that he was lacking against Zyn and Abbav in the field of intrigue, especially when they had all the experience of the military dictating their actions. Shen had recently widened his Path to contain social considerations, but he wasn't experienced or skilled in it, much less in the extended field of manipulation. He was a combatant through and through.

It was time to stop wasting brain power on useless things. As much as he hated it, he could only do as he had been told for now. He would trust the process and his superiors.

The alternative was fleeing into the Void, but while Liya had told him to escape no matter what, his morals wouldn't let him cause the loss of a Reality Node and the deaths that came with it. Especially not after his morals were also pulled into his True Self. As Abbav had said, Shen's beliefs were now as firm as an A-rank's.

Shen clenched his fist on his spear and cleansed his mind of anything other than killing Void Spawn.

Certainty in his power filled his being like a refreshing cold wave. He had limits and knew he alone couldn't reserve the situation. Not as he was now. But having limits didn't mean they were set in stone. He was also Boundlessness in certain aspects, and he could grow.

The enemy approached.

Shen mindlessly killed them.

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* - * - *

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"He did it again," Abbav suddenly told Zyn. The First Lieutenant was fighting a C-rank Warrior and couldn't reply yet. The Captain continued, "His willpower improved against all odds. Was it his talent? Was it the unconscious collective? Wait, is this...? Yes, it is. Lieutenant Shen simply improved by himself. How disappointing. Maybe I should push him another—"

Zyn felt a Realization he didn't recognize and turned just in time to see Abbav explode.

The Realization made his armor vibrate before Zyn could even think of using his artifacts to retreat. "Captain Abbav is safe. I merely removed him from this endeavor. He has been constantly analyzing a troop whose mind he read—who is thus temporarily protected from any interest that might touch on matters he discovered during the mind-reading. I have exercised my right to preemptively save him from himself before he crosses a line that would require me to execute him. He has regrettably failed his promotion test. This Node is relatively tranquil at the time. As long as that doesn't change, I'll replace the Captain until this Expeditionary Training is over."

The First Lieutenant didn't even consider questioning the words. That was an A-rank. He knew it wasn't "only" a B-rank with a domain because the Realization's owner had easily overwhelmed a peak B-rank like Abbav.

It looked like La'sing's new Acting General had arrived.

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[A/N: The Expeditionary Training will end within 1 to 3 chapters.]

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