[MA] 352. Boundaries (Patreon)

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[A/N: Tuesday's chapter might be late next week. It's unlikely but possible.

Chapters this week: 3/3

Next chapter: Almost certainly Tuesday]

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One Voided Guardian had long become a literal needle, a form Shen had never encountered among Void Spawn. It was one inch long and, now, surrounded by the Axioms of Lightning. Shen still couldn't understand how it could control a Law without a will opposing his Aural Realm, but he could only deal with it.

Its Laws made it as fast as, well, lightning, forcing Shen to pay even more attention to the enemies surrounding him. But it had gained more than mere speed. Shen recognized traces of his Law of Conductivity in it. It moved through the Path of least resistance now and then. And when his spearhead struck against it, there was a powerful explosion, as if a humongous electrical discharge happened in a split second.

The discharge also pushed Shen's weapon away. The resulting shockwave damaged the tiny Voided Guardian's tip but didn't kill it. It retreated to let the others take its place in attacking Shen.

Another creature was a long, thin snake. Shen had been fighting a mass of tentacles moments ago, and while they annoyed him with strikes from everywhere trying to constrict his movements, they were easier to deal with than this variant. The snake had all strength, speed, and resistance concentrated on its head. And now, it harnessed the power of the Axioms of the Mace.

When Shen's spear hit it head-on, his spearhead shattered. The snake kept coming. Shen dodged, took one of his two floating spears from the air, and swung it at the creature's body. His spearhead was deflected as if plastic hitting metal. The power and techniques he had been using until now were no longer enough to deal with the creatures.

What he felt in that second attack made no sense. It was as if the Laws of the Mace were inside the Voided Guardian. That should be impossible. How could that creature repel Laws yet be them?

Then again, the Void was known for loving paradoxes.

Shen stepped back from the snake for now and faced his third enemy, one of the goblins with daggers. Maybe fearing the Axioms of Light that had killed the other goblin, this one used Darkness. Without Shen's Aural Realm, he would be incapable of locating it. Even with that advantage, he saw his spear suddenly miss the creature. The Voided Guardian had just teleported a few inches to the side.

Well, not actually teleported. Its movement was so eccentric that Shen couldn't follow it. It had been in two places at once, yet not; Shen had seen two things, yet his mind only accepted one.

It was achievable only with a B-tier technique, and that raised alarms for Shen; that creature couldn't be allowed to progress further.

He invested a tenth of his qi into his fastest attack. His energy moved according to the universe's secrets in a simple yet effective military technique that could only be used against the Alliace's enemies. That alone pushed his swing into a speed he couldn't achieve any other way, and then, Conductivity, Extremity, and True Boundlessness added to it.

His arm's bones cracked, and its muscles were almost torn apart. His spear moved in a wide arc. The spearhead found three false shadows before hitting the true enemy, which Shen couldn't even see, only feel with his Aural Realm.

He immediately focused on the edge of his weapon's blade to become impossibly sharp and was rewarded for it. It found solid resistance, but it was cut apart. The enemy still resisted his attack, but not enough.

Once the spear was inside his foe, Shen shook and twisted it. He cut diagonally in one way, then another. He also burned more qi to enlarge the attack inside the creature.

It blew up into smoke, and he swiftly killed the escaping sliver.

15% of his qi was gone just like that. On top of the 5% he had used until now, 80% remained for another eight enemies.

Killing the snake forced him into a dangerous place. A Voided Guardian was behind him.

It was a weird one, shaped like a limbless turtle that moved vertically. Usually, it defended others and bumped against Shen to force him out of position. However, it now harnessed the power of the Axioms of Space and was the first to use a Law outside its body.

Space was locked around Shen. He couldn't move. Impossibly, that ability had ignored his own control over all Laws around him. It overlapped with his Laws, dismissing his claim of superiority in the area. He couldn't even feel it with his Law senses; only his Aural Realm let him barely feel the Laws of Space barely touching the edges of aura.

Perhaps that was only possible because he was dealing with the Axioms of Space. Its Laws occupied a place that he had never felt before. The Laws of Space superimposed on his in a kind of "deeper" space that felt similar to the fourth dimension he had seen when opposing the ripple but was not quite there yet.

The best way to describe it was like a drawing on paper. Adding any kind of weight to a two-dimensional drawing meant reaching three dimensions. Therefore, the drawing's ink's "height," as insignificant as it might be, was theoretically not part of the two dimensions in the picture. Yet, that was precisely what the Voided Guardian was doing. It used a theoretically inexistent "depth" in the third dimension to force two different things to occupy the same three-dimensional space simultaneously—without reaching a fourth dimension.

At least Shen's Aural Realm let him barely feel the Laws of Space on top of his own. Feeling them allowed him to target them. He willed that place to become his, too. His Laws filled it, and his willpower forced itself on the region, demanding ownership and expelling any foreign influence.

For the first time in his life, Shen's willpower faced a Void creature's will—and he lost miserably.

There was not even a fight. When Shen faced the Voided Guardian's willpower, he wasn't actually facing it. He wasn't even facing the scary fog.

He was facing the Void Overmind.

Whenever two opposing will-controlled Laws competed for the same space, it should only end with the weaker side losing and suffering a mental rebound. That was not what happened. For a split instant, Shen's vision was filled with utter nothingness, an all-encompassing, desolate lack of everything. His heart stopped beating in terror, and his mind almost popped like a balloon.

Then, Reality descended.

The Void Overmind existed at the edges of Reality. It had no place so deep into a Node. The mana barrier might be keeping the system at bay; the Void Spawn might be beyond the reach of Reality's Laws, making Shen's Aura-Material Suppression useless; but this was about Will.

Axioms existed somewhere between Reality's Aspects and Expressions; it was acceptable for Axioms not to locate existences that repelled them, like C-tier Void Warriors. The Aspect of Will, however, was a higher piece of the puzzle that made everything. Every individual's Will was linked to Reality's overarching Will to exist. And when Shen's tiny Will faced the Void Overmind, the Will of Reality itself located the Void Overmind deep into its domain.

Shen wasn't sure what happened next. His mind couldn't comprehend or register it. He only knew that one moment he was staring at the Void and about to die as his mind and True Self would explode from the pressure. The next moment, he was back in the vault, and the turtle was gone.

He knew a mere instant had passed because everything was as it had been a moment ago, with the Voided Guardians and fog still moving in his direction. Yet, the creature hadn't faded into smoke or left a sliver of existence behind to escape; it had disappeared. The fog didn't throb in anger at its destruction. Shen felt no lingering pain or consequence of almost being crushed like an ant.

Hells, Shen couldn't even locate any sign of the Voided Guardian ever existing.

It was almost like it had been an illusion, but he believed Reality had just erased the thing from history. That creature had never been or would ever be. Reality didn't seem to care about Void Spawn, Void Energy, the fog, or the Voided Guardians, but it wouldn't allow that thing to have ever tainted it.

Could Reality do that at any time? If so, why didn't it? Was direct intervention costly, so Reality was unwilling to pay unless something crossed its bottom line?

What were even the constraints to Reality's actions? Did it need to spend energy? Energy was just the Expression of Space and Will; Reality would certainly not be limited by it, right?

Whatever the case, those were things to consider later.

Even if the turtle had been an illusion, the Void had shown more than it should. It had revealed to Shen that his three-dimensional existence had a little more depth than he had ever imagined. After feeling that place once, he could still locate it and, more importantly, adapt his Aural Realm to also cover it.

It came as noo surprise when his willpower-fueled aura only went so far before stopping. He reached the limits of three-dimensional space and lacked the strength to push further.

Now that he felt everything with his Path, he understood his paper and ink example was both right and wrong. He was still kind of dealing with three dimensions but with a part of it usually beyond his perception. It was like a blurry edge right before the fourth dimension. His mind was three-dimensional and so limited to the "regular" three dimensions unless he knew where to look. He suspected that only people with the Axioms of Space in their Path would ever feel there was a boundary just there, at least before mastering a Law.

Yes, mastering a Law. That, he realized, was the "big trick" one could understand after mastering a Law. The trick that became so easy after reaching B-rank and having your mind expanded.

B-ranks bypassed one's soul defense because they attacked souls sideways, from the boundaries of the fourth spatial dimension.

It was like someone drawing a square on a piece of paper and believing themselves safe from attack from all directions. Then, an enemy came from the three-dimensional world and ignored the square's boundaries, attacking it straight in the middle.

When he had been seeing the four dimensions, Shen's True Self had looked "deeper" than the Voided Guardians. Yet, he wasn't exempt from attacks bypassing his soul defenses. His True Self also didn't occupy that blurry boundary. It was still three-dimensional and susceptible to attacks from beyond.

Merely knowing the border existed wasn't enough for just anyone to even feel it. Not at C-rank. Shen was confident that mastering a Law connected one with it in an intrinsic manner. Laws were not limited to the three dimensions, and so, a Guardian who mastered a Law "unlocked" the ability to locate the boundary. They only needed to try to feel their Law beyond its three-dimensional existence. It should be easy for anyone who didn't let preconceptions limit their perspective.

Then again, such preconceived notions should be very hard to ignore after one was as far into their Path as the peak of C-rank. Reaching B-rank likely made it so undeniable that only a few would keep ignoring it for a while.

Neither the Voided Guardian nor Shen had located the boundary the usual way. The turtle had accomplished it because of the Axioms of Space. Shen had cheated with his Aural Realm.

His Aural Realm only existed because he had an aura, his aura was stronger than average, he had developed a domain and understood some things about it, and he had enough willpower thanks to his True Self. It was an ability beyond most C-rank Guardians. His passive Law sense alone couldn't detect how he had been locked in space. He, and any other C-rank without mastered Laws, wouldn't have felt the superimposed Laws. Thus, he would've assumed to be facing a B-rank Void Spawn that could ignore his soul defenses.

The scary part was that the turtle had ignored his soul defenses. Luckily, it had used it just to lock him in place. An attack would've been the end of him. It hadn't attacked because it was used to its specialized function in group combat: defense and movement control. If any other of the Voided Guardians held the Axioms of Space instead...

Luck was part of walking a Path, but Shen had never felt as lucky as now.

And that's when he realized something that made his eyes widen. His first-class talent wasn't involved in saving him. His solid foundations had been what let him survive here.

Something was lacking in him. Something that he had always felt in a life-and-death situation but assumed to be his resoluteness pushing him forward. Something he had felt even in the Void Incubator, outside Reality. Something that he could only pinpoint because of his True Self and how impossible it was to find it missing there—so impossible he hadn't noticed it until now.

His talent was gone.

Looking back, he could specify the moment it had disappeared: when the mana barrier cut the system off.

Why? What had one's talent to do with this place? Was talent removal or suppression a generic fail-safe when people came in contact with Void artifacts and their identity couldn't be validated? Was it something unique to this artifact? It was the only thing in the vault, after all.

Regardless of the answer, it didn't matter. For the first time in his life, Shen didn't have a special cheat for life-threatening situations. It filled him with a mix of dread and elation.

This was on him. Only on him. All of him. He would survive or fail based on his own ability and no external assistance of any kind—beyond what he had received to become who he currently was.

Shen's True Self beat once, like a heart that had just found life and purpose in existing as itself, by itself, for itself.

He had never felt so alive.

He smiled widely and attacked his next foe.

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