[MA] 385. Who Am I (Patreon)

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[A/N: Chapters this week: 1/3

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"Who am I?"

That question had surrounded Shen's Path from the very beginning. His identity was always at the core of his self. And now, as he looked at the untangled bits of his True Self that looked like specks of light filled with meaning he could garner at a glance, he had to change that.

He had to cease being human.

But was it worth it to change something so vital about himself to survive? Could that be considered living? Then again, walking a Path meant changing in some ways. Was changing his body really too much when it was just the vessel for his Will to be accomplished?

Shen didn't decide at once. He kept glancing at the bits of his whole. To see his True Self laid so bare before him was... humbling. He was so small. So insignificant. Comparing this... soul dust to the strength he had felt and the truths he had glimpsed when fighting Valentina showed how absolutely far he was from absolute power.

By taking his time, he realized something interesting. He couldn't make his drow identity part of himself. He could only remove his racial identity from his True Self.

This Baptism of Unmaking was about removing things. No matter what he removed, he would be temporarily weakened because part of himself would be lost, and his True Self was a comprehensive whole. Every part depended on every part. Removing anything meant restructuring everything.

It was a chance to change anything he disliked about himself. Refinement—at a cost. Not to mention the Heavens above still awaited.

Shen didn't know how much time he wondered about what to do. He was confident that he wouldn't even be able to consider letting go of his humanity without this Baptism. Even the Baptism couldn't make the decision easy, though.

He stared at his humanity. Why did he value it? Why was it so important?

By being human—and with his old body—he had been living proof of the sacrifices his parents had made for him. His mother had died because of him. His father had sacrificed his honor and life for him. Giving up on his humanity felt like giving up on that. It was an enormous dishonor, a form of filial unpiety that would hurt him to do.

Yet, wouldn't his death also dishonor his parents? What would they rather happen: for him to die for his human identity or to keep living as something else? A modern commoner might not understand how hard the question was. Blood and ancestry were a fundamental part of the Eternal Empire's culture. Shen couldn't know what his parents would truly have wanted.

That, however, led him to the next consideration: the Eternal Empire.

His human identity was closely linked to the Eternal Empire. Humanity itself had been modified with human genes so he could live. He and humankind had an inseparable connection. To let go of his identity was to spit on the DNA they had sacrificed for him.

Humanity had changed their identity a little for him, and now he was deciding whether to depart from them.

His sense of honor flared at the thought. He couldn't do that. And yet... He could. He wasn't bound by his True Self during this Baptism of Unmaking. His honor might make him irate or even suicidal after removing his humanity, but only after the Baptism.

Should he also ignore that part of himself now, though? He believed in it. Deeply. Still, his current sense of detachment made him struggle to see exactly why.

Shen realized this Baptism was also a test. He might Unmake his whole self if he weren't careful—if his True Self didn't withstand the test of the Baptism.

As interesting as that was, the question remained: why was his humanity important?

It wasn't.

Not for him. Not personally. It was important because of how it was connected to the people he cared about and his past. He had already abandoned the Eternal Empire. Getting rid of his last connection to it felt right, even. As for his parents...

They weren't around, were they?

Submerged in water, Shen's body cried.

Ironically, now, unburdened by all the expectations of his True Self and the weight of his Path, while trying to decide whether to abandon his humanity, Shen found himself also submersed in raw, stupid human emotion. For he resented his parents for not being there for him.

His mother had had no choice; she had been murdered. But his father hadn't. The man had chosen to deceive his son and be absent.

Shen would rather have died in his father's warm embrace than have to decide whether to shed away his humanity to keep on living.

He cried for a few minutes, and then that feeling became distant. The more time he spent in that state, the more he became disconnected from his True Self. Evidently, if another half hour or so passed, he would be permanently gone, unable to return to the parts of himself that anchored his essence to his floating mind.

Maybe that detachment was the reason he managed to do what he did next. Maybe not. He would never know.

Shen willed his humanity to be removed from his True Self.

It felt like grabbing a rib with a plier and slowly pulling it out. His entire being screamed. And before he could overcome the sensation, the Heavens trembled, and golden lightning fell from the skies.

It hit not Shen's remaining self but the speck he had just removed. It was instantly erased, and then tiny electric arcs kept traveling into him. They burned whenever they passed, and every memory Shen had ever had of being human was burned from him. Every part of his existence directly connected to that identity disappeared. A moment later, he couldn't even recall the race's name. Or rather, he couldn't, but he couldn't tell which of the races he recalled had been him.

He still recalled friends he had had, and they could identify his former race if he ever met them and convinced them he was him. However, any clue that might make him figure it out by himself disappeared.

And then, he forgot he had ever had another race—talking to those people would be really awkward in the future.

The pain was even worse as Heavenly Lightning coursed through his True Self. His mind was ravaged, and the Heavens weren't kind. This wasn't a Tribulation as he had feared, but the Heavens wouldn't allow him any half-measures. If he decided to Unmake himself, they would ensure it was thorough.

He couldn't start to guess why the Heavens would be involved, but it all but confirmed the Gardener was A-rank. His Realization still surrounded Shen, and no B-rank could possibly be involved in a ritual that was struck by Heavenly Lightning and just keep going.

After the lightning was done burning him, something shifted in his True Self. A heavy strain simply disappeared. Suddenly, Shen felt absurdly lighter. He didn't recall what he had removed, but it had been important, and it felt right.

He was already safe, but he grabbed his Truth of Limit and threw it far away from him.

Shen had been deceived in the Ritual of Will-Merging. He hadn't had the time to think, with a clear conscience, of what Truth to add to himself. His Truth had worked, but now, he could see it was quite poorly so. His Will was Absolute Power. It was never meant to be limited.

Golden lightning fell from the sky, and he forgot what Limit he had had.

There was an imbalance in his new True Self because it was meant for three counter-weights, but it didn't last long. Shen didn't remove his Law of True Boundlessness from himself, but he took away its position as a Core Belief of his True Self.

Golden lightning fell, and he forgot he had ever had a third concept holding his True Self together. Then, the second one.

Shen only knew his True Self with a single point of focus, his Will, was special, but not how.

His entire being was hurting by then. Three Heavenly lightning bolts was his limit—and maybe another hidden test in the Baptism of Unmaking; one had to decide very carefully what to remove from oneself.

Still, Shen looked at his essence for a while. He analyzed everything. He saw things that could be improved by removing other things, but nothing major. Nothing that demanded him to redefine his identity.

So, he grabbed his True Self with his willpower and reassembled it the way it should be.

His Will was at the very core but also permeated everything. A thick shell of Honor surrounded it, though. It didn't counter-balance his Will of Absolute Power, but it would filter it. Power for power's sake felt wrong even to his detached mind. Power was dangerous if sought or gained the wrong way.

Then came almost everything else.

And thus, Shen was remade.

Red lightning fell from the skies. One, two, three—the same number of changes he had made.

As the first one struck, he forgot he had made any changes. As the second one struck, he forgot what a Baptism of Unmaking even was. As the third one struck, he forgot himself.

The next moment, a twenty-four-year-old male drow woke up naked in a wheat field.

He knew only three things: he was called Shen, he liked spears, and he had three years to figure out who he was, or the electricity he felt in his heart would kill him.

The next instant, he knew two new things: he was arrogant, and he would figure things out in a manner of weeks to months.

He stood up, saw smoke in the distance, and purposefully walked its way.

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