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[MA] 444. Paradox
🕑 Added 2024-07-23 22:46:11 +0000 UTCPrevious Chapter — Table of Contents — Next Chapter
[A/N: My apologies for the delay. Last week was crazy.
To make up for it, you get two long changers. This one is 30% lengthier than usual.
Chapters LAST week: 2/3
Next chapter: In a few minutes]
War was an old Concept. Older than many. When two Axioms fought each other for longer than a single battle, it became War. After enough Time passed, they had to come up with rules of engagement. Strategies. Tactics. Decide when it was worth it to go against the very regulations they decided upon.
War was old and shared among all Laws. Some made it more evident than others, but everything could be used in War. War encompassed all things.
Shen was War.
He had never ceased being it, but it had been replaced with Shaft for all intents and purposes. Whatever he had learned and mastered hadn't evolved. Now, everything came back to him.
He was War—and at war.
While he was still in pain from the lightning bolt he had just touched, the Heavens sent a black lightning bolt that absorbed light instead of releasing it. All Axioms trembled as the bolt passed by them. It unmade Concepts and Laws alike, turning everything into Law Fragments and consuming many of them. Spacetime shattered and the Void appeared, but golden lightning struck against the opening and remade the fabric of Reality.
The black lightning was the most unstable thing Shen had ever seen. Yet, it was a paragon of pure stability, for it was the Law of the Shaft. It was a paradox that should be beyond Shen. How could something so unstable be so stable? How could something so unstable be a supporting pillar of the very Heavens, a Shaft of its Weapons, part of the Heavenly Spear that smit all to pieces?
The paradox should be Shen, but he understood it all the same.
That was the absolute apex of the Law of the Shaft. There was nothing beyond it with pure Laws. No greater mystery to Shaft. Its greatest manifestation was shown to him as the Heavens came to test his mettle.
Shen had read about some religions on Earth, and this looked like divine revelation. The Heavens talked to him, showed him what it meant to really master Shaft. What it meant to face the Heavens in War.
Shen observed it. He pulled Un'Re and tried to copy it but failed at first. He was sure anyone would've failed. No one could pass this tribulation without a domain. It differed from what he had learned about this tribulation, but it might have something to do with being in phasespace.
Well, luckily, he had a domain.
Shen used his domain to bend Reality to his Will. He demanded himself to be capable of displaying the exact same power. He demanded Reality to allow him to be the true master of the Law of the Shaft.
The Overlord Realm Rules around Un'Re inflated like a balloon in angry red light as Shen pushed the spear beyond the power it should display at the Overlord Realm. He didn't break the limits, though, as only death awaited any who did it. Instant death. No time for explanations, no attempt to understand the situation. That rule was set in stone, and, according to what he had learned, even the Warden-Emperors were bound to it. Hells, even the very Heavens were bound to it. Only the Divine Mandatary could ignore it.
But still, he pushed. His power went an infinitesimal drop beyond the boundary of the Overlord Realm. He had to push to match the Heavens, as they were also cheating a little.
Un'Re met the Heavens.
Everything exploded.
New formations activated between him and the inn below, and he was displaced in Space again. He was now entirely above Cylek, alone, and the inn was back to being only in its original position.
The shockwave cleared the tribulation clouds for a second. The impact made Shen's muscles and skin burst messily like watermelons. Both the clouds and his body recovered in a few moments.
Shen's One Self gave him a disadvantage this time, as his body and mind were One. The damage was not enough for him to lose himself, but he still felt dazed for a moment. When he returned to himself, he barely had the opportunity to marvel at what was suddenly his in a way it had never been before.
Shen was a Master of the Law of the Shaft of the Axioms of the Spear. There was nothing new to learn about it. Wherever he saw the Law, it was his to use, bend, move, or destroy as he wished. And it would be pushed to even greater power if he used it in War.
War was also his. Any War. All Wars.
He wanted to delve deeply into what that meant, but the Concept of Combat and its Law of Killing Weapon were next.
A blinding white lightning bolt came for him. It was pure power wrapped around an unbending and unbreakable intent of Killing him.
The Heavens meant to indeed Kill Shen with this one, not only test him. In fact, the Heavens attempted to push beyond the limits of the Overlord Realm to accumulate more power and smite him down with everything they had. They had to. This was Killing Weapon pushed to its pinnacle. This was the Heavens' Spear in the form of lightning, meant for nothing else but to Kill. Killing Weapon could stop at nothing to fulfill their meaning of existence, its reason to be.
They almost burst through the Overlord Realm's Rules, but golden lightning came again; this time, not to mend Reality but to suppress the white lightning. It was kept in check. And it struck down.
Shen met Killing Weapon with Killing Weapon. This was the purest form of Combat. He loved it.
A new explosion cleared the skies and broke his body. They were quickly restored again. Shen became a Master of the Law of the Killing Weapon of the Axioms of the Spear. He knew everything there was to learn about it. And any time he used it in Combat—almost every time—it would be pushed to even greater power. Not by himself, but by the rules of the True Heavens.
A Path was a Path. You build upon it. The steps you had previously taken mattered to place you where you currently were. Combat mattered for Killing Weapon.
Likewise, Sharpness mattered for Extremity; the Sharper the Spear he wielded, the more Extreme his attacks would be.
Zephyr mattered for Gentle Breeze. The Law would be at its strongest whenever he was the softest. It might be used to fool an enemy in combat. He would see.
Flow mattered for Stream. It wasn't just about keeping something going. Stream's power would be enhanced if his moves followed a specific Flow.
Arc Flash mattered for Conductivity. Comprehending that one almost shattered Shen's mind. Breaking Conductivity could improve its power as long as Conductivity was kept exactly as smooth as before. But if it were that smooth, why had it broken? The Axioms of Lightning allowed him to know it, and he felt his willpower physically increase by ten percent with the knowledge, evidencing it was a significant secret of Reality—at least for an Overlord. Everything he learned increased until now merely his willpower by up to one percent; no increase had been this significant.
And then came True Boundlessness.
Shen found it strange how the Law was kept for last despite being the third he mastered while all others had followed the order.
The Heavens parted, and he understood why.
It wasn't the clouds that parted; they were still there. It wasn't Spacetime either; it was still there. No, the Heavens parted for him. They revealed themselves to him. They pulled him into their most intimate innards.
Shen's Allvision went beyond the Axioms, beyond the Low and High Heavens. He saw things his mind forgot right after, lest remembering and trying to understand him break him. He witnessed marvels and secrets of all Creation that hurt his soul. The soul injuries would've seen him corrupted without his One Self.
He looked higher and higher. His Allvision touched the True Heavens—and unlike last time he touched them, it went beyond. Shen's consciousness was pulled not toward the edges of Reality where the Void waited but into its innermost layers.
There, close to the very center of the True Heavens, Shen was made witnesses to True Boundlessness at all its glory and majesty.
There was no corner of Reality the True Heavens didn't encompass. There was no boundary of Reality the True Heavens respected. It was everything, and it was constantly pushing.
There, at the very core of the True Heavens that ruled over and defined all Reality, Shen found the Void.
Nothingness was part of the True Heavens because the True Heavens had no Boundaries as much as it was Space with its Boundaries. It made no sense. It made perfect sense.
True Boundlessness reached ever further, ever beyond. It didn't rule over the Void because the Void was the absence of everything, including the very True Boundlessness that encompassed it.
Shen couldn't understand that. Even as the True Heavens made it as simple as it could be for his Overlord mind to comprehend, he couldn't begin to pierce how Void and Reality could coexist, how True Boundlessness could be in the Void yet be absent in it, how the Void was constantly unmaking the very core of the True Heavens yet the True Heavens was never even slightly consumed.
There was no simple answer like Yin and Yang, Creation and Destruction. There was Reality, and there was the complete absence of Reality—the Void. Whenever the two met, the Void Overmind came to be, and it started to work to Void everything that was. But there were no rules of engagement, no attempt to understand each other. No complementarity. No harmony. No sense.
The closest Shen could get to was a form of Duality. Existence and the Void were opposites. But even then, it made no sense because the Void couldn't be defined by anything. Not by True Boundlessness. Not by Duality. Not by itself.
He almost understood that the Void wasn't real. Sure, it wasn't Real in the sense that it wasn't part of Reality, but he almost felt that the Nothingness didn't truly Exist; it was merely perceived by... Not by Reality itself. Not by the True Heavens, either. By... Its people? But if the Void only existed because living beings believed in it, it should be defined to some point by the True Heavens. It wasn't. It tried to consume the True Heavens. The True Heavens wasn't consumed because it Existed and would keep existing for as long as Reality Existed in its current format—until it Changed.
At that moment, Shen understood that there was no understanding the Void. Not ever. His Reality-made mind was incapable of understanding it. He could only accept it and deal with it however and whenever it came.
The Heavens closed, pushing him back into his One Self.
Before his consciousness was returned, he at least understood one thing: the Void was the ultimate enemy, but it was also no enemy. There was no way to safely use it or its power, but it didn't need to be feared. Nothingness simply was—or rather, the Void simply wasn't. That was it.
He returned to himself, and found True Boundlessness... Not Mastered. It could never be. To have anyone be a Master over it would mean it wasn't Truly Boundless...
Shen's eyes widened as he realized not even the True Heavens controlled True Boundlessness. Not even the True Heavens defined it. True Boundlessness... It shouldn't be possible for it to exist as part of Reality. Still, it had to exist because Boundlessness could be Conceptualized by anyone who met any Boundary, like the Boundaries of Space, Will, and Change.
True Boundlessness was beyond Shen's mind ability—its Boundaries—to understand.
Yet, he also... Mastered it. Somehow. True Boundlessness was his. As with other Laws, it could be boosted by its origin Concept in Shen's Path. It would become stronger whenever it was... Boundless.
A moment later, he was almost unmade. He was Boundless. Truly Boundless. In a way he hadn't been until now.
It took everything he had to keep himself simply existing as One Self. As something with limits. He had to demand True Boundless to accept to be in his Path just as Reality demanded it to bow to its Aspects and Expressions. Without him, his Path would cease to be, and so would the True Boundlessness in his Path. It was limited in his Path, sure, but it was also somehow beyond the True Heavens because he was Severed. It was fulfilling its purpose of being Boundless by being inside him.
It settled down, and with it came the decision to one day truly understand what it meant to be Truly Boundless.
When Shen overcame the last part of his tribulation, he felt a shift of perspective. A shift of power. He hadn't really become stronger. He had learned new techniques to mimic the pinnacle of his Laws, but he could've done that without the tribulation. No, what changed was himself.
His essence.
Shen was further anchored in Reality. The True Heavens accepted him better now that he had passed its Selection, despite him being Severed from it to a point. His unconsciousness now had a more significant influence over the mix of everything that was the True Heavens. It didn't matter to change any Heavenly Rules because he was still just one speck of dust, but it mattered to make him... more real. His foundations were strengthened. And a sense of... almost like a brain fog, was lifted from him.
He cold also feel Reality better and instinctively understand every other Law of his Axioms to a point. He couldn't add them to his Path before breaking through to the Seeker level, but he knew how they would react to anything he did. He even had an idea of how other Axioms would respond to his Path. Every Concept of his mastered Laws was as his as they had been before, but now he understood all their connections to other Axioms on a deep level. That was the source of most of the boost to his willpower before True Boundlessness.
Speaking of which, Shen wasn't surprised when he discovered that witnessing True Boundlessness had increased his willpower by another thirty percent. Or rather, he was surprised it had risen so "little." He hadn't fully understood the Void and its connection to Reality, but the little he had grasped should be one of the greatest mysteries of Reality, much more important than almost everything he knew together.
Shen concluded it had to do with the Divine Mandatary's meddling. The Mandatary had defined how knowledge and willpower were connected in the Shaft, and Shen was willing to bet no single piece of knowledge could increase anyone's willpower more than thirty percent. Likewise, he bet that any time his willpower increased from accumulating knowledge henceforth would come with a slight boost until everything he could gain from the secrets of the Void was given to him. If it were any other way, there would be a lot of tactics and strategies by the peak forces to control who learned what when, to maximize their gains, but there was no such thing. E'livia had investigated it thoroughly.
The tribulation ended, the skies cleared, and Shen floated victoriously above Cylek.
He looked at the hundreds of armored floating vehicles surrounding him and smirked.
He would like these weaklings them attempt anything against a Demi-Dominator.
[A/N: Special thanks to our A-rank patron, Gordon Freeman!]
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Comments
Zaim İpek
Lovely. I think that is really the stand-out specialty of your writing style. The way you present tribulations is so uniquely your own. This was great. I await the day Shen can actually identify and articulate the primary universal aspects of order and chaos and how the two are actually one and the same, because however reality happens to be at any moment is part of its order. The fact that it changes, is a rule and therefore part of its order. And the way all of reality can never be measured or predicted in totality even by itself is the very essence of what we call chaos theory. There are certain things in reality that are 100% determined but also 100% unknowable. And that is both due to how reality is precisely ordered and infinitely chaotic. Order and Chaos being fundamentally harmonious and even synonymous when one takes a large enough view of the whole is one of my favorite things humans have discovered. For instance, crystal are an entropic structure. They are the result of entropy. A crystal doesn't break down into something else. A crystal is the result of breaking down into the lowest energy state. Black holes are similar. A black hole is perfect order. Everything in perfect order. No particles moving around, no alternating quantum states. Just pure singularity. And yet a black hole is also pure chaos in that it is the only instance where actual information is destroyed on a quantum string level due to perfect homogenity. It's the chaos that brings order and the order that creates chaos as black holes then decay over time via the perhaps impossible-to-understand phenomenon of Hawking radiation. Due to the very nature and scale of black holes, these things are not observable to us because black holes destroy information. So we can know that there probably is Hawking radiation, but understanding it in a meaningful way is most likely impossible. The universe just is.
