Alistair stared at his burning body in disbelief. Intense red flames covered his clothes from head to toe.
But he felt nothing. No pain, no heat, and no threat. All of his well-honed senses hadn’t detected any threat, either. Yet his closest friends looked at him with guarded eyes. What was going on?
“Alistair, I’m going to need you to stay very still,” Alexandra said, drifting away from him with Jesse and Oliver behind her. She made a gesture and looked up to what seemed to be a meeting room on the second floor of the upper dome.
“Guys, seriously, tell me what is happening,” Alistair said. “I’m not joking.”
“Neither are we,” Alexandra said. “You’ve triggered the Karmic Gel. Your own sister assured us it was foolproof. No matter who climbs through that item, if they have malicious Karmic intent, it’ll trigger the flames of a sinner’s hell.”
“Well, I feel no pain, so clearly I’m not a sinner,” Alistair joked. “Alexandra, it’s me! You’ve literally had your eyes on me the entire time since I fought Oracle until now. There was no time for me to be replaced by a doppelganger. And if I was a fake since the beginning, how the hell did I defeat Oracle at her full power without taking a scratch?”
The room was a hotbed of a tension. The layout was similar to the first dome, taking most of its inspiration from a modern office building. One that was designed by an architect who probably loved glass a little too much.
While there were some stragglers working at desks, he actually recognized most of the people he detected on the second floor. To no one’s surprise, upon seeing their boss on fire in a potentially compromised position, they came flying down.
John Desmond, the Northeast Order Freehold’s second-in-command, floated gracefully on a flaming chariot. Despite the opaque flames hiding the passengers, his aura sense knew who they were right away. Moneylender Lauren Yoon who served as their treasurer, whom he needed to see anyway, Archer Blaise Blanchett who was in charge of educating and raising troops, Caren Locasta, the Chronicler, and William St. James, the Farsighter. In some sense, those last two were the brains of their freehold.
“Don’t forget about my guile,” Dev’rox said. “I’m over a hundred thousand years old. I’ve picked up quite a few things in my time.”
“Dev’rox! I was beginning to worry! You weren’t talking for a while.”
“Prince of Hell, I need some breaks, too. My soul got seriously stressed being in that barbaric paradise, and then I had to push my arcane magics right after?”
“Sorry,” Alistair said. “You do deserve a break, buddy.”
“I’m your arcane master, not your buddy,” Dev’rox replied, though with good humor. “I’ll talk to you later. Let me rest for now.”
Alistair was glad that Dev’rox didn’t want to continue their conversation, since he had to deal with the pressing issue of all of his freehold thinking he was an enemy.
John and his passengers joined Alexandra close to the gel whole. In particular, he felt Caren and William’s discerning gazes fall over him as they tried to ascertain the truth.
“Is what he says true, Alexandra?” Caren asked.
“Yes, it is,” Alexandra replied, not taking her eyes off Alistair's burning body. “He defeated Oracle and came directly here. His powers seemed normal to me.”
“My powers. Good idea,” Alistair said, remembering what the Devil King report said about the fifth of their number, Chameleon. “To what degree can this Chameleon fellow copy Skills?”
“To his own power,” Caren said. “Which is lower than his rank would indicate as a Devil King. It’s the price one must pay to have copying on degree of fidelity. In other words, the output of his copying is much lower than the original, as long as the original is, say, a top 50 ranker.”
“So he would be nothing compared to me, then?” Alistair asked. “Why don’t I just flex my aura and prove that I’m not the shapeshifter?”
“That’s fine enough.” Alexandra whittled her daggers together. “But my concern wasn’t that you’re Chameleon. I already felt your Buddha Skill right in front of me. I was worried about Oracle messing with you. Maybe she implanted a sleeper Karmic program or something, I don’t know. And then when you get back here, boom, you kill everyone.”
“I seem to be doing a poor job of that,” Alistair noted.
“That’s just what she would make you say, isn’t it?”
“Alexandra, Alistair, this is getting us nowhere,” John said, raising his hands. “Alexandra is correct. If the gel triggered the fire, that means something is wrong with your Karma. Let’s think about this logically. The last thing you did was fight the strongest pure Karmic cultivator on Earth. Alistair, don’t you think that’s the least bit suspicious?”
Alistair reflected inwardly. John had a point. He had been so adamant about his innocence that he didn’t consider all the relevant facts. Speaking only in terms of Karmic energy and deftness with Karma, Oracle surpassed him. Therefore, it wasn’t such a crazy idea that she had pulled one past his careful sight. It would have had to have been at the end, when she killed herself and unleashed a torrential outpour of insidious Karmic threads. What if one had gotten past his protections and latched onto to his soul?
What would the consequence of that even be? Alistair wondered. Could it really possess me and force me to kill my comrades?
Alistair found that hard to believe. That just seemed way too strong, even for her. If she had such a godlike Skill, then she should have been able to put up more of a fight.
He searched deep within himself for aberrations in his Karma. The pool of crimson Karmic energy that Alistair employed sat within his soulcore, in a state of superposition with two other types of quintessence, Dao energy and Mana. Nue’s seat was the brain rather than the soulcore.
Nothing felt wrong with his Karmic pool, nor the threads of Fate that tugged in every which direction. They felt… normal. Which concerned Alistair even more. At this point, the others had convinced him the Second Devil King had done something to him, even if he didn’t know what it was. That he couldn’t figure out the mark she made led to him wondering if the worst-case scenario really was true.
The change came.
It was a pulse. A hidden node of darkness nested in a thread of Fate close to his body opened up and unveiled its contents.
In that moment, all things became clear. Oracle had sacrificed the last remnants of her life to curse Alistair with a bead of Karma. By hiding it within a thread of Fate and not within his body, she had evaded his finely tuned senses. Her weaving of threads was a masterpiece unrivaled by Alistair. She had an abundant amount of practice as it was her main combat Skill, and his less trained Karmic sight was blind to it.
Solitude. This word echoed through Alistair’s head many times. It was within Oracle’s last sentence before passing on from the world. Darkness, darkness and solitude.
Fate within the Leading Domes upended, the same as when he battled Oracle. A cover of darkness spread from Alistair to everywhere in sight in a fraction of a second. He was in no position to offer a counter with his 13 points of positive Karma. But there was a distinct lack of threat inside of the darkness. His danger sense felt no deadly nature.
Suddenly, as it came, the darkness went.
And so did everyone else.
Solitude. When the absolute darkness faded, Alistair was alone. On the moon.
Alistair gazed down at Earth.
“Huh?” was all he could let out.
Before he could lose his sanity, Alistair calmly looked down at his beautiful planet, and went to work.
In the beginning, Alistair was certain it had to be an illusion. But as he surveyed the desolate surface of the moon, nothing stuck out. He calmly looked for any wrong details, squeezing the most out of his senses. There was no giveaway. For an intents and purposes, he was… just on the moon.
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He counted his lucky stars that he wasn’t dying. With the Metabolism leaf of the Heart Branch, he converted Mana to oyxgen. His skin had enough durability to create pressure on his internal organs to prevent his bodily fluids from boiling and killing him. His natural resistance to heat and his transformed Mammothskin Raiment protected him from the 120 degrees Celsius temperatures.
It wasn’t comfortable—he felt like his body was squeezed from the inside out, but he could survive. But what the hell was he supposed to do?
“Dev’rox? This isn’t an illusion, right? I mean, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, but just want to double check.”
“Mhmm,” Dev’rox said. “I’m not an expert in that field. But I think not.”
“Then, excusing my language, what the fuck just happened?”
Dev’rox flew out of his body. He whirled around the rocky surface, diving underneath into the hills and through the dark sky of outer space. “Huh. Okay. I might have an answer. Can you ask me politely?”
“Dev’rox, not the time.”
“Bah, you younglings have no manners these days. Fine. Drumroll please,” Dev’rox said. Alistair gave him a stern look. “We’re inside of an alternative Fate stream.”
Before Alistair could ask what that was, the imp shushed him and started his explanation. “With my eminent genius, I realized that my actions were being limited. As a ghost, before attaching myself to you, I had very little causal impact. Even at the beginning of our relationship, I could do very little. Now, I feel something similar. So, I wracked my venerable brain for any possible source of such a limitation. The answer was an alternative Fate stream.
“If you think about the ontology of reality as split into the many planes of existence, then Fate is but one of many ways to think of the flow of reality. There are many models of this, but the two most prominent are Fate and Time.”
“I can’t see anything weird in my Karmic vision,” Alistair said. “Apart from, you know, being on the moon.”
“Fate and Karma are different things. The Order of the Multiverse is no simple model. The threads of Fate and the Karmic web are two separate concepts. You can see threads of Fate with your Karmic vision, and influence it, but Karma is not Fate itself. Your Subclass is Karmic, so being able to tell fine differences in Fate is not necessarily in its wheelhouse.”
“Fate and Time,” Alistair muttered. “So does that mean time travel is possible?”
Dev’rox snorted. “Weren’t you the one admonishing me for sidetracks?” There was no doubt Alistair had touched one of his weak spots. The imp loved to provide information—it made him seem more sagelike and worldly. “I have never heard of anything like that. If time travel is possible at all, I suspect only Truthseekers could accomplish such a feat. Anyhow, continuing from where you interrupted me—the Time model of reality posits free will, with infinite branching realities. The Fate model of reality posits destiny, with set paths and events happening. That is not to say there is no free will in Fate and no sure things in Time. Both models are true and false at the same time. When you see threads and manipulate threads of Fate, they are real. When a Time cultivator sees their timelines, they are also real.”
Alistair greedily soaked up all the knowledge he was given. Dev’rox was prohibited by Multiversal Law from revealing information that was too far above him. With specific instances, however, the Profound realm could explain what he was seeing right in front of him. Alistair appreciated that Dev’rox was giving him this much, since talking about Time when seeing a Fate related phenomenon was a stretch. Finding the extremities of Law was something Dev’rox excelled in.
“A Fate stream is different from a timeline in that Fate is centered around the individual. If Oracle dragged you into a separate stream, it is all local to you. There must be a certain condition that this Fate stream represents.”
“Solitude,” Alistair muttered. “That’s what she told me before she killed herself. What else is the representation of solitude on Earth except the moon?”
“That does seem right,” Dev’rox said. “Oracle created a destiny for you that involved absolute solitude. This is what the universe provided. If you’re wondering how come she didn’t do something absurd like making all your friends hate you, that requires a constant flow of energy. Obviously, she’s dead. Your essence is foreign to the Fate stream, and by targeting you, she’s limited that energy drain. You’ll still eventually return to the prime reality, but I haven’t the faintest idea how long that would take.”
“Don’t know what I’d do without you,” Alistair said. “Thanks for the rundown. But isn’t this ability way too broken? How the hell is this a Foundation realm power? Wouldn’t everyone at the higher realms be Fate cultivators, considering they can just remove their opponents from the battle?”
“Not quite. She required her life’s sacrifice to bring you here, which makes it difficult to use consistently. And Fate streams cannot bring death. At least not directly. They cannot kill, and are difficult to injure with, as one’s own Fate dislikes subversion. Harm is the ultimate subversion, making it extremely difficult.”
Alistair considered Dev’rox’s new information. That begged the question of why she had cursed him with her dying breath. Spite? Possible, but that was the least dangerous conclusion. He had to think of the worst and imagine he was facing that.
Looking through all of his options, there really was nothing that he could do. Teleportation Circles didn’t extend the distance he needed. He had no special treasure to bring him back. He was well and truly separated from the entire world. Solitude, like Oracle said.
Alistair sat down. He did have one option, but he wasn’t sure if it was the best idea. He had his one meeting with the Lazarene Minister for [Armageddon]. It was his last meeting, so he wanted to save it for a desperate time. This was a desperate time, but Alistair was also around 80% sure that the Clear Water Sect elder could do nothing for him. Teleporting their sponsee from the moon to the Earth to bypass the actions of his enemy seemed like an obvious case of violating the pact of non-interference.
Clear Water Sect, Alistair thought. He had thought so little of his future with them since he was so frantically trying to save the world. Fifty years of service, or ten under wartime conditions. That sounded so long at first, but after understanding his true lifespan even after reaching just Adept, it was so short. Given his draconic bloodline, Alistair wouldn't be surprised if he could reach a 10,000 year lifespan as an Adept.
Why so little years? Were they so confident in their camaradarie and believed he would genuinely come to see them as his family? Now that he thought about it, Evangeline was going to come with him? The Clear Water Sect had recruited both of them. It would be like going to college together, Alistair mused. Only this time, Angie wouldn't get to hold how elite her school was over him.
While he had time to spare, he checked his finances. Money ruled the world. The multiverse, it seemed. Maybe Lucius Wood’s path wasn’t so wrong in the grand scheme of things.
Looking back at his past, Alistair’s goals in his life in the before were very money based. Evangeline had gotten a job working as a machine learning engineer for an AI startup, and Alistair didn’t want to fall behind. He had gotten an investment banking job, and he was looking forward to a wealthy future, maybe retiring early. Settling down with Katelyn and having a few kids. How whimsical his old goals seemed now.
The Northeast Order Freehold generated 21.7 million Gold drachma per month in taxes. That didn’t include an additional 9.9 million in proceeds from the official store, leading to a total of 31.8 million a month, or a bit over a million a day. Land Store Credits were up to 99.3k a month.
This despite all the warring and destruction. The improvement of the existing land outpaced the destruction, at least so far. New Boston especially was the economic center of the world, and the network effects of that were generating a ton of money.
Alistair smiled. It looked like everything was okay, at least for now. In the map within his freehold overview, it said that 9.1% of the Northeast Freehold was overrun by the dungeon monsters. Not great, but they could handle that.
In his personal account were 5.5 million Gold drachma and 19.2k Land Credits. This was the personal generation untied to the overall freehold. His specifically chosen subordinates like John Desmond, who was the Vice President of the freehold, could access the overall collected money and credits.
Speaking of millions of drachma, Alistair took out what he had been dreading—Farsa Strongbite’s business card. The white metal of the card felt cool to his touch as he grabbed it out of his pocket, where he knew it would be. It was one of his soulbound items, along with the Cabal’s black marble and now Purana’s glass tetrahedron that would guide him to Lisorte.
Alistair was expecting to see “LATE” again, but there was instead a short message.
“LATE: All payments postponed. Meeting scheduled with debtor Alistair Tan in 90 FX-14752 days with the Visionary realm Farsa Strongbite, Portolon Clan debt collector.”
Alistair wasn’t sure what to make of that. No payments were a good thing, but a second meeting didn’t sound good.
“Looks like it’s indentured servitude for you,” Dev’rox chuckled.
“That’s not funny because you’re going to be along the ride with me,” Alistair shot back. “Are you being serious, also?”
“No, I am being utterly serious,” Dev’rox said. “I was the Final Frontier Empire’s slave for tens of thousands of years, remember?”
“But I’m already in a contract with the Clear Water Sect.”
“They can work out a deal. It won’t be that bad, trust me. They’ll probably have you run around doing errands.”
“Asset?” Alistair raised an eyebrow. “The Portolon Clan hates me because I ruined their investment in Anthony. They want my hide. I bet they’d send me on suicide missions.”
“Then you’d best get stronger. Or hope that your sect leader negotiates otherwise.”
There was a period of a few hours of nothing. Alistair had thought that his perception of time might be completely out of whack, but he forgot about the rotation of the Earth. From his lofty vantage point, he could see the Earth’s rotation clearly, and never lost track of time.
Like he said before, there wasn’t anything to do but wait. Wait, and hope that Oracle’s dwindling curse would run out. He wasn’t going to use his final meeting unless he really had no other option.
Around a day into his silent meditation, there was a change. A notification window appeared.
> Grand Dungeon Prompt:
>
> The Grand Dungeon of The Second Step is a challenge of the highest difficulty. A balanced lineup of challengers is highly recommended.
>
> Limitations: Max 8 challengers
>
> The Grand Dungeon, Symphony of Skills, is comprised of ten individual sectors. You must pass through each sector to get to the next, culminating in the final “Trial of Harmony.” Each sector offers its unique challenges. The Grand Dungeon is offered in multiple locations at once, and always maintains the same difficulty, no matter the challenger. Multiple instances of the dungeon are separate entities. The first in the world to clear the Symphony of Skills gets a special Legendary rarity item.
>
> Task: Clear the dungeon.
>
> Reward (Solo Clear):
>
> 1) +25 Upgrade Points for each sector cleared
>
> 2) Insight Vision for the creation of a proto-Domain (If user already possesses proto-Domain, instead they receive an appropriate level Dao Fruit)
>
> 3) 400 Upgrade Points
>
> 4) First Through Bonus: Legendary rarity item.
>
> Time Limit: Until the end of The Second Step, 23 days from now.
>
> Accept (Y/N)? Time remaining for decision: Four hours.