Liya arrived at the basement where her charge had gone crazy. She still couldn't get the system to show her what had happened there, which was why she was investigating at all.
She focused on feeling the surrounding energies. She wasn't an expert energy manipulator; her approach to magic was the most cost-effective possible: she used mana to intensify her Path's hold over Reality and little else. Yet, she was still a C-rank at the edges of the B-rank, so she felt the remnants of something other than mana after a while.
Feng Shen was a cultivator, so that should be qi. Still, Liya didn't stop. She continued there for minutes that turned into hours.
She was trying to feel someone's Path.
There were many generic explanations for why the system blocked someone's access to information. However, most of them didn't fit her situation. Although Liya didn't believe in talent, enough powerful beings in the Alliance did and demanded they be cared for. She had tools to monitor Feng Shen's health that bordered on the authority of an A-rank. They should have let her see what had happened here.
They didn't, and she could think of only two possible explanations for that.
One was the involvement of an S-rank.
The other was the meddling of a system hacker.
If an S-rank was involved, Liya wouldn't feel anything in the surroundings, no matter how long or hard she tried. She was nowhere near powerful enough to differentiate an S-rank's Realization from Reality itself.
However, if she was being blocked by an A-rank or weaker and they had done something to Feng Shen in that basement, she would feel the echoes of their Path around, no matter their power.
Although the Path of a strong A-rank, or one specialized in stealth, would've eluded her in most other places, the Milky Way galaxy was still too weak and couldn't deal with an A-rank's mere existence very well—much less their applied power. Their Path would release undesired emanations that would stay behind. If there were any around, she would feel them.
Liya could do nothing about the data blackout if an S-rank was responsible for it. However, if a hacker was involved, she would have a way out, though it was tricky.
If a hacker was around, they were good enough to change her access to information but not feed the system a false recording. That might not be enough for them to prevent or modify any reports she made, but she wouldn't risk it until she investigated things further.
What if she made a report, but it was blocked and alerted the hacker? What if that made them come for her?
After Liya's power-up using the Receptacles of Hope, she felt confident in dealing with an average B-rank. However, she was still a C-rank. Any peak B-rank or stronger could crush her with ease.
While Earth was on a lockdown from the rest of the Alliance, all communication to the outside world had to go through the system, so her lips were sealed, with one exception:
Direct contact with the Universe's Superintendent.
Liya could use a simple beacon spell—if it could even be called that—that the being responsible for that universe would quickly notice. Her identity as the Drow Maiden would let her not get immediately obliterated from existence for the insolence, but that would only take her so far.
Superintendents weren't investigators, much less had a lot of time on their hands. To report a system invasion to a Superintendent, Liya needed irrefutable evidence. False flags were dealt with harshly, which might even affect the drow race.
Therefore, Liya had to uncover enough evidence to present to the Superintendent before contacting them.
The alternative was letting go of her identity as an Observer and directly teleporting away from Earth straight into a branch of the Justice Department. However, her people had ordered her to stay protected on Earth, and she would obey.
So, she kept trying to feel something, anything that might—
Suddenly, she felt it. A hint of an itch on the edge of her senses. It was weak and brief, and any mortal would've thought they had imagined it. However, she was a C-rank being. Confidence in her senses was a prerequisite for her survival.
Still, she would rather not call the Superintendent based on just that. Fortunately, there was a much better place for her to feel what she believed to be someone's Path.
Liya would've preferred to stay away from her charge for now if possible. The other Observers would investigate, learn that Feng Shen was hers, and try to interfere. However, it seemed she would have to meet the boy in person sooner than expected.
A couple steps brought her to the edge of the rift portal he had gone through. Twenty Pioneers were at the boundary, talking amongst themselves.
Some, led by Feng Shen's female companion, wanted to go check on the Human Rising Star. Others were scared of what the uncontrolled boy would do to them if they met each other. A few, led by the Human Maiden, argued they had other rifts to deal with for humankind's benefit.
Liya agreed with the latter. Those people were just too weak to matter; they were more likely to get in the way rather than help Feng Shen with anything.
As an Observer, no one could see, feel, or touch Liya. She entered the rift unhindered. Another step later, she reached her charge.
Feng Shen was fighting valiantly, though he would eventually die a glorious death from the way things were looking. She hadn't come to watch that though. Instead, she focused on his brain, concentrating on feeling the energies inside.
Liya had heard about qi deviation before and wondered if her charge was going through it. However, from what she had heard, qi deviation worked differently. It could either hurt a cultivator and bring their power drastically down or tremendously raise their power at the cost of their sanity.
Feng Shen hadn't followed that pattern.
He had shown great restraint right after the supposed deviation—he hadn't killed his companion and had gone after Bounties. Only after he mastered a new Concept, which should've made him saner, did he truly go wild.
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Liya quickly felt what she assumed to be qi in her charge's brain. That was good. She then kept trying to feel that strange Path once more.
If she found nothing—if the boy's stupidity had caused his downfall—she would let fate follow its course.
But if he had been messed with, the culprit would learn what happened with anyone who messed with the drow.
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Shen was a tad bit slower than the fastest projectiles, the flying vehicles' homing white laser lights. He made up for it with superior footwork, but there was only so much he could do against hundreds of thousands of enemies, many of them throwing projectiles or spells at him.
The issue, he realized too late, was that they didn't care about friendly fire.
The gnolls had outstanding movement coordination. When struck by Shen or friendly fire in a non-lethal manner, they swiftly retreated, and others took their places almost instantly.
To kill them in a single strike, Shen had to spend a lot of qi. If he didn't kill them in one hit, they fled. That made things even worse for him in the long run.
Shen's spear cut down most projectiles that reached him, but some still made it past his weapon. His body was resisting well, but he found the hard way that consuming two health potions didn't let him recover 200 HP over 10 minutes. The health regeneration was always the same.
That left him with health crystals. He was going through his AP at a fast rate. He had expected his stamina to be an issue, but he had underestimated the difficulty of having only his Foundational Concept at his disposal.
Being slow sucked.
Pure D+ agility, without any movement art involved, let him move at around thirty thousand feet per second, or ten times the speed of sound. He was slowed to half that by different spells and Skills, but that was still Mach 5, the limit between supersonic and hypersonic speed. And yet, the much slower gnolls reacted fast enough to use their defensive Skills on time. Shen was sure there was more at play there.
As seconds turned into minutes and minutes got closer to one hour, Shen found himself killing less than ten gnolls per minute. Even that required much effort.
His qi reached an all-time low while his stats were pushed to the brink. His spear cut shields even without qi as he got better at using his D+ agility and D strength, yet the gnolls' Skills let them resist long enough for him to be forced to move before he could kill the shield-bearers. It just wasn't enough.
They kept him encircled by shields. When a white cube came, he was forced to push through despite how much damage he took. That cost less qi than dealing with a cube, though the price in health and pain was significant.
Shen...
Shen found despair.
And in despair, he found illumination.
His Foundational Concept was War, Combat, and Sharpness. An aura was the constant externalization of a Concept. That meant his Battle Sense and his sphere filled with Foundational Qi should—
KILL!
Shen was finding his true self through carnage. Unabridged, unadulterated, absolute carnage. He let go of pesky things like Concepts to focus on the ancient wisdom of man:
Sharp end kill. Enemy bad. Therefore, kill enemy with sharp end
Humankind had survived on that and nothing else for so long. Why complicate things? His aura would come or not; let things happen as they should.
He thrust his spear with his entire body behind the movement. The subtly of footwork, the annoyance of a spear art, all were shed in favor of pure, brute, raw strength and speed. Muscle work had his spear meet a tower shield at neck-breaking speed. The shield resisted, and the spearhead, wielded without technique, shattered in half.
But the sheer shock wave of his attack damaged the gnoll, and he found sheer joy in that.
He was Combat! He was War! He was Sharpness!
Shen was the Spear, and the Spear—
KILL!
He roared to the skies as projectiles and spells lowered his HP. He bought health crystal after crystal until interacting with the system became too bothersome.
He was death, not life.
He had to kill, not survive.
Kill the enemy, kill himself; what's the difference?
He would kill himself, and in the end, he would find his aura or not. That was the true purpose of his one goal. His life had been forfeited for something so much grander than him.
As Shen's HP neared zero, he understood that he should have known his place—
The world blinked.
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Liya was mesmerized by what she felt.
It was a Path yet not, a kind of energy intrinsically linked to willpower the likes she had never encountered before. It had a mind of its own and flared every time her charge got closer to developing his aura.
It had been subtle at first. Small bursts here and there, just enough to make her sure foul play was involved, but not enough to let her tell what it was doing.
She felt conflicted about putting Feng Shen through greater suffering to identify that thing. Still, she concluded that understanding that malady, and maybe the enemy behind it, would help her guide him into preventing a similar situation later.
When Feng Shen touched his aura for the first time, the energy flared with greater power and intent, twisting his brain entirely to prevent him from accomplishing anything. Yet, even in that state, he still almost developed an aura again.
Thus, almost as fascinating as the strange energy-Path-willpower thing she felt was what she witnessed in Feng Shen.
Liya had been humbled that day, for she recognized a prior mistake of hers. Talent, the knack for solving things at critical moments that some old fogies in the Alliance insisted was the only thing keeping it from being swallowed by the Void. For the first time, she saw it happen with enough consistency to believe it could surpass learning ability.
As she had peered into Feng Shen's brain, she had learned how it worked. It wasn't too different from the drow, though it had been consumed by unrelenting resolution, an obsession that left little space for anything else. His mind, in his soul, did what it could to bring reason to that almost primal brain, but that strange energy had been perverting the entire mind all the while.
Even then, Feng Shen found ways to bridge the gap between being little more than an animal with a stick and a sapient with enough control of his Path to will it on the surroundings and form an aura.
Repeatedly, he stepped closer to that. The energy flared, pushing him further away each time, yet his talent made him return to it again.
He probably didn't realize most attempts until those last ones, when he completely skipped multiple steps in his aura development.
First, he had started to try to slam his Concept into his surroundings to brute-force an aura. She had seen it done before, but never by something with little more sapience than a dog.
Then, when the energy cut him, he had actually exploited the complete lack of an ego caused by his further modified brain to turn himself into a sort of living Law. In that state, he had siphoned understanding from the basics of some Concepts and funneled it into his surroundings using his body, not his mind, as a medium. That was a way of forming an aura that she had never seen before.
No amount of learning ability, skill, or luck could explain those attempts. Liya had to admit talent was a most valuable thing. It had allowed him to take that extra step twice when it mattered the most.
Yet, even as Liya realized that, she was also humbled by his failure. It reminded her of her people's past.
Before absolute power, no amount of talent mattered. The energy holding Feng Shen had thoroughly dominated him from beginning to end. He had been but a puppet playing to some superior being's tune.
Liya was still no closer to finding out the responsible than initially, but she knew she couldn't deal with that strange energy. It was beyond her power, maybe even beyond a B-rank's power. Likewise, the culprit wasn't someone she could face until she became A-rank.
That didn't discourage her; who better than the drow to bid their time for revenge?
Revenge would come, but now, it was time to attempt to save her charge—or add yet another being to the drow revenge list if the Universe's Superintendent refused to help in such blatant disrespect of Alliance law.
She didn't expect any issues though. A first-class talent with a racial Title had been attacked in a protected world, and the culprit had hacked into the system to cover their tracks. Way too many people would get pissed or get ideas if word of that going unpunished was spread, and even if they silenced her, even if the drow somehow didn't investigate or get to the bottom of her death, one of the Observers would spill the beans.
Liya pushed her Path, strengthened with her mana, through the rift portal and back to Earth. Once she could affect the planet, she willed Reality to get Annihilated. There was no easier way to grab the attention of a Superintendent.
She instantly felt their attention upon her, and then the rift world stopped.