Shen woke up lying in the backseat of an abandoned car. Alicia had found a light blanket somewhere and covered him with it.
The sleep had done him good; it had helped his mind and body relax after everything he had been through. His father had been right to take sporadic naps despite theoretically not needing it.
It was raining outside, the first time in forever since he had last seen the rain. So he just stood there for a while, looking at the water drops hitting the window and sliding down.
His thoughts had been a mess after leaving the rift. He wondered if it was a downside of his high learning ability. A lot of things were going on all at once, connections being made and conclusions being reached and discarded. Their emotional nature had overwhelmed him.
Now, Shen felt like his mind had subconsciously taken care of everything, and he knew both how he felt and what he should do.
In the Eternal Empire, cultivators were considered naturally superior and thus held important positions. They could punish any mortal or cultivator below them within the boundaries of the law. When disrespected by whoever it was, they had to uphold their honor and defend their position.
However, the Eternal Empire was not only a land of honor-bound power but also of responsibility-driven privilege.
To attack someone considerably weaker than you for no reason was a way of quickly bringing both the fist of the Eternal Guard and the humiliation of your peers towards you. When mortals were involved, both punishments became even harsher.
Even when disrespected by a mortal, a cultivator didn't lash out in anger. Instead, one sought the cultivator responsible for the mortal and punished the offender according to the law. If the mortal was directly under you, you applied the punishment in public and made the reason for it clear for all spectators. The offender was punished, the others received a warning, and any abuses would be witnessed.
Shen, however, had killed mortals for his advance.
That was no different from using them as a cultivation resource. Repeatedly causing others harm to increase one's cultivation wasn't a novelty; there were plenty of ways of doing that. In the tutorial, Shen mentioned how some cultivators used to do just that through sex, and there was a name for those types of cultivators:
Demonic cultivators.
Previously, Shen had thought he had become one such person, but Alicia was right: it wasn't really his fault. Some of his memories from the days under Valentina's spell were fuzzy, but he recalled trying to kill himself to stop the madness. He had tried to uphold his honor. Though he hadn't been sure right after leaving the rift, his learning ability had sorted through his memories effectively and concluded he was no monster.
He was no more guilty of a kill than a stone used by a child to crush an ant. He had been a tool, nothing more.
It made things easier, but not by much.
To be a tool of such wanton carnage had marked him. He would never be able to forget that his power had been forged on the blood of innocents or that with enough power, one could commit such atrocity that easily.
He sought absolute power to be truly free, yet power corrupted. What if he became a Valentina in the future?
His learning ability provided no answer for that.
Oh, it provided excuses and speculations. The Immortal Emperor was honorable enough despite his power, Shen told himself. Shen only had to watch out for the pitfalls and avoid them.
The issue was that he knew he wasn't perfect. Without perfection, he would make mistakes. Even if he learned from them, the consequences of an error made by someone with absolute power couldn't even be measured. He was merely at peak D-rank power, yet he had killed from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. What would have happened if he had been C- or B-rank instead?
Yet he needed to seek that power. People like Valentina had it and were misusing it. He wanted his revenge, and he vowed to stop similar people from spreading such suffering. But then he came full circle: what if he became like her in seeking to make the multiverse a better place?
Shen sighed and sat up.
He could only do his best and hope it would work out. He either would find a good answer at the end of his Path or wouldn't; the only way to find out was by reaching the said end.
He checked his surroundings. His aura had replaced his Battle Sense, except it was always active, covered a smaller area, and could be used in more ways. The range of a mere thousand feet annoyed him, but he felt he should be able to increase it through training, and the improved effects more than made up for it.
Alicia had left some clothes on the front seats, but he couldn't feel her in his aura range, so he left the car naked and felt the rain on his skin.
It was cold, but he wasn't an average human anymore. Not even an ordinary cultivator. He was confident only the best body cultivation techniques in the Eternal Empire could make one as resistant as him, and even then, they would require a lot of resources that couldn't make their usage so widespread.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Shen extended his hand and felt the cold water running through his fingers. The feeling was there, yet also strangely distant because it didn't affect him as much. He wondered whether it was just because of his resistance or if his terrible recent memories made him feel disconnected from the world.
He looked at the skies and wished the rain could wash the blood in his soul.
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Shen allowed himself a few hours of further rest and inner monologue.
Then he bought a gray cultivator robe for 90 AP, used a twist of his will to have his aura shave his head, and left Alicia's clothes untouched. He also didn't put any shoes on as he looked around.
He found Alicia sitting in a distant convertible, her surroundings kept dry by magic heat.
"New style?" Alicia asked with a raised eyebrow as he approached.
Her tone was light, but not as much as usual. Shen guessed she had been affected by what she had witnessed. It made him feel guiltier.
"This is a form of penitence," he explained.
Her eyes softened a little. "It wasn't your fault," she repeated.
Shen smiled sadly. "It wasn't. Yet I was the tool used to bring pain and suffering to innocent people. Mothers lost their children, kids became orphans, and good men were killed by my hands. I was there all the time, watching it yet unable to make it stop. I owe the fallen my sorrow; I owe the broken families and mourning friends a public display of regret. If anything, because it was my own hubris that put me in such a situation."
That was another thing Shen had concluded. Pursuing his Path was the right thing to do. Being true to himself was fundamental to living a life of fewer regrets. Yet, the true reason he hadn't submitted to Valentina had nothing to do with that.
Shen had been arrogant and greedy.
He had been aware of the danger yet decided to risk everything for an unknown reward. He had gambled with his life. Even if Valentina hadn't turned him into a killing machine, what if she had merely refused to give him anything for the information? He would still have risked his life for nothing.
No, worse. Shen had been lucky that Valentina had targeted him. What if she had lashed out against Alicia? He hadn't even considered that at the time, too caught up in his own feelings to care for the one friend he had in life.
Shen loved to talk of honor, but the more he learned of himself, the more he found himself lacking.
Alicia hugged herself but said nothing for a few moments. When she did, she didn't reply to his words. "Can you just make it stop already?" she asked, annoyed.
"What?" he uttered before understanding what she was referring to. "Oh, my aura. No, auras don't work like that. It'll always be on until I develop a domain."
"It's fucking unnerving, feels like the very air around me is about to kill me at any time." She caressed her arms as if cold. "It fucking bent cars."
Alicia pointed at a field in the road, around the still blackened rift portal. The vehicles there had been bent in weird angles, cut apart, and crushed by his aura.
"I can control those effects, and I won't hurt you," Shen replied. "But that brings me to the reason I came to you. We need to talk."
She sat up straighter. Shen's aura let him feel the fear in her face, posture, and even the smell she released.
"Before anything else, I must apologize," he said and bowed deeply until his upper body was perfectly parallel to the ground. "I put your life at risk when I insisted on a reward from Valentina. If she had lashed out at you instead of me for my arrogance... I also must apologize for everything you had to see when you followed me. I'm sorry. I'll strive to improve."
Shen half expected Alicia to say he was being too serious or stupid or something. She had shown herself much more emotional than rational in the past.
However, she hugged herself harder, bit her lower lip, and made an effort to stop the tears in her eyes from falling. She nodded, and he took it as an acceptance of his apology.
"I need your help with two things," Shen said as he stood straight. "First and foremost, we need to bring every Guardian possible to this place. There are at least a thousand D-ranks and hundreds of thousands of E-ranks in this rift, and in less than nine days, they'll be free to cross the portal into our world."
That quickly brought Alicia from her state of sadness. She opened her eyes wide and stood up. "What?!"
Shen Inspected the portal aloud, and Alicia soon did the same.
| D Rift — Rebellious Gnoll Cult (BLOCKED)
| Blockade: 8 days
| Protection: 4 days
| Duration: 2 months
| Guilty of: communing with the Void
"The protection ends in four days," he said, "and I believe it has to do with the enemy being allowed to invade this world. The blockade will outlive it, but when it's also over, the creatures on the other side will be free to cross over."
"Oh fuck," Alicia said. "A thousand D-fucking-ranks? And hundreds of thousands of E-ranks? What the fuck?!" She shrugged. "Marzia said we get D rifts because we have a D-rank, so we gotta rank up quickly, but that sounds like way too fucking much."
"Oh, she did?" Shen replied, interested. His mind worked quickly, and he nodded when he reached a conclusion that made sense. He shared it with Alicia. "Maybe the Guardian System or the Alliance doesn't expect someone to become D-rank so much more quickly than everyone else in their world. The Pioneer Tutorial is not supposed to be beaten. Instead, it's in place to give some elites a better chance and experience before going through the standard tutorial. They will be humbled by their loss and understand the need to grow stronger.
"That's probably why the rewards are so good if we actually get Pioneers. We'll need the learning ability upgrade to have a chance to grow fast enough to survive."
Alicia looked confused. "Why not just let us grow at our own pace instead of trying to fabricate elites?"
"Probably too slow," Shen guessed. "We're supposed to become soldiers in a cosmic war, and we might need to fight some Void Spawn in two years when Earth moves a little away from the supposedly safest place in the Multiverse Alliance. Making the power gap between elites and common Guardians appear sooner adds a lot of jealousy and desire not to be overcome. It pushes everyone to do better faster than letting us grow slowly at a similar pace. Then again, I'm no expert. The Multiverse Alliance needs warriors, so they likely turned the integration of new worlds into a science of its own."
Alicia snorted. "Yet for all their supposed grand science, their plan failed. You did it; you beat the odds. Why would they throw away a race that did well in the Pioneer Tutorial? Isn't all those revives even supposed to be expensive? Why throw money away like that?"
Shen nodded sadly. "I don't know, and I lack the knowledge to even begin to guess about it. I mean, I could guess someone wanted us gone, and the Alliance keeps the loophole in place if they need to use it against a race they dislike. However, I don't know whether it's true and why or whether there's another reason."
The girl closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she stared right into Shen's eyes with newfound determination. "Alright, we gotta save the fucking world. Nothing much, just another Tuesday. What else? You said you need help with two things."
Shen nodded, acknowledging her resolve. "The other favor is much simpler. I want your help making a video."