The drow unarmed style was Lawless and Conceptless. It wasn't easy to create a C-tier Lawless technique, much less a Conceptless one, but they had accomplished it.
Therefore, Feng Shen had no trouble adapting it to his Path. Doing so helped Liya pinpoint where he still saw himself as a spear. When she did, she slapped him hard to correct the mistakes instead of patting him softly.
Yet, the anger he showed only decreased.
His self-control impressed her, just as did his learning speed. Learning the basic drow unarmed combat was easy. Yet, Shen got a passable mark in half the time Liya had expected it to take.
It wasn't just his talent at play, though. She could tell he had drawn from some unknown wheel of knowledge, probably the same place his spear art and movement art had come from before he also assimilated them into his Path. That gave him too much of an edge to learn the drow style.
She wondered what secrets Earth's past held but knew better than to pry on something she had been told only a specialized B-rank or an A-rank could find out. She would have demanded answers if it was detrimental to her charge or could be good to the drow, but it didn't look like it. Her charge's spear and movement arts were good, but the drow knew better ones.
Feng Shen learned so fast that Liya started stealthily and subtly applying her domain around him to slow him down whenever he moved less than perfectly. Without his aura, he had trouble detecting it and believed not moving absolutely correctly came with worse drawbacks than it did.
In doing so, Liya was surprised to learn that he had found how to use his True Path to passively counter Law-based environment-focused lockdown techniques. From everything she had seen, he had never interacted with Laws before she covered Earth in Darkness.
He hadn't resisted her Darkness back then, so he had learned this ability in the Void Incubator. Liya refused to believe he had learned how to counter a Law after briefly feeling hers. Therefore, the most likely explanation was that the Embryo he had fought used Law-magic.
That explained better how he had developed a Conceptual domain and why he had harmed his soul using it.
Liya might've been a bit too eager to classify Feng Shen as stupid and pathetic. She blamed it on what she had witnessed in other humans.
Still, Feng Shen never noticed the shattered Law fragments that appeared whenever someone's Law-infused will was removed from something—in this case, the space around him. She was quick to Annihilate the gray smoke before he could perceive it.
Two and a half months after she had kidnapped him, his body became a work of art, and he fought like an elite young drow.
It was time to focus on his mind.
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Back in Liya's time, she had moved to weapon training right after getting good enough at unarmed combat. She had had no trouble with it.
However, the troublesome young swordswoman who used to see herself as a sword ended up dead. Such deaths weren't usual. They became mere statistics in the drow mass warrior-producing machine until enough deaths evidenced a glaring flaw in the training process.
Extensive research on similar deaths made the drow realize the young woman had reverted to seeing herself as a weapon after extended contact with a sword. The weapon training had come too soon after the unarmed training. That caused a backslash and shattered her True Path, thus killing her.
After locating the source of the issue, the drow tested many ways to avert it. In the end, the best solution was the simplest one: the trainee's mind had to be stimulated to further cement their body-soul identity. It even ended up speeding up the weapon-training phase for those who should've had no trouble with it.
Liya would keep Feng Shen's body active, but part of his current training was about making his mind and body into weapons. She had to take his mind away from that.
He had to remember he was more than a weaponized existence.
"That's enough," she said after he finished kicking the air in an almost perfect motion. "Sit down and ask me three questions."
Letting him ask questions was a good icebreaker and a great way to give back his humanity. The human mind, for all its failings, was a curious one. She would let him exercise it, thus connecting with his intrinsic self.
Even if Feng Shen proved more of a battle maniac than she expected and only asked things about combat, she would only have to lead the conversation toward more suitable topics.
He sat down as ordered and asked, "Why are you doing this?"
"What do you mean by this: letting you ask questions or training you?" Liya asked back.
Obviously, he meant the latter, and she could've been an asshole and answered the former. Instead, she indirectly pointed out that he should be clearer whenever he got opportunities like this.
"Training me," he replied.
"Because of the drop of orc blood essence inside you," she said.
He frowned for a split moment before recalling what it was about. "The tutorial."
"Yes."
"That blood drop is still inside me?"
"Is that your second question?" Liya teased. Before he could answer, she replied. "Yes, it is, and the Alliance likely paid a high price to make it so. I could purge it, but we'll use it to your advantage at the right moment."
"High price?"
"Telling you about that will require you to spend another question," she replied. "For now, you only need to know that the Orc Rising Star gave the Alliance a drop of blood essence, and his Incarnation deemed you worthy of further training. That's why it inserted the blood drop into you. After that, Alliance law demanded he train you to the best of his ability, but it came with internal orc political implications, and he chose to get rid of you instead. The only legal way to do so was to find a better master—or at least someone he could argue was better. He found me."
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Shen frowned.
He hated the drow. He hated her with everything he was. He hated her more than he thought possible. He hated even more how knowledgeable she was and how good she was at training him. He hated that he learned so much through painful stimuli. Oh, how he hated her and everything about her!
And now, he also hated being unable to feel the orc blood drop inside his body despite the damn elf saying it was there. That meant only one thing: the orc was much more powerful than him. And he also hated how outclassed he constantly felt since he was pulled into the Void.
Shen could ask the drow how to feel the blood drop but carefully considered his next question instead.
He hated her, but the things he could learn from her! That he had already learned! She had removed falsehoods from his Path. Those wrong principles would've hindered his growth otherwise—he could tell it now after pinpointing and extinguishing them.
Shen's body was not a spear. He was not a spear. He had realized it before, but now he truly lived it on his every breath.
Shen had also previously realized his mind was part of his Path yet claimed a separated, hierarchically higher role. It was affected by his Path, yet it also led it. The training made that absurdly more explicit.
He had previously thought of himself as a master of his Path, his existence, but it was more than that now. Now, he saw the entirety of his existence, not only his Concepts. Three was nothing he was ignoring or undervaluing anymore.
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In the rift, he had understood his emotions were a crucial part of him.
Now, he understood he was more human than he had thought and that it had much more severe implications.
It was so obvious, yet getting such simple truth literally beaten into his very bones and soul had been so hard! And painful! And humiliating!
Oh, how he hated the damn drow!
Shen still felt confused now and then. When he started walking a True Path—as the elf called it—even his opposing Concepts had covered for each other's weaknesses while strengthening each other. Regrettably, that same strength was used against other parts of himself. He hadn't noticed before because his mind had agreed with the Concepts that he should be a spear to many extents, that it was superior to his biological body. Now, he disagreed, and it wasn't an easy thing to do.
The Laws of Reality controlled everything in existence. He had pulled tiny drops of said Laws, the Concepts, into himself. Now, those drops pressured him into adapting to their existence rather than keep being the full extent of what he was—rather than being human.
His mind wasn't exactly at odds with the rest of his existence; he still saw himself as his Path in almost everything. But that single exception, acknowledging he was a human rather than a spear, made him feel pressured in every waking moment.
Moving like a human was still a conscious effort rather than something completely natural, though it became easier the more he did it.
As much as he had doubts about everything, that difficulty decided what one of his next questions should be. He didn't want to cease being his true self. The example of telling a child they had a heart without telling them what a heart was resonated deeply within him.
Shen had mastered some Concepts of the Spear, but he knew very little about his own body. He bet filling that hole would help him even more in understanding what he truly was.
He needed to study biology.
But first, he needed to confirm something, an almost fleeting observation that he couldn't dismiss.
"Would trying to become fire burn someone walking a Fire-based Path?" he asked.
The drow had the gall to smile approvingly at him.
How he hated himself for learning from Marzia's killer. How he wanted to kill his torturer! How he despised his body's hormones flaring to life with the force of a thousand dragons whenever he looked at her beautiful, amazing, perfect face and body!
That was almost the most challenging part: controlling how much he desired her. Just as he hadn't known he could hate someone so much, even more than Valentina and Hui Huang, he hadn't known he could appreciate and want a woman so badly. And that only made him hate himself too.
Yet, as much as she had taught him many things, the most valuable lesson she had given him was something she definitely didn't want to.
She had taught him how to control his emotions and bid his time.
Shen was a cultivator. He should've known those things already. But it had taken the elf to truly impart to him how wise his people's ways were.
And it was a source of great pleasure how much she hated seeing him improve on that. The less he showed his emotions and let her play with them, the harder she tried. She mocked and humiliated him, dishonored Marzia, and tortured his body.
It only made him stronger.
He would let her know of the error of her ways the day he killed her.
So now, as she gave him a smile that could've outshined the sun, as he felt things in his body that he had to quickly shut down, he instantly controlled his hatred and paid attention to the answer.
"Yes, a walking Fire Path can burn you," she replied," especially if it's a True Path."
She paused, and he frowned. She wouldn't stop her answer there, would she? Just as his anger started flaring again—both at her being a miser with sharing wisdom and at himself for not carefully wording his question—she resumed talking.
From her mocking smile, she had done it on purpose, which only made him hate her more, though he quickly hid it.
"Walking a True Path makes it much easier to reach B-rank and is required to achieve A-rank. Even at low ranks like yours, it usually brings forth greater power. However, there are risks.
"Statistically, at least seven in every ten True Path Walkers of new races die when they suddenly decide their bodies are incompatible with their Path and destroy themselves. You've felt similar disgust when learning the drow unarmed fighting style. You had to change it into something better compatible with your Path. Resisting that urge is almost impossible without practice or strong willpower."
She made another pause, longer this time. Long enough for Shen to think she was over, even if the answer felt incomplete. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, she continued.
He really, really hated everything about her.
"After Earth opens up to the rest of the Alliance, it'll be easy to get information about the dangers of seeing oneself as their core Concept. However, raw, pure, simple knowledge is not enough to convince True Path Walkers to change their ways, their very selves.
"Most who see themselves as a Concept are as stupid as you and need dedicated, precisely crafted training to make them truly, deeply, and intrinsically understand that they are not their core Concept. I never trained an idiot like you, but I was told that you might still be troubled with stupid thoughts even after my training.
"Established forces start dealing with this issue from the moment their people start treading a Path. Even then, there are pathetic people like you. At least this fault is not exclusive to your race."
He nodded. He had guessed as much. "You could've explained something that instead of using the dragon-door example. It would've made much more sense."
The elf scoffed. "Even my exalted patient self has limits. I forget that some biological beings are so utterly moronic that they would use an elemental-Law-based core Concept."
He raised an eyebrow. That was news. "What?"
"I'll let this question pass as a freebie," she said and proceeded to explain it better.
However, she had said that single sentence in a way that made clear she felt that he was so, so stupid that she had to explain it to him, or he might push a spear through his skull out of stupidity. Shen hadn't even known someone could suggest something with voice tone and facial features!
"Think of phoenixes," the drow said, "they are fire. Now, think of fire dragons. No matter how high their affinity is to fire, they are still biological creatures. They can't turn themselves into flames—not before A-rank.
"So, they need to use fire outside their bodies. That requires mana, an aura, or a domain up to the S-rank. In the front lines against the Void, mana is a precious resource. It's usual for mages to find themselves without it. Auras don't work against Void Spawn. Domains are for mid to peak B-ranks with few exceptions, like me. The Darkness you felt before entering the Void was part of my domain.
"Oh, right, you were stupid enough to develop a Conceptual domain. Don't worry; you won't be able to use it outside your body until you're deep into C-rank, so it's also useless—and not just against the Void Spawn. It's a new kind of useless, I suppose. I understand there's a Darwin Award on Earth for people like you?"
He didn't know what a Darwin Award was, but he got from the context that it awarded stupidity. And the way she said it...
Shen gave out an inner sigh. Hating her so much was almost tiring at times.
He wasn't surprised to find she was very strong. But it was news that she was also some kind of genius if she wasn't lying about developing a domain—one she could use—at C-rank. That made it slightly harder to kill her, but he would do it eventually.
"In other words," she continued, "until someone develops a domain at B-rank, their core Concept will be useless to help them survive the most dangerous part of being a Guardian: fighting the Void. Unless a core Concept or Law can significantly enhance one's body capabilities and martial effectiveness, its usefulness ranges from limited to useless against the deadliest foe any Alliance citizen will face.
"Elemental Laws are not good at improving a non-elemental being physical fighting abilities. They can help a fighter in many ways, but not as well as any other kind of Law. Even a weapon Law is more valuable because you can adequately wield its physical manifestation against the Void. You, for instance, can use a spear against the Void Spawn, and just being in contact with it will make it effective against them, too—as much as your Path would be.
"However, if you give an ice spear to someone walking an Ice Path, they will be immensely inferior to you. Even if they are spear masters, they will still be overwhelmingly inferior to someone with a primal principle, like Annihilation.
"When fighting the Void, every advantage one can take is crucial."
That felt like a bit too much. Shen had fought the Void in the tutorial. They weren't that bad.
He was almost sure she wasn't reading his mind, but she had a way of guessing his thoughts. Now, she did it again, sighed as if he was an absolute moron, and kept talking.
"Your race hasn't experienced the front lines or a Void invasion. As absurd as your contact with the Void Spawn in a tutorial was, it was highly controlled. You entered a Void Incubator and left alive because it would rather have your pathetic self as a Herald than an even more pathetic gnoll as a Prophet.
"But believe me: it takes but an instant, a single wrong decision, to spark a chain reaction of unfortunate events that end up with a destroyed world and maybe an obliterated race.
"So, tell me, Feng Shen. Is it worth it for a non-elemental being to place an elemental Concept as their Path's core?"
Shen was left more confused than before. Why was a foundational Concept, which she called core Concept, so important? All his Concepts had become one after he started walking a True Path. He had thought the different categories didn't matter anymore.
Well, of course, he mostly used his spear, but that was a personal choice.
Or was it?
He was as much his Path's secondary Concepts as the foundational ones.
Or was he?
He could use them to affect his body as well as his foundational Concepts.
Or could he?
Suddenly, he wasn't so sure about his next question being about biology anymore. He was curious about Paths and the Void. More importantly, Alicia walked a Fire Path as far as he knew; was she in danger?
But in the end, he put it on the back of his head and went ahead with his original plan. He could find information about those things after he survived his training. And right now, to survive, he needed to further cement the division between his human self and his chosen weapon.
"My last question is a simple one. What does each part of the human body do? From every cell to every organ."
She smiled so happily, shiningly, and gloriously that he had to make a gigantic effort to quell the urge to want to be by her side forever.
He would've slapped his face hard if he wasn't sure she would've liked it and smiled even more dazzlingly.
"That would be your training's next phase anyway," she said as books started appearing out of nowhere around them, falling carelessly on the ground. "These are biology books about humans and every species on Earth. Comparing human biology to other biological beings will help you, too. I'm glad you wasted your last question on that. I hate talking to such a stupid being."
Shen's anger burned fiercely but coldly. He would make her regret her words and actions—eventually.
For now, he silently picked up a random book from the few hundred around him and started reading.