Sovereign of the Karmic System

"What happened? What did you see?" Asked Daniel with worry.

Aeron, still discombobulated by what had happened to him, took a deep breath, and after turning to look back at Daniel, he said, "We need to have a conversation about the ascension of the members of your group. I doubt that your luck will care for the side effects caused by obtaining these gifts."

Daniel was even more confused by Aeron’s response. He had been unable to read Edmund’s mind while the other dimensions tried to contend for his consciousness, and even now, his mind power could not penetrate the barrier that Aeron had left around it to protect it. "What are you talking about? Is he alright?" He asked with anxiousness.

The only reason why Aeron had survived this experience, was because of his own gift, which according to what he had just discovered, comprehended his consciousness’ immortality.

To see an infinite number of dimensions all at the same time, was in a sense, like having multiple eyes, and seeing a different image with each one of them. The amount of information received was extremely vast, and Edmund had been able to survive it only due to the fact that what he was going through, was part of his gift, and therefore, was not meant to kill him.

By logic, Edmund should have had a way to limit the burden of this ability, just like a cultivator would be able to limit the intake of essence, in order to avoid the collapse of his body when he cultivated. The apparent urgency of the situation had forced Aeron to meddle in, and consequently be heavily injured by it.

In hindsight, what Aeron had done was extremely stupid. The magnitude of what Edmund had witnessed was not something that a cultivator that did not possess his gift could bear, and therefore, the simple fact that Edmund was still bound to his body and he had not gone crazy, was the proof that he was simply adjusting to the changes, and not getting killed by them.

Naturally, Aeron was unsure of what Edmund’s exact gift was. He was more of an expert regarding the factions’ gifts than the gifts of high immortality, and even if he had been, he wouldn’t have been able to guess what this power was. Nobody would have, since the existence of a Multiverse was only a theory, and there was no proof that any other universe existed aside from the world in which the universal government had been built in, and the void.

"I don’t know. There were so many images, and went by so fast. A lot of those images were similar to the void. Darkness and collapsed space.. But each of them felt somewhat different." Responded Aeron, still unsure of what he had witnessed.

"The Void is a different dimension." Responded a disembodied voice that came from behind the two. "From what you are saying, it would seem that he has obtained the ability to see through what separates the dimensions." Said Nova, who appeared only after he finished talking, in the shape of a humanoid faceless silhouette.

"Did you know that something like that existed?" Asked Daniel to Nova who, along with Edmund, formed a triangle relationship of teacher and student with each other.

Nova slowly shook his faceless head a few times, before saying, "It is a question for my kind, similar to the meaning of life for yours. I can imagine it, but I would never talk about it as if I knew what the truth is."

What Nova had said made sense to Daniel, after all, the comprehension that was considered the perfection for a human, could only include the concepts of space presented by their universe. The only reason why some had theorized about collapsed space, for example, was because after reaching the void for the first time, they had encountered spatial elementals which were born with the concepts of shattered and collapsed space ingrained in their bodies.

Before the Void Dwellers had entered the void, spatial essence was believed to be perfect without the concepts of shattered and collapsed space. It was only after encountering a spatial elemental that came from within the destroyed universe, that the thought that maybe they didn’t know everything there was to know about space, started to spread amongst the scholars of the subject.

Now, thanks to Edmund’s ascension, Daniel, Aeron, and Nova had discovered that what they knew about space was not comparable to a whole tree, but to the branches, leaves, trunk, and yet missing the roots.

"Alright." Responded Daniel before turning to look at Aeron, and adding, "We will wait for him to wake up. He’ll decide whether to go through that process, or keep the barrier around his mind." He then remained quiet in hope for a response.

However, before Aeron could say anything, Daniel remembered that Edmund and Lady Night were not the only ones going through an ascension. So, instead of waiting for something big to happen, he teleported directly in front of Sewah, and found him with his eyes closed, still in the middle of his ascension.

For a moment Daniel felt nervous. One of the three people whose ascension he had witnessed had entered into a state that had caused them to feel an impressive strain, without knowing what the gift would be.

To him, all of this suffering was unnecessary, and if possible, he would have preferred them to receive a milder gift. The wait started to weigh on him, causing him to wonder what crazy and rare power a person like Sewah could possibly receive.

Almost as if in response to these questions, Daniel noticed that there was something wrong with the red number that Sewah had inherited by the Oni leader, and until now, was floating above Sewah’s head. What was odd about it, was not a change in the number itself, but the fact that it was slowly disappearing.

"What the hell.." he muttered in confusion. Everyone was included by the universal embrace of karma, and for Sewah’s number to actually disappear, was unseen.

Karma was a philosophy created by a human in the earliest stages of human civilization, and adopted by numerous others as a way of life. Little did these people know that true Karma actually existed. It’s origin was unknown, and for all Daniel knew, it could have been born out of the gift he had received by Iewah as a result of its nature.

The number of times Daniel had thought about the old question "if a tree falls in the middle of the woods, and there is nobody to hear the noise, does it actually make a sound?" Thinking that maybe he was the listener, and that the gift was his ears, implying that karma only existed as a consequence of his power, was uncountable.

Despite what the truth was, Daniel had never met someone without karma, and the complete loss of it in Sewah had left him speechless. However, that feeling was overcome by what happened next.

As soon as the number above Sewah’s head disappeared, and his power reached the level of a high immortality blessed by the group effects of Daniel’s group system, multiple windows appeared in Daniel’s mind.

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Karmaless Warrior Sewah found. (Details)

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Karmaless Warrior Sewah is already part of the Karmic System’s group.

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For as surprised as he was by the sudden appearance of these two small windows, Daniel remained calm, and while focusing on the first of these messages, he thought "Details." causing one more larger window to open.

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Karmaless Warrior: A cultivator who has delved deeply into either side of karma, and rejected both of them, permanently leaving the universal cycle of karma. His actions will never award any type of karma, and he will never be able to accumulate it.

The battle prowess of the karmaless warrior will, to a certain extent and despite its positive or negative nature, grow along with the karmic count of his opponent. This effect does not apply to the wielder of the Karmic System as long as he is a member of his group.

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The first part of the explanation had finally given an answer to what Daniel had always wondered, confirming that karma was not something that his system had created for him, but a real law that affected everyone in the universe. What had surprised him the most, however, was the explanation of Sewah’s power.

Sewah’s gift was, along with the ones he had witnessed his friends obtain, all rare and seemingly unique powers. The last of them, to Daniel’s surprise, had something to do with his very own system.

This surprise, however, did not last long. After all, Sewah was born as a part of the karmic system, and in two different moments of his life, he had possessed the positive karma left to him by Daniel, and the negative karma left to him by the oni leader.

A lot had happened after Daniel had been able to take his body back, but the fact that Sewah had, at some point in his life, rejected both of these lifestyles, had turned him into the type of cultivator that during his ascension to high immortality, would have a chance of obtaining such a gift.

From what Daniel could understand from the explanation, a karmaless warrior was an individual with ambiguous, or uncertain morality. They would not care about the outcome of their actions, and the reason why they did what they did, was based on their own free will.

What was surprising about this gift was that, according to what Daniel had just read, Sewah’s power would grow based on the karma owned by his opponent. What that meant was that despite his opponent possessing a positive or negative karma, the higher the number, the more difficult it would be for him to face Sewah.

"Do you think it will become a problem?" Asked Aeron after quietly appearing next to Daniel. He then added, "His attempts of being better are genuine, but he has been struggling.. competition appears to be in his nature, similarly to how anger is part of ours."

"I gave him a chance. I won’t take it back before he has a chance to mess things up." Responded Daniel immediately after. He had promised Sewah that he would help him become a human, and he had no intention of turning that promise into a lie.

While Daniel and Aeron observed as Sewah slowly opened his eyes, a doubt appeared in Daniel’s mind. There was a very high chance that the reason why Sewah had received that kind of gift, was because he was, in some way, still attached to karma. But could he have been the only one? Many cultivators lived for tens of thousands of years, and some of them were bound to experience the two opposing natures of karma. Was it possible that in the infinite universe, there was a population, or a faction composed by karmaless warriors?

This idea made Daniel uncomfortable. Despite his increasing control over the laws of karma, he was still only a cultivator with a specific amount of karma points. If such a faction really existed, they would be a bane to his existence.

The vastity of the universe was truly a terrifying concept. Not knowing to which level of the food chain one belonged, meant that everyone could possibly be the prey of a predator that had yet to jump out of the grass.

For the first time Daniel could understand what could have caused for a universal government to be created. And that was not the greed of a certain group of people, but the fear of the weaker majority towards the known stronger minority. A hierarchy made for the weak to feel protected, while the strongest, were always on the lookout for a higher glass ceiling.

The only thing one could do was to keep becoming stronger. Who knows, maybe that was the reason that had turned humans into cultivators. Forever unable to feel safe.

Suddenly, from behind Daniel, came flying two massive dragons, who just before landing, turned into their humanoid form. One of the two was Lady Night who, curious about what her draconic form would be, had turned into a massive dragon.

Naturally, her transformation had attracted Xargy, to which she had barely been able to give an explanation, before the two had been forced to rush in Daniel’s direction.

"Dan, it is better if you stop the planet." Said Xargy with hurry.

"Why?" Daniel asked back.

"Because we are about to push through who knows how many ships!"

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