The Reincarnator's Tavern

Chapter 11 Journeyer of the Je'daii

Rayleigh's training across Tython was a slow and steady one, directed by necessity and whim rather than logic or purpose.

Rayleigh spent six months at the Temple of Force Skills before deciding he'd learned enough. He spent at least one day in each of the Force Skill Rooms to assimilate the experience of those who came before him, but most of the skills were not particularly useful.

Rayleigh's Swordsman build relied on the basics and speed. He didn't want to build the highest tower, he wanted to build the strongest foundation. With his Metaknowledge sealed, he didn't know anything about the Pirate and Hunter Classes so he wanted to be ready for anything. Besides, the effort put into the foundation is never wasted.

Rayleigh had no intention of learning the flashy skills from the Alter category other than Telekinesis and perhaps some healing skills, his main focus was on the Control and Sense category skills.

The Control Skills he familiarized himself with included Tutaminis, Force Speed, Force Valor, Force Stealth, Force Attribute, and Force Jump.

The Sense Skills he learned or further mastered included Farsight, Telepathy, Comprehend Speech, Precognition, and Battle Precognition.

On his own, he also gained further mastery over Shatterpoint and Psychometry.

The only skill missing from the Skill Rooms were Healing category skills, but those were located in the Temple of Healing.

All of that only took three and a half months. His talent did not lose out to the Chosen One he'd heard about, but the Main Character of this Galaxy didn't have the Easy Masteries of Control and Sense. Rayleigh's level in those foundational skills granted a far greater learning speed for skills within their categories than the MC could gain, even with a Master Apprentice Force-Bond. Yes, Rayleigh wouldn't admit it, but he'd been treating the MC of this Galaxy as a rival, even though they'd never met. And he wasn't the only one.

Rayleigh still stayed out of the Jedi Chat Room but he heard about what was happening on Coruscant second-hand from Lord_of_Madness and Pacifist.

A number of Padawans at the Jedi Temple tried to pick on and make fun of the MC. It seems that before he was found, he lived as a slave on an outer rim world. The Padawans who still didn't have a Jedi Master were jealous that the chosen one got one right away without a single day of training and they tried to provoke him repeatedly. That was when the Players stepped in. Rayleigh wasn't the only one treating the MC as a rival, but being a rival didn't mean you had to be an enemy.

The Players had long shown their talents and many already had Masters and Master-Apprentice Force-Bonds. With their talent, it would only take a few years to exceed their Master's level of skill and connection to the Force. The only Players who did not get a Master were the Players like Rayleigh who planned on leaving for another world to Multi-Class.

When the local Padawans tried to bully the chosen one, the Players stepped in and helped the MC out. Using Character Mode, they were able to come off as sincere and genuine. They helped the MC catch up on what he missed, and the MC proved his talent by quickly rising past the skill level of all the non-Player Padawans. But this could be attributed more to a combination of his Force Talent and his Master-Apprentice Force-Bond. Only with both was he able to quickly rise in skill and Force connection.

The Master-Apprentice Force-Bond might allow the MC to catch up to Rayleigh in a few years, but Rayleigh intended to Multi-Class, so even if he was a weaker Jedi in the future, Rayleigh had absolute confidence he'd be a stronger swordsman.

In any case, the reason Rayleigh remained at the Temple of Silence after learning what he needed was that he had one more thing to learn, a skill not found in the skill rooms, but in the desert itself. Rayleigh wanted to learn how to imitate the Silent Desert using the Force.

Rayleigh used HK-47's head as a target and would test the application of the skill using trial and error. Why? Because the skill had a lot of applications.

Only after three more months of practice, three months of meditating in the maddening quiet of the Silent Desert did Rayleigh figure it out. Force Muffle could erase the sound of any region he used it on.

Rayleigh's next stop was Vur Tepe, The Forge.

Before the creation of Lightsabers, Jedi used a Skill called Force Weapon to imbue themselves into a forged metal sword. The Forge was where those swords were created. Though the swords of the past had long since been taken away or rusted to dust, the actual workshop where the forging took place was kept in pristine condition. Rayleigh intended to use Force Weapon to do something no other Player was likely able to do.

The Lightsaber in a Player's inventory contained a Kyber crystal that was perfectly attuned to the Player who acquired it from the Character Creation points. It was, of course, a Projection, just like everything else in the inventory. If it was damaged, altered, or broken, it would revert to the same form it first came in when its Projection was disabled and re-enabled.

This meant that a Player could not use Force Weapon to empower their Lightsaber. There was only one exception to this rule. The Lightsaber Customization Kit. Alterations made using the tools from the Kit would remain if the Lightsaber was disabled and re-enabled. Rayleigh tested this by making a meaningless scratch on his Lightsaber using the kit and confirming it was still there when he turned it off and on. That meant if he used Force Weapon while having the Customization Kit out, the effect would remain.

Rayleigh spent a week at the Forge looking into the past and getting a feel for how the Je'daii once made metal as strong as a Lightsaber.

The next Temple Rayleigh visited was Stav Kesh, the Temple of Martial Arts.

The Temple of Martial Arts was almost the exact opposite of the Temple of Force Skills. The Tho Yor of Stav Kesh was parked on the top of a snow-covered mountain, forcing Rayleigh to use Temperature Control again to prevent himself from freezing. Ironically, many things inside the two temples were also comparable. Rayleigh found another metal pole and a pair of buckets. The memory he saw using Psychometry on the buckets revealed that there was a spring of water that never froze a few kilometers from the Temple of Martial Arts. Once again, up for the challenge, Rayleigh would take the buckets to the spring and fill them up at least once a day, then try to take them back without falling off the mountain, getting attacked by animals, or taking so long that the water froze solid in the buckets.

Although Rayleigh did not find any Holocrons in Stav Kesh, he did find multiple pieces of ancient training equipment, perfectly preserved due to the freezing temperature. Rayleigh could use Psychometry on the equipment to learn the Martial Arts the Temple taught as if he was a student there thirty thousand years ago.

Not that everything went perfectly. There was an instance where Rayleigh was taking his water buckets back to the Temple, got cocky, and slipped and fell. He was able to right himself and land as best he could, but he still broke his leg. Rayleigh's shout of pain echoed through the mountains for at least half a minute. He'd never bothered to learn how to dampen pain using the Force because of his Iron Will plan, but the pain of a broken leg certainly made him reconsider that idea.

At the time, Rayleigh wasn't thinking, so he used Dark Transfer to heal his leg.

Dark Transfer is a skill that allows its user to heal or destroy by pouring the Force into weak points, similar to Shatterpoint. If you gently poured the Force into those weak points, you could fill the cracks, healing the injury of a living being. Dark Transfer's ability to heal was so great, it could literally revive the recently deceased if the Midichlorians in their bodies had not disbursed yet.

However, Dark Transfer was a Dark Side skill for a reason. Rayleigh knew how to use it because it was a freebie Easy Mastery, but with his Metaknowledge sealed, he didn't know the consequences of using it.

From a Light Side perspective, Dark Transfer was a Dark Side skill because it took from the Force. Force Healing allows a Jedi to give their own Life Force to another, but Dark Transfer directly takes the power of the Force without any cost. What was worse, was that the Jedi did not consider death a terrible thing. Returning to the Cosmic Force was a thing to be celebrated, but if Dark Transfer was used to revive the dead, the Jedi would consider it forcefully taking that which should have rightfully belonged to the Cosmic Force.

But even if you ignored the Light Side posturing and moral ambiguity, Dark Transfer did in fact have a cost, as Rayleigh learned.

After healing his leg, Rayleigh's leg remained cold. Days after the accident, his leg remained cold. Rayleigh eventually used the Tho Yor to travel to Mahara Kesh, the Temple of Healing, to find out what was happening.

Besides learning more about Force Healing, removing poison, and how the Force affects living tissue, Rayleigh discovered the problem he'd unwittingly given himself.

Rayleigh took from the Force and used it to heal his leg, but where did he take it from? Well, he took it from the air of the highest peak of the coldest mountain on Tython. What did that mean? It meant that the attribute of the Force he took it from had tainted his leg, which was why it remained cold.

This was far more dangerous than it seemed. If Rayleigh used Dark Transfer on himself in an area filled with Dark Side energies, he could literally fall to the Dark Side through Force pollution alone. Thankfully, he'd just been stupid enough to use it when really cold. The cold was uncomfortable, but it wasn't that dangerous. Rayleigh remained at the Temple of Healing while figuring out how to use Dark Transfer in a mostly safe way for another month before returning to the Temple of Martial Arts.

One of the most interesting areas in the Temple was a field of ice, like an ice rink. It was hidden in the back and surrounded by mountainous cliffs, accessible only by a single, tiny path to ensure that whatever was practiced here could be done in private. This was used by the Je'daii to practice their Alchaka.

Once a Je'daii, or later a Jedi, had a grasp of their talents and skills in the Force, they may develop an Alchaka, a physical routine that includes moving meditation, Lightsaber Velocities, and Martial Arts all in one. Whether it was a Je'daii or a Jedi, an Alchaka was an incredibly personal and private thing. The Alchaka was how most Jedi, even the ones who never exercised, kept up their level of fitness.

Using the practice equipment lying around, Rayleigh could shamelessly steal the Alchaka of everyone who used that equipment while practicing their own. He planned to create his own after incorporating the best of each one while also fully incorporating Master Dyanameez's Lightsaber forms into his own personalized style.

The reason that practicing an Alchaka in an ice rink was practical was that it prevented wasteful movement. On an ice rink, slipping and falling indicated wasteful or excessive movement. He needed to avoid those for his foundation. A proper Alchaka left the user completely exhausted and incorporated every single aspect of their strength into the routine and was performed again and again and again and again. The muscle memory of a skilled Je'daii or Jedi was not built through years of deadly combat but was created from their Alchaka. Creating their Alchaka on an ice rink prevents it from having any unknown flaws.

As with everything, Rayleigh fully intended to take his own Alchaka to the next level. Every form of movement, strike, acrobatic, and martial form was displayed using his fastest speed while on the ice in a way that didn't cause him to slip and fall. While using every single bit of energy he had available to him for as long as he could hold on, Rayleigh had to maintain an absolute and perfect level of balance. Any movement that could cause him to slip was discarded as wasteful.

Including the time Rayleigh spent at the Temple of Healing, Rayleigh spent a total of nine months at the Temple of Martial Arts. There was no Mastering Martial arts, only continuous improvement. Rayleigh simply stayed there until he'd worked out the best Alchaka he could think of. If an observer looked at his Alchaka, they would probably think of a bouncing blender with how he just stood in one place while spinning, jumping, and twisting around. Another reason the Alchaka was considered private was that it was usually quite embarrassing, and Rayleigh's was not an exception to this rule.

The next stop was Bodhi, the Temple of the Arts. He did visit Padawan Kesh, but there was nothing for him to learn at the Je'daii Temple for Younglings. He also tried Anil Kesh, the Temple of Science, but found only rubble from a long-forgotten battle that completely destroyed the temple. After the Temple of the Arts was the Temple of Balance which he left for last.

After months of straining himself physically, Rayleigh came to the Temple of the Arts to find himself a hobby. Oddly enough, the Temple of the Arts was in the most pristine condition of all the Temples he'd seen so far. There were two reasons for this. First, the Temple of the Arts was on an island, making it difficult to get to. Second, there was nothing left of value to loot. There used to be something of a museum, but it was looted long ago and nothing others considered of value remained.

The Temple of the Arts had the feel of a small Japanese village, with each structure taking on an ornate appearance the other temples lacked. The temple only contained four buildings, each containing the practice areas for two of the arts. The choices included writing, calligraphy, dancing, drawing, sculpture, cooking, music, and theater. Rayleigh intended to learn the ways of Cooking and Calligraphy.

The Temple of the Arts did not really teach the arts. This was Tython, after all, and this place was built by the Je'daii. This Temple was just as important as any other as it taught its students how to understand the secrets hidden within the Force through the arts.

Rayleigh took all the aged cookbooks and cooking utensils from the area where they taught cooking and used psychometry to steal their secrets. Inside the area which taught calligraphy, there were calligraphy brushes used by Je'daii Masters which contained a strong memory of the Masters using those tools to comprehend the manifestations of the Force through their arts.

Although the kitchen of the Cooking area was empty, preventing Rayeligh from testing his stolen chef skills, there were some ink pots and ink powder for Rayleigh to make ink with to use to practice calligraphy.

Of course, even making ink is a science. Rayleigh had to immerse himself in the memories of the ink pots to figure out how the Je'daii of the past ground up and smoothed out their ink before using it. Making ink wasn't like making Ovaltine after all.

Rayleigh spent another three months at the Temple of the Arts under a simple routine. He'd practice his Alchaka with as much weight as he could for an hour, meditate and recover, practice calligraphy for a few hours, meditate, go to the Tavern for a meal and once a week, a Mission, then he'd practice his Alchaka again without weights for two hours, trying to go as fast as possible, and then he'd practice calligraphy again and meditate before going to sleep.

Whenever he got insanely bored, he'd spend an hour in the Chat Room or order HK-47 to tell him about some assassination he'd done in the past. There were thousands, and HK-47 was actually quite the storyteller. Plus, learning the ins and outs of the Galaxy through the sensors of an Assassination Droid was very insightful.

The entire time, he continuously wore his ultra-itchy robes. He'd even found a few ways of making it even itchier. Even when he was completely motionless while meditating, he felt like he was covered in itching powder. Though not the same as the suffering Iron Will Protagonists usually undergo, he was certainly strengthening his will every single day by denying every cell in his body the absolute, unstoppable need to scratch his flesh off his bones. If that didn't strengthen his willpower, he didn't think anything could.

While Rayleigh was practicing his handwriting using a thirty thousand-year-old brush, the other Players were starting to get active, specifically the Wizard Players.

Miracle told Rayleigh that, including herself, there were eleven Players in the U.K. going to Hogwarts. Six of them were originally there; the other five were either Ninjas or Warriors who used Mission Points to transfer over. Their first semester started in five months, but most arrived earlier to get their wand and some practice in.

When a Player transfers from one world to another, how much they pay determines a lot. Ninja_Lord, for example, paid a premium and got himself a new identity as a half-blood going to Hogwarts. He inherited all the memories of his new identity prior to his arrival, but before his eleventh birthday, his father apparently didn't know his mother was a witch.

What Rayleigh found more interesting was that what Ninja_Lord paid didn't just affect his identity in the Wizard World, but the Ninja World. According to his explanation in the Chat Room, payment included a fee that would allow him to return at any time. He had a backstory that the Hokage gave him a long-term infiltration Mission. This explained why he was gone and would allow him to return. It seemed he was trying to become a leader by sharing certain useful pieces of information to make himself stand out.

Ninja_Lord was apparently the only Ninja to pay for that service. The other Ninjas who left, like Bone_Wizard, didn't pay for a backstory, so they just vanished from the Village and were thought to have gone rogue. Not that this was a problem if they never intended to return. By starting as a Ninja, they already had their Ninja power system unlocked. They could keep training it without returning to the Ninja world.

What was funny was that, although the Wizards started their interesting stuff first, they had the most complainers inside the Tavern. Many of the Wizards thought they could practice Wandless Magic, so they didn't pay for a wand at the start.

According to Miracle, "Although kids can do accidental magic, that's not the same as wandless magic. Accidental magic is like sneezing. Can you train yourself to sneeze on command? Maybe, but it is really hard, really inconvenient, and really painful. The fanfics lied to us!!!"

Real Wandless Magic was just a Wand Spell you had high enough proficiency in to use without a wand. Trying to learn a Wand Spell without a wand and use it Wandlessly right away was like going from crawling to Olympic level pole vaulting and skipping the steps in the middle.

Because of this, many Players who took Wizard as their Primary Class and didn't get a Wand were unable to perform difficult Missions. Their biggest goal was to accumulate enough points to turn their Wand into an Inventory item. That way, not only could they take it to other worlds, but they could also use it on Missions.

Some Players like that couldn't even wait and used a tiny amount of Mission Points to go to either the Ninja World or Warrior World. It was fine if they went to the Warrior World. Many Martial Temples ran orphanages, so having a kid show up there without any records wasn't too bad, but the kids who chose to go to the Ninja World without paying for an ID couldn't even get into the Leaf Village. They appeared in smaller, outskirt villages and had to figure out a way to get into the village and enroll in Ninja School without being seen as a spy. Some were taken under the wing of Players like Ninja_Lord who taught them how to use the Ninja Power system. Some were more unfortunate. There were numerous horror stories in the Chat Room.

After Rayleigh couldn't gain any more benefits from using the Je'daii Master's Calligraphy brush, Rayleigh left and headed for Akar Kesh, the Temple of Balance. This was also around the time the Wizard Players started attending their first year of Wizard School.

The Temple of Balance was not as highly elevated as the mountaintop Temple of Martial Arts, but it was on a pillar that rose above the clouds. The massive pillar had a single, simple pavilion and eight stone columns surrounding a pool of water.

The Temple of Balance had a single purpose, to meditate on the Ashla, the Bogan, and the balance between the Light and Dark of the Force. The sky-piercing pillar that Akar Kesh was situated on stood alone among the clouds. When one looked around it from the top, there was nothing to see below but cloud cover. The only thing one could really look at from the Temple was the crystal-clear image of Tython's two moons.

Even though Rayleigh didn't have a Master-Apprentice Force-Bond to cheat his way to a high-level connection with the Force, he didn't feel he needed one. Connecting to the Force was about listening to it, figuring out what it wanted, and figuring out how to change yourself so that it responded to you in the best way. So Rayleigh began to think.

Although Jedi younglings grew up with stories, Rayleigh doubted any of them were as varied as the hundreds of Light Novels he read in his previous life. Anti-Heroes, Accidental Heroes, Tragic Villains, and Villainous Bystanders were all counter-points to the traditional theory of good and evil, light and dark, which the Jedi divided the Force into.

From the journals he'd peeped through in the various temples he ransacked, he understood that the Dark Side was a hunger for power. An all-consuming Force that promised its might to anyone willing to feed it.

Rayleigh had no interest in the Dark Side. Its promise of power was hollow. What good was sacrificing to become powerful if someone stronger showed up the next day? Wasn't that always the case with the Protagonists? No matter how strong the MC becomes, someone stronger will always appear. The MC sacrificed everything to become stronger than his opponent, then the opponent's great-grandfather shows up and is five times stronger. What was the point? The sacrifice was for nothing!

Then there was the Light Side, the path of Peace. According to the Sith, Peace was a lie, but that wasn't true. No, the truth is worse, so much worse. Peace did exist, and the Republic had been at peace for a very long time. This could be attributed to the Jedi. This wasn't a good thing.

From every fantasy or history book, Rayleigh had ever read, peace was just a polite way of saying stagnation. There could be no real progress with peace. Progress comes from conflict. Was a world at peace a world without conflict? No, there was always conflict. So why was there such a long period of peace without any great conflicts? According to Republic History, it was the Jedi, the Peacekeepers. But could conflict actually be removed? No, only suppressed. What did that mean? It meant that the Jedi had been suppressing the conflict in the Galaxy for a thousand years. But nothing can be suppressed forever. It was a dam waiting to burst.

It didn't take a genius to realize what came next. Besides, this was a fantasy setting. This world came from a story. What kind of story didn't have any conflict? It was easy to just assume that conflict would show up at some point, and then you could work backwards to figure out what caused it.

Considering the setting, you could even argue that whatever conflict was going to happen was caused by the Jedi.

So what went wrong? Why did the Jedi's actions fail?

And they weren't the only ones who failed. Until the last thousand years, the Sith have been, historically, the stronger of the two forces in the Galaxy. The Jedi were basically a small Order in the Republic while the Sith had an entire Empire. But the Sith never won. They were always stronger, always in a better position, always had the advantage, but they never won.

The Jedi justified that, historically, since they lost, the Sith were the ones in the wrong. But considering what was to come, that implied that in the future, the same could be said about the Jedi. They were both on the wrong path. So what was the correct path? What did the Force want?

Rayleigh meditated atop the Temple of Balance for as long as he could, looking back and forth between the ivory-white, iridescent Ashla, and the blood-red, shadow-covered Bogan while meditating on these two paths.

When he was tired, he slept. When he was stiff, he'd perform his Alchaka. When he was hungry, he'd go to the Tavern. Other than these points, he spent the remainder of his time meditating, asking himself questions and trying to piece together possible answers.

Power was an illusion. It was only used in reference to others. If a weak old man was the only person on a planet, he could proudly claim he was the strongest person in the world. Attaining power just means you are trying to reach the level of someone else. Rayleigh figured that was why the Sith didn't care about where their power came from or its cost. Power was basically an arbitrary number. They just wanted to reach a higher number; the source of the power was irrelevant.

Eternal peace was a path to ruin. On Earth, any society that had peace for too long was eventually destroyed because of internal fighting or invasion from stronger powers.

The fact that slavery still exists yet the Jedi exist as Peacekeepers means that the Jedi actually protect slavery. Peacekeepers maintain the status quo, preventing conflict and change. This meant that anything that could end slavery would be stopped by the Jedi, as ending slavery would lead to conflict.

Rayleigh thought about every path that the Light Side, the Dark Side, and the Force itself could take and spent days and weeks building up the possible paths to their eventual conclusion, all of which appeared to be dead-ends.

He eventually started comparing the Force to various entities to check for similarities. It was fun to compare it to the Lovecraftian Elder Gods.

It was during this particularly horrific train of thought that Rayleigh thought of something he doubted any sane Jedi or Sith of the path had ever thought of.

The Lovecraftian Elder Gods were not mortal and did not see the Universe as mortals do. Therefore, the worst thing you could do with them was humanizing them and using the logic of humans to think you knew anything about them.

That brought Rayleigh to the question: why did everyone assume the Force wanted something? Or more specifically, why did the Je'daii and the Jedi assume the Force had intentions that a sentient being would share? Did the Order humanize the Force and make an inaccurate assumption?

So what did the Force want? He knew that it wanted there to be more living things in the Universe as it could only exist in living things. But what else? What path did the Force want its users to take and use it for?

The answer suddenly became obvious. It actually made Rayleigh laugh. He broke down laughing until tears came out of his eyes. He didn't know how long he remained laughing. If it weren't for his excellent physical condition, he likely could have passed out from lack of oxygen while locked in this uncontrollable laughing fit. If this was the truth, then it was just too much. Could everyone have had it so wrong?

There wasn't a path. Or at least, there wasn't a path forward. The path was to stand still.

It reminded Rayleigh of a witch he had dated in his past life. He asked for her to cast a good luck spell on him, but she refused. According to her, giving him luck meant taking it from someone else. Doing so would put him in the debt of whoever he got the luck from, and if he didn't pay off that debt, things would happen to ensure the debt was paid off and everything was balanced.

Rayleigh thought it was BS, but she explained that there was a price for everything, including magic. At some point, he asked her how she used magic without paying the price. She answered that she didn't. When she learned that magic couldn't be used easily without a price, she stopped trying to use magic. Figuring out how to pay the price was just as big a hassle as doing it without magic, so magic was almost pointless. He asked her how she could call herself a witch if she didn't use magic. She said just because she didn't use it didn't mean she couldn't.

The so-called path of the Force was about the same. Don't use it. That was the path. Or more specifically, don't use it to unbalance a situation, or else the situation will restore its balance eventually with a vengeance.

When a Sith used the Force to make themselves powerful, the Force ate at their very bodies. With a Jedi using the Force to enforce peace, it would only ensure the next conflict was even greater.

Both paths balanced out in the end, and one might even say it was better if neither path was ever taken.

Rather than take power from the Force, just improve yourself. Rather than enforce peace, just keep yourself safe.

The only real purpose of the Jedi in the Republic was to defend it from the Sith. But in the last thousand years, if the Jedi had stopped interfering and allowed conflicts to escalate, would things have really been so bad? Sure, lives would have been lost during the conflict, but no conflict lasts forever. The end result may have been better than the current Republic of today.

Rayleigh could almost hear the Force sing during his epiphany. He wasn't nearly as excited though. The best way to use the Force was not to use it?! What kind of BS is that?

Rayleigh meditated on it for a while and found, to his great relief, that there were in fact two exceptions. He could use the Force on little things and he could use the Force on things that universally affected everyone, instead of one side or another. If he did something that affected only one side of anything, there would eventually be a natural rebound to balance out whatever he did.

Thankfully, at least from what he saw, there was a lot of wiggle room when it came to, 'little things.'

Using the Force to figure out the best way to resolve a planetary, generation-spanning conflict was a big thing. Using the Force to enhance your ability to move fast or Jump Good was a little thing. In fact, just about any personal use of the Force that didn't affect anyone else was a little thing.

Using the Force to free a large group of captured soldiers was something that mattered. Using the Force to escape if you were captured was something that didn't matter. At least as long as you didn't involve yourself in the matter later.

And it wasn't like he wasn't allowed to do big things. He just couldn't use the Force to assist himself in doing those big things. He could fight a war or overthrow a dictator if he wanted to, he just couldn't use the Force while doing it. And there were plenty of big things he could do that affected everyone. If a threat was going to kill everyone on a planet, then stopping that threat affected everyone on that planet equally as was in line with the will of the Force.

This still meant there were many limits of course. Rayleigh could not use the Force while acting as a bodyguard, assassin, diplomat, or leader. Basically, he could not use the Force to be a long-term meddlesome influence on other people's problems.

Understanding this also gave Rayleigh a better picture of what the Jedi should do to follow the will of the Force. If the Jedi wanted to bring peace to the Galaxy, they should have become teachers. It was a big thing to use the Force to catch a mountain of fish to feed a village. It was a small thing to give a lesson to a villager how to fish and then have that villager teach the others in the village how to fish. Allowing the Force to guide a Jedi into teaching the right lessons to the right people would be the ideal means to guide the Galaxy to lasting, meaningful peace.

In the example of the planetary, generation-spanning conflict, the best course of action would be for someone from that planet to seek out a Jedi and learn from the Jedi how to resolve the conflict, and then have the person return and try it out himself. It may work or it may not, but if it did work, the backlash would be far weaker than the consequences of an unrelated outsider coming in and just forcing the end of the conflict with the threat of magic powers.

Jedi could easily become the best teachers. Impartation and Force-Bonds allow a Jedi to obtain vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom. Eons of wisdom could accumulate through the lines of Masters and apprentices, granting a relatively young Jedi hundreds of years of wisdom. They were tailor-made to be teachers, but the Jedi order insisted they be meddlers.

Of course, this would only work if people with problems came to them and asked to learn. Forcing your lessons upon someone who didn't ask for them is also unnecessary meddling.

The Je'daii were pretty close to the truth, though. They spent their lives as students or teachers but focused too much on the mysteries of the Force and never considered that they were the best fit for the role of teacher to those lacking Force-sensitivity about non-Force-related subjects. The fall of the Je'daii which lead to the split between the Jedi and the Sith occurred because the Je'daii completely ignored their Force-lacking neighbors which led to war and bloodshed. If they figured out the truth and sent Je'daii Teachers to create schools they could impart their lessons through, the Je'daii might still be around and the Sith would never have been born.

The only problem, though, once he put all the pieces together, was that this pretty much implied the current Jedi Order was doomed. One thousand years of meddling. Would there even be a single Jedi left when the balance was paid off?

Although it was not the answer he wanted, the vibrant hum of the Force seemed to indicate he was right. Even if he was off, he was still closer to the correct path than the Jedi or Je'daii ever were.

In any case, he'd found his answer. Meditating on it should let the speed of his growing connection to the Force keep up with those Padawans with Master-Apprentice Force-Bonds. Even if some exceeded the strength of his connection due to faster growth, that would only be until they reached the level of their own Master. Rayleigh's connection to the Force would continuously grow at the same rate and eventually surpass any Jedi.

Of course, he still needed to simplify it.

Rayleigh did not master the contents of the Temples he stayed at. He was far from a Master and at best, he'd be able to force a young Jedi Knight to fight without holding back. What he did at each Temple was learn enough of the basics so that he could continue his studies even after leaving.

Since he had a new path, he needed a new way to simplify the meditation. After thinking about it for a long time, he created a new Code for himself.

There is no strength, only the strongest and everyone else.

There is no power, only continuous self-improvement.

There is no balance, only the in-motion and the motionless.

There is no beginning or end, only a previous and a next.

Rayleigh almost smiled. His code was perhaps the most blasphemous Code to ever exist. It properly insulted every aspect that both the Jedi and the Sith believed in at the same time, yet contained his core philosophy.

Most of it didn't even make sense, but meditating on those parts led to the deeper truths hidden beneath the surface. He was quite satisfied with it. Why follow someone else's code when you can make your own?

Rayleigh checked the Chat Room while thinking of what to do next. Basically, he was done. Staying at the Temple of Balance served no further purpose. So what was he going to do next?

Rayleigh had actually been here for eight months. Decoding the Force wasn't a cakewalk. In the Wizard World, the first year's Christmas was last week and it was almost New Year's.

Several Players became friends with the MC of the Wizard World and helped him during some of the weird things that happened a few months ago.

While Rayleigh was pondering what to do next, he saw a reminder in the General Chat that the Hunter World's Hunter Exam was going to take place on the first of the year, which apparently coincided with the dates for the Wizard World and MCU. Rayleigh was eleven, and he'd run out of things to do on this planet, so he figured that now was as good a time as any. With a single look back to Ashla and Bogan, Rayleigh opened the Door to the Tavern and entered, leaving Tython for his next adventure.

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