Chapter 175: 175 – Dead King’s Oracle

The outermost ring contained myriad flickering points, each of which branched off into a dazzling blur of glowing pathways that shifted about and changed in number the longer one looked at them. It felt like the more one tried to untangle the webway, the more complex and tangled it became. However, one pattern could be discerned even amidst the confusing projection.

All of the paths from the lower circles inevitably led either to a dead end, to another path, or reached the next circle.

The second circle had far fewer lights and far fewer paths, few enough that after observing for a little while she noticed that it was cycling through seven groupings of lights and paths in twenty-eight second intervals.

The third one didn’t even change, with only some eleven lights and corresponding paths in total. Of these eleven, five reached the fourth circle.

One light ended in the fourth circle, and from another a glowing path shot off into space in a twisted, spiraling path that only ended at the wall. From the three remaining lights, three paths spiraled upward, winding around each other and reaching up into empty space where they faded into nothing; not ending, but not yet having reached anything beyond either.

“According to the tenets of the Three Kings there are four circles of existence and infinite paths to divinity,” the Caster said. 

Zelsys felt that the construct looked incomplete, and made clear her thoughts to the Caster, “The construct looks unfinished.”

“So it does,” the Caster nodded before pulling out the black-stone card again and reading off its surface. “According to the card, you are to sit in the center and observe the construct in motion whilst thinking of what self-cultivation means to you. It will then somehow project a vision into your mind’s eye.”

Looking back at him, she noticed that he remained squarely behind the door’s precipice. She wondered if it was because he couldn’t enter, or because he chose not to. In the end, it didn’t matter.

Zelsys stepped onto the circle and sat down, craning her neck to look up into the swirling web of lights and paths. She took a deep breath, slowly exhaling a long wisp of Fog as she considered what cultivation meant to her. Without the awareness of what it should mean to her, of where the agreed-upon constraints of it lay, she could only grab for the most fundamental of meaning.

To be aware of the limits of one’s own capabilities, yet to confidently endeavor to break past them - that is the true essence of cultivation. It is neither arrogant overconfidence nor an inferiority complex, but a true desire to forge oneself into something greater than nature intended. 

At heart she didn’t want to be a ruler, a conqueror, or even a god. Zelsys simply felt an urge, a blazing will that told her she could be so much more than she was, and she knew it would burn her up if she didn’t act on it. She felt that complacence fundamentally went against who she was, that in the end, she was lying to herself when she said she would be happy just working as a beast-slayer.

She wouldn’t be happy. If forced into the role of a beast-slayer she would seek out more and more dangerous contracts with bigger payouts, and when the contracts dried up, she would go looking for more dangerous beasts of her own volition. Without an outside force pushing her into the work, she would likely use the money from her beast-slaying work to fund her inevitable pursuit of yet greater self-refinement. Better training equipment, better materials for actual equipment, maybe workers to go digging around in the ruins of fallen cultivator-families.

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A chuckle escaped her.

In the end she knew that driving flame to be ego, but she didn’t view it as a sin, or as a flaw. She felt egoism to be a vital part of the self, an ember without which one would become fuel for another’s flame. And much like a flame ego had to be controlled, lest it consume one utterly.

Yes, that was it. 

She had it.

“Cultivation is supremacy over the self,” she thought out loud. “It is to accept one’s limits and move past them, to live with one’s flaws without being a slave to them. To cultivate is to mend one’s cracks with silver and from them derive greater strength and beauty.”

Something within her snapped, like the neck of a bottle, split open by colossal pressure from within. That thrumming, warm buzz ran down her scalp, the back of her neck, then down her back and arms, spreading out in waves as it filled the inside of her head and something coalesced in her head. 

It wasn’t sight within the mind’s eye as the Caster had suggested, or even a voice that resounded inside her head. It was… Remembering. Flashes of memory in clarity more pure than any real memory could convey. Like using her tablet’s mnemonic record function.

The individual words that she was remembering didn’t make sense. They were in an old-sounding language, with syllables and pronunciations that vaguely and remotely resembled the Ikesian that she understood. And yet, she understood; not the words themselves, but the intended meaning behind them.

“Manyfold are the ways to reach heaven, of which three are those that we have walked. They are ours, and ours alone, yet our knowledge might yet aid others to discover their own walking way. My lessers are unwilling to share of their secrets, but I can sense the end of us coming. As such, I have chosen to construct this place, to put this place’s Living Core to work on something other than challenging the aspirants.”

“Whatsoever this oracle shows you, know that it is a murky reflection of what you are, a muddled refraction sharpened ten-dozen times, the empty spaces filled in by the arcane mechanisms of this edifice.”

For a moment there was nothing. Then, there was everything.

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