It was quite possibly the worst day of his life. Made all the worse for the fact that it didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. A careening carousel of casual cruelty that wouldn’t let him off for the life or death of him—the latter seeming preferable at that very moment, so long as it was a permanent reprieve. A montage of murders, a symphony of suffering, with him, lucky him, smack dab in the middle of it. A lone spotlight paints the world a rusty crimson; a boot to the backside has him tripping face first onto center stage.

  Each orchestrated demise more inventive than the last. Over and over, again and again. Until the heightened horror of it, the constant stress, the mounting worry, became more exhausting to maintain than anything. The snuffing of his candle light—routine, like clockwork—beginning to blend together after a fashion, into this chunky morass of general suck. His will to be present, “to live in the moment,” eventually draining away to reveal a rather soggy “I owe you,” drying on slick tile.

  The world faded away to reveal an absence space, a yawning black abyss—falling into himself as he had done what felt like eons ago. And although this wasn’t the same as getting his eternal soul methodically ripped to shreds, wasn’t it though? He figured the end result was more or less the same.

  To one side, in that inexplicably illuminated darkness, the promise of sweet sweet oblivion beckoned. To be honest, he glanced at it a couple of times. A place free from the pain. Free from the stress of moving forward. It felt like he was standing at a crossroads. It would be such an easy thing to do. To sink back into that bland nothingness. To forget himself in its voluptuous embrace. The void crooned to him softly, whispering in his ear:

  “I’m only ever one step away. Stay a while, why don’t you? I can make all your worries disappear.”

  He’d escaped its grasp once. He didn’t suspect that it’d happen a second time. For a while, he didn’t know how long, he genuinely considered it.

  Jun turned his back on the void, embracing the everlasting pain, even as he somehow rose above it. It could touch him in this place, true, but it also mattered less. It was an odd sensation. How many times had she killed him now. A hundred? A thousand? At this point, he was beginning to lose count. There were only two ways this trial was ending, he knew. Either he broke, or his tormenter did. He didn’t know about her, but he most certainly hadn’t come this far to give up now.

  This… this was the part of the plan he hadn’t shared with the others, not even the system knockoff, in all its snide sagacity. It was the main reason he’d insisted Ivory not be here for this, despite the interesting possibilities their soul fusion offered. Put simply, he was risking it all on a hunch.

  He was under no illusions.

  He’d known what it meant to go toe to toe with a bona fide immortal. Or, at least he thought he did. That it ended up being worse than he could’ve ever imagined, was still well within expectations. She was a twice damned ascendant after all. A god among mortals.

  His temporary titles? Yeah, they weren’t doing jack. At least not at this stage. He was outmatched. Outplayed. Totally and completely. In technique. In cultivation. In body, mind, and spirit, he’d never even really stood a chance. In all worlds, in all ways, he’d been screwed from the get go. Well, in all ways, that is, but one. The single area in which he, not only matched the sadistic tentacle Queen in power, but blew her aquatic tail fin out of the water. Now if only it weren’t the most nebulous attribute possible.

  His astronomically high insight value

  He knew a bit more about it now. The knockoff had thankfully seen to that. Insight. It was a rather holistic concept, delineated by two main characteristics. Universal depth, and universal breadth. The first referred to one’s intuitive sense for the underlying truth of things.

  The individual forces at play most never get to see are laid bare to those born with greater insight than others. While the second, breadth, refers to one’s internal grasp of the interconnectedness of all things. How every action creates consequence. And how that consequence creates ripples which, in turn, evoke change. Change which is as unpredictable as it is potentially far reaching. And, finally, the interplay between all of these entangled ripples.

  It… wasn’t much to go on, really. Not something he’d have bet his life on a day ago, if he’d been given any other choice. Worse yet, he’d never really noticed any particular benefit to having his insight value as high as it was, though he supposed that was to be expected.

  If he was understanding things correctly, just about every benefit he’d received from the stat had been subconscious. And while he couldn’t risk actually falling into unconsciousness in the state he was in—that would effectively be the same as surrendering to the void—he could drift along in this in-between place, and hope against all hope his overinflated attribute came to the rescue.

  In effect, he would balance on this edge of oblivion for as long as he could manage, and let what would be… well, be. And perhaps, drifting in this place of utter remove, deprived of tactile sensations, thoughts, and feelings, he might finally get to see his insight value at work.

  Eyes unseeing, the boy turns his chin by the barest fraction of a centimeter. Reacting entire microseconds before she’d even properly committed to the attack. Her swift uppercut blows his head clean off his shoulders—punching a perfectly circular hole in the cloud-bank high above. The severe change in air pressure this action elicits tearing his body apart before the world inevitably fades to black.

  Dammit! She’d given no indication that time! None! There was simply no way he could have anticipated her. She hadn’t even known she was going to do what she’d done until she’d already done it! So how the fuck was he still able to read her!?

  He wasn’t getting physically faster, if anything he was slowing down—the toll of the ordeal likely weighing on him. And yet! Somehow he was reacting to her continued assault with greater and greater alacrity. Only improving by scant microseconds at a time, practically nothing in the grand scheme of things, and yet if this trend continued…?

  Impossible!

  And yet, on the off chance it did…? Nialla decided to take an immediate step back.

  She wasn’t scared. No of course she wasn’t. She was merely acting with as much prudence as a being her age should, when presented with the strange and inexplicable. This time, when the world around her resolved into its bright and vivid tones, instead of launching herself mindlessly at the inexplicable creature, she cautiously hung back. Loosed a couple dozen spearing tentacles at a time. Overwhelming his pitiful defenses again and again, to tear into the succulent meat at its center, and so restart the cycle anew.

  She didn’t know why it unnerved her so, but if her proximity was the catalyst, she wouldn’t go on blithely fueling his abnormal growth any further. She’d already done enough damage as it was in her rage. She would bombard him from afar until his mind shattered from the strain. Surely it couldn’t be much longer now? Then, once she’d successfully broken him, she’d be free to riffle through the pieces for the answers she sought. What unholy time formation she now found herself in, being the first in a long list of burning questions.

  Lanyue gently cradled her son to her chest with a tenderness she would not have dared to display had he still been in his right mind.

  A needy burble was all the warning she got. It was enough. Lanyue did not flinch as her boy clamped his sharp incisors around the tender meat of her neck. On the contrary, she redirected much of the passive spirit from that area, as not to shatter his teeth on the diamond-like skin afforded to her by her five star body.

  A young man of his bloodline dynasty could not afford to be weak. And, in her mind, any unnecessary signs of affection on her part would only be doing him a great disservice. He would see, sometime down the line her methods would bear fruit. It was likely he wouldn’t know to thank her when the time came for him to make the truly difficult decisions, but she was just fine with that so long as he was strong.

  She felt the warm dribble of blood soak through her neckline as he gnawed and tore away at her flesh like a dog with a bone—staining the ornate silken gown that’d been her great great grand mothers once upon a time, as he did so. The thought that the priceless family heirloom was now likely ruined never even crossed her mind. Rubbing his head with her free hand, she cooed softly in his ear.

  “Yes, I know. Poor baby. You must be starving,” he shook his head roughly, trying, and failing, to tear a chunk free from her surprisingly resilient throat.

  “I know. I know. But you have to be patient. Let mama fix you up something nice and hot, okay? Then, before you know it, you’ll be stuffed so full we’ll have to roll you around everywhere we go, mark my words.”

  Touching down on the forest floor, Lanyue produced a cooking pot from her interspacial ring, had a fire roaring to life with a twist of spirit, and then began tossing ingredients into the pot. All the while her boy continued to gnaw away—glassy eyed and drooling.

  In a perfect world, he would see her as a useful pawn with few, if any, karmic strings attached. A trust worthy ally in times of peace, as well as war, and one just as easily spent or discarded should the situation demand it of him. No good came from unnecessary ties, especially familial ones. They were all needless distractions that would only serve to sway his better judgment.

  “After we’re done here, how’s about we pay a visit to your auntie Cecilia. Mama did promise she’d check in on her, after all. Would you like that? Huh? Go see auntie Cecilia?!”

  Base sentimentality, after all, was not becoming of a great man. Leastwise was it becoming of an emperor.

  Jun stared down at his own face reflected in the opaque pond. In this place, a product of his dissociating mind, he’d figured it could be whatever he wanted it to be. And so he’d turned the vast nothingness surrounding him on all sides, into a vast nothingness with a tranquil pond for him to tread upon, like a black pane of glass—every footstep sending ripples across its mirror-like surface.

  Time passed. He ambled on. He didn’t know for how long. The passage of time meaningless in a place like this. His meandering only ever punctuated by the visceral jolt of yet another violent demise. Each happening in quick succession. So near constant as to make individual pains meaningless.

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  To meld the jumble of sensations together into a background buzz.

  A lot like a full body case of pins and needles in a way. Only, if those pins were actually the size of letter openers, and the needling scored bone deep. It was almost to the point where he didn’t flinch with every subsequent death. Almost.

  “Again?” Jun scoffed. “A bit derivative don’t you think? And here I’d pegged you as the creative type. ‘A veritable master of her craft, that one,’ is what I would have said. You’d been remarkably innovative before, but now…? What changed? Have you just given up entirely?”

  His only response was the same death as had been inflicted upon him the last twelve times running—a series of spearing tentacles through the heart, head, and groin.

  “Oh. Okay, I guess we’re just doing this now. A bit basic, but whatever. Actually? You know what? No! I can’t accept that! Really! Does artistry mean nothing to you people anymore? Is it so wrong to take pride in your work?”

  By the five-hundredth go around, his disposition had turned from faux outrage to outright boredom. In fact, the general sameness of each death was actually making it just that smallest bit more manageable. He was no longer flinching constantly, at least, which he saw as a vast improvement.

  “Still hurts like a mother though.”

  Only… that wasn’t exactly true anymore, was it?

  It was uncomfortable to be sure. But the pain…? He was pretty sure he was entirely desensitized to it by now. Much of the immediacy, at least, had long since bent the knee to the needs, no, to the mires of monotony. Yeah. Mires of monotony. That had a rather nice ring to it. It really was a wonder what a person could get used to, if given enough time.

  It still left that god's awful pins and needles sensation, but he figured that too was all in his head. And should, therefore, go by way of the erstwhile agony in very short order. Any minute now. Any second…

  Four hundred deaths later, and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. If anything, it appeared to be getting stronger. Jun stopped his random meandering. Standing stock still on the undulating pond, he tried to nail down the source of his discomfort, so that he might stuff it in a box, and shove that box somewhere the sun didn’t shine.

  Strangely, the more he focused on that feeling, the more intense it became. He’d only caught short snippets at first, brief bursts of static followed by blessed seconds of calm. The cyclical sensation coinciding with every new death and subsequent revival. Like the cresting of a wave, it slapped him down, bowled him over, clogged up his nose, his mouth, his ears, then was gone—him left to splutter and choke in its wake.

  It sucked royally, in other words. Although, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. He decided to stand there, and take it. Eventually, after he didn’t know how long, he realized that the sensation, though it was steadily growing worse, was also, weirdly, the same? He didn’t know how that made much sense but the frequency, if that was even the right word, never changed. He decided this required further study. And so, swaying slightly on his feet, he watched and he waited—the roiling undulations of his once still pond slapping at his ankles.

  The more he listened out for that, he didn’t even know what to call it, the better he was at recognizing its signature. More than that, after a time, he was able to make out other… voices? Tones? The faint hints of something more—vague, nearly insubstantial impressions. Like muffled snippets of a conversation heard through several inches of hardwood flooring. Nevertheless, they were there, and the more attentively he listened, the more audible they became. And in turn, the more energetic the skittering of legs across his skin.

  He continued like this for what felt like an eternity, breathing in with every murder, exhaling with every brief flood of relief. Until, all at once, like a damn had burst, an influx of impressions assailed him. And it was as if he’d been transported from quiet drawing room to bustling cathedral all at once, resounding with its multilayered cacophony.

  Like the brush of a million cobwebs on his bare skin. The uncountable skittering legs of innumerable insects. Needles stabbed into places they most certainly were not welcome. He was swaddled in prickly furs, slathered in burning pitch, protracted an itch like poison ivy ratcheted up to eleven. Hot flashes and cold sweats assailed him with unenviable regularity. Only by accident did he realize he could greatly expand the range of his perception, and so intensify the overall experience by orders of magnitude.

  Like a child exploring a hot stove for the first time, he recoiled instinctually at the sharp increase in discomfort. Learning as he did so that, not only could he somehow expand himself, but he could also somehow protract himself as well. Bunching in so tight that the glut of sensations was no worse than a mild buzz, he contemplated cutting himself off from the whole expanse of unpleasantness entirely. Something stopped him however.

  Almost unconsciously, he pictured the overabundance of impressions as a vast ocean of stars. And so he was only mildly surprised when, upon opening his eyes, he was greeted by a sea of constellations. Reflected in the still pond beneath his feet was a galactic spiral of scattered star dust and twinkling celestial bodies. Staring up into the impossibly vast firmament, he had to admit it was rather stunning.

  Tentatively, he reached a figurative hand, unwinding the tight knot of his perception to touch upon the great infinite of the cosmos—the divine.

  “Nope! Still sucks.”

  He retracted his senses immediately. Sucking on his sore fingers, as if that might worry away the lingering discomfort, he barely even acknowledged this last in a long string of gruesome deaths.

  “Same old same old.”

  Except, there was something different about it this time. Or, perhaps it wasn’t so much that it had changed, as he only now recognized it anew.

  How something rippled out from him in the brief moments preceding his mortal coil’s erstwhile departure.

  How it branched out and out and out and out to intermingle with the grand firmament up above—shrinking into obscurity in a kaleidoscopic display of fractal patterns and mind bending geometry. The reverberations of its passage sending faint ripples through the surface of pond and constellations alike.

  Curious.

  On a hunch, he tried to visually track the spiraling undulation before it lost itself among the confusion of stars. When that didn’t work, a splitting headache his only consolation prize, on the next go around he tried his best to follow. To expand his perception outward in a thin tendril, instead of ballooning it out all over the place haphazardly.

  He hoped this would help to lessen the influx of unwelcome impressions. And, surprise surprise, he actually managed it, after a fashion.

  Of course, he was forced to twist and bend his mind to traverse the circuitous routes which bridged the deceptively simple looking gaps between stars. A strangely exhausting activity, tracing those fractal pathways, it worked just about as well as could’ve been expected. Not that it, ultimately, amounted to much.

  Even shrunk down to the size of a pin, the clamoring of impressions was far too distracting for him to focus solely on one thing, let alone the fleeting echos of a trail he was following more by memory than sight. He retracted his mental feeler before he too was lost amidst the distant cacophony.

  And that was another thing!

  Distance operated weirdly in this place. It was as if the further he ranged, the less forward progress he made. Either that, or distance itself grew exponentially, the deeper into the sea of stars he went. Which only made tracking the quickly flitting ripple all the more tedious.

  More than a little frustrated by this point, he attempted to center himself. Inhaling the burst of static which followed each subsequent death; exhaling a sigh of relief for every moment of release. He continued like this for quite some time. Slowly but surely reestablishing the connection he’d made with that initial burst of skin crawling dissonance.

  It was illusive, at first. A lone whisper amidst a din of overlapping voices. Blocking out the starry constellations with an effort of will, however, he managed.

  It wasn’t long—maybe a hundred deaths, maybe a thousand—before he could reliably make out the specific “frequency” he sought in a crowd of thousands. Maybe two thousand more after that before he could do so in the tens of millions—it’s chime a dulcet ringing in his ears. And, as he dared to tentatively expand his perception—touching upon the murmuring firmament beyond with that chime held firmly in mind—he felt a corresponding ping from behind a sizable grouping of stars.

  As he watched, another pulse rippled out from his body, spiraled upwards, unerringly, towards the origin source of that strangely resonant chime. He followed, confident he would not get lost this time. Time seemed to stretch, just about as malleable in this place as distance was.

  Afterwards, he couldn’t say with any amount of certainty how long it took for him to follow the trail all the way back to its source.

  Only that, by the time he’d reached it, he felt changed, more real somehow, and more knowledgeable than he had any right to be. Suddenly very aware of what exactly he’d actually done in chasing down that branching ripple. A ripple initially spread from Nialla’s actions, through him in the wake of his death, and out into the cosmos, where it then nestled itself right back where it’s journey had first begun.

  A cyclical journey which perfectly mirrored the struggle still raging on the outside. An unresolved verdict. A bastardized perversion of fate. Ending at his death. Yet beginning with his revival. The faulty transfer of consequence was a ripple felt in real time.

  The interconnectedness of all things.

  If everything in the universe is indeed connected, from the smallest grain to the largest galaxy, then our actions and choices would more than likely have a ripple effect on the world around us. He’d understood these words in theory, but not in practice. He hadn’t truly comprehended how our intent informs our actions. How, in that way, mere thought could be said to have a very real impact on the nature of our reality.

  An integral part of the overarching design, you could say.

  And when concepts such as time and space hold little to no sway—except as colored lenses from which to observe this peculiar reality—the want to do a thing, might as well be the act in and of itself, in so far as it’s far reaching consequences are concerned.

  Possibility like an etherial layer hidden just beneath the surface. A mirror world underlining the greater design.

  It’s influence only ever truly felt when thought and action are unified as one. The infinite possibilities hidden, but not hidden nearly well enough. For that’s what he’d been feeling all this time. That gods awful pins and needles sensation. The intent to kill—and so bring about the ripple of consequence his death would incur—without the true resolution of his death.

  He now suspected he’d only been made aware of that discordant echo of possibility, because, in a way, he actually had died.

  An interconnected web of unimaginable proportions. Constantly in flux. Ever changing. Ever evolving. Flexed and bowed in ways entirely unpredictable. Altered irrevocably by the smallest of ripples in some places, while in others, an enormous splash may have no effect whatsoever.

  For a single individual, even a god, to encompass its infinite vastness in its totality, to Jun’s mind, might as well be an impossibility. However, to comprehend a single piece of its grand majesty…? An individual thread? A lone star in the sky?

  Really, how hard could it be?

  Jun reached out and brushed against the string that was Nialla Tallvar. Action and inaction. Hang ups and predilections. Past, present, future. In every conceivable tense. In every conceivable timeline. And although it was only the briefest moment of contact—mere fractions of a microsecond all his soul was ready to handle—it was enough.

  “Ah. I see it now..”

  With a thought he summoned up a workshop notification, mildly surprised when it actually worked in this space.

  |League Step|

  Allows for instant teleportation between your current position and any location within a trial world. This effect is irrelevant of whether you’ve been there before or not. You cannot convey others with this ability. This is a world locked ability.

  Gain one charge for every lived month within a trial world.

  Charges available: 239

  “Totally forgot about this. Should definitely come in handy. I wonder. Was the answer always this simple? Am I just dumb?”

  Then, since it seemed no one else was going to do it, he decided to answer his own question.

  “Yeah… probably.”