“Nowhere around here,” Forn quickly replied.
“The Hills of Life are our territory. You can hunt a good distance away, just a little ways off of where we met, but anything closer than that is our land.”
Again, space and time didn’t exist here. What existed was the facsimile of both. The concept of the forest held and connected things together. It lets them interact in a way similar to space-time.
If I were to make a map of the forest, in front of me would be the Grove, and past that would be the deeper territories of the Hills of Life. That was where Forn’s father had gone.
I wasn’t stupid enough to head deeper into the Hills, that would be death. Even fighting that dragon had been a bit of a risk on my part, but its clear feral nature and madness had convinced me to fight it.
And if I were to go deep into the Hills, I might encounter a similar fate and be corrupted by higher powers.
“Is it safe?” I asked.
“Depends on where you are,” she answered. “If you want to be safe, you should leave the forest.”
That sounded mean but I could see through her words. She thought my sudden change of heart came from her father’s words. She believed I would go and die to prove her father wrong.
“I just need my ability to defend and escape to be relatively guaranteed. I haven’t fought in an eternity and I just want to test my strength.”
Forn looked at me curiously.
“Did you just recently advance?”
“Yes,” I answered.
That wasn’t a lie. I had hit the thirteenth rank relatively recently. Well, recent compared to how long I’d been alive for.
She nodded in understanding. It was common for cultivators to consolidate their realm, which often meant understanding the exact limitations of their abilities and pushing themselves to their limits even though it became unnecessary at higher ranks. I knew my strength and power, but there was a difference between knowing and expressing.
For me to completely understand a mortal’s limit, even an immortal’s limit wouldn’t take anything more than a glance. But as a person’s power grew, so did the complexity of their being. The thirteenth rank was still within the order of less of godhood.
First through fifth were the mortal realms, sixth through eighth were the immortal realms, nine through eleven were the demigod realms and twelve to fourteen were the realms of Gods.
There were qualitative changes at each realm but these gaps meant even larger changes.
An immortal stopped aging both in body and soul. A demigod could walk outside of their realm, free of physical laws, and maintain their existence within the void without a voidwalker technique. A god was unique, in the absolute sense of the word.
Immortals were freed from life, demigods were freed from laws, but a god was free from everything. Even if you cultivated fire or water and the keepers of the law of water were suddenly destroyed, while it may dry up many lakes, it would not dry up your water.
In a better sense, everything was an echo of something. Life, fire, humans, forests, everything was informed by a higher being. By being a god, you cut that connection and become a thing truly your own.
You could even become the propagator of your own concept.
That was all to say that the thirteenth realm didn’t bring me something entirely new.
I was still the same type of being by all classifications, but I was different from before.
Qualitatively different.
“Well, there’s no such thing as safe hunting, but the creatures there max out at the third step of the thirteenth rank. You should be able to flee from them safely, if worst comes to worst. Follow me and I’ll show you.”
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She stood up and started walking.
“It is a hunting spot for some of our youth, but it is unclaimed territory.”
Unclaimed territory was a universal term. It just meant that the land wasn’t sought after by higher powers so it could switch owners rapidly and the stability of its condition was up to the whims of those more powerful.
Ah-Marin used to be a thriving realm in its golden age, but after one too many battles, its major sects had abandoned it over and over again until it eventually became unclaimed territory. Now it had a new power structure with powerful sects and rulers, but the only reason it wasn’t settled by more powerful sects was because it was too small of a realm with too few resources.
The most powerful person there aside from me was a tenth rank demigod, which meant they were barely qualified to venture out into the void.
“Is it stable?”
“Yes,” she said as we jumped over an infinitely deep pit.
I could see something blinking at me from below and looked away before it could catch me with its eyes.
“You just have to mind the ecosystem.”
“The ecosystem?” I asked.
“There’s still a balance between forces, even within a forest. In a mortal forest, the fear of death and the need to eat drive nature forward. Here it is very much the same, but the need to eat is replaced by the need for power. The animals seek to grow in their own way. If you create a large enough power gap then some other creature from another region might come in and fill it.”
I nodded. It was unclaimed by the factions that surrounded it, but that was human politics, not animals. Animals settled wherever they could and you had to have the right mix of creatures to have a stable ecosystem. If you removed the wolf, you’d have too many deer and they would overgraze and kill the local fauna.
It was the same concept but on an immensely larger level.
“What are the beasts there capable of?”
“That particular patch is filled with darkness and life qi and the plants within the area are very much the same.”
For this place, the basic laws and qi characteristics naturally found within the area would inform what type of creatures lived within the area.
That meant that all the plants and creatures that lived there sought after a certain quality of qi, and that meant that they used a certain type of attack.
This wasn’t a certain truth, but more of a general set of assumptions you could make about most of the environment.
Just like the Desert Crabs within the desert strip and how their life cycle had developed to work around the lack of qi, I could assume the creatures here had a similar relationship with the place.
The nature of Dark meant that they could be countered by light, but the nature of life would mean that they would counter death as well. Qualitative opposites like this were the basic foundations of conceptual fighting. It was why Forn needed my help to defeat the dragon, even though she was immensely stronger than me, her qualities of laws and daos coincided with his.
It was like two oceans throwing water at one another. But the dragon was stronger so given a long period of time, his quantity of power would outlast hers. I came in and attacked it with opposing concepts that it couldn’t ignore so easily and that gave her enough of edge to strike through.
Her ‘growth’ seeped into his ‘wound.’ Making my initial strike much stronger than it had originally been. Even then, it could have won, but it was partially mad and completely corrupted.
The nature of a thing consists not of its power, but the definition of its power. Opposing laws and daos, even if they were significantly weaker were much more effective against these beings.
“I see why it remained unclaimed,” I replied.
To defeat and claim this area would mean that you would need a creature adept at both light and death concepts. And that was significantly rare.
Concepts weren’t exclusive to one another. Light could be evil and dark could be good, but they had general associations.
Light was revealing, freeing. Light gave life and sight. The concept of light was often tied to the concept of goodness and growth, and darkness was tied to evil and rot.
Those who practiced light-based techniques often didn’t deal in death laws and the same could be said for those who practiced death based techniques. Death and light rarely mixed.
So the two semi-opposing natures being present in this patch of land meant that the creatures who lived there had probably adapted to it. So a qualitative counter to both darkness and life was necessary to truly have an edge against the creatures of the forest.
That made taking over the area more effort than it was worth.
“Light based attacks are enough of a deterrent for most beings within the area but they heal fast so taking them down requires both death and light.”
I nodded. A quality of light was its pervasiveness. It was that one thing that spread farthest in most universes, one of the fundamental forces of preception you could say. Stars shined for billions of lightyears, and if untouched, their light would travel forever.
So it made sense that the creatures there would scatter from the light, assuming it was of a high enough nature.
But how to mix that with death?
Well, I had some arrays premade, both of light and death. I could use them both at the same time, but the creatures of that place probably had more developed natures, something that mixed both life and darkness together.
A dark growth. Fungus. Black holes. Living devouring shadows.
I wondered what laws I could gather? I wonder what natures awaited?
As we ran across the forest, I found myself a little excited.
More than worry, more than caution, I found eagerness bubbling up within me.
The part of Dane that studied arrays and the nature of existence was curious, the part of Bill that loved to explore the many impossibilities of the world was curious.
And in the truest sense, I the whole of both was boiling over with interest.
Then I frowned.
I was just about to make a mistake again.