The Path To Perfection

Chapter 29: The Pathfinder

Just when he was worried that the object was not working, his entire being, both soul and body were overwhelmed by a horrifying pain.

Then everything went black.

Al'ravee found himself in black space again. The difference was that the previous one looked real but was a virtual simulation. this black space was the real deal.

'What do I do?' Al'ravee thought to himself. There was nothing in front of him, he didn't even understand what exactly this pathfinder was supposed to be doing.

*SWOOSH*

Shooting stars. That's what Al'ravee started seeing. Stars shot around in a messy order, some of them shot up, some shot down, and others went either left or right. Some stars were coming from both his back and front.

As they drew closer leaving colorful streaks behind, they all slowed down a few meters away from him.

Looking around, the previously black empty space was now filled with head-sized balls of light of different colors.

On a closer look, these were not actually balls of light but different objects that gave out splendorous glows. There was a head-sized ball of fire, a floating puddle of clear water, lightning blots of different colors, swords, Spears, guns, ships, pyramids, a beating heart, mirrors, clothing, and many more.

'Are these concepts?' Al'ravee asked no one in particular.

Willing to move forward, he arrived before the ball of fire. He tried to touch it but realized he didn't have hands in this place, just his soul.

When he tried to focus on it, he was able to understand a bit of what was in front of him. There were no words but the mysterious pathfinder took care of that.

This was the raw concept of fire. If he absorbed this concept, it would fuse with his being, giving him ownership of its capabilities.

Al'ravee moved around, having a feel of the many of the concepts present. The more he did this, the more he felt that there was nothing logical about these things.

With authority over concepts, gods could decide what was science and what was not, rewriting the very rules of the universe.

Another thing he noticed was that each law varied in complexity. The fire concept was relatively simple in its entirety but the concept of war seemed a bit more complex, in return, it lost its directness.

Time flew by fast.

It had been a few hours and so far, the most intriguing concept he had seen was the concept of nothing. To him, the only thing such a concept did was wipe stuff out of existence. Terrifying yet somewhat boring.

Al'ravee turned his attention to the other concepts that he had taken some interest in. There were just too many concepts to look through so he brushed through as much as he could to see the most complex of concepts.

This set of concepts had no apparent highest complexity. They all seemed to be equal yet varied in some way.

The concept of Creation, it looked like one big mass of golden energy. This was also the concept Krene is currently focused on.

The concept of Destruction, this law was a mixture of purple and red and was also similar to the concept of Creation. Jurdelious was adept in the use of this concept.

The concept of Sin, this law had no impressive visage, just a multicolored foggy cloud.

The concepts of Chaos, Order, and Harmony. These were just red, blue, and green foggy balls, nothing impressive about their visage.

The concept of Fate. This concept had white and gold mixed together in a mass of metal chains.

The concept of Nature. Just a small vase with a tiny tree inside.

The concept of Knowledge. This one looked like a massive eyeball attached to an equally massive brain.

The concept of Force. Only a circular disk was represented here.

Then there was the concept of Reality. Quite unremarkable and resembled a mirror with no reflection.

Al'ravee was particularly eager to choose the concept of Machinery. He could already think of a few areas where this would be beneficial.

He quickly shook his head to get rid of the thought of giant robots and spaceships.

Al'ravee settled down to think well.

'Ris had said something about concept structure, I need to be careful with what I choose’

He went over them again before making a decision.

"I'll choose..."

##########

It's been two hundred and ninety-five years since Al'ravee went missing. The Divera empire seemed to be doing well these last years after the wars they fought against the alliance of other continents. Some people suspected that there were still some undercurrents going on but no one paid it too much attention.

Coincidentally, the small cave that served as Al'ravee's hideout wasn't yet discovered but a small urban settlement had sprung up not too far from its location.

It was morning and everyone in the town was going about doing their thing. Quite a busy place as there are three categories of people living here.

Farm owners were the high class of the town. Most of them owned large areas of land where they employed workers to farm for them.

The second category was the farm workers. Unless they were supervisors, many of them were in the lower class of the society. Their work consisted of either operating farm machines or manual farm labor.

The third category was the traders. They were the link between the farmers and the other cities. Some merchants buy things from other places to sell them here and others buy farm produce to sell outside. Many of them won't be called rich but they were definitely not poor.

Everybody woke up that morning expecting it to be just like every other day.

*WHOM!*

*ZHIIIING*

The late morning spring breeze seized to blow. All the locals stopped moving wherever they were.

The people walking on the road stopped moving like someone had pressed the pause button on their lives.

A vendor in his shop was about to hand over a bag of canned food to his customer but froze midway. The customer who was about to reach out for the bag also froze. They were both still smiling but they could not wipe that smile off their face.

A cat was about to jump from a roof to the next-door fence. As soon as it felt that pressure, its limbs went stiff mid-air and the cat just bumped into the fence before falling to the ground roughly.

After a few seconds, all the nearby living beings fell to the ground. They had been forced to hold their breath so they could only faint from the lack of oxygen.

This event wasn't only restricted to the town. Animals in the nearby forest also fainted after being forced to freeze all their movements. Cars that were going to and fro from the town crashed into different objects in their way. Even the trees seemed to turn paler in comparison to their former bright green.

*Silence*

Not even the usual sound of birds could pollute this area. The silence was so intense it almost seemed deafening.

There were not many things that could be responsible for such a phenomenon.

In the following hours, merchants who came into the small town witnessed the sight of countless people lying on the dirty ground. Cars that had crashed through the walls of houses, shops, and restaurants.

No matter what they did, these people did not wake up. Unfortunately, some of those who had accidents in the process died.

Soon words reached out to every corner of the continent and beyond that, there was a new unknown pandemic that was running rampant which, put all the residents of a small town to sleep.