Chapter 47 - He, human and spirit

With one step, he began to fall. The world around him rotated, no longer flashing with time gaps worth of months.

Years turned into days and those became hours. He watched as the entire place transformed into hundreds of colours.

A canvas splashed by children. He saw those memories when he first arrived on Earth.

The entire place. It seemed different, very much so.

Here, he no longer felt burdened by thought and knowledge of a superior being able to squash him at any moment.

Humans, their flashing light when they thought of using him. The others that he liked and their inevitable mortality.

What remained became the simple family of deer. The strongest family he'd seen until now.

Nothing came close to the doe taking care of her young whilst on alert against any kind of predators.

A simple world. Combined with easy-to-understand rules.

You live, and then you die. Nothing more and nothing less.

Psychological burdens didn't exist, they had no right to be at all.

Different kind of ruthlessness lived here. The one he never saw during his earlier times.

Law of the Jungle. Powerful feasts on the weak and yet the weak prevail without a problem.

Balance. The most powerful law.

He observed his memories. The tingling sensations of wind running across the backs of the young deer.

Their twitching ears as they listened to the beautiful opera of the natural life.

While almost defenceless. The family continued to live with little to no fear.

The powerful legs standing as their one confidence. In reality, they held as much power as he did.

Compared to the overwhelming force of an alien creature. The nuke and pair of legs made no difference.

Perhaps ignorance fuelled their desire to live. Those creatures didn't know of the horrors that could assault them at any moment.

That's when Liam realised. What difference did a pack of wolves and those powerful vines make?

One side could slaughter them all and the other could do so in a record time.

Liam kept falling. The pictures turned into seconds and they kept slowing down.

He knew what would come next.

A snap of light brought him back to the days where he didn't know anything.

Ignorant, hopeless. Less mature?

He didn't think so. From those experiences he survived until now, he never learned how to cope with stress and how to combat any kind of situation without becoming a coward.

His one change stemmed from nightmares. Those thoughts of researching for a few decades and hoping to gain power to fight against godlike creatures.

Liam didn't have the intellect or talent of an absolute genius. Heavens never gave him a substantial gift.

And immortality meant nothing when the enemy could come down knocking whenever it wanted to.

In the grand scheme of things. Immortal lifeforms should be pretty common in the wider universe.

Gifts, talents, luck which encompassed all.

Luck he had. To survive that apocalyptic cataclysm took a lot of luck.

No matter what kind of lifeform he became after rebirth. Magic didn't exist at that time.

While he had luck. Liam searched around in his memory and tried to remember the times he lost an opportunity.

On rare occasions, he didn't utilize flashes of genius. But the most tangible signs of luck, he utilized well.

Something never added up. Stupid, he wasn't. At least he hoped so.

Unless soul afflictions existed, he couldn't have any kind of mental illnesses.

If a stupid man can rise, eventually. Liam should be able to do so as well.

The growth he had during those years felt good. But that ended there.

It felt good. People every day fought and grew much faster than he did.

Not to mention the mysterious enemy. He had to accelerate his growth speed.

Otherwise, once he grows to a god slayer status, the enemy could have long ascended to a higher plane of existence or took him to see death face to face.

Liam watched himself. The young man as he attempted many not so intelligent things.

Jumping around, trying to swim. Weird ritual dances he thought of.

Many things he would rather forget.

"Why would I want to forget those silly things, though?" He asked himself.

The entire time. Liam forced himself to strip things away from him.

In order to be more majestic. He scrapped off the face he adored and took out a face of a being close to perfection.

To get better at controlling mana.

He subdued his emotions and took the beautiful roaring fires out for the sake of little power and progress.

Never did he cooperate with himself. The best he did for himself would be the times he boosted his mental strength and reinforced the five senses.

Every other step he filled with self hurting thorns.

Perfection.

In order to attain it. Liam stripped away the imperfections of himself and adorned the fake armour of perfection.

He held his breath and leaned in on a pond. It appeared he didn't know when, but it did.

A clear reflection of himself.

Liam looked at it as he touched his face finger by finger. His palm touched his cheeks.

Warm and squishy sensation filled his hands. It felt real; it became real.

The reflection gained life on its own as emotions appeared on its face.

Each change thundered inside Liam's head. The smile he would make when he observed the young play.

Anger at the world and the injustice. Thoughts of freedom and his flying face when faced with difficulties that he knew he could defeat.

It represented everything he should have embodied.

"There's no real perfection, only perfection of oneself." Liam muttered out loud.

What if? He looked at the wrong way.

Perfection did exist. But perfection never represented something objective.

The word itself represented the epitome of subjectiveness.

He didn't need to be perfect in the omniscient word. Liam needed to perfect himself.

To forge the greatest being he could be. Sure, he did all of that, but not under the guise of Liam.

A person, a human who became a spirit and pleaded for freedom.

That's not him. Those were the ugly emotions of jealousy bubbling underneath the surface.

Liam couldn't deny that he saw himself as a human. But he couldn't deny his spirit side.

To abandon one would be to abandon the path to perfection.

His entire body began to shine. Parts of him began to transform.

He braced his body as he fell into the small pond. Below, the crystal clear surface hid the deepest and darkest emotions he forever wished to imprison.

Pain it sawed his limbs, poked his eyes out and cut his tongue over and over.

Grief, the jester that laughed on the graves of those he loved and cared about.

And that pesky pride.

Liam knew deep inside. The thoughts, those that he wanted to hear.

They revolved around him alone. He wanted to be free, to travel and explore the wider universe.

No one but him.

Pride that fuelled him to rise above many. He, too, buried it down deep inside.

Replaced by a monster he liked to call humility. Everyone's equal and he shouldn't look at anyone with contempt.

No matter if one works every possible second in their lives and the other can't bother to pick up their food utensils.

He never stood for that cause. Where, the powerful gained more power.

Equality didn't exist. And it shouldn't because no one put the equal amount of effort.

Maybe when everyone did.

Liam would agree with the notion of equality. The pride of a great spirit.

It began its debut.

"Mhmm, screw those dumb thoughts. I'll be the greatest, only I and no one else." He said with his body almost flying out on its own.

His pride, the double-edged sword that prompted him to act on his own selfish terms.

It belonged to him. He nurtured it and he couldn't deny its existence any longer.

No matter how much people thought of it as a sin.

Liam saw another gift.

Prideful fools who never put in effort didn't have any kind of pride, they had arrogance.

Those that worked step by step. Forged out their own mark in the world.

They had the right to call themselves prideful. Pride came out on its own.

The plans he made over the years began to transform inside his head.

So what if he couldn't mass produce awakened realm elders? It didn't matter to him.

He desired raw power.

One which would never leave him, no matter what happened.

And nurturing awakened elders would never result in his own strength.

It would embody his achievements. But another genius would outshine those, using Liam's own knowledge as a stepping stone.

His own power, though.

Undeniable power that no one could take away from him. That belonged to a unique category.

Those runes, spells.

They all held infinite potential.

Which he never truly owned. No matter how much power runes had.

Without powerful mana and enough time. The weakness remained the same.

At most, awakened realm, runes and mana refining could prove to do one thing for him.

To help him forge his true path.

The one where he uses both his human and spirit sides. Not bound by standards, morals or thoughts of possibility...