Volume 6 Chapter 6: Manipulate

〖 So he wasn’t able to force Dim Silence out? 〗within the aspect of gloom, Negary was continuously expanding his consciousness forward to remove the white flames inside it.

〖 My research on breaking Red Tears has also reached a bottleneck 〗

Negary thought as he looked at the pair of closed eyes. The Pathway of every Pathway Entity had encompassed their entire existence, which naturally included their consciousness and will.

Even if Red Tears’ Pathway had fallen into a damaged state due to their previous collision, it still managed to shield the last of Red Tears’ consciousness. It was this final barrier that had completely blocked Negary out.

〖 It seems I can only discard her 〗

To devour a Pathway Entity alive and outright kill them were two tasks of drastically different difficulty.

Right as this thought flashed through Negary’s mind, he sensed the barrier around Red Tears trembling ever so slightly, after which an opening appeared within her existence, no longer resisting Negary’s invasion.

〖 As expected of the Irregularity Pathway, as soon as my thoughts changed, she immediately noticed 〗

Red Tears was essentially drinking poison to stop her thirst right now. One could imagine her current situation as being the poster girl of the brothel, since she didn’t have the power to retaliate, she could only rely on seduction and teasing to ensure her purity in front of her rich and powerful esteemed guests.

But if the esteemed guests got teased for too much without getting anything and decided not to bother with her anymore, her existence as the poster girl would stop being necessary. At the same time, if she did relent on her teasing and let herself be eaten a little bit at a time, she would soon be eaten completely.

This could only be described as the sorrow of the weak, and Red Tears’ current situation was one where she had no strength to retaliate even if she wanted to. Of course, just as Red Tears had said, even a worm would struggle if it got trampled on, and if a brothel girl truly didn’t want to be ‘eaten’, she would risk her life.

〖 Truly… 〗

The will to live of every Pathway Entity was especially firm, especially when it came to maintaining their own existence. This was instinctive, as a Pathway Entity’s existence being lost would mean them losing everything for good.

…

Sensing Negary invading the part of her existence that she purposely relented to study her information, Red Tears silently sighed in relief. Both of them knew that she was only stalling for time, but every bit that she relented meant a bigger portion of her Pathway being revealed to Negary, which was an actual benefit to be obtained.

As long as she continued to exist, there would still be hope. After awakening, she had been using the power of Irregularity to create irregularities in other locations through the correlation characteristic of Space-Time matter, which should have already drawn this world spirit’s attention.

Red Tears fully believed that not even a systematic world spirit would want itself to be taken over. Negary was honestly even more of a sentient phenomenon than she was, as any entity that harbored the thought of improving itself and bypassing its limit would be infected by Negary, or rather, would give birth to a Negary personality inside themselves.

This world spirit was the same, as Negary had borrowed the power of the collision to infiltrate the world spirit with his information, causing the systematic world spirit to become irregular in that instant and get partially taken over by Negary, which resulted in the current messy situation. It could only be said that Negary had utilized every last bit of resources available to himself.

As long as she could wait, the world spirit could very possibly help her escape from Negary, as her power of Irregularity was very suitable for dividing a consciousness.

While thinking of her escape plan, Red Tears could sense Negary digesting the portion of information she had relented earlier and slowly back away. Even the sense of persisting pressure from before had even relaxed somewhat.

Right as Red Tears believed that she had managed to convince Negary, all the eyes that represented Negary’s consciousness suddenly started bleeding golden blood before turning into gaping maws that chomped towards Red Tears.

However this time, after being slightly shocked, Red Tears did not relent on her defenses right away. It hadn’t been too long, so if she relented another part of her defenses, that would only cause Negary to inch closer and closer. At the same time, if Negary truly wanted to destroy her, then relenting on her defenses would only be leaving her heritage behind. Since relenting or not didn’t change the fact that she would die and it was unable to buy any time for herself, she chose to go out standing tall.

『 How terrifying, while existing as mere consciousness, he has managed to grasp the power of Irregularity 』

This time, Red Tears wasn’t able to sense any fluctuations in Negary’s consciousness at all, so she finally made one emotional exclamation before dying off. For the sake of survival, she would have agreed to any level of humiliation, but once death was assured, she would not hesitate to display her mettle as a Pathway Entity.

『 I had looked forward to witnessing the fight between you and Eternal Light, how regretful… 』Red Tears’ consciousness then thoroughly collapsed.

…

Her Pathway also collapsed together with her existence, the majority of it returning to the Seed of Truth within, leaving only a very minor portion for Negary. Compared to devouring a Pathway in the normal manner, this method was so violent that the harvest was pitifully lacking in comparison.

A Pathway is the crystallization of Principles, a depiction of the universe’s Truth, representing one driving force within the universe. A Pathway Entity would observe this Truth, then depict it through their comprehension and existence, so when their existence disappeared, this ‘Truth’ would also return to nothingness.

To once again display this depiction of Truth, one must have a profound comprehension of it, and this comprehension must have not already been taken up in another Pathway.

Otherwise, when the Great Magus Stim’s Pathway was stripped away by the chip system of the Multitudes organization, his previous knowledge did not disappear, why would it have been so hard for him to re-manifest a Pathway?

He could only utilize this knowledge and was unable to manifest them into a Pathway; because the Pathway that encompassed this knowledge was already taken up by the Multitudes organization. It was also the reason why Pathway Entities must devour the Pathways of others, instead of simply copying from them.

As Negary gradually manifested his Pathway, he could faintly sense a corresponding entity that had taken up root in the Pathway of Manipulation. If there were no surprises, the [Origin] of Wang Yuan who Negary originated from actually came from that entity.

When he had first finished repairing his soul and gave up on his past to walk the path of Negary, the obscured entity who reached its hand out towards Wang Yuan was most likely also that entity.[1]

If Negary truly wanted to continue down the Pathway of Manipulation, he would most likely face this entity who preceded him.

Thinking of this, Negary’s train of thought suddenly jumped to a different matter.

While a [Protagonist Aura] wasn’t unbeatable, it would still have been extremely difficult to go against within their own worlds. While Wang Yuan’s [Protagonist Aura] still hadn’t been released at all, the fact that he was a [Protagonist] was already irrefutable.

Even at his peak, Negary would have found it difficult to take Meng 37 away from this world. And with his current discerning eyes, the System at the time would have only been at the third stage of release at most, most likely a clone of an entity. Perhaps it might have been able to utilize a portion of the Pathway’s power, but that was the extent of it, so how could it have deceived and brought Wang Yuan to another world?

At this point, Negary could only think of two possible explanations. The first was that the world spirit at the time had completely given up on Wang Yuan, even if the world’s operation would have been messed up due to the loss of the [Protagonist Aura], it had to discard Wang Yuan for some reason.

The second was that the originator of the Manipulation [Origin] was in fact the System’s master.

[1] Vol1 ch30

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