Depthless Hunger

Chapter 91: Morality Fruit

Winning a battle was great. Benefits included not dying. But maybe Kai's life had gotten too easy, because he was aggravated that he'd won the battle and yet hadn't broken through.

No matter how many times he checked, his Physique remained stubbornly at F-9. He'd pushed himself past his limits and taken a severe beating. For that matter, he'd eaten a drake fruit right before the battle. Yet none of that had been enough to take him to E rank. Was it stuck there solely because he hadn't eaten the soul fruit first? It was so rare that he hadn't wanted to use it until he was prepared.

"You're still upset about your Physique ranking, aren't you?" Zae Zin Nim glanced at him with an expression that left her plausible deniability that she was amused.

"Well, can you blame me?" Kai grimaced as he rubbed his still-healing arm. "He was able to overpower me for too much of that fight, and I struggled to injure him. If I hadn't had access to Direboar's Strength, I would have lost."

"But you did. Are you really upset about fighting someone with a Class and twenty years of experience on you?"

It was technically true, it just wasn't any comfort. If Kai had just managed to advance a little further, then he'd have had a decisive strength advantage. What if Zae Zin Nim had been unlucky in her fight and needed help? What if more opponents had followed after the elites? He couldn't afford to end fights lying half-dead.

"Didn't you buy two drake fruit?" Zae Zin Nim asked. "You could eat the second one before you try to break through in a more controlled environment. It's usually good to try both, since everyone's path is different."

"What? No, that one's for you." He had been carrying it in his belt, but only because he had more space, so he handed it toward her. She stared down at his hand. "Didn't you say that you needed to improve your Physique before you could reach the next stage? I can't help you cultivate, but maybe this will work."

"That... could be true." After examining the fruit thoroughly, she began cutting it into small pieces to eat them gradually.

"I was assuming that half of the stuff we bought was for you. Well, except the soul fruit, since you don't really need that."

"Mm."

"Do you think that I'd be making a mistake by eating it now? I'm afraid I might be wasting my effort against barriers, but I also don't want to take it early and waste something so valuable."

"It's probably fine." It seemed like she might say no more, but after she finished swallowing a piece of drake fruit, Zae Zin Nim became more talkative. "I'm the wrong person to ask about breaking the 99 Power barrier, since it was built into the path set before me. But I do know the theory. It's more like expanding the borders of your soul than evolving one part of that soul. The only reason you wouldn't want to expand early is if you didn't have a clear-sighted view of your essence."

That actually might disqualify him. Kai took out the perfectly spherical fruit and turned it over in his hands. Sometimes the white peel seemed entirely opaque, other times he thought he could feel power surging within it. Not mana or qi, something more fundamental. It couldn't go to waste.

"I wouldn't worry too much about wasting your training or cultivation before then," she continued. "The 'other side' of you seems to soak up anything. It actually might be slowing you down in some ways because it's always hungry. But if you were up against a barrier where hard work or special treasures wouldn't help, I think it would absorb all the excess."

"So you're suggesting that I should wait." Kai started to put back the fruit, but Zae Zin Nim shook her head.

"Not necessarily. Your essence might be strange, but it doesn't strike me as all that unbalanced. You've adapted everything you've received fairly well so far. The problem is likely in your head, so the question is if you have a mental framework for every part of your essence."

"Honestly, I've been thinking about my soul as being split into two halves, but I don't think that's really true. Though I should say..." He realized that he had never told her about his surreal experience while Anaelina was trying to drain his power. It felt awkward to describe such a vision at first, but Zae Zin Nim nodded along and so he told her about everything.

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Well, nearly everything. When it came to what had emerged from the center of the circle, it was just a formless "something" that he couldn't adequately describe.

"That does sound like a mental framework," she said after a pause. "The question is whether it's a good enough one. Are you comfortable with this dark island?"

"I'm not sure how I'd know if I was. I haven't been doing this very long."

"If it was entirely inappropriate, you would probably face more serious consequences. But we have time to do nothing but train, so you might as well give it some more thought."

He did so starting from that moment, continuing through their evening training schedule. There wasn't much conversation, aside from Zae Zin Nim once complaining about Krysali cultivation and the apparent limitations of its flying capacity. But instead of thinking about the monstrous talents within him, he found that his attention kept wandering.

At first he had gotten irritated at himself for the lack of mental discipline, then he gradually began to wonder if it was really an accident. He kept thinking about Rayakan and the actions he'd taken there. Or, perhaps more importantly, how they had left it. There were things he'd wanted to discuss and never had.

The next day after their early training, Kai decided there was no point drawing it out any longer. "Zae Zin Nim, do you really not care about anything we did in Rayakan?

"What?" She blinked over at him as if she didn't understand the question. "I gave you my opinions on all our decisions. It was an effective place for growth, even if only temporarily."

"I mean about the clans, the Guild, and... the whole social order. You can't say you don't care. You seemed to have strong implicit opinions when the villagers defended us."

"Because that was just unnatural. But as for the city... I think it was for the best. I liked Razzagah Lantrian better than some and think he can be trusted, for what he is. The former leaders were clearly wasteful. The city will be a little stronger with them deposed."

"But you don't think it matters," Kai pressed.

"Not in an ultimate sense..." Zae Zin Nim made a vague gesture into the air ahead of them. "Maybe we improved things, maybe not. It won't last. Anyone with enough power could unmake all of it easily. Such peace can't last unless it's rooted in power."

"Is that even a meaningful argument? You can always say 'what if someone shows up and destroys it all?' to any position, but it doesn't prove anything."

"It's not hypothetical. You saw how much damage Anaelina did to their ruling structure just in the process of pursuing you. A slightly more powerful version of her could have enslaved the entire city, then it really wouldn't matter who was in charge or how they treated the peasants."

Kai sighed and accepted that he might not get through to her. "That's a depressing way to view life. I mean, even without a mad killer showing up, everyone is going to die anyway. Everything crumbles to dust. If changes that have an impact for a short time don't matter, there's no point doing anything."

"Yes, good point."

He started to roll his eyes, then caught a strange twist to her lips. Had she actually been joking with him? Sometimes he felt like the two of them were warriors fighting back to back, then other times he wasn't sure they were even on the same battlefield.

They walked in silence for a time, then she spoke again in a softer voice.

"I don't think we have the same attitude toward... moral beliefs. In my life, I've heard many powerful cultivators preach ideals in one moment, then betray them the next. It always seemed clear to me that they were simply pretexts, weapons to be used against others. Anyone who believed otherwise was either simple-minded or deluded."

"So, when we first met..."

"It never occurred to me that you might be sincere in wanting to help me." Zae Zin Nim shook her head slowly. "It still seems unbelievable. But I've come to believe that you mean what you say."

"So I'm a simple-minded do-gooder?"

"If I recall, you recently killed a man by eating his head, including the helmet. I don't think you have any room to talk."

Kai laughed freely and thought there was a slight smile on her face as well. That had already been more than she usually said on such issues, so he was willing to let it go. She surprised him by speaking up again a minute later.

"My life has been about following the path set before me as quickly as possible. I always thought that it was meaningless for me to even consider such questions before I had enough power to back up my beliefs." After a pause almost as long as the first, Zae Zin Nim spoke more quietly. "It is possible that I should have given these matters more thought. I am not sure."

"Hey, there's no rush," Kai said. "We want to hit our breakthroughs soon, but when it comes to the rest, we've got nothing but time."

.

..

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Kai raced northward on a thousand feet, drawn by something he couldn't name. He could taste the change in the air, swelling with every throb of an eldritch heartbeat. The sound was unfamiliar, but it knew him. There was no choice but to obey. With a thousand jaws he wanted to consume the humans around him, but something higher called.

He soon saw the vast stone blocks of the Frontier appear in his path and only dimly remembered why they existed. They were nothing but an obstacle now. In a multitude of leaps he reached the top. There he paused briefly, looking beyond with thousands of eyes. Somewhere, deep in the wasteland, it was beginning...

Then he woke up in his bedroll, covered in a cold sweat. Kai tossed and turned, struggling to remember his dream, before he fell asleep.