Chapter 1629 — 1629: Kindness

"Good for realms, huh?" Lex said with curiosity. He had… a crazy idea. Honestly, he should stop using such adjectives now. All his ideas were crazy. Crazy was his norm now. So in that case… Lex had a very normal idea.

Since he was bonded with Lotus, who was fused with a realm, it was almost as if Lex was fused with a realm. He frequently got feedback from his relationship with Lotus. Heck, he even had a transformation of his own that depended on Lotus - not that he wanted to tell Z about it. The poor kid was working so hard on getting more forms.

Anyway, Lotus wanted Lex to return to the Inn to fuse that power into the realm, but that wouldn't happen any time soon. So… he pursed his lips and sucked the shimmering green pentagons right out of the air, absorbing them.

But the power originated from Lex to begin with - absorbing it would have no effect. Instead of absorbing it himself, he directed it towards his back, where his tattoo had appeared, and channeled it into Lotus.

"What did you just do?" Lotus asked. "I changed my mind. Don't come back to the realm. Just keep doing whatever you just did."

Lex smirked, and dismissed his ability for now. While he could not understand the actual effects of the ability, he understood his body quite well. When the tattoo absorbed some of those green pentagons, it appeared as though nothing really happened, but Lex sensed that at the very base of his black tattoo, a single pigment of color began to appear. The otherwise black tattoo showed signs of a deeper evolution.

Lex kept the change in mind, and decided that he would investigate it further later on. He did not believe that the power would only have a single function or be one dimensional. After all, Paladins could fight, they could heal, they could protect and do so much, all using the same type of power. For now, though, it was time to move forward.

Mentally, he placed all his newly accumulated beads on the Go board. He had noticed that, recently, his opponent had stopped adding pieces to the board. He didn't know what that guy was planning, but Lex would not wait for him to act first. The more pieces he placed, the greater his understanding of the board.

With nothing else left to do, he grabbed Naraka and focused. Since he had already distinctly felt the presence of Abaddon when he was making his oath, it was very easy for him to pick it out once again.

For a moment, he wondered what it meant that Abaddon had witnessed or acknowledged his oath. It did not feel like Abaddon had made any conscious decision, nor did he feely any less hostility or hunger from it. It was as if its presence alone was sufficient for the oath's completion, and its actual sentiments - if a realm could have sentiments - did not matter. That was so odd. Yet another thing for him to ponder on.

Lex focused his sword intent, and specifically targeted Abaddon's presence, cutting neither space nor even the air. Instead, his sword cut into the already frail presence that Abaddon maintained this deep in the jungle.

His sword cut through the presence with ease, and revealed behind the cut a passage for him to enter. The process was too easy - far easier than any obstacle Lex had overcome to get this far. He did not think the ease was because of his own skill.

Lex didn't doubt he was awesome, but it was also clear that from the moment he took his Paladin's oath, something had changed. From being rejected into this place, he suddenly went to being welcomed.

Lex fixed his tie, making sure he looked presentable, and walked into the opening. The passage looked very plain and bare, as if it was a hall in a government building, and at the far end there was a door, though a single glance at the door gave Lex the feeling that he wasn't supposed to go there. It was as if his instincts told him to remember that door, but not go towards it.

Instead of walking towards it, Lex turned around. Rather than the opening he had come from, he saw endless rolling hills, covered in thin mist, flowing as if coming and going from eternity.

He recognized the mist that he had been absorbing, yet over here it somehow seemed a lot more substantial. It also flowed away from him, never touching him, but going around him instead.

But he did not feel like he was losing out. Instead, he felt like the mist was protecting him - as if it was too much for him to even touch. But that was far from all. He even felt like the mist was being exceptionally kind to him, covering the land to hide things that he should not see.

There was no other way to describe it. It felt like kindness, as if this place - whatever it was - sincerely appreciated his existence.

Many things in Lex's mind clicked, and Lex fell into a trance, watching the mist gently passing over the landscape. With his left eye, he could see deep into the world, peering at the laws. Through it, he could also see Karma.

While the details of the Karma of this land eluded him, he could feel that the kindness of this place was as a reaction to his good Karma.

As he began to understand the consequences of good or positive Karma, he went deeper into a trance. He'd never wondered before, because it seemed so obvious, but why was certain Karma good or bad. Who created those definitions? Was it the Karma itself that determined what was good or bad?

As it turned out, at least according to the understanding Lex was developing at that moment, good or bad Karma was determined by whether the consequence of something was good or bad for the universe, on both a micro and macro scale.

Lex began getting insight into the universal equivalent of the trolley problem. It was infinitely more complex, with an endless number of variables. Instead of judging the problem based on morality or law or philosophy, it looked at it from the immediate and long term consequences and repercussions of each action, reaction, and even existence of each situation, as it pertained to the existence of the universe.

Lex fell into a state of enlightenment, gaining a deeper and more esoteric understanding of Karma, its consequences and origins.