Chapter 160: Selfhood

Chapter 160: Selfhood

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Selfhood

"We were given the name Keter because of its presence within us," He answered. "Similarly, Malkuth was given that name because the core of his soul was composed of Malkuth."

"The core of it," I repeated. "But not the whole?"

"No soul is composed of entirely of one Sephirot," He answered. "If they were, they would be powerless. Souls draw their power from the light above the Sephirot and shape it into useful forms as it passes through the spheres. The Light enters the Sephirot through Keter and is given form in the physical world by Malkuth, but the spheres in-between define what that form will be."

"So everyone has at least Keter and Malkuth in them?" I asked. "Because you need Keter to take in the Light and Malkuth to output it."

"Yes," He confirmed. "Keter and Malkuth serve a number of purposes upon the Tree of Life, but one of the most important is as the start and end points of the process."

I nodded to show I understood but then tilted my head to the side.

"But if everyone contains Keter within them, what's the big deal?" I asked. "Why does it matter if it's inside of us, too?"

I got the feeling my Light Elemental would have smiled if it wasn't aware of how creepy it would have been.

"Because Keter is special," He replied. "As the first and highest of the Sephirot, it is also the one most distant from this world. Though all the spheres have a multitude of purposes, Keter's has few within this realm and therefore its presence is rare. All living souls have a measure of Keter within them to connect them to the Light, but they contain it in drops or even atoms. We do not. Instead, a large portion of our soul is composed of Keter."

"So we have a lot more than usual," I said. "Okay, makes sense. How much more?"

"At least a few millions times that of a normal person," He stated. "Probably billions."

I whistled slightly.

"A lot more than usual," I mused. "What's that do? That is, what are the properties of Keter? Do you know, if it's as rare as you say?"

"Discovering and examining the exact properties of the Sephirot was one of the main reasons of our creation," My Light Elemental answered. "Keter especially they wanted to examine in large quantities. It isa complex thing, but you know of its most basic effects well. When we are hurt, Light flows down the tree and mends our wounds in an instant. When our power runs low, we draw down more from above. All Angelsall Huntersdo so, but you've no doubt noticed that we are particularly capable in that regard. In addition, the nature of the Crown expresses itself ina peculiar way."

"The Gamer's Mind and the Gamer's Body," I guessed. "I never learned those powersI just had them. Before I even awakened my Aura."

"The" He paused for a moment, seeming to look for the word. "Skin of your soul and how it is expressed is something uniqueto you and to everyone. It's because of who you are as a person and the situations you found yourself in that your soul expressed itself through the medium of a game. Before, our power manifested in a different way. Butyes. As I said before, the crown is worn above the head and we are beyond influences to our minds. More than that, our body itself is almost divorced from this world; our existence itself is defined by our power. As Malkuth governs the world, we govern ourselves."

"I see," I mused. Thinking about it, that might even explain how my Semblance awakened before my Aura and a number of other things. "It's because of Keter that I'm able to exist as a game character, then. But if stuff like that's the result of a large amount of Keter within one's soul, are there other people like me?"nove(l)bi(n.)com

"No," He answered immediately. "Keter does not occur in such large quantities naturallynot in the physical world, at least."

"Then how did my creator's make me?" I asked, frowning. I could think of a fair amount of possibilities that I hoped weren't true. Hell, I could think of things I hoped weren't possible. "Did they find a way to make Keter artificially?"

"No," He stated, multifold tone growing solemn. "They simply took it from where it already existed."

Shit, I thought, closing my eyes. I couldn't say I was surprised and yetI'd truly hoped that wasn't the case. That was

"How many?" I whispered. "How many souls did it take to createus?"

"I already told you," He replied. "Millions. Probably billions."

I swore.

"How is that even possible?" I demanded. Honestly, it was hard for me to even imaginebillions of people. Currently, Remnant was home to only millions. Even behold the horrible magnitude of the crime, the mere thought of there being billions was mindboggling.

"It was fairly simple," He answered calmly, though there was an edge to the words. "At its height, this world was home to billions and billions. The Angels ruled over the mortals in all things and it was simply a matter of collecting them as they died. Over many generations, the souls of billions of mortals were collected and broken down into their component pieces for the sake of experimentation."

I looked down, pondering that, but a question nagged at me and made me look back at him.

"What was my power last time?" I asked. "What was I capable of before? You said the results were similar in some waysis there something I should be aware of? A weakness Malkuth exploited?"

He pondered that for a moment before answering.

"The power of Keter does not lend itself easily to explanation," He replied. "But to put it simply, where you are a game character, before we were the main character of a living story. We would draw in those around us and, to an extent, weave our own paths. We could not devour books as you do now, but we could find people and give them roles relative to ourselvesa mentor or a tutor, whose role was to pass on knowledge. And then we could learn from them with miraculous speed, like a character in a story facing a deadline. We could give those around us roles as well, both of allies and enemies, enhancing their abilities in some ways and redefining our position relative to them. I could develop abilities of my own by weaving them into my narrative, if I knew enough about how they worked, and we could adjust things around us in minor ways. I was the main character of my story and I defined the world around me accordingly."

"How much stronger was I?" I asked.

"It is hard to say," He said and from the sound of his many voices, I imagined he was a bit confused on that himself. "Far more powerful then you are now, but by how much varied greatly. Your current power has the advantage of consistencyit provides hard numbers that allow you to calculate precisely how powerful you currently are. Provided you have the power and are able to apply your skills to the situation your power is defined, though it increases quickly. Before, our power depended greatly on how we define roles beforehand and could vary depending on anything from location to opponent. If I decided I was the 'hero' defending a defined location, I could be several times stronger while fighting to protect it. If someone I'd defined as a 'friend' or 'lover' was injured in front of me or if I was trying to slay my 'archenemy', it could increase then as well. While my base power was defined, my upper limit could vary greatly depending upon how I set up a situation and the details were defined in narrative terms, rather than mathematical ones. I will say, however, that I was likely the strongest I'd ever been when I fought Malkuth for the last time."

"The how did he win?" I asked.

"With sheer, overwhelming power," Keter answered. "In theory, Keter is above Malkuthbut reality is never quite that simple. Again, Keter is the furthest from Malkuth, from reality as you know itand though there are things we are capable of that are simply beyond him, so long as the battle takes place in the physical world, the lord of the physical can be presumed to have the advantage. His might in this world is something that is, if not impossible, exceptionally difficult to oppose directly."

I nodded, considering that.

"If he rules this world," I began slowly. "What about worlds beyond it? Worlds that aren't physical? Malkuth is the lowest of the Spherot, but what about the ones above it? Even if it's not a world where we hold all the cards, I'd settle for shutting down his physics fuckery. Could I beat him there? Lock him up, maybe?"

"The thought has occurred," Keter answered. "Though the details are, unfortunately, more complex than one might hope. It is not a simple matter of stepping into a higher plane and doing battleMalkuth is where the Light is given form, where the thoughts and actions defined above are made real. Above Malkuth, many of the things you know do not exist or have no real meaning. If you go high enough, interacting with things at all could be difficult or impossible. Even beyond that, how our powers would work in such a placeto say nothing of hisis difficult to predict. All of the Archangels are mixtures of the Sephirot, whatever our names might be, and we exist as defined by Malkuth. Even you and I, Keter, were made and given form in this world and all of our powers are defined by that. Beyond it"

He twitched a pair of wings in what I took to be a shrug.

And yetI noticed he didn't say 'no.' If he'd wanted to do so, I imagined there were easier ways to say 'it doesn't work like that,' but he didn't. Almost like he was dancing around somethingperhaps something he couldn't tell me.

On the other hand, I doubted he'd say anything without purpose. What he said was logical, after all, and something to take into account. It was possible, even likely, that I'd have thought of such a simple solutionand wow, I'd just called travelling beyond known reality 'simple,' which said a lot about how difficult fighting Malkuth was beginning to seemin my past life. Maybe I'd tried to fight him on a higher plane or lock him away. Maybe that was why he wasn't free to come down here and hand me my ass.

If so, it didn't change the fact that whatever I'd tried before, I'd ended up deadand, perhaps more importantly, it hadn't worked, at least not completely. Whether I'd locked him in a box or shoved him into a pocket dimension, the fact remained that he was still alive and still causing trouble. His creations, the Grimm, remained and he remained capable of commanding, creating, and empowering them. From what I knew now, it seemed that Malkuth's aforementioned physics fuckery was the source of a lot of the Grimm's powers and how many of them could exist, and he was obviously able to keep supporting them to some extent.

Whatever had happened, I'd died, he'd lived, and everything had gone to hell as a result. Human civilization had been shattered and mankind had been hunted across Remnant for thousands upon thousands of years. Countless nations, countless people, had lived and died in fear of the Grimm and there was no sign of that changing. Even if I was growing stronger all the time, I was depressingly aware that if he said a word and mobilized the Grimm, he could wipe the Kingdoms off the map. I could fight to defend them, but only one city at a time, and even thenif I stood guard over Mistral and went all out, releasing Lux Aeternas, Gungnirs, and the full power of Bai Hu's arts, if I pushed myself to the utter limit and pulled out all the stops, I could kill millions of Grimm. I could maybe even, over a long enough time frame and as the battle wore on and on, kill billions.

But nobody in Mistral was going to thank me for it. I would knowI'd fucking erased this city enough times to know precisely how long it would hold out if I was forced to fight and the answer was 'not very.' And because I had over two hundred and fifty points of Wisdom, I was smart enough to know that if you kill everyone you're trying to protect in the process of trying to protect them, then you're a dumbass and a failure.

Whatever I'd done to stop him, hadn't stopped him. Not enough to satisfy me or any of the countless people he's killed. A more effectiveand preferably permanent solution was requiredand I could only think of one.

Now if only I could figure out how to actually do it.

"Sorry," I said after a moment, sighing loudly. "I interrupted your story. We'd gotten together and pulled the wool over the Angel's eyes; what then?"

"We waited and we planned until we were strong enough," He continued. "We played along with their requests and did as we were told. They arranged a number of experiments to test our loyalties, but when you're capable of learning of such plans easily, there is little to fear. We past every test they set before us until they were certain they had us under control. Then, we finished our preparations, brutally murdered all of them, and took control."

"Define 'took control.'"

"We conquered the world," Keter said. "It was fairly simple, in fact. By that time, we were over twenty years of age and had come into our power. As our betrayal was unexpected and our preparations thorough, we'd killed a significant number of our enemies before they even realized what was happening. They'd been more successful with their experiments before us and the vast majority of them had remained loyal, but the same measures they'd used to ensure they were never betrayed worked against them. We divided them, turned them against one another, remained hidden, and then struck. In later years, it would be called the War in Heaven, but for such a grand title, it wasn't a particularly difficult battle. They'd sought to make beings of unparalleled power, after all, and they'd succeeded."

"What then?" I asked. "Did Malkuth betray us?"

"No," Keter answered, voices becoming more human. Several even sounded sad. "Not then, at least. Not for a very long time. We ruled as onethe ten Archangels. We stepped into the void the Angels had left behind and set out to fix the mistakes of our creators. It was simple enough when you had power like ours and working together, we could create miracles as easily as breathing. After generations of the Angels tyranny, the people rejoiced and we'd long known our origin. Our souls had come from people like them, billions of people that had died and worse than died for our maker's experiments. Seeing everything and reigning above it all, it seemed only fitting to help them now. We made new Angels, raising up the kind and hardworking and noble, and we used our power to make things better. It took time, but we ended disease, hunger, and so many other things."

"Were you trying to make a utopia?" I wondered, honestly curious. I knew, after all, that this story ended badly, I just wasn't sure how yet.

"What's a utopia?" He asked. "Try to define it. And then, try to make everyone agree to that definition. Making a perfect world is, I think, impossibleand it was never our intention to try. We simply wanted to make things better. Having seen how people suffered, we simply wished to end it. No more, no less. The results were not perfect, but only a fool would consider an inability to obtain perfection a reason to do nothing."

"Then what happened?" I asked him. "What went wrong?"

"Time," He said. "For all things change in time. And we ruled for a thousand years."