Many existences ask...what must I possess to be truly powerful? They ask it while gathering treasures, while stacking techniques, while eating what should not be eaten.
And existence, patient as it is, watches them gather and stack and eat, and waits for them to notice what was in front of them the whole time. Loyalty. The quality no vault holds and no technique teaches.
Loyalty to oneself, first, the refusal to abandon what you are when abandoning it would be easier. Loyalty to one's ideals, held even when the holding costs. And loyalty to those around you, given without ledger, returned without asking. The gathering ones never notice it, because loyalty cannot be taken, and taking is all they know. But the ones who learn it, the ones who are believed in and believe in turn, go unfathomably far. Farther than treasure. Farther than technique.
For a being alone is only ever as strong as itself. A being surrounded by loyalty is as strong as everything that refuses to let it fall.
