As Lan stared at the karma of miracles, he grew more and more excited. But soon, he calmed down and started observing the room. It was a simple basement with walls and floor made out of the same stone as the rest of the tower. Besides the skeleton and the dead karma of miracles floating above it, there was also a bookshelf full of books related to karmic studies.
Lan turned his attention to the skeleton, it was humanoid with four arms and tusks on its face; the skeleton of the Horlun, clearly. "I'm lucky to have left behind such an intact skeleton; the others did not have the luxury of doing so." The Horlun's voice came from the dead karma.
This made Lan's attention return to it and he started observing it. He could tell that besides the karma of miracles, which makes up its outer layer, being the newest addition before its death, there were 2 others. The first being the story of the Horlun, which was the core, and the second being what its karmic ties left behind for it.
"Why have you decided to leave this fragment behind?" Lan couldn't help but ask; the fragment was the pain and sorrow the Horlun felt when he gained what the Karmic ties left behind, but also the joy he felt during the shared memories of those Karmic ties before he became all alone. As for how he knew? Such a thing is easily discernible to Lan with his Karmic vision.
The answer the Horlun spoke next confused Lan. "It was hope." "Hope?" Lan couldn't help but ask. "Yes, hope. Hope that one day someone will find this and make use of it to break the barrier which has shackled our home for thousands of years." Lan was impressed with this answer. Someone had stayed behind after death for so long in a state that was like torture, just because they had hope. That one day, they can use all the karma they accumulated to help someone break the barrier.
"I acknowledge your hardship, even though you're not as good as I, you're definitely a rare talent. Tell me your name, I'll make sure to remember it." Lan had spoken with arrogance in his tone, yet the Horlun didn't mind; his hardship that lasted almost a thousand years has been acknowledged by someone he is sure can break the barrier. He was happy, so unimaginably happy, if he still had a living body he would surely tear up.
"...Thank you, truly thank you for those words. My name is Naleik. Please remember it. I don't want my karma, my story to be forgotten." The Horlun, now identified as Naleik, spoke and as he finished speaking, that last fragment dissipated; the only reason he stayed was so his karma would not be forgotten. With that accomplished, his last fragment could pass on.
Lan stayed silent for a moment and then spoke. "... of course, I will always carry your karma with me." He reached for the Karma and as he touched it, it got absorbed into his body. This is Lan's unique power to absorb dead and forgotten karma, which should by no means be normally accessible to anyone. He didn't digest the karma yet and just kept it inside him, not making it a part of himself yet.
The reason for this is that he wants his own karmic story to have a solid foundation.
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Lan soon left the tower, taking all the books with him thanks to a spatial storage treasure he found on the bookshelf. It was in the form of a book. Lan, for some reason, felt like he had a strange connection with books, but that thought soon inexplicably vanished from his mind as if he never even thought of it at all.
The journey back was swift. Upon coming back Lan went back to his personal training grounds and took out all the books he collected at the tower.
There were all sorts of books, but he was most interested in the books on karmic treasures as that was one of the things that his initial knowledge didn't cover.
Karmic treasures were pretty simple; they were graded with ascending numbers according to the Karmic realms. Each realm has two grades, low and high. The grades are low first grade, high first grade, low second grade, high second grade and so on.
They are then further divided according to their purpose. Offensive, defensive, support, spatial and many more types of Karmic treasures.
There is no one method to forge them as they form through the combination of forged karma and actual physical items.
Forged karma is a type of karma that is formed when someone manifests their experiences, therefore their karma, into the physical world as a copy that can interact with the physical world in ways that correspond to the karma that is manifested.
Therefore to make karmic treasures the one who is making them needs to either have the corresponding karma themselves or someone needs to give them that forged karma.
Of course, there are other ways to get forged karma as well. One such way is to kill someone and take their karma before it dies too and forge it within that short period of time.
With the information Lan has gathered, he has the confidence to forge the treasure that can take him out of the barrier after he has managed to grow as much as possible within it.
Thankfully, Lan's unique power gives him the advantage of being able to use dead and forgotten karma to forge karma and make karmic treasures with that.
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A week after Lan got back he has decided to put his plans into motion. Right now he's travelling to the city for the first time. The city is 10km away from the wall, so it was pretty fast.
Once he arrived at the city, the first thing he noticed was the obvious unharvested karma the factions of the wall had accumulated. From just this, Lan has concluded that the lords of the factions are weak. They're leaving all that karma there, which means they cannot harvest it; harvesting karma from an organisation you rule is a basic technique. If they cannot do even that, Lan will have an easy time completing his story.
Upon realising this, Lan grinned and entered the city unnoticed by the guards.
The first place Lan went was the Aerdent Tower, which was quite literally a tower. He hid his power and enrolled in the tower as a student. Enrolling was really easy; he just demonstrated some of his skills while making it seem like he had no concrete style, so no one could accuse him of being from a different faction.
In the days that followed, he made himself seem like a prodigy who grew every day. Soon, he had caught the attention of the Lord of the tower, who invited him to be his disciple.
Lan accepted and continued making himself seem like a regular prodigy. Until a month later when he finally reached the point where he could complete his plan.
When he was training with the lord of the tower, as usual, he suddenly stopped "This should be enough." The lord was confused "What are you doing Hem?"
Lan started glaring at the lord "I really hate that name. Couldn't they have chosen a better fake name?" This made the lord even more confused "fake name what do you mean?" Lan, who no longer wanted to keep this farce up, walked up to the lord and simply slashed his sword at him.
The sword cut his arm off and he screamed in pain as he fell on his knees. Lan looked down at the screaming lord and scoffed "How is someone of the karmic pathway this weak? Call your lord friends, weakling."
The lord glared at Lan "You will regret this, you ungrateful traitor!" the lord took out a talisman and activated it and soon all the other lords in the city showed up staring at Lan and the downed lord.
Lan looked at them briefly and then looked back at the tower's lord "Good, I don't need you anymore." Lan slashed at him once again this time decapitating him and turning to the other lords "Time to clean up some trash."
Upon hearing this all the lords got angry and started shouting profanities "You ******! How dare you talk like this to us?" This one particular lord, who shouted the loudest, stood out "How surprising, there's a lord in this place who has reached the first level in a karmic profession."
The lord grinned upon hearing this and started hyping himself up "That's right, I am the strongest lord here, so bow to me you weakling and I may consider keeping you alive!"
Lan simply stared at him as if looking at someone who was already dead "It is indeed be impressive for this rotten place." "That's right, so bo-!" "But unfortunately for you, I reached the second level not long ago." The lord froze completely and so did the other lords "Don't cry in the afterlife after this." Lan walked up to them and, with a few fast slashes, they all died "Try not being assholes in your next lives and maybe no one like me will come to punish you for your sins." upon saying that Lan turned and simply walked away and went back to the wall slowly. It took over a hour and when he arrived he met with the generals.
"Lord Lan you're back? Do you need something?" Tordain asked. Lan looked at them "It's done you're free now." Once he delivered the news, he simply walked away went down the wall to the monster side and stared at today's monster tide and in a matter of a few minutes just... slaughtered them all.
"It's finally time." Lan started slowly floating a meter off the ground and started being surrounded by mysterious blue-gold light.
"The way to become a karmic child is simple: you just form an impressive story, gather karmic energy and form the embryo of the realm by the formula of the yin and yang, taking the negative of the story, such as death and suffering and infusing them into the yin and the possitives such as growth and heroics and infusing them into the yang."
Lan's eyes lit up and within his soul a vortex of karmic energy emerged, one side red-black, the other blue-white, which slowly formed a yin-yang symbol.
"Once the yin and the yang have formed, you form creation and from the creation comes life."
The yin-yang within Lan's soul slowly compressed and once it was fully compressed, it exploded and created a fetus-like energy construct shining gold
Lan grinned and looked up at the barrier as he landed on the purple grass below his feet "So that's why it exists."