Vile Rabbit

Now apexion could somewhat understand why it possible entities at the higher tier could use the past, present, and future as their game board.

He ignored the suppressive and repelling force and gazed at the endless darkness between realms, at the higher laws hidden with in, the laws that governed the lower laws.

These laws are called grand laws, and they supersede minor laws.

While staring at the laws, he also thought about the moments he interacted with a tier 8 being, the Silent One, and the Hanging Tree.

He was attempting to decipher the key that he was missing in his evolution from them.

Records of his interactions with them flashed through his mind, every single detail.

"I see."

And there he saw it, something that he couldn't perceive due to his previous level of existence was now revealed before his eyes. The silent one's figure was wrapped with strange ethereal strings that seemed to vanish into nothingness. The moment he saw the strings, a name came to his mind:

"Karmic strings. A sub-law of the concept of fate."

'Karma, fate, karma, fate.'

His thoughts raced; fate was one of the concepts that he couldn't grasp a hint of before, so he was curious to see if he could understand it now. He felt that it was the key for him to penetrate the barrier that's preventing him from completely ascending.

He gazed at his realm, at the quadrillions of creatures wandering around seamlessly through the cycle of life. They born, they laugh, talk, reproduce, fight, and die.

And the question that he had asked himself long ago bloomed again in his mind:

"Why was I who born the way I was, and why were others born the way they were?"

This question doesn't just apply on an individual level, such as personality; no, it encompassed all things, such as the world of birth, creature of birth, time of birth, innate talent, and then personality traits.

If he weren't in the Apex world, but in an unawakened world, or worse, a world like the Game of Death world, would he still be the same? Would he even live this long? If he weren't a primal rabbit, had such innate talent, and was innately cautious, greedy, jealous, lustful, and ruthless, would he have still been able to ascend to the divine? And if yes, would that creature still be Apexion?

And most importantly of all, why was he the one born with these qualities and not some other creature? Was it just coincidence, or was there some force behind it?

With these questions in his mind, Apexion retracted his gaze and vanished into the vacuum. He was going to do something that he hadn't done in a while, experiment and research.

A few moments later, he arrived before a relatively small realm, spanning seven thousand light years in diameter. This realm was composed of a single cosmic sphere planet spanning three light years in diameter, and it was a special world that he purposefully left untainted by any paths whatsoever not even his.

He made sure to block the automatic divine path ascension that happens when a creature activates a certain number of blood runes by engraving a realm-spanning rule on the number of blood runes a creature could activate, and he even went as far as deactivating the realm's nexus sphere.

He wanted to see if under all these conditions a creature could somehow still awaken or even create a miracle and become a pathfinder. Plus, he also wanted an isolated realm for research.

Zip!

The realm barrier seamlessly opened up, inviting him inside. But before he entered, his body suddenly divided into four; these were his clones. All but the Lust clone had fused with him before his breakthrough, for he had completely destroyed it after the discussion with the Hanging Tree.

He didn't want to have any direct contact with it, for it had been in contact with too many higher-tier beings, and who knows what they may or may not have left on it? Its returning might have exposed his location to those beings, who would probably devour him the moment they found him the main self.

And it's to be noted that these three aren't just disposable items that he could kill without consequence; no, for each held a sliver of his existence, and losing them would cause him to lose a part of his strength and apart of his self.

The clones shot off into the distance, each with a specific task at hand. He had now reached the level where he felt comfortable to exit the shallow waters and enter the deep. He felt that the eighth-tier existences could no longer outright kill him in a frontal battle that's one-on-one, of course…

The Wrathful clone's task was to lead his armies to the Eternal Battle, which is the Realm of Doom, where almost all the paths and non-paths battle against each other.

And they aren't just battling each other for nothing, for the Realm of Doom has a unique feature called [Kill as You Go], where, when a creature kills another, that said creature might receive a certain aspect of the creature they killed such as a certain portion of strength, skills, or even innate talents.

There is a saying that inside the Realm of Death, even a tier 1 creature could instantly become a divine being. That is, if it was lucky enough to kill a divine being, which would have been impossible under normal circumstances, but the realm of doom was far from normal and there had been record such things happening before.

The Lust clone is going to journey to the inner realm by itself, and the Envy clone is going to search for forbidden realms; there is a theory he wanted to clarify about these realms.

…

Apexion then stepped inside the realm. He appeared a few light years above the world, his presence concealed. He then sat down, cross-legged, and his eyes shone with endless calculation as he gazed down at the colorful world laced with mountains, forests, volcanoes, oceans, and deserts, at the countless diverse species striving in these habitats. Every single one of them was unawakened.

His goal was to penetrate the reason why some creatures were born with godly potential and some with little to none.

He observed and observed, and before he knew it, five hundred years had passed, and his eyes flickered with enlightenment.

"I see."

He muttered to himself in an understanding tone. During these years, he had discovered two aspects of karma, which he instinctively named negative karma and positive karma.

As for how he discovered these aspects, it was on his one-hundred-year mark when he noticed something peculiar.

He saw that creatures who did a lot of what some would consider good deeds would more than likely have something good happen to them in that life, and if nothing good happened to them in that life, it would happen to them in their next life. Yes, next life, for when a creature dies, its spirit essence would be absorbed into the world, then cleansed and installed into a newly pregnant creature.

The grand cycle of life.

The opposite is true for creatures who do a lot of things that lower life forms would consider bad or evil. They would more than likely suffer a horrific event, whether in that life or the next, or the next.

The next thing is that their good or bad actions can even stain their bloodlines, so that even after their death, their family remains or has the capacity to become prosperous or the opposite of prosperous.

…

About fifty years ago, a boy lived in a small village outside of the kingdom. He lived with his mother and father in poverty; they could barely afford food to eat.

As the years passed, the boy discovered that he had a talent in the arts; he could carve mesmerizing statues out of wood.

Soon he became a famous artist, and by selling his carvings, he made a fortune. He moved his family out of the poverty-stricken village and into the flourishing kingdom.

The key part was that after leaving the village, he did not cut ties; no, he used his wealth to renovate the village and donated food to the locals, inadvertently saving many who were a breath away from dying of starvation.

He even went further and did the same for all the villages around the kingdom. He created homes for the homeless.

His selfless actions garnered him a lot of praise and criticism.

Some said that he was a lucky fool for wasting his wealth on useless commoners and that he would soon end up back as a poor, starving rat.

In contrast, some labeled him a saint sent by the wind and earth gods to save the world from its current dire state…

Sadly, after a few years, the boy suddenly died of an illness that he didn't know he had.

The boy's spirit essence went on to live a new life. His wealth was split up by his family, and his art business collapsed due to the schemes of those who were envious of his talent.