Chapter 599: What is Error?
Alex placed his complete focus on the dark book in his hands. It was thin, containing around twelve pages. With a small breath, he opened it and read the bold first words.
What is Error?
Darkness is the canvas, that much was certain. It held nothing of its own, yet upon it the whole of reality is painted.
The laws of fire and water, of weight and breath, of light and sound, all of them are the foundations of reality, just as cells are to a body, all build upon a canvas, chained together into the endless patterns that make up reality.
From this truth, the first property of Darkness is plain to see. Erasure. To erase was simply to wipe away the color, to return the canvas to its blank, waiting state.
Simple, natural, inevitable.
But then came the question. What if the canvas itself shifted? Not wiped clean, not partly erased, only unsettled. The paint still clung, the lines still held, but the ground beneath them was no longer steady.
The disturbance would result in a straight line bending, a circle wavering, and colors stretching into shapes they were never meant to take.
The picture would remain, but it would no longer match what had been drawn.
This disturbance from known to unknown was an Error.
’Interesting... Interesting,’ Alex collected his thoughts before shifting to the next page.
"Steps to learning the way of Error"
The first step of wilding Error was not strength, but perception. One had to be able to sense the base of reality itself, the canvas beneath the paint.
Alex had imagined the base as something simple, a surface stretched endlessly, one layer holding everything, just like space, but he quickly learned his mistake.
The base of reality was not one-dimensional, nor was it a single sheet laid neatly beneath existence. It was woven in countless layers, a tapestry of depths, each belonging to what it held.
A tree, for instance, carried its own base. Not just its structure, but its leaves and even the essence that made the tree possible.
Similarly, the soil had its own base, the grains of dust their own, the world itself another, and even that world rested upon a deeper base, the space in which it sat, and the hidden foundations beneath that.
Every layer was bound into a larger one, a pyramid of interlocking truths. To shift the base of a leaf was not the same as shifting the base of the tree that bore it, but the other way around was true.
The deeper one looked, the more intricate it became. It was not one, or two, or three dimensions, it was structure within structure, a scaffolding that defied simple measure.
Each base was not a single thread, but more like the root of a vast tree, branching down and out into finer and finer roots, until every leaf, every vein, every cell had its own foundation, all tied back to the greater trunk of reality itself.
This also revealed the most important truth.
The base and reality were not the same, but neither could exist without the other. Reality was the paint, the reflection, the expression, while the base was the canvas, the mirror, the hidden support that held all those things in being.
Distinct, but inseparable.
The paint could not cling without the canvas, the reflection could not shine without the mirror.
"The way to wield Error"
After learning to sense the base of reality, the second step was to learn how to distort it, to send ripples through it, intrun planting an Error.
To wield Error, one had to press into Darkness not to destroy, but to disturb it, not too much, lest the law collapse into erasure, and not too little, lest nothing happen at all.
Error was not creation, nor was it destruction. It was the disfiguration of the stable, made possible by the trembling of the base itself, the canvas made unstable beneath a law, and when the base faltered, the law standing on it stumbled.
Fire would still burn, but its burn would be uncertain, its heat twisted unnaturally. Gravity would still pull, but its pull would lag and lurch as though the world had forgotten its own weight.
Since reality was meant to always stay in order, it rejected Error by trying to always correct itself to its true nature.
This was why the way of Error was not discovered until someone grew to a higher existence.
Erasure was obvious, blunt, and absolute. It was laid bare for everyone. But Error was unnatural, an anomaly not meant to stay within reality.
But this was only half the distance one had to travel to truly wield the way of Error. And it was the reason why almost no one ever even glimpsed its path until they had stepped into great power.
The first was to sense the base of reality, and the second was to disturb it, but that alone will not make one achieve even chaotic results, let alone precise ones.
The third requirement of wielding Error was having an understanding of how and why natural forces work the way they do.
A person may see the base of an elemental phenomenon like a small flame and even disturb the base of it, but unless he understands the nature of fire itself, the result would most likely be nothing or complete collapse.
Error was not a force, but a wound, a fracture placed upon a force, and to wound something without killing it, one must know its structure.
If one struck fire without understanding it, the results would be chaos at best. An unsuccessful attempt would cause it to sputter out, burn in strange colors, or, in the case of failure, collapse entirely into smoke.
Sometimes nothing would happen at all, because too little Error was sown, while other times, the flame itself would come apart, unraveling into choking ash and soot.
This was why the path was so burdensome. To wield Error properly, one had to study, to learn why and how the reality itself functioned, everything from the ways of flame, the weight of stone, the pull of rivers, and even aspects like the breath of wind itself.
Without extensive knowledge, the hand was blind. But if one understood the truth of a thing, then Error could be planted precisely, and the natural aspects could be bent to produce results the user wanted.
’I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but this borders on impossible,’ Alex murmured, closing the book with a heavy breath. ’Not that it will stop me,’
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After Alex made full recovery, Odeseues laid out his daily routine for him. He would spend four hours sleeping, which the Inheritor would use to study his physique, and the remaining twenty would be spent on roaming the domains of the Drakaryx clan.
The Drakaryx clan had eleven domains, each controlled by one of the seats of power, individuals like Asher and Vasticus who held authority only lower than the Inheritor himself.
All these domains were not only home to the seats of power, but also served as proving grounds for those who sought entry into the clan, or for anyone who wished to claim rewards by carving their name into the honor obelisks.
Yet only a selected section of the domains was used for such trials, while the rest remained sealed, reserved only for the selected clan members.
A quick question confirmed that his stay in these domains wouldn’t be comfortable, and what Odesues meant by that statement, Alex only found out after his first day within the Blooming Requiem.
Alex was not told how long he had within each domain; he was just sent to the Blooming Requiem, the domain ruled by Seyra, the Matron of nature, growth, and Eternal hunt.
It was the most breathtaking land Alex had ever laid eyes upon. The air was crisp, alive with the fragrance of earth after rain. Valleys stretched wide, carved by rivers that shimmered like strands of silver.
Yet Alex was quickly made aware that this domain was a cradle and a grave, a domain where life and death walked side by side. And also, this place was his testing ground.
The moment Alex regained his senses, he was met with the sight of one of the most serene women he had ever laid eyes on.
Something about her presence stirred an instinctive urge to shield her, to shelter her from the cruelties of the world. Yet even through the haze of that pull, he remained clear-headed enough to recognize the truth, those thoughts were not his own, but the result of a subtle mental influence.
Seyra departed with words sweet as nectar but also as dry as the exhale of death. "Enjoy the Eternal Hunt."
But meeting Seyra was the only moment of peace within her domain, as mere minutes after she departed, a Briar-parasite attacked him, a vile growth that had wormed itself into the body of a Cerynox Wolf, twisting the beast into a puppet of thorns and rot.
Dealing with the beast was easy, but he was just the first of the countless threats that followed.
The ones that came at Alex head-on were the easiest to deal with. Claws, fangs, and twisted bodies could be cut down and erased.
But the true dangers lurked behind them.
The plagues were the true horror, and they were everywhere, microscopic terrors, as small as dust yet far deadlier than any beast. They drifted on the air like harmless pollen, but each grain fed hungrily on his vitality, swelling inside his lungs with every breath.
A single moment of lapse, a heartbeat’s delay, and his body would become their garden.
Worse still were the mind-plagues, threats with no shape, no sound, no scent. They slipped into his thoughts like thieves, gnawing at the edges of his reason.
Paranoia, memory fog, sudden lapses of focus, individually, these effects were mostly harmless, but together they left him vulnerable. And in this garden of death, weakness was the same as becoming nutrients for it.
Alex adapted and learned to counter the threats, but he was not the only one adapting, as each wave became insidious than the last.
He endured the never-ending challenges until, at last, the day came to its close. To say that the twenty hours had been a worse test than the long, grinding days of war he had fought against the Slaken would be an understatement.