Limitless The Strongest Revenant

"As I mentioned earlier, malice is basically the powerful emotions that the soul leaves behind in the spirit. As the body decomposes and turns to dust, the spirit or soul energy returns to Mother Earth."

"Mother Earth? What do you mean?" I asked confused.

"The Norse call her Yggdrasil, while the Slavs, Finns, and Baltic religions call her "The Oak". The Germanic mythologies call it Irminsul. The Chinese call it Jianmu. While the Hindus call it Ashvatha. Even the Jewish Kaballah has a version called the Sephirot. It would take us hours to list all the names it has had over the thousands of years."

Of the names Phillip used, the one I recognized the most was Yggdrasil. It was the super big ass tree that connected the realms of the Nine Worlds in Norse mythology.

"Basically, the idea is that there is a global force that corrects the will of the world. Kind of like a deity, but it has no consciousness of its own. The lack of this ego is why the representation is a tree and not a guardian beast."

"I'm sorry Phillip, I still don't get it."

The monocled bastard made an exasperated face. After a few moments he snapped his fingers and resumed his lecture.

"You are familiar with the law of karma mentioned in Indian religion and philosophy, correct?"

"Karma? Yes, of course. That is where what you do in this life affects your next one, right? If you do good, you will be reborn as a human, if you were a asshole, you will be reborn as a toad or an insect."

Phillip clapped his hands and nodded in approval. "Excellent, that is correct. Now let us build on that. As mentioned, the spirit that holds malice will be recycled by whoever takes the life of the one that held it. If a man kills a man, the spirit of the murdered will move to the murder."

"Wait, wait. I can understand that point for reapers, but are you saying the same is true for humans?"

"Why yes, you already know this from reading popular cultivation novels and Japanese manga. The so-called blood lust. In those media, don't the protagonists only get blood lust after taking a lot of lives? The cause being irrelevant of course."

Blood lust was a common concept in fiction. The ability to put pressure on people just by thinking about the act of killing another. Was Phillip saying this tied to spirits?

"Phillip, isn't this related to a Reaper's death resonance? Aren't they basically the same thing?" Yvonne interjected.

"Yes, excellent observation. Reapers generally experience the effects of malice in a much more direct manner. But that doesn't mean that everything else is free from the effects of malice. Animals become bloodthirsty, and in humans it manifests as either PTSD or some sort of psychopathy."

"Fuck, I feel like I have a brain tumor, explain it like I am five Phillip."

"Sigh. Let's see. You know how you feel when you do something bad? Like when you lie to a friend or cheat on a test. At first you get an uneasy feeling, right?"

"Yes. Isn't that what people call conscience?"

"Yes. Usually, the more virtuous a person is, the more his inner voice will bother him. But if they fight that inner voice, eventually it will stop and they will no longer be bothered by that so-called voice. Correct?"

"Yes. That is why someone who kills once is more likely to kill again. I know that."

"Good, then let us go one step further. You often hear of soldiers coming home from wars and becoming violent with their spouses, correct?"

How could I not. I lived through such an experience. My father, Frank Smith, served in the military and eventually started beating my mother until she left.

When Phillip noticed that I didn't say anything, he continued.

"Brain doctors who diagnosed these people often came to the same conclusion. Because of the traumatic events the person has experienced, they are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. This often manifests as hearing voices, seeing visions, or reliving dangerous moments that cause their bodies to go into fight or flight mode."

At his words, I began to remember the voices I began to hear when I experienced my soul collapse. If the spirits we absorb into our soulgems carry these emotions, then I could understand why some of them would carry voices or visions.

"What are you saying? These subjects confuse me."

"Well, that is the limit of trying to explain a complicated subject to a five-year-old, my lord."

"..."

"We have wasted enough time on this, so let me summarize. Spirits that hold emotions and malice is that person's karma. The more malice a person has, the more lives he has taken.

"When he dies, his soul energy goes either to whatever killed him or back to the world. The "world" in this case is Mother Nature, so for simplicity's sake let's call it the World Tree."

"So the one who gets the world's karma is Yggdrasil?"

"Yes. There is more to discuss, but for now let us keep it simple. Understand that the body decomposes and returns to the earth as fertilizer. The soul energy or the spirit, on the other hand, goes to the World Tree. We are clear on these points, yes?"

I nodded. Although I had more questions, I didn't need to understand everything right now. Just that a person's spirit is shared with everything in the world and goes to Yggdrasil after death.

"Okay, that is how it is for the living. But it is a little different for the dead. You see, for the living, when the malice returns to Mother Earth, they no longer have to worry. But for us, this is the beginning of our problems."

Phillip then took his monocle and began wiping it.

"Remember what I said earlier about zombies and the undead?"

"Yes, they are basically corpses that have spirit but no ego."

"Correct. This means that the bodies that die on earth will be reanimated in hell. And at the direction of someone, the world tree imbues those bodies with spirits."

"What? Then the World Tree is what reanimates the corpses!"n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"Yes. The concept of Samsara or reincarnation that humans have is lacking. The only people who are given a second life are those who are given pure souls. For everyone else, they will not be reborn, but will become the inhabitants of Hellsgate."

"You've got to be shitting me."

"No, my lord. I am not. This is why, despite almost every religion claiming that reincarnation is a real thing, hardly anyone like that actually exists. The sheer amount of malice that the World Tree holds has become so great that the process of reincarnation has been stopped permanently."

The implications of what Phillip was saying caused a deadly silence in the room. It was a lot to take in. But I had a different thought.

'What about me? Didn't I reincarnate seven times? How was I able to do that?'

"Well, when the malice of the entire world fills Hellsgate, it falls to the reapers to clean it up. There is only one way to purify malice. It is to bear the brunt of it and overwhelm the emotions.

"Every reaper has the ability to carry "spirit", right? Unlike humans. We even actively try to earn as much of it as possible. However, there are still dangers. If a Reaper takes in more spirits than he can control, his soul will collapse.

"The only way to increase this amount is to become stronger as a Reaper. The highest form of Reapers, the Revenants, have the ability to control trillions of spirits. Through them, the evil unleashed by the world is contained."

"Motherfucker, so reapers are basically garbage men for the World Tree?" I cursed out loud.

"You can interpret it that way, my lord. It is not entirely accurate, but it is true in a way."

"Ugh. Just when I think a reaper's life cannot get any worse!"

"Which brings me to my original point. Since the Revenants require an unfathomable number of spirits to control their abilities, they collect these spirits from the entire battlefront. This is done as a tax or by cleaning the areas in hell of malice."

Understanding what my clerk was saying, I connected the dots. "That's why you said you needed to be able to do this before you could set up a battlefront."