Lightning Is the Only Way

Gravis told Stella that he would be back shortly and broke the Emblem.

BANG!

When Gravis broke the Emblem, his surroundings seemingly exploded as space was thrown into absolute carnage. The displacement of the teleportation left behind a small, smoking crater.

Gravis hadn't noticed these changes since he had always already been gone when he broke the Emblem, but Stella noticed them.

And her eyes nearly fell out of her sockets.

Stella knew a lot about teleportation, and she had also used such Emblems several times. However, none of the Emblems she had ever seen had demonstrated such an insane power. To create such destruction with a mere teleportation was basically unheard of.

Could her dead teacher create something like this?

Maybe?

However, it would definitely be beyond expensive, even for her. Yet, Gravis had broken the Emblem just to talk to someone? Whom was he talking to? Who were they?

Was Gravis truly just an Ascender? How could he come into contact with someone with such great power that they could hand out such teleportation Emblems in just a couple of days?

Gravis was already the most bizarre and abnormal human Stella had ever met, but he just continued to become more and more mysterious. After talking with him for a while, Stella had assumed that she knew Gravis better.

And then he pulled that stunt!

Meanwhile, Gravis appeared at Arc's clearing. Instead of arriving at the same position he had arrived last time, Gravis directly appeared close to Arc.

Gravis immediately noticed Arc. Arc sat on a tree stump as he drew some confusing lines into the ground with a smile.

Arc turned to Gravis with a smile, who watched Arc with narrowed eyes.

"Funnily enough," Arc said with a slight laugh. "This has nothing to do with me."

Gravis' brows furrowed further. "How can it not have something to do with you?" he asked. "You are responsible for assigning tribulations, are you not?"

"Yes, I am," Arc said, "but I'm not as involved as you think I am."

Gravis crossed his arms. "So, you're telling me that you didn't assign me as Stella's tribulation?" he asked, skeptical.

Arc lifted his right index finger. "That's something else," he said. "Yes, I have assigned you as her tribulation, but that doesn't mean that I manipulated you or her into fighting."

"Isn't that what Heavens do?" Gravis asked, unamused. "You put being at the right locations at the right time so that a conflict will appear naturally."

"Correct," Arc said with a smile and a nod, "but that's not what I did."

"If you didn't do that, how can I be Stella's tribulation?" Gravis asked. This whole thing seemed shady to him.

"I think you got something wrong, Gravis," Arc said as he drew another line in the dirt. "You believe that we first assign a tribulation and then manipulate the circumstance, but that is inaccurate."

"About 50% of tribulations go like this, yes, but the other 50% are different," Arc said, "and you just so happen to be part of the other 50%."

"And what are these other 50%?" Gravis asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That's when a fitting opponent appears near the one having the tribulation," Arc explained. "If we held ourselves to a strict timetable, someone might be in a dangerous fight and get their tribulation at the same time. That wouldn't be fair, obviously."

"So, we leave the Cultivators and beasts a window of about 200 years before their time is up. If someone that fits the tribulation criteria comes into conflict with the tribulation taker, we can simply count that as the tribulation. We don't have to manipulate everything, Gravis."

Gravis thought about this for a bit. Arc's words actually made sense. If the Heavens held themselves to a strict set of rules, in this case, they would have to work several times harder and would need to get involved more.

The highest Heaven wasn't a big fan of Heavens involving themselves in the normal world. The other rules already proved that. Heavens were not supposed to appear in front of beings, contact them, help them, or destroy them without a very good reason. The highest Heaven's rules were very hands-off.

Needing to send different opponents to different places all the time would require the Heavens to change the flow of the world. Sure, if it was necessary, they would do so, but if it wasn't necessary, everyone would have it easier.

"So, you're saying that I just so happened to choose the most powerful opponent possible that just so happened to have an incoming tribulation?" Gravis asked.

Arc laughed a bit. "Sounds unbelievable when you phrase it like that, doesn't it?" Arc asked.

Gravis nodded.

"How about I rephrase it for you?"

Gravis only raised an eyebrow.

"You basically knew nothing of your potential targets when you chose the resource point you want to attack," Arc said with a smile. "And when you choose something while having nearly no information on said choice, did you make an informed, deliberate choice?"

Then, Arc smirked. "Or did you choose at random and bet on luck?"

Gravis' face transformed into a grimace. He didn't like what he heard one bit.

"Think about it," Arc said as he raised on hand. "On one side, we have a Late Minor Circulation Immortal with the worst possible luck imaginable. However, this person is searching for an opponent an entire Circulation above them."

Arc raised his other hand. "On the other side, we have someone with above-average Karmic Luck, who is also an entire Circulation above the first one, and even worse, they have a tribulation coming up."

"The bad luck of the first individual draws them to a very powerful enemy."

"The good luck of the second individual draws weaker opponents to them."

"Two magnets that attract each other."

"Doesn't this sound like a match made in heaven?" Arc asked with a smirk.

Gravis groaned when he heard Arc's pun, and Arc laughed loudly when he saw Gravis' reaction.

Luck was something very illusory. Gravis knew about his bad luck but evading something like luck was very difficult. Gravis thought that he had enough information to make an informed decision, but he had failed to notice that his information had been flawed.

His information came from Liran, and the information had been public knowledge. Usually, something like that was rather reliable, but it wasn't perfect. One inaccuracy in thousands of resource points was not bad at all. This meant that thousands of other resource points still had accurate information on their power.

What were the chances of hitting that single inaccuracy among thousands of good choices?

Nearly nothing.

Anyone that hit this single inaccuracy would only blame one thing.

Bad luck.

"Fuck!" Gravis shouted as he kicked a ton of earth to the side out of anger. "I keep trying to circumvent my lack of Karmic Luck, but I just continually step into it!"

Arc only chuckled a bit. "Don't beat yourself up over it," he said. "Not even us Heavens know how actual luck works. We know what effect our bestowal of Karmic Luck has on luck, but we also don't know why and how luck exists. Is it a Law? No, it isn't."

Arc lifted his right index finger with a smirk. "So, if it isn't a Law, but we can still see its effects, that only leaves two possibilities. Either luck doesn't exist, and it's something we create in our own minds, or it is something that exists that not even my creator knows how it works."

Arc chuckled a bit again. "And when not even my creator knows how it works, how can you even attempt to understand it with your current power?"

"And if it doesn't exist, how can you attempt to understand something that doesn't exist?"

Gravis was still frustrated but sighed. "I know," Gravis admitted, "but it's just so frustrating and annoying!"

"That's a luxury, you know, Gravis," Arc said.

"Huh?" Gravis uttered, not sure what Arc meant.

"If anyone else were in your situation, they wouldn't find this annoying or frustrating, but terrifying," Arc explained. "They would constantly fear for their life and shut themselves off from the world, thinking that everything could kill them if they left their home. A lack of Karmic Luck would be absolutely horrifying to everyone else."

Arc chuckled a bit. "Yet, here you are, just being minorly annoyed by it."

Gravis grunted. "Alright, fine! You win, Arc," Gravis said with a groan.

Arc only smiled. "Also, bad luck can sometimes turn into tremendously good luck."

Gravis nodded. "I know."

"Like in this case," Arc said with a smirk.

Gravis looked with a questioning look at Arc.

"Honestly, your luck could be called transcendental right now," Arc said.

"What do you mean?" Gravis asked with furrowed brows, his frustration forgotten.

"You and Stella are connected," Arc said with a smirk. "In actuality, you have been connected before you even arrived in this world."

"In fact, you have been connected for nearly 4,000 years, your time, of course."

Gravis' eyes widened.