Sovereign of the Karmic System

".. If there is a deadly virus, it’s airborne, and we’ve already breathed it in."

"A virus?.. What is that?" Asked the woman which was carrying her daughter in her arms.

Daniel looked around, and noticed that the eyes of everybody present were pointed at him. For a moment he forgot that the discovery of viruses had been done in his world of origin, and that it wasn’t certain that it was common knowledge in the rest of the universe as well.

He then took a deep breath, and said "A few hundred years ago, an alchemist from our world discovered the presence of a form of extremely small parasites that reproduce inside the cells of other organisms.. Usually our powerful bodies are capable of defending us from these entities, that’s why we don’t get sick after we reach a certain level of power.."

After a small pause, Daniel continued "Unfortunately, there are some types of these parasites that are born capable of avoiding these defenses completely.. When that happens, we get sick.. Badly.."

People were starting to get visible worried after hearing Daniel’s words. Only a few were keeping their calm, and after seeing Daniel’s behaviour, one of them said "What does airborne mean?"

"There is more than one way in which a virus can move from one person to another. Through bacteria and exchange of bodily fluids, which usually means that the virus doesn’t survive long outside of a person’s body.. And finally, airborne.. Which means that the virus is in the air, and that we get infected by simply breathing." Responded Daniel calmly.

"Then why are you so calm?" Asked the man with a slightly irritated tone.

"Does that mean that we will die?"

"Did they also found a cure?"

Daniel listened to each and every question that was rapidly thrown at him. Unfortunately, he had a very limited knowledge about the matter. As he had simply read a mention to this in one of his sister’s books when he was younger.

When the panicked chatter started to slow down, Daniel lifted his hand, and said "It’s not certain that we will die.. You can see a virus like you see poison. You only have to survive it long enough for your organs to purge it out of our body, and you should be fine."

A young man within the crowd pointed at the various bodies on the ground, and said "They couldn’t, what makes you think that we will be able to?.."

Daniel sighed gently, and said "The concept of poison is part of death, and opposite to life’s concept of regeneration.. If you are knowledgeable of life or healing essence, you should be fine for awhile.. If not.." while pausing slightly, he took a random stone out of his spatial ring, and forced a large amount of immortal essence into it. Then, he turned it in life essence, causing the sphere to become a temporary life sphere, and said "Stay close to me.."

Having had enough with questions, Daniel turned to look at the direction indicated by the thirty years old mother, and started to walk.

Der followed quietly, and the rest did as well.

In strange and confusing situations such as this one, people would always follow those with answers, and a calmer mind. That was to compensate for the fear and confusion that the situation forced upon them.

For a couple of hours Daniel walked in the direction where everybody else was headed to. The closer he got to the core of the city, the more people he encountered, and the more bodies he saw.

After four hours, he started to hear the weakest amongst the people behind him cough, and slow down.

This had made the strongest in the group become more agitated and worried, causing a few of them to start talking about sending those who were clearly sicker away from the rest of the group.

In response to those talks, Daniel reduced the area of effect from a fifty meter radius, to twenty meters, therefore condensing the life essence he was producing to a purer state.

This bought more time to the weakest people, but unfortunately, the more people they walked around, the more they would be noticed by other people.

The people which were previously ahead of them, had now finished their healing pills and were starting to feel increasingly worse. They were now looking at Daniel’s healthy group of people catching up to them, and after asking a couple of questions, they would usually decide to join them.

People started to crowd more and more around Daniel, to a point where ninety percent of the area of effect was already occupied by people.

In around five hours, a group of people appeared in Daniel’s sight. They were amassed against what looked like an invisible wall, and were shouting towards it.

A few of the people turned to look at Daniel’s incoming group.

They appeared very ill, and a few were on the verge of dying, but the moment they saw the healthy state of the people around Daniel, they walked towards them to ask how they could be fine despite walking from the teleporting station.

A few of the most chatty amongst the people around Daniel started to recount what they had heard, causing the people in the group of furious cultivators to turn towards Daniel, and look at the stone he was holding.

A small group of ill-minded people started to think about stealing the stone, but they immediately stopped after hearing that it wasn’t an actual life sphere, but just a temporary one. And therefore, it was Daniel that was maintaining it.

Daniel gave the stone to Der, and walked directly towards the invisible barrier.

The people that noticed him approach quickly opened a path for him, allowing him to see what was on the other side of the barrier.

On the other side of the barrier, were three middle aged man in heavy armor, and an old man with lighter clothes.

Daniel approached the barrier as much as he could, and said with a casual tone "Can I ask a few things about what is going on?"

Before the people behind the barrier could answer, an angry young man next to him said "They can’t hear you.. The bastards block-"

But before the young man could finish, the old man in the group of four turned to look at him from behind the barrier, and with a surprised expression, said "What a talented young man.. Your knowledge of sound and spatial essence must be extremely high.."

That was the truth. Daniel’s comprehension of spatial and sound essence was high enough to allow him to force his voice through the blockade that had been created for the quarantine. There was even a high chance that he could leave, but since there was a good chance that he was infected as well, he wouldn’t try to do that before being sure that he wasn’t contagious.

After noticing Daniel’s capabilities, the old man pointed at the three guards, and added "I suggest you don’t try to teleport out of here.. The moment you come out, they will kill you."

"I know, I just want informations." Responded Daniel, completely unimpressed by the oppressive power emanated by the three men in heavy armor.

"Very well. We’ve started to notice people that lived in the core of the area die in large numbers. They had no injuries, and there were no signs of battle, or traces of magic around them. They simply dropped dead, and started decomposing. We have examined them but found nothing. Our hypothesis is that the cause is a new poison capable of leaving no traces.. One that could be breathed in. So, we’ve locked the space in a range of a few kilometers to be sure." Explained the old man calmly.

From behind Daniel, the people who had followed him here started to chat loudly.

"It’s almost exactly what he said.."

"..but it could also be poison, right?"

Daniel ignored the voices of the people behind him, and said to the old man "What is the government doing about it?"

An uncomfortable expression appeared on the old man as he heard this question.

Immediately, Daniel understood that the people in charge of this matter weren’t in control of the situation.

"We are looking into the matter. We have captured a few suspicious character, and have been interrogating known members of sects and groups that deal in poison." Responded the old man.

The possibility that a virus being created, was one of the main points about the article he had read when he was younger. It was described as a high functioning disease, which could be forced on a specific group of people.

Unfortunately, this article also included the reasons why it was unlikely that someone could actually create one in this year and age.

One of these reasons being that these entities worked on a scale too small for a person to be able to operate. After all, even the most powerful poisons in existence were created naturally, and while they could spread inside the body, the actual amount of poison would never increase.

During his walk to the barrier of the quarantine, Daniel had thought about why people hadn’t discovered viruses yet. The only thing he could think about was that, since the population in the universe was in the trillions of trillions, even if the population of an entire planet were to be devoured by a virus, the rest of the universe would find this an event of little importance.

After all, new planets were discovered, and millions of people were born each and every instant.

The problem with thinking that this plague was a poison and not a virus, was that a poison would not leave the body unless countered, or forced out, while a virus, as mentioned by the alchemist which had discovered them, would eventually die if given the time to one’s enhanced body to hunt it down.

"How long does it take for people to die since they start coughing?" Asked Daniel to the old man.

The old man looked curiously at him, and said "Around twelve hours.." He had noticed the temporary life sphere which Daniel had created, so, he added "People already tried to ingest healing pills to fight the effect, but in the end, it became too powerful and died.. I’m sorry."

Once again, people started to panic around Daniel.

One of them even took a talisman out of his spatial ring, and was about to crush it. Daniel recognized this talisman as a spatial talisman, very similar to the one that the Silver Alchemist had used to teleport him out of Phyrri, but the moment before them man could destroy it, a flash came down at the speed of light and hit him.

After the light dissipated, people noticed the man lying on the ground, with an enormous arrow that had gone through his heart, and impaled him.

Daniel looked up in the air, and saw a single woman with a bow in her hands that was flying at an height of ten kilometers in the air. Her power was the highest Daniel had seen since he had entered this world, only slightly inferior to the power of the Spiritual Acolytes.

What bothered Daniel, was knowing that the man’s talisman would not have worked anyway, and that if the archer bothered to check before killing him, she would have noticed it as well.

He looked at the corpse of the desperate man, and after sighing lightly, he took a water sphere and a time sphere out of his spatial ring, and locked them on a small bench to the side of the road. Then, he sat quietly.

He was out of the range of the temporary life essence, and yet he still kept it up for the rest of the people to use, while he tested a few theories.

The water essence was created with the sheer concept of freezing, and it emanated a freezing cold which surrounded the entire area that surrounded the bench.

"What are you doing?" asked Der with curiosity. "You are out of the life essence field.."

"They don’t know what they are doing.. And we have no time to waste here while they chase ghosts." Responded Daniel before closing his eyes, and focusing.