GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



She shook her head and gazed at her so-called soldiers. Her gaze couldn't help but contain pity. It is both pity for her and for her people. Things were already difficult before. Now it has become delusional to say that they will be victorious over the Vipers. They have next to no chance of success. Death awaits most of them because they answered her call. 

The ocular monkeys have lost the advantage of surprise, but they cannot stop. They have to continue. She promised Sawyer. She promised Dana. She also promised Manate. She promised them as they sacrificed themselves so that she and Ravin would be able to escape on that fateful night. 

They were hunted by the Vipers, but her friends gave their lives for her. She promised them that she would end the Vipers, so she could not give up now. All the ocular monkeys that will die today will die because she has a vendetta against their oppressors. 

She can't give up now anyway. The Vipers have become aware of their atrocities. The Vipers will not rest until the last of them have been wiped out or enslaved. They were hunted for food before. Now, only slavery or extinction awaits them.

She is certain of this future because she has seen it. It is either the Vipers or them. That didn't make the decision easy to make either way. The fact that you must fight doesn't mean that you will fight or that your decision to fight will make things easy. It also doesn't mean that you will win. 

It is mostly the case in the situation when you're forced to fight that you will lack confidence. And she isn't confident at all. Not when she can feel what she has to overcome to achieve this promise. People mostly fear the unknown. There is very little that is unknown to her. And yet she feels fear. It is because the knowledge of what she fears has not made her confident.

Even now, she can feel it. The transcendent Viper that they call the God emperor. He is the Emperor of the Vipers. Emperor Situ is the strongest of the paragons of Vipers. He is somewhere at the center of the army of vipers. She doesn't need to look much farther to determine his location. His presence and existence weigh heavily on her mind. He is like an insurmountable mountain-made flesh. 

Situ had rushed to attack them when he got word of what they were doing to his people. Situ rushed ahead of his army to confront them. He didn't wait for the other paragons to come together or for his empire to rally. He came to put an end to the killing of his people all by himself.

Some might it call it foolishness or overconfidence to face an army on your own. But it was not the case for Situ. Situ alone held back all the transcendents of the ocular monkeys and their army. He went on a rampage against the full power of an entire race, and he stood his ground. He did more than stand his ground, he also pushed the ocular monkeys back. Now she knows why he was called Situ The Unbreakable. 

One Viper stopped the entire battle might of the ocular monkeys in its tracks. It took all the sages to match him. Even then, they had to be careful not to lose their lives to him. What are they to do now that Situ's army has come to join him? One might say that their situation is hopeless.

A paragon that is a mana entity is already a force to be reckoned with. It requires a transcendent to match them. They knew that the Emperor would be a force to be reckoned with. They expected a fight with him to be difficult. They were wrong. He is very strong, but that isn't the most difficult part they have with him. Situ is also immortal. He is unbreakable. 

Paragons gain their strength through the empowerment of their people. The connections they have with members of their communities empower them to levels beyond extraordinary. They become a force of nature. They become the embodiment of the will and power of a race. 

For instance, a mana entity that is a paragon gains a 10% increase in mana regeneration and a 30% increase in mana storage for each connection that they have. A paragon of a small tribe of a thousand Vipers will have 100 times mana regeneration and 300 times their mana pool. It is an empowerment that makes them at least 100 times more powerful than a normal mana entity. If they have a connection in the tens of thousands, then they become 1000 more powerful than a mana entity. 

That small empowerment from a small tribe makes the paragons a foe that another mana entity can't match. It is why a transcendent has to be present to fight them. Even then, there have to be others that will cut down those connections by eliminating their sources. This will weaken the mana entity enough to be killed.

Things change when the paragon is a transcendent. Transcendence is breaking the limits. Paragons have already broken the limit as mana entities, so transcendence makes them break the limit on death. They will remain alive as long as they still have their connections. You can kill them, but they will resurrect immediately by sacrificing a single connection.

Situ is an emperor of millions of Vipers. That means he has to be killed millions of times before he can stay dead. The strength of his connection makes killing him nearly impossible to achieve. The empowerment of a Transcendent has been reduced by 100 times since mana entities can't really affect a transcendent, but millions of connections are still a force to be reckoned with.

Situ knew the worth of the power that could be gained from having a monopoly over his race. That's why he killed and stole the connections of other rivals to make himself the sole Emperor of his race.