The Spear of Reason
One of the Humanity Clones sat atop the tower in the Mental World and closed her eyes. Rather than watch the others grind away at the Tunnel Digging skill — a grind in every sense of the word — she meant to gather up the insights born from endless repetition.
Needless to say, this was the one clone who stood out from the rest: the only Humanity Clone to learn spear arts from Elder Togo, the one he had once appraised as "a newborn who already knows how to use her body."
A few of the other clones had their own talents and leanings, all different — but measured against the main body and the rest of them, most of the clones were physical disasters. That single distinction set this one apart more than anything else.
And that clone had spent thousands of hours in the Training Ground, lost in a trance, swinging a spear against countless enemies. It was more than enough time not merely to grow familiar with the art, but to grasp something deeper — time to spare, even.
The catch was that the clone was still a Mortal. Fully settling an insight required time as a matter of course — the kind of time that would leave an ordinary Mortal starving to death long before the work was done.
So whether she could even properly absorb the insight was an open question. After all, the one who had taught her spear arts was a cultivator who had touched the Hwashin realm. Naturally, what she had learned was no mere spear technique — it was something closer to a prayer, a form that carried a Law inside it.
But while the clone's mind was that of a Mortal, her flesh was a cultivator's body housing a Golden Core. And the long hours of contemplation and torment that insight demanded? The Double Speed Mod handled those without breaking a sweat.
For a mere Mortal — unlike the main body, who was a cultivator — to attain enlightenment was a kind of transcendence. When a cultivator gained insight, it raised their ceiling and bought them a blacklisting from Heaven's borders. A Mortal's enlightenment worked in precisely the opposite direction: spiritual power rose, and Heaven itself extended its support.
What people commonly called celestial fortune. If Yu Hee had known about it, she would have shouted, Guaranteed luck event!
The problem was where the clone was sitting: the Training Ground. On top of that, she wasn't even moving a physical body in any real sense — she was settling her insight mentally, inside the Mental World.
In a place Heaven could neither interfere with nor observe, a single Humanity Clone was gathering enlightenment in spear arts with a Mortal's mind. Even the other clones, watching, could feel a solemn, untouchable presence radiating from her.
Spiritual energy flocked around the clone seated high on the tower of the Mental World, serenely gathering her insight. The light of spiritual power shining from the Golden Core concentrated into a dazzling spectacle — and of course nobody wanted to interrupt that.
So the other clones kept training Tunnel Digging and making use of the Training Ground. A great deal of time passed.
They couldn't open the skill window, but they could feel the skill level rising by the gradual drop in Tunnel Digging's power, range, and slaughter-energy cost. Just as they were starting to get thoroughly sick of a skill that had stopped leveling, they all abruptly lost control of the body at once.
It happened the moment the clone who had been settling her insight in the Mental World began to move the Mental World's grown body with her own mind.
In the Mental World, a fully mature woman closed her hand around a spear of light woven from spiritual power....
In the Training Ground, the small girl's form — ringed by scarecrows — mirrored the woman of the Mental World, reaching into empty air as if gripping a spear and closing her fist....
"This is my spear."
The Humanity Clone who had established the single most important standard of what makes a human human gathered her insight into one declaration, and that standard was reason.
Because true intellect required more than mere recognition and inference — it required the capacity for reflection. And because the main body had no concept of reflection at all, it was the Humanity Clones who possessed a conscience capable of it: herself, and all of them.
One Humanity Clone attained enlightenment and transcended her Mortal state.
But the body binding that Mortal was a cultivator's flesh housing a Golden Core, and what filled it was a vast ocean of slaughter energy, seething with malice and death.
Ordinarily, even with interference like that, Heaven's support would have let her transcend as an independent being. But this was the Training Ground, and the place the clone truly occupied was the Mental World. Those two facts combined, and the transcendence unfolded in perfect silence and secrecy — without Heaven's support, without the Status Window's backup.
In the Mental World, the woman danced.
In the Training Ground, the small girl danced after her.
A luminous spear of spiritual power swept in graceful arcs along the dance, casting its light across a Mental World drowning in slaughter energy.
Along the trajectories of the dance, the surrounding scarecrows were cut down to the last, and the crimson slaughter energy they produced shaped itself around the transparent spear, staining it red and giving it form.
At last, following the spiritual light cast by the spear of power, a completed rule — something no different from a finished technique — settled into place within the Mental World. It was the manifestation of a Law similar to Cheok, the Law Yu Hee herself possessed.
In the same instant, the clone gave the transparent spear — now dyed red with slaughter energy — a single shake, flinging the slaughter free and reclaiming it into the wheel. Then she defined the Law her enlightenment had won her.
Through the transparent spear made manifest from her own heart, she defined her Law. She looked back on herself — an existence who shared thoughts with the main body and yet was unmistakably other — and through the insight gained from spear arts, she arrived at a Law that belonged to the Humanity Clones alone.
And so.
A self-proof and a standard, forged by honing a mere conscience through enlightenment until it became something more.
The spear swept through the air.
It wore the shape of a spear, but in truth it was no spear at all — it was a heart, a Law, and its name was Reason.
At the bickering voices of the other clones squabbling in the Mental World, the one who held control of the body swept her spear through empty air. She didn't cut the scarecrow legion down in a single stroke — she dropped the entire horde at once, a display of sheer presence — and opened her mouth.
"It's a Law that distinguishes right from wrong."
Voices arriving so nearly in unison from the body and the Mental World that they might as well have been one — and the clones each tightened their grip on the consciences they carried, every one a different shape and color....
"No. Not yet. That's a Law too."
The clones had always believed that skill had been born because the main body, more than anyone, wanted to believe this world was a game — and couldn't. The fresh realization that Reality Denial was nothing less than a Law in its own right sent them straight back into a free-for-all debate, chaos of every kind. The clone who held the body tuned it all out. Already the scarecrows were reappearing, leveling every weapon they had, and she leveled her own heart against them in turn.
"We're still human, the way Mortals are. This is that kind of thing — a Law that judges right and wrong by our human standard."
"Compared to the main body."
The clones who had been screaming and thrashing went quiet at that single line and nodded in unison, as if in full agreement. Honestly, until San Gi-yeon — their friendly NPC — had started resurrecting them and handing out consciences, the main body had looked like a runaway locomotive with the brakes cut.
No — given the growth speed, a spaceship was closer. Physically and mentally, she had shot forward so fast it seemed she might punch straight into the upper realms, eyes locked on nothing but the road ahead.
The gap in temperament between Yu Hee the main body and the Humanity Clones was wide enough to make you wonder whether they even shared the same past-life memories.
If the path was blocked, go around. If there was danger, avoid it. Pick up only guaranteed rewards and aim for absolute safety — that had been the past life's whole approach. Just look at the main build and the answer was obvious.
Dump everything into defense and resistances, survive as many events as possible, and grow by enduring. That was the past-life build. Even granting that the slaughter energy had forced a regeneration-extreme-offense build this time around, the difference was night and day.
Path looks blocked? Attack. Danger sensed? Attack. No guaranteed reward? Attack anyway. Already in danger? Attack without exception — the rampage of a rabid chihuahua with zero off switch.
Leaning entirely on 100% Captive Mode and Auto-Battle Mode, she had ambushed and first-striked nearly every neutral NPC that appeared on the minimap and killed them all — a stretch of pure, deranged violence.
A pursuit of slaughter so excessive you could almost believe she had forgotten dialogue was a form of interaction at all: that, more than anything, was the stark proof that the clones were the human ones, not the main body.
Because —
"We're her too."