Strongest Hammer God

Chapter 1042: Objectively Wrong

"And how did you do that?" Sebastian asked, still confused. "The new brain has no connection with the old brain, which means it has no connection with the Spirit."

"What other connections does your Spirit have?" Kyle asked. "Is it only connected to your mind?"

Sebastian became silent for a while. "It should also be connected to other Spirits via Karmic Lines, but that still doesn't solve the issue. If you could create a Karmic Line between my Spirit and my new brain, it might work, but the Spirit is unassailable. In order to make new Karmic Lines, you need to interact with my Spirit, but you can't interact with it."

"That's true," Kyle answered. "I can't influence your Spirit, but I can still create a connection."

"How?" Sebastian asked with a raised brow.

"I broke the Karmic Line between our Spirits and reattached my half with the new brain. My Spirit believes that your new brain is you," Kyle explained.

"That wouldn't solve the issue," Sebastian answered. "There's only one cable. If you unplug the cable from my mind and plug it into my new brain, there wouldn't be a connection between us anymore."

"What if there are two cables?" Kyle asked. "Or, more precisely, a cable and an entire network? Our Spirits are in a separate reality from our bodies, but they might not be in separate realities from each other. What if there's still a way for your Spirit to interact with my Spirit simply by being in the same network?"

"Our Spirits are connected. I know as much because you're alive. Through that connection, your Spirit interacted with my Spirit, and my Spirit knows where your physical mind is."

"Wait," Sebastian said, "I can see how that makes sense, but there are still several issues. For example, while your Spirit knows where my mind is, why would my Spirit believe your Spirit and recreate me somewhere else? If it worked like that, anyone connected via Karma with me could simply recreate my body and mind anywhere."

"Your situation was special," Kyle said. "Your position was relative, not determined."

"I don't believe that's enough," Sebastian said.

"It wasn't," Kyle said. "Thousands of connections said that your position was undetermined, but only one connection said that it was determined. Even more, the object in the determined position did not have the same characteristics as the object your Spirit was searching for."

"But what if it was the only connection you had? If there were no other connections, this one had to be the correct one, right?"

Sebastian's eyes widened. "You cut all of my Karmic Lines?!"

"I thought I did, but I actually didn't," Kyle said. "In the heat of the moment, after discovering my new power over Karmic Luck, I've forgotten the one truth that you have repeated several times in this conversation."

"The Spirit is unassailable."

"I can cut the Karmic Line between the two of us, but that's because I can influence my Spirit. I can cut my end of the line, but I can't cut yours. However, you need two ends to create a connection. As long as I cut mine, the connection is broken."

"Earlier, I believed that I could cut your other connections as well, but that's not the case. What I can do, though, is isolate the other connections. The connections need a medium, and that medium is the Karmic Luck layer of our reality."

"When I tried to cut your Karmic Lines, I've actually just blocked the signal temporarily."

"Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't change anything. After all, the connection between the mind and the Spirit should be the strongest one. Your Spirit will never listen to any other connection as long as its primary connection still works. If the primary connection doesn't work, it will disperse since that means that you're dead."

"But you were not dead. The world thought that you were still alive. It was searching for you. Since my Karmic Line was the only stable and reliable one, your Spirit used the data from my Spirit to determine your position. It looked at the data and noticed that the coordinates given by my Spirit fit with the rough coordinates of where your mind should be."

"So, it used the data of our connection to re-establish its primary connection. Since your new brain overlapped with your old brain, your Spirit attached to your new brain. It realized that your brain wasn't how it was supposed to be, but it also noticed that the hardware of your brain was working. That was also the riskiest part. Either your Spirit would back up the data of your new brain, which would turn you into a vegetable, or it would load its backup of your old brain into your new brain."

Kyle sighed. "Luckily, it was the latter."

"When I saw that your brain worked with Spacetime Lightning, I completed it and focused on your Center. At that moment, I was giving you Neutral, Elemental, and Biological Energy, but your mind needed a way to generate its own Energies. Your mind noticed that your Center was strange and repaired it with my Energies. After repairing it, your Center generated its own Energies again, which your mind used to recreate your body."

Kyle released a breath. "And that's how it happened."

Sebastian just looked at Kyle in shock.

"And how did my new brain not immediately turn into ash when my Spirit tried to use Spacetime Lightning to run it?" he asked.

"Fuck if I know," Kyle answered with a shrug. "My guess is that you still work with Neutral Energy. It's just that you can turn Spacetime Lightning into Neutral Energy, but I don't know for sure. I can't see your Spirit."

Sebastian remained quiet for a while as he digested the things Kyle had just said.

Now, he realized why Kyle had said that Sebastian was supposed to be dead.

There were so many uncertainties and gambles. Kyle's plan had been filled with assumptions. The fact that it had worked was unbelievable.

As Sebastian thought about Kyle's explanation, he was reminded of some old fields of study from his time back on Earth.

His mind had essentially been in a quantum superposition.

The way Kyle had used to save him reminded Sebastian of how network infrastructure in big companies worked.

When one link went down, the switch could still reach its destination via other paths. After all, just the shortest path was down. It might need to go through a couple of hops, but it could still reach its destination.

After some time, Sebastian looked at Kyle with furrowed brows. "You thought you were cutting all of my Karmic Lines?"

"Yep," Kyle answered.

"You..." Sebastian sputtered, not knowing how he should feel. "That would have killed you!"

"Probably," Kyle answered with a shrug.

"Why?" Sebastian asked with furrowed brows. "You know how important your life is! So many people have sacrificed themselves for you!"

Kyle remained silent for a bit.

"Yeah, I know," he said before standing up, "and I'm done!"

"Objectively, should I have done that? No."

"Was it the right decision? No."

"Would all the sacrificed people say that I should go through with it? No."

"But fuck objectivity! Fuck doing the right thing!"

"My best fucking friend was dying, and I won't sit idly by when there's a chance that I can save him!"

"I'm Kyle, and I have agency! I can make my own choices!"

"So what if my decision was objectively wrong?! In my opinion, I did the right thing, and I do not regret going through with it!"

"I'm not Swamp Dragon, and I don't want to be!"

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Creator’s Thoughts: Huge shoutout to Kollum for the Magic Castle! I remember his name from the last time he has given me a similarly valuable gift. Kollum, thank you so much for your gift! It brightened my day yesterday!

The author's patreon. If he gets more than 1000 per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.

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