956 Chapter 956 — Alex
At that moment, Shang felt a slight headache appearing in his mind.
"Alex..." Shang repeated.
The headache became stronger, but Shang barely felt any difference.
A moment later, Shang entered his own mind and looked at his soul.
"Alex."
Shang saw Mana rush towards a certain spot in his soul, which was surrounded by a cloud of Entropy.
As soon as the Mana reached that place, it came into contact with Entropy and turned into Destruction, which ravaged part of Shang's soul.
However, the damage was very quickly healed since it had only been an absolutely tiny bit of Mana and Entropy.
Shang wasn't quite sure where this had come from. After all, he hadn't put this piece of Entropy in his mind.
Shang stretched his hand towards the cloud of Entropy and tore it out of his mind.
A moment later, the Mana rushed into the place the Entropy had occupied, and a new memory appeared in Shang's head.
"I am Alex," Shang said with realization.
"At least, it is who I used to be."
"Alex..."
As Shang repeated his old name, he was reminded of Earth.
He had been an MMA fighter.
He had once battled with addiction and depression.
He had worked at a grocery store.
How mundane.
How boring.
How meaningless.
What was the point of having a good job when one was still stuck working under a stupider and weaker asshole?
What was the point of having a huge company when one still needed to appease their partners, the customers, and the public?
What was the point of being a gigantic and powerful dictator when one still needed to fear a revolt or another country trying to assassinate them?
What was the point of becoming the ruler of the world when one would still eventually succumb to something like cancer or a heart attack?
In the end, what was the difference between a beggar that died alone on their twentieth birthday and a rich and happy billionaire in their hundreds?
Their lives had been different, but after death, everyone was the same.
The last hundred years of the billionaire's life had lost all value since they were now equal to the beggar.
What was the difference between a mass murderer and a philanthropist dying? After death, nothing mattered.
Memory?
Also didn't matter.
The memory of someone's existence would vanish at some point anyway, which would make them equal to everyone else too.
Additionally, one wouldn't even be able to appreciate and feel how it was to be remembered for thousands of years. After all, one was dead, and dead people didn't have feelings.
If one was blind, deaf, and surrounded by people, it didn‘t matter whether the people were screaming at them or crying for them.
The blind and deaf person wouldn't feel a difference.
'Pointless,' Shang thought with disgust and disregard.
'Living on Earth is such a pointless and miserable experience.'
'You can die to so many things, and you will certainly die very quickly.'
'I-Iere, I can live for as long as I am powerful. IfI die, I will die because I am not powerful enough'
‘The God will only die to his own recklessness since he didn't kill me.'
'He could have easily prevented his future death.'
'Alex, huh?' Shang thought.
'What a miserable, weak, and irrelevant existence.'
'Remembering you is already putting way too much value on you.'
Shang ignored the new part of his memories and went back to experimenting on the Abomination King.
He had only accidentally used Alex as a name, and the resulting minor headache had reminded Shang of his old persona.
It had no consequence on Shang's existence.
After continuing to experiment with this specimen for a couple more weeks, Shang had eventually crippled its mind so much that it had become unusable.
Another thousand years later, Shang was done experimenting on the Abomination Kings for now.
Instead, he changed focus to his ownmind.
With Shang's current expertise and knowledge, he could alter parts of his own mind with quite a lot of confidence.
At least he knew exactly what he couldn't change, which was more important.
Whenever Shang decided to replace a part of his mind made of Mana with one made of Entropy, Shang wrote down all the relevant information before changing it.
Then, he would compare the information with the one he perceived.
Most of the time, nothing changed, but sometimes, something changed dramatically.
However, as Shang changed more, he saw some subtler changes creep in.
Sure enough, Shang's opinion of Mana had changed, and he felt a slight disgust toward anything touching him that was made of Mana.
However, Shang knew about these changes, and he knew that his consciousness was more important than his instincts.
So, Shang kept changing some things.
Eventually, Shang noticed that it became very difficult to resist the urge to just destroy all the Mana with his Domain of Entropy.
'That should be the limit,' Shang thought. 'I need Mana inside my mind since Mana represents consciousness. If there is too little Mana, the instinct of Entropy will take over, which will transform me into essentially just another Abomination.'
'70% Entropy, huh? So, that's the upper limit. Anything more than that, and I don't think I can control myself anymore.'
Shang looked around the world with hatred and disgust.
He had already surrounded himself in a very thin barrier of his Domain of Entropy, which made it so that his body didn't touch any Mana. He simply felt too disgusted by the Mana touching his body.
'I really don't see why anyone would care about this disgusting world existing or not, but I have promised myself that I would change my mind back to being filled with Mana before I make any significant decisions."
And so, Shang did just that.
He turned his mind back to its old composition, and his opinions changed very quickly.
'How interesting,' he thought. 'And now, I feel like, without this world, there would be nearly no meaning to becoming powerful when I wanted to destroy it just moments ago.'
'And yet, not everything was so bad,' he thought as he looked at a specific part of his soul.
'The part that controls empathy. Surprisingly, I still have one.'
As Shang interacted with that part, he realized that it became active whenever he thought about destroying Aterium.
'Feelings are weakness.'
'Empathy is weakness.'
'1 could just remove it.'
Shang's hand stretched towards that part of his soul.
'Should I?'
