Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2389 Identity?

”...What exactly do you mean when you say your Eye of Truth mutated?” Robin asked slowly, a strange smile spreading across his face as his attention shifted completely away from the book and settled on Jabba.

What he had just seen inside the book wasnʼt some incomprehensible miracle, nor was there anything about the conclusions themselves that made them impossible to understand, but the way they had been written certainly wasnʼt the work of a Truth Chosen. Instead of deriving conclusions from visible patterns, connecting clues together, and constructing comparisons and analyses that gradually led toward an answer, Jabba simply wrote statements like: the percentage of this is 99%, and therefore—

Where did you even get that percentage youʼre using as the foundation for everything that follows?!

Or he would write: this snake is this many years old, and therefore— Where were the deductions, observations, or patterns that allowed you to determine the snakeʼs age in the first place?

That was precisely why Robin had gone through the entire book from beginning to end. He could certainly accept the conclusions written inside and even be convinced by the project as a whole, but only if those percentages and precise pieces of information were actually correct and Jabba hadnʼt simply written down whatever numbers came to mind without any foundation whatsoever, which was exactly why Robin had asked him to explain what he had just read rather than immediately commenting on the contents!

But... a mutation of the Eye of Truth itself?

That was something new.

”Yes, my eye underwent a mutation not too long ago.” Jabba furrowed his brows and nodded seriously, clearly treating the matter as something he had already spent quite some time observing. ”I no longer see patterns the way I used to. Instead, I see something resembling a window beside whatever Iʼm targeting, and inside that window I can see all the information that can possibly be observed about the target. The weaker the target is compared to me, or the stronger I am compared to it, the more information that window reveals.”

He then turned slightly to the side and pointed toward a peculiar-looking stone nearby, while the pupil of his eye began rotating as he focused on it. ”...Take this stone, for example. It contains three ordinary primary components commonly found in stones, along with three grams of a rare substance. Its market value should be around 75 Pearls. It was originally part of a cluster of rocks beneath the ground, then emerged during a volcanic eruption 6,600 years ago and eventually settled on top of this mountain... I can also see other information about it, such as its exact dimensions, the colors of every individual part of it, and the history of its movements throughout the past several thousand years, as well as, of course, the fact that itʼs an inanimate object.”

”....” Robin stared deeply into Jabbaʼs eyes for a long time without saying anything, as though trying to confirm what he had just heard, while his hands gradually began trembling slightly. ”You can see... a status window?”

”Yes.” Jabba nodded without hesitation. ”I can see everything available about my targetʼs status through written information that appears beside it, instead of having to derive all of that information myself from the patterns I observe. I call this mutation the Cosmic Identity Card!”

”Mmm!!” Robin bit down hard on his lower lip and closed his eyes, then clenched both fists with enough force to make the tension in his hands obvious.

At that moment, it was impossible to tell whether he was overwhelmed with ecstasy at what he had just heard or desperately restraining himself from reaching out and hitting someone.

”You see a status window beside everything you look at, huh?” Sakar spoke from the side in his deep voice, his tone remaining steady even though it was obvious that those words carried another meaning beneath the surface.

”.....” Jabba cast Sakar a quick sidelong glance with his restless eye, clearly understanding what he was implying, then immediately turned his gaze forward again as though he had seen nothing. ”That does happen.”

Then he turned toward Robin with a smile, apparently deciding to move on to the more important part. ”And thatʼs not all. Iʼve discovered that I can actually interfere with some of the options that appear to me inside the window.”

”Wha-t?” Robin asked through uneven breaths, the single word coming out with difficulty as he stared at Jabba.

”Look.” Jabba pointed toward the same rock again. ”One of the entries that appears when I observe that rock is its color, and connected to that particular entry are several elements responsible for giving the stone those different visible colors according to their respective proportions.”

Then his expression became focused as he concentrated on the information visible only to him. ”Now, Iʼm going to change the proportion of one of those elements inside the rock.”

Hummm

Robinʼs eyes immediately flew wide open as the faint purple shade within the stone began intensifying at a clearly visible rate, and when he activated ten percent of the Eye of Truth to observe the process more closely, he could see new patterns forming before him. Those patterns werenʼt foreign additions being forced into the stone from somewhere else; instead, right before his eyes, he could actually see one of the existing elements transforming into another!

Then Robin slowly shifted his gaze away from the stone and stared intensely at Jabbaʼs face again, his eyes filled with such disbelief that he remained silent for several seconds. ”.....?!” Finally, with visible difficulty and heaviness in his voice, he opened his mouth and asked, ”Do you understand exactly what youʼre doing?”

”Iʼm changing the proportions of the elements.” Jabba nodded as the strain of what he had just done became slightly more apparent on his face, and he raised a hand to rub his forehead as though easing the pressure accumulating there. ”But doing that is undoubtedly extremely difficult. If I had chosen to increase that rare substance instead, even by a single gram, the exhaustion would have been much more obvious than what youʼre seeing now.”

He continued after gathering himself slightly, ”That puzzled me for quite a while. What exactly is the difference that makes altering one thing far more exhausting than altering another, or sometimes makes me completely incapable of changing a particular thing in the first place? Eventually, after repeatedly testing what I could and couldnʼt affect, I concluded that it has something to do with the Cosmic Identity entry itself. The stronger something is, the rarer it is, or the more useful it is, the harder it becomes for me to manipulate it. There are clearly limits governing what I can alter and to what extent I can alter it, but those limits are still incomprehensible to me.”

”Aha...” Robin continued staring intensely into Jabbaʼs eyes, paying close attention to every detail of his explanation. ”Perhaps itʼs simply because youʼre only at level eighteen right now. Maybe when you reach level forty-eight, for example, youʼll naturally become much stronger and those limits will change accordingly.”

”Youʼre right.” Jabba nodded seriously, apparently having considered the same possibility himself. ”Progress is difficult when I compare myself to some of those genius Truth Chosen, but itʼll come eventually as long as I continue forward.” Then he furrowed his brows slightly as he tried to describe the difference more precisely. ”I feel that this mutation is fundamentally different from everything I experienced with the ordinary Eye of Truth up to level ten. I think the levels themselves and the progression between them are much more tangible and noticeable, instead of merely trying to investigate things, accumulate general knowledge, and then wait until some useful ability eventually appears from all that understanding... In that particular regard, what Iʼm experiencing now feels completely different.”

”.....”

”...?” Jabba gradually became confused by the peculiar way Robin was staring at him, especially when the silence continued longer than expected. ”What?”

”Kid...” Robin continued staring straight into Jabbaʼs face as though he were looking at something he had never expected to find standing right in front of him. ”You possess the Master Law of Identity.”

”...?!” Sakar abruptly turned toward Jabba, his attention immediately locking onto him with unprecedented intensity.

He had already inferred several unusual things from the Lordʼs manner of speaking, his questions, and especially the expressions he had shown throughout Jabbaʼs explanation, so he knew that whatever the young man possessed was anything but ordinary, but this revelation was still far beyond anything he had imagined!

”Huh?” Jabba showed a confused half-smile, clearly believing Robin had taken the matter too far, then casually waved his hand. ”Donʼt be ridiculous.” He immediately realized who he had just spoken to and what he had said, so his expression changed and he hurriedly laughed. ”Hehe, sorry, sorry. That was just a reflex.”

”The ridiculous one here is the idiot using a Master Law without even knowing what it is!!” Robin abruptly stood up and lightly smacked the back of Jabbaʼs head, his disbelief now visibly mixed with frustration. ”How the hell did you move from Truth to Identity without even realizing what was happening? More importantly, how did you manage to do that without even me realizing it?!”

”All right, stop now, this is genuinely starting to get scary...” Jabbaʼs expression gradually changed as Robinʼs seriousness finally began sinking in. ”The mutation happened so gradually that I didnʼt even notice when the changes began or when they became this pronounced. Thereʼs no way something that happened like that could actually be an entirely different Master Law!”

Then he suddenly seemed to realize another implication behind Robinʼs words, causing his eye to widen as he hurriedly shouted, ”And I didnʼt get it from anyone! I swear I didnʼt!!”

”Stop already.” Robin smacked the back of Jabbaʼs head again, cutting off his unnecessary defense. ”Itʼs not a potato that someone can simply hand over to you whenever they feel like it. Besides, I canʼt sense any traces of Candidacy or Unbinding on you either, so itʼs obvious enough that you reached it through your own efforts rather than receiving it from someone else, but thatʼs exactly what makes this so strange. How did you do it? Identity is supposed to be the antithesis of Truth, its direct opposite, and you were already a Truth Chosen!”

He began rubbing his chin thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes remaining fixed on Jabba as he tried to make sense of the contradiction before him, then took a step backward and spread both arms to give Jabba an unobstructed target. ”Examine me with your eye and tell me exactly what you see.”