Strongest Hammer God

Kyle approached the Gate of Death slowly. There was no motivation visible in his movements. He simply looked like someone who was about to walk to his death.

For just a moment, he stopped in front of the Gate of Death and looked at it.

As he looked at it, he felt an intense feeling of finality.

'I will die,' he thought. 'I know I will die.'

'I don't want to enter. I don't want to die.'

'But what choice do I have? Either I die in there, or I die out here. Yet, if I die out here, Sebastian will also die with me. The current iteration of Ayuvar might not be my home anymore, but it's still filled with humans.'

'To be honest, I don't really care about an army of people I have never met, but in a small way, I still care a little bit.'

'If I have to choose my death, I might as well choose this one. At least, in that way, my death will have a bit of meaning.'

"And here we go again," a voice spoke.

He looked over and saw a shadow stepping to the side of the Gate of Death.

"You're the one that stops people from entering the Gate of Death, right?" Kyle asked calmly.

"Kinda," the shadow said. "I destroy the Gate of Death in the vast majority of cases, but I made an agreement with the owner of this Cosmos. I only destroy the gates if the summoner doesn't want to enter anymore."

"Funnily enough, I could technically destroy the Gate of Death right now. I can see that you really don't want to enter. Do you actually know how rare that is?"

Kyle sighed. "No."

"The Gate of Death has the highest chance of appearing when you're filled with pure hopelessness," the shadow explained, "but there are also other ways to summon it. For example, back when I was still young, I summoned it just because I felt the feeling of Death again. I did not feel hopeless at all. In fact, I was pretty happy and content back then."

"And that worked?" Kyle asked with lethargic interest.

"Yep," the shadow answered. "You just need to feel Death to summon it. It's just that hopelessness creates a deep feeling of rejection towards the world, and since the world is made of Energy, you are rejecting Energy. This is not the way you've used to summon the Gate of Death."

"You simply adapted. You wanted the Gate of Death to appear, and you subconsciously embraced Death, which emulated the feeling of Death. This is very different from embracing the concept of your life ending. Do you know how many people want to summon the Gate of Death but can't? Here you are, and you did it just like that."

"What's the point of this praise?" Kyle asked. "My life is going to end anyway."

"Eeeehhh, depends on how you view life," the shadow said. "Like, imagine I were to resurrect a dead friend of yours. Would your friend be alive or dead?"

Kyle's brows furrowed. At first glance, it seemed like a simple concept. Resurrection, by definition, meant bringing a dead person back to life.

But was it actually that simple?

Kyle was reminded of some stupid philosophical arguments from back on Earth about teleportation. If a teleporter worked by disassembling the particles of a person in place A and assembling the same person in place B, would they die in place A and resurrect in place B?

If the particles could be teleported as well, one could argue that it was the same person, but then again, why were the particles relevant? By disassembling a person, the particles would have long since lost all relation to the person.

If a person were instantly disassembled and reassembled a hundred times within a single second, would there have been a hundred or zero deaths?

"The answer is as clear as it is frustrating and boring," the shadow said. "Objective reality experiences itself. Every life is a figure on its board. No different figures are identical. If they are identical, they are the same figure. One figure vanishes, and an identical figure appears in its place."

"Objective reality is one singular entity, and each life is part of it. Since the new figure is identical, its impact on objective reality remains identical. Therefore, it is the same."

The shadow chuckled a bit. "But that doesn't help you at all, right?"

It didn't. It might be the truth in objective reality, but objective reality had no power in these matters.

It didn't matter if they counted as the same person or not. That could be made clear by simply going through a simple thought experiment.

How would you feel if a perfect copy of yours appeared in front of you, consumed you, and proceeded to live your life?

The same figure in objective reality. The same impact.

And yet, it made no difference.

The person would still feel the terror and unwillingness of death. Objective reality didn't matter.

Kyle found himself in such a situation.

Just based on what the shadow had said, Kyle could see that he would die. His own self would stop existing.

"The thought is harrowing, right?" the shadow asked, "and yet, it's not a big deal. People argue about the value of their consciousness and their self. Their consciousness ends, and a new consciousness takes place. Alright, then, what about sleep? Does your consciousness die? What about losing consciousness? When your brain restarts, did you subjectively die? What if your brain was replaced with an identical one?"

"Everything loses its relevance," Kyle commented. "It's the same argument as stacking grains of sand and asking the other person if it counts as a mountain after every grain. There is no clear line."

Kyle looked at the Gate of Death. "Everything's just subjective. We have things that make us feel uncomfortable, but when the same thing is framed in a different light, we suddenly don't mind it anymore. You can use that on everything."

"A person being killed or dying from old age. In both cases, a life ends. Why care about one more than the other? That's because we are not living in objective reality. We are living in our subjective reality. Some subjective realities are closer to objective reality than others, but in the end, they are still subjective realities."

"If our subjective reality were to overlap with objective reality..."

"We wouldn't exist."

Silence.

"This Cosmos is boring," the shadow said.

"How so?" Kyle asked. His voice sounded a bit livelier than before.

"Because it very rarely rewards mental growth," the shadow said. "You are only supposed to learn everything that's physical. There are no Emotional Laws or Situational Laws. You have the Law of Karmic Causality that fits in these categories, but that's the only one. You can also argue that Imposing Laws fit, but that just raises the number from one to two."

The shadow shook his head in disappointment. "This Cosmos is all dick and no balls."

The shadow imitated sighing. "But, oh well, it makes sense if you consider the owner's goal. He doesn't want you to live, grow, and learn."

"He wants you to fight."

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