"You think you can?"
Winnie frowned and looked toward Lilith, who stood a short distance away.
Electric arcs flickered in Lilith's eyes, and a complicated look crossed her face. She fell silent for a moment before speaking.
"It's just that you're even harder to figure out than that man."
"He was powerful and mysterious, with an unusual way of doing things. But his power, at least at first, seemed remarkably pure."
"Pure?" Shen Yi frowned.
"Yes."
Lilith nodded.
"When he first arrived in Beyond the World, he was already as powerful as a top-tier Authority Holder."
"Absurdly powerful."
"But he seemed to possess only one kind of Authority, or an Authority with only one defining trait. Its nature was unlike anything the other Authority Holders had seen, yet he wielded it as though it were part of him. He was terrifyingly strong."
"He was also a loner. You could even say he thought it beneath him to talk much with other Authority Holders. He kept to himself."
Shen Yi recalled how Alvin had described the human Authority Holder who had laid down the rules and swept through the Boundary Zone. It fit.
He pressed her further.
"If Authority is a manifestation of rules, and the world only has so many rules, shouldn't their types and properties have been thoroughly understood over all these years? How could there still be a power no one had ever seen?"
Lilith shook her head. Her eyes held a sense of wonder at how vast and unknown Beyond the World remained.
"You're treating Authority and the world's rules as the same thing. Or rather, you're treating what's known as all there is."
"Authority is simply a fragment of a rule or a concept made manifest—one that's relatively distinct and relatively easy for an individual to