Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5148

Chapter 5148: False Idols! III

The balconies that had held so many a moment ago now held fewer.

The surviving Calymmians froze in place, their flames guttering with confusion and dread. The Ediacaran Primordial Architects near the top, who had been about to descend with their superior contributions, halted where they stood. The mountain’s assembled population collectively absorbed what had just happened, and the absorption was not pretty.

Philemon Aristos stared down from his high balcony.

Both of his heads held expressions that had crossed from rage into something narrower, something that knew what dread felt like from close range. His plasmic golden flames had flickered down several orders of intensity while he watched his Calymmian forces burst across the lower levels of his own mountain. His two mouths opened together, and the voice that came out of them had lost some of the harmonic authority it had carried before.

"What power is this?"

His voice rolled down the slopes, unsteady for the first time.

"What taboo thing have you turned to? What have you done to yourself to be capable of that?"

His left head’s mouth worked.

"Do you know what you are doing now? Do you understand what you are pressing against? This is tantamount to spitting at the feet of THE Gilded Ones. We are their feet!We are what stands between them and the lower tiers of existence. We are the arrangement they placed here to receive the kinds of insults you are now offering. You are not defying Primordial Architects. You are defying the order that THE Gilded Ones themselves engineered across THE First Cause! This will not be tolerated. This cannot be tolerated! The moment word of this reaches-"

...!

The surrounding atmosphere began to waver and melt.

The pale stone at the base of the mountain softened under a heat that had not been there a moment ago. The air rippled with distortion. The temples higher up began to sweat at their edges, their carved proportions blurring slightly as the ambient temperature of THE Wyld itself started to respond to what was happening at the foot of THE Gilded White Mountain.

THE Creature’s flames rose higher in temperature.

The multicolored gold deepened into something closer to the bloody undercolor that had always lived beneath them. His posture remained floating and calm, but the flames now reached above his head in standing columns, their heat pressing outward across the slopes in waves that made the surviving Primordial Architects shield their own flames against his.

He spoke.

"I am going to cut off those feet."

His voice was almost conversational.

"I am going to cut them off, and I am going to teach all of you how to think for yourselves. You have been the feet of a False Golden Idol for far too long, and you have confused servitude with community, and you have confused engineering with belonging, and someone has to finally separate those confusions for you. That someone is going to be me. Today is the day you learn what your minds feel like when they are not being operated by external instructions."

The flames rose further.

"And any power I have, I obtained because I persevered. Through loss. Through grief. Through a foundation I shattered with my own hands and rebuilt across eons of climbing. I did not inherit this. I did not receive this. I did not accept any offers from any Idols. I climbed, and I bled. I continued when continuing was the only option that remained to me, and I continued when even that option ran out and I had to construct new ones from nothing. Every capacity I now wield is a capacity I earned through perseverance."

His eyes lifted to the highest balcony.

"So...Persevere."

BOOM!

Brutality ensued.

---

With every passing nanosecond, Noah was stronger than the previous nanosecond.

It was a unique sensation. His body continued generating endless Quintessence Infiniforce that filled his existence at a rate which had become self-sustaining and no longer required his active attention.

Observable Force poured into him endlessly from Ubergulden Adelheid through the bond that now functioned more as a wormhole than a channel, and her continuous contribution saturated him to a degree that most beings would have collapsed under. And above him, a faint THE Hadean Pillar of Infinity grew grander with every moment, the construction continuing as he actualized additional Civilizations into its mid-tiers, the Pillar becoming a catalog of Civilizational possibilities that stretched higher with every breath he took.

And yet Absolute Infinity seemed a bit distant still.

The threshold was closer than it had been an hour ago, closer than it had been a day ago, but it was not yet at hand. The final crossing from Uncountable Infinity into Absolute Infinity required something more than accumulated additions. It required an integration, a settling, a moment when the accumulated Civilizations and the saturated force and the engineered foundations all cohered into a single unified expression grand enough to cross the boundary.

That moment was not here yet. He felt it the way a climber felt the shape of a summit still above him. Clearly fuckin visible, but not yet touched.

But since he was forging THE First Infinite Scale and he got to decide what went into it, he now wanted to incorporate the amplification of Egos.

He could affirm to himself with certainty that his emotions had nothing to do with why he had not gone mad with Infinity.

As a weak F Rank Hunter back in his old world, or even his self when he had first put together the fragments of Ruination to affirm his Infinity, had not possessed emotions significant enough to compare with the Gilded Ones who amplified their Egos to existential thresholds.

His immunity from Infinity...did he really need some grand reason why? Maybe it just was what it was!

That was something to investigate more deeply someday. He thought back to Egos.

Uniquely, Ubergulden Adelheid belonged to THE Superbius Gilded Ones. They amplified their Egos to exceed what Pride itself stood for.

Superbius.

The Pride that was not merely inflated self-regard but a foundational conviction of one’s own supremacy, a Pride engineered so deeply that it became the substrate of identity rather than a feeling about identity. The Superbius Gilded Ones were Pride given form. Pride refined into architecture. Pride made into a people.

Avaritia for Greed, the hoarding appetite that Octavius Kraethos had been engineered along.

Luxuria for Lust, the Ego that sought satisfaction through consumption of others, whether sexual or emotional or existential.

Invidia for Envy, the Ego that cultivated itself through measurement against what others possessed, refining itself through the hunger for what was held elsewhere. Gula for Gluttony, the Ego of unbounded appetite that differed from Greed in that it sought to consume rather than to hoard. Ira for Wrath, the Ego of sustained fury refined into combat foundation.

Acedia for Sloth, which in its amplified form was not laziness but a strange inertia, a refusal to be moved by external pressures that became its own kind of implacable power.

Humilitas for Humility, the inverse of Superbius, the Ego of refined self-diminishment that paradoxically became its own kind of foundation.

Caritas for Charity, the Ego of outward giving, the cultivated love of others that could potentially became a channel through which Infinity could pour without collapsing into self.

Castitas for Chastity, not as prudishness but as refined purity of focus, the dedication that refused distraction. Patientia for Patience, the Ego of unhurried endurance that could hold a flood indefinitely by simply not being moved by it. Temperantia for Temperance, the Ego of measured restraint, of choosing less when more was available.

Industria for Diligence, the Ego of sustained effort refined into a combat foundation. Humanitas for Kindness, the Ego of outward care that cultivated itself through the well-being of others.

Noah thought about all of this in the span of an instant he had stretched out toward infinity.

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