Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5246

Chapter 5246: Survival! I

Noah waved his hand.

Multicolored Infinity bloomed outward from his palm like a fire, illuminating the immediate surroundings with the warm cycling light of his Source expression. He looked at himself in the glow of it.

His fair skin glistened in the Infinity-light, every surface of him vivid in a way that cultivation had been quietly suppressing for so long he had forgotten this was what skin looked like when nothing was filtering it. His shoulders and abdomen were pronounced, the muscular definition of his frame rendered in sharp relief by the light, and across his front and behind, broad green leaves covered what they covered with the patient indifference of an environment that did not concern itself with modesty but had provided the minimum available.

He looked like something carved from a grand idea about what a man should look like.

He turned to check on Adelheid.

"Damn."

He said it before he could arrange his face around not saying it. He fully attributed it to the place amplifying every basal emotion to its unfiltered intensity, which was a factually accurate attribution, and which also did nothing to change the fact that the damn had been entirely warranted.

Ubergulden Adelheid’s fair gold skin shone dimly in his Infinity-light with the specific luminescence of a Source expression that was warm and genuine underneath every layer of engineering she had accumulated across her eons. Her figure was pronounced in the way that this place pronounced everything it stripped back to its essentials, and the broad leaves covering her chest and waist were providing coverage in the technical sense of the word.

She had not noticed him looking.

Because she was looking at him.

Her eyes moved across his figure with the specific unhurried assessment of a being whose basal emotions were also running at full unfiltered volume, her gold eyes tracking across his shoulders and abdomen and back up again with an expression she had not yet arranged into the composed neutrality she used for most situations.

They were both acclimating!

Then Noah’s Infinity pressed against something in the dark behind them and rang out a warning, and he grabbed Adelheid without deliberating and pulled her hard to the right as her warm figure pressed against him and they hit the ground rolling.

BOOM!

The ground where they had been standing exploded upward in a shower of dark sand and jagged rock, the impact deep enough to suggest the thing that had caused it was not small. When the debris settled, the creature stood in the crater it had made.

Twice their height. Obsidian from its snout to the blunt end of its abbreviated tail, its body low and wide and built in the way that things built for pure damage tended to be built, with no wasted space between its thick haunches and its broader shoulders. The fur, if it could be called fur, was dense obsidian-dark with the texture of compressed Source material rather than ordinary animal coat, each strand carrying a faint crimson luminescence that matched the blaze of its eyes. Its claws were longer than Noah’s forearm, the ends catching the Infinity-light and holding it in the way that things built for tearing held light.

A Honey Badger!

The obsidian honey badger looked at them with the crimson eyes of something that had been hunting in THE Source Lands for longer than it was comfortable to estimate and had not done so unsuccessfully.

A Seidr Source. First Demarcation.

It felt like considerably more than First Demarcation should feel.

That was the first thing Noah registered as the honey badger charged!

WUUU!

It moved low and fast and without any of the telegraphing that combat experience produced in beings who had fought other combat-experienced beings. It had not developed fighting instincts against opponents who could read its preparation. It had developed fighting instincts against everything in THE Source Lands, which meant it assumed nothing could read its preparation and moved accordingly.

Noah pushed Adelheid left and went right and the honey badger drove between them, its momentum carrying it past their positions before it arrested with a pivot that something its size had no business executing at that speed. It turned on Adelheid.

She was already moving.

Her Seidr Source flared gold around her as she drove her hands outward in the form of an attack that would have carried Paleozoic Scale Gilded authority in Observable Existence. Here it carried her Source expression raw, unstructured, pure gold light hammering into the honey badger’s flank as it turned toward her.

The honey badger absorbed it.

Not resisted. Absorbed, its obsidian coat pulling the Source energy inward in the way that things designed by long survival in this environment pulled available energy inward, and the honey badger’s crimson eyes burned fractionally brighter after the contact than before.

It was eating her attack!

WAP!

"Hey." Noah stepped between her and the honey badger. "Stay close, okay?"

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