Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5307

Chapter 5307: Settlement IV

Pride was a fascinating thing to observe in beings who hadn’t earned it.

There was a version of pride that existed because it had been produced naturally, forged through genuine adversity and genuine achievement and the earned confidence of someone who had looked at something difficult and come out the other side of it changed.

That version had weight. It pushed back!

It made decisions regardless of consequence because it had calculated the consequence and found the consequence acceptable.

Then there was engineered pride. Superbius pride. The kind cultivated into a being’s foundations through careful Gilded methodology, installed the way any other capability was installed, present as a feature of the existence rather than as a truth of the being. It looked identical from a distance. Up close, it revealed itself the moment a real test arrived.

The test had arrived.

Noah had smashed Dietrich into the ground in front of dozens of Superbius and Ira Gilded Ones and all of them had stood exactly where they were, assessing. Which was sensible. He wasn’t criticizing the intelligence of the calculation.

But intelligence and pride were different faculties, and every one of them standing still while one of their own bled in a crater was giving him information about which faculty was running the room.

None of the big ones had shown up yet. The heavy power sat deeper in the settlement, further from the wall. What he had in front of him were Seidr Source and Galdr Source Gilded Ones, which was still Paleozoic Scale, still formidable by any standard he had operated within before THE Source Lands.

They were watching him stand on THE Bellum Pulse wall and absorb its continuous pressure and they were making correct assessments about the gap between what they were and what he appeared to be.

He actually wanted to be problematic!

He wanted a fight. He genuinely wanted one. He had come into this settlement carrying the accumulated weight of the Arms Race and the Persevere spamming and a Galdr Source so saturated it had pressed against its own ceiling, and he had been hoping at least one of them would give him a reason to test it.

Not one of them moved.

He looked down at them.

"You know, I always looked up to Superbius." He said it pleasantly, with the tone of someone sharing a sincere memory.

"Oh, Superbius! As a lowly Luxuria, my status was just pleasure and nothing else. I knew the stories though. Superbius and Ira fighting against Source Lifeforms and Infinite Lifeforms, standing at the front of every major conflict in our Gilded history, moving forward when everything said stop." He looked across the gathered Gilded Ones slowly.

"I thought, wow. If only I could do something like that. So I worked hard and I became the Custos of a Superbius Gilded One. I entered THE Source Lands. And now I stand in front of more Superbius Gilded Ones than I have ever seen in one place."

He paused.

"Where... is your pride?" He asked it genuinely, without aggression. "Does a Luxuria like me ever have the chance to move past my designated engineering? Will your pride allow that? Or will you stand there watching one of your own lie in a crater and decide today is not the day?"

BOOM!

He let the aura drop.

The Infinite Radiation of his Source came down across the settlement in a wave that carried the full pressure of what he had become across the last several hours, the dense concentrated multicolored flames around his frame expanding outward as the heat of it crashed into the surrounding Superbius and Ira Gilded Ones and pressed against their foundations from above!

BOOM!

He looked down at them.

"WHERE IS YOUR PRIDE?!"