Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5429

Chapter 5429: Upgrade!

Her eyebrows rose, and he let his gaze drift, across the catalog only he could see, to one particular line.

Foundation refinement. Five thousand Osmontian Biomass to elevate one of his nine Passive Osmontian Principium Foundations by a tier. And of the nine terrifying Foundations, the one he was looking at, the one he wanted, was THE Tide That Owes Nothing.

It was the obvious play, once a being thought past the next second. He could grind out points slowly and pour them into his Intent or his Infinity and feel grander right away, today, this hour. Or he could feed the Tide. Elevate the Foundation that already paid him a thousandfold on every act of giving, and watch it begin paying more, ranking by ranking, so that every gift he made and every share his people earned returned a richer flood of Biomass than before. He would not see the result the instant he bought it. The return would lag, the way returns did!

But once it caught, the compounding would be terrifying. A higher Tide meant more Biomass meant a higher Tide still, the same widening river the Estuary already ran, now built into the engine of his giving.

What was it they used to say, back in his old home, before any of this?

Delayed gratification.

He turned the old phrase over. The weak reached for the thing in front of them because they could not bear to want. They took the small pleasure now because the now was all they trusted, and so they stayed small, forever spending themselves on the immediate.

But a being who could hold a want, who could look at five thousand points and choose the slower, deeper thing over the bright quick one, was a being who had mastered his own hunger instead of being ruled by it. That was the whole of strength, in the end. Not the wanton of desire, the Gilded had tried that and rotted, but the commanding of it. He wanted to be grander now. He would be grander later, and far more, precisely because he could stand to wait!

The man who could defer was the man who got to decide the shape of his own becoming, and Noah had decided long ago that he would never again be a creature of the desperate now!

So he waited. He lay in the rain and let the seconds trickle, watching his Biomass climb toward five thousand, in no hurry at all!

And while he waited, he asked.

"Ruination," he said. "Give me the breakdown. The full quantification of the rankings for upgrades to my existence. I want to know exactly what tier I’m elevating from, and to."

HUUM!

|Of course, Master. The ranking framework for all components of your existence elevatable by Osmontian Biomass.|

|The system ascends through grades, each grade a tier of grandeur, and I will give them to you with the notation woven into them. The grades, lowest to highest: F, Beith. E, Duir. D, Ruis. C, Straif. B, Ngetal. A, Idho. Then beyond the single letters, S, Ebad. SS, Oir. SSS, Muin.|

|Each grade is a notched mark along a single stem, in the old carved manner, a script of trees and raw elemental truth and the heavy unyielding strings of fate. It suits a language of definitions carved into existence. Your Osmontian Tongue and this ranking are kin.|

|This framework was not chosen arbitrarily, Master. It was made to sit inside your identity, and it has been part of you longer than almost anything else. The alphanumeric grade has been woven into you since the very beginning, since the day you picked up an F-Rank Fireball skill book in a dying apartment and read it by failing light. F-Rank. The lowest notch on the lowest stem. That was where you began, with the most mediocre grade existence offered, and you have climbed unimaginably far from those small letters since.|

|But the letters never left you. They are part of what you are, the young man who started at F and refused to stay there. So rather than discard that origin, your existence has chosen to infuse it and elevate it into something grand. The same humble grading that once measured a starter fireball now measures the Foundations of a True Lifeform. It is the same ladder. You have simply dragged it up to a height its makers never imagined.|

|F-Rank, Beith. The Birch. The first notch, the pioneer growth, the tree that takes root in barren ground where nothing else will. Beith is the grade of beginning, of a thing that exists and asserts itself and nothing more. Every component starts here, raw and rooted and unrefined, holding only its bare untempered truth. It is where you began with a fireball, and where each facet of you begins again on this ladder.|

|E-Rank, Duir. The Oak. The hardening. Duir is the grade at which a component stops merely existing and becomes durable, settling into a strength that endures pressure rather than bending to it.|

|D-Rank, Ruis. The Elder. The grade of acceleration and renewal, the tree of swift growth and the turning of cycles.|

|C-Rank, Straif. The Blackthorn. The grade of sharpness and consequence, the tree of thorns and binding fate.|

|B-Rank, Ngetal. The Reed. The grade of reach and pervasion, the tree that grows in dense ranks and binds whole banks together.|

|A-Rank, Idho. The Yew. The grade of near-permanence and authority over endings, the longest-lived of trees, the one that stands over graves and outlasts the ages.|

|S-Rank, Ebad. The Aspen, the trembling shield-tree. Beyond the letters now, into the rare grades.|

|SS-Rank, Oir. The Spindle, the tree of finished craft and exact making.|

|SSS-Rank, Muin. The Vine. The grade of binding mastery and intoxicating dominance, the tree whose fruit overwhelms and whose growth claims everything it touches.|

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