Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5439

Chapter 5439: Yes, and No II

They entered the ancient temple.

Inside stood many statues, and every one of them looked disturbingly lifelike, figures caught in stone with a fidelity that suggested they had not always been stone. Noah’s gaze moved over them as they passed, and Ryaenara spoke, casual and unhurried.

"You know," she said, "sometimes a thing stays safe simply because it never announces itself. It sits in the dark, unremarkable, and nothing hunts it because nothing knows it’s worth hunting. But the moment it’s tested, the moment even a glimpse of what it could become is revealed to Existence, every unfathomably powerful thing that feeds on potential comes running to devour it before it can grow." She glanced back at him.

"That’s what I did to you, I’m afraid. I exposed you without meaning to. I ran my little test expecting a wing or two, and instead you turned out to be someone with Boundless Potential..."

HUUM!

Boundless Potential.

Noah took the words in calmly as Ryaenara led him deeper, past the lifelike statues, until she stopped before a dark one and waved her hand. Light bloomed across it, and the statue illuminated.

It was a man, grand and imposing, carved standing tall. The face meant nothing to Noah, unrecognizable, a stranger’s features. But the eyes had been rendered with something aloof and cruel in them, a terrible arrogance frozen into the stone, and they pulled at him.

"Tell me," Ryaenara said. "Does this statue... remind you of anyone?"

...!

It was an odd question, and Noah studied the statue closely.

The face told him nothing. But the eyes. The longer he looked at the eyes, the more his mind flickered, some deep recognition scratching at him, and then it landed, and he went stern. Blue Intent billowed up around him, his Osmontian Source Infinity blazing to readiness, and he turned a cold gaze on Ryaenara.

Her smile only brightened at his reaction.

"Mmm. Yes," she said, pleased. "This is a statue of another body that THE Sealed One wears. The face changes, vessel to vessel, but the eyes never quite do. Through the eyes, you can always recognize him, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing him."

BOOM!

Yes. The eyes were THE Sealed One’s eyes.

And for such a statue to stand here, in this hidden dimension, meant something Noah did not like at all. It meant that THE Sealed One was entrenched far deeper among the Source Lifeforms than Noah had let himself believe. He had thought he was beginning to grasp the scale of the enemy. He kept being shown he wasn’t!

His gaze went imperious and heavy.

"You," he said. "You’re a Follower of THE Sealed One? I have to hand it to the man. To be this good, this deep, this widely, it’s almost impressive."

He needed to think of THE Sealed One as grander still than he already did. Every single time he adjusted his estimate upward, he turned out not to have adjusted far enough, and damn, but the thing kept earning the fear others gave it!

And yet.

Ryaenara smiled even more brilliantly.

"Well," she said. "Yes, and no. I am a Follower of THE Sealed One, and I am also not."

Her smile turned devilish and grand as she said it, as though she were delivering the finest joke in all of existence.

HUUM!

The words landed like a riddle, and Noah’s eyes sharpened. A Follower, but also not. If she followed THE Sealed One and also did not follow him...

"Then who," he said, "are you a Follower of?"

BOOM!

"Now," she said, beaming. "Now you are asking the right questions!"

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