Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5475

Chapter 5475: No Adversity, Just Pain!

The earth beneath the altar split, and something rose out of the dark.

It came slowly, deliberately, and when the voice arrived it filled the whole Expanse. It was the voice of a man who had never once in his existence needed to rush a sentence.

"Strength," THE Sealed One said, "is the prediction of possibilities. I want you to sit with that word, Osmont. Prediction. I knew, when I began going for you, that one or two of my Vessels might one day receive a visitor. I knew it the way a farmer knows the seasons. And knowing it, I prepared for it."

The rising figure paused, letting the words settle into the silence.

"Even so. Even with you standing in my sky, I still do not wish to contribute one drop of adversity to you if I do not have to. Because it always comes down to choices. Yours, and mine." A low sound, almost a sigh.

"Now. I do understand how difficult it is, granting a being no adversity at all. It goes against every instinct. So consider this my present to you, my Vessel. I sacrifice for the greater good. I do this to give you no satisfaction. Only the knowledge that what follows is a consequence of your actions, and no one else’s."

HUUM!

The instant the words left him, a withered lifeform rose fully into view.

Noah looked at it and understood at once. The Vessel was already dying. Already fading, its edges crumbling to ash even as it lifted itself for everyone to see, unmade from the inside by its own master’s hand. It had never been meant to fight. It had been meant to die on command, and the command had come.

The Vessel turned toward Noah, and it smiled.

"No adversity," it said. "Just pain."

And it withered, and turned to ash, and was gone.

Noah’s eyes shone. He took a single step and appeared far below, coming to stand beside Taylor. Near her stood the one he recognized as Adrastia, and beside Adrastia, an Original Source Lifeform, tall and ancient, her presence pressing on the ruined air.

Then...

All across the Expanse, the thousands upon thousands of prisoners fell. Gilded Ones. Source Lifeforms. Infinite Lifeforms. Every chained being on every mountain and every ore-veined path, all of them dropping at once, as if a thousand strings had been cut in the same instant. No screaming. No struggle. Life simply left them, all together, in total silence.

|The vibrant Source of the Vessel of THE Sealed One in THE Elvarna Mining Expanse has been sacrificed, in an effort to feed you no adversity. Alongside it, every imprisoned lifeform still bound by the Chains or the Directives of THE Sealed One has been sacrificed as well. The two were tied together. He cut them together.|

...!

Noah’s eyes blazed.

He looked around, and the silence pressed in from every side. Tens of thousands of lifeforms lay on the ground, collapsed without a single sound, the whole Expanse gone still in the space of a breath. A moment ago it had been a battlefield full of noise. Now it was a field of the dead.

Only a few still stood.

Taylor had no chains on her. Neither did Adrastia, nor the Original beside them, nor a handful of others scattered nearby. Whatever Adrastia had done down here, he had begun freeing people, pulling them loose from the chains of THE Sealed one by one. But it had not been enough, and worse, it had not been the right thing. The chains were not what killed them. The Directives were. Anyone still carrying THE Sealed One’s Directives in their existence had perished the moment he pulled the cord, chains or no chains.

So out of every prisoner in THE Elvarna Mining Expanse, only three had survived. Taylor. Adrastia. And the Source Lifeform standing beside them, one of THE Originals, freed early enough and fully enough to live.

Everyone else who had been a prisoner was a corpse.

"Just how true is your Intent, Osmont? Just how true are you to your identity?" There was no cruelty in it, which made it worse.

"Because if you had done nothing, all of these lifeforms would still be alive. Because you came, far too many Triassic and Mesozoic Scale beings, Infinite and Source and Gilded alike, are dead. Their blood is on your hands, my Vessel. Yours. There will be no grand battle for you. No adversity. Only the consequences of your choices." A last quiet breath in the dark.

"And know this. Anywhere else you go, wherever another of my Vessels waits, expect the same. All life there will fade the moment you arrive. You will walk from graveyard to graveyard, and I will not have lifted a finger against you. You will have done it, simply by being what you are."

HUUM!

But this fucker was a genuinely frustrating being to fight.

Noah looked out over the thousands upon thousands of corpses. He was frustrated. He was furious. He was not guilty.

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