Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5762

Chapter 5762: A Delectable Treat! I

Noah held the illusory ring in his hands, and turned it, and looked at it with the eyes he had now.

"You are a glimmer of an Existential Chorionic Gonadotropin," he said slowly, "worn inside the shape of a ring. That is what you are. That is what you have always been, and I could never see it until now."

He turned it again in his fingers. "So tell me. How did you manage that, when the Immense Ones shattered your existence to pieces? Or is your own Root of Immensity so grand that even they could not shatter it?"

...!

For a long moment, there was only silence.

The snow fell. The clock-hands of Atlas’s Dimension turned somewhere far away in another of his bodies. And the ring sat quiet in his hands, and Noah waited.

Then the old engineer spoke.

|It seems you have had quite a leap,| Atlas said.

|A major one, in a very short span. When you ceased, all of you at once, I will admit I braced for the worst. I thought an Immense One had finally caught your scent and made a move. But no. You were only grasping your own Root of Immensity.|

|Which, for the record, I had intended to help you form much, much later. After we had raised your Provenance and the depth of your existence a great deal higher. How you jumped that many steps in a little, I have no idea, and I have decided not to think too hard about it, because thinking too hard about you gives me a ringache.|

Noah’s mouth pulled at one corner.

|But you asked me a question,| Atlas went on, quieter. |So. Yes. In the tools I engineered, I spread my Root of Immensity. Every relic, every workshop, every ring, every hidden thing I ever made. I wove glimmers of my own Existential Chorionic Gonadotropin into all of them. Do you understand what that means?|

He did not wait to find out. |It means that as long as one of my tools survived anywhere in existence, some fragment of my Root survived with it. They broke my body on their anvil. They collapsed my homes into ash. And they thought they were done. But they could never find every tool. And if they could never eliminate my tools, then they could never, truly, eliminate me.|

Noah looked at the ring in his hands calmly.

"So this whole time," Noah said. "I have been carrying part of you."

|A small part. A glimmer. Enough to talk, to teach, to scheme. Not enough to walk out and reforge myself, which is the great inconvenience of my situation.|

Noah let that sit a moment and then he asked the thing underneath everything.

"What is your purpose, really? With me. You spread yourself through your tools, and you gave a great ring to THE REMINISCING WIDOW, which means you may even have her help now. Existence is give and take. You told me I could make the impossible possible, and I suppose I have just proven a little of that."

He held the ring up. "But what is the endgame? What are you actually after?"

And there was silence again!

|When an Immensity is destroyed,| Atlas said at last, |it does not simply come back. No matter how grand the being was. No matter how much of it survives in glimmers and tools. When you rebuild an Immensity that was broken, you never get the same power back. You come back smaller. Diminished. A great fire relit from one saved ember, and it never burns as tall as it did before.|

The ring pulsed faintly.

|Which means that even if I clawed my way back into a body, I would not be able to do the thing I most need to do. I could not take down the ones I need to take down. Not the way I am now. Not the way I would come back.|

|So there is revenge in it. There is a great deal of revenge in it. But there is also the simpler thing. The capability to do what I no longer can. If you grow grand enough, Dreamer. If you become truly, unfathomably grand. Then maybe, one day, you will be grand enough to fully restore an Immensity that was broken. To relight the fire without losing the height. Maybe. Who knows.|

The old engineer’s voice was quiet and honest and unashamed.

|It is all for my own selfish reasons, in the end. Even as I help you along. Do not ever mistake me for a kind old man. I am a very selfish one who happens to be teaching you.|

|Oh, fuck.|

|Right. Right, I am an idiot. Dreamer, listen to me. Hide yourself. All of you, every body, get all of your existence into your Existential Root Domain right now, this instant. How did I forget this? How did I forget the single most obvious thing?!|

The words came fast and alarmed. |Inside an Elsedimension they have no access to, you are hard to reach. But out here, a newly formed Root of Immensity? Some Immense Ones can smell that! A fresh Root reaching its weavings out into open existence is a scent, and it is a rare and delicious one, and you are broadcasting it right now like a lit fire in a dark forest!|

|THE UNPAID COLLECTOR smells something unique left behind in this place.|

|THE SLEEPLESS FIEND is surprised. He says that whatever has been found here is his.|

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