Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5895

Chapter 5895: Paths! I

THE First Gu of Emotions hung frozen in the river of light, and inside it, Emotive spread.

Noah watched her go. Her fourteen colors had reached every thread now, and they kept going, deeper and deeper into the stiff, silent body of the Gu, replacing rage with her rage, grief with her grief, joy with her joy, until the vast thing hanging in Ruination’s glowing dark held hardly a feeling that was still its own.

Then something brushed the edge of his existence from very far away.

It was faint and enormous, and it was spreading. Noah lifted his head.

"Ruination," he said. "Keep me updated."

"Yes, Master," she said at once, and bowed, and the crimson light of her existence let him go.

He opened his eyes in the Chrysalis.

The torn silk drifted around him where the storm of feelings had been. Achilles hung nearby, curled in on himself, his existence still flickering and settling and flickering again as he fought to hold it in one shape. And above them both, the sky was changing.

Golden auroras were spreading across it!

They rolled out slowly over the drifting silk, filling the whole sky of the Chrysalis from edge to edge, and Noah could feel them keep going. They stretched on past the Chrysalis, across the Gaps, over Legacies and Dimensions and everything in between, as far as his senses could follow and then further.

Information came down out of the gold.

|Sufficient conditions have been met.|

|THE Narrative of Kings has begun to unfold across existence.|

Then the aurora opened like a page, and a vast banner of white and gold unrolled across the sky.

Noah read it calmly.

Twenty blank places at the top, burning gold. Then names, blazing with power, one after another, down past the hundredth and further. THE Dissolved Progenitor at twenty-two. THE King of Countless Expanses at twenty-eight. THE Maker of Scales at thirty, a little dimmer than the names around him.

And at fifty, so faint it barely glowed at all, his own.

|50. THE Dreaming Human Origin|

His existence stirred with interest. It was a grand thing, this Narrative, stretched across all of existence at once, touching every Legacy and every King. He could feel how far it reached, how heavy it was, how many eyes across existence were turning up toward it at this very moment and finding their own place on that list.

It was grand.

And in the end, it was just another Narrative.

Noah floated beneath the gold and let the thought settle slowly, from far above.

"Narratives," he said quietly. "THE Long Night. Fate. Time. Calamity. Destiny. Now Kings. Each one stretched across existence like a net, each one telling everything it touches what it is and where it stands and how much it is worth."

He looked up at his own dim name.

"They are unfathomably grand. They can reach into every corner of existence at once and change how all of it moves. I respect that. I would be a fool not to."

The aurora rippled overhead, and the names blazed.

"But a Narrative measuring me does not make me what it measures. A list of Kings can call me fiftieth, or first, or nothing at all. The Long Night can call me a seat to be filled, a mere Epitropos, or not. None of it changes what I am."

His eyes were calm and bright. "Only my own view of myself matters. Only my own Narratives matter."

He smiled a little.

"So I will not play inside their stories. I will eat whatever they offer. The Narratives of others are not paths for me to walk." He turned his hand over. "They are fuel."

WAA!

But they were useful.

From Lifthrasir, he had gained clues that THE Dissolved Progenitor may be more than what the story told, and now his appeared near the top of the list of another Narrative. So there could be many things to gain!

Slowly, he opened his hand.

The Shard of IT lay in his palm, bright as a fallen star. He looked at it for one moment more, and then he tossed it up and caught it in his mouth and swallowed it whole!

HUUM!

The Shard went down into him like a coal into a furnace, and something deep inside him answered it.

He had carried another Shard of IT for a little bit now, the one from Lucy’s domain, sitting in the center of his existence, where it had always resisted his attempts to break it down. The new Shard flew straight toward it the moment it entered him, and the two of them met and pressed together, and his whole existence lurched forward as if someone had pushed it a step up a long stair.

His Shinjitsu surged to meet them.

It tried to do what it always did now. It reached for both Shards and tried to break them down completely, to find every borrowed piece and set it down and make the rest truly his. Gold-blue and stubborn, it pressed and pressed against them.

They held.

IT, as a whole, was simply too grand. The Shards gave him something just by being inside him, a steady weight and a push forward, but their center stayed whole and bright and closed to him, older and larger than anything he could reach.

But the weavings around them could be broken down.

Every thread of power that had clung to the new Shard, every scrap of feeling the First Gu had poured into it, every echo of the Ages it had sat inside that creature, all of it peeled away under his Shinjitsu, filtered and sorted and taken in. Whatever was borrowed, he set down. Whatever could be made his, he made his.

|You have consumed a second Shard of IT.|

|It has joined the first Shard of IT within you.| 𝘧𝗿𝖊𝖾𝑤𝓮𝑏𝓷𝚘𝚟𝗲𝒍.𝖼𝒐𝖒

|Their center cannot be broken down. IT is too grand.|

|Everything around them that can be broken down has been filtered through your Shinjitsu and made your own.|

|Assimilation Rate: 0.2% to 1%.|

|Threshold reached: THE First Unveiling.|

|Your truth has stopped flickering.|

|You are now more real than anything you touch.|

|VERITAS, PROVENANCE, PONDUS, OSMONTIAN MOIRAI: True Order III.1 to True Order III.3.|

|With two Shards of IT, your existence has begun to act as a container for a relic, if it can be called that.|

|It has no clear origin. It has no clear purpose. It has only power.|

|Be cautious.|

|Name: Noah Osmont|

|Title: THE Dreaming Human Origin|

|Narrative of THE Long Night: Existential Epitropos|

|Narrative of Kings: Rank 50|

|Profundity: ?????|

|VERITAS, PROVENANCE, PONDUS, OSMONTIAN MOIRAI: True Order III.3|

|POTENTIA: Infinite, True|

|Foundation: THE True Foundation|

|Shinjitsu: Assimilation Rate 1%. Threshold: THE First Unveiling.|

|Infinities: Dialetheic, Adynatic, Noetic|

|Shinjitsu Weavings: THE Dream That Was Always So, THE Empty Hands That Hold, THE Infinite Quantum Dream|

|Weavings: THE True Dreaming Grammar, THE True Walking Winter, True Keystone Sight, Osmontian Tongue Letters and Words|

|Kin: Ruination, THE Infiniverse, Ul’moreth, Emotive, Aurvald...|

|Held within: two Shards of IT|

|Narratives: two sealed scrolls. The third page is blank.|