Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5901

Chapter 5901: A Grand Action!

Noah held sixty-one percent of THE Verdant Regard, and he used it to study her.

He took his time. Inside the Quantum Dream, time was something he could afford, and a chance to study an Ancient’s existence this closely might come only once. So he sat inside her and watched how she worked.

Her Regard was a simple thing at its root, and terrible in its simplicity. When she looked at something, her gaze put down roots in it. Thin green threads of ownership, finer than hair, sank into whatever her eyes touched and began to grow, and the longer she looked, the deeper they went, until the thing she was looking at belonged to her garden and forgot it had ever belonged to anything else.

Every leaf in her dream was an eye because every eye was a root. Her whole existence was a single long gaze that had stayed fixed, Age after Age, on whatever it wanted.

|THE Verdant Regard’s Immensity: Regard.|

|Her gaze plants roots of ownership in whatever it touches.|

|The longer she looks, the deeper the roots grow.|

|Everything she owns, she owns because she once looked at it and did not stop.|

He followed the roots back through her dream, and found her memories at the bottom of them.

He found Minerva first!

Her daughter was everywhere in this dream. Minerva as a small child running through the orchard. Minerva learning to make her first flower bloom. Minerva standing tall and proud and stubborn, saying she would become Immense on her own. And Minerva at the very end, in the snow of the Long Night, her Root becoming a tree of light, the door shutting, the Root severed, her small body crumpling into the cold.

THE Verdant Regard loved her daughter. Noah could feel it, enormous and fierce and posessive, the kind of love that looks at something and keeps looking forever.

But he also found the pills.

Over the years, the Verdant Regard had taken dozens of Root Bearers from the lesser corners of the Legacy, quietly, a few at a time. She had ground them down in a stone bowl in a locked room at the back of her orchard, every one of them, until nothing remained but their weavings. She had pressed those weavings into small green pills, round and sweet-smelling, and fed them to Minerva.

Minerva had swallowed them, trusting.

Her mother had kept the answer to herself.

|She ground down dozens of Root Bearers for their weavings.|

|She fed their weavings to her daughter as pills.|

|Her daughter never knew where they came from.|

Noah looked at that memory for a long time, and his calm stayed exactly where it was.

Then he went further back, past Minerva, past the orchard, to the very beginning, and found the Fiend.

She had been young then, only a Newly Risen Immense One, bright and new and very proud of herself. And one day, THE SLEEPLESS FIEND had simply walked into her garden, smiling, his shroud of Causes murmuring around him, and looked at her with his ever-open eyes.

He had taken whatever he wanted from her. Her time, her power, her body, her loyalty. He had used her as he wished, for as long as he wished, and when he was done, he had stayed anyway, because it amused him to have her near. Over the Ages, she had grown loyal to him, as a vine grows loyal to the wall it climbs, because there was nowhere else for it to go.

And underneath all of that loyalty, in the deepest and quietest corner of her dream, Noah found something she had kept unspoken for Ages.

She was afraid of him!

Even now, even after all the Ages, even as an Ancient, she was afraid of him. She had seen his shroud slip once, a long time ago, for less than a heartbeat, and whatever she had glimpsed underneath it, her memory had refused to keep. All she had kept was the feeling. She had no idea how deep the Fiend truly went.

|She has served THE SLEEPLESS FIEND since she was Newly Risen.|

|She is loyal to him because she could never escape him.|

|She fears him.|

|Even she does not know the full extent of his power. ?????|

...!

And all the while Noah studied her, she fought him.

Somewhere deep in the thirty-nine percent of herself that was still hers, THE Verdant Regard was clawing at him. Her gaze kept trying to root into him and kept sliding off. Her Immensity kept surging up against his hold like a tide against a sea wall. She was hurt, and slow, and bleeding light from the reopened scar, but she was an Ancient, and she kept going.

|Control of her existence: 61%.|

|She is still fighting.|

|At this pace, full control will take a very long time.| 𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ𝘄𝖾𝒃𝘯𝒐𝘃𝔢𝓵.𝔠𝖔𝘮

Noah considered that.

Then he smiled.

He was inside an Infinite Quantum Dream. He could do this as many times as he liked.

|Branch 1 ends.|

|Branch 2 begins. You enter her dream again, from the start, with everything you have learned.|

In he went again!

This time, he knew where her dream’s rhythm stumbled, and he slipped in through the stumble. He knew which eyes in her garden were sleepiest, and he walked past those. He knew exactly how her gaze rooted, and he kept himself perfectly empty of anything it could hold.

|Branch 2: Control of her existence: 68%. Time: 31 minutes.|

Again he went in.

|Branch 3: You know where her Regard gathers before it strikes. Control: 74%. Time: 19 minutes.|

|Branch 9: Control of her existence: 100%.|

|Time: one nanosecond.|

...!