Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5925

Chapter 5925: Existence II

Noah stood on the crimson terrace, motionless, for a long time as his mind became filled with understanding and profundity!

Below him, the Legacy went on settling. Moriarty went on pacing. Theon went on dreaming in his cocoon. The sky of records went on scrolling forever.

His eyes were elsewhere.

He was looking at five small grey places in the dark, light years away, and at one of them blooming.

"I have been replacing existence," he said aloud.

His voice was quiet. There was no one near enough to hear it except Ruination, everywhere at once around him, and she said nothing.

"Since the beginning. My Dream rolls over a place, and the place becomes mine, and whatever it was before stops being. A Gap becomes my Gap. A Dimension becomes my Dimension. The Legacy, all of it, replaced, long before today."

He looked at the replaced gap, silent and his. "It works. It has always worked. It made me strong. It made me safe."

He looked at the blooming one.

"But a replaced thing is finished. It is mine, and it is still. It is a room I own with no one living in it. I...have been building an empire of empty rooms."

The hum from the fifth gap rose faintly in the dark. The obsidian flowers turned toward him.

"And this." He was quiet for a while. "This was there the whole time. Every place I ever replaced, I could have given to instead. I could have let it stay itself, and let it learn me, and grow into me, and become something that was both of us at once. It would have been mine all the same. More mine. Because it would have chosen to be."

He thought of the Iron Psalm. Iron gates over existences. Kneel and keep your homes.

He thought of himself, over the Keepers. Over the Verdant Regard. Over a hundred fallen Immense Ones drawn into a black eye.

"Most of the powerful things in existence take," he said. "Kings take. Immense Ones take. I take. We pull existence into ourselves, or we pull ourselves over existence, and we call the result strength. And it is strength, yes. But it is the strength of a man who eats his seed grain because he is hungry today."

He let out a long breath. "Existence will let you take from it. It will even let you replace it. It is generous that way. But if you give to it, truly give, without reaching for what comes back..."

The fifth gap breathed out another slow tide of dark-gold essence, and it came home to him.

"...it gives back. Oh, it gives back!"

He laughed, very softly, once.

"I am a Nightmare," he said. "I have spent the last day making Immense Ones afraid and closing gates forever and tearing doors into the Fallow. And the most frightening thing I have learned in all of it is how to...give."

He was quiet again.

"There are so many paths across existence. I keep forgetting that. I find one road that works, and I walk it until it is the only road I can see. Replacing is a road. It is a good road. I will keep walking it when I need to. But it was never the only one."

His eyes, gold and obsidian, rested on the blooming dark. "You can replace existence. You can devour it. Or you can give to it, and let it give back, and become something it recognizes as...part of it."

HUUM!

Existence was vast and cold and nocaring, right?

It didn’t care for Narratives or Immense Ones. But did it not care for itself? And what would happen when someone actually cared for existence instead of...taking from it?

...!

He thought of the Dreamer and the Devourer parts of him.

"The Devourer would ruin this," he said quietly. "The moment I reach for what comes back, it stops coming. Existence can tell. It can tell the difference between a hand that gives and a hand that is pretending to give so it can take."

A faint, grim smile bloomed. "Of course it can. I can tell. Why would existence be any less wise than me?"

His Shinjitsu pulsed, slow and deep.

|You have grasped a path.|

|Existence can be replaced. Existence can be devoured. Existence can be given to.|

|When Authority is given freely and is truly in tune with existence, the two meld.|

|The existence you give to keeps its own nature.|

|It grows an identity related to you.|

|It is connected to you as fully as any existence you replace.|

|It gives back to you, continuously.|

|Condition: it must be given, not grasped. Existence returns little to a hand that reaches.|

|Your Shinjitsu finds Nascent Nightmare Essence unfathomably compatible.|

|THE Dreaming Human Origin: a new way of standing in existence has opened. Its full extent: ?????|

That was all of it. That was the entire technique, if it could be called one. Give. Let go. Watch.