Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5996

Chapter 5996: Evolution? I

Noah went over the new as the pieces settled into place.

The Pulse!

How far did the Pulse reach? He shifted his weight and watched his own wave run out across the ground, blue-gold, thinning at about two hundred meters.

Around him, the forest was settling. Fine gold dust from the shattered ground still hung in the nearest beam of light, drifting down so slowly that it hardly seemed to fall, and inside the black-glass trunks the constellations had gone back to their patient turning.

He closed his eyes, and the Pulse was enough.

Everything slowed again. He loved this sensation of grandness and attunement to thr surroundings, the forest easing down to a crawl around him while his own mind ran clear and quick through all of it, and in the slowness, the waves came.

Every trunk gave one off, a slow ring of pale light rising up its length with the Narrative that moved inside it. The roots sent smaller ones down into the ground, and small tiny microscopic creatures he had never seen sent quick, faint ripples through the dark between the beams, hundreds of them, each one a life he could now place exactly.

Gular stood beside the crater, already whole again, his waves coming in bright, steady flickers. Beginnings, lighting and fading under everything he was.

Then there was the pig. What remained of it lay in the crater and pulsed once, faintly, and the boundless gold brilliance its body had held was moving. It was flowing down, out of the golden hide and into the soil, and below the soil.

Noah opened his eyes and looked down. The ground was still there under his feet, and through it, with the Pulse, he saw what lay beneath: seas, flat and endless seas of light stacked one under the other, each a different color, violet and green and deep gold and colors that had no names. They stretched out in every direction until his sight cut off, perfectly still, and the pig’s gold was sinking into the nearest of them and spreading across its surface.

He looked at them calmly. A sea beneath a sea beneath a sea, and his existence felt a sense of terrifying rejection when he even thought of going down there to see. Not because he wasn’t powerful enough...it was a sensation of him or anything else simply not being able to, as if what he saw with the vision of the Pulse was there...and not there.

As if he was looking at a motif or an idea that allowed him to understand the weavings of the pig had gone down into that vibrant sea, and soon after...

As the last of the golden glow went down, and two small things rose out of the seas. They were crystals, faint and many-colored, each no bigger than the first joint of his thumb, and they came up through the ground without disturbing it. One drifted slowly toward Noah. The other turned and floated toward Gular.

Information rose out of the place.

|The Introductory Narrative of Existence has ended. An Essara 1 Abomination has been returned to THE Mountain.|

|A Small Xerion Crystal has been freely given from existence for your efforts.|

|The region nearby is filled with Essara Lifeforms of different variety. The more you return to THE Mountain, the more you get back in return.|

|You are also an Essara Lifeform. Others can also seek to return you to THE Mountain.|

|If your return reaches sufficient levels, more of ??? will reveal itself to you.|

...!

So the pig had gone home to the spine of existence, and existence had paid for it, freely!

And everything here was an Essara Lifeform, every beast in the dark around them, and so was he, and so was Gular. Anything in this region could hunt them for the same reason they would hunt it.

He kept giving while he thought.

What did he actually have? One Small Xerion Crystal floating in front of him, whatever it turned out to be, five days of masked scent with the better part of an hour already gone, and one month to raise his designation.

He looked down again, past his feet, into the seas again. Where his own giving was sinking into the nearest of them, something was beginning to form, a small knot of many colors, very faint, gathering in the place where his authority disappeared.

A crystal. His giving was growing one! It was a marvelous scene as he felt his authority meld into the endless sea below, and any cognizance he held within that authority faded as it became part of something larger, and the return yo his giving...flowed to a crystal that began to rise up and form.

How fast, though? He watched it for a few breaths and could barely see it change. Slow, then. Still, it was a second source for him as he didn’t necessarily have to hunt to obtain these Xerion Crystals!

Across the crater, Gular had already closed his fingers around his own crystal. He was studying it without a word. Gular had come here three times for these, and this time he had brought someone to stand in front.

Noah raised his hand and closed it around the crystal floating before him. What exactly was this?

The moment he touched it, a pulse went through him, many-colored and deep, and he felt it down in his Dreaming Human Origin, down where his Dreams lived. Information bloomed in front of his eyes again.

|Small Xerion Crystal.|

|Given freely by existence. It carries no wound and no debt.|

|Effect: induces the natural, rapid growth and proliferation of the holder’s own natal Narrative.|

|Gather 50: a Purified Exalted Essara of Existence will bloom.|

|Acclimation: 100%.|

|Acclimation: exceeds 100%.|

|Your weavings have deemed this place to be THE Central Mountain. It will be designated to you as such.|

|Region: THE Root Forest of THE Central Mountain.|