Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 4994: Sensation I

It was an odd sensation.

Admitting something he always knew but did not want to think about had placed him here, in this moment, facing truths he had walled away behind achievements and certainties and the accumulated weight of everything he had accomplished. For all his past, he had been trying to infuse his existence with Infinities. His Infinite Formless Depth. His infinite foundation. An infinite this, an infinite that. Layer upon layer of endlessness crammed into every aspect of his being.

But no matter how many parts of himself he infused with Infinities, the core of who he was remained finite.

His mind was finite. His mentality was finite. His identity was finite. And every time he tried cramming Infinity into something finite, he limited it. Every time he expressed Infinity through himself, he constrained it. He was a straw trying to channel an ocean, and no matter how wide he made the straw, it would never be the ocean itself.

Even if he was successful on his previously set path, even if he continued cramming aspects of Infinity into himself and changed absolutely everything about his existence, there would still be Noah Osmont. His identity would always be finite because identity itself was a finite thing. For Noah Osmont to truly be Infinite was to no longer be Noah Osmont at all.

He was Noah Osmont because he was a son.

He was Noah Osmont because he was a father.

He was Noah Osmont because he was a husband, a leader, a builder of Civilizations, someone who cared about specific people and specific outcomes and specific futures.

He would have to lose this very identity if he were to truly cram in all of Infinity. At that point, he would become something else entirely. The same as the Principles themselves. A loose law of existence. One of the endless strings that held together Observable Existence.

He would not be Noah Osmont because he would no longer care about the things Noah Osmont cared about. He would be everything and nothing that resembled the person who had started this journey.

He could not not be him.

So he would have always remained finite.

But even saying this had been a frightening thing, because he had always asked himself a question that lurked beneath all his achievements and all his confidence. What if he lost his Infinity?

That would be equally catastrophic. He would have lost such a significant part of himself, the authority that had defined him since the moment Mana first changed everything. Without Infinity, what was he? Without that endless potential, who was Noah Osmont?

So he had locked away this thought.

He had not even thought about it.

He had built walls around it so thoroughly that even his own consciousness could not perceive what he was hiding from himself. The fear was not that he was finite. The fear was that admitting it would somehow take away the Infinity he had gained, that speaking the truth would make the truth punish him for acknowledging it.

But he had to face it eventually.

Today, he admitted and declared it.

And he felt... free.

But it was unfathomably hard to explain how he felt beyond that single word.

He felt empty in a way that should have been terrifying but somehow was not. Those immense waves of power that had always surrounded him, that immensity of his Depth and the weight he could press down to change existence itself, he felt like all of it was gone. The blue-gold flames that had defined his presence since his advancement into Absolute had vanished. The pressure that made lesser beings tremble in his vicinity had disappeared.

He truly felt normal, as if he had returned back to that day before he even utilized that fireball skill book so long ago. That mundane Noah Osmont who had been nothing special, just someone going about their day to day. Just surviving, but not really...living.

But at the same time, he did not feel normal.

What he could see now was truly hard to explain.

The massive hand of THE Primordial Armor, for example. He could not even touch the body of this existence before. His Geodesic Negations had passed through like wind through open windows. His Maws had phased through platinum surfaces without finding purchase. Beowulf existed at THE Second Scale, a level of reality that THE First Scale simply could not interact with unless THE Second Scale chose to permit interaction.

That hand was coming at him unfathomably fast.

It should have been impossible to perceive, let alone respond to. The gap between Scales meant that Beowulf’s movements occurred on levels that beings at THE First Scale could not process. The hand should have reached him before he even registered that it had moved.

But at this moment, Noah felt like he could perceive it.

More than perceive it. He felt like he could understand it.

The hand was massive and terrible and carried authority that should have crushed everything it touched. But it was still just a hand. It was still just force being directed toward a target. And force, no matter how vast, could be met with other force if that other force was sufficient.

Noah did not want this hand to reach him and his people.

So he raised his own hand and tried smacking it away.

Instinctively.

Not with technique. Not with methodology. Not with any of the refined expressions of authority he had developed across his journey. He simply saw something coming toward those he cared about, and he responded in the most basic way possible.

He tried to push it away.

And...

HUUM!

Noah felt his eyes radiate with blue unlike anything he had experienced before.

Not the blue-gold that had characterized his Infinity. Not the crimson-blue. This was pure, fundamental blue that seemed to exist before color itself had been differentiated, a shade that predated the concepts of light and spectrum and visual perception entirely.

Then, for a brief moment, Noah felt something that exceeded everything he had ever experienced.

He was connected to an endless sea.

The sensation was overwhelming in its simplicity. He was not containing the sea. He was not drawing from the sea. He was not trying to fit the sea inside himself. He was simply connected to it, aware of it, able to feel its presence stretching out in every direction simultaneously.

And he could, with a little exertion, pull on this endless sea to do what he wanted.

The sea was the force of all Infinity in Observable Existence.

He could feel it now in ways he had never felt it before. The Infinity stretched out across corrupted proto-matter in THE Prima Indifferentia. The Infinity burning in THE Living Paradox. The Infinity that THE Primordial Paradox now carried after receiving the Lotus petal. The Infinity within THE Infiniverse who stood beside him at this very moment.

But it extended further than that.

The Infinity scattered across THE Wastes in every Seal he had ever placed. The Infinity burning in the foundations of every Primus Inevitability he had elevated. The Infinity growing in the Sacred Herbs of his cultivation sites. The Infinity that had spread through Observable Existence since the moment he first touched endless Mana. The Infinity of The First Tongue itself.

It could not truly be contained.

The only reason he was pulling what he was pulling, the only limitation on what he could access, was his own finite capacity. His finite mind could only direct so much. His finite comprehension could only process so many threads simultaneously. The sea was endless, but the one giving commands to that sea was not.

And somehow, that limitation did not diminish what was happening.

It defined it.

Noah channeled boundless Infinity not through him, not through his finite being that would have constrained it into shapes his existence could process. He simply directed it where he wanted it to go. He was the conductor. The Infinity was the orchestra. And the symphony they produced together did not need to fit inside him to be played.

He pointed at the incoming hand.

He willed the endless sea to respond.

And so, it had responded.

HUUUUM!