Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5025: Assault on Unity! I

Noah took a step and appeared in THE Wastes.

The crimson expanse that had once stretched endlessly in all directions now drowned beneath multicolored waters that fell from skies transformed by his Miniature Cause.

Rivers of Existential Infinity carved new channels through terrain that had remained unchanged for eons, washing away corrupted proto-matter that dissolved upon contact with authority exceeding anything it had been designed to resist.

He observed the consequences of his actions with eyes that burned ancient and young simultaneously.

The environment itself had changed in ways that would persist long after the rainfall concluded. Where darkness had pooled in corners of THE Wastes, light now pressed through waters that refused to permit shadow. Where corruption had spread its tendrils across the landscape, nothing remained except cleansed foundations saturated with Infinity that would take centuries to fade.

Or really, it would never fade.

Naldine appeared beside him with expression that remained cold despite everything she was witnessing. Amser Modred materialized a moment later, his purple temporal currents flickering with exhaustion from the strain of their journey through time.

Neither of them spoke.

They simply watched as Noah observed what his collision with THE Creature had wrought.

He saw beings who had survived the initial deluge kneeling in the multicolored waters, their foundations absorbing authority that was transforming them into something greater than they had been before. He saw the spaces where other beings had existed moments ago, now empty except for waters that had washed away existences too weak to contain what was being poured into them.

Noah pondered all the things he had seen as he took another step and disappeared.

Jotunheim materialized around them near a massive glacial mountain whose peaks had once pierced the fabric of this Primordial Realm with authority accumulated across eons of existence. Now those peaks drowned beneath multicolored waters that fell endlessly from skies that seemed to have no limit to what they could produce.

On the slopes of that mountain, Noah saw Chaos Giants kneeling.

Half of them remained, their massive forms trembling as the Pluvial Epoch of Existential Infinity persisted around them with weight that tested their foundations every moment it continued. Their Unity had been severed by waters that refused to permit unauthorized merger, and now they existed as individuals for the first time since THE Entity had claimed them.

Less than half of the Chaos Giants who had once populated this region had survived.

The others had unraveled and ceased to exist entirely, their existences washed away by flood waters that could not distinguish between host and infection once merger had progressed beyond recoverable thresholds.

Where those Chaos Giants had stood moments before, nothing remained except multicolored rivers carrying dissolved potential toward destinations unknown.

Countless beings across THE First Scale would perish from this Cause he had initiated.

Countless more would be forever changed by waters that were still falling, still cleansing, still testing every foundation they touched.

Noah looked upon the kneeling Chaos Giants and the empty spaces where their fallen kin had existed, and he couldn’t help but voice out...

"I used to ask myself moral questions."

His voice emerged with weight that pressed against the falling waters around them, multicolored light blazing from his eyes as he spoke.

"I used to wonder whether my actions were good or bad. Whether the paths I walked led toward righteousness or damnation. Whether the choices I made could be justified by the outcomes they produced."

Naldine and Temporal listened without interruption.

"If I took my past self from just three years ago and brought him here to witness this, he might be appalled by what I have done."

Noah’s gaze swept across the drowning landscape of Jotunheim, across the kneeling survivors and the empty spaces where the fallen had ceased to be.

"He might look at these dissolving existences and see murder on a scale that exceeded anything he could have imagined. He might condemn me for triggering this. He might call me a monster for accepting these deaths as acceptable cost for the transformation that follows."

His eyes shone with multicolored light of the baptism he had undergone across his battle with THE Creature.

"And yet existence itself deems that I did not wipe out as many beings as I wiped out. It declares this a process of natural selection rather than genocide. It claims these beings who died would have died anyway, that their Civilizations were too weak to survive the conflicts already spreading across Observable Existence, that the Pluvial Epoch merely advanced their inevitable conclusion."

He paused.

"It is hard to say whether the past version of myself would ever agree with such philosophy. It is hard to know if that younger existence would accept that some extinctions create space for growth that could not occur otherwise, that some monsters are necessary for the survival of what remains."

His voice carried neither regret nor celebration.

"But that younger existence is not here. I am here. And I...will witness the full scope of what my choices have produced, because I am the one who must live with their consequences."

He sighed.

Then he turned away from the kneeling Chaos Giants and took another step, crossing vast distances in moments that existed outside normal measurement.

They appeared in a region where multicolored rivers flooded and concentrated like a nexus of the storm itself.

The waters here possessed density exceeding anything Noah had witnessed in THE Wastes or on the glacial mountains of Jotunheim. They swirled in patterns of purpose rather than random flowing, converging upon a central point where two figures stood amidst the deluge with authority that pressed back against the Pluvial Epoch itself.

THE Secretive Eon.

THE Primordial Chaos.

They stood at the nexus of the storm with foundations that blazed against the cleansing waters attempting to wash away the infection that had claimed them.

Their Unity fought against dissolution with desperation that made the surrounding environment tremble, THE Entity’s roots refusing to release their hold on hosts who had been among its most valuable acquisitions.

Chaos Giants sprawled out all around them, clutching their heads as the infection within them warred with Unity that was being forcibly severed by waters that would not accept their merger. Some of them screamed with voices that shook the multicolored rivers. Others lay silent, their internal battle having already concluded in one direction or the other.

Noah gazed forth coldly at the two figures standing at the center of this chaos.

He locked his gaze with THE Secretive Eon first, meeting eyes that had always held secrets beyond counting, eyes that now blazed with something he had never seen in them before.

Then his gaze shifted to THE Primordial Chaos, that apex entity who had laughed at everything across eons of existence, who had found amusement in circumstances that should have produced any other response.

Neither of them wore their usual calm expressions.

For the first time since Noah had encountered either of these beings, they were not composed. They were not calculating. They were not observing events with detachment that suggested nothing could truly threaten what they had become.

They...were definitely mad beyond measure.