Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5420: Tides of Quintessential Change! III

He had a lot to do, so he set off to do all of it.

|You are beginning to refine your Intent. Within THE Effluvium Sanctum’s lethal ambient pressure, your identity is being tested against a forge calibrated to push beings toward the Fifth Scale, and your Intent ebbs and flows as it sheds its last imprecisions.|

|THE Estuary Eye is drawing in the unique qualities of this place. The Pure Primordial Essence, THE Primordial Source threaded through the Source Herbs, the dense ambient Intent itself, all of it bleeds into you at flood capacity, aligned and claimed the instant it crosses into your existence.|

|Your Osmontian Source Infinity continues to grow denser and more concentrated. An official methodology and quantification for it is underway. Until now you have wielded the fused authority by instinct and identity. A formal structure for measuring and advancing it is being established within you, which will let you progress it deliberately rather than only by becoming.|

In THE Effluvium Sanctum, Noah’s Intent began to ebb and flow, settling and sharpening, and the Dora Shath’yar watched from a distance, nine Olympian-grade Daughters keeping a wary guard over a seated being who had made even THE Creature reevaluate.

And Noah kept it low. He did not flare the Egoic Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian out into the open the way he had for the greeting. He did not need to, so he did not, letting it run quiet and contained beneath the surface of him while he worked.

He could keep it low-key.

He could absolutely keep it low-key!

He closed his eyes.

He sat in the storm of his own blue flame, the lethal pressure of the Sanctum pressing on him from every direction, and he let the body there sink into stillness. Then, across an unfathomable distance, in another body entirely, he opened them again.

---

He opened them in THE Braneworld Observable Existence, above a ruined Gilded Citadel, one hand still clamped around the broken neck of Ubergulden Dietrich. And he rose. He lifted that body up off the carnage and the silver tide of feeding Dredges, up toward the gold sky and the Mesozoic Scale Ealdor Gilded One descending out of it with a Titan-rarity Custos at his side.

As he rose, billowing waves of cerulean gushed off him, and the Ealdor Gilded One frowned. Whatever the Fifth Scale being had expected to find waiting in the ruins, it had not been this, and his own Intent and power began to flare out in answer, the gold of his Olympian record deepening across the heavens.

And at that moment, Noah felt something settle over him like a trance.

Through his Osmontian Source Infinity, threaded as it was through every one of his bodies and rooted in the Infinite Cause that had birthed his entire Observable Existence, he found himself observing. Not one front. All of them. Information flowed into him from across the whole of THE Braneworld at once, every place his war was burning, and he felt that he could experience this entire significant moment in the Observable Existence’s history simultaneously, a single pivotal day witnessed from every angle that mattered. His existence buzzed with it. And the component of THE Protagonist woven into his Intent burned a little brighter, the way it always did at the grand turns, and around him a symphony began to bloom.

The beat was heavy, and grand, and it established itself in his perception and then stretched outward across the region and beyond.

DUM! DUM! DUM!

|Your existence has entered a unique position. You are observing the flow of information across an event that will likely reshape THE First Cause of this significant Observable Existence. THE Braneworld is no small thing. It gave birth to you, and to a great many other monstrous beings, from its Origin. An Observable Existence that produces what it has produced does not change hands quietly.|

|Your existence is choosing to interpret and experience this event in its own way. You will observe all of the pivotal happenings at once, simultaneously, while a Quintessential beat and melody bloom across your perception, composed by your existence for this event alone. Consider it the privilege of the one whose Cause underwrites the day. Witness it as you like.|

...!

Noah smiled lightly at the shenanigans of THE Protagonist concept, and he nodded.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s get started."

HUUM!

And as soon as he said it, the symphony rose, and Ruination’s voice carried the melody through him, low and steady over the heavy beat, a song only he could hear.

|I built a thing from nothing in the dark.

I learned the only lesson that they taught.

That every hand that feeds you wants you caught,

and every crown is heavier than it looks.

I am not what I was, I am not the same.

I burned the boy to forge the colder name.

And every choice I made, I made awake,

and every life I took, I chose to take.|

His vision buzzed as he saw one record, extremely far away.

---

Above the first Citadel, Alexander floated.

THE Peacemaker hung in the high dark over a sprawling Gilded seat, his calm gaze sweeping the golden towers below. He pressed a button.

WAA!

Thousands of Osmontian Ordnances fell out of the sky!

They dropped in a slow terrible rain, and where they landed the Citadel ceased, the proud golden architecture vanishing under blooming detonations, mushroom clouds rising one after another across the whole of the seat until the towers were gone and the halls were gone and the Gilded Ones who had ruled from them were gone, the entire Citadel reduced to fallout beneath a being who pressed a button and did not look away from what the button did.

As he watched this, Noah heard the grand symphony continuing!

DUM! DUM! DUM!

|They told me that the strong were always cruel,

and that the kind ones only made good fuel.

So I became the thing they made me fear,

and now they kneel and wonder how I’m here.

It doesn’t change. The hunger doesn’t end.

You cannot buy a tyrant for a friend.

And every day they thought would stay the same

Is burning now. It’s burning. Let it change. Let it change!|