Chapter 5883: Existence is Murky!

Noah’s Dream poured out of THE Legacy of THE Acharya rapidly, and it moved faster than it ever had.

Before Shinjitsu, his Dream had swapped existence out one piece at a time, and every new piece only copied the shape of the old one. Now his truth ran through every part of the Dream at once, so each piece changed completely the moment his Dream reached it. One Dimension took a heartbeat. Then ten took a heartbeat. Then a hundred!

It worked the same way every time. His Dream reached a piece of existence, and that piece became his Dream. It looked the same and it acted the same, but it was his now, through and through, and nothing of the old existence was left inside.

He crossed the edge of the Acharya’s lands and spread into the Undefined Gaps, the empty places between Dimensions where nothing had ever been given a shape. Great channels of Existential Conduits ran through the Gaps in every direction, carrying the weight of existence from place to place.

Noah took hold of them one by one and turned them, so that they ran through his Dream and carried his Dream along with them. The empty space around each Conduit became part of his Dream as it passed, and the heavy snow falling over everything began to fall because he had always dreamed it falling.

He smiled the whole time, because it felt like running downhill with the wind in his face!

Thousands of Dimensions later, he had stopped noticing the wind.

Countless Conduits turned easily now, one after another, and Noah watched them turn. A Dimension with billions of people in it changed from old existence into his Dream between one breath and the next, and every person in it kept living and none of them knew. He counted them and moved on. From up here a Legacy looked about the size of a coin, a Dimension looked like a grain of sand, and the Gaps looked like one long quiet field waiting to be filled.

It was interesting, really. It was only a matter of reaching the end of the field.

His three Infinities had grown on their own while he worked.

Noah blinked as he sensed the Infinities through him as they felt...

"When...did they get that big?"

He looked back at the last Dimension full of people, and he realized that he had felt nothing at all while he changed it, not warmth or worry or even curiosity. He had been looking down from so far up that it had stopped looking like people.

They looked like...ants.

That bothered him less than it should have, and that bothered him more than anything!

New prompts bloomed across his sight, slow and steady.

|Your Dream is replacing existence faster than your Shinjitsu can fill it.|

|Assimilation Rate: 0.2%.|

|Most of what your Dream has replaced is new and thin. It is not yet truly yours.|

|Warning: The higher you look from, the less you feel of what is below.|

|Your Infinities are growing too fast. A mind made of Infinity can forget how big one person is.|

|What you are doing is not a human thing to do. It does not have to make you less human.|

|Your humanity must be kept in balance and renewed while you expand.|

|Your Shinjitsu needs time to settle into everything you replace. If you spread faster than it can settle, your Dream will grow thin.|

|Stop now, and the settling will begin.|

Noah stopped!

He felt how far he had come! Behind him lay more existence than he had ever covered, and every bit of it was his Dream. He breathed in slowly as all of the surrounding existence breathed.

He had done so much, so fast, in so little time that it almost looked like running. The hunters of Provenance were coming from one side, the Keepers were watching from another, and the Curator still held its seat next door. His Kin were growing toward Established faster than anyone would believe, and he was the one pushing everything along fastest.

But nothing said he had to keep going so fast right now. He could stop and make sure everything held before he took another step!

He had to make sure everything was stable!

When he thought about it, he smiled, and he entered a Dream.

It opened like a door, and he stepped out onto a vast shore.

Green and gold farms rolled back from the water in wide squares, with fishing spots dotted along the edge, little wooden docks and a few small boats rocking in the shallows. The sun was warm, and somewhere a bird kept calling the same three notes.

His night-sky skin began to flake off like dry leaves. Blue-gold flakes drifted away on the breeze, and then his horns of light, and then the frost on his jaw, until a plain human body stood on the sand, fair and a little thin. White robes wrapped around him as if they had been waiting for him all along.

He walked toward a bright horizon, barefoot on the warm path, and far ahead on a dock he could see two people, one holding a fishing pole and one laughing.

His mother, and Seo-yeon!

---

<Vastness>

Far from that quiet shore, in a place no dream had touched yet, something enormous was walking.

It was a titan! Seas of power poured down its shoulders and ran off its arms like water off a cliff, and heavy white snow fell from it endlessly. Dead Dimensions drifted around it like ash, and live ones turned slowly beside them, millions, and when it moved, all of existence around it seemed to move too, as if it carried the whole space along with it.

Its face was hazy, like a face seen through steam, and it looked around slowly.

It felt a change!

|"Existence is already so murky, with so many trying to grasp it,"| the titan said, and its voice rolled across the dark like thunder. |"And now another has begun laying their claim too?"|

It was quiet for a moment.

|"Hmm. No. No. Things don’t need to become any messier."|

BOOM!

The titan rose to its full height, and as it rose, the ground of that whole region rose with it. Dimensions lifted, snow lifted, even the space lifted, as if existence itself in that place was standing up from a long sleep!

And this being raised his hand...and slapped out!