Chapter 526: Exploration I
Brilliant blue-purple brilliance erupted around Thalsian’s form as transformation reached completion.
The light wasn’t emanating from external sources but radiating from his being itself, as if he’d beco partially composed of condensed authority that couldn’t be fully contained within conventional flesh.
He was being reborn in the Level Zero Scale of Existence.
Pre-Civilizational!
His existence pulsed with profound power that made his previous peak outputs seem like preliminary exercises.
He could feel the difference in every aspect of his being!
Just how strong had he beco? How imnse was this elevation compared to where he’d operated before?
When Thalsian opened his eyes, truly opened them with perception elevated beyond anything he’d possessed monts earlier, his gaze imdiately locked onto his grandson who floated before him.
The boundless power Thalsian felt coursing through his transford existence…the trendous capability that made him feel invincible…
It felt like a pool of water compared to the silent power his grandson emanated.
Achilles wasn’t actively displaying his capability, wasn’t manifesting authority or demonstrating strength through overt gestures.
He simply existed, and his re presence and reserves made Thalsian’s newfound ocean of power seem like a modest reservoir by comparison.
The disparity was staggering…enough to make Thalsian question whether they truly operated at the sa scale, or whether his grandson had sohow advanced even further beyond the threshold in this short period of ti.
Thalsian shook his head with mixture of disbelief and genuine amusent.
“Yeah, I’m feeling good,” he confird, his consciousness still adapting to capabilities that felt simultaneously natural and impossibly advanced.
“The Sixth can have his Limitations broken next!”
Internally, Thalsian laughed with joyful satisfaction as at this mont, he had the recognition that their lineage, which had been scattered and nearly exterminated across millennia, had finally produced sothing unfathomably monstrous.
So monstrous that…he could only make a silent prayer for the enemies who would be unlucky enough to stand against his grandson!
—
In the vastness of the Void, a singular figure moved with purpose.
While his family and all those sheltered within the expanding Sea of Thalassara remained absolutely safe, Achilles was conducting other activities beyond their sanctuary’s boundaries.
Currently, he maintained a body in the state of One With The Void as he floated calmly across emptiness that should have been impassable, inhospitable, and fundantally hostile to existence that required structure and coherence to maintain itself.
But he had assimilated The Void itself.
That singular achievent rendered him no different from any component of this vast nothingness…he was the emptiness through which he traveled, identical in fundantal nature to the darkness surrounding him!
The distinction between Achilles and environnt had beco absolutely nothing!
He moved freely across the Void with the ease.
He loved isolation…the peace it granted, the freedom from constant vigilance it permitted, the opportunity to simply exist!
He was living in isolation now.
But to ensure nothing unexpected occurred, to maintain the security that permitted such peace, he had to continue advancing with rapidity.
His ideology at this mont was straightforward in its elegance…continue an easy life of isolation while floating across the Void, avoid territories where the Nar’Thyss maintained significant presence, and navigate toward the edges of regions where the Foldless Ones were believed to reside.
Exploration rather than conquest.
Information gathering that would inform future decisions without committing to actions that might trigger cascading consequences.
So he floated across the Void, and he was no different from it.
He could sense everything within a distance of several Gigaparsecs around his position..
a sphere of awareness so vast that stellar clusters would be considered minor features within its boundaries.
Anything swimming in the Void, any entity traversing this emptiness whether through capability or desperation, would register in his perception.
On the first day he floated across the Void, maintaining his exploration with patient focus…
He sensed and ca across…nothing.
Absolute emptiness in every direction his consciousness examined.
No entities, no structures, no phenona beyond the baseline nothingness that comprised the Void’s fundantal nature.
Not even a Star Sea.
That was how vast this emptiness truly was!
On the second day, as he continued his patient navigation toward destinations still imasurably distant…
His existence ca to sudden attention as his expanded perception registered sothing foreign within the sphere of his awareness.
He had co across a…creature.
A creature swimming across the Void with purpose.
The being appeared as radiant obsidian blue sli…a gelatinous mass that sohow maintained coherence despite the Void’s tendency to dissolve structures lacking sufficient existential weight.
But calling it rely a sli failed to capture the terrible majesty of its full manifestation.
Obsidian tentacles surrounded its central mass in quantities that defied easy counting…dozens or perhaps hundreds of appendages that moved with coordinated purpose, each one capable of independent action while contributing to unified behavior.
The creature resembled a Chthonic horror pulled from nightmares, sothing that should have remained buried in darkness rather than swimming freely through the Void with casual ease.
And on the back of this already disturbing entity, obsidian wings spread with span that would have dwarfed small moons.
Most disturbingly, embedded within those wings were two massive crimson eyes!
Achilles analyzed this creature with clinical precision.
The entity seed to operate at the Level Zero Scale of Existence.
Potentially very dangerous if provoked or if its interests conflicted with his.
But critically, it sensed nothing about him.
Despite those massive crimson eyes sweeping across the exact region where he floated, despite tentacles that should have detected disturbances in the Void’s consistency, despite whatever other sensory capabilities it possessed…
The creature registered no awareness of his presence.
Because he was the fucking Void!
Achilles did nothing.
Made no movent, manifested no power, took no action that might draw attention or reveal his presence.
He maintained his isolation as the goal this ti remained exclusively information gathering rather than engagent or acquisition.
He possessed extensive knowledge about Fables…about how narratives unfolded when specific choices were made, how seemingly minor actions could cascade into major consequences.
He understood with uncomfortable clarity that if he randomly moved to attack this creature he didn’t know, to attempt assimilating it simply because opportunity presented itself…
Before he realized what was happening, he would find himself embroiled in a Fable where the creature’s Lineage suddenly began searching for him with resources he couldn’t easily counter.
Its family and ancestors would all mobilize to locate whoever had eliminated their kin, pursuing vengeance with the kind of single-minded determination that made retreat or negotiation impossible.
Or this creature could be a powerful Disciple of so terrifying Entity operating at the Level Zero Scale of Existence…a student whose death would draw the attention of a master far more capable than Achilles could currently handle.
There were countless ways a Fable could unfold once he participated in its opening monts!
But so long as he didn’t move to participate, so long as he remained perfectly isolated from events occurring around him…
None of those potential Fables would manifest. The creature would pass by, continue its journey to whatever destination it sought, and he would remain unknown, unnoticed, free to continue his exploration without complications.
And so he continued moving across the Void after the creature had passed beyond his sphere of awareness, maintaining his role as Explorer noting the intricacies of existence rather than Conqueror attempting to claim everything he encountered.
If he truly found an existence or treasure that his consciousness felt an unsurpassable need to assimilate…if he ca across sothing so valuable that the potential gains outweighed all considerations of prudence, he would carefully gauge the potential consequences of embroiling himself in conflict before taking any action.
But until that mont arrived, until he discovered sothing genuinely irreplaceable…
He would maintain perfect isolation and observe without interfering!
Like this, he crossed the Void with one body while others remained in the Sea of Thalassara attending to different priorities.
He floated toward the direction where Foldless Ones were believed to reside, his navigation inford by mories he’d assimilated from defeated Nar’Thyss.
Days passed in patient exploration.
And Achilles continued his lonely vigil across emptiness, an Explorer docunting existence’s hidden territories while maintaining the isolation that kept his sanctuary safe from attention they couldn’t yet survive!
1/1 Onward!
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