Noah almost sighed at the ominous encouragent as he continued calmly. "I hope so too. The three destinations that are possible are...The Hunger morial, The Breeding Grounds of the First, and THE Living Emotion’s Garden of Feeling."
Khor’s eyes widened dramatically. She blinked several tis, as if confirming she had heard correctly.
"The Hunger morial... The Breeding Grounds... THE Living Emotion’s Garden..." She repeated each na with increasing disbelief. "If any of those places match what I rember, you will die in each of them. The only question is how quickly."
BOOM!
Noah waited for her to elaborate.
Because an elaboration was fucking needed after such words!
"The Hunger morial is where Inevitabilities go to mourn what they can never have...satisfaction. Being there while not fully inevitable yourself would be like bleeding in waters full of sharks who haven’t eaten since before ti was invented."
She shook her head at the second option.
"The Breeding Grounds of the First is where Early Creatures discovered themselves. It was wild. Archaic. Primal. The process was... violent. Experintal. Often fatal for all parties involved. Even I avoided that place when it was active."
Her expression grew oddly wistful at the third.
"And THE Living Emotion’s Garden seems beautiful, peaceful even. But it’s where pure emotions exist without filters or controls. You could die of joy there. Literally experience so much happiness your existence forgets to continue. Or sorrow so profound you retroactively never existed. But well, an Inevitability like your other self would survive there just fine."
She looked at him with sothing approaching concern.
"Each destination offers unique ways to cease existing, Outsider. Are you certain you want to risk any of them?"
The question hung in the air between them, carrying weight that transcended simple concern for his safety.
This was about whether his ambition had finally exceeded his capability to survive it!
All three possible destinations were deed equally dangerous, each offering unique flavors of cessation.
Noah’s gaze beca stern as he processed the implications, but his resolve remained unshaken. He would go through with it.
After all, he was without Fear or Doubt...those Everythings had been carved away from his existence.
And he had made this sa choice a day ago when he first ventured into the Earliest Folds. Everything that had occurred there had led to this mont, this accumulation of power and possibility.
Khor observed his expression with the particular understanding of soone who had seen such determination before.
She sighed wistfully, the sound carrying eons of mory, and tapped her finger in the air. An obsidian light shot from her fingertip, curling through space to settle in his ear like an ethereal earpiece.
"Since I found you by your loneso back then, you shouldn’t be able to take others with you..." she explained, her tone deceptively casual. "So all I’ll do is leave you a shred of my consciousness as it should be able to traverse with you. It won’t be able to act or interfere, just an accessory in your ear that can observe nearby surroundings and talk."
She turned her attention back to reshaping the Shore, as if its architecture was suddenly more important than his potential death.
"Maybe my knowledge will help ensure you don’t die too quickly, Outsider."
The nonchalance of her delivery couldn’t hide what she was doing...going above and beyond to ensure his survival while pretending it was rely convenient.
Noah smiled at the personality of this unique entity he still couldn’t fully understand. The weight of her authority settled in his ear, a presence that was simultaneously there and not there, like rembering a whisper.
A Temporal Traversal into the Earliest Folds, where only an instant or seconds would pass in the current age while he experienced hours or days in the past.
For soone who needed ti more than anything else, who could accomplish ridiculous things in short periods, this was invaluable.
He closed his eyes and connected to his Early Atlas of the Folds, feeling its eagerness to bridge impossible distances once more.
"Let’s go. Initiate Temporal Traversal."
HUUM!
Reality imdiately responded.
|CRITICAL TRAVERSAL INITIATING|
|Second Journey to the Earliest Folds|
|Destination Selection: Random|
|Rolling the dice...|
|Extre Caution Required|
|Enhanced Paraters Due to Increased Complexity:|
- Ti limit extended to 24 hours (previously 1 hour)
- Both bodies (Noah and Ozymandias) will traverse together
- Stability increased by 300% from previous journey
- Death still results in complete existential extinction
|Destination Selected: The Breeding Grounds of the First|
|...|
|Oh no.|
|Do you wish to proceed? This action cannot be undone|
...!
Noah’s eyes flashed with a light of Tyranny!
His gaze remained even moreso as he bellowed within his existence...Proceed!
WAA!
Noah’s confirmation rang through existence with practiced certainty.
His entire being began to buzz with frequencies that had beco familiar yet remained impossible.
The sensation of folding through ti started in his Existences, both his primary existence and Ozymandias resonating in harmony.
WAP!
Both bodies folded in on themselves simultaneously, reality accepting that its rules were more like suggestions.
The spaces where they had been showed no evidence of their presence, as if they had been edited out of the present to be pasted into the past.
|Transference initiated to: The Breeding Grounds of the First|
|Duration of traversal: Experiencing all of ti and none of it|
|Probability of survival: You really don’t want to know. But you defied the odds before so...maybe?|
|Note: At least it’s not THE Living Emotion’s Garden|
BOOM!
The journey felt different this ti.
Where his first traversal had been chaotic, desperate, held together by will and luck, this passage was steadier.
His Towers of Osmont blazed like lighthouses through temporal fog, each one a beacon keeping his existence oriented. The hundred towers that had reached the Second Stage created a constellation of guidance through the nothing between monts.
His increased complexity made the journey almost comfortable...if comfort could apply to being stretched across eons and cycles of an unknown number of years.
He felt years pass in heartbeats, experienced the weight of ages in blinks, but his consciousness remained coherent, observing rather than rely surviving!
The Goad materialized in his primary body’s grip while Ozymandias’s tentacles instinctively reached through dinsions, both forms using their nature to navigate.
The journey that had felt like it nearly torn him apart before now felt like swimming upstream through thick water...difficult but manageable.
|Existential Integrity: 99%... 98%... 97%...|
|Stabilizing factors enhanced:|
- Dual-Existence resonance: 25% stability
- Elevated Stages of Towers, Glyphs of the Seed of the Principle of Perpetual Harvest: 40% stability
- Previous experience: 20% stability
- Khor’s consciousness fragnt: 5% stability
|Final Integrity: 96%|
|Traversal optimal|
|Your existence has adapted rather remarkably|
...!
After eternities that lasted seconds, or perhaps seconds that contained eternities, reality reasserted itself with particular violence.
WAP!
They arrived.
BOOM!
The sensation of arrival hit both bodies simultaneously. Every atom of their beings began drinking in the raw Early Existential Authority that saturated this place.
But sothing was different from his previous destination. Where the unnad location had been wild, untad possibility, this place felt... intentional.
Glorious.
Unfathomable!
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