Greed, so beings whisper, is a poison of the soul.
A corrosive force that inevitably leads to ruin!
They preach that to be greedy is to invite downfall, to be bitten by the very snake you sought to charm.
But sotis, in the grand, unfair weavings of existence, the real poison isn't greed, but a lack of it.
Sotis, to succeed, to survive, one must be overwhelmingly, unapologetically, titanically greedy!
Consider the cautionary tale of the devilish Young Master of the Azure Cloud Sect, a being blessed with talent, resources, and an arrogance that could curdle stars.
He discovers a transmigrated protagonist, a soul from another world whose unassuming form hides a destiny of impossible glory.
The Young Master, in a fit of calculated avarice, acts!
He ambushes the protagonist, beats him to within an inch of his existence, and steals the celestial bone fragnt embedded in his chest…a treasure of unimaginable potential.
He then leaves the protagonist for dead, content with his prize. This, he thinks, is a masterstroke of cunning and greed.
But three years later, the protagonist returns, his power magnified by rage and the convenient discovery of an ancient master's inheritance in the very chasm he was thrown into.
He is a walking apocalypse, and he unleashes his vengeance! The Young Master is decimated. His entire sect is annihilated. The slumbering ancestors are woken from their eons-long naps just to be killed again.
It is a tragedy born from greed.
Or was it?
No. It was a tragedy born from insufficient greed!
If that devilish Young Master had been truly, profoundly greedy, he wouldn't have just stolen the bone fragnt.
He would have seen the protagonist not as a source of a single treasure, but as a treasure in his entirety.
He would have been greedy enough to refine the protagonist's entire body, destiny and all, into a single, glorious pill.
Thoroughness, born from the deepest avarice, would have saved him. Sotis, greed is not just required. It is the only path to salvation.
—
At this mont, in the shattered heart of what was once Aeternitas Concordia, Noah was expressing an overabundance of that very necessary greed.
He stood as a nexus of consumption, a tyrant of opportunity, using every tool, every ally, every impossible advantage at his disposal to turn this apocalypse into his personal harvest!
Khor, a being of primordial hunger, was a terrifying force of nature unleashed.
She floated with a serene, almost bored expression, her tiny form a stark contrast to the scale of her actions.
Every now and then, she would tap a delicate finger into the air.
TAP.
And a Dead Existence, a being of 77 Trillion, or 200 Trillion, or even 300 Trillion in Complexity, would simply… crumple.
Space would fold around it like a discarded napkin, and it would appear, bound and broken, at their feet.
For her, the nurical difference seed irrelevant. With a single, casual tap, she treated them all the sa.
Noah watched her, his own power a raging inferno, yet he could barely sense the fluctuations of her authority.
How much had she poured into her Heart to be capable of this? How much of her Everything did it contain?
She was a whisper of her forr self, a fragnt of the entity that had once made THE Living Existences cautious.
And yet, even this fragnt could play with Dukes like a child playing with toys.
As if sensing his thoughts, Khor turned to him, another 300 Trillion Complexity Dead Existence appearing at her feet as she did.
"My level of power may seem like a grand ideal to aspire to, but even this is but a speck. There was boundless more compared to this, and yet THE Living Paradox collapsed it. So… there is a long way to go, Outsider."
She offered him a smile that was both a comfort and a terrifying benchmark. "But you… you are proceeding adequately."
Adequately.
The word echoed in Noah's mind. He looked down at himself. The bloody purple flas of his Haki danced across his skin, a royal conflagration of Tyranny and Quintessence.
Illusory markers floated above his head- the obsidian jaws of Hunger, the flaming skull of Death, the radiant throne of his own authority.
He looked like a devilish demon king, an emperor of endings, a being born from a beautiful, terrible nightmare!
His existence felt grand, an symphony of power playing in every cell.
In the distance, Ra'Zan and Ozymandias were finishing their feast, devouring the complexities of the delivered Dead before Ra'Zan, with a cackle of pure necrotic joy, began using their husks to summon new, loyal Dead Existences to their Legion.
And every few seconds, as the feast continued…
|You are exerting trendous effort to command a Legion and coordinate a battlefield. This effort has been amplified.|
|Through the devoured Complexity from your Legion, your own has increased by 5 Trillion…|
|Harvest continues. Complexity increased by 10 Trillion…|
|The feast is endless. Complexity increased by 15 Trillion…|
Prompt after prompt flashed before him, each one a testant to his surging might.
His Complexity was a rising tide, threatening to drown all previous limitations. And every single point of this newfound power, every drop of this torrential flood, he was pouring directly into a single vessel!
|All incoming Complexity is being fed directly into your Heart of Tyranny.|
|All incoming Purity is being fed directly into your Heart of Tyranny.|
|Your Heart is… pleased. It is also growing terrifyingly dense.|
…!
He was proceeding adequately?
His eyes, burning with the light of celestial purple suns, turned sharp. While the mad laughter of Nysteria echoed in the distance as she clashed with that radiant, fat turtle, Noah looked at Khor. "Okay," he said, his voice a low, dangerous calm.
"So so of us are trying to escape inadequacy. Apart from Complexity and Purity… how would one give their Everything, or portions of their Everything, to their Heart if they aren't an Inevitability? If they have no experience in the manipulation of Everythings?"
WAA!
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