It fucking worked?
Noah's eyes shone with brilliance as he watched the impossible unfold before him.
It was a long shot, a gamble based on a split-second analysis through the Lens of Civilization. He had looked at Aethon and peeled back the layers of magma and storm to see the core truth of the entity, and what he found was simple and profound. Aethon cared for his people more than his pride.
Was this the first enemy that was actually reasonable?
Noah watched the blue-gold snowflakes settle on the skin of the Elental Legion like blessings descending from an alien heaven. He watched them close their eyes in reverence. He watched them pay their respects to his Primus Mana, to the Civilizational Authority of Mana and Hunger that wore the mask of Elental supremacy with such perfect conviction.
The mont they accepted, his existence lurched.
It wasn't a stumble or a misstep but an expansion, as if the boundaries of his being had suddenly grown to encompass territory that had never belonged to him before.
He felt a profound sense of imnsity wash over him, a validation that vibrated in his very marrow and sang through his bones. He had made the right choice!
In all things, Noah debated the angles and calculated the trade-offs. Every action was a transaction with Existence. To spare Aethon was to forsake the imdiate loot of tens of thousands of Sextillion-level entities, to leave a harvest un-reaped in the traditional sense of conquest and consumption.
But as the imnsity settled into his bones and spread through his consciousness, he knew the trade was not just fair.
It was a magisterial robbery.
Because the prompts that blood before his vision were not of simple experience or loot, not the mundane accumulation of power through violence.
They were of Glory.
JUNFATHOMABLE ACTION CONFIRD
You have embarked further upon your Way of Existence.
You have actively utilized the Unique Quality of The Way of Mana.]
Analysis: Mana is present and pervasive. It is the basal authority, the fundantal building block of countless weavings. No fire burns, no ice freezes, no earth hardens without the catalyst of Mana.
By proving your Mana is the supre form of their authority, you have initiated:
THE CIVILIZATIONAL ENCROACHNT OF MANA
Target: The Primordial Civilization of Elental.]
Status: You have laid claim to the foundations of this Civilization.
The number of entities paying respect is small relative to the whole, but their acknowledgnt represents a conceptual breach. You have opened a pathway to siphon the imnsity and harvest of a Primordial Civilization directly.|
****
Noah read the words and his eyes blazed with concentrated intensity.
Around him, the blue-gold snowstorm beca maddeningly serious in its purpose. It spun faster, the flakes growing heavy with accumulated authority, turning the battlefield into a domain of absolute Mana Supremacy.
He felt it then, a terrifying influx of harvest crashing down toward his existence like the endless waves of a celestial sea threatening to drown him in power.
Quintessential Harvest Descends.
Source: Civilizational Encroachnt]
Target: Primordial Civilization of Elental
The harvest of the laid claim has begun. The concentration of this authority exceeds all prior harvests.
The foundation of the Elental Civilization stretches far outside
THE Loom and expresses itself even more imnsely within it. You
are siphoning from the totality.
Under your Primordial Civilization of Mana and Hunger, a new feature has risen- The Derivative Civilizations of Mana and Hunger|
You can now enact: The Derivative Civilization of Elental under the Brilliance of Mana.
...!
Holy shit.
What?
Noah's mind raced as he processed the implications cascading through his understanding.
A Derivative Civilization?
He thought that power belonged solely to THE Creature, that only THE Primordial Civilization of Existence could spawn derivatives like The Way of Idle Existence or The Civilization of Effort. These were privileges reserved for the absolute pinnacle of existential authority. But now... his own Civilization could do it?
Because Mana is fundantal. Because Mana is everywhere. Because he proved his Primus Mana can beco any Elent!
Oh!
He felt the harvest slamming into the Architect's Bulwarks with the force of continental collision. The walls of his civilization were
growing thicker and taller and more absolute with each passing mont. He was eating the foundation of a rival Primordial power and using it to pave his own streets, to build his own monunts, to fuel his own ascension!
It was a mont of profound and glorious change. It was a victory that would be marked in the annals of history! Well, however short
that history would be.
But choices always have reactions.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, whether intended or
not, whether welcod or feared.
Noah had reached out and touched the foundation of a Primordial
Civilization with grasping fingers. He had grabbed a pillar of the establishnt and shaken it with the audacity of a thief in the night.
And the owner of that house, of course, noticed.
It was akin to opening the doors of a bedroom and taking another's
wife right there...of course they would see you do it!
"You Sacrilegious Fucking Savage."
BOOM!
The voice was deep and terrifying and absolute. It did not co from
the air or from any physical source but from the atoms themselves,
vibrating with fury.
"How dare you?"
...!
Everything froze in that instant.
The snow stopped falling mid-descent. The wind stopped howling as
if cut by an invisible blade.
Existence itself trembled under the weight of attention suddenly
focused on this single point in space and ti.
DUM. DUM. DUM.
Drums began to beat with terrible rhythm. Not drums of skin and
wood but drums of frozen fire and elental voids, instrunts forged from the fundant of reality itself. A symphony began to spread across the battlefield, a rising crescendo that scread a single word across every frequency of observable existence.
ELENTAL!
ELENTAL!
ELENTAL!
Noah's eyes snapped wide open as recognition slamd into him.
He looked past Aethon and past the submitted legion kneeling in the snow. He looked to the rear, to the distant scattered mbers of the Elental Civilization who had not yet paid respect, who had remained uncommitted in their uncertainty.
Their eyes ignited with crimson-gold light.
The glow blazed from their sockets with intensity that burned away
their individuality and their choice. They were no longer independent soldiers making their own decisions but vessels, hollow containers for sothing far greater and far more terrible as their existence could not handle it and already shockingly began to lt their bodies. A terrifying consciousness was descending upon them. It was forcing its way into the fabric of the Injunction Sanctuary with brutal inevitability, tearing through the barriers of distance and dinsion as if such concepts were rely polite suggestions.
The booming voice ca from their mouths now, spoken in perfect horrifying synchrony that made the words echo and multiply across the battlefield even as their bodies broke down. This entity did not
care.
Just as THE Living Paradox had descended to protect his Vessels when Noah and Khor were about to collapse it.
THE Living Elental...was trying to descend.
Unlike the others, he was not here for a ga or a philosophical
debate. His Civilization, his very foundation, had just been encroached upon by an upstart thief. A burglar had broken into his vault and was actively stealing from the treasury, and he had co to catch the perpetrator red-handed and make an example of such audacity! Noah's gaze flashed with fierceness and lividity mixing into sothing
dangerous.
He did not cower before the descending presence. He did not
apologize or attempt to explain or beg for rcy.
He prepared. An unfathomable opportunity had opened before him like a door to
paradise.
And an equally dangerous predicant had descended to et it!
User Comments
0 comments from readers