Noah blinked, his eyes shining!
The Apocalypse Cause she had been pulling in during Chernobyl’s transformation, the Fourth Scale equivalent imnsity she carried, the Infinite Anomalous Source Factor that let her copy and embody what she touched.
She had been steeping in the resuscitated domain’s power and her own nature was already terrifying. A pout and a swing of her hand had thrown a Fourth Scale Relictus miles!
She had done it the way a toddler knocked over a cup, without calculation, purely as a reflex of displeasure!
The other Relictus around her raised their heads in shock, staring at the small girl who had just casually hurled one of their own across the landscape, and Seo-yeon stared right back at the one she had thrown, her little face fierce, daring it to try startling her again.
Sir William looked between Noah and Seo-yeon, and sothing in his composed features suggested he had just recognized that the little girl was going to be a source of complications wherever she went.
He turned to the three other Source Lifeforms who had arrived with them.
"Go ahead and debrief," he said. "I will handle the ceremony."
...!
The three departed toward the mountain, and Sir William turned back to Noah, glancing once more at Seo-yeon, who was now staring down the Relictus that had raised its head in startled shock, her hands on her hips, every bit of her small fra communicating that she would do it again.
"Why... don’t we go directly to THE Saint Source Palace for your ceremony," Sir William said. "Rather than walk the full distance and risk further incidents along the way."
His glance toward Seo-yeon made the reasoning clear. "I will teleport us directly there. You will get the chance to explore afterwards"
Noah smiled and nodded.
He reached out and Seo-yeon floated back to him, settling against his side, still casting a final fierce look at the Relictus. Sir William grasped his sword, and a brief obsidian light covered the three of them, and they disappeared from the grasslands.
---
They appeared inside a grand castle located deeper within THE Hallowed Desne.
The hall they arrived in was vast, its ceiling lost sowhere far above, and it was lined along both walls with regalia. Suits of knightly armor stood in rows, each one distinct, each one carrying the weight of having belonged to soone.
Swords hung mounted between them, and weapons of every description, hamrs and spears and bows and flails and armants Noah had no na for currently, each one an Armant of a Sword of Existence, displayed with the reverence of relics.
The whole hall felt saturated with history and complexity, the accumulated record of an order that had existed long enough to fill a space this size with the tools of beings who had served it.
Ahead, three massive statues sat on thrones, vast figures Noah did not yet recognize, their faces carrying the stern grandeur of beings morialized for things the hall did not explain.
And before the statues stood a Source Lifeform.
She stood tall and graceful, holding a radiant obsidian sword with its tip pointed down toward the floor, both hands resting on its poml. She was adorned in tallic armor that covered her entire body except her head, the armor obsidian and gold and worked with a craftsmanship that made the displayed regalia around the hall look ordinary by comparison.
Her bearing was the bearing of a being who had stood exactly this way for a very long ti and would continue to stand this way for a very long ti more.
Noah gazed at her, and looked into her obsidian eyes.
His existence buzzed with danger instantly.
It was not a threat she was making. She stood perfectly still, sword pointed down, simply present. But her power pressed against his perception with a suffocating weight that he felt in his foundations, a pressure that his existence recognized as belonging to sothing far beyond what he had yet faced, sothing that made the gathered Magna Sorora and the Fourth Scale Ragnars of Chernobyl feel like a lower category of concern.
|Source Lifeform- assessnt.|
|Designation: Da Seraphine, THE Knighting Sword.|
|Standing: Vakochev’s Fifth Scale of Existence. THE sozoic Scale.|
|Distinction: A Sword of Existence charged with the knighting of new Swords. She administers the Oath and confers the official standing upon those who have proven worthy. She has knighted Swords across an imnse span of the order’s history. Her authority in this matter is absolute, and her judgnt of a candidate is final.|
|Note: She is beyond the Fourth Scale. THE Triassic Scale is where beings beco truly powerful. THE sozoic Scale is not yet defined. Direct conflict with this being is not advisable under any current circumstance.|
THE sozoic Scale. THE Fifth!
Noah held the assessnt with the cold composure he held everything, but inwardly he marked it carefully. He had just begun to feel that weak Fourth Scale entities were manageable, that he could wound a Relictus like Calypso.
And here was a being a full Scale beyond that, standing in a hall as the one who administered Oaths, treated as functionary rather than pinnacle. If a sozoic Scale being was the one who handled knightings, then THE Queen Regnant, THE Origin Sword, the being all of this answered to, was sothing even further beyond.
Sir William bowed with deep respect toward Da Seraphine.
Even Seo-yeon hid behind Noah, peering out from behind his leg with astonishnt, her earlier fierceness entirely gone in the presence of a being whose pressure her instincts correctly read as sothing not to provoke.
Da Seraphine raised her sword slightly, and spoke, her voice booming through the vast hall.
"A new Sword has passed the trials and arrived before ," she said. "Are you ready to take your Oath?"
...!
Sir William stepped forward.
"Your Grace," he said, "this is the Trial Sword whose details I sent a short while ago. Alongside his capabilities, and an account of what occurred within Chernobyl." He inclined his head. "I sponsored him. I stand by the sponsorship. What he demonstrated exceeds what any standard trial asures, and I believe he warrants your direct attention rather than the usual proceeding."
...!
Da Seraphine’s obsidian eyes shifted to Noah fully, and as the details Sir William referenced settled into her understanding, they lit with genuine interest.
She was quiet for a mont, studying the man before her. The silent Infinity that could not be seen through. THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian still radiating faintly from his fra others wouldn’t know of. The little girl hiding behind his leg who carried both THE Primordial Source and Infinity. The account of a Terminal Observable Existence rebuilt by his hands.
"Interesting," she said. "Very interesting."
She raised her radiant obsidian sword from where its tip had rested against the floor, the motion smooth and deliberate, the suffocating pressure of a sozoic Scale being shifting through the hall as she did.
"Okay," she said. "Then we shall give him the special treatnt."
...!
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