Chapter 4147 Who Is He?! II
Chapter 4147 Who Is He?! II
Noah looked over at Duke Whisker on his shoulder, his expression showing amusement reserved for watching someone get entirely too comfortable in a situation they didn't fully understand.
"You seem to have gotten very comfortable," he observed, his voice booming with layers of meaning that Duke Whisker was only beginning to understand.
The mouse waved his little hands with the kind of dismissive gesture that would have been imperious if it werent so small.
"Come on," Duke Whisker said, his whiskers twitching with what might have been embarrassment or calculation.
"You have shared with me what you called a Mead, was it? We can be considered to be on good terms by now."
The casualness of the statement made Noah's smile deepen. He shook his head.
"Is it not due to your size that you get away with many things?" Noah asked. "Imagine if I had Gwendolyn standing on my shoulder like you are."
The image that conjured…Duke Gwendolyn perched on his shoulders…was absurd enough!
Duke Whisker blinked rapidly, and his stellar eyes turned toward the thrones of the Living Origins, finding Duke Gwendolyn seated beside multiple other Dukes.
Her gaze burned as she looked toward their section with intensity that suggested she was attempting to dissolve distance through sheer force of will.
"You're not even using the term 'Duke' with her name now?" Duke Whisker observed, his voice holding genuine curiosity mixed with something that might have been concern.
"Did the events that occurred ruin the relationship that much?"
The question buzzed in the air between them!
Noah remained calm at these words, his expression giving away nothing.
"Something like that," he said simply, the dismissal in his tone suggesting entire chapters of story that he had no intention of sharing.
"Anyways, you want to gauge my origin based on who comes here with me? Let's put that to the test."
The smile that crossed his face then was pure tyranny given form…the expression of someone about to do something that would make ordered existence frantically check its notes to see if this was actually allowed!
He raised his hand with certainty, pulling upon the authority of the Early Veiled Shore to transport someone across the weavings of Existence itself!
The gesture was simple, almost negligent, but the power it commanded made local spacetime seriously consider early retirement.
A flash of obsidian brilliance erupted in the space before them, darkness that somehow illuminated rather than obscured.
Reality seemed to hiccup, flickering from light to darkness momentarily as if someone had turned existence off and on again to see if that would fix the problem.
WAP!
The sound was less noise and more existence acknowledging that something had arrived which probably shouldn't be here. Or anywhere. Or perhaps everywhere all at once!
The figure that materialized was small…diminutive even by normal standards, absolutely tiny compared to the grand beings filling the amphitheater.
But size, as everyone present was about to learn, had absolutely nothing to do with significance!
Khor stood there, blinking with eyes that contained depths suggesting she had seen the beginnings of beginnings and found them mildly interesting.
Her form was wrapped in obsidian robes that seemed to be made from compressed possibility, shifting between states of matter.
Her dark hair floated as if gravity was a suggestion but not particularly relevant.
She looked around with those shining eyes, taking in the grand amphitheater, the assembled powers of existence, the careful arrangements of authority and hierarchy, and her first words were…
"Outsider, is this the Folds you have prepared for me to eat?"
BOOM!
The question landed in the localized silence around them.
On Noah's shoulder, Duke Whisker's entire body went rigid, his stellar eyes widening.
A Fold? To be eaten?
The words were utterly terrifying in their casual impossibility. Folds weren't things that could be consumed!
They were fundamental structures of existence, the very framework upon which reality organized itself.
Suggesting one could eat a Fold was like…was like…!
Noah gazed at Duke Whisker, watching the mouse struggle to make sense of what he had just heard, watching assumptions about reality crumble in real-time.
Then, with the same casual tone one might use to discuss dinner plans, he turned to Khor and said.
"No, not this one. This is the little meeting that all Ten Living Existences are having to discuss an issue relating to... Dead Existences."
The words 'Dead Existences' seemed to catch Khor's attention in a way that the grand assembly hadn't.
She tilted her head with the particular angle of someone trying to remember something.
"Why would The Dead be an issue?" she asked, her gaze sweeping over the vast structure and the varieties of Living Existences with the kind of interest one might show for an ant farm.
"There is The Veil between them and The Living. THE Creature deemed it so. A few, like you've seen for yourself, can appear if made made uniquely, but there wouldn't be mass migrations to cause problems due to The Veil…"
…!
The casual mention of THE Creature sent another wave of shock through Duke Whisker.
His tiny form actually trembled on Noah's shoulder, though whether from fear or excitement at witnessing something beyond his understanding was unclear.
The words being spoken existed in a bubble of privacy, audible only to the three of them, but that somehow made them more terrifying rather than less.
Duke Whisker was facing a tremendous level of shock, each revelation hitting him like conceptual hammers made from crystallized impossibility!
Noah replied to Khor with the same conversational tone. "Recently, that Veil has seemingly been torn. The Dead have begun freely emerging into the Folds."
Khor's expression shifted to genuine surprise- the first real emotion she'd shown since arriving.
"Really? That should not be possible. The Veil made by THE Creature would always hold... well, unless THE Creature was dead."
She paused, then actually laughed, the sound like Wheels colliding in harmony. "Haha, but that guy wouldn't die. That guy CAN'T die."
HUUM!
She spoke these shocking words freely, each one containing implications that would take eons to fully unpack, before shaking her head and smiling.
Her attention shifted then, turning fully toward Noah and finally noticing the small passenger on his shoulder.
Her eyes lit up with the kind of delight usually reserved for children discovering particularly interesting toys.
She floated upwards, and her hands reached toward Duke Whisker with the inevitability of entropy itself.
"What a cute little mouse you have here," she said, her voice carrying genuine pleasure at the discovery. "Does it speak?"
…!
Her hands moved with speed that transcended speed, arriving at their destination before they had left their origin.
To Duke Whisker's absolute horror, he discovered that his authority as a Duke…that fundamental power that defined his existence at these elevated levels, simply didn't work.
It wasn't suppressed. It wasn't overwhelmed. It was simply... ignored, the way one might ignore a child's declaration that they were king of the living room.
Any resistance he might have mounted was devoured before it could manifest, consumed by something in Khor's nature that treated Duke-level power as nothing!
He found himself held in hands that were simultaneously gentle and absolutely inescapable, clamps made from concepts that preceded the invention of escape.
And then, to his utter bewilderment, she began to play with him.
Not violently. Not cruelly. She began to play with the genuine delight of someone who had found something adorably squishy and couldn't resist poking it!
His cheeks were pulled. His tiny form was turned this way and that for examination. He was treated exactly like what he appeared to be…a stuffed toy that happened to move!
"I speak! I speak!" Duke Whisker managed to voice out while his cheeks were being stretched to different dimensions. "I am... a Duke of Origin!"
The declaration came out with all the dignity he could muster while being played with like a stress ball!
Khor looked at him in her hands, her smile widening with genuine amusement. "Oh, you looked fluffy, Little Duke," she said, as if his title was just another adorable feature.
…!
Even though their voices couldn't be heard beyond their immediate vicinity, even though they were isolated in their own pocket of reality, many eyes throughout the amphitheater remained fixed on them.
Those arriving and taking their seats who paid attention to the strip of thrones between the Living Laws and Living Origins witnessed something that shouldn't be possible: a Duke of Living Origins being picked up and played with like a beloved pet by an unknown entity!
On the side of the Living Origins, several figures rose with solemnity.
Duke Gwendolyn stood first, her form radiating authority. Beside her, other Dukes rose as well…Duke Albalos, whose very presence suggested origins given form; Duke Septimus, Duke Valen, Duke Marienne…and many others!
The question burning in all their minds, the question that would have been shouted if dignity allowed for shouting, was simple and terrible.
Who had Osmont just brought over?
What kind of being could treat a Duke like that?!
The implications were heavy, but even more staggering was how casually it had been done.
No grand entrance. No dramatic reveal.
Just Noah waving his hand and summoning her here!