Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 5200: The Custos, Osmont! IV

The first requirement was foundational standing. Ordovician Paleozoic at minimum. The second was designation standing, restricted among the Luxuria to those holding the rank of Prima Serva, and among all other designations requiring explicit Magna Sorora authorization.

Both of those conditions were administrative.

The third condition was the interesting one.

The entrant had to want to understand. Not to acquire, not to weaponize, not to accumulate. To understand. The Sanctum assessed this condition at its threshold through a mechanism no Gilded One had ever successfully mapped, and beings who arrived carrying motivations other than genuine comprehension were turned back with the same patient insistence as those who simply lacked the proper standing.

That was why the some Superbius Gilded Ones had been turned back.

Pride didn’t want to understand things. Pride wanted to possess things, to deploy things, to demonstrate things. The Dominion Cause that underpinned their engineering produced beings who approached knowledge the way they approached territory: as something to be claimed and administered. The Sanctum, apparently, did not respect that orientation.

Noah spent a moment considering what his own orientation toward the Sanctum actually was.

Genuine curiosity. Practical application, certainly, but genuine curiosity first and the application second. He wanted to understand what was inside because not understanding something that existed felt like a personal failure of attention. That seemed like it might satisfy the third condition, though he supposed he’d find out at the threshold.

Inside the Sanctum stood the Dreamstones.

Dreamstones that held...knowledge of The 9 Prime Causes that comprised THE First Cause!

Nine primary stones, natural crystalline growths that had emerged from the Sanctum’s ground during the earliest eons of THE Braneworld’s existence, predating every structure the Gilded had subsequently built around them.

Each stone had been shaped by the Prime Cause energy it contained rather than by any engineering methodology. The forms were organic expressions of foundational truth rather than designed artifacts, which made them the only things in THE Braneworld, from what Custos Rani’s sparse knowledge suggested, that the Gilded had not managed to put their engineering fingerprints on.

The Nine Prime Causes.

He turned each one over in his mind as the memories offered them to him.

THE Desidero Cause:existence wants. THE Dominion Cause: existence arranges hierarchies. THE Bellum Cause: existence fights. THE Cognitio Cause: existence learns. THE Vigilia Cause: existence is watched. THE Immutis Cause: existence endures. THE Consumptio Cause: existence converts. THE Mortis Cause: existence concludes.

And then the ninth.

THE Genesis Cause: existence emerges.

The only Prime Cause to which no Gilded designation had ever been connected, because the Gilded were born into their power rather than forging it through the painful emergence the Cause demanded as the price of genuine connection.

They had built their entire civilization atop an experiential gap where THE Genesis Cause should have been, and the gap had remained unfilled across all Seven Ages because filling it would have required them to suffer, and suffering was the one thing their engineering had been specifically designed to exempt them from.

But as of now...Noah knew very little about The Nine Prime Causes since he only had memories of Rani, and now Dante, to go off of!

A qualified being who placed their hand against a Dreamstone received, through the contact, not new information but foundational comprehension.

Understanding at the existential level rather than the cognitive level. The Pulses that could be derived from each Cause became accessible through that comprehension naturally, because Pulses were simply structured expressions of the Cause’s truth, and a being who understood the truth at the foundational level found the expressions available without the long cultivation process through which they were ordinarily developed.

Then came the part that made his eyes open without him deciding to open them.

THE Cause Incorporation.

The distinction between wielding a Cause and incorporating one was the distinction between borrowing an authority for a designated expression and becoming a being whose existence permanently embodied the Cause’s truth as a constituent element of what they were.

Beings who had incorporated a Prime Cause did not cast Pulses from that Cause. They expressed them, the way a being expressed their own Civilization rather than wielded it as a tool, the expressions available continuously, carrying the full weight of the Prime Cause itself.

Most who attempted Incorporation failed. Their existences were not sufficiently aligned with the foundational truth they sought to incorporate, their personal Civilizations too individually configured to subordinate themselves to the Cause’s broader axiom without fracturing under the pressure.

Very few had managed to incorporate even a portion of a single Prime Cause’s power. Those who succeeded shared one common characteristic: their Civilizational Access exceeded twenty-five percent.

Noah’s Civilizational Access currently edged an excess above 15%.

He had known this! The number had been a quiet background note in his cultivation planning, a threshold he intended to address once more immediate matters had concluded.

He thought about his Hadean Pillar of Infinity, which contained hundreds of actualized Civilizations, each one burning with the full weight of Infinity he had layered into it.

He thought about THE Absolute Forge of Infinity, where the density of Nearu Absolute Infinity had been compressed into every layer of his being. He thought about the specific shape of his own Cause, THE Infinite Cause, and how he had already been designing and planning to incorporate the power of his Cause into his Infinite Scales without ever having been told that such a thing was possible or what it was called.

He had arrived at the same destination independently.

He opened his eyes.

At this time.

Outside Custos Rani’s domain, outside the tower, he sensed Ubergulden Adelheid as she had come quick, and she was not alone.

There was a grand golden vessel of the Ubergulden House that blazed down fully and hung in THE Velanthra’s sky, its logo blazing, its delegation descending toward THE Amaranthine Tower where his disguised body was currently inhabiting Dante’s mediocre features!

He had a few things to manage in the next several hours.

But THE Sanctum Velanthra was very near the top of the list as he could observe Prime Causes and see if he could integrate them into his Infinite Scales alongside his Infinite Cause!

He intended to visit The Sanctum before anyone in this domain had fully processed what had arrived among them.