Read Novel Full Chapter 5201: The Custos, Osmont! V
Chapter 5201: The Custos, Osmont! V
Noah watched from Custos Rani’s domain with patient attention.
Through the rose-crystal walls, the Ubergulden vessel dominated the sky above THE Velanthra like a continent that had decided to relocate upward, its polished gold hull displacing the crimson-pink mists with casual authority.
Below it, the three million Luxuria of the domain had collectively found reasons to be near windows, on terraces, at the edges of waterways, all of them oriented upward with the specific stillness of a population that had just realized the afternoon was going to be more interesting than anticipated.
He stretched his fingers, feeling the clone body he wore as Dante settle into its borrowed weight.
Time to go.
---
The Dante body emerged from THE Amaranthine Tower into the open air of THE Velanthra, floating upward through the rose-gold mist with the unhurried cadence of a being who had decided that appearing nervous would be the worst possible choice available to him.
Every Luxuria watching from below tracked his ascent.
He did not look at them. He looked upward, scanning the descending delegation. The three Sororis Primas, robed in layered gold, their Custodes flanking them with the dense stillness of weapons that had been set down rather than sheathed.
An Ubergulden Gilded One, golden-eyed and without pupils, his Observable Force drawing ambient currents to him naturally the way significant bodies drew everything nearby. And then, slightly behind him, Ubergulden Adelheid.
He smiled and waved!
It was a small wave! Several of the watching Luxuria below genuinely did not know how to process this!
Adelheid’s expression did not change.
The moment he appeared at the delegation’s level, the Sororis Primas assessed him simultaneously with the cold efficiency of institutions conducting a brief inspection.
Whatever they were looking for in the confirmation that he was genuinely Adelheid’s Custos, they apparently found it, because the displeasure that crossed their features was heavy!
They believed he was what he appeared to be. They simply found what he appeared to be disappointing.
Sororis Prima Evangelina did not introduce herself.
She raised her hand, and a blinding pillar of golden light dropped around him like a declaration rather than a question, and in the next instant he was elsewhere.
In the area, Custodes and all other Ubergulden also disappeared in a flash of golden light!
The skies above THE Velanthra held only the three Sororis Primas and the vessel.
Sororis Konstanze turned toward Evangelina with a flat expression.
"She really bound a Luxuria weakling as her Custos."
"Shall we kill him? It will hurt Adelheid’s weavings for the foreseeable future to lose a Custos, but she can then bond with an Ira or Superbius Gilded One who actually has power behind them after her existence heals. The current arrangement is an embarrassment to the Ubergulden name and a liability to the mission."
Mathilde said nothing, which was her way of agreeing.
Evangelina was quiet for a moment, looking at the space where the Dante-body had been.
"We are at a tipping point," she said finally.
Her voice came out cold and calm.
"Even among the Ubergulden lineage, very few have been confirmed to have the capability to survive entry into that place. We have confirmed Adelheid to be among the rare few, alongside her brother. That confirmation is not something we set aside because her Custos is a disappointment."
She turned toward the other two with the unhurried authority of a senior Sister who had decided where the conversation was going.
"Something can be weak, but we, THE Magna Sorora, are strong. The Superbius are strong. We have made Luxuria playthings powerful before, and we can do it again. We will make this one powerful enough to support Adelheid in that place. We have protocols. We have resources. We have Seven Ages of methodology for exactly this kind of problem."
Her mandala-eyes held steady.
"We have to seize this opportunity before THE Relictus find out and close it off. They will close it off the moment they detect the approach. They always do. Which means our window is not infinite, and I have no interest in wasting it arguing over the aesthetics of Adelheid’s Custos arrangement."
...!
She turned upward toward the vessel.
"Come on."
All three of them disappeared in the next instant. A nanosecond later, the entire vessel above THE Velanthra vanished alongside them, the massive structure of solidified Observable Force departing with the same casual authority with which it had arrived, leaving behind only the rippling disturbance in the rose-colored mists where its presence had been.
The weight pressing down across the domain dissolved.
Three million Luxuria breathed out in quiet collective relief, the specific exhalation of a population that had been holding itself very still in the presence of something significantly larger than itself and had just been granted permission to resume ordinary function.
The crimson-pink mists began to resettle into their usual drifting patterns. The engineered rivers of rose-gold Infinity returned to their channels. The beaches and the terraces and the waterways slowly repopulated with beings whose primary question was the same question every Luxuria in the domain was currently asking each other.
What had made it pertinent for the terrifying Ubergulden House to make a visit here?
Nobody had a satisfying answer.
In Custos Rani’s private domain, Noah’s other body stretched and breathed out slowly.
He looked toward Custos Rani.
"Let’s go see about these Prime Causes in THE Sanctum Velanthra."
He said it the way someone might suggest a walk, the tone of a being for whom the next item on the agenda was simply the next item on the agenda, regardless of what that item actually was.
Custos Rani’s galaxy-filled eyes blazed with fervor as she nodded and followed.
Noah’s mind was already sorting through the next several phases of his plans.
THE Sanctum Velanthra first. Soak up everything the Dreamstones held. The Prime Causes, the derived Causes, every layer of foundational knowledge the Gilded had spent seven ages hoarding on the upper face of the Observable while the Bounded below climbed through Vakochev’s limited framework without any of it.
Then the Royal Luxuria Houses within the domain.
He could not openly conquer just yet. THE Braneworld Observable Existence was populated with beings who could collapse him without breaking their focus, and advertising his presence before his foundations had grown sufficient was the kind of mistake that closed the game before the interesting parts arrived.
So he would not advertise.
He would do what a certain category of organism did when it found itself inside a system too large and too defended for direct assault: enter quietly, establish contact points, extend through the existing infrastructure along pathways that the infrastructure’s own immune responses were not calibrated to detect, and continue that extension until the moment when the system looked inward and found that the thing it had permitted to enter had already become a constituent part of how it functioned.
By then, removal would be complicated.
By then, removal would be so deeply entangled with the system’s own operational continuity that the attempt to remove him would damage the system attempting the removal more than it damaged him.
A virus did not announce its presence.
A virus did not challenge the body’s defenses directly, did not send formal declarations, did not register with the immune system as a hostile presence requiring immediate response. A virus simply found the pathways that were already open, moved through them, replicated along them, and waited with the patient confidence of something that had understood from the beginning that the game was not won through force but through proliferation, and that proliferation required only two things: access and time.
He had access.
He was working on the time!
Noah followed the rose-gold mist through the corridors of THE Amaranthine Tower with the unhurried gait of a being who already owned the building and had simply not yet informed the building of this fact.
THE Sanctum Velanthra was waiting!