Read Novel Full Chapter 5455: I Will Collect!
Chapter 5455: I Will Collect!
The rain of mana had become a storm.
It raged around the great blue tree in THE Infiniverse, cerulean drops whipping sideways through howling currents of loose power, the whole grove bending and singing under the pressure of what stood at its center. Noah stood alone in the eye of it, his Intent buzzing off him in slow terrifying waves, and the storm was not weather at all. It was him. It was fury and resolve given no other place to go, radiating out of a being whose composure had never once broken and whose depths had never once been this loud.
He let it rage. And then he put it to work.
"Elevate THE Tide That Owes Nothing," Noah said quietly, "to Rank D."
|Elevation of THE Tide That Owes Nothing from E-Rank, Duir, to D-Rank, Ruis, currently requires 25,000 Osmontian Biomass. Your accumulated reserves are sufficient, Master. Confirm the upgrade?|
"Confirmed."
The Biomass drained out of him in a single deep pull, and the Foundation drank, and rose.
|THE Tide That Owes Nothing has risen to D-Rank, Ruis. The Elder. The grade of acceleration and renewal, where a Foundation stops merely working and begins compounding upon itself.|
|Effects of the advancement: the return range on your giving now spans one thousand to eight thousandfold, scaled to the magnitude and quintessence of the act. Additionally, at Ruis, the Tide gains a new property: Echoing Returns. Acts of profound giving no longer pay out only once. The grandest gifts will continue generating diminishing returns across time, the way a stone dropped in deep water sends out ring after ring. What you give greatly, you will be repaid for again, and again, and again.|
|One further property has surfaced at this rank. The Tide’s definition of giving has deepened. At Beith and Duir, it recognized only intentional gifts. At Ruis, it recognizes sacrifice. What is taken from you against your will, if it passes from you into another, now falls within the Tide’s jurisdiction.|
Noah read that last line twice, standing motionless in the heart of his own storm, and something cold and bright moved through his eyes.
"Then..." he said to his own Foundation, to Ruination, to existence itself. "I’ve taken a tremendous loss. One of the worst of my life. THE Sealed One took, and what he took passed from me into him. My Chernobyl, with my nine Causes seated in its foundation. My Braneworld, the Lower Observable Existence my whole Cause was born from. Both of them carried my authority, my weavings, my identity in their bones, and both of them went from my hands into his." His voice dropped lower.
"I gave him what he took. I didn’t want to. But is that not, by the new definition, an act of giving? So I want to be paid. I will be paid!"
HUUM!
The storm around him went utterly still for a single breath.
|Your assertion is being weighed. It is a terrifying piece of reasoning.|
|Weighing complete. The assertion holds. Two Observable Existences, both carrying your seated Causes and your invested authority, passed from your possession into the possession of another. Intent does not govern the Tide at Ruis. Transfer does. This constitutes the single largest act of giving in your recorded existence, and THE Tide That Owes Nothing has been triggered at the uppermost bound of its new range.|
|Your Egoic Intent rises to affirm the return. Your Osmontian Source Infinity rises to affirm the return. THE Hunger That Refines, THE Mirror That Keeps, and THE Sovereign Existence all rise in concert, your whole foundation converging to ensure that what was torn from you is answered in full.|
The storm reversed.
Every raging current of mana and loose power turned inward at once, spiraling down toward Noah in a tightening cerulean vortex, and within that vortex, light began to condense. Not one point of light. Many!
|Boons delivered. For the giving of two Observable Existences, the Tide returns the seeds of many. You have received six Genesis Tesseracts.|
HUUM!
Six four-dimensional hypercubes resolved out of the collapsing storm, blue-white and impossibly folded, each one holding the Infinite Source Potential of a First Cause, each one the seed from which an entire Observable Existence could be grown. They drifted down around Noah in a slow constellation, and the sight of them, six of the treasure that had once stunned him as a singular miracle, said everything about what the Tide had become.
|A further return has been collected- Resonance. The Tide’s return has touched the two pills within THE Sealed One’s body, because they were yours before they were his, and the echo of this giving has marked them. Faintly, at the very edge of perception, you can now feel where they are. The connection is one-way and cannot be traced back to you. He is carrying two beacons in his stomach, but they are dissolving rapidly.|
...!
Noah reached out and gathered the six Tesseracts into his hands, the folded weight of six unborn Observable Existences resting against his palms, and the last of the storm settled into stillness around him.
And the potential location of THE Sealed One’s Vessels showed possibilities!
"Whether loss or gain," he said, and his voice carried through the quiet grove like a vow being carved somewhere permanent. "Whether giving or taking, whether it comes to me as a gift or gets torn out of me screaming. I will turn everything into a boon. Everything. He wanted to teach me about consequences?"
The cerulean in his eyes burned steady and cold. "Then let him learn mine. Even a loss will be made into a win. Even his victories will pay me. And when the Ledger comes due, I’ll collect every last name written in it!"
WAA!
---
Far out in the Undefined Gaps, where the survivor-bubbles drifted like lanterns in the dark, Noah and THE Creature floated alone together, apart from all the rest.
Neither had arranged the meeting. They had simply gravitated to the same empty stretch of black, the way the two largest things in any room eventually end up standing next to each other, and for a long while neither spoke. The dark pressed in around them.
"Everyone back there...has a glimmer of fear," THE Creature said finally. "I can smell it on all of them. However small, it exists." His burning eyes stayed fixed on the empty dark ahead.
"Sometimes, you meet something so heavy, you couldn’t help but feel fear. Even if one had given away their Everything of Fear, they might find it regenerated a little. Fear...is a curious thing."
...!
"What about you?" Noah asked.
"Existence...has no fear."
BOOM!
His obsidian flames stirred, low and deliberate. "I am not one who takes losses easily. I never have been. I have my own weavings and my own secrets. I know many things. THE Sealed One was a pariah once. All of existence turned on him as one, the only alliance of its kind, and cut him apart and buried the pieces, and the ages since have let his name soften into legend and reverence. That softening ends. I will do everything I can, spend everything I’ve kept, to ensure he returns to being what he was. A pariah of Existence. Hunted by all of it, hidden from none of it."
"He’s been careful it seems," Noah said. "Moving through vessels and feeding in the dark this whole time."
"Why would something unbeatable bother with the dark?"
His titanic frame turned fully toward Noah for the first time. "I will reach out to a Primeval Lifeform. I’ll make it known, to the kind of existences that shaped the ages before either of us drew breath, that THE Sealed One is not stirring or waking or rumored. He is actively and rapidly moving." The obsidian flames rose around him.
"That should put some pressure on him."
WAA!
...!
He would reach out to a Primeval Lifeform!
The words settled over Noah with their full weight. THE Creature said it the way a man mentioned an old acquaintance, casual and certain!
Just what complex weavings of existence surrounded THE Creature?
Noah shook his head at this thought as he nodded and said...
"I know of a few locations where his Vessels or Sealed Appendages might be. He seems to be capable of exerting a great deal of power, but his vessels crack and die off as a consequence as we saw. If we can force him to exert enough pressure through his vessels, without us dying of course...we could also begin applying our own pressure. This was the plan all along from the discussions with THE Queen Regnant."
...!
THE Creature nodded at these words as he stretched his neck left and right.
"I want to grasp results for myself and not another loss. So even though delaying will change things...give me 3 hours. I will see if I can grasp another True Appendage in that time."
...!
3 Hours!
Noah’s eyes flashed coldly as he nodded!
"3 hours."
HUUM!
His fist and THE Creature’s fist crossed as if to affirm this as in the next moment, THE Creature disappeared as the distant Calypso also disappeared with him!