Read Novel Full Chapter 5496: A Place of Wonder and Dangers!
Chapter 5496: A Place of Wonder and Dangers!
The battle was over, and Noah measured its results.
One divided body of a True Lifeform, destroyed. 150,000 Osmontian Biomass spent, with 180,000 returned through the Tide as his reserves settled just below 400,000. His Egoic Intent now stood at D-Rank Ruis permanently, a purchase made mid-battle, which would be C-Rank when he fused with Ruination and THE Infiniverse.
His thoughts turned briefly to THE Creature and Ryaenara, scattered light years away. Was he worried? He turned the question over honestly and found that he wasn’t. THE Creature was Existence itself, a being who had walked THE Infinite Unfurling alone and bore adversity as a companion. And Ryaenara was more powerful than any of them! They should be okay.
For now, he wanted to carefully move and explore.
"Release the fusion," Noah said, and his crown answered.
|Releasing, Master. THE Quintessential Confluence placed a not insignificant strain upon all three of us.|
HUUM!
The thousands of realms folded inward as the full Pantheon withdrew back into his existence, THE Infiniverse’s manifestation stepping lightly out of his chest as Ruination’s strings rewove themselves into the circlet upon his brow. His hair returned to its dark bluish shade as the layered rings faded from his eyes, and the crushing aura of three fused True Lifeforms settled back into the quiet weight of one.
But he kept the golden sands.
Beneath his feet, a sea of golden dream-sand remained unfurled from a single realm of his Pantheon, a drifting island of radiant dunes perhaps a hundred meters across as it began to float across the region with all of them upon it. Noah stood at its heart with his crown gleaming, Emotive settled beside him with her legs folded beneath her, and THE Infiniverse walked the edges of the sands as her eyes shone with cerulean light, mapping out everything they passed and weaving it into her records.
Emotive looked around at the storming skies and the endless dark geography beyond their golden island, and her manic eyes narrowed with genuine curiosity.
"Hey, hey. Just how much danger do you think we’re in, in a place like this?"
Noah’s mouth curved slightly as the dream-sands carried them onward.
"As long as we don’t meet a Primeval Lifeform or an overly powerful True Lifeform, we should be okay." His eyes moved across the raging horizon as his voice stayed level. "But this is one of the more perilous journeys we have ever taken, because everything is here. All of my bodies. THE Infiniverse. Everything and everyone I have. There is no home waiting safely in another era this time, no half of me holding the fort." His gaze sharpened!
"So death and failure are not permitted. Not even once."
...!
Emotive blinked at him, and then smiled wide, and said nothing at all as she scooted slightly closer on the sands.
The golden island accelerated.
Noah drove it across the region rapidly as they crossed distances that would have taken lesser beings minutes, light years folding beneath the dream-sands as the geography of this small, insignificant section of THE Krazhor-Nul unfurled before them. And over all of them, he laid the Ego of Humilitas, weavings of profound humbleness wrapping their auras and presense as it made them as indicernable as possible, a drifting mote of gold too modest for ancient senses to linger upon!
And the scenes they crossed...
They passed beneath arches of fossilized bone so vast that clouds formed beneath their curves, the hollow remains of things that had died before the Scales were born as they held absolutely no remnant aura! They crossed a sea of liquid silver that reflected not their images but their weavings, golden threads rippling across its surface as they flew over.
They passed floating mountain ranges drifting like herds through the storm, valleys where the rain of Infinity had pooled into lakes of pure blue potential.
It was all...
Ancient. Gorgeous. And utterly silent, as if the whole Dimension was holding its breath around them.
Then they came upon the tree.
It rose out of the dark geography ahead like a wound in the sky itself, a massive obsidian tree that was a million miles large! Its trunk was a continent of black bark veined with dim crimson light as its branches spread through the storm clouds and past them, and towards its misty peak, vibrant obsidian fruits could be seen.
They were gorgeous.
Each fruit was the size of a hill as its obsidian skin gleamed like polished night, and within that darkness, slow swirls of violet and crimson turned like trapped galaxies! They pulsed faintly, rhythmically, almost like hearts, and their fragrance reached across the distance even through the storm, sweet and deep and ancient as it promised nourishment beyond anything an Observable Existence could grow.
Noah’s eyes shone as he waved his hands!
Threads of his authority reached across the distance and plucked a dozen of the massive fruits from the misty peak, shrinking them down as they drifted into his grasp, and the prompts bloomed immediately.
|Designation: THE Umbral Madfruit of the Krazhor Bough. These fruits are saturated with dense existential nourishment, and I will note that their raw value as sustenance exceeds most treasures of THE Source Lands. However. Woven through every fiber of their flesh is a cursed madness. Any lifeform who consumes one will have this madness bloom through their mind and Intent, turning them irreversibly mad as their sense of self unravels into raving pieces. They cannot be eaten.|
...!
They looked so grand, but they couldn’t be eaten.
Noah turned the shrunken fruits over in his palm as their trapped galaxies swirled, and then his eyes shined with a distinct light as he came to a decision. He took all the ones he had harvested... and handed every single one of them to Emotive!
Emotive blinked.
She looked down at the armful of cursed obsidian fruits, then up at Noah, then down at the fruits again as she accepted all of them casually, tucking them away into her amaranthine light as if being handed a bouquet. Then her manic eyes turned unusually serious as she nodded at him with profound gravity.
"I will find someone to poison for you."
Noah calmly waited.
Because above him, existence had already begun to seethe! The air over the golden sands trembled as a familiar pressure gathered, reality folding around a gift given with no expectation of return, and THE Tide That Owes Nothing triggered!
From the seething point above, something descended.
It was a fruit. An obsidian-crimson fruit the size of a fist as it pulsed with ominous power, its skin darker than the Madfruits and its inner light not violet but a deep arterial crimson that beat like a slow drum, and it drifted down into Noah’s waiting hand as the prompts followed.
|THE Tide That Owes Nothing has been triggered. You gifted treasures of immense value while knowing they could never serve you, and the Tide, with its Sharpened Returns, has answered in kind. Boon delivered: THE Marrowbane Fruit of the First Withering. This fruit contains concentrated True Existential Curse Authority. If consumed, or if its inner weavings are exposed onto a lifeform’s physical body or Source, that lifeform will be branded with a curse that guarantees their death in exactly 1 year. No grade, no Intent, and no Trueness I can currently model provides exemption. Handle it with the care its nature demands.|
...!
A curse that guaranteed death within a year, condensed into a fruit!
It was a unique thing, and it seemed this place had many unique things. A Dimension whose trees grew madness. Noah put the fruit away with genuine care, sealing it within layered folds of his Pantheon’s storage as Emotive did the same with hers, and the golden island drifted onward through the storm.
Then, a moment later, Noah paused in thought.
Cursed fruits. Cursed Descendants. Cursed Steeds whose First Causes were locked in terminal weavings, dying the slow structural death of Observable Existences! His mind turned over the shape of this whole Dimension, and...
He called out softly, and the Pantheon answered.
"Seo-yeon."
HUUM!
The golden sands bloomed with mirrored light as a small figure stepped out of the Pantheon’s folds.
Seo-yeon appeared upon the dream-sands in her favorite dress as mirrored light trailed off her shoulders, and her eyes went wide immediately, wonder filling her small face as she turned in a slow circle! The storming skies of raging Infinity, the endless dark geography, the golden sea beneath her feet, the million-mile tree receding behind them!
"Whoa," she breathed. "Aba, where are we?!"
"Somewhere very old, and very far from home. Or rather," Noah’s mouth curved, "home came with us."
He knelt down to her height upon the sands as his voice gentled, though his eyes stayed sharp. "Seo-yeon. I need your help with something. Can you sense any dying Causes? Anything similar to before, anything like Chernobyl... that is close by?"
...!
He wanted to see.
He wanted to see if he could pull himself towards the Cursed Steeds of Those Who Remain! He knew, plainly and coldly, that he would have to be extremely careful, as such beings might already be under the control of terrifyingly powerful masters. Or perhaps some were dying alone in the far corners of this Dimension, unclaimed and unguarded. Who knew! But his daughter had the capability.
If Seo-yeon could sense anything... he could proceed slowly from there!