Chapter 4128 Seek Failures! II
Chapter 4128 Seek Failures! II
She paused, her next words carrying the weight of personal experience.
"Also...the alternative is cessation. I chose that once, when THE Living Paradox came for me. I was tired of the unfairness. So I chose to stop. And now, through impossible circumstances, I exist again- diminished, fragmentary, but present. Existence's biggest joke might be that even giving up doesn't guarantee an ending. I failed...even at the act of cessation. But was not not an opportunity? Did I not come back...from a Seed, Outsider? From the most unlikely possibilities success can bloom."
BOOM!
Noah absorbed this as his traverse neared completion, reality solidifying into the familiar patterns of his Shore.
"I and all others should expect suffering..." he said.
"You should expect existence," Khor corrected. "And existence, at its core, is suffering punctuated by moments of transcendence. The suffering makes the transcendence meaningful. The transcendence makes the suffering bearable."
...!
The traverse completed, Noah standing once again in his Shore with both bodies intact.
The power of an Early Creature was gone, but the memory remained. More importantly, the understanding remained.
Looking at his status, at the complexity and purity that had seemed so impressive before but now felt insignificant, Noah understood truly.
The path ahead wasn't just difficult. It was designed to break those who walked it.
The question was whether he would break in ways that made him stronger, or in ways that made him stop.
Time would tell.
But for now, he had half a corpse to process, towers to advance, and a Principle to design.
The failures Khor promised would come. But today- this moment, he had survived.
Sometimes, that was enough!
Noah's feet touched the golden sands of the Shore with the particular weight of someone carrying impossible cargo.
His body buzzed with vibrations that suggested it might tear apart at any moment...not from exhaustion but from the sheer complexity differential between himself and what he carried within.
Deep in his existence, stored in space that shouldn't accommodate it, half the corpse of a Primordial Stone Ape pressed against the boundaries of his being. Even dead, even bisected, the creature's complexity sought escape from its inferior container. It was like trying to hold a star in a paper bag....possible through impossible means, but the paper remembered it should be burning. Barely three minutes had passed in the current era since his departure. Time's cruel arithmetic meant his hours of terror had been compressed into moments here!
Yet his return carried weight that made everyone notice.
Heidrun's ancient eyes widened as she sensed the wildness radiating from both his bodies.
Yoshinami's eight legs tensed with instinctive recognition of danger. Sigrid's Order tried to categorize what she was feeling and failed!
Moiraine paused mid-cultivation, paradoxical energies scattering as her attention fixed on him.
They all turned, all noticed, but none approached.
The aura surrounding Noah wasn't just power...it was the particular exhaustion that came from surviving something that should have killed you! It was the
weight of having tasted impossibility and finding it bitter.
They recognized it as the signal to give someone space to process what couldn't be processed in company.
Only one figure moved toward him.
Khor floated over with the grace of someone who had seen every possible form of trauma and found them all educational. Her tiny hand patted his shoulder with surprising gentleness.
"Take out the prize of failure and let us see it in all its glory," she said, her voice carrying understanding that transcended sympathy. "I will help."
Her hand on his shoulder did more than comfort- it stabilized his existence, her ancient nature providing ballast against the chaos within him. With her support, Noah waved his hand and released what he'd been containing.
HUUM!
The upper half of the Primordial Stone Ape materialized with violence that made reality stagger.
Its expression remained frozen in the shock and horror of its bisection- eyes wide with the particular indignation of something that had lived for eons discovering it could die in seconds.
Those eyes, even dulled by death, burned with lividity that suggested the creature's fury had outlasted its life. Stellar white fur caught light that shouldn't exist, each strand containing complexity that could have birthed civilizations.
The surrounding existence rumbled and roiled at its appearance. The Shore itself groaned under weight that transcended the physical.
This was a creature that had approached one quadrillion in complexity, and even half-dead, it commanded respect through sheer presence! The corpse crashed onto the golden sands with impact that should have created craters but instead created ripples- the Shore accepting this offering with the particular hunger of something that knew treasure when it tasted it. Crimson-gold blood, each drop worth kingdoms, painted the sands in patterns that suggested meaning. The torso stuck upright as if the creature remained alive, as if its missing lower body was simply planted in the earth, as if it might at any moment pull itself free and resume existence!
JANALYZING RETRIEVED SPECIMEN
Classification: Primordial Stone Ape (Upper Torso)|
Complexity at death: ~780,000,000,000,000(780 Trillion)|
Current usable resources: ~490,000,000,000,000(490 Trillion)
This is the highest tier of loot ever collected
Previous record: Not even close
PROCESSING OPTIONS AVAILABLE:|
How would you like to proceed?
The corpse contains complexity and purity that will revolutionize everything|
Suggested approaches: Careful extraction over days
|Or: Immediate integration with significant risk
Your choice, as always, will probably be the dangerous one]
Noah looked at the corpse, and impossibly, it seemed to stare back. Those dead eyes carried accusation that transcended mortality- this was personal now, between predator and prey, though which was which remained unclear.
"Take its heart," Noah voiced with cold certainty. "Infuse all the extracted complexity and purity into me. Into my Heart. Into my Towers. Into my Atlas."
BOOM!
The Early Veiled Shore trembled with anticipation, golden sands beginning to swirl around the corpse like an hourglass attempting to digest time itself. But the sands failed to pull it down, the corpse's complexity exceeding even the
Shore's impressive appetite.
PROCESSING ALERT
Specimen exceeds current processing capabilities]
Estimated time for standard extraction: 7 days
Unless alternative methods are employed