Chapter 4485: Kleos I
Chapter 4485: Kleos I
Noah hovered above the landscape, his eyes dissecting the oncoming storm.
The horizon had been systematically erased, replaced by a towering tsunami of elemental cataclysm rushing toward his forces.
The Civilizational Legions of Elementals were rewriting the environment itself.
Noah observed their forms with cold assessment. Titanic Early Creatures and Living Elementals, their bodies etched with tens of thousands of Kleos Glyphs that pulsed like dying stars. Magma gushed from the pores of reality itself, freezing instantly into jagged, absolute-zero glaciers as contradictory Principles of Thermodynamic Collapse and Elemental Supremacy warred for dominance in the same physical space.
The air itself was being tortured by their presence.
But it was the Astral Codexes that truly defined the scale of the approaching threat.
Dozens of Elemental commanders raised their hands, their grimoires flaring with accumulated power from eons of cultivation. Countless Elemental Everythings burned with unleashed authority, the scene glorious in its concentrated destruction as thousands upon thousands of Everythings were systematically consumed to fuel a devastating assault.
HUUM!
From pages of brilliant light, Astral Arcana Glyphs manifested with terrible beauty, tearing through the fabric of the Sanctuary itself.
An ancient Woolly Mammoth...composed entirely of sentient permafrost and concentrated lightning, trampled through the air with impossible mass. Its tusks carved voids in space with each swing.
A Plesiosaur of liquid magma swam through the ether like an ocean predator, its roar boiling the very concept of moisture from existence.
And above them, Immortal Jellyfishes pulsed with blinding elemental brilliance, their tentacles trailing paralysis and entropy that dissolved matter on contact.
It was a wave carrying hundreds of Sextillions in combined Complexity and Purity. A force that should have washed away Noah’s Civilization like sandcastles before a hurricane!
And facing it...
Five million members of the Infinite Bulwark Specialization stood in perfect silence.
They did not flinch. They held their shields. They simply planted their feet with systematic precision, their Civilizational Armors locking together in geometric perfection that defied the chaos rushing toward them.
"Civilization Fortress Formation," the collective thought echoed through their network...a silent command that solidified the air around them.
Their obsidian-gold plates flared with concentrated authority, linking every single member into a singular, monolithic entity.
They were no longer five million individual soldiers.
They were one Wall.
BOOM!
The impact was glorious!
The Woolly Mammoths struck with full force. The magma oceans crashed like a tidal wave. The jellyfish tentacles lashed out with paralyzing venom. The Elemental Legion unleashed a barrage that could have cracked an many Transcendent Folds!
But the Wall did not move.
Not a single inch. Not a fraction of measurement.
Noah watched the mechanics unfold with cold, analytical satisfaction.
The lead Infinite Bulwark, a Primus Inevitability named Bastion, and a few ten thousands Primus Inevitabilities took the brunt of the damage directly.The force was sufficient to atomize many things, carrying the concentrated weight of thousands of Sextillion Complexity all together!
But the Wall of Primus Inevitabilities did not take these thousands of Sextillions in damage.
The moment impact connected, the Civilization Fortress Formation engaged. The damage was not absorbed by them alone, it traveled instantly through golden conduits linking the armor, racing away from the point of impact at speeds faster than thought itself.
And it did not merely spread to the five million present.
It crossed dimensional boundaries, utilizing the Civilization Network to distribute the kinetic and conceptual load across all 16+ Million Infinite Bulwark specialists currently active throughout the Civilization.
The mathematics of it all was beautiful. The numbers were tyrannical!
A blow that should have obliterated a single unit was diluted by a factor of sixteen million times 10 Sextillion!
All those in the Infinite Bulwark Specialization whose personal defense stood at a formidable 10 Sextillion average felt a tremor that barely registered as a scratch. A loss of perhaps 1 Sextillion in existential integrity.
They didn’t even blink.
The Elemental commanders watched, their eyes widening in genuine, shocked confusion. They had unleashed the apocalypse itself!
And the apocalypse had simply... stopped.
Then, the second phase engaged with devastating efficiency.
"Restore."
The command came from the rear formations.
Sigrid, THE Living Order, floated amidst the Verdant Cycle specialists, her form a beacon of verdant-gold brilliance that pulsed with restorative authority. She did not look worried...she looked like a conductor raising a baton before a symphony.
HUUM!
"Symphonic Restoration!"
Waves of green-gold light erupted from Vital Chorus specialists. It was an aggressive injection of concentrated vitality!
The light washed over the Infinite Bulwarks like a cleansing tide. Minor scratches on their existential frames vanished instantly.
But the healing didn’t stop at simple restoration.
[Overflow Vitality] activated automatically. The excess healing energy didn’t dissipate wastefully...it hardened, coalescing around the obsidian-gold armor as a secondary, translucent layer of verdant shielding.
They were not just healed, but were also fortified beyond their original state!
The Elemental Legion stared with mounting incomprehension, their collective breath caught in their throats. They had thrown mountains at these beings.
And the beings were now demonstrably healthier than before the attack.
It was terrifying and glorious all at once.
But Noah wasn’t watching the defensive display anymore, he was watching the numbers.
|Damage Conversion Active|
|Accumulated Hostile Authority: 8,400 Sextillion|
|Status: Holding... Awaiting Discharge Command|
The Bulwarks were glowing with terrifying, contained heat. They had systematically eaten the enemy’s attack, stored the kinetic and conceptual energy within their own frameworks, and were now holding it like a breath waiting to be exhaled with devastating force.
Noah’s smile was predatory as he called out.
"Ozymandias."
...!
In the space between armies, where the violet tide of the Civilization Legions of Emotives surged toward the beleaguered remnants of the Living Laws, a ripple occurred.
Deborah, The Silent Adjudicator, stood with her marble skin visibly cracked, her silver light dimming with each passing moment. Around her, the remaining Living Laws were collapsing under just the light concentrated assault.
"Do not yield!" she screamed, her voice cracking with coldness. "We are the final testament to Law itself! We do not yield!"
HUUM!
Then, a shadow fell over her position.
A figure stepped out of empty air directly in front of her defensive line.
It was a humanoid form of obsidian and crimson, tentacles writhing from its back like a cloak of living darkness. It radiated a hunger so profound it made the surrounding Emotive energy shiver with instinctive recognition.
Deborah’s eyes widened with a mixture of emotions.
"Friend..." she whispered. "You do not need to sacrifice yourself for us."
Ozymandias did not look back at her.
He stood alone, a single point of darkness against a horizon of violet fire.
He adjusted his hands with a casual gesture, the motion showing absolute arrogance in the face of the rushing horde.
"Sacrifice?" Ozymandias asked, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that vibrated in Deborah’s chest. "No. You misunderstand my purpose here entirely."
He raised one hand, palm open, facing the direction of The Iron Concordat positioned far across the battlefield.
"Let the accumulated damage...flow through me."
WAA!
The connection snapped into place with audible resonance. The Damage Conversion network flared with blinding intensity.
The 8,400 Sextillion units of stored destructive energy held by the Infinite Bulwarks was not released as a scattered blast.
It was channeled with surgical precision!
It rushed through the Civilization’s interconnected framework, pouring directly into Ozymandias’s form.
His obsidian-crimson body swelled with accumulated power. His aura exploded outward, shifting from terrifying hunger to a blinding, catastrophic beacon of pure concentrated ruin.
The energy of the Elemental Legion’s attack...The Principles, the mammoths, the magma, the void-ice, all of it...was systematically converted into raw, unadulterated Hunger.
Ozymandias opened his mouth.
The jaw did unhinged, expanding impossibly as the fabric of reality tore around the motion. Crimson Obsidian Hunger Jaws bloomed into existence with devastating manifestation.
They were colossal, spanning the horizon entirely...dwarfing the Emotive giants rushing toward him like insignificant insects.
The power radiating from those jaws was impossibly concentrated, a singular strike containing a few Thousands of Sextillions in Complexity and Purity even after any losses with the conversion. It was damage Ozymandias had no inherent right to wield, power he had not personally cultivated!
But it was power he now controlled through the cheating architecture of Noah’s Civilization!
"Chomp."
The word was spoken softly, almost gently.
The sound that followed was wet and utterly final.
The jaws slammed shut with apocalyptic force.
BOOM!
Nine massive Early Creatures, beings measuring 100 to 300 Sextillion Complexity and surrounded by Civilizational Authority of Emotive...were caught directly in the bite. Towering avatars of Sorrow and Rage who had existed since the Earliest Folds.
They didn’t have time to scream.
Their conceptual barriers shattered like glass. Their fundamental principles unraveled like torn fabric. Their upper bodies were sheared off cleanly, separated from their legs by the absolute sharpness of the bite that transcended conventional cutting.
The Emotive Legion halted, their momentum completely broken by the sheer, impossible violence of the act!
Ozymandias stood amidst the falling rain of blood and dissipating essence.
He waved his hand with a cool dismissal.
Tentacles of hunger erupted from the fading jaws, snatching the nine cleaved corpses from the air before they could strike the ground. He wound up his arm with theatrical motion and threw them...hurling the massive bodies across light-years of battlefield, straight toward the waiting, skeletal arms of Ra’Zan in The Hungering Maw faction.
"Fresh corpses for the Legion." Ozymandias declared, his voice ringing with satisfaction!
He watched Arch Lich Ra’Zan catch the first body, the Lich’s cackling laughter echoing like a symphony of breaking bones.
Ozymandias then turned back to the frozen, livid masses of the Emotive Legion.
He stood tall, his obsidian-crimson form shining with a majesty that demanded reverence. He placed one hand behind his back with a posture of relaxed superiority.
With his other hand, he beckoned to them...a simple, taunting motion of his fingers.
"Come now," Ozymandias purred, his eyes burning with the light of a predator who has discovered an all-you-can-eat buffet. "Do not let fear overwhelm you just yet. I require substantially more harvest before satisfaction."
His smile widened.
"And my Civilization is very hungry."
HUUM!
The declaration resonated across the battlefield.
Behind Ozymandias, Deborah stared with her marble mouth hanging open.
What manner of beings had she received help from?!