Chapter 4486: Kleos II
Chapter 4486: Kleos II
The silence following Ozymandias’s display was heavy with horrified realization.
Nine Early Creatures, beings who had reigned for epochs, ended in a single bite.
But the Civilization Legion of Emotives did not break.
The violet and gray storm of their collective aura parted, and from the depths of their formation, a figure emerged. He drifted, carried by a visible current of weeping spirits and solidified sighs.
Threnody, The Weaver of Final Sorrows.
He was an Elder Early Creature, his form that of shifting, melancholic shadows. His face was a mask of beautiful, frozen grief, with eyes that were not eyes but deep, endless wells of tear-filled oceans. Around him, Everythings of Emotion swirled...tiny, crystallized shards of panic, regret, and absolute resignation orbiting him like a solar system of tragedy.
Threnody looked at Ozymandias, at the obsidian-crimson predator standing amidst the blood of his kin.
"Fear?" Threnody asked, his voice a sound like wind howling through a dead city...hollow, mournful, and utterly devoid of hope.
He floated closer, the Everythings of Sorrow dampening the very light around him.
"You speak to us of fear, Stranger. But you mistake our purpose. You mistake our fundamental nature."
Threnody spread his arms, and the violet light intensified, heavy with the weight of a trillion bad endings.
"None of us know fear anymore. We lost the capacity for it the moment the doors of THE Loom closed. Fear is the anticipation of loss. Fear is the hope that disaster can be averted."
He pointed a shadowy finger toward the chaotic sky, toward the invisible, encroaching threat of the future.
"Fear... was knowing The Fallout approaches. Fear was realizing we were the chaff, the discarded remnants left to burn while the chosen slept in safety. We have already processed that terror. We have already died a thousand times in our minds."
HUUM!
A wave of gray light washed over the Emotive Legion, stabilizing them. They stopped trembling. They looked at Ozymandias not with lividity, but with the blank, terrifying stare of the terminally condemned.
"We are the walking dead," Threnody whispered, the sound echoing in the marrow of every being present. "Regardless of what you do... regardless of what we accomplish... we will be consumed. That is the only truth. So do not think you can sow fear in a field that has already been salted by the End."
...!
The logic was suffocating...a defense born of absolute nihilism. They fought not to survive, but because they had nothing left to lose!
Ozymandias listened, his obsidian-crimson form pulsing, the tentacles on his back writhing with amusement.
He smiled, and his jaw unhinged slightly, revealing the spinning void of crimson fire within.
"How poetic," Ozymandias rumbled, his voice a tyrannical counter-weight to Threnody’s sorrow. "You claim you cannot fear because you are already dead?"
BOOM!
Crimson authority exploded from him, pushing back the violet fog.
"Then I shall teach you a new emotion," Ozymandias declared, his eyes burning with the light of a predator who plays with his food. "I shall teach you Regret. Regret that you did not kneel when you had the chance. Regret... that your end will not be The Fallout, but Me."
HUUM!
The air shattered. Emotive flared. Law brightened. The armies charged!
From his vantage point, Noah watched the collision with cold satisfaction.
Ozymandias had successfully intervened. Deborah, the Living Law holding the Heart Fragment, was shielded from the immediate onslaught. The strategic objective was secured.
Noah’s gaze flicked to the nine corpses arcing through the void...massive, mutilated bodies of Early Creatures, rich with Sextillions of Complexity. They crashed near Arch Lich Ra’Zan, who was already cackling as his necrotic authority began seeping into them.
Excellent.
But Noah’s attention was drawn elsewhere, to the second front.
Far ahead of the main line, a small, diminutive figure stood alone against the tidal wave of the Civilization Legion of Elementals.
Khor.
The First Hunger stood amidst the shattered geometry of the canyon floor.
Facing her were tens of thousands of Early Creatures and Living Elementals...beings of magma, storm, and void, roaring with the collective power of an era that remembered how to break Primordial Folds.
Khor did not adopt a fighting stance.
She simply... opened her mouth.
CLACK.
She snapped her jaws shut on empty air.
Across the battlefield, three hundred miles away, the head of a Magma Titan simply vanished. There was no travel time. No projectile. Just the sound of jaws closing, and then the absence of matter.
"Feed."
Khor blurred.
She moved with a weight and brutality that defied her size, slamming into the front line of the Elemental Legion like a kinetic bombardment.
She didn’t dodge. She didn’t parry.
She simply fucking advanced.
An Elemental of Wind, vibrating with 300 Sextillion Complexity, slashed at her with a blade that could cut dimensions.
Khor caught the blade in her bare hand, with her tiny, fair fingers.
|Reality Severance|
Her fingers tightened. The blade shattered, its conceptual sharpness severed by the greater musings of her Hunger.
She pulled the Elemental forward, her other hand driving into its chest like a spear. An excess of 300+ Sextillion flowed across her hand like a blade.
She ripped out its Heart- a swirling vortex of storm-essence, and shoved it into her mouth.
CRUNCH.
|Consumption Acceleration| triggered instantly. The Elemental collapsed into dust, its 300 Sextillion power digested in a microsecond!
OOOH!
Khor’s aura flared. A crimson shockwave blasted outward, knocking back the surrounding titans.
[Hunger Stacks: +30%]
Her power spiked. She was stronger now than she was a second ago.
"More," she whispered.
She spun, a whirlwind of violence. She fought with the brutal efficiency of a butcher. She grabbed a Void-Beast by its horns, snapped its neck, and bit a chunk out of its reality before dropping the corpse and eating it whole. She kicked a Glacial Golem Early Creature, shattering its legs, and devoured the falling shards of ice before they hit the ground.
Oh!
It was a slaughter. It was a feast.
The Elementals rallied, realizing this tiny creature was a monster.
"Collapse her!" roared Aethon, The Primeval Storm-Forge, his binary star eyes blazing with desperate fury. "Pour everything into her position! She cannot withstand the combined might of our Legion! Drown her in our accumulated power!"
Ten thousand elemental attacks converged on Khor.
Magma, lightning, absolute zero, gravity crush...it all slammed into her simultaneously. The ground beneath her vaporized, turning into a crater of molten glass and void of collapse!
The dust settled. And yet...
Khor stood there. Unscathed. Unmoved.
There wasn’t a scratch on her skin.
The Elementals froze, their minds reeling as they wondered...bro, fucking how?
They didn’t know. They couldn’t see.
Far behind the lines, within The Iron Concordat formations, The Infinite Bulwarks glowed with radiant, obsidian-gold light. They staggered slightly, their armor groaning as the invisible, metaphysical tethers of the Civilization transferred the damage from Khor to them.
The impact that should have obliterated Khor was distributed across sixteen million tanks, those present here, and those not!
What would have been a deathblow became a mosquito bite spread across an army.
Khor brushed a speck of dust from her shoulder, looking at the terrified Elemental commanders with a grin widening to reveal white teeth that seemed too numerous, too sharp.
"Is that it?" she asked.
She lunged.
Her small mouth opened impossibly wide, far beyond what her frame should allow, and she bit.
An Early Creature of Crystal-Fire suddenly felt its left arm disappear. Simply gone, as if it had never existed.
Khor’s jaws closed with a wet snap.
She bit again.
The creature’s right leg vanished. It stumbled, confusion and horror warring in its eyes.
Another bite.
Its torso developed a perfect spherical void where its core had been.
Bite. Bite. Bite.
Each chomp removed portions of existence with surgical precision. The Early Creature could feel different parts of its being disappearing and ceasing to have ever been there. Its memories of having those limbs were intact, but the limbs themselves were unmade.
Then, with one final, larger bite, Khor’s jaws stretched to encompass the entire remaining body.
CRUNCH.
The Early Creature disappeared completely.
[Hunger Stacks: +90%]
She didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.
Her form blurred across the battlefield, a crimson streak of annihilation. Each Early Creature she encountered suffered the same fate, dismantled bite by bite before total consumption.
|Hunger Stacks: +180%|
|Hunger Stacks: +225%|
She was getting faster. Stronger. Every kill fed the engine. Every bite fueled the slaughter.
The Elemental Legion began to burn with a rageful light of Civilizational Authority!
Oh!
Noah watched from above, his heart beating in a slow, tyrannical rhythm.
The light of his Civilization was blinding.
This was warfare evolved. This was the synergy of a true organism. His Vanguard could fight with reckless abandon, knowing the Bulwarks held their lives. His Support could heal the Bulwarks, knowing the Vanguard would end the threat.
He watched Khor tear the head off a 300 Sextillion Complexity creature and laugh, a sense of sorrow and frustration being released from her.
|Harvest Accumulating...|
|Source: Elemental Legion|
|Amplification: Perpetual Harvest Active|
|Projected Gain: Extraordinary. Quintessentially so.|
Noah closed his eyes for a brief second, feeling the influx of power. It was intoxicating.
"Yes," he murmured to the chaos. "This is the path. This is The Way."
He opened his eyes, and they blazed with tyrannical satisfaction.
"Burn them all," he commanded softly. "And bring me the ash."
...!
HUUM!