Chapter 5333: Sword of Existence! I
Chapter 5333: Sword of Existence! I
Noah frowned at this time, looking at Sir William and the others.
He had not particularly wanted their help. He had been getting there. THE Domain of the Genesis Monarch and his Aura had been narrowing toward an answer of his own. But he set the irritation aside, because the result was the result, and there was a more pressing point to make.
He looked at Luxanna.
"Can you hear that?" he asked.
...!
The silence.
Luxanna’s malevolent eyes flicked around the battlefield, and the laughter died in her throat, because there was nothing to hear. The dozens of Gilded Ones who had descended with her, the Fourth Scale entities and the Devonian Paleozoic Third Scale ones, were gone. All of them!
In the short span while she had been smashed across the domain and dragged back and torn open by the four Source Lifeforms, Noah had acted against every one of them through THE Domain of the Genesis Monarch, using his Aura and Chernobyl together to incapacitate them and feed them to the Observable Existence’s open jaws, devouring them one after another while she had been occupied with her own survival.
The battlefield held no Gilded Ones but her.
"Only you remain, Lu-xa-nna," Noah said coldly.
BOOM!
His words carried across the silent domain, and beside him, Seo-yeon smiled with shining eyes, watching with the bright absorbed attention of a child who had just been taught a grand lesson she intended to remember.
One had to fight like this!
Luxanna looked at the empty battlefield where her forces had been, and then she laughed.
It came back, the mad evil light returning to her eyes despite the gashes and the heavy breathing and the torn Intent wrapped around her like a bandage.
"Only I remain," she said, savoring it. "For now. For now, big guy. In a few seconds, dozens more just like me will arrive. And some far stronger than me. Because that is the rule, isn’t it? Challenge invites challenge. Power invites more power. You showed me how strong you are, and now I will show you exactly what that strength summons. They are already coming. Every reserve. Every Legion. You have made yourself far too interesting to ignore!"
Noah frowned at these words.
At that moment, words reached him that only he could hear, stemming from Sir William.
"If we remain here, this Observable Existence will be crushed under the weight of the forces coming. It has only just been resuscitated. Its foundations are new and its First Cause is freshly rebuilt, and it cannot survive becoming the battleground for what she is summoning. For now, you and Seo-yeon need to go where the Gilded Ones cannot follow. You need to go...to THE Source Lands."
...!
BOOM!
THE Source Lands.
Where the Gilded Ones had just made their entry into THE Strand of Broken Scales. Where his other body walked among Marxist’s settlement under the name Ozymandias. Where the Gilded Ones were already present and already hunting!
Noah’s eyes shone brightly.
He looked at Sir William and nodded. The logic was sound, and the irony of fleeing toward the Gilded Ones to escape the Gilded Ones was unique.
In the next moment, Sir William unsheathed his sword, and an obsidian sea arose, wrapping around himself, Noah, Seo-yeon, the three other Source Lifeforms, and the surrounding Relictus.
Luxanna saw it and roared, shock and rage twisting her cruel features.
"You cowards!" she howled. "Wait just two seconds! Just two seconds so we can corner you and this whole place! Wait just a fucking—"
BOOM!
The obsidian sea churned and exploded.
Obsidian streaks shot out across Chernobyl in multiple directions at once, racing toward THE Undefined Gaps, toward the boundary of the Observable Existence and the unclassified spaces beyond it, scattering so that no single pursuit could catch all of them. Luxanna roared and split her torn Intent to chase several of the streaks while choosing one sliver to pursue with her own body, the silver dragon hurling herself after a fleeing obsidian streak with everything her wounded existence had left.
"Wait! A! Fucking! Second!"
BOOM!
---
Luxanna chased the obsidian streak toward the boundary of Chernobyl, and the boundary refused to let her reach it.
She felt it the moment she committed to the pursuit. Invisible shackles formed around her torn body, not from any being, not from any visible attack, but from the Observable Existence itself. Chernobyl reached up and grabbed her!
The substrate she had been flying through became hands, the air became chains, the reborn domain that answered to the being who had rebuilt it decided she was not permitted to leave, and it pulled her down. THE Domain of the Genesis Monarch had marked her as a Fourth Scale existence to be contained, and even with her third-rarity Intent resisting, even with her existence straining against the hold, the domain dragged her back from the edge she had nearly reached.
The obsidian streaks vanished into THE Undefined Gaps. Noah was gone. Seo-yeon was gone. The Swords of Existence and the Relictus, gone!
And Luxanna was held in place by an existence that hated her.
She roared.
"You cowards! You absolute cowards, you ran, you actually ran, you held me down like a child and you ran!" She thrashed against the invisible shackles, her silver Acedia Intent raging uselessly against a domain that did not care about her records because it had its own.
"Osmont, or whatever your name is, you slippery little thing, you spineless gorgeous monster, you don’t get to do that to me and just leave! And you! Source Lifeform! Manners maketh man, you said, manners, you pompous obsidian-suited bag of etiquette, where were your manners when you grabbed my prize and dove into a hole! Cowards! All of you! Those ugly oversized lizards you call Relictus, those overgrown fucking pets, I will skin every one of them and make a coat, do you hear me! A big fuckin coat!"
BOOM!
The shackles held her. The domain did not answer her insults. It simply kept her in place, the wrath of a freshly reborn Observable Existence pressing down on the dragon who had tried to make it a battlefield.
Only when she stopped trying to go out did they fade away.
A second later, the sky cracked.
Dozens of titanic Ragnars descended into Chernobyl, each emanating the heavy aura of the Fourth Scale, and these were nothing like the soulless Dredge units Noah had erased in nine seconds. These carried their full will and their full power.
Some blazed with the crimson war-fury of Ira Intents. Some pressed down with the golden weight of Superbius Intents. Others spread the dulling silver of Acedia Intents, and every one of them was more terrifying than the single Ragnar Noah had first assessed, each carrying a second-rarity Intent wielded by a being that knew exactly how to wield it.
Behind them came something worse.
A group of women descended, each accompanied by their Custodes, and the air itself seemed to compose itself around them as they arrived. THE Magna Sorora!
They were unblemished in their power, beautiful in the way that beings of immense standing were beautiful, and their Intents pressed against the reborn domain with a weight that made the Ragnars seem ordinary. Every one of them carried a third-rarity Intent. Not one Titan Intent among the leadership the way Luxanna had been the rare exception in her own force. All of them!
A gathering of Titan-rarity Akashic Civilizational Intents, arrived together!
At their head was a woman with radiant gold hair, a crown hanging diagonally across her head, her presence carrying the composed authority of a being who commanded the rest without needing to assert it.
She looked at the contained Luxanna.
"What happened here?" she asked.
Luxanna stopped thrashing, her frustration channeling into the report through gritted teeth.
"A Lifeform that can resuscitate a Terminal Observable Existence," she said. "And a Lifeform that can Bless another to gain THE Primordial Source. A man and a little girl. This is them. The two of them. They are the answer. Both of them. The answer to everything our entire civilization has ever wanted, and they slipped into THE Undefined Gaps two seconds before I could close my hand on them."
She waved a hand, and the illusory images of Noah and Seo-yeon formed in the air between the gathered Magna Sorora. The man burning with silent Infinity that could not be seen through. The little girl in tattered blue rags, carrying both foundational natures in her small frame.
The golden-haired woman reached out and took the illusory images, and the other Sororis Prima around her did the same, each of them drawing the faces into their own perception, studying them with the focused attention of beings committing something to the deepest layers of their memory.
When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that made the entire gathered force go still.
"Memorize these faces," she said. "Dream of these faces. Hold them in your existence until they are carved there permanently. We will have a location for you soon enough, because beings like this do not stay hidden, no matter where they run. And when we have it, you will move. All of you." Her eyes moved across the assembled Ragnars and Sororis Prima and Custodes.
"They must be found. They must be recovered. At all cost. Whatever it requires, whatever it consumes, whatever Observable Existence must burn to flush them out. The man who can bring dead domains back to life, and the girl who can hand us THE Primordial Source. Found, and recovered. At all cost."
She let the silence hold.
"Understood?"
...!
The answer came back from dozens of Fourth Scale throats at once, the Ragnars and the Sororis Prima and the Custodes speaking as one, the word carrying across the reborn sky of Chernobyl with the unified weight of a force that had just been given its single most important purpose.
"Understood!"
BOOM!