Chapter 5394: One Step! II
Chapter 5394: One Step! II
They stood on THE Loyal Reach and watched the other body work.
It hung in the dark beyond THE Infiniverse, bound in countless chains that ran back to the immensity behind it, and it had carried that immensity through THE Undefined Gaps for a little while now, dragging an entire Observable Existence the way a beast of burden drags a mountain. For all that time the work had been a kind of suffering, his skin rupturing and his bones breaking under a weight no body was built to pull, the radiant flames of Persevere and Exelissomai mending each ruin grander than before only so the ruin could happen again. Endless. Brutal. The price he had set for himself on purpose!
It was different now.
His Intent surrounded that body, and his Osmontian Source Infinity moved through it in deep cerulean currents, and the body raised its leg to take a step.
The step came. And this time the muscles did not tear. The bones did not break! The body that had been ruined and remade a thousand times simply held, the weight bearing down on it the same as ever and the foundation underneath finally equal to it, and the leg came forward and the foot found nothing in the empty Gaps and his Intent built something for it to find, a foothold of pure identity, and he pressed down on it and took a step!
BOOM!
He took that step! That one step!
HUUM!
He took another. And another!
|You are pulling the full weight and immensity of THE Infiniverse forward through THE Undefined Gaps. For the first time, your foundation sustains the action without rupture. Your body holds.|
The strain did not lessen as he walked. It grew. Each step dragged more of THE Infiniverse into motion, and a thing in motion that vast wanted to keep being still, and so every stride asked more of him than the last. But the strain growing was the point. The strain growing was the proof that he was actually moving the thing, and he met each increase by uttering the words he always uttered, except now his Intent stood behind them.
PERSEVERE!
EXELISSOMAI!
And with his Intent behind the Prime Letters, they were no longer only words mending a broken body. Storms of blue brilliance surged around him with each utterance, the cerulean force of his fused authority roaring out into the Gaps, and the body at the center of the storms looked ancient and grand, a titan straining against an impossible load, lit by the light of his own perseverance, hauling an existence forward one deliberate step at a time.
|THE Infiniverse advances. Note the relationship always established: as you grow stronger, THE Infiniverse grows with you, and the weight behind her can be scaled upward to match. The labor does not end as you strengthen, it deepens. A stronger you pulls a grander Infiniverse, and a grander Infiniverse demands a stronger you, and the two of you climb together with no ceiling on either. The burden was never meant to be escaped...|
Noah read that and found he approved of it. He had never wanted the weight gone! The more adversity, the better!
And grandly...
|You have given tremendous and sustained effort to accomplish an arduous action, consistently, across an immensity of time. THE Tide That Owes Nothing has triggered. Effort, freely and consistently given, is a form of giving, and giving returns to you grander. This would not normally trigger THE Tide, but your Intent is working hard to cheat and find as many loopholes as possible. |
|Boons returned: The effects of Persevere and Exelissomai are elevated by 100 times. Persevere no longer merely mends what breaks; it now strengthens the foundation preemptively against the next strain, so that you grow into each heavier load before the load arrives. Exelissomai no longer merely unfolds you grander after rupture; it now compounds, each unfolding building on the last rather than resetting, so that your becoming accelerates the longer you labor. The more effort you give to the pulling, the more these two Prime Letters give back, and the more they give back, the more effort you can give. The loop favors you in both directions at once.|
...!
Noah went over the prompts slowly, standing on the flat of THE Loyal Reach with his family around him, watching his other body walk.
It was, he thought, the purest expression yet of the thing he kept marveling at. He gave effort, and the effort came back as the capacity for more effort. He gave the pulling, and the pulling made the puller grander!There was no bottom to it that he could find, no point where the giving finally cost more than it returned. He had built his entire existence around turning hardship into fuel, and now his very Foundation had made that into a law that ran on its own, whether he attended to it or not!
His family watched too.
Amelia seemed to be slightly pained as she knew everything they had at this moment wss due to...her son going through tremendous pain, and he didnโt stop even now.
Seo-yeon covered her mouth with both small hands, her eyes wide, staring at the distant body hauling an entire Observable Existence through the dark by hand, the storms of blue brilliance roaring around it with every step. She had held the pain of one dying existence and thought it the heaviest thing in existence. She was watching Noah carry a living one on his back!
Henry let out a long silent breath, shaking his head, and Noah caught the look on his sonโs face, the look of a young man affirming, once again, a thing he already knew. His father was a monster!
Out in the Gaps, the other body kept walking. Step after step, foothold after foothold of pure Intent forming under his feet where the empty dark offered nothing, the massive multicolored bulk of THE Infiniverse grinding into motion behind him.
And on the flat of THE Loyal Reach, the body that stood with his family nudged the great blade with the toe of his boot.
It answered him, the split-blade of cerulean fire shooting forward into THE Undefined Gaps, carrying Noah and his mother and his son and the little girl who could hear dying worlds, off into the dark toward whatever Terminal Observable Existence Seo-yeonโs small pointing finger would guide them to next.
One body walked, and pulled an Existence.
The other flew, and went looking for one to save.