Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 5589

Chapter 5589: Nature Against Nature!

The white weapons fell!

Lances of woven loomlight rained down from the many-sided head of the Woe Culture as turning wheels of stellar white carved through the unseen sky, and the nine clones of THE True Human Emperor scattered across the heavens as detonations of crimson gold met an authority older than the frameworks themsleves!

And through all of it, the vast thing was still trying to understand.

"You strike me even now," its heavy voice boomed as three of its long legs swept a clone out of the sky, hair-fine threads bending fortune so that every dodge arrived a breath late!

"And I strike you, because you would end me, and I preserve myself. But I do not understand you, Little One! This... is what I am? I am a Woe Culture? I am simply living as I should, emulating the Primevals and THE First Lifeforms. You would hunt me because of my nature? Others have passed through here and seen me and not done anything. We simply nod to each other. Why not you?"

Others!

The word boomed inside Noah even as his clones wove between falling lances. Others had passed through this unseen layer.

Others had seen this thing hanging over his people, and nodded, and moved along! What manner of beings strolled through the white rivers above the skies of Dimensions unobserved?

"I do not hunt you because having a nature is a crime. Everything alive has one. I hunt you because your nature and mine conflict, and conflicting natures do not get to share one sky!"

"Natures do not conflict," the Woe Culture cut in, a lance of white driving down between two clones as it spoke, genuinely arguing now, fighting and reasoning in the same breath!

"Natures coexist. The storm does not conflict with the mountain."

"The storm does not FARM the mountain!" Noah’s nine voices cracked back across the sky as staffs swept a wheel of white aside!

"Your nature farms the grief of gathered lifeforms. My nature is to gather lifeforms and guard them. The ones you drink from below are mine, sworn to me, led by me, and every ribbon of misery you pull up through those jaws is pulled out of my people! Those others who nodded at you carried no one beneath your shadow. I do. Your claim on this sky and my claim on this sky cannot both stand."

His voice went cold as a drop of blood formed at every staff. "So one of them falls. You will not die for being what you are. You die for being what you are...HERE."

HUUM!

The violet lights churned slowly through the endless body as its legs drew back, and when it spoke again, there was something almost reasonable in the vast voice.

"Then I will leave here. I will go elsewhere, and live my nature above some other sky."

"You will do the same where you go, yes?"

"Of course," the Woe Culture said honestly, without a single beat of hesitation, "for that is my nature."

...!

And there it was.

It would drift across the unseen layer and settle above some other Dimension of countless decillions who buried their dead and never knew why the wars kept coming, and it would open its jaws, and it saw nothing in that sentence to apologize for.

"..."

Noah shook his head as before any sentence could be carried out, he reached for his newest tool.

THE Yoke of the Standing Sky!

The invisible structure across his shoulders woke for the first time as he willed it, blue gold force spreading out from him through all nine clones at once, and nine titanic figures raised their hands toward the endless purple body as Noah did something no being below had ever done to a Woe Culture.

He took it up.

BOOM!

The weight arrived!

Gigaparsecs of living lifeform came down onto his existence in a single instant as the Yoke gathered the whole of it, plates and legs and gigaparsecs of glowing skin, every league of a thing vaster than an Observable Existence, and Noah felt his frame ring from his clones to his true body on a distant volcanic peak! His shoulders bent!

The three singularities in his depths flared as his PONDUS was pressed to its edges for the first time since crossing, and the question of what the Yoke could bear was being answered in the harshest classroom there was!

Could he hold a lifeform the size of an endless sky?

His spine, seated with the Telos of Paradox, held opposing weights without breaking. His shoulders, broad with the Yoke, held the rest!

And the Woe Culture thrashed in shock as its entire body lifted, because it was being CARRIED, hoisted off the domain it had grazed for ages by something a fraction of a fraction of its size, its legs kicking at nothing, its fortune-threads finding no odds to bend against a grip that was not an attack at all!

"What... what is this?! Put me down, Little One! PUT ME DOWN!"

"As you wish," Noah said.

And he threw it.

"I too shall have to live truly to my nature," Noah said quietly, "as my heart and mind tell me... You must die."

BOOM!

The white lattices parted around his burning drops as loomlight slid off stellar blue without purchase, and the detonations landed on flesh that could no longer knit itself closed, and gorges became canyons became severings as the endless body of the Woe Culture came apart across the foam!

And it cried out.

The sound rolled through the space between Dimensions, mournful and vast and utterly without anger, the grief-drinker grieving at last on its own behalf as its violet lights guttered out along thousands of Gigaparsecs.

"How could you end me... for simply living by my nature? I curse you... I curse you...!"

...!

Its body burst.

Countless light years of stellar purple, gigaparsecs of plates and legs and clear glowing skin, ruptured outward in slow silence and dissolved, breaking down into indicernable motes of violet that scattered across the black foam and thinned and went dark.

The nine clones of THE True Human Emperor floated amid the dissolution and gazed upon it, crowns of blood turning, saying nothing, as the largest lifeform Noah had ever killed stopped existing in the space between Dimensions, far from any sky it could ever graze again.

And Noah, through nine sets of senses at once, probed the dying words.

I curse you. Had that been a wail, or a working? He swept his sight across his clones, across his blood, across the connection running back to his body on a volcanic peak, hunting for any thread of violet that had latched where it should not have. He found nothing.

Which meant nothing had landed, or that whatever had landed was not a thing his senses knew how to find yet.

HUUM!

|The Woe Culture has been granted its death. Its nature has ended with it: the probability-tendrils woven across THE Golden Expanse and its surrounding regions have unraveled. The adversity it farmed will no longer be called. Your Provenance Essence has increased in concentration. Your PONDUS has increased. PONDUS: 12.|

|A separate matter, Master.|

|Due to settings enacted by THE Infiniverse, THE Tide That Owes Nothing has been quietly generating and preserving potential boons for all things you have given, for a while now. Leadership given to a domain. Protection given to millions. Marks given to the marked. Affirmation given to the grieving. The ledger has been kept, and none of it has yet been answered.|

|With the granting of death to a unique lifeform, the Tide has reached an unprecedented generation.|

|Shall the generation and preservation continue?|

...!