Chapter 5346: Origin III
Chapter 5346: Origin III
His father moved with the dominating presence Noah remembered, and stomped down. Noah felt his existence constrict all around him, and in this illusion, he could not reach his power.
All of it...was far too real.
He grasped for Infinity and found a wall. He reached for THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian and found nothing. The Intent had sealed him into the body and the helplessness of who he had been.
BOOM!
His father’s foot caved in his chest, and he spat crimson-gold blood, his ribs cracking under the weight!
Erick stepped down harder, grinding his foot against Noah’s chest, and looked down coldly.
"Look at you. Supposed to be the big bad emperor now. Countless beings looking up to you. Whole civilizations bowing. And none of them know how much of a fraud you really are. None of them know what a loser I raised. None of them know how many times you got beaten in that apartment, how many slaps, how many of my fists." He smiled, slow and cruel. "Does this bring back memories, my boy?"
BOOM!
"All these women you keep picking up, why so fucking many? You think you’ll be less of a loser the more women you have? You’ll still be the same fuckin loser even if you get a thousand! You will still be that loser stuck in his room with barely any friends! The void you have...none of them will fill it! "
BOOM!
"I only had your mother, and I am still a bigger man than you. Well, I cheated here and there, but so what? You made things miserable in that house, you fuckin mistake."
His father crouched and began to punch him, and Noah looked up coldly.
BOOM!
A fist landed across his face, carrying Dame Seraphine’s Intent behind it, and Noah’s head snapped sideways, blood and a hadean tooth flying from his mouth. He turned his head back and looked at his father defiantly. Erick smiled wider, laughed, and threw another punch, and another, settling into the cruel rhythm of a man who had done this many times and had enjoyed it every time.
"They say existence is adversity," Erick said between blows, conversational, almost warm in his cruelty. "Well. I must have been very good adversity for you, then. Wasn’t I helpful? I was your adversity. I forged you into what you are now, every slap a hammer blow, every beating shaping the metal. You can’t escape that. You can’t escape me."
BOOM!
Another punch.
"You saved your mother from the Apocalypse. Pulled her right out. But not me. Why not me, boy? You left me to die down there in the claws of weak Rank F Beasts. What kind of son leaves his father to die just because the old man knocked him around a little? What a horrible fucking son you are! Is blood not thicker than water? Do you care nothing for blood at all? Was all of it fake?"
BOOM!
"You know I’ll never meet my grandson now," Erick continued, punching.
"Little Henry. You think he looks up to you? Not long ago you put that boy through adversity yourself. Almost beat him the way I used to beat you. He probably hates you, but is too fearful to even look at you. You have so much time in existence, you can fucking dilate time itself, but how much of it do you spend with him? None of it! Like father, like son, eh? Like father, like son!" He laughed.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Punches and blood spattered all around!
"You think you can outrun me? Outlive my memory? My impact on you? I’ll haunt you every day of your life, you useless sack of my DNA. That’s all you ever were. That’s all you are now, under the robes and the titles. Your mother, you named her the Origin of your Infinite Cause. Yes? But she’s only half the puzzle. It took two to make you, you mistake. I’m part of your Cause too. I’m part of your origin. So where’s my power? Where’s my due? I WANT MY FUCKING DUE!"
BOOM!
He grew angrier, pummeling Noah’s head, and Noah’s facial muscles deformed under the blows, his ears ringing, his vision cutting in and out.
All he could hear was the rhythm of it!
"You were a mistake."
BOOM!
"You should never have been born."
BOOM!
"You are a fraud."
BOOM!
HUUUM!
The ringing grew louder and louder, everything threatening to fade, and Noah could feel it, the illusion pressing toward the point where it would take him completely.
But even as all of it happened.
HUUM!
His existence burned with boundless Quintessence and Tyranny. Quintessence that now seemed an inviolable part of himself.
DUM!
His heart began to beat faster. He was a mistake? He was a fraud?!
He?
HE?!
BOOM!
Infinity surged first, the way it always had, the way it had in a dying apartment when he had nothing else. Multicolored brilliance. Osmontian Absolute Infinity. Quintessence Infiniforce. All of it his, all of it organized around his identity, blooming across him as THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian blazed back to life through the seal the Intent had placed on him!
An instant later, obsidian brilliance flared, and THE Primordial Source surged into his hands.
His hands, burning with Infinity and THE Primordial Source, rose and caught his father’s swings, stopping the fists cold. And Noah rose with them, ferociously, surging up off the ground, and he drove his forehead into his father’s face, cracking the man’s skull with the headbutt.
BOOM!
Noah jumped to his feet.
He walked toward his stumbling father, tendrils of Infinity and THE Primordial Source crackling off his frame, his obsidian-burning hands held loose at his sides, and he spoke with the cold grand certainty of a being who had thought all of this through a long time ago.
"You want to talk about origins? Okay!" he said.
"You think being half the biology that made me gives you a claim on what I built? It doesn’t. An origin is not a debt! A father is not owed his child’s life just for having been present at the start of it. You were the conditions I started in. The adversity, like you said. And adversity does not get credit for what the thing surviving it becomes."
BOOM!
"The storm does not own the ship that crossed it. You were weather, Erick. Just some bad fucking weather. And I sailed through you, and what I built on the other side is mine."
...!
"You were an abusive piece of shit that took your anger out on anyone smaller. That’s all you were. Angry you couldn’t make anything of yourself. Angry knowing...your son saw you for the loser that you were. You probably heard me praying to never turn out like you"
HUUM!
He took another step.
"I will never be like you. Not in any way that counts. You looked at a child you helped make and saw a mistake. I look at my child... and I would unmake existence before I let it have him."
His father roared and swung his fists, buzzing with Dame Seraphine’s Intent, and Noah evaded them.
He did not decide to. His body moved on its own, his Infinity and his Hadean Pillar of Infinity taking control, instinct carrying him aside from each blow with the calm economy of a being who had stopped needing to think about combat at this level.
He weaved, unhurried, letting the deepest layers of what he was do the work, and then he threw his hand, burning with Infinity and obsidian tendrils of THE Primordial Source, into his father’s gut.
BOOM!
The illusion of Erick Osmont folded over the blow, kneeling, spitting blood.
And Noah began to beat the illusion down, because he had affirmed his origin. He knew his source. He had declared his Cause with his own will, and an illusion conjured by an Intent was not going to revise that for him.
"My Infinite Cause is my Cause," he said, driving his fist down. "I can deem its Origin whoever I damn well wish. I chose my mother. That was a choice, mine, and it stands because I say it fucking stands. If I cut you off, you are cut off. You receive nothing. You have nothing due! You are due nothing!"
BOOM!