Chapter 5426: I AM! III
Chapter 5426: I AM! III
Noah had built the letter to last forever on a single utterance. Speak it once, and existence kept paying, kept asserting him into reality, kept precipitating its cerulean overflow, on and on without another word from him.
But that raised a question the rest of existence would have done well to ask before tangling with him.
Who said he could only utter it once?
Really, who decided that?!
Speaking it again did nothing to the rate of the Osmontian Biomass. That part was settled, a steady river. But the letter did more than generate a resource. Every time Noah spoke I AM, he affirmed himself, declared who he was a second time, a third, a hundredth, and each fresh declaration slammed through his entire existence like an overpowered Existential Enzyme. It sped the reactions of everything he was. It amplified, and elevated, and healed, all at once, a catalyst that asked his whole being to perform itself faster and harder and cleaner for the moment the word rang out. Once was permanent. Again was a detonation of self.
Out in the Undefined Gaps, that detonation looked like a man hauling an Observable Existence on foot.
Noah’s body there stood braced against the great dark, muscular and immense, his abs rippling, the cables of his frame drawn taut, THE Infiniverse anchored to him by threads of authority as he dragged it forward through the void toward no destination. It was slow work even for him, pulling a whole domain through the gaps between existences. So he spoke.
"I AM!"
WAA!
Blue flame erupted across his body, immense and roaring, the cerulean shrouding him from heel to crown, and his entire existence sped up at the word. He took a step, and then another, rapid now where he had been straining, hauling THE Infiniverse behind him in great surging strides, the enzyme of the letter accelerating every reaction in him so that the impossible labor became merely difficult, and the difficult became a march. He walked an Observable Existence across the dark like a man pulling a cart up a hill, and with each fresh utterance the hill flattened a little more beneath his feet.
In THE Source Lands, behind the veil of infinity where no eye could reach, the word carried a different weight.
There, in the region Noah had blanketed so that some things would not be seen by others, his body and Eon’s were deep in Dual Cultivation, and through the concealing veil only one thing escaped clearly, spoken low and certain.
"I AM!"
HUUM!
The blue storm of infinity behind the veil exploded in concentration tenfold. The sea of cerulean that hid them surged and thickened, glorious phenomena blooming across its surface, the letter pouring its catalytic affirmation into the working so that everything within compounded, every reaction quickened, the thousandfold return of THE Tide That Owes Nothing married to the enzyme of his own self-declaration. Eon’s Superbius answered it gladly. Whatever was happening behind that veil, the word made it grander, and then mercifully the veil kept the rest.
In THE Effluvium Sanctum, seated in the storm of his own flame amid the lethal pressure of the floating seas, Noah spoke it again.
"I AM."
The Sanctum’s killing ambient Intent had been pressing on him from every side, a forge built to grind Fourth Scale beings toward the Fifth, and at the letter his existence simply outpaced it. His Intent, mid-refinement, snapped sharper. His Osmontian Source Infinity thickened a measured degree. The Estuary Eye above him drank harder, the enzyme speeding even its inhuman appetite, and the nine Dora Shath’yar watching from the distance felt the seated being’s presence climb without warning and traded glances!
---
And in THE Braneworld, the word came last, and it came as a challenge.
Noah’s body there held THE Loyal Reach in one hand, the split-blade burning cerulean with its nine-pointed-star hilt. The other hand still held Dietrich by the ruined neck, and Noah looked at the hollowed Gilded One with the mild distaste a man holds for something stuck to his shoe, and threw him down. Dietrich fell away like discarded trash, blind and broken, tumbling back toward the silver tide below, and Noah did not watch him go. He looked up instead, at the thing unfolding in the gold sky.
The Pantheon of the Mesozoic Scale Ealdor Gilded One.
It rose vast above the dying capital, a dimension of gold and engineered glory, a structure of soaring lattice-towers and burning sigil-walls, every surface inscribed with the records of a being who had ruled across ages. Golden chains of authority hung from impossible heights, and a throne sat at its heart wreathed in the cold light of an Olympian Intent made law, the whole edifice declaring that within it the Ealdor was sovereign and reality obeyed. It was genuinely formidable. A true Fifth Scale Pantheon, the dimension upon which the Ealdor existed, and stepping against it should have been suicide for anything that had not built one of its own.
|The being before you has manifested its Existential Pantheon. Designation: THE Aureate Firmament of House Vularch. Holder: Ealdor Gilded One Vularch Sethis, Mesozoic Scale, Olympian Intent. Within this Pantheon he resides in his own Pantheonic Dimension and is, by the ordinary rules, beyond your reach. You possess no Pantheon. By the framework, you cannot breach his.|
The Ealdor, Vularch Sethis, looked down at the small blue figure from within his golden dimension, and his voice rolled out cold and certain.
"What are you?" he said. "What manner of thing throws a Gilded aside and stares up at my Firmament without kneeling?" His gold eyes narrowed.
"You, and the others tearing at our home, do you understand what you are inviting? The Gilded Ones are not alone. We are not some isolated seat to be pulled down in the dark. We are spread across Observable Existences beyond your counting, and while this Braneworld holds only Mesozoic Scale beings, there are grander things than us standing behind us elsewhere. We have powers in other places that would unmake you for sport. We even have Primeval Lifeforms at our backs. Primevals. Do you hear me, whatever you are? We are not a thing you can war against and survive!"
And Noah, hearing all of it, the threats and the grandeur and the invocation of Primevals, actually smiled.
Noah grasped THE Loyal Reach in both hands, the split-blade flaring, and he spoke.
"I AM!"
BOOM!
His existence detonated with the word, the cerulean enzyme firing through every reaction in him, amplifying and elevating and quickening, and he shot up toward the terrifying golden Pantheon without a trace of fear, because he was Noah Osmont, and fear was a thing he had grown past long ago!
He had no Pantheon. He had decided, for himself, that he did not need one to match one.
And he was about to find out, against a genuine Fifth Scale dimension, whether he had been right.
Oh, he was!
As Noah shot toward the golden Pantheon, blade blazing, a quiet set of prompts surfaced beneath the roar.
|THE Tide That Owes Nothing has been triggered. The Osmontian Biomass continuously generated and distributed to your people is, in its truest nature, an act of giving. You give your people the means to rise, and the Tide does not permit giving to go unanswered, no matter how grand the gift already is.|
|Even Osmontian Biomass, a resource of profound significance, is not exempt. What you give returns to you, multiplied. Since the inception of THE First Letter, the Biomass granted to your people has accrued you a return.|
|You have gained +1,000 Osmontian Biomass.|
Noah’s smile widened mid-flight!