Chapter 5501: Human!
Chapter 5501: Human!
The forge sang on, and the golden island was no longer quiet.
CLANG! CLANG!
Noah’s hammer rose and fell upon the anvil as fresh Advanced Apeiron Armaments cooled in gleaming rows, and all around him, across the drifting dream-sands, dozens of his closest people walked beneath the storming skies of THE Krazhor-Nul.
His Mother was here. Henry was here. Barbatos, Adelaide, Sigrid, Riya, Naldine, Titano, The Emperor Penguin, Kazuhiko, Erikson, Lich Ra’Zan, Khor, Amser, The Dora Shath’yar...dozens of the people drawn out from the safety of THE Infiniverse and standing upon the sands of his Dimension, and every single one of them was adorned in THE Tidebound Apeiron!
The abyssal-blue armors had transformed upon each wearer, thinning and reshaping until they lay like a layer of their own clothing, Amelia’s flowing into the trim of her emerald gown, Henry’s settling as a blue-gold mantle across his shoulders, Barbatos wearing hers like a duelist’s coat as the Emperor Penguin’s armor had simply become a small regal breastplate that he polished with one flipper!
And with the simple Egoic Intents of their armaments humming, the lethal ambient density of THE Krazhor-Nul broke around them like water around stones as they gazed at the wonders of this place with open awe!
The storm of raining authorities. The distant fossil ranges. The million-mile tree far behind them. His people drank it all in, and Noah watched them drink it in as his hammer kept its rhythm.
And then, as they crossed into a new region...they sensed a cluster of lifeforms!
Ahead, the dark geography gave way to a vast basin wrapped in mist and slow-turning storms, and stretched over all of it like a soap-bubble of solid law was a dimensional forcefield, a boundary of layered weavings that pressed back against their approach with a simple, ancient demand. Only a True Lifeform could cross.
Noah’s Trueness answered without being asked, and the boundary parted around the golden island like a curtain!
And within...
"Whoa..." Seo-yeon whispered.
Within was a hidden paradise. Rolling plains of luminous silver-green grass spread beneath the mist as groves of colossal blue-leafed trees rose like towers, and moving through this greenery, grazing upon it in slow contented herds...were massive lifeforms!
They were like archaic dinosaurs. Colossal long-necked beasts whose hides shimmered with plated opal scales, their backs ridged with crystalline sails that caught the storm-light. Horned quadrupeds the size of hills with manes of drifting silver flame. Massive shelled grazers whose shells spiraled like the horns of legends, gentle-eyed and slow, tearing up whole trees and chewing them with the placid rhythm of creatures who had never once needed to hurry. They were herbivores, every one of them, eating the surrounding greenery in peace.
And each of them...had their Sources vibrantly at THE Fourth Scale of Existence!
|Designation: THE Mistgrove Behemoths of THE Krazhor-Nul. They are natal inhabitants of this Dimension, protected within grazing sanctuaries such as this one, and every member of the herd carries a natal intent related to herbivores, expressions of placidity, growth, and endless grazing woven into their Sources from birth. They hold no aggression weavings whatsoever. They are, in the plainest terms, the fattened cattle of this Dimension.|
Noah’s eyes shined brightly!
He gazed upon their massive bodies, the mountainous slabs of muscle shifting beneath opal hides, the sheer tonnage of meat wandering placidly before him, Fourth Scale Sources marbled through every fiber of it, and a singular, profound, deeply human question rose through the mind of THE True Human Emperor.
How... would the bodies of these creatures taste?!
He set down his hammer.
What followed was conducted in respectful silence. Noah’s hand extended as his authority reached across the plains and plucked one of the massive beasts from the edge of the herd, a horned grazer the size of a hill, its end delivered so swiftly and painlessly that the rest of the herd did not even pause their chewing! The golden island rose at his will, lifting high above the misted basin until the sanctuary spread below them like a painting, and there, in the high quiet above a paradise, Noah rolled up his sleeves.
From his many actualized Civilizations, The Civilization of Cooking was pulled out!
The weavings of a hundred thousand kitchens settled over his body as his stance changed, his hands changed, the entire manner of his existence changed, and THE True Human Emperor became a chef once more.
His blades moved first. The colossal beast was broken down with strokes of such precision that not a single fiber tore wrong, mountains of marbled crimson meat separating into their noble cuts as bones the size of towers were set aside. And then came the fire.
His Osmontian Source Infinity rose as the flames!
Cerulean fire bloomed across dozens of floating grill-stations as Noah cooked upon his own Infinity, the blue flames licking up around slabs of Fourth Scale meat, and through the fire itself he provided the spices, threads of his Intent folding into the flames as seasoning, notes of his Causes rendered into flavor, Harvest lending depth and Quintessence lending purity as the smoke that rose over the golden island turned fragrant enough to make many weep!
And the cuts that emerged...
Thick-cut ribs glazed in their own rendered Source, the meat pulling from the bone in tender crimson sheets that steamed with cerulean light! Rolled roasts, seared to a crust of gold and carved into medallions so marbled they glowed like stained glass.
Skewers of flame-mane flank, charred and dripping. Broths of tower-bone simmered until they shimmered like liquid pearl, and upon every plate, every cut burned faintly with Osmontian Source Infinity and the warm weight of his Intent, food that was also, in the truest sense, him!
|Each prepared meal of Mistgrove Behemoth provides +100 Osmontian Biomass to those consuming it, alongside an all-parameter elevation of their Source lasting several days, a strengthening of natal placidity within their weavings that steadies the mind against fear and madness, and a gentle deepening of the consumer’s affinity toward their own Intent. In plainer terms: this meal makes them stronger, calmer, braver, and truer.|
"...Aba." Seo-yeon had drifted up beside the grills, and she was openly salivating, mirrored light flickering off her cheeks. "Aba, is it ready?"
"Go," Noah said, and the feast began!
His people fell upon the food with the joy of soldiers given a festival! Titano wept openly over the ribs. The Emperor Penguin claimed an entire loin roast and defended it with regal menace. Sigrid and Adelaide dueled with skewers, Kazuhiko ate in reverent silence, Lich Ra’Zan, who did not strictly need to eat, ate anyway, and Seo-yeon sat on the throne handle with a rib bigger than she was, absolutely destroying it.
And Noah stood back from the grills, and looked at his people, in this dangerous Dimension, and thought...
This...was what it meant to be human.
Because out here, in the vastness of existence, amid all the terrors and Scales and dying Causes and cursed lineages, a human wonders what their purpose is. What they were here for! It was a terrifying question to ever ponder, as one may search across eras and never once find the answer. But when they all came together like this, eating and laughing and simply being around each other beneath a storm that could kill Mesozoic Scale beings...the question quieted.
This was being human. Not the answer to the question, but the reason the question could be borne at all.
His gaze drifted across the feast, and paused.
In one corner of the golden island, away from the laughter...Emotive was bowing.
She was bowing toward the butler-like figure of Malphas, her head lowered deep as her hands pressed together before her. Malphas had served her once, in the era when Emotive played with the emotions of all her servants, when her cruelty had been a habit. She had done everything since to redeem herself.
But redemption in general was one thing as she had to do the other.
Malphas stood stiffly before her with a difficult expression fighting across his composed face, a servant’s discipline warring with emotions he was trying desperately not to show. But he did not walk away either, and Emotive did not rise until he had managed, stiffly, barely, a single nod.
Noah watched it all in silence.
Near the two of them, Heidrun strutted past! The lustrous goat, her fur now a stellar cascade of white-gold and blue, held her horned head at a magnificently arrogant angle as she surveyed the feast like a queen inspecting tribute, and then began to eat with a delicacy that fooled no one, as she was on her third plate, this fatty.
Noah looked at all of this.
And his thoughts turned.
His Osmontian Tongue, four Letters strong and hungry for more. The Infinite Tongue that had preceded it. The First Tongue, THE Primordial Tongue, all the grammars of power that existence had layered across the ages, and the directions his own Tongue could still grow!
Letters were carved from lived truth. And what truth had he lived more thoroughly than the one unfolding on these sands right now?
So he simply said it.
"I AM...HUMAN."
HUUUM!
Waves of silent immensity permeated all around.
The fourth Letter rolled out over the golden island not as a simple, settled fact, and it wrapped around the feast like warmth around a hearth as his people’s laughter rang inside it, and Noah simply enjoyed this moment!
And at this time...
Above him, his Intent and his Osmontian Source Infinity began to gather!
Existence folded and formed glimmering singularities across the sky over the island, points of light blooming one after another as wonders began to descend toward him, and the familiar seethe of his Foundations moved beneath all of it with unusual force, THE Tide exerting itself tremendously, his whole Scale of Foundations flexing as if determined to guarantee an ecstatic result!
|THE Tide That Owes Nothing has been triggered. You hunted, butchered, cooked, and served with your own hands, gifting a feast woven from your Civilizations, your Infinity, and your Intent to dozens of those dearest to you. The Tide has judged this compound act of giving among the purest it has yet answered, and your Foundations have exerted themselves in concert to sharpen the returns.|
|Boons delivered, and they seem to be Meats stemming from True Lifeforms.|
WAA!
The singularities opened, and the boons descended!
Slabs of meat drifted down through the storm-light, each one sealed in folds of glimmering preservation, and even wrapped, even inert, their presense pressed upon the island with the unmistakable seamless weight of Trueness!
|First: THE Coilflesh of the World-Serpent, three great cuts recovered through the weavings from the destroyed divided bodies of Ormarr Grimtunge. Each prepared meal grants between +3,000 and +5,000 Osmontian Biomass, alongside a lasting reinforcement of the consumer’s bindings and grip upon their own existence...|
|Second: THE Marbled Haunch of a Fallen Aurochs-Sovereign, a True Lifeform of a prior era whose remains the Tide sourced from the deep graves of this Dimension. Each meal grants between +5,000 and +8,000 Osmontian Biomass, and briefly allows any consumer to bear burdens far past their Scale without buckling...|
|Third, and finest: THE Pale Sirloin of an Unnamed True Grazer, its origin veiled even to me, its flesh humming with a placid natal intent so profound it borders on law. Each meal grants +10,000 Osmontian Biomass, and deepens the consumer’s Trueness itself by a sliver...|
...!
Noah looked upon the descending bounty with shining eyes as slabs of True Lifeform meat settled gently onto his grill-stations, ingredients that lifeforms of any era would wage wars over, delivered to a chef because he had fed his family well, and he began taking them all in with the reverent hands of a craftsman receiving sacred materials.
For this, too...was being human!