Chapter 5507: The Explorer! I
Chapter 5507: The Explorer! I
The Superbius Gilded True Lifeform struck again.
His terrifying Intent descended upon the bloodied titan as golden Dimensional weavings tore the red sea apart along its path, inevitability declaring THE Creature broken, the stage shredding beneath the declaration as the strike crossed the distance in a single fold of pride!
And then a figure appeared in front of THE Creature.
It was a humanoid visage. A scholar! An explorer! A man of unremarkable height in scholarly white robes, his hair tousled as if he had just walked out of a library and into a hurricane, his hands clasped calmly behind his back!
And shockingly...the descending Intent split!
The golden declaration of a Cenozoic-equivalent being forked around the newcomer like a river forced around a stone it could not acknowledge, tearing twin canyons through the sea on either side of him as it dispersed into the storm, as if the Intent itself simply could not hit the being that had just appeared!
THE Creature looked at this being, and sighed, and shook his head with open marvel.
Anaximander!
A supposedly normal human who had been studying the stars of a Lower Observable Existence, only to be visited paradoxically by THE Weavers, and from there...he had taken a step simply because he said he could...and appeared in space! He could not survive in space. But he simply deemed that he should, and so he did!
He held no authority. Not a single wisp of it, not then and not now! And yet this man had shouldered the burden of the Veil between the Living and the Dead, helping THE Creature carry it without even knowing what it was. He could do things because his existence made it so he could do them, and in that early era, others had not truly understood what they were looking at. Even THE Creature had not.
But the moment THE Creature grasped the weavings of a True Lifeform, of Identity and how it steered everything, how a lived claim made existence conform...his first thought had been Anaximander.
In all of existence, THE Creature truly could not say who had lived their way, based purely on their identity, making existence conform to what they believed...more than Anaximander!
And he appeared now, untouched, the terrifying Intent of a Superbius Gilded True Lifeform parting around him, likely because somewhere along his wandering road, the scholar had simply declared a commandment that his body could not be harmed by others.
THE Creature shook his head and nodded to him.
"It has been some time, Anaximander."
...!
The explorer turned, and laughed!
"Some time? It’s been over a year, big guy!"
...!
A year?
Barely days had passed since THE Creature, Osmont, and Anaximander had parted, since they painted the skies of that Lower Observable Existence red-gold with the blood of a Gilded One and started this entire chain of events.
But for Anaximander, more than a year had passed? Just what dimensions had this man wandered into, to distort time so much?
There was no time to catch up.
Anaximander turned around to see the two grand True Lifeforms gazing over coldly, the Ira one risen bloodied from the waves, the Superbius one burning with golden offense, and the scholar whistled in open amazement as he looked them up and down like specimens.
"Oh, wonderful. The two of you are True," he said, nodding along to his own observation. "Genuinely True, I can tell, it’s all very impressive. But...hm. Your Egos seem to conflict with your Trueness. Ira rages against what is, and Superbius insists on more than what is, and both of those are arguments with reality, aren’t they? That is quite paradoxical for beings whose whole foundation is being seamless with reality." He tilted his head, and said it plainly, like a diagnosis.
"I don’t think...you are True at all."
...!
HUUM!
He said such simple words.
And yet in the next moment, the gazes of two True Lifeforms changed heavily! Shock bloomed first, then incredulity, and then from their golden bodies...their Intents began to leak! Wrath and pride flooded out of them in unraveling streams as if a hole had been poked in each of their existences, Trueness hemorrhaging into the storm, two seamless claims suddenly springing seams because a man with no authority had looked at them and disagreed!
Even THE Creature was alarmed!
His flat eyes swept the scholar and found nothing, no Intent, no working, no exertion of any framework existence had ever catalogued, just a man in white robes floating over a red sea, being right at people!
"You may want to attack, big guy," Anaximander said casually, "I can’t keep this up for too long!"
...!
THE Creature shook his head once at the immensity of his friend.
And took a step!
He imposed himself upon two incredulous True Lifeforms in whose deepest weavings doubt had begun to bloom, doubt about the very claims their existences were built upon! And when there was doubt in something True...it was done for!
The battle that followed was brutal.
BOOM!
The Ira Gilded One erupted first as his True Appendage tore free of his back, THE Gauntlets of the Unspent Fury, colossal crimson gauntlets forged from every rage he had ever swallowed, and he met THE Creature’s charge head-on as their fists collided with a detonation that vaporized miles of the red sea! THE Creature took the blow across his jaw, dark blood scattering, and answered with THE Burden, slamming the wrathful titan down through the boiling waves as he followed him under, fists hammering down like falling eras!
The Superbius one moved a breath later, golden light screaming as his own Appendage bloomed, THE Crown of the Unbowed Summit, a floating diadem of golden Dimensional weavings that tore reality apart in halos around him, and his declarations rained down upon THE Creature’s back, shredding the claimed sea, ripping wounds across obsidian shoulders even as their Trueness kept leaking, kept bleeding, their every technique arriving thinner than the last!
CRACK!
THE Creature caught the Ira one’s gauntlet mid-swing and broke the arm behind it over his knee!
The wrathful being howled as THE MAW opened along the titan’s shoulder and bit the crimson Appendage in half, devouring fury mid-scream, and THE Creature spun through the golden declarations raining from above, taking two across the chest, bleeding, always bleeding, and not slowing at all, as he seized the Ira one by the skull and used a True Lifeform as a club to smash the descending Crown from the sky!
"You...what did he DO?!"
...!
And through all of it, both Gilded beings kept glancing hatefully at the scholar!