Chapter 5553: Analysis! II
Chapter 5553: Analysis! II
The bubble for DAMODRED appeared, and a string ran from it back to CAUSES, and then to THE TIDE THAT OWES NOTHING.
"Because the mechanism as we understand it is narrow," Ruination said. "He cured a Cursed Lifeform bound to Those Who Remain through Cause replacement. That act altered cause and effect across existence and time. The Tide followed the altered weavings back to the only thing they still resembled, found an extinct people’s markers sleeping in their own Causes, and matured an egg from it."
"Is that reproducible? Or was it a single accident? Does it only ever come as a Tide reward for curing a Steed, and are there even any more Steeds we can reach? Or, now that we know its origin, can we replicate it deliberately?"
...!
THE Infiniverse thought about it!
"THE Tide That Owes Nothing does not follow a procedure. It follows him, and it returns what he gives interlinked with what he is. That is why it can reach things that are extinct. It is because the Tide does not consider extinction a category that applies to a gift, so long as there is enough logic and foundation beneath the pull to make the gift coherent."
She gestured at the Damodred bubble. "The Laestrygonians laid markers into their Causes deliberately, as a chance. The chance required rare Causes to clash and meld in the right way. The Master’s cure of the Steed produced exactly that shape. The logic was already there. The Tide only had to notice it and lock on. That was the door being opened. Now that it is open, does it really need to be opened again?"
Ruination’s strings paused mid-write.
"We know what we are looking for now," THE Infiniverse continued. "Before, the Tide had to discover a resemblance across an age of dead weavings on its own. Now the target is known, named, and precedented, and we have one of them standing beside the Master as proof of concept."
She drew two new strands out of the unfolded Causes diagram and set them apart from the rest.
"So. If we focus deliberately on Blighted Causes and Calcified Causes, study them, hold them in our understanding, perhaps even channel them at the moment THE Tide is triggered by some other act of giving, then that focus becomes a hook. Something for the Return to lock onto. The Tide chooses what to give. But a hook can influence what it reaches for...a specified Return"
...!
Ruination absorbed that, and the diagram above the sea rearranged itself into something that looked, for the first time, less like a mystery and more like a plan!
THE Infiniverse had begun to work, and Ruination stood back and let her.
She raised one hand, and a Status Panel bloomed above the sea.
|STATUS PANEL: NOAH OSMONT|
|Designations: THE Quintessential Osmontian. THE True Human Emperor. THE Fledgling Liege of the First Lineage. Human.|
|Scale framework: First Infinite Scale of Existence complete; Second Infinite Scale approaching its next stage.|
|FACETS OF EXISTENCE: A-Rank, Idho. Osmontian Source Infinity. Volume. Output. Trueness. All Nine Foundations. Currently rising continuously under THE Collision of Causes.|
|INTENT: THE Ananke Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian. A-Rank, Idho. Second order.|
|OSMONTIAN TONGUE: five Letters, one Word. I AM. OSMONT. QUINTESSENTIAL. HUMAN. PROTAGONIST. THE MORTAL COIL.|
|CAUSES: nine, seated in THE Infinite Cause. Designation under review, previously logged as Prime Causes, now correctly THE OSMONTIAN CAUSES. Currently colliding in perpetuity against nine First Causes of THE Steed.|
|ARTS: THE Collision of Causes. THE Quintessential Confluence. THE DOMAIN OF THE MORTAL COIL.|
|APPENDAGES: THE Estuary Eye. THE Pinion Vigil. THE Hepatarch of the Undying Root. THE Amaranthine Heart. THE Primeval Osmontian Marrow. THE Circlet of the Quintessential Ruin. THE Quintessential Pantheon of THE Infiniverse.|
|OSMONTIAN BIOMASS: 89,800,000. Elevation costs falling continuously.|
|RETAINERS AND BONDED EXISTENCES: Hvitrmarr, Remnant Dimension Steed of the First lineage, THE Autarkis Intent. Damodred of THE Laestrygonians, SS-Rank across all facets. THE Infiniverse. Ruination...|
|HELD, UNUSED: THE Tessellated Heart of the Borrowed Flame. THE Lingering Word. One True Declarative Human Ruling.|
Ruination looked around her Master’s quantified panel and found the first flaw in the second line she read.
A-Rank Idho. It was honest, accurate, and useless as a threat assessment, because it did not describe what happened when her Master arrived somewhere.
He rode a Steed who had come down on a Cenozoic True Lifeform and unmade it in one motion, its Ananke-grade Intent caving inward under THE Autarkis Intent like wet parchment under a falling mountain. So the practical answer was that he already overcame Cenozoic Scale beings whenever he pleased, because he did not have to do it himself.
Which was precisely why she did not trust the number.
Ashkavaal had also been Cenozoic, partially grasped temporal weavings, and her Master had killed her with a beginner’s fireball at Rank F standing.
That established the floor of the Sixth Scale. Nothing else.
Ruination pondered about the quantification of power from here!
She set Jarl Skallagrim’s weaving apart from the Scale diagram, where it hung refusing to sit beside a single rung of it.
These fuckers were hard to designate!
She redrew it. Where the Scale diagram had hung, the grade ladder rose in its place, F Beith through A Idho, then S Ebad, SS Oir, SSS Muin, and above that the unnamed rung waiting to be carved in THE Osmontian Tongue when he reached it.
The grades measured the thing itself rather than the rung it occupied. They could describe a Cursed Descendant, a Laestrygonian, and her Master. Vakochev’s framework could describe none of the three.
Ruination enlarged Damodred and analyzed him at this time.
The strongest weapon under her Master’s command was considerably stronger than her Master.
SS-Rank facets. SS-Rank Autarkis Intent. An SS-Rank Pantheon!
Her Master’s own facets sat at A-Idho. Hvitrmarr, simply by being ridden, delivered S-Rank to any battle she entered. And Damodred, by being here, delivered SS!
So what was his standing? A, because that was his own hand? Or SS, because SS answered when he spoke?
She smiled lightly while thinking where exactly to put her Master.
That left the largest thread on the board.
She set Theron Adranos into the air, and his weaving read as almost nothing.
The Superpowered Lifeforms emanated no authority. Less presence upon existence than the scorched dirt he had knelt in.
He had stood inside THE DOMAIN OF THE MORTAL COIL and felt nothing.
Which should have been impossible, because the Word nullified all authority and made no exceptions.
She also had to quantify this!
The panel turned slowly above the sea.
Across the water, THE Infiniverse worked on in her silence, taking Blighted Causes apart and putting them back together, building a hook to throw into the Tide.
Two of them at their labors, in the middle of his own Source!