Chapter 5573: MY MANA! II
Chapter 5573: MY MANA! II
What could he generate that would be filled with his power? That he could use to unleash his power, and have it be his? What could he replace his Mana with?
It had to be infinite. And he had to generate it!
Provenance Essence itself was too unfathomable. He could not endlessly generate more singularities. What else could...
Oh.
Oh...
BOOM!
His body shook as a pulse boomed out of him that caused the surrounding space to quiver!
He had thought of something!
And it made him feel so supremely stupid.
Something he generated. Something carrying his power. A resource he could consider Infinite!
It had been circulating through him this entire time, through every trial and every transformation, so close and so constant that he had looked straight past it while interrogating the whole of existence for an answer.
Toward the seemingly calm Sealed One bubbling with anger, Noah raised his hand.
He looked at his fingertip as the skin split open, and a crimson gold drop of blood flowed out!
HUUM!
The moment it did, a heavy and terrifying hum erupted.
Far ahead, every one of the dying Infinite Lifeforms trembled at that hum, their fractured bodies seizing all at once, as though something ancient had just exposed itself to the air for the first time in an age and their existences recognized it before their minds could!
In the next instant, their bodies exploded into puddles of blood.
An army that had ridden into this domain on rivers of the dead, reduced in one heartbeat to red stains among the red!
And THE Sealed One, seated on his crack in existence, opened his eyes wide with shock as his very existence began to buzz!
Meanwhile, Noah felt like he was in an extremely unique state.
His Blood. His Mana!
Mana was external. An ambient resource, absorbed, refined, spent. A thing one gathered from the generosity of existence and returned to it when the spell was done. But his Blood!
Oh, his blood!
He had even cast out his Marrow. Nothing borrowed remained anywhere in his veins. The blood within him now was the blood of a Provenance Lifeform, produced by remade cells that answered to nothing external, bathed from its first drop in the singular light of a Provenance Essence.
The drop at his fingertip hung there, immense crimson gold, and through its depths shone a stellar blue hue, his light, his singularity, alive inside his blood the way the sun lives inside a sea.
Noah looked at it, and he called out.
"My Blood... my Mana... Sanguine Mana... My..."
He let the last words fall silent, because some names were not for the air, and certainly not for the old monster listening from his perch.
’My Provenance Blood! My First Blood!’
...!
HUUUM!
The moment he named it, the hum deepened, and he felt an overabundance of control flood through him, command so total it bordered on the absurd. One drop, and it answered him like a limb. He told his single drop of Sanguine Mana one thing.
Show him.
Show him its capability!
And the drop of blood popped.
Ahead of him, everything turned crimson gold!
The phenomenon that erupted was akin to countless event horizons blooming at once, an unfathomable twisting force of infinite density unfolding across the space where an army had died, dragging light and air and the hanging cracks of existence into its turning!
Crimson gold light and stellar blue swallowed everything, blindingly, wall to wall across the domain, and through it all rang a single sustained hum so vast and so ancient that even Anaximander, far behind, pressed his hands over his ears!
And by the time the light cleared...
The fractured existence ahead of Noah was covered in his blood.
It coated the frozen cracks. It sheeted across the broken air. It lay over the obsidian sands in a thin crimson gold film that shimmered with stellar blue, and Noah felt absolutely everything within it, every inch, every surface, as though the entire painted expanse were an extension of his own body and he could control everything his blood had touched.
And in the center of it stood the vessel of THE Sealed One.
Ragged and heavily injured. Its red robes torn to strips, its reassembled seams torn open again, and this time its Trueness was actually spilling out, flaking away from the wounds as red ash that drifted and dissolved. It breathed haggardly, each breath dragging, and it looked toward Noah with cold eyes as its existence visibly decayed!
Noah looked out over the crimson gold expanse where an army used to be, and he gave the thing he had just done its name.
"Sanguine Blood Drop."
HUUM!
The hum of his singularity rose to meet the naming, and Ruination’s voice bloomed into his senses, translating what his existence was declaring into clean lines he could look at and analyze.
|Your existence has made a declaration.|
|Blood has been officially designated as your Infinite Generated Resource: SANGUINE MANA.|
|SANGUINE MANA: blood generated by your remade cells, bathed in the light of your Provenance Essence. Production is generation. Generation is you. Reserves: INFINITE.|
|Properties confirmed: Sanguine Mana carries your power in full. Its potency reflects the concentration of your Provenance Essence, VERITAS and PONDUS and will rise as they rise. It answers no external authority. It cannot be adulterated, seized, or turned against you. Where it rests, you feel. Where it spreads, you command.|
|The first Provenance Art has formed.|
|PROVENANCE ART: SANGUINE BLOOD DROP.|
|A single drop of Sanguine Mana, released and detonated at your will. Capabilities: the detonation expresses twisting force of infinite density, akin to blooming event horizons, across a region you define. All things within the region caught in the detonation are subject to your power without distinction between body, framework, or authority. Residual Sanguine Mana coats the region. Coated regions become extensions of your control: you may sense all things within them, deny movement within them, and detonate them again. Drops may be scaled: one drop, many drops, or a continuous flow. Cost: nothing you will miss. You generate more with every heartbeat.|
|Note: this Art was not taught, granted, or inherited. You made it. Designation is permanent.|
Noah read the lines once, and permitted himself a single moment of satisfaction. His first Art!
Named by him, built from him!
Then he floated forward, across his own blood, toward the dying vessel of THE Sealed One.
The vessel stood in the center of the crimson gold film, decaying by the breath, its Trueness flaking off as red ash. It did not retreat. Beings like this never retreated!