Chapter 5577: NOBLESSE! I
Chapter 5577: NOBLESSE! I
With a bit of breathing room, many things could be done without rushing!
Noah crossed the sand to Hvitrmarr first, and caught her shoulder before her knee could touch the ground.
"None of that," he said quietly. "The bond you felt leave was one more borrowed thing I had to set down. It was never you I set down. I told you I would be your Rider, and I will continue to be your Rider. Soon, something better than what we had will bloom, okay?"
The White Steed’s gold eyes searched his face. She straightened, and the distress she had carried finally loosened its grip on her frame, and she stayed close to him!
He then looked at Damodred.
"With the power I have now, I should have something grander than Causes soon enough," Noah said. "I will see if I can easily find the genetic markers of Laestrygonians, and bring more of your brethren back."
...!
The Laestrygonian went very still! His people, eradicated by THE Sleepless Fiend, existing now as one survivor bound to one man!
Damodred bowed his head deeply.
"I follow The Master completely," he said, "and await your continued glory."
Noah then turned to Ryaenara.
He chose his words carefully.
"I don’t want to make any promises. But... we can try to see if curing your Brother is a possibility right now."
BOOM!
The words landed on her like a detonation! Her body trembled, her composure cracking as her eyes shone with unfathomable hope as she surged a step forward!
"Can we... can we go right now? He is in my Dimension, as we ca... GAH!"
Even before she finished her words, she spat crimson blood.
It was not ordinary blood! It came out shining with her Trueness, threads of her very existence leaving with it, and then, shockingly, her chest split open, and out of the wound erupted faces!
Hateful, roaring faces, pressing up out of her flesh in a snarling cluster, screaming without sound!
OOOOH!
...!
Noah frowned and was instantly at her side, his hands grasping her shoulders, his senses driving down into her existence, and he quickly understood what was happening.
HUUM!
|Analysis of the existence: RYAENARA.|
|A bond of following was established between this existence and THE Sealed One in ages past. However much of a double agent this existence believed herself to be, serving and not serving, the initial bond she formed was filled with weavings even she could not understand, layered beneath her perception at the moment of its making.|
|Through those hidden weavings, THE Sealed One has grasped the Lifeline of her existence and cursed it with deterioration. Her Trueness and her Intent are already infected. Her Lifeline is bound over to collapse.|
|Designation of the curse: THE Hollowing Chorus of the Forfeited Lifeline.|
|She is marked for death.|
...!
Noah looked at the prompts with heavy eyes.
The old monster still could not be underestimated. Killed in one body an hour ago, and reaching out as he must have perceived something regarding Ryaenara! After all, she was in THE Ymnaros where THE Sealed One just faced a catastrophic loss of THE Aurate Collar of the First Purity!
But for someone to be marked for death?
Noah’s voice tyrannically boomed out!
"I won’t allow it."
BOOM!
He moved with immensity. Ryaenara was still convulsing in his grip, vomiting blood and Trueness in gouts now, and she was crying, and even dying she spent her words on someone else.
"Ulf, please save Ulf! Enter my Dimension before it collap... GAAH!"
She spat out more blood, and her teeth fell out with it, scattering white against the dark sand, and her body began sagging toward the ground as the roaring faces on her chest howled their silent howl!
Noah focused.
Time seemingly slowed before his perception, thinning and thinning until it was no longer even moving, the domain caught in a single stretched instant with her blood hanging mid-air between them.
A blood drop appeared on his fingertip.
He thought for a moment, whole architectures of reasoning assembling and collapsing and reassembling. The curse held her Lifeline, and her Lifeline sat threaded through the frameworks of existence, and anything threaded through frameworks could be gripped by things older and crueler than her.
He would continue to lean on his Infinite Sanguine Mana as the solution!
And right now, he was making another Art.
His fingertip began to carve, and this rune was unlike the shamanic rune, deeper and slower, waves and strings coming together within his blood as he drew, strand weaving into strand. The Letters of THE Osmontian Tongue flowed into its construction, I AM and OSMONT and HUMAN pressed into the turning lines, and beneath the Letters something even more ancient moved through the strokes, a texture that belonged to the age his blood now remembered, and the finished rune hung in the stopped air like a seal from before the first framework was ever raised!
Time resumed.
The rune flowed into Ryaenara.
HUUM!
|The third Provenance Art has formed.|
|PROVENANCE ART: THE PROVENANCE BLOOD MARK.|
|A mark carved of Sanguine Mana, THE Osmontian Tongue, and that which came before frameworks. It is placed upon a select few chosen existence, and it is irreversible.|
|The marked existence has its Lifeline and its entire Existence fully bound to you. Their fate is lost from all Scales and all frameworks: no instrument of existence may weigh them, no authority of existence may grip them, and no thread of theirs remains for any hand but yours. They follow you, fully, from the moment of marking onward.|
|In exchange, their Potential is elevated grandly. The marked become NOBLESSE BLOOD APOSTLES.|
|NOBLESSE BLOOD APOSTLES manifest in five tiers of rarity, determined by the potential of the one marked. From the least to the rarest: BLOOD KNIGHT, BLOOD BARON, BLOOD DUKE, BLOOD MONARCH, BLOOD SOVEREIGN. The rarer the Apostle, the grander the attributes their existence may carry.|
...!
The effects on Ryaenara were immediate!
She started trembling even harder, gushes of dark blood erupting from her, old blood, wrong blood, everything the curse had touched being driven out of her at once, and the hateful faces on her chest reared and cried out as the mark’s authority closed over them!
And yet, her Trueness stopped leaking.
The shining threads that had been escaping with every cough drew back into her, held fast, and then she transformed.
The dark blood burned away off her skin. Her hair poured down glossy obsidian, blacker and deeper than it had ever been, catching the obelisk light like still water at night. Her eyes opened, and the pupils within them burned bloody red, and behind the red turned a quiet light of infinity, depth without end!
Red gold robes wrapped around her out of nothing, layered and regal, settling onto her shoulders with the weight of a station rather than a garment.
The roaring faces gave one last soundless howl, and dissolved.
|The curse THE Hollowing Chorus of the Forfeited Lifeline has been destroyed.|
|Cause of destruction: the curse was anchored through the frameworks of existence, gripping a Lifeline threaded within them. The marked existence of RYAENARA no longer resides within any Scale or framework. There is nothing remaining for the curse to hold. Her Lifeline answers to one authority alone, and that authority cannot be weighed or touched by the instruments of THE Sealed One.|
|As of this moment, her existence is without any Scales or framework.|
|RYAENARA has become a Noblesse Blood Apostle of the fourth tier: BLOOD BARON.|
WAA!
Ryaenara stood whole in her red gold robes, and her crimson eyes burned with nobility and wonder as she looked at Noah.
Then she instantly knelt before him.
It was nothing like the kneel of a defeated thing. Her back was straight, her head lifted, her reverent eyes raised to him as if she were looking at a distant and grand lifeform across an impossible span, and her voice came out grandly, formal in a way Ryaenara had never once been formal in all the time he had known her!
"Thank you for the generosity, Master. Command me, and I will move existence for you!"
HUUM!
Noah looked at her oddly.
He had not expected such a heavy change!
Did his blood have such a heavy effect when he did this?
"Are you... still you?"
"I am Ryaenara, your Apostle, from this point on in existence."
"What... do you want?"
"If Master can grant my Brother the same favor as me, I would be grateful." Her crimson eyes did not waver.
"He would also be of much more use to you, with his gaze being capable of reaching into the future."
...!
She was still her. The first thing she wanted was still Ulf, before power, before anything. But different!
Noah affirmed this as he looked at her deeply, his gaze reaching into her remade existence.
|STATUS PANEL: RYAENARA- NOBLESSE BLOOD APOSTLE, BLOOD BARON|
|VERITAS: 1|
|PROVENANCE: 0|
|POTENTIA: 5|
|PONDUS: 2|
He took the panel in, and nodded.
He had changed her into a grand lifeform, unmoored from every Scale and framework in existence, her potential elevated to a value that stood beside numbers he had bled for!
And it seemed she would only be the first.
Because nearby, Hvitrmarr and Damodred had both kneeled down onto the dark sand, heads bowed, as if they were waiting for the same thing!