Chapter 5641: Ruling! III
Chapter 5641: Ruling! III
The heavens above THE Infiniverse shattered into a display of unfathomable, dazzling beauty!
Twelve thousand hypercubes of deep blue-white light bloomed into existence simultaneously, hanging against the skies!
They spun slowly, humming with the raw, unshaped potential of entire Observable Existences waiting to be unpacked.
The sheer density of the gathered Tesseracts cast a brilliant, oscillating glow over the verdant hills, illuminating Noah’s face as he looked up at the staggering harvest!
It was a level of wealth that defied all logic, paid out by an Existence that was now mechanically forced to favor him!
As Noah watched the hypercubes drift in their majestic, silent orbit, the space beside him rippled gently.
Thalia Vasiliou stepped onto the grass, her white-blue robes shifting in the wind. She did not look at the magnificent display of Tesseracts right away. Instead, she looked at Noah, her expression clouded with a heavy, troubled weight.
She looked around at their surroundings, taking in the suffocating security of the Scene Dictation and the dazzling lights above, before she finally spoke.
"The Ruling of THE Provenance of Existence... was not supposed to be enacted until much later," Thalia said, her voice quiet but strained.
"In the future, you mentioned something to me about Vakochev right before everything came down. Did Vakochev reach out to you already? Because even that was supposed to happen much later."
...!
Noah turned his gaze away from the blooming stars to look at the dazzling woman beside him.
His endlessly blue eyes shone brightly as he listened to her words.
They held terrifyingly heavy implications!
If THE Provenance of Existence was not supposed to come down right now, it meant Vakochev was not supposed to have lost his war so early. The maker of the Scales had retreated prematurely, triggering the Immense Ones to impose their new order long before the timeline dictated they should.
Why would things be playing out differently?
Noah evaluated the variables with cold precision. Did any of this have anything to do with his own aggressive actions across THE Krazhor-Nul and THE Ymnaros? Or did it stem from Thalia herself coming back across Dimensions and Time?
His recent movements against Those Who Remain could not have possibly triggered things to start playing out differently, right?
The past could not be changed. The loops of existence were closed, meaning everything that was happening now was exactly as it was always supposed to happen.
Yet, her clouded expression told a different story. If the loop was closed, why was she surprised by the timing?
Noah considered the paradox silently.
Existence was a script. If his actions were rewriting the timeline in real time, then the rules of causality she relied on were already breaking under his weight!
And if the rules were broken, then the future she was trying to prevent was no longer the future they were walking into.
Nothing was set in stone!
What she knew could or could not happen!
"..."
---
<THE Infinity Eater>
Existence is terribly fond of the illusion of freedom!
Terribly!
But the truth of any harvest is that someone always owns the field.
Many ancient beings believed they were the masters of their own domains. They cultivated boundless blue Infinity, climbed Vakochev’s Scales, and raised grand citadels across the observable and unobservable realms. In truth, they were merely crops left to fatten in the sun!
THE PAX existed to prune the weeds that grew too tall and disrupted the soil. THE Infinity Eater existed to reap the harvest when the season finally ended.
He sat in the center of a dying Dimension. It was a hollowed-out realm of gray dust and silent, hovering structures. Rivers of pure blue Infinity flowed continuously into his pale, elongated form, drawn from thr countless decillions of True Lifeforms scattered across adjacent Dimensions.
He did not look like a monster. He looked like a weary scholar draped in immaculate white robes, his eyes solid blue spheres without pupils.
He looked up at the tearing sky. Above him, the boundary of the Dimension was folded backward, revealing an eye that spanned the entire horizon. It was a presence that crushed the very concept of depth. It was one of THE Immense Ones.
"The new Ruling is remarkably loud," THE Infinity Eater spoke. His voice was smooth and polite, carrying the precise annoyance of an accountant finding an error in the Records.
"You have handed Mantles to the absolute dregs of reality. You are paying them in Moirai for playing out their little roles. Why flood the market with currency when the old system kept them so predictably obedient? Vakochev was actually not so bad."
The eye above did not blink. A serene, feminine voice resonated directly within the structure of his existence, carrying the weight of ancient architecture.
"A river that never floods leaves the soil to turn to dust." Her voice sounded like grinding tectonic plates softened by velvet. "The water must be allowed to rise so that we may see what knows how to swim."
"It is inefficient," THE Infinity Eater countered. He raised a pale hand, observing the golden sign of his own Mantle rotating slowly above his palm. It was the shape of a curved scythe.
He had been weighed and Ordained in the very first nanosecond the Ruling descended. He held the Mantle of THE HARVESTER.
It was a role he had played for Ages, perfectly in accordance with the design of Those Who Remain. Existential Moirai flooded him constantly, a localized destiny ensuring that whatever he sought to consume would inevitably fall into his mouth.
"I have farmed these Dimensions for you since the earliest epochs," he continued. "I let them build their Egos and their True bodies. Then I drink their Existence ever so slowly and send the yield upward. This new Provenance of Existence gives them hope in these roles. It gives them the illusion that they can author their own standing. Hope is a notoriously difficult crop to manage."
"Hope is not a crop," the serene voice answered, shifting the pressure in the gray air. "Hope is the plow. It turns the earth. It makes the roots dig deeper. When the roots are deep, the fruit is heavy."
THE Infinity Eater frowned. The answers of THE Immense Ones were never truly answers. They were simply pronouncements of weather from beings who lived above the clouds!
He knew better than to ask for a plain explanation. He merely needed to ensure his own quota remained undisturbed.
"As long as my fields are protected, you may play whatever games you wish with their Existence," he said calmly.
He closed his solid blue eyes and reached out through his unfathomable senses, checking the intake valves of his vast, invisible network. He monitored the deep, hidden tethers that connected him to the countless decillions of Lifeforms across all Dimensions he had his network.
He expected the familiar, rushing torrent of blue Infinity.
He felt...less.
THE Infinity Eater opened his eyes. The serene composure broke for a fraction of a second, revealing the terrifying, endless void beneath his pale skin.
He checked the invisible tethers again. The lifeforms were still there. They were still drawing on a wellspring of power, still generating massive amounts of weavings of existence.
But the source they were drawing from was no longer him. It was no longer a current he owned!
Someone had seamlessly slid beneath his architecture. Someone had replaced his water with their own, turning his entire crop into dependents of a new, unknown wellspring!
"The fruit is suddenly growing on someone else’s tree," THE Infinity Eater murmured.
He looked back up at the colossal eye spanning the broken sky.
"Did you authorize another collector in the eastern Dimensions?" he asked.
"The wind blows where the pressure drops," the feminine voice replied softly. "If a house falls, it is because the wood was ready to break."
THE Infinity Eater let out a slow, cold sigh. These monstrous beings never gave straight answers!
He stood up. The gray dust around him swirled into a violent vortex as the immense pressure of his Dimensionality flared outward. The scythe of his Mantle pulsed with demanding, hungry gold light.
"I am THE HARVESTER," THE Infinity Eater declared. His polite tone completely vanished, replaced by the sheer, absolute gravity of a predator whose territory had been breached.
"And I have to go find out who is stealing from my farm of lifeforms and replacing me as the source."
The colossal eye above slowly faded into the dark, offering no blessing and no warning.
THE Infinity Eater stepped forward and vanished into the crossing, leaving the hollow Dimension to quietly collapse behind him.