Chapter 5362: Upheaval! II

Noah hit the crystal wall of THE Maw, came off it without slowing, and reached for the Swords with the only thing he had that might help them as he saw them on their knees.

He did not want to lose this body here as he had to work with everyone while they grasped what they came across!

THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian erupted out of him, the obsidian gold flooding the dark of the mine, and he stretched it toward the four kneeling figures the way he had wrapped it around Seo-yeon against the Pulse.

If the cleaved hand was forcing them down through the converted Infinity and Primordial Source of their own bodies, then his Aura, with his identity forged unbreakable into its foundation, might give them something to hold to. Might wall their existences off from the will pressing them into the ground. It was worth trying!

The Swords felt it reach them, and they answered.

Sir William’s Titan Intent of dignity erupted first, the obsidian phantom of regality unfolding around him even as he knelt, the record of a being who had never once compromised his standards rising in defiance of a will that demanded he abandon them.

Botswana’s Wrathbound Bulwark blazed up beside it, the record of endured violence turned to refusal, a being who had survived everything insisting that he would survive this too.

He would survive as he always had!

Richard’s Lucid Aegis flared, his understanding fighting to see clearly through the conversion. Lianna’s Veiled Current turned, trying to slip her existence out of the grip that held it.

Four third-rarity Intents, four records of beings who had earned the right to impose themselves on existence, erupting together in the dark of THE Maw!

And the cleaved hand answered them with patience.

|Transmission received: Kneel and let go.|

|Kneel and let go, or the collapse of your peers will be on your hands. You are being given the choice. Be grateful for the courtesy and kneel.|

The words landed inside Noah’s existence with the weight of the thing that spoke them, and they were not a bluff!

He answered it anyway.

Him? Fucking kneel?!

"No," Noah said, and roared it into the dark. "NO!"

He pulled.

He reached into THE Infinite Cause, the Cause that backed two Observable Existences, and dragged its full weight up into himself. He reached into his Einherjar Source, the bastion-heavy third Demarcation with Hamingja running golden through it, and called on the grand luck that bent surrounding existence to favor him!

He reached across THE Undefined Gaps to the body that pulled the immensity of THE Infiniverse on its shoulders, and he drew on that immensity too, the weight of an entire Observable Existence channeled toward the hand. He gathered everything he was, every authority, every body, every Cause, and turned it on the cleaved gray-blue thing hanging in the deep of THE Maw, because he was not going to kneel, and he was going to pull those four beings out of the ground if it could be done at all!

What happened next...occurred in the span of a single instant.

The decrepit fingers turned toward the Swords coldly and the converted Infinity and Primordial Source that composed the four Swords twisted, all at once, turning against the existences they belonged to, the authorities of their own bodies bending toward a will that was not theirs.

It was horrifying as they were all...very clearly outmatched. Their records and knowledge...felt like a tiny boat while that hand felt like a vast, tumultuous sea.

All of them here felt an unfathomably heavy foreboding sensation!

All of them felt their Sources begin to shiver and tremble! Why...why would their sources be trembling?

Botswana’s roar changed in his throat.

The great scarred titan who had laughed and called Noah brother fought it, his Wrathbound Bulwark surging, his whole record of endured survival thrown against the thing unmaking him from the inside, and for a moment the moment held, the titan straining, Noah’s Aura wrapped around him, the two of them pushing back against the collapse together!

Then the converted authority of his body wrenched around, dragged him to face Noah, made his expression into something to be looked at, and his eyes found the new Sword across the dark, wide and disbelieving, the eyes of a being who had always assumed he would die fighting and could not understand why the fight was being taken from him.

His existence and his Source came apart.

Unraveled by a power he, a Triassic Scale Existence, could not deny.

What had been a titan became a river of crimson-tinged light, flowing across the dark of THE Maw and into the cleaved hand, which glowed crimson as it drank him down. Noah’s Aura closed on the space where he had been and found nothing left to hold.

"Botswana!"

Richard howled in rage and pain as was already going. The small quick Sword who had paced and theorized and enjoyed his own cleverness fought it the only way he knew how, his Lucid Aegis straining to understand the mechanism even as the mechanism took him, and his bright darting eyes were forced to look at Noah as if a massive invisible hand forced them to.

And in them was a terrible final clarity, the clarity of a being who had at last seen the whole shape of the thing and understood, too late, that it was too grand.

His face was turned toward Noah as...

BOOM! CRACK!

A Pulse tore through him. His existence came apart. He became a river, and the river was drunk, and the hand glowed brighter.

Lianna’s existence buzzed!

The woman who gave nothing away gave nothing away even now, her Veiled Current twisting, trying to slip her existence sideways out of a grip that had no sideways to slip toward!

Her Akashic Civilizational Intent was grand!

Her record was heavy!

But...it seemed like it held nothing compared to the record of that decrepit hand!

It failed to stand!

And when it failed, her head was forcefully turned as she met Noah’s eyes with something that was almost an apology and almost a warning and was gone before he could read which it had been.

Her face was shown to him. Her existence came apart. The river flowed. The hand drank!

And then there was Sir William.

The Gentleman Knight was the last left kneeling, his Titan Intent of dignity still burning around him, the obsidian phantom of regality flickering as the converted authority of his own body turned against the existence it composed.

Noah threw everything he had left toward him, the full weight of the Aura and the Infinite Cause and THE Infiniverse, reaching for his sponsor, the being who had vouched for him and given him the path, the one whose collapse he was not going to allow if collapse could be refused!

And yet...

Oh, and yet...

It could not be refused. He felt it. He felt the same thing he had felt with the other three, the absolute insufficiency of everything he was against the thing in the dark!

The other three had their faces turned to Noah against their will. Sir William turned his own!

He looked at Noah of his own choosing, his composure unbroken even as his existence began to come apart around it, even as the dignity of an entire life burned down toward its final ember, and he held the one thing that no power could take from a being unless the being handed it over.

"Persevere," Sir William said.

His voice was steady. It had no right to be steady. His existence was unraveling around the word and his voice did not shake!

"If you can do nothing else." The phantom of regality dimmed, guttered. "In the face of the impossible, Persevere."

HUUM!

A breath, the last of his composure, spent on purpose. "Manners...Maketh...Man."

BOOM!

His existence came apart as he Akashic Civilizational Intent was shredded to oblivion.

He became a river of light, dignified even in the shape of his unmaking, and the river flowed across the dark of THE Maw and into the cleaved hand, and the hand glowed crimson and full and turned, at last, to Noah, alone now over four absences where his companions had been.

...!

|Transmission received: That... could have been avoided.|

|Remember that I offered, and you refused, and they paid. Kneel and let go, and the next ones you care for will not have to.|

Noah stood in the dark, four rivers of the dead glowing crimson inside a cleaved gray-blue hand, and the rage that moved through him was the clean cold rage of a being who had just been taught something he would never forgive.

It had killed them to make a point.

It thought that would bend him!

It had read him wrong!

The hand shot toward him.

And Noah bellowed, a sound that came up out of everything he was, the roar of a being who had stood before Dame Seraphine’s pressure and refused, who had stood in his own father’s illusion and refused, and who would stand here, in the dark, over the rivers of the dead, and refuse again.

He would always refuse!

THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian blazed to its absolute height, obsidian gold flooding THE Maw until the crystal walls and the abandoned scaffolding and the cleaved hand itself were all lit by the immensity of it, the nine Prime Causes burning across its surface, THE Infinite Cause and THE Einherjar Source and the weight of THE Infiniverse all pouring through him at once, an emperor’s defiance roaring!

Roaring!

The hand pierced through all of it.

It pierced the Aura, pierced the light, pierced every authority he had raised against it, the decrepit gray-blue fingers passing through the immensity of THE Source Barbarian as though the immensity were a curtain, and it drove toward his chest, toward the center of his existence, toward the place where his identity sat forged into the foundation of his Infinity.

Seeking to enter him!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.