Chapter 4181: Well! I

How does one defeat an enemy so much more powerful than them?

Some say use strategy, intelligence, and deception to take them down.

These people, bless their optimistic hearts, would lie dead before they even knew it if they were facing an Early Creature.

Their last thought would probably be "I should have dodged" as their existence was retroactively edited to have never included that thought.

What did intelligence do against something that could eradicate a Wheel of Existence with a yawn?

You could be the smartest being in your Fold, have memorized every strategy text ever written, and still end up as a footnote in someone else’s story. "Here lies Gerald the Brilliant. He had seventeen contingency plans. But the Early Creature sneezed."

Strategy and deception? How monumentally difficult was it to deceive something that could see through the fundamental structures of existence?

It was like trying to hide from someone by standing behind a glass wall you’d painted to look like a brick wall. They could see you, the wall, your poor artistic choices, and the embarrassment of your ancestors watching from whatever afterlife they’d imagined.

No.

When faced with a stronger enemy, the reliable methods were limited and mostly terrible.

You could become just as strong as them instantly...which required the kind of plot device that made reality itself roll its eyes. You could raise a white flag and accept death...at least it was honest. Or you could employ the most time-honored tradition in existence:

Call someone else to handle it.

This was why connections were so important!

Knowing the right entities could help one overcome an enemy they weren’t quite ready for. It was networking, but with extinction on the line.

---

In the Nullvein Gravewake Folds, Khor floated with the particular expression of someone who had been interrupted during something important.

Another body of Noah appeared beside her, his expression heavy with the weight of immediate crisis.

Khor turned to him, covering her body with her hands in exaggerated modesty despite being fully clothed, and frowned with theatrical indignation.

"Outsider, don’t look at me like that. I know your tendencies, and I’ll tell you now...I do not have the same physiological makeup as your women."

The teasing would normally have earned a response, but Noah remained somber, his urgency cutting through attempted levity.

"A Dead Early Creature has appeared in the Transcendent Origin Folds. Things are perilous beyond current parameters. I may need to bring you in."

Khor blinked, the playfulness evaporating as she processed the implications. She sighed with the weight of someone whose plans had just been catastrophically interrupted.

She had intended to relish the meal of an entire Folds.

But...Existence was rarely fair.

"Since these are Folds I’m meant to swallow to shatter the first seal, it will be fast, Outsider." She gestured at the sprawling impossibility around them.

"As instructed, I’ve already mapped these entire Folds and marked all Wheels of Existence and Domains with signs of life...Living Things and Dead Things, for transport to your Infiniverse."

Her efficiency was terrifying in its casualness.

"There seem to be a few Living Laws floating around here, so those shall simply be left behind."

WAA!

She had already taken care of everything with the thoroughness of someone who treated consuming entire dimensions as light work!

Since time was an issue, she would move fast...her version of fast, which existed in timeframes that made light feel sluggish.

"Outsider," she asked with the particular tone of someone about to demonstrate something memorable, "have you ever swallowed an entire Fold in an instant?"

The question landed with weight that made local reality nervous. Noah shook his head calmly, though his eyes sharpened with interest.

Khor nodded with the satisfaction of someone about to show off. "For The First Hunger, it is akin to opening... and closing my mouth."

She opened her small mouth.

WAP!

She closed.

...!

Light flashed...not gradually but instantly, as if existence had blinked.

And that was it.

BOOM!

The rumbling that followed wasn’t sound but reality trying to figure out what had just happened.

The environment transformed into weavings of Collapse, that particular state between existence and void where things went to die.

Between Folds and the emptiness where Folds used to be, authorities mixed with Collapse in patterns that would have been beautiful if they weren’t so fundamentally wrong.

Past these weavings of Collapse, gaps revealed themselves...doorways that led to the Wandering Territories, spaces between spaces where normal rules politely excused themselves. Terrifying to cross, deadly for the weak.

In that instant...literally the time it took Khor to open and close her mouth, she had swallowed the structure and all that composed the Nullvein Gravewake Folds!

Every Wheel of Existence, every Domain, every being whether pulsing with life or emanating death, had been simultaneously transported into the Infiniverse.

An unknown number of Wheels of Existence bloomed in Noah’s transformed shore, their inhabitants probably very confused about the sudden change of scenery but undeniably alive...or dead, depending on their original state.

The magnitude of this action should have warranted celebration!

An entire Fold, consumed and relocated in less time than it took to think about it. Yet as a seal shattered within her, Khor’s eyes became luminous not with joy but with growing somberness.

"Oh," she said, the word carrying weight that single syllables shouldn’t possess.

"Fuck," she added, upgrading the concern to profanity.

Noah’s expression soured like sunlight made of disappointment. "What?"

Khor turned to him with eyes that had seen too much and just remembered it all.

"Breaking past this seal is allowing back an influx of memory, Outsider." Her voice carried the particular quality of someone delivering news they wished they didn’t have.

"And I remember now what THE Living Paradox said as it collapsed my existence. That its actions toward me were actually merciful."

She paused, letting that sink in...THE Living Paradox, showing mercy.

"Because I wouldn’t be there for the Fallout. The Existential Fallout that would follow whatever was coming. Because THE Living Paradox and a few others would be inside a grand fortification...a monument built to survive what was coming."

Her expression grew even graver.

"They would be inside... THE Loom."

...!

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