Chapter 4186: Maybe! IV

In the Transcendent Origin Folds.

The decimation was so absolute, so thorough, that existence itself felt insufficient.

Aeternitas Concordia, once a golden jewel of commerce and a testament to the cooperative might of the Living Existences, was now a graveyard of broken dreams!

The grand towers that had pierced the heavens were reduced to jagged stumps of tarnished gold, their surfaces scarred by an authority that had made even light forget its own nature.

Bridges that had once elegantly spanned impossible distances now hung like the snapped strings of a forgotten instrument.

A dead silence reigned, a quiet so profound it was more oppressive than any scream.

It was broken only by the faint, grotesque sounds of twitching skeletons, the countless Fold Dwellers and Living Existences who had been caught in the initial wave of Nysteria’s arrival.

They were neither alive nor truly dead, but thry were becoming...Dead Existences!

"Order..."

The word was a guttural growl, ripped from the depths of Sigrid’s being.

She stood beside Noah, her entire form a blazing beacon of white-gold light, the Eye of Order on her forehead pulsing with a cold, focused fury!

Her hands were clenched into fists so tight that the space around them began to crystallize into perfect, ordered patterns of violence.

She was a tempest of righteous rage, barely contained, ready to unleash the full, terrible weight of her authority upon the creature that had dared to bring such profound disorder to this place.

But a hand on her arm, firm and unyielding, held her back. Noah’s touch was a quiet anchor in the storm of her fury!

He knew, with certainty that the moment Sigrid unleashed her power, the Dead Early Creature’s attention would fixate on her.

The curiosity in Nysteria’s obsidian eyes would sharpen into predatory focus, and she would swat away this burgeoning Order like an annoying fly.

Uniquely, that gaze remained fixed on him.

Even after her declaration, after she had named herself Nysteria, her attention lingered on Noah.

She had called him "young one," a term that carried a universe of meaning.

Did she somehow sense the essence of an Early Creature within him? Or was it something else, something even more fundamental that she recognized?

Even with his recent, monumental gains, Noah felt the oppressive weight of her presence.

It wasn’t an active attack, not yet. It was simply her Haki, the passive radiation of her existence!

It pressed down on him with the weight of collapsed Folds, a conceptual pressure that made his trillions of complexity feel like a handful of sand against a tidal wave.

This was the chasm between their levels of being, a gap measured not in numbers but in the sheer, undeniable reality of her power.

And then, in the instant between one strained heartbeat and the next...

WAP!

Space complained. It twisted with the petulant whine of a fundamental law being told it was merely a suggestion!

A brilliant, obsidian light flashed into being, a darkness so pure it was luminous, and from it, a figure emerged with the grace of someone stepping out for a stroll.

"Ah..."

Khor’s voice was the first thing to arrive, a soft, musical note that cut through the oppressive silence.

She stood there, her diminutive form a stark contrast to the devastation around her, her abyssal eyes sweeping across the ruins with a look of genuine fascination, like an art critic examining a particularly chaotic sculpture.

The moment she fully materialized, Noah felt the suffocating pressure of Nysteria’s Haki vanish.

It did not fade or retreat; it was simply... gone, erased from his reality as if it had never been.

Prompts, tinged with a familiar, almost conversational tone, bloomed before his eyes- almost as if trying to lighten his mood after he was told everything he knew would cease.

|The First Hunger has entered the chat.|

|Existential Debuff: [Haki of Nysteria - Overwhelming Dread]... has been cleansed.|

|Reason: The First Hunger finds the Haki of lesser beings to be in poor taste.|

|She has imposed her influence upon your existence, replacing the negative effect with a neutral state of "mild amusement."|

|Please note: "Mild amusement" does not grant any statistical bonuses, but it is existentially preferable to being crushed into conceptual paste.|

Noah gazed at Khor, a sense of profound relief washing through him, even as a new layer of tension settled in.

Around him, his forces reacted. The half-devoured form of Ra’Zan reconstituted itself with a hiss of necrotic energy.

The Primordial Stone Ape, now under Ra’Zan’s command, let out a silent roar, its obsidian eyes burning with cold fury.

And Ozymandias, a maelstrom of writhing, hungry tentacles, focused his entire being on the Dead Early Creature, a singular thought echoing through his pure existence: Food!

Khor took another look around, her gaze sweeping from the twitching skeletons to the Dead Existences still emerging from the distant tears.

She whistled, a low, melodic sound that seemed to carry across impossible distances.

"Man, do you get yourself in these situations purposefully, Outsider?" she asked, turning to Noah with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Many of those here have strength that vastly exceeds yours."

Noah’s gaze did not waver from Nysteria.

The Dead Early Creature had not reacted to Khor’s arrival with aggression, but with a cautious, calculating stillness.

"Can you handle that one over there?" he asked, his voice low and steady.

Khor hummed, a thoughtful, drawn-out note.

Then she smiled, a brilliant, terrifying expression. "Maybe, Outsider! But... I don’t know if I will be able to step in just yet. It seems that I have been underestimating the current Living Existences too much..."

She clapped her tiny hands together with delight. "And what we now know explains why all those I saw at that little Concordat were so weak...they’re all leftovers after eons. But... they seem to still have some power."

As she spoke, her gaze, and then Noah’s, was drawn to a new phenomenon.

In the impossibly far distance, beyond the ruins of Concordia, beyond even the boundaries of this immediate region, a light began to shine.

It was a white-gold brilliance, so pure and so potent that it made the very concept of Origin feel tangible.

It emanated from the direction of the Heart of Origin itself, a beacon of unimaginable power being lit in response to the encroaching darkness!

The light coalesced, taking form, and what emerged was a sight that would be burned into the memory of every being who witnessed it.

A massive, illusory figure began to rise, its scale so vast it dwarfed even the mummified Dead Existence.

It was a turtle, but a turtle as imagined by a dreaming titan.

Nine heads, each one carrying the wisdom of a different aspect of Origin, rose on long, graceful necks.

From its shell, wings of pure, white-gold light unfurled, each feather a different story of creation.

Its ancient, reptilian skin seemed to emanate the very musings of Origin itself, a living testament to the power of beginnings!

The nine heads turned as one, their eighteen eyes, each a blazing golden star, fixing upon Nysteria and the other Dead Existences.

HUUM!

A roar erupted, a sound that was not of fury, but of judgment. It was the sound of Origin itself declaring that these endings were an affront to its nature!

Noah felt the power radiating from the colossal turtle, his enhanced perception struggling to quantify it. It was quadrillions! Seemingly exceeding the Dead Early Creature and any others here!

Khor watched, a nostalgic smile touching her lips. "In the Earliest Folds, many wondered about the form that THE Living Origin took," she said, her voice a soft murmur. "More often than not... it appeared as a fat turtle. It seems that even while weakened, the Living Origins still know their roots."

The massive turtle bellowed again, a challenge that shook the Folds. And Nysteria, the Dead Early Creature, responded.

A thrill of excitement, a predator’s joy, pulsed from her. She raised her obsidian club in eager anticipation of the glorious battle to come.

If it had been before, Noah would have watched this clash of titans with the same eager enthusiasm, his mind already calculating the loot, the opportunities for growth.

But now, his gaze was different. It was cold, calculating, predatory.

These were not opportunities he could obtain.

They were resources he must obtain. HAD to obtain.

His mind raced, recalling Khor’s words. Her power was contained in her heart. Her Heart of Hunger!

He had unlocked his own Haki of an Early Creature, a nascent, untamed force. He had an Inevitability, Ozymandias, as part of his very being. Could he not do the same? Could he not pour his Everythings, his complexity, his very will into his Heart, and express it through a Haki that would make even these ancient beings pause?

The thought was a spark in the tinder of his ambition and tyranny!

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