Chapter 5367: Identity

Noah went deeper into THE Maw, and he thought about the dead as he planned his stepd from here, knowing Dame Seraphine and others would come soon to search.

The mine took him down through dark that the abandoned scaffolding no longer reached, past the depths where the Source Lifeforms had stopped sending workers, and he walked it alone except for Ruination, who moved beside him as her illusory self, a churning weave of Infinity lines that suggested a shape without committing to one.

He could feel her worry. She did not voice it at first, but it was there in the way her manifestation kept close to him, closer than it usually drifted, the way a person stays near someone they are afraid might fall.

He let himself think about Sir William, because he had learned a long time ago that the dead are owed at least that much, the small dignity of being thought about by the ones who watched them go.

Botswana, who had called him brother. Richard, who had paced and theorized and enjoyed the sound of his own cleverness right up until the end. Lianna, who had given nothing away.

And Sir William, who had turned his own face toward Noah by choice when the others had theirs turned by force. Persevere, he had said. In the face of the impossible. And then he had become light and been drunk down by the thing now chained in Noah’s heart.

"Master," Ruination said quietly, beside him. "Your identity. Its hold on your Infinity. It is...even more critical now after what happened."

"Quintessentially critical," Noah said. "More than it has ever been." He kept flying down into the dark.

"The thing I’ve imprisoned works by conversion. It eats what you are and wears the leftovers. The only reason it’s chained instead of driving this body is that my identity is forged into my Infinity too deep for it to get a grip on. So going forward, I need to do many things that cement who I am. Reinforce it. Make it harder, not softer. Every choice that makes me more myself is a brick in the wall between me and that thing. I can’t afford to drift."

Ruination was quiet a moment, her lines churning as when it came to reinforcing her Master’s identity...she knew that who he was underneath all that power was critical!

So she asked...something mundane.

"Out of the women you spend time with," she said. "Who do you love the most?"

...!

Noah glanced at her, understanding immediately what she was doing. She was building the wall with him. Every answer that made him more concretely, specifically himself was mortar.

So she was going to ask him to be specific about the parts of himself that were softest, because those were the parts hardest to convert and the parts most truly his.

He found the first cluster of Eridarch Ore as he answered.

It sat in the crystal wall, banded and dark and faintly luminous, and he reached out with THE Aura of THE Source Barbarian and coaxed it free in balance, the way he had done before, drawing it into his existence.

"People like to say that if you’re with more than one woman, you have to love them all equally," he said, working the Ore loose. "That it’s only fair. That anything else is a betrayal of the ones who come up short."

He pulled the band into himself.

"It’s a nice idea and it isn’t true. It can’t be true. The human heart doesn’t divide into equal shares on command. Even mine, and mine has been called a great many things. Even my heart has a favorite."

He moved to the next cluster. "For me, it’s Adelaide. The mother of my child holds a place the others don’t. I don’t love the others less than they deserve. I love her more than I can help. Those are different things, and I’ve made peace with both."

Ruination nodded slowly, taking it in. She was recording him. Cementing him and his identity more and more as she knew...they had never faced an enemy like this!

"And of all the concepts," she said. "Apart from Infinity and Quintessence, the two you’re built on. What does Master love the most?"

She was doing anything she could to anchor his identity. THE Sealed One ate identities, so Ruination was going to make his identity as loud and specific and undeniable as she could, one question at a time, until there was simply too much of him for the thing to swallow.

A reminder of oneself was an unfathomable reinforcement.

They reached the depths of the mine, and the instabilities there raged.

Storms of converted Infinity and Primordial Source churned through the deep dark, the foreign nature howling, the kind of place that would have unmade weak Fourth Scale beings. Noah walked into it calmly and withstood all of it, his identity-forged Infinity treating the storm as weather. And there, at the heart of the storms, he found it.

A massive trove of Eridarch Ore. The richest deposit in all of THE Maw, banded crystal metal blazing faintly through the chaos, more of it than he had seen in any single place.

He released tendrils of Infinity and THE Primordial Source and began to harvest, the two authorities reaching into the lattice and coaxing the Ore free band by band, drawing it into his existence in a steady patient stream.

"Loot," he said, answering her question as he worked. "Or Cheats. Or the Protagonist. Those three would fight over the top spot."

He pulled another band loose.

"I always loved the idea of taking the route nobody else could. The shortcut. The path that lets you obtain the thing everyone else has to bleed for, the back door into what should have been impossible. And the Protagonist most of all, maybe. Because isn’t it grand, to be the center of attention? The center of the story? When you believe you’re the protagonist, you believe you’re invincible. You believe the narrative won’t let you die, because the story needs you."

...!

"So I tried to build that ideology around myself. If I could make myself the protagonist of my own existence, maybe existence wouldn’t write me off. Maybe, just maybe, I could have a happy ending instead of the ending the apocalypse had picked out for me."

He paused, drawing in another band of Ore. "But man. Existence is brutal. It doesn’t care who you’ve decided you are. It writes off protagonists all the time. So I stopped waiting for the story to protect me and started making sure I was the one holding the pen."

HUUM!

"And if the story still tries to end you anyway?" Ruination asked.

"Then... I cheat," Noah said simply. "And if I can’t cheat, I loot whatever’s killing me for parts. And if I can’t do that, I persevere. I...Persevere."

He almost smiled.

"It all comes back to the same thing. I decide what happens to me. Not the apocalypse. Not Vakochev. Not a corpse from before the Scales sitting in my chest. Me."

Ruination listened calmly before she continued.

"I know Master has no Everything of Fear, but if you did...what would you be most afraid of?" she asked.

Noah was quiet for a moment, working the Ore, and then he answered honestly.

"If I had any fear, it would be becoming my father," he said.

"Not the way the illusion meant it. I wouldnt be afraid of being weak, or failing, or dying barren of accomplishments, the things he threw at me. If I were capable of fear...I would be afraid of being the kind of thing that looks at something small and precious and sees a mistake. He had a son and saw a burden. I have a son, and now a little girl who pinky-promised me, and people who hid in my domain because I’m the only wall between them and the dark."

" If I ever start seeing them as weight instead of as the reason for any of it, then the thing in my chest has already won, whatever my Infinity says. Who know, maybe I need to take back my Everything of Fear. Maybe fear makes one human...and would be a critical part of identity. Maybe..."

...!

Ruination said nothing to that. There was nothing to say to it!

He harvested until there was nothing left to harvest.

|All Eridarch Ore deposits within THE Maw have been mined. Total units obtained: 4,196. This represents the entire yield of what was once the richest mine in THE Arkethys Observable Existence, including the deep trove that was abandoned when the instabilities made it inaccessible to ordinary mining. The Ore will accelerate the transformation of your Aura toward a realized Akashic Civilizational Intent, and will aid the ongoing fusion of your Infinity and THE Primordial Source.|

Noah sensed all of it, the four thousand units of Eridarch Ore stored away inside his existence, banded crystal humming with bound Infinity and Primordial Source, and he sat down where he was, in the depths of THE Maw, surrounded by the raging storms of converted authority, the abandoned trove emptied around him.

Ruination came up behind him, and her illusory manifestation wrapped its arms around him from the back, holding him.

It was quiet and intimate as Noah’s right hand landed on hers.

DUM!

His hesrt beat loudly as everytime it did, he was learning more and more about the horrific monster inside him.

He sat in the storm with a monster chained in his chest and the dead on his conscience and four thousand units of impossible ore inside him, and his eyes blazed with boundless Quintessence, the essence of everything he was burning steady in the dark.

He would take it step by step. That was all there ever was. Step by step, beat by beat, choice by choice.

He had to persevere.

He had to be himself.

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.