Chapter 4173: Progression! II

The threat was delivered with such certainty that several nearby Paradoxes actually stepped back. Schrodinger only smiled and nodded, then turned his attention upward.

"O Powerful Fold Dwellers," he called out with theatrical humility, "us Living Paradoxes are weak, but we will have one of our most steadfast soldiers, Goliath, join in to support with a few others!"

Elysia Firmhand gazed down with eyes that could have frozen concepts. Her response came with the weight of someone who had already calculated every possible outcome.

"For those coming to reinforce the Wandering Territories, we leave in five. Make your decisions by that time." She gestured to her twin beside her.

"My brother, Caelum Firmhand of the Blue Fields, will stay here with others to coordinate any movements for Living Existences across the Folds."

Caelum nodded, his rake shifting in his grip with movement that suggested entire harvests being planned.

"This time when The Dead are not prevalent and barely any Tears of Existence have opened," Elysia continued, "will be the most critical!"

...!

The stage was set.

Noah’s eyes burned with possibilities as the Kleos Concordat had led to unexpected results and meetings, but he would keep moving forward with his own preparations.

The game had become more complex, the players more numerous, but the goal remained the same...survival and transcendence, in whatever order proved necessary.

Behind him, a voice filled with indignation broke through his thoughts.

"Master, we didn’t even get to show off!"

The Emperor Penguin raised his beak with pride that seemed personally offended by the lack of combat. Noah smiled while patting the bird’s head, the gesture both affectionate and condescending in the way that only Emperor Penguin seemed to appreciate.

He looked at Kazuhiko, whose hand rested on his sword with the patience of someone who knew violence was inevitable. Erikson stood in his beach attire, the Slipper of Existential Humiliation tucked casually in his waistband. The Queen of Matter had already begun documenting everything in one of her floating books.

"You’ll get to play soon enough," Noah assured them. "Come, let us finish preparations."

He turned to Khor, and her eyes lit up with anticipation that made reality nervous.

"Is it that time, Outsider?"

Is it that time?

The unspoken completion of the question hung in the air as truly...it was time to swallow an entire Fold!

The casual impossibility of it, stated as if discussing lunch plans, made several nearby beings edge away despite not hearing the actual words.

Noah nodded, his authority wrapping around Khor with precision that had been refined through impossible practice.

In one moment she was there, in the next, she simply wasn’t...transported to wherever Folds would be devoured!

Sigrid moved beside him with grace, Ruination and the Infiniverse flanking them as they all gazed up at the Fold Dwellers and the ever-growing Tree of Unity. The sight was magnificent in its implications...forced cooperation on a scale that existence had never before witnessed.

Noah’s expression grew cold with solemnity that made the temperature around him drop as he looked ahead.

Sigrid, sensitive to his moods, asked quietly, "What is it?"

He turned to her, and his words carried weight that made her straighten instinctively.

"We will have to send one of your bodies to the Transcendent Origin Folds. It seems soon, a catastrophe is coming to it. It should be a good place to cultivate your Order."

WAA!

The words landed with the force of prophecy.

Sigrid nodded without hesitation. Even though she had told the Living Origins she would not establish Order with them, even though she had rejected their authority and chosen her own path, that was still her home in ways that transcended politics or power.

The Living Origins were where she had learned what Origin meant, where her family had sacrificed everything for a concept that she now embodied in ways they never could have imagined. If chaos was coming to that place, she would be there for it!

Not for them, but for what they had once represented. For the memory of her Ama who had taught her to guide without controlling.

For the echo of possibilities that had been sacrificed on Order’s altar.

"I’ll go," she said simply, the words carrying certainty that made them more than agreement...they were declaration, promise, and threat combined.

Noah nodded, already calculating deployments, contingencies, and the very real possibility that Schrodinger’s warnings about the Origin Folds weren’t warnings at all, but promises of chaos he had orchestrated himself.

The only question was for what purpose?

The gathering was dispersing with purpose now, each faction preparing for movements that would reshape the Folds against The Dead.

But Noah couldn’t shake the feeling that the real game was being played on a board none of them could fully see, with pieces that didn’t know they were pieces, toward an ending that might not be an ending at all.

Above them, the Tree of Unity continued to grow, its roots spreading through dimensions that didn’t have names, its branches reaching toward futures that hadn’t decided whether to exist!

—

In Aeternitas Concordia, deep within the golden streets of the marketplace where weak Fold Dwellers haggled alongside beings who could unmake reality with a thought, Noah sat upon a radiant throne that he had manifested from pure authority!

The morning’s trade had been particularly profitable...not in terms of resources gained, though those were substantial, but in information gathered.

"Alright, that’s all the trading for now!"

His voice carried across the marketplace with finality that brooked no argument.

With practiced motions, he began storing away the Glass Woks and bowls that had contained the meat of Marine Lifeforms from his Early Veiled Shore...delicacies that beings here couldn’t obtain through any other means.

The crowd that had gathered, a mixture of hopeful Fold Dwellers and calculating Living Existences, began to disperse with varying degrees of reluctance.

Beside him, Kalysta and the other Fold Dwellers from the Veiled Sunfolds remained, their expressions mixing gratitude with confusion at the sudden end to commerce.

Noah turned to them, his gaze carrying weight that made even these beings who had grown accustomed to his strangeness pay attention.

"You all need to go now."

Kalysta’s eyes flashed with kismet, that particular light that suggested she was seeing fragments of possibility.

Her mouth opened to reply, perhaps to question. But before sound could emerge, Noah’s hand moved with certainty.

White-gold light erupted from his gesture with the patient inevitability of sunrise.

It wrapped around Kalysta, the Originus Venerant entities, and every being connected to the Veiled Sunfolds. The light didn’t transport them so much as exchange them, reality shuffling its deck to deal a different hand.

Where they had stood, a single figure now materialized.

Sigrid’s clone appeared with the grace of Order asserting itself in a space that had momentarily forgotten structure!

THE Living Order returned...to her home!

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