Chapter 4303: This is MY Way! II

The King of Aethelgard laughed, a short, sharp, and utterly contemptuous sound.

"I do not need to be given a Civilization. And I have no desire to be entangled in the emotional, chaotic weavings of THE Living Emotive."

...!

THE Weavers remained still, their faceless hoods a void of unreadable intent. "In this case," their unison voice was a gentle, yet absolute, counter-argument, "you have to. It will benefit your Way of Existence... and your budding Civilization."

Gilgamesh was silent for a long, heavy moment. He looked at these three mysterious beings, at their quiet, unshakeable certainty, and he gave a single, almost imperceptible, nod of assent.

And then, it happened.

WUU!

The three hooded figures, who had been a single, unified presence, suddenly stopped. Their forms, which had been perfectly still, flickered!

A silent, internal conversation, a wave of pure, conceptual data, passed between them.

"Something is wrong," one of them, the one with the high, melodic voice, whispered, the word a fragile, uncertain thing!

"An interference with a budding Weaving of Existence we have set in place..."

The one with the dry, academic voice replied, its tone now sharp with a new, analytical coldness. "I cannot sense who... could THE Creature have noticed something? But they are occupied right now..."

HUUM!

The three of them rose as one. The calm, prophetic certainty they had projected was gone, replaced by a new, more profound, and utterly terrifying, silence.

They looked at each other, their faceless hoods a void of shared, unspoken concern.

"We will proceed carefully," their unison voice was now a low, dangerous whisper. "We will see what interference occurred, and where."

With those final, ominous words, they turned to Gilgamesh, a silent dismissal in their posture.

He looked at them, a new, cautious light in his golden eyes, and with a final, lingering glance, he vanished, leaving them alone in their silent, shadowed hall, with a new, unforeseen, and very, very dangerous variable in their grand equation!

—

It was cold, and yet a sense of terrifying warmth of knowledge and power was present in the center of a glacial expanse in the Earliest Folds...in a small corner of these vast Folds!

​Two figures sat upon glacial blue stones that seemed to be carved from frozen time itself.

One, a man exuding a quiet, analytical brilliance, held a simple stick, idly drawing intricate diagrams and cryptic words on the frozen ground.

He sighed, the sound a small, human thing in this ancient, terrible place.

​"THE Creature...THE Living Paradox...THE Living Emotive...Stories of the Earliest Folds....Ay, so convoluted..." Anaximander muttered, shaking his head.

​In the last hour, Noah had cracked open his understanding of existence, revealing the complex, glittering, and dangerous structures within!

The Stories of the Earliest Folds Noah had shared, the concepts of Scales of Existence...it was a universe of data that made his own explorations feel like a child’s first steps.

​Sitting opposite him, Noah’s gaze was calm, his vast power held in perfect, effortless check.

He had, in turn, been analyzing this impossible being, this Anaximander, and had found nothing!

His existence was a perfect, smooth wall, a blank page that refused to be read.

​|He is an anomaly through and through, Master. His self-defined ’Way’ is something we have never encountered. There seems to be a reason why the so-called THE Weavers approached him. Anything that can require the attention of entities like that is not simple.|

​Beside Noah, the holographic, crimson-blue figure of RUIN/EDEN frowned with a profound, analytical contemplation, her gaze fixed on Anaximander as if he were the most complex, unsolvable equation she had ever encountered.

​At this moment, Noah leaned forward.

​"Hey, say..." he began, "If you knew there was an apocalyptic problem, a grand, existential threat where the complete cessation of existence was coming... a Fallout of sorts, as some might call it. How would you avoid it? Prevent it? Escape it?"

​...!

​Anaximander looked up, his bright, intelligent eyes blinking in surprise. The stick in his hand paused mid-diagram. He gazed at Noah, his mind a brilliant engine of logic!

​"What an exquisitely terrifying hypothesis," he breathed, a flicker of genuine, scientific excitement in his eyes.

He stood, his simple robes fluttering in a wind that wasn’t there, and began to pace.

​"Well," he began, his voice taking on the rhythmic cadence of a lecturer dissecting a grand problem, "the first step, in any logical framework, would be to identify the source. The catalyst. Causality is not just a suggestion; it is the spine of Existence. If a collapse is coming, something caused it. I would dedicate all my resources to finding that First Domino. If one could find the source, the trigger... could one not, theoretically, stop it? Alter it? Convince it not to have been triggered at all? It is the most direct, and likely the most impossible, solution."

​"But," he continued, holding up a finger, "let us assume the catalyst is unstoppable. That it is a force of nature, like a hurricane that has already made landfall. What then? Then, the logical recourse is not to fight the storm, but to build a shelter."

​He gestured to the vast, swirling sky above them. "Not a simple shelter of stone and metal, but a conceptual one. A fortress built outside the very rules of the storm. A sanctuary forged from a different kind of reality, a place so fundamentally separate from the collapsing Folds that this...what did you call it...Fallout, could not find its purchase. An isolated, perfect bunker."

WAA!

Noah couldn’t help but smile at all the answers this being gave as they were...the same ones powerful entities came up with!

​"A beautiful theory," Anaximander mused, "but one that relies on the existence of such a place, or the means to build it. So, if the storm cannot be stopped, and a shelter cannot be built, what remains?"

​He smiled, a bright, intellectual spark. "A third path. You do not fight the storm, and you do not hide from it. You find a place the storm simply cannot reach. You go... elsewhere. A hidden garden, a forgotten pocket of existence. You find a new civilization, a new place to plant your seeds, and you simply... wait for the storm to pass, hoping it does not find you."

BOOM!

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