Chapter 4491: Why? II

Back in the Injunction Sanctuary of Law.

Noah stood amidst the chaotic currents of the battlefield, his armored form a silent, unmoving axis around which the violence spun. He did not raise his blade or cast an ability...he simply observed, his eyes flicking from one front to another with the cold, detached precision of an Emperor rearranging pieces on a board that spanned light-years.

His presence alone was a weight, an anchor of Primus Mana that stabilized the shaking reality of the Sanctuary.

Far to his left, the battle lines had shifted.

Ozymandias stood as a lone, obsidian-crimson bastion before the crumbling ranks of Deborah’s Civilization Legion of Laws. Behind him, silver-skinned Living Laws trembled while before him surged a storm of violet and gray...a tidal wave of weaponized sorrow led by the weeping figure of Threnody.

The Weaver of Final Sorrows did not attack with fancy abilities. He attacked with feeling.

Around him, tens of thousands of Living Emotives dissolved into a singular, nebulous cloud of pure, distilled negative emotion. It was a fog of suicide and a mist of absolute surrender. Threnody floated at its heart, his tear-filled eyes fixing on Ozymandias and the trembling Living Laws behind him.

"Why do you persist?" Threnody asked, his voice a soft, hypnotic melody that bypassed the ears and whispered directly into the soul.

He raised his shadowy hands, and the violet cloud surged forward to drown.

"The struggle is the pain," Threnody crooned. "To fight is to suffer. Look at the horizon and see the inevitability of the End. We were forgotten and discarded, and there is no salvation in resistance...only the prolongation of agony."

HUUM!

The wave crashed down with the weight of thousands of Sextillions in raw Complexity, but its true danger lay in its frequency. It permeated the Haki of the Living Laws, seeping into their minds like water through cracked stone.

"Let go," Threnody whispered. "Just... let go."

Behind Ozymandias, several silver-skinned Living Laws dropped their Civilizational Authority of Law as their eyes dulled. They looked at their own hands, then at the void, and began to channel their authority inward...preparing to collapse their own existences simply to stop the noise of living.

It was a massacre of the will.

But Ozymandias smiled.

His obsidian-crimson jaw unhinged to reveal the spinning, fiery void of his Infinite Hunger.

"Let go?" Ozymandias rumbled, his voice a tyrannical counter-frequency that shattered the hypnotic rhythm. "I never let go of anything I intend to eat."

WOOSH!

He inhaled.

The violet cloud of suicidal despair, the weaponized sorrow of an entire Legion...was sucked into the maw of the Hungering Maw specialist. It was a torrent of negative energy that would be poison to most, but it was flavor to him. He drank the despair and swallowed the grief, and as he did, the Damage Conversion protocol from the Iron Concordat flared to life.

The suffering was not felt at all as it was processed like fuel.

Ozymandias snapped his jaw shut and the air cleared instantly!

WAA!

"You speak of terror," Ozymandias said, wiping a stray wisp of violet energy from his lip. "You speak of the fear of the End. But you are merely sad, little ghost."

His predatory gaze fixed on Threnody with absolute certainty.

"You do not know true fear."

Above him, a Primus Mana Codex materialized and blazed with the light of a Primus Mana Arcana Glyph. The card depicted a writhing mass of tentacles and eyes rising from a dark, forgotten ocean...ancient in design and terrible in purpose.

|Mana Arcana Glyph: The Horror from the Deep|

"Allow me to educate you," Ozymandias whispered.

The card dissolved into green-black light.

SCREEEEEE!

Reality tore open above the Emotive Legion, and from the rift it emerged...a Chthonian monstrosity of impossible scale. It was a mountain of wet, slick flesh and writhing tentacles, a visage of madness that defied geometry. Countless eyes opened across its bulk, and each one served as a window into a dimension of pure, unadulterated terror.

|Damage Conversion Discharge: Active|

|Input: 5,000 Sextillion Stored Kinetic Authority|

|Status: Channeling into Summoned Entity|

The stored damage from the Iron Concordat’s defense flowed into the Horror, inflating its power to levels that warped the very physics of the Sanctuary. 5,000 Sextillion worth of destructive potential swelled within its impossible form.

"Know true fear," Ozymandias commanded. "Know true terror."

HUUM!

The Horror descended with tentacles that lashed out not to strike but to grasp. It wrapped around the Emotive Legion, crushing the violet clouds and shattering the weeping forms of the Early Creatures.

Threnody bellowed and erupted with fervor!

But the Horror feasted regardless. The Legion of Emotives broke as their disciplined despair shattered into chaotic, frantic rout, and more than a dozen fell prey to be devoured.

...!

Noah watched the carnage with a faint smile before turning his gaze elsewhere...to the sector where death bloomed like a dark flower.

He gazed at his prized Lich!

Arch Lich Ra’Zan floated amidst a cloud of necrotic brilliance with nine new figures standing before him. They were titanic entities that radiated a cold and absolute stillness.

|Transformation Complete: 9x Primus Inevitabilities of Death|

|Base Material: High-Quality Early Creature Corpses|

|Average Complexity/Purity: 200 Sextillion|

|Classification: Mind Flayer Elemental Liches|

They were nightmares of design...humanoid forms draped in robes of obsidian crimson that seemed woven from dried blood, their faces hidden in the shadows of their hoods. Only pairs of burning, abyssal eyes were visible along with clusters of writhing, purple-grey tentacles where mouths should be.

They held staffs made of frozen lightning and petrified magma, marking them as Elemental masters corrupted by Death.

Noah looked at them and saw not just soldiers but potential. Their base power was many times that of a standard Primus Inevitability, and if they specialized...

He didn’t hesitate.

"Civilization is growth," Noah stated, his voice carrying across the battlefield with absolute authority.

HUUM!

Behind him, space fractured as a massive structure descended from the bruised sky and tore through the clouds of war. It was a Sovereign Spire of Osmont, but it burned with a deep, aggressive obsidian crimson light, and its architecture was sharp and predatory.

THE CRIMSON HUNGER SOVEREIGN SPIRE.

"Ra’Zan," Noah commanded. "Let the newcomers undergo Specialization."

...!

Ra’Zan cackled with a sound like grinding stones. "KEKEKEKE! Enter, my beauties! Embrace the hunger!"

The nine Mind Flayer Elemental Liches distorted space, flickering out of existence and reappearing before the open doors of the Spire. They flowed inside, eager for the transformation that would turn them into monsters of the Hungering Maw.

Noah’s eyes pulsed with tyrannical satisfaction because when they emerged, they would be fucking catastrophes!

But there was one final piece on the board.

Noah turned his head slowly as his gaze locked onto the distant figure of Aethon, The Primeval Storm-Forge.

The Elemental leader was still fighting and still commanding his legion against the impenetrable wall of the Iron Concordat and the rampaging fury of Khor. He was a titan of duty who burned his existence to hold the line.

Noah’s voice projected outward and cut through the roar of the elements.

"Aethon."

The giant froze before turning, his binary star eyes meeting Noah’s crimson gaze.

"Why fight for a Civilization that has forsaken you?" Noah asked with a tone that was not mocking but genuinely curious. "You see my Legions overwhelming you and the collapse of your brothers and sisters. You know the doors of THE Loom are closed to you."

Noah gestured to the battlefield and the inevitable tide of his victory.

"Why fight for THE Loom to hasten your collapse when it will collapse you and your people regardless of the outcome?"

...!

He had seen this being with his Lens of Civilization. Aethon was mighty as it would be such a waste if he was merely collapsed!

Aethon straightened as magma dripped from his chin and lightning crackled across his shoulders. His binary star eyes blazed with ancient conviction.

"My life is for Elemental," Aethon rumbled, his voice shaking the ground. "My being is for Elemental, and my brethren will only ever follow the Elemental Civilization. It is our Way and our Truth, and we do not abandon it because the end is near."

It was a noble answer and a tragic one.

Noah nodded coldly.

"If you only follow Elemental..." He raised his hand. "Then I can embody for you a grand Elemental Civilization."

HUUM!

Noah tapped into his existence and accessed the Principle of Mana Supremacy. He drew upon the Living Existential Authority of Elemental he possessed and then flooded it all with Primus Mana.

His hand began to burn, but it was not the blue-gold of his usual authority.

It was a blinding, crystalline blue-gold Frost.

"Elemental is Mana," Noah whispered. "And Mana is Infinite in its variations."

BOOM!

He borrowed from the storage of Damage Conversion as just over 1,000 Sextillion in Complexity and Purity flowed across his existence for the scale of what he intended to achieve.

|Damage Conversion Withdrawal: 1,000+ Sextillion|

|Purpose: Elemental Authority Manifestation|

|Status: Channeling...|

BOOM!

He released it.

The sky above the battlefield changed instantly as the bruised, chaotic vortex vanished. In its place, a blanket of radiant, stellar blue-gold clouds formed.

And then it began to snow.

But this was not ice...each flake was a crystallized concept of Elemental Perfection, and each flake carried the weight of a star. The temperature plummeted to absolute zero, yet the snow burned with authority as it coated the battlefield in seconds and turned the shattered canyons into a glittering, majestic wonderland of frozen power.

The Elemental Legion stopped fighting.

The magma cooled and the lightning froze in mid-arc. They looked up with eyes wide with shock because they felt it...the purity, the density, the sheer and undeniable Civilizational Elemental Authority radiating from Noah. It was richer than anything they had felt from their own leaders, deeper and more profound.

"This is Elemental," Noah’s voice boomed from everywhere at once, carried by the snow. "I know your very existence can sense it."

He floated higher while wreathed in the blue-gold storm, looking like a titan of winter and Mana, an Emperor of frozen perfection presiding over a battlefield that had become his canvas.

"Why would you oppose a Civilization of Elementals that wishes to fight against the collapse of THE Loom?" His voice resonated through every snowflake. "Why die for those who locked you out when you can live for a Civilization that embodies your Way perfectly?"

...!

Aethon trembled.

He looked at the snow falling on his magma skin and saw that it did not melt. It settled there like a blessing, cool and absolute, carrying authority that spoke to the very core of what he was.

What the fuck was this?

Like, really. What the fuck?

This is impossible, Aethon thought. No authority, no being...can simply become Elemental...right? Civilizational at that too???

But the snow falling on his skin told a different story.

He looked at his legion and saw them shaking, their loyalty to the abstract concept of ’Elemental’ warring with the reality of the Elemental Supremacy standing before them.

Noah extended a hand.

"THE Loom abandoned you," he said simply. "I offer you a storm that never ends."

...!

Anaximander once told him to become the storm. And boy oh boy, did he want to rage!

The battlefield fell silent, save for the soft, heavy sound of falling snow.

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