Chapter 4496: At The Darkest Hour I

The concept of pain is, at its core, a gift wrapped in barbed wire.

It is the body’s desperate scream, the soul’s frantic alarm bell ringing in the void. To feel pain is to know with absolute certainty that something is wrong. It is the heat that snaps the hand back from the flame before the flesh is charred. It is the sharp reminder that you are mortal and fragile and currently under siege.

Without pain, we would wander into fire and feel nothing until we were ash. Pain is guidance, and pain is survival.

But then there is the other kind.

The excruciating relentless unending symphony of agony that serves no purpose, teaches no lesson, and offers no escape. It is the torture of a nerve ending singing a high piercing note that never resolves. It is the constant grinding pressure that turns bone to dust and will to water.

Many have argued about this duality for eons across civilizations.

Some say that pain is the ultimate test, that Existence in its infinite cruelty uses agony as a sieve to separate the weak from the worthy. To endure is to prove one’s right to exist. To break is to admit that you were never truly meant to be here at all. In this view, every second of suffering is a coin paid into the bank of one’s own potential.

Another perspective sees pain as a flaw in the design, a glitch in the matrix of existence. Why should growth require suffering? Why must strength be forged in fire? They argue that Existence should allow for elevation without agony, that the equation of pain equals gain is a lie told by tyrants to justify their cruelty. To them, pain is simply noise, a distraction from the true work of living.

And then there is the third view. The rarest and coldest perspective.

To these few, pain is neither a test nor a flaw. It simply is. It is a condition of reality as fundamental as gravity or time. You do not fight gravity but build structures to withstand it. You do not argue with time but learn to move within its flow.

So too with pain. You do not seek to escape it, nor do you glorify it. You simply exist within it, expanding your capacity to endure until the pain becomes background radiation, a constant hum that proves you are still alive.

For those who can reach this state, for those who can look into the abyss of excruciating constant agony and refuse to blink, their endurance will undoubtedly be paid off. Not in comfort perhaps, but in power.

And power, in the end, is the only currency that matters.

The pain Noah felt was something he truly could not accurately describe.

It was not a sensation but an environment. He was drowning in it. Every atom of his being was screaming, a trillion voices raised in a chorus of absolute unadulterated misery. The worst part was the lack of adaptation. There was no numbness, no dulling of the senses over time. Every second was as fresh and sharp as the first.

It was the sensation of being dipped in acid, then frozen, then burned again, over and over, with no rhythm or reprieve.

Doing anything in this state, under the brand of THE Immolation Of The Sacrilegious Savage, was unbearable.

Even the act of thinking required a titanic effort of will. He knew that this effort was being harvested, that every moment of torture was translating into exponential growth for his Civilization. But his existence truly did not wish to do it. Every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to stop, to fold, to simply let go and allow the darkness to take him.

That was how excruciating it was.

So he floated in the space of The Injunction Sanctuary of Law, his body a trembling statue of crimson-gold fire. He watched the blurry distance where his forces swarmed the Civilization Legions of Emotives, including Aethon and those under him, but the images were fractured and distorted by the haze of his own suffering.

Beside him, Alexander Asmodeus neared with cautious steps.

Further back, the Living Laws and Dukes of Law watched from a safe distance. They were ashen and terrified, still trembling from the pressure of THE Living Elemental that had briefly flashed into existence. They were useless. Utterly and completely useless.

Alexander stopped a respectful distance away, his silver-white aura flickering with genuine concern. He looked at Noah, at the flames that did not burn clothing but devoured concepts, and he asked the only question that mattered.

"How can I help?"

He did not ask if Noah was okay. That answer was written in every tremor of Noah’s frame, in the way the air around him hissed and boiled with residual heat.

Noah almost wanted to laugh at the question, but the thought of the physical effort stopped him cold. He almost wanted to say that nobody talking to him right now would be of great help, that even listening was an agony he didn’t want to endure.

But he had to find a way to adapt. He had to get used to this new reality.

"Nothing can be done," Noah said, his voice a sound like grinding stones dragged across broken glass as his throat was fucking dry. "Apart from enduring."

Alexander’s expression tightened. "I’m sorry," he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "I did not expect for things to play out like this. I did not foresee... this."

Noah managed a smile though it cost him dearly. It was a small tight thing, a grimace masquerading as amusement.

"This is just existence," he whispered through the burning. "Existence is grand. Existence is unfair. Existence is unpredictable. It is what it is."

After this, Alexander turned silent. He simply looked at Noah with an expression that was difficult to read.

Even though he showed a smile, Noah’s figure, wreathed in angrily scorching crimson-gold flames, still couldn’t help but tremble with constant rhythmic shaking. The tremors were a physical manifestation of the war being fought in every cell of his body.

Noah felt the eyes of Alexander remain on him with steady focus. They were the eyes of someone younger looking up to someone older, as if they found his actions unfathomably grand. As if his suffering was a monument to be admired rather than a torture to be pitied.

He shook his head excruciatingly at this perception. The scorching blurry prompts continued to flow over his eyes every now and then, a ticker tape of his own torture converted to power.

|+100 Sextillion Complexity and Purity gained from an unsurpassable effort...|

They were unfathomably immense gains that came from this excruciating effort, numbers that would have taken days and weeks for him to accumulate through normal means.

Noah felt it all washing over him. He tried to focus his scattered attention on his other self, on Ozymandias, who should be wrapping up a battle soon. Because THE Immolation Of The Sacrilegious Savage was a curse as much as a weapon.

He was barely handling it with all his accumulated will.

Other existences, for them it was utterly disastrous if he actively allowed the contagion to spread!

Far in the distance, the battle raged with renewed intensity. But it was a massacre of a different kind.

Ozymandias stood amidst the violet storm of the Emotive Legion like a dark star. His humanoid body, wreathed in the same crimson-gold fire that burned Noah, erupted with terrible purpose. Thousands of tentacles, slick with obsidian-crimson hunger and blazing with the contagious agony of the Immolation, shot out in every direction like seeking missiles.

They rushed towards the Civilizational Legions of Emotives with predatory intent. The moment they made contact, the effect was instantaneous and devastating.

The Emotives, beings of pure concentrated feeling, were instantly wreathed in THE Immolation Of The Sacrilegious Savage.

Most of them felt the excruciating pain for a second or two. That was all their sanity could withstand before it shattered like glass. Their minds broke. Their wills evaporated. They did not fight back and they did not try to flee. They simply... collapsed their own existence voluntarily as Ozymandias would then devour them!

It was a wave of mass suicide, triggered by a pain that no being should ever have to feel.

Others scattered in absolute terror, their formations breaking apart as they fled from the burning touch of Ozymandias’s tentacles like prey fleeing a predator.

Because of this devastating effect, the Legion of Emotives became scattered and broken down. The Civilizational Legion of Law and Deborah, watching from their defensive line, stared in stupor and disbelief. They had been fighting a losing battle for what felt like eons, and now in mere moments their enemy was dissolving before their eyes.

As for Ozymandias himself, his existence felt the same excruciating pain as Noah. Every movement was torture. Every extension of a tentacle was a scream trapped in his throat threatening to escape.

But he endured!

And for his endurance while moving even more aggressively, Harvest continued to descend on him in waves. He gained 100 Sextillion Complexity and Purity every so often, his power skyrocketing as he turned his own suffering into a weapon of mass destruction.

This battle could effectively be considered over and done. As much as Noah was being afflicted with a terrifying curse from a Primordial Sovereign, he had gotten his hands on a truly terrifying weapon.

Pain, it turned out, was the ultimate offensive capability.

Noah watched this unfold through the haze of his own agony, and despite everything he felt something like satisfaction. The Emotives were breaking not because they were weak but because the pain was simply beyond any reasonable capacity to endure. Even beings of 300 Sextillion Complexity were folding within seconds.

And he was standing here, minutes into the Brand, still conscious and still fighting.

What does that make me?

The thought came unbidden and he almost wanted to laugh again.

Alexander spoke again, his voice cutting through Noah’s internal thoughts "Is there any principle or authority that might alleviate...this?"

Noah shook his head slowly, each movement sending fresh lances of agony through his neck. "This is an attack from THE Living Elemental himself. No one here has the authority to counter it. Unless you have the distinction of THE."

"Then what do we do?"

What could one do indeed.

At this though, Noah remembered his own words.

Unless you have the distinction of THE.

Who...did he know with a distinction of THE?

...!

His eyes pulsed with tyranny!

His vision swam and refocused. The prompts kept coming.

|+150 Sextillion Complexity and Purity gained from an unsurpassable effort...|

The numbers were climbing faster now. His existence was learning to harvest from the pain more efficiently, extracting power from suffering with ruthless precision.

It was the third view of pain made manifest. Pain as a condition of reality. Pain as background radiation. Pain as the price of ascension.

He had paid the price before in smaller denominations. Now he was paying in bulk, and existence was forced to acknowledge the transaction.

In the distance, Ozymandias’s tentacles swept through another cluster of Emotives. They scattered like leaves before a storm, and those too slow to escape dissolved hunger in his jaws with expressions of relief on their fading faces.

Khor appeared near Ozymandias, her small form blazing with hunger as she coordinated the assault. Riya and others cautiously floated above.

The crimson-gold flames continued to burn as the pain continued to scream, and Noah continued to stand strong!

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