Chapter 5312: Sword II

Noah smiled.

He thought about the suit and the blade Sir William had given him, and about the many paths laid out in front of him, all of them active, all of them running at once.

His body as Dante in THE Sanctum Velanthra would be grasping the Third Cause within those depths. His body in THE Source Lands would be leaving with the Gilded Ones of Marxist’s settlement to seek an unknown Source treasure surrounded by Source Beast armies.

Gathering information on the reach of Gilded Ones into THE Source Lands was also ongoing as he felt like with settlements, so long as they were desperate enough, more and more would arrive on THE Strand of Broken Scales.

They didn’t send powerful Gilded Ones over en masse as they didn’t wish to risk their lives with too many unknowns, but when they sent more and more beings like Marxist...they would be able to make a lot of headway!

But apart from this...

There was the pathway of THE Sword of Existence in front of him now, waiting. And he still had to finish defining his First Infinite Scale.

There was much to be done.

That was fine. Being busy meant progressing, and progressing meant moving forward, and moving forward was the only direction he had ever genuinely respected!

He could not remain static!

So he would push ahead on all of it!

His biggest aim, the one that sat behind all the others, was grasping THE Primordial Source. A task that countless beings across existence had found impossibly hard, that ancient Source Lifeforms guarded as the thing that made them what they were, that THE Gilded Ones were building entire settlements in THE Source Lands to inch toward.

THE Source Lands was one possibility.

THE Sword of Existence was another.

So.

He reached into his existence and took out the suit and the blade Sir William Arthur had given him. The Lesser Existential Source Armament sat there in obsidian and white, the blue-obsidian sheath of THE Sovereign Reckoning resting beside it, both of them carrying the quiet weight of instruments forged by a Source Lifeform for a specific purpose.

He looked at the suit.

He was ready to put it on and see exactly what barrier he had to cross to become...a Sword of Existence.

---

<Swords of Existence>

Of the Swords of Existence, little is recorded that can be trusted, and much is recorded that cannot, for they are not a people who keep records of themselves and they discourage the keeping of records by others.

What follows is assembled from the fragments that survived, and one is asked to hold it loosely.

They are Lifeforms, though the word strains under the weight of what it is asked to carry when applied to them. Some were born of Infinity. Some emerged from THE Primordial Source itself. Some began as lesser things and climbed, across eons of adversity, to the threshold where the Swords would consider them at all.

What unites them is not their origin, for their origins could not be more varied, but the standard they have chosen to answer to, which is THE Primordial Source, and the Way each of them carries within, which is theirs alone and answers to nothing beneath the Source.

They are not protectors, though they protect. They are not destroyers, though they destroy!

To call them either is to mistake the consequence of their actions for the cause of them, and this mistake has been made by nearly everyone who has ever encountered them and lived to record the encounter.

Consider the Gold Incursion of Infinity.

In an age not too long ago, THE Gilded Ones and a coalition of Infinite Lifeforms fell into a war whose origins are no longer clear and whose conduct is remembered with horror by every chronicle that mentions it at all.

Multiple Observable Existences became the battleground. Both were laid to waste in the fighting, their populations caught between forces that did not pause to consider them, their substrates torn apart by weapons that neither side had any intention of restraining.

Countless died who had no part in the quarrel. The Observable Existences, which had existed for longer than most things existed, were reduced to ruin in the span of a single drawn-out atrocity.

The Swords of Existence stepped in.

They did not appeal to the better natures of the combatants, having correctly assessed that no such natures were present. They entered the war and inflicted casualties on both sides so severe, so indifferent to which banner the dying had marched under, that the war simply could not continue.

THE Gilded Ones lost figures they could not afford to lose. The Infinite Lifeforms lost the same. And in the silence that followed, neither side had the strength remaining to resume!

It is tempting to say the Swords fought for the dying. For the countless caught between the armies. For the ruined Observable Existences and the lives that had been spent in them.

This is not what happened.

The Swords of Existence did not fight for the little ones. They did not weigh the suffering of the innocent and find it moved them to action.

They fought because the war offended THE Source, because the unraveling of two Observable Existences for no purpose THE Source recognized as legitimate was a thing that could not be permitted to continue, and they followed THE Source where it led them.

That the dying were saved was a consequence. It was not the reason!

This is the thing that must be understood about the Swords of Existence, the thing that makes them feared by the powerful in a way that no merely benevolent force could ever be feared.

A benevolent force can be predicted. It will protect what is good and oppose what is cruel, and the wicked can plan around it.

The Swords cannot be planned around, because they do not serve good and they do not oppose cruelty. They serve THE Source, and THE Source serves nothing.

When a Sword arrives, the question is never whether you are innocent or guilty.

The question is only whether you stand where THE Source has decided the cut will fall.

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.