Chapter 5512: Predator and Prey! II

|Osmontian Source Infinity elevated to C-Rank, Straif, the Blackthorn, the grade of sharpness and consequence. Cost: 300,000.|

|Volume elevated to C-Rank. Output elevated to C-Rank. Trueness elevated to C-Rank.|

|The remaining Foundations, elevated through their grades to C-Rank, Straif: THE Unkneeling Crown. THE Mirror That Keeps. THE Hunger That Refines. THE Unmoved Verdict. THE Pure Trajectory. THE All-Drawing Stillness. THE Remembered Truth. And THE Sovereign Existence, your Ninth, whose imposition of your identity upon nearby existence now carries the Blackthorn’s edge. Cost: 1,960,000.|

|THE Tide That Owes Nothing, your Second Foundation, elevated to B-Rank, Ngetal, the Reed, the grade of reach and pervasion. Its returns now range from twenty thousand to one hundred thousandfold, and its Sharpened Returns have deepened into Woven Returns, boons that may now arrive already interlinked with your existing capabilities. Cost: 1,100,000.|

|And THE Ananke Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian, elevated from C-Rank, Straif, to B-Rank, Ngetal. Cost: 1,250,000. Within THE Quintessential Confluence, it now functions at A-Rank, Idho, the Yew, the grade of near-permanence and authority over endings.|

|Total expenditure: 4,760,000. Remaining reserves: 403,000. Every facet of your existence now stands at C-Rank or above, and your Intent stands within the peak.|

...!

The pressure of his existence began to change!

It was visible! Across the light-flooded sky, Noah’s fused frame erupted with the settling weight of an entire existence rising grades in a single breath, his hair blazing brighter as the lemniscate rings in his eyes multiplied, and around him, billowing prismatic cerulean seas of his A-Rank-functioning Intent surged outward and wrapped around the cluster of cells in layer after layer after layer!

And finally...there was some form of stability!

The tyrannical basal Intent of the cells pressed against his seas, and for the first time, the seas did not thin! The bubble’s sideways slide through Dimensions and Time slowed, and strained, and stopped, ancient arrogance meeting an identity that had just paid millions of Biomass for the right to disagree with it, and the two pressures ground against each other in silence above the golden island!

Noah reached his hand out to grasp them!

...!

---

<THE Recorder of Wilds>

Countless gigaparsecs from a golden island, upon a drifting cloud of solid gold, an old woman in white robes was having her tea.

The cloud floated placidly through the storming dark of THE Krazhor-Nul as its owner sat cross-legged at its center, a full tea set arranged before her upon a lacquered tray, steam curling gently from a cup so ancient its glaze had forgotten its original color.

Her long white hair was pinned loosely with a single wooden stick, her wrinkled face was folded into an expression of profound peace, and around her frame, the lethal ambient density of this Dimension, the pressure that killed non-True Lifeforms in minutes and made True ones wary...simply did not apply!

The rain of authorities parted around her cloud out of what could only be called respect.

She was Primeval.

And she was, at this moment, being interrupted mid-sip.

Far below her drifting cloud, a procession moved across the dark geography, and it was vast! More than twenty True Lifeforms traveled in loose formation across the storm, and more than half of them pressed upon existence with the weight of THE Cenozoic Scale, a gathering of apex beings. Among them coiled Ormarr Grimtunge, the great Serpent whole once more. Beneath them all, dragging the storm sideways with its ambient wrongness, walked a Steed. And at the very head of the procession, leading all of it, flew a woman in red robes.

The old woman set down her cup, leaned comfortably forward upon her cloud, and began to speak. To no one. To herself, in warm, hushed, marveling tones, as she always did, for she had been talking herself through the wilds of existence for longer than most Dimensions had held their shapes.

"Here we see...a migration of tepid animals. Twenty and some, more than half of them Cenozoic. Now that is a rare sight. A colony this size only leaves the nest for a handful of reasons. Whatever could their reason be..."

She settled in comfortably, the way one does before a long-awaited nature scene, and her voice echoed out with old, patient wonder.

"Every animal has a part to play in the ecosystem of existence. Some are prey. Some are predators. And many, many more live somewhere in between, scavengers, followers, grazers, mimics, each one filling its little role in the great turning of things. It is easy to forget, watching the big ones stomp about, that the roles were never chosen. They simply grew into them. And here...here we have nearly the whole cast in a single frame."

She lifted a wrinkled finger toward the figure at the head of the procession.

"There. At the front is...a predator."

The red-robed woman flew cold-faced through the storm, and her entire existence emanated bloodlust and brutality! Her crimson eyes stared dead ahead, unblinking, and around her frame the very weavings of the Dimension seemed to thin and part, not out of respect, as they did for the old woman’s cloud, but out of the simple instinct of things avoiding an edge.

She did not speak as she simply moved, and twenty True Lifeforms moved behind her!

"This predator seems to be a proper one, too. Her weavings reveal she us...Lissana. Look at her. No wasted motion, no chatter, no play. She’s shaped like a blade because that is what her path made of her, killing, refined across a True existence until nothing else was left. Even the others keep just slightly behind her wake. They don’t do that out of respect. They do it the way small fish keep clear of a shark’s mouth, without ever quite thinking about it. She could thin this entire column before it agreed on a direction to run..."

Her finger drifted back along the formation, and her old eyes creased with rich amusement.

"And here, oh, here we have a much more common creature. The Serpent, Ormarr. His Trueness seems injured, and his position...it is not at the head, where a beast his size belongs, but tucked at her flank, held low, adjusting himself to her wake stroke by stroke.That makes him... a follower. A creature that seeks any path for himself, whichever one is nearest and strongest at the time, and today her path happens to be it. He’s been hurt somewhere, badly, and so he presses up against a bigger predator and performs harmlessness while he waits for his chance to matter again. Nature makes a great many of these. They survive wonderfully. They just never quite become anything."

...!

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