Chapter 5548: Lapse! I

The first attempt threw his focus backward! It was exactly as Damodred had promised and worse, a nuclear tempest of pure conceptual force going off inside his own being as his Causes slammed together too hard, at broken angles, the raw energy of the collisions finding nowhere clean to discharge as his whole existence shuddered under the strain as though it might tear apart!

He gritted his teeth, refusing to flinch, his eyes blazing with cerulean-crimson light as he spoke the mantra again!

"I AM OSMONT. I AM QUINTESSENTIAL. I AM HUMAN. I AM THE PROTAGONIST!"

HUUM!

The second attempt was better! The third better still! And somewhere in the reciting, as his Ananke Intent discovered how to align the reactive faces of one Cause directly into another, the chaotic detonations stabilized!

It became a rhythm.

A glorious, magisterial rhythm!

Eighteen Causes, nine of his own Prime Causes and nine First Causes of THE Steed, began to collide inside his existence under the three absolute conditions the titan had named! They crashed together at the right speed, at the right angle, and often enough to matter, over and over, and wherever they struck, they bloomed into glorious, cascading light.

Multicolored waves poured off the impacts, and multicolored strings sang out across his inner world, every wave and every string carrying a tremendous, ancient density that washed over the whole of his existence as the weight of ages pressed into him from within.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

It was like endless cosmic drums beginning to beat within his soul, a rhythm of perpetual collision without pause, and from every crash of Cause on Cause, the waves and strings spilled outward as though whole singularities were being born inside him with each passing nanosecond!

|You have grasped an ancient art unique to THE Laestrygonians. Analysis follows.|

|THE COLLISION OF CAUSES has begun. Rather than fusing your nine Prime Causes and the nine First Causes of THE Steed, you are now driving all eighteen into perpetual, structured collision, governed by frequency, energy, and orientation, commanded through THE Osmontian Tongue as your True Tongue.|

|Effect: with every passing second, you grow stronger. Not in one facet, but collectively, across the whole of your existence at once. Every collision feeds its benefit directly into you. All facets rise together, endlessly, for as long as the collision is sustained.|

|Secondary effect: the Osmontian Biomass cost of all future elevation is being reduced, and continues to fall the longer the art runs.|

|Warning retained for the record: this art carries perpetual internal adversity by design. It is the art for which THE Laestrygonians were driven to extinction. It empowers without limit and it costs without end.|

...!

Noah read every word in the prompts, a slow shake of his head accompanying the wonder moving through him even as the internal drums beat on and the ancient, multicolored waves kept washing through his existence!

He looked up at Damodred, his eyes gleaming with quiet, imperial dominance.

"Just where are you sitting, currently?" Noah asked, his voice ringing with declared power. "Show me your power."

HUUM!

Noah activated THE Protagonist’s Omniscient Regard!

Damodred bowed, the veil of severed hands dipping low toward the gray floor.

"Gladly, Master. Though I would have you understand, I hold but a fraction of what I wielded at my peak. Still. It is not nothing."

The Regard settled over the titan, and the Character Sheet bloomed in Noah’s vision like a monument of calcified history!

|CHARACTER SHEET|

|Designation: Damodred. Last of THE Laestrygonians. The First to Return.|

|Standing: a fraction of his living peak, and still immense.|

|Facets of Existence: SS-Rank, Oir. Across the board. Finished craft, exact making, seated in a being that should by every law be frozen.|

|Intent: SS-Rank. THE Autarkis Intent. The third order, sovereignty above inevitability.|

|Pantheon: THE Sepulcher of the Unyielding Dead, SS-Rank. A Pantheon that is not a realm one enters but a graveyard that enters you, seating an opponent inside the accumulated stillness and agony of an extinct people.|

|Core: 36 Causes, Blighted and Calcified both, held in perpetual collision every moment of his existence. The very art he has just taught you, run without pause across ages.|

|Disposition: absolutely loyal to the Master. Grieving, patient, and certain. He does not hurry, because he has already waited longer than most things have existed.|

|Notable thread: he waits, quietly, for the Master to call forth MORE of his kind from extinction. He is the first to return. He does not believe he will be the last. He is content to serve, and to wait, and to see how many Laestrygonians the Master’s Tide might yet pull back into the light.|

...!

It was something utterly surreal to see, and it made Noah take a moment to truly evaluate the wonder that landed on his lap!

But as Causes collided more and more in his existence...new prompts bloomed in Noah’s vision, and these were different, for they were not describing what was, but what was beginning to be!

|Notice. A unique capability is forming at the meeting point of three things: THE Ananke Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian, your Osmontian Source Infinity, and THE Collision of Causes now running perpetually within you.|

|The eighteen Causes crashing inside your existence do not only elevate you. They produce. Every collision births raw power, waves and strings and newborn singularities, and until now that power has poured inward, feeding your ascent. It need not only pour inward.|

|By uttering THE Osmontian Tongue as a mantra, and steering the intent not toward elevation but toward release, you may take the immense power thrown off by each collision and unleash it OUTWARD, as an attack. The particular Causes you drive together determine the shape of what emerges. No two collisions yield the same weapon.|

|This capability is now yours to wield. Designation: THE Cataclysm of Colliding Causes.|

...!

Noah read it, and a slow, imperial smile touched his mouth.

An engine that made him grander with every breath, and now a weapon fired from the same furnace.

He raised one hand toward the empty gray expanse of Damodred’s showing-place, and he spoke the mantra again, low and grand, but this time he bent the intent outward, toward release!

"I AM OSMONT. I AM QUINTESSENTIAL. I AM HUMAN. I AM THE PROTAGONIST!"

HUUM!

And inside him, he chose.

He reached into the churning eighteen and seized two, driving them together on purpose, aiming their reactive faces into one another with the frequency and the energy and the orientation the titan had named.

His Prime Cause of Tyranny, and one of Hvitrmarr’s First Causes, the ancient anchor of Valor.

They collided!

BOOM!

And from Noah’s open palm erupted a lance of layered cerulean and gold, a spear of pure dominance shot through with a Steed’s unbreakable courage, and it tore across the gray space and struck the far nothing with a weight that made the whole domain shudder, a strike that did not merely destroy but commanded the space it hit to break, valor lending the tyranny a fearlessness that would not be refused!

Noah’s eyes gleamed!

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