Infinite Mana in the Apocalypse - Chapter 3755

Chapter 3755: Resistances IV
And then it came.

As 30 Existential Dimensional Lattices spun all around me, a prompt came as if to affirm my being.

| You have unlocked all 10 True Absolute Existential Resistances at 1%. You may be the first in all of recorded Existence to do so, giving you an exalted distinction.|

Exalted?

No.

Not exalted. But heading towards Infinity.

A being no longer playing within the rules.

One ready… to change them!

The rain continued in the Infiniverse Crucible. Still radiant. Still multicolored. Still beneath me.

But my eyes had already left it behind.

They were fixed elsewhere- away from the Infiniverse entirely! Through the eyes of another body.

Time slowed.

Nine Time Sentinels. Wrapped in yesterdays they couldn’t let go.

I’d seen them before and their status panels, but things should be distinctly different now.

In addition to their Complexity Quotients and Purity Quotients, I should now be able to see something else.

NAME: Time Sentinel Paraxis

TITLE: Librarian of Lost Moments

TRUE SOURCE: Regression

CQ: 162,000 SU | PQ: 158,100 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (3%)

3%.

Too little!

My eyes wandered.

NAME: Time Sentinel Virunys

TITLE: Recorder of Eternal Now

TRUE SOURCE: Moment

CQ: 174,800 SU | PQ: 169,500 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (5%) |

5%.

Powerful. But…still not over the top.

And then…

NAME: Time Sentinel Leader Velmior Thal-Veyr TITLE: Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds

TRUE SOURCE: Interval

CQ: 220,000 SU | PQ: 215,000 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (9%)

The most powerful Time Sentinel.

How many Existential Dimensional Lattices did he fold to attain 9%? A number that seemed low, but its capabilities were undoubtedly grand!

That was what near-untouchability looked like. Almost sacred. Almost.

And then I looked to my left.

Romulus.

NAME: Primarch Romulus, Verdant Flame of Collapse

TITLE: Primarch of Entropic Continuity

TRUE SOURCE: Entropy

CQ: 111,111 (179,999) SU | PQ: 111,111 (180,000) SU

RESISTANCE: Paradoxical Resistance (10%)

Less Complexity Quotient and Purity Quotient, and yet…1% more!

Romulus was a Marked One who had his weavings Compressed, while the Time Sentinels were not.

Romulus was a reason to be calm in this whole ordeal even if I didn’t erupt with my newfound power.

…!

I may or may not be able to touch him in his current stage.

He had after all, trained for countless millions of years while I…how many days has it been since grasping True Sources?

But even I had limits. Temporary ones.

Romulus stood like a collapsed temple of inevitability.

I smiled while looking at this being who was my senior from the same Wheel of Existence.

Not envy.

But a sense of admiration.

A monsters acknowledging another monster.

After all, his True Source of Entropy led him to the strongest Resistance- or what I personally believed to be the strongest Resistance- Paradoxical.

As for the Sentinels?

One Resistance for all of these entities from the Chronosect of Threadbound Folds.

I had ten Resistances. At one percent each. So, how would a clash unfold?

I closed my eyes.

And Existence paused.

I could feel every terrifying possible weaving about to erupt at this moment.

I felt Velmior watching. Judging.

I felt Romulus ready to move against Eluriah Veilnox.

I saw the Time Sentinels and their confidence.

They thought they understood time, and that they understood me.

They would soon come to learn otherwise!

BOOM!

I opened my eyes.

‘You see through one lens,’ I thought. ‘While I see through ten.’

…!

No rain fell in this Dead Frequency of the End.

The Dead Wheel it was on groaned beneath us.

The Frequency of the End pulsed, barely living, barely breathing- a collapsed monument buried in its own myth.

Nine Time Sentinels stood across the fractured horizon. Each a master of twisted seconds and rewoven instants, their robes fluttering in warped winds that had no direction.

But only one mattered.

Velmior Thal-Veyr.

Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds. A man who had apparently seen every end of every story and simply… yawned.

I stood between him and Romulus.

I had already measured them all.

But I needed to know more and obtain additional data to back how my weavings were unfolding.

I believed in seeing.

In knowing.

And so, I stepped forward.

Voice low. Unmoved.

“Instead of erupting into a chaotic battlefield where a thousand clashes lead to the same end already read a million times,” I said, “why don’t we propose something simpler?”

Velmior’s ageless eyes turned toward me, curiosity flickering like a dying clock.

I tilted my head, gaze sharp. “Let the strongest of each side fight. The rest will observe.”

Murmurs stirred across the dead weavings. Even the wind tilted in question.

Velmior’s lips parted in what might have been called a smile.

Romulus didn’t move, but I saw the corner of his robe ripple- he was not amused.

I continued, calm and absolute. “If all outcomes are already known, then there’s no need to waste energy on repetition.”

That was the trick.

He had already seen all futures where we fought as a whole.

But had he seen this?

Did his infinite echoes cover a variable he didn’t predict?

Velmior chuckled.

A low, resonant sound. Not laughter. Appreciation.

“You wish to watch the truly powerful dance,” he said. “To see if the fabric of time can be folded differently.”

He raised his hand. Time folded around his fingertips like a child’s toy- the one around him anyways.

“No one interferes,” he said.

His voice was not loud.

But the other Sentinels froze and gave an affirmation.

All of them.

Not a breath moved. Not a strand of power shifted. Every timeline paused.

Even Eluriah’s gaze stiffened slightly.

“I will indulge this,” Velmior said, walking forward, each step grinding eons into the air.

“And in doing so, show you all… that resistance, even refined, even entropic, is still- futile.”

His cloak of moments flared.

Romulus stepped beside me, not glancing my way.

His entropy roared.

Their eyes locked.

Existence trembled.

And above, the Dead Wheel began to whisper!

BOOOM!

The air fractured.

It didn’t break. It didn’t shatter.

It folded.

Temporal pressure and paradoxical entropy collapsed against each other as the two stepped forward- not like men, but like movements.

Romulus, Verdant Flame of Collapse, bore down like the slow end of all things. His every breath exhaled centuries. His robes didn’t ripple in the wind; the wind adjusted its course to avoid disturbing them. Behind him, Existential Dimensional Lattices bloomed. Not three. Not ten. But dozens upon dozens as they should be in the hundreds, or more if he was still holding back.

Each one a geometric prayer written in the collapsing bones of dying chaos.

They spun with violence and entropy, fractal and furious. Each lattice a decree of Paradoxical Resistance made manifest.

And across from him, Velmior Thal-Veyr, Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds, did not yield.

He stood at the nexus of a storm of time. His body did not move- but his echoes did. Countless iterations of himself flickered like spiraling clock hands around him. Some young. Some aged. Some already dead. Some still being born.

His Lattices? Different.

Elegant. Simple. Singular.

They did not roar.

They ticked.

And each tick was a commandment.

I watched as the first clash occurred. It did not begin with motion. It began with presence. When two inevitabilities occupy the same point in space, Existence is forced to make a decision.

Reality blinked.

Time jumped.

Entropy bled.

Romulus struck first.

No war cry. No grand gesture. Just a ripple.

One of his Lattices flared, and the ground behind Velmior aged chaotically a thousand years in an instant. Dead Omniverses that had once stood there in a forgotten timeline turned to sand and ash

Velmior raised a single finger.

And rewound it.

His Temporal Resistance pulsed- not defensive, but corrective. Reality itself hiccuped as the aged sands reformed, recoiled, returned.

But only mostly.

Romulus smiled.

Because a third of the decay remained.

…Interesting.

One percent.

Just one.

It was all it took.

Even among Primarchs.

I stood at the edge of it all, untouched, my hands folded behind my back as I observed the clash of titans.

The difference in power wasn’t in force. It was in finality. Romulus moved as if the outcome had already been etched. Velmior moved as if it could still be negotiated.

And therein was the difference.

Certainty.

That 1% difference between them made one of them certain!

Velmior narrowed his eyes.

Time screamed.

Dozens of versions of himself collapsed into the now, each one wielding a moment from a separate timeline. Together, they moved in synchronicity to box Romulus in.

Romulus’s entropy expanded.

Not violently. Inevitably.

His Lattices burned downward like chains of collapsing logic. Every strike from Velmior aged into irrelevance. Every breath he took aged the air around him. His very act of being eroded timelines.

And then…

He moved.

Not forward.

Not backward.

He slipped.

A paradox.

One moment he was clashing with Velmior.

The next, he slipped and he stood before Eluriah Veilnox!

…!

It was not teleportation.

It was not speed.

It was priority.

Romulus did not ignore the timeline.

He rearranged it.

He never agreen to simply fight the strongest as he moved with his own rhythm!

Velmior turned, but too late.

Romulus lifted a single hand, and twenty-five of his Lattices screamed downward like falling thrones.

Entropy landed.

Eluriah gasped and roared.

Her Temporal Resistance kicked in- but it wasn’t enough.

She staggered. Blood, real and heavy, painted the air.

The Sentinels moved.

Every one of them.

Even those who had sworn to stay still.

Even those who believed in observation roared.

They surged forward.

But Romulus was already there.

His robes burned. Not with fire. With endings.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t gloat.

He simply withstood.

Time twisted. Timeline after timeline attempted to overwrite his presence, to bend him to a rewritten outcome.

He denied all of them.

Because Paradoxical Resistance didn’t protect him from harm.

It made him inharmonious.

Untouchable.

And from the center of it all, he stood as ten Sentinels unleashed a weaving of overlapping seconds, recursions, and never-was moments.

He held them all back.

Because of one thing.

Because of one percent!

It was glorious to see.

I folded my arms tighter.

So this… is the value of resistance.

Ten percent Paradoxical, against nine percent Temporal.

That one percent made Romulus immune to the correction. Immune to the edits. To the will of timelines.

He existed in a place Velmior could not reach.

He was… certain.

While Velmior was still trying to be.

And that made all the difference.

The war had begun.

But I had remained still!

Because I wasn’t done watching.

Because I hadn’t yet seen enough.

BOOM!

Existence fractured.

Not metaphorically. Not conceptually. It fractured.

Cracks of paradox bled through the very breath of the Dead Wheel as Primarch Romulus surged with terrifying defiance against the Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds.

They were both titans of foundation. But the difference between nine and ten… was not a number. It was a truth.

And I saw it clearly.

As the Time Sentinel Leader’s Lattices of flowing Interval bloomed like an ocean of collapsing hours, Romulus answered with entropy given voice. He moved like the end of all things, his body sheathed in spiraling lattices that disassembled the very idea of continuity.

Their clash sent out tremors across time. Past. Present. Future. Everything shook.

It wasn’t just power.

It was ideology. One sought to preserve. The other? Collapse.

And then came the roar.

“Entropic Lattice Fracture.”

Romulus’ voice thundered with a timbre that could end decades.

He sacrificed them. Dozens. Lattices he had formed across eons shattered.

Each one a monumental act of destruction.

Of entropy!

They cracked like glass and then exploded, each detonation rippling with Complexity and Purity compressed into a singular catastrophic burst. The Dead Prime Frequency of the End howled and cried in reply. Even Velmior stepped back.

And Romulus moved.

He tore through the remaining Time Sentinels- not to kill, but to pass. Each step was a paradox made solid. Each breath carried the weight of ending moments.

And then he appeared before her running visage.

Primarch Eluriah Veilnox.

Her terror had not yet faded.

She tried to speak.

But her words fell into the entropy. Time itself frayed. Threads that made up her lifespan withered. Youth, age, power- consumed by collapse. Her body shimmered in a kaleidoscope of decaying futures.

“NO!” Velmior bellowed. The first crack in his composure.

The Chronosect stirred in fury. And they moved.

All of them.

Their time weavings snapped like whips. But Romulus stood at the center, the embodiment of 10% Paradoxical Resistance, denying their alteration attempts as if they were insects striking stone.

It was beautiful.

And I chose that moment to move.

Because timing, you see… is not something you follow.

It’s something you impose.

I appeared behind the weakest of them that was rushing.

Time Sentinel Paraxis, the Librarian of Lost Moments.

Regression as his True Source.

A fragile idea. Dangerous, yes- but also backward. Unsuitable against a tyrant that only moves forward.

I did not draw power wildly. I did not reveal all.

Just three.

Three Existential Dimensional Lattices from my Origin Prime Osmontian Infinitum Lineage.

They hummed. Just three, and already, Paraxis trembled from the ambush.

He turned.

I looked him in the eye.

And then unraveled the river of time surrounding him. Not by clashing with it. But by rewriting what the river meant.

My weavings bled into his.

And his existence began to come undone.

Not violently. Precisely. Like threads pulled from a weaving.

He screamed, but not from pain.

From understanding.

He knew what was happening.

His True Source began to dissolve, and my weavings did what they were meant to do.

They took.

| The True Source of Loot has been ignited.|

WUU!

Golden-purple sigils erupted around me as the very death of this Time Sentinel became… mine.

His Lattices collapsed, and rather than fade, they folded into golden boxes of geometric compression. Dozens of Lattices transformed into cascading fragments that gathered before me like treasure chests forged of fallen existence.

The clash of titans above the shattered expanse of the Dead Wheel roared with apocalyptic resonance.

Below, I stood.

Still. Quiet. Thinking.

The severed corpse of the Time Sentinel I’d dismantled still lingered in fading echoes, his timeline unraveling like a poorly threaded script. And before me, something glorious began to manifest.

| Paradoxical Primarch Loot Cache Constructed. |

Ah.

So this was it.

The True Source of Loot bloomed within me like a second heart- one that beat with theft, inheritance, and sovereign reclamation.

Ribbons of brilliance unfolded in front of me as the Cache assembled: glowing orbs spiraling, lines of code-like lattice rotating around a central point.

| Contents: 1 Undefined Existential Dimensional Lattice (x4) | 1 True Source Sigil (Regression) |

Oh, Regression.

How poetic.

The very Source they used to claw backward through time now rested as fragmented essence in my grasp. I lifted a hand. The Cache responded.

Threads pulled into my body and gave understanding.

Undefined Lattices:- not yet formed, not yet decided. Their only law was mine. Their only purpose was adaptation.

They spun into the center of my Loot Source, a gravitational paradox pulling them close.

And like stars being devoured by a conceptual black hole, the Undefined Lattices began to shape.

| Initiating Lattice Formation: True Source of Loot |

| Lattice One Formed.| | Lattice Two Formed.| | Lattice Three Formed. |

HUUM!

The entire Dead Wheel shook beneath the formation.

The Lattices of Loot weren’t just structures.

These were teeth.

A system designed to take. To rip. To consume.

Not from cruelty.

But from earned dominance.

I blinked. My eyes turned toward the next Sentinel.

Time Sentinel Vyronn, Herald of Punctuality. A Primarch-level Time Warden. 150,000 CQ. 165,000 PQ. Temporal Resistance: 4%.

“Let’s test something,” I murmured, stepping forward.

My Existential Dimensional Lattices responded. Not three this time.

All of them.

More than Thirty now with the Lattices of Loot being formed.

I glanced at the Resistance that hung like accolades as I moved.

| Elemental: 1%, Temporal: 1%, Origin: 1%, Quantum: 1%, Dimensional: 1%, Spiritual: 1%, Conceptual: 1%, Law: 1%, Emotive: 1%, Paradoxical: 1% |

All moved at once.

My body glowed with tyrannical clarity.

I appeared behind Vyronn in an instant. Not because I was fast, but because resistance to spatial restriction now made space an accessory, even with the singular low percentage I had as relative to my enemy that did not have even this 1% Dimensional Resistances…I was above.

The moment I touched his shoulder, it began.

My Lattices folded over his own like sharpened ink.

He turned, mouth opening to call upon the Whenfolds…but his voice did not come.

His words unraveled. Conceptual Resistance.

His position warped. Dimensional Resistance.

His True Source rippled. Temporal Resistance.

His heart despaired. Emotive Resistance.

And then I struck.

With a single downward motion of my hand, I pressed more than thirty Lattices of my own against the few dozen of his I could detect.

Almost evenly matched.

But not even close.

He began to tear.

Not his flesh.

His continuity.

HUUM!

Another Cache began to form.

As he screamed, Time fractured around us- but my tenfold Resistance matrix held the distortion outside my frame.

| Constructing New Paradoxical Primarch Loot Cache. |

His Lattices collapsed one by one.

His Sigil of Punctuality cracked.

| Acquired: Undefined Existential Dimensional Lattices (x7) | True Source Sigil: Punctuality |

I let the Cache float toward me. Consuming it with a single breath.

The Loot Source roared, trying to use these Undefined Lattices for itself as I stopped it, directing them to be used to form Lattices of my Lineage.

At 9 Lattices in a single True Source, one’s Resistance related to that True Source would increase by an unknown percentage.

The next one after that was 81.

I would soon see what 9 Lattices of my Lineage would give.

Then my gaze turned.

The Time Sentinel Leader stared at me now. Eyes no longer lazy, no longer smug. His gaze had changed to that of rage.

I returned it, expression calm, words precise.

“I bet you didn’t see that in all your timelines.”

The Dead Wheel howled.

And I smiled.

Because this wasn’t about stealing victories.

It was about rewriting fate.

One Cache at a time!