Infinite Mana in the Apocalypse - Chapter 3761

Chapter 3761: What is Fictional Transcendence? II
I felt it, the shift, the pull.

Like a tide made of Lattices and woven Fate itself, it carried me, not my body, but something deeper. A self composed of illusory patterns, threads of paradox and power folding over each other infinitely.

I was both there and not there.

A part of me was carried by the 50 Existential Dimensional Lattices, swept across vast unseen currents.

The Nullvein Gravewake Folds, the endless expanse between existences, stretched before me. And I traversed it not with steps, but as an unfolding of will. Seconds and years passed together, time losing all meaning.

A moment. An eternity.

And then…

I arrived at…

A Dead Wheel of Existence.

Ruined. Fractured. Breathless.

My form, still illusory, flickered as my body was composed entirely of Lattices. A floating diagram of command, of Resistances folded and layered upon each other. I was here and yet not. Untouchable.

The Wheel was quiet.

But not empty.

I felt a pull, a gravity of authority.

Toward a Frequency.

Without hesitation, I drifted, no, I willed myself toward it.

As I passed into its decaying weavings, I saw them.

Dead Things… from the Hollow Concord of Nullity!

Nascent Source-Bearers, flickering shades of broken purpose.

Harmonized Sourcebound Icons, emanating threads of warped grandeur.

Converged Architects, towering, half-shattered beings of once-great renown as their Purity Quotient was abysmal compared to their Complexity Quotient.

And among them…

Veltraxis.

I recognized him instantly.

One of the Mawbearers, his weavings dense and powerful as he was a Resplendent Monad. His form was draped in rotting banners of devouring.

Beside him, seated atop a throne of writhing bones and musical strands, was another.

Melodrass.

The 9th Mawbearer.

He played a grand tune, a melody woven from death and sorrow. Strings of unseen instruments pulled at the air itself, his fingers dancing across invisible weavings. A concert of despair.

They were gathering, weavings of death vibrant around them.

But it wasn’t them that seized my attention.

It was what wrapped around them.

An invisible mass.

No, a distorted soul.

A writhing, chaotic thing, not one identity, but many.

It coiled around Veltraxis. Around Melodrass. Around the others. A mass of tentacular weavings, translucent and deformed, impossible to parse by normal senses.

To the Nascent Bearers and Converged Architects, it was non-existent.

To Veltraxis and Melodrass?

They had no idea.

Maybe a Primarch would have noticed.

Maybe.

But me?

I saw it.

I recognized it.

An Undefined True Source, one without a single narrative, an amalgamation of many truths, many existences fused into a grotesque unity.

A miracle of horror.

A masterpiece of corruption.

A symphony of Usurpation.

And at the heart of it, a figure.

Humanoid. Blurred. Shifting.

As if no single identity could hold.

As if reality itself could not decide what, who, he was.

But I knew.

I had seen his Fable.

I narrowed my eyes.

And spoke, voice low, threading across layers of unawareness.

“Eckert.”

The figure jolted.

Shock.

He turned, eyes wide, his translucent form stabilizing slightly into something more… human.

He stared at me, or rather, at the illusion of me, composed of Lattices and Fictional Authority.

He shouldn’t have been able to see me.

No Dead Thing here could.

No Harmonized Sourcebound Icon.

No Converged Architect.

Not even Veltraxis or Melodrass.

Only Eckert, because I chose to be seen.

Eckert blinked.

“Scared the shit outta me,” he hissed, looking around quickly. None of the Mawbearers stirred.

They hadn’t noticed.

They couldn’t.

Absolute Fictional Transcendence wove a shroud no weak Primarch or Resplendent Monad or lesser could penetrate. Only by my will could any perceive me, and even then, barely.

I smiled.

“How the hell did you go from the Origin Singed to this? You’re about to fully take over the weavings of someone one Source Value away from a Primarch,” I said, voice full of quiet amazement.

Eckert’s amorphous face shifted, a wry smile forming.

He looked at me, shaking his head slowly, exhaling.

“Not even gonna ask how the hell you’re here,” he muttered. “But yeah. This guy…” He jerked his chin toward Melodrass. “Big depressed bastard. Real careful type. I’m seventy percent in. Another few days, maybe less, and he’ll be mine.”

He leaned back, or rather, the blurred mass of undefined soul around him did.

“Veltraxis is already practically hollowed out. The others are just dead weight. Melodrass, though… he’s careful. He’s got layers of collapse defenses, his source embedded in a melody. But I’m good at peeling layers, and I am patient.”

I nodded as I glanced at the others.

The Concord members murmured and plotted below, oblivious to the grotesque ballet occurring among their weavings.

The infection they couldn’t sense.

The Fable unfolding inside them.

I looked back at Eckert, my smile turning sharper.

“You’ve crafted an Undefined True Source without a single identity. That’s… something new.”

Everyone had their secrets.

And Eckert nodded with a sly smile as he kept his secrets to himself.

He shifted, threads tightening, his soul-mass spiraling more deeply into Melodrass’s.

“It’s only a little unique. Nothing compared to you. Let’s just say… by the time they notice my presence here, it’ll be too late.”

I gazed around once more, at the gathering of Dead Things. The Hollow Concord, blissfully unaware they were being eaten alive from the inside.

A whisper of amusement, of awe, curled in my chest.

Eckert had no Resistance.

No Primarchhood.

And yet he stood here, beneath the noses of Mawbearers and Converged Architects, thriving.

Not by strength.

By understanding.

By theft.

By absolute, unapologetic usurpation!

I tilted my head, the smile never leaving my lips.

“Would you accept help?” I asked calmly, watching the swirling, massed soul around Eckert spiral deeper into Melodrass’s existence.

Eckert glanced up with brows raised. “What are you offering?”

“I want to test something,” I said, voice light, almost lazy. “A new trick.”

Eckert hummed low, a rumble in his fractured chest. “I’ve never lost when I accepted your help,” he said, shaking his head. “Bring it on.”

I inclined my head in acceptance.

Slowly, I reached inward, touching the vastness of my Existential Dimensional Lattices, my Living Wheel thundering quietly in the distance of my awareness.

And the system, the Fable, responded.

| An additional 3 Existential Dimensional Lattices are required for the alteration of existence you need to make while in your current state of observation. Proceed? |

Three Lattices. For what I intended? A bargain.

My eyes pulsed, golden-blue rings of command expanding.

Proceed.

Without hesitation, three Lattices detached from the intricate whorls of my Lineage, my Origin Prime Osmontian Infinitum, and floated forward.

They did not shine.

They did not flare.

They slipped silently into the Frequency, invisible, unseen.

They moved like whispers, like inevitabilities.

Toward Melodrass.

The Requiem he played, the deadly melody that wove together death and collapse, trembled.

Not from resistance.

From surrender.

Melodrass blinked, once, twice, the strings of unseen instruments faltering in his grasp.

His eyes clouded over.

Not with confusion.

With emptiness.

With daze.

A breath later, Veltraxis followed, the flickering banners of devouring around his form dimming.

And then…

The Dead Things around them.

The Nascent Source-Bearers. The Harmonized Sourcebound Icons. The Converged Architects.

Each and every one…

A single, subtle wave passed through them, and countless unseen gaps bloomed in their existences.

Dazed.

Open.

Vulnerable.

Perfect.

Eckert’s distorted, tentacled mass of Undefined True Source rippled with glee, if such a thing could feel emotion.

He shook his head incredulously, his form tightening, coiling, and then…

He moved.

The grotesque soul-structure expanded, slipping effortlessly into the opened cracks.

A tendril here.

A thread there.

Quietly.

Carefully.

Completely.

The Undefined True Source wormed its way into Melodrass’s core. Into Veltraxis. Into the weavings of the gathered Dead Things.

They didn’t scream.

They didn’t resist.

They didn’t even know.

By the time their eyes cleared, by the time the haze lifted, they were themselves.

And yet…

Not.

Their True Sources pulsed not with their own authority, but Eckert’s. Their beings moved not by their will, but his. They were hollowed. Hijacked.

Usurped.

Eckert breathed out through Melodrass’s stolen body, flexing fingers now strung with authority he hadn’t possessed mere moments ago.

He plucked at the invisible instrument, the Requiem shifting slightly, a new, discordant note sliding into the melody.

His gaze, clear, cunning, lifted to me.

“Man oh man,” Eckert said, voice a strange, broken echo of Melodrass and himself intertwined. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“There’s a big guy, real big, sitting at the top of the Hollow Concord of Nullity. He’s the one who gave a certain command. Ordered all the Mawbearers to stay put. Said to wait for the weavings of a certain True Favored Living Thing to come to them.”

A glint of sardonic amusement flickered in his gaze.

“Apparently, the ruler of the Hollow Concord really wants to get his hands on you.”

I laughed.

A low, amused sound, a ripple across the silence of the unseen graveyard we stood in.

Eckert’s expression turned grim.

I didn’t miss it.

I tilted my head, the smile sharpening.

“And who,” I asked, “would that be?”

Eckert’s stolen face shifted, his soul-mass flickering ominously.

“It’s not a Mawbearer,” he said softly. “It’s a Living Thing.”

The words dropped like stones in a dead sea.

“Not one of the Dead. Not some decaying echo.”

He leaned closer, voice low.

“They call him the Hollow Pale One. Aetheron Cael’Zhyr.”

…!

Aetheron.

The name resonated, even whispered.

“Silver hair like moonlight bleached of warmth. Eyes redder than collapsed stars. A being who moves not with death, but with the absence of life altogether. The Hollow Mawbearer. A Living Thing that sits above the Mawbearers of the Hollow Concord, a sovereign untouched by rot, untouched by decay, yet utterly belonging to the dominion of Death.”

Eckert shook his head slowly.

“Even Melodrass doesn’t understand the depths of his power. None of them do.”

I smiled wider.

But it wasn’t amusement.

It was hunger.

A Living Thing feared by Mawbearers, by Primarchs. Resplendent Monads, by Converged Architects?

Something truly ancient.

Something truly hungry.

Something that believed, foolishly, that it could touch me.

I folded my hands behind my back.

Raised my chin.

Dominance sang in the existence of my illusory form.

“They all try,” I said, voice soft, voice absolute.

Others had tried before.

Legions.

Wonders.

Legends.

“They all come to try and devour me.”

The Hollow Concord, the Chronosect, the Logos, the Wheelomachy, Ankyras, Chosen Ones… all the mighty things that thought themselves inevitable.

I smiled wider.

“But in the end,” I said, “they are the ones eaten.”

A final, heavy silence fell.

Not dread. Not terror. Inevitability.

Eckert watched me, half-grim, half-shaking his head.

And I…

I turned my gaze outward once more.

Toward the endless, waiting Fables.

Toward the untold futures.

Toward the ones who would come, thinking themselves apex predators.

I licked my lips, not in hunger. In anticipation. Because when they came…

They would find the real hunter waiting. I let the silence stretch for a breath. Then I spoke, low, steady.

“I plan to lie low for a few days,” I said, my voice threading across the unseen space between us. “Before I move against the Hollow Concord of Nullity.”

Eckert’s form, still tangled around the weavings of Melodrass, shimmered faintly.

He nodded, his expression calming and satisfied.

“Sounds good,” he murmured. “I’ll keep doing what I do best.”

He leaned back, the soul-mass of his Undefined True Source rippling gently, unassumingly.

“I plan to go from the Tenth Mawbearers and up,” he said. “One by one. Slowly. Silently. Unless it’s a truly powerful Primarch, I should be able to slip through unnoticed.”

He tapped at the bone-crafted instrument still loosely gripped in Melodrass’s fingers, a mockery of what the Dead Thing had once been.

“You see…” Eckert smiled thinly. “Right now? I am Melodrass. There’s no sense of change. No resistance. No cracks. I am him.”

The arrogance wasn’t misplaced.

It was factual.

He was Melodrass now, not possessing him, not controlling him, but being him. Perfect assimilation. Perfect usurpation.

“Even now,” Eckert continued, his voice turning thoughtful, almost predatory, “I can feel it. The step Melodrass needed to take, the final one to Primarchy.”

He grinned grotesquely, eyes gleaming with ambition.

“I’ll do it soon. With the added complexity of my own. I do not even have to do anything. My existence thrives more if I am Idle. Just sitting here doing nothing, and this Existence of Melodrass will become a Primarch soon…”

He sat back, and the undefined tendrils coiled closer into the host.

“And once I become a Primarch through him… well.” He chuckled.

“Other Primarchs will become targets. Maybe even the single-digit Mawbearers if I grow bold enough and move from my idle slumber.”

A hum of dark amusement.

He tilted his head at me, his smile crooked.

“Of course,” he added, voice lower, amused, “I fully expect monsters like you to be exceptions.”

He shook his head slowly, reverently.

“You’d probably still find me. After all, there aren’t many like you, right?”

I smiled. Soft. Sharp.

And filled with quiet finality.

“No,” I said.

“There are not any like me.”

Our gazes, such as they were in this place beyond perception, met for a moment longer.

Then I spoke once more, my voice calm, quintessential.

“Take care of your Fable,” I said.

Eckert smiled wider.

“You too.”

And with that, I pulled back.

The connection to this Dead Wheel, to this Frequency, thinned, stretched, snapped.

I drifted once more.

Back into the river.

The river that was not water.

The river that was not flow.

A multicolored torrent of untold Fables, stretching in endless, fractal spirals across the unseen lattice of existence.

I floated above it, no, within it, threads of Narrative and Authority brushing against the Lattices of my illusory self.

Eckert’s Fable, the Fable of the Great Usurper, faded from immediate reach but left a quiet resonance behind.

I let my gaze, not with eyes, but with something more fundamental, drift.

Through the trillionfold currents of the River.

Fables intertwined, branching, colliding, diverging.

And then…I paused.

I felt a pull towards another current.

Brilliant.

Radiant.

A river of deep, endless violet, its surface shimmering with complex geometries and soft pulses of serene might.

I drifted toward it, curious.

When I touched its shimmering skin, a prompt unfurled in my mind.

| The Fable of the Peacemaker |

“Oh?”

I smiled faintly.

I remembered them, the Peacemaker. Their long entanglement with Bob. Their strange role in the unfolding Fables of the native Wheel of Existence.

But the thought of Bob while remembering the Peacemaker…

BZZT!

Caused a dull resonance.

Subtle.

Insistent.

My attention shifted as this resonance pulled me away.

Another river.

Not brilliant.

Not gleaming.

Murky.

Black.

Yet radiant, as if it refused to be extinguished, even drowning in its own darkness.

I reached for it.

Touched it.

And another prompt unfolded.

| The Fable of Bob |

I let the words settle.

The Fable of Bob.

A river of loss and fury. Of forgotten dreams and broken oaths. Of silent, enduring hunger.

My fingers, my existence, lingered at the edge of its current.

Feeling the pulse.

The tug.

The whisper.

Bob.

What was he doing now?

Where was he, in the tangled mess of Fables?

The river shifted faintly beneath my touch, and I could feel the possibility stir.

The Fable waited.

It did not invite.

It dared.

Dared me to look deeper.

To see.

To understand.

A quiet smile touched my lips.

After all…

This was my Fable to tell!