Infinite Mana in the Apocalypse - Chapter 3774

Chapter 3774: Stench! I
Farther away, draped in a halo of fraying timelines, stood cluster of beings.

A lone Primarch, save for the single other Primarch at his side.

Their Null Forms shimmered faintly with the geometry of severed threads- timelines clipped and archived.

They bore the mark of the Chronosect of Threadbound Folds.

Keepers of time.

Recorders of causality.

Masters of impossible consequence.

The leader- a towering being of stern countenance, did not speak immediately.

He gazed not only at Noah.

But at another.

Farther off.

Thauron.

The Null Monarch.

The silent Entity who watched from his perch, half-lidded, smiling faintly.

The Chronosect Primarch’s voice was low, reverent.

“I remember records,” he said, “of a 1,000-Inch Null Form Monarch.”

The air around him quivered.

“That being was said to have survived the Foldless Judgment….”

He turned his heavy gaze back to Noah.

“And if that entity is entangled with this Stranger…”

The words did not need to be spoken.

The implications were too vast.

The other Chronosect Primarch, standing by his side, said nothing.

But their eyes, ancient and glimmering with the wisdom of collapsed time, betrayed a rare emotion.

Concern.

And then.

Farther still.

A distant mountain veiled in roaring streams of unstable mana.

A place few dared tread, for unstable mana in its rawest form was lethal to others even at their heights.

There, five Primarchs sat.

Clad in robes of shifting prismatic light.

Their Null Forms seemed less like solid constructs and more like rivers of mana given mind and purpose.

The Mannafolds.

Entities who had long since abandoned traditional matter and flesh, becoming pure conduits of existence’s energy.

The leader- a woman with a Null Form like a blazing comet, her body shimmering with currents of flowing aether- gazed down at Noah.

Her many eyes closed briefly, and she felt it.

A resonance.

Not through flesh.

Not through spirit.

Through mana.

Through the raw currents of creation and destruction that wove through the Folds.

She opened her eyes.

Bright.

Unfathomably deep.

“He may have an existential physiology similar to us,” she said softly, voice threading with power.

The other four Primarchs shifted.

“No,” another said. “He is not yet like us, otherwise, we would have seen him.”

…!

They all gazed at the distant figure of Noah, still motionless under the endless crush of folded time.

“Should we move to recruit him?” another asked, voice brimming with curious hunger.

The leader of the Mannafolds here nodded, a single motion of powerful will.

“Yes.”

Her gaze sharpened.

She could feel it, barely- the layers of mana folded into Noah’s being, the impossible complexity of his existence.

Her Null Form shimmered brighter- a lighthouse in the storm.

“We will offer him sanctuary in our Mannafolds. And see if the Stranger who can withstand epochs of time wishes to become more.”

The five of them, folded in impossible mana, continued to watch.

But now, their patience was edged with intention!

Beings of such conplexity were abundant as the Nullvein Gravewake Folds and the Fold Dwellers within…were intricate and innumerable!

In these very same Nullvein Gravewake Folds.

A weaving of space where paradox ruled.

A realm where collapse was not an event, but a constant.

Here, drifting endlessly through the layers of folded existence, the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension moved.

Not drifting as a ship would on a sea, no.

It twisted.

It sheared through the Folds like a blade dipped in impossibility, its very existence defying locality.

One moment, a shape- a spiral of collapsed frequencies.

The next, a monolithic fortress of blackened absolutes, fracturing and repairing itself in the span of a thought.

The Cradle did not obey time.

It did not obey space.

It did not obey.

It was a monument.

A trial.

A paradox.

No Living Thing or Dead Thing, no Fold Dweller or rogue frequency was able to enter it just because they wished to!

No known power could casually violate the weaving.

And yet…at this moment.

Something stirred beyond the veil of paradox.

At first, a ripple.

Subtle.

A shiver that even the Gravewake Folds, eternally collapsing and refolding, seemed to fear.

Then…motion.

A distortion, like a smudge on the fabric of all laws.

It slithered.

Folded.

Shifted in impossible geometries.

And from that distortion…

BOOM!

A shape.

Vast.

Indescribable.

A silhouette that seemed to be a thousand jagged limbs, folded into a single writhing mass.

And…the silhouette sniffed as if it was drawn here by something. And it continued to follow this smell!

It did not move across space.

It devoured the distance between itself and the Null Cradle.

Closer.

Closer.

Until it was upon the Cradle’s shimmering boundary.

It loomed.

And then…

It reached out.

An appendage, slick and black-gold, ejected from its jaws.

It touched the barrier.

And the barrier…resisted.

Paradox met something that refused collapse.

Law met antithesis.

For a moment, for the briefest shudder of reality- the barrier flared, a ripple of finality radiating outward!

But then…

BZZT!

The appendage clenched.

Not violently.

Not with brute force.

No.

With precision.

With inevitability…and Collapse.

Cracks formed.

Hairline fissures of undone paradox, slithering outward like veins of oblivion.

The Cradle’s barrier buckled.

And then broke.

No explosion.

No thunderous sound.

Just…a rupture.

Silent.

Complete.

The being slipped through the breach it made, the wound sealing slowly, sluggishly, behind it.

It was inside.

Inside the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension.

The thing drifted forward, unfurling.

The shifting black-gold plates across its writhing frame shimmered faintly with the echoes of broken True Sources, their forms warping and twisting as if screaming.

It had no face set face as it seemed to constantly be changing.

Eyes that changed from two to one hundred.

But it soon turned- a slow, deliberate pivot, toward the Outer Wheel Platform.

And then…in breathed in.

A soundless inhalation.

And as it did, the very fabric of paradox rippled around it.

As if…

As if it had scented something delightful.

Something precious.

Something it hungered for.

It drifted through the shattered barrier.

Silent.

Deliberate.

No sound announced its arrival to the Outer Wheel Platform.

Above the fractured lands where Harmonized Sourcebound Icons and Monads gathered —it hovered.

Black and gold, a blur against the broken sky.

It observed.

It watched.

Its void-like gaze locked onto a singular figure.

Caelnor.

An entity cloaked in weavings of a unique True Source, stood unaware for a breath too long.

That was enough.

The creature shifted.

Its body writhed, restructured, its malformed skin sliding, melting, reforming until it mirrored Caelnor.

Same stature.

Same robes.

Only…

Its skin shimmered gold-black, like a reflection dipped in oil and ash.

And then,

It moved.

No warning.

No grand display.

Just a warp, the space between them crushed and discarded as it appeared right beside Caelnor!

He stepped back instinctively, sensing something wrong as he frowned.

His mouth opened.

“Who….what the hell are you do-”

He never finished.

The gold-black imitation struck out.

Swift.

Effortless.

A single obsidian hand punctured through Caelnor’s Null Form- a violation so absolute it made no noise.

Caelnor’s eyes widened, flashing with shock, confusion, disbelief!

And then…

CRACK!

His Existence folded.

His True Source inverted.

Splintering.

Shattering.

Caelnor exploded into a bloom of Collapse, fragments of what he once was scattering into oblivion.

The creature stood there, motionless.

It did not devour the splintered remnants.

It did not claim the shattered weavings.

It simply watched as the last traces of Caelnor vanished, uninterested, unbothered. But it did confirm the stench that was strong enough to pull it here from the heavy shackles it was bound by from this being.

The stench had passed by here.

Its gaze shifted.

Still hungry.

Still moving.

Those in the surroundings saw the shocking scene as they were firdt astonished, and then horrified!

Panic set in slowly.

First, a silence.

Then a ripple of dread.

The Harmonized Sourcebound Icons and the few Resplendent Monads nearby began to shift uneasily, uncertainty growing heavy in the broken air of the Outer Wheel Platform.

How?

How had it injured someone here?

This was the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension- a place where open violence was suppressed, where harm should have been impossible unless one wielded powers of absurd complexity.

And yet…

Caelnor was gone.

Without resistance.

Without even a trace left behind.

A Resplendent Monad snapped and roared out!

Golden weavings of a True Source of Destiny flared to life around him as they covered his golden Null Form- shining, brilliant, a construct of infinite pathways and inevitabilities weaving out.

HUUM!

He roared.

A challenge.

A desperation.

The Monad struck.

Destiny surged forth, an intricate weaving of bound fates, a tide meant to crush inevitability and smother opposition beneath a web of certainty.

The golden True Source slammed into the creature.

It did not move to defend.

It did not flee.

The attack crashed over it- folding, weaving, saturating.

For a brief moment, the gold-black humanoid exoskeleton of the creature pulsed.

Once.

And then…

The shimmer of gold deepened.

Changed.

Became its own.

In the next instant, the creature moved.

It lifted a single clawed hand- no effort, no flourish.

It slashed downward.

A terrifying convergence burst forth- not just a replication, but an evolution.

The True Source of Destiny reborn in the creature’s form, impossibly more complex, a weaving a hundredfold deeper, sharper.

Destiny, the Monad’s own power, closed off everything.

All paths.

All possibilities.

Cut away.

Shut.

Collapsed.

The Resplendent Monad froze.

Wide-eyed.

Unable to breathe, unable to move, as he watched his own Existence- his own True Source- lose all futures, all meanings.

His body trembled.

Then cracked.

And in a heartbeat, he too shattered.

Folded into broken splinters of Collapse, scattering into the void.

The creature stood there.

Unmoving.

Still growing as it added Destiny to its roster.

The others?

They did not hesitate anymore.

Panic burst into chaos.

Some bellowed- wordless cries lost to the hollow winds.

Some turned and fled- racing for the edges of the Outer Wheel Platform as many were much weaker than that Monad!

Others leapt off the Outer Wheel Platform entirely, choosing the uncertain collapse of the Gravewake Folds below over facing this thing.

It didn’t matter.

The creature moved.

Fast.

Predatory.

A black-gold blur of shifting mass and uncoiling death.

It fell upon them with terrifying precision- not devouring, not feeding.

Just unmaking, assimilating, and amplifying!

It was a massacre unfolding in a manner that was absolutely not warranted or expected- and the thing carrying it out…remained unknown.

But what exactly could forcefully tear into the Null Cradle of Fold-Breaking Ascension that one could not even find even if they sought it?!