Chapter 4082: Fables and Pride! III

She paused at the edge of the Shore, where a portal awaited to return them to the Doorway to the Loom.

“But…if anyone can retrieve something THE Living Law left behind, it would be them. come on!”

Weavings of existence continued to unfold across the Folds.

There were countless Fables and countless players, with some not knowing just how terrifying the Folds of others could be.

While some sought Tools of THE Living Law in distant realms, others pursued something more fundamental!

Not artifacts of power, but power itself, and the knowledge of how existence could be transcended.

In the Transcendent Paradoxical Folds, there existed a region that defied even paradoxical standards.

Dozens of obsidian rivers flowed here, but they followed no conventional physics…some ran upward, others sideways, several flowed through themselves in loops that had no beginning or end.

The waters weren’t water but liquidified contradiction, each drop containing the statement “this does not exist” while very clearly existing!

At the center of these impossible waterways stood Schrodinger in his characteristic beggar’s appearance, though what surrounded him suggested anything but poverty of power.

Five Inevitabilities lay still around him.

Not dormant, not waiting….truly still, in the way only dead things could achieve.

These were the same Inevitabilities he had imprisoned in the Doorway to the Loom, the ones that had devoured part of THE Living Order’s Everything.

Now their countless tentacles, which had once reached through dimensions to consume meaning itself, lay limp and purposeless!

An Inevitability that was 5 Inevitabilities, killed!

The air thrummed with the terrifying complexity of Paradox that Schrodinger emitted.

He worked with the focused intensity of a surgeon operating on existence itself, his hands moving through the corpse of the nearest Inevitability with purpose that transcended the physical.

He was carving out Everything.

Not the general everything, but the specific Everything that the Inevitability had consumed from THE Living Order!

The process should have been impossible…Everything, once devoured by an Inevitability, may be gone forever, processed into nothing.

May be.

Yet here was Schrodinger, carefully extracting what shouldn’t exist from something that barely existed itself.

Behind him, the paradoxical rivers suddenly parted like curtains made of impossibility.

Through the gap floated Duke Diviticus, moving with the caution of someone entering a space they knew they survived only through sufferance!

Schrodinger had sensed her approach and allowed it…without his permission, the rivers would have drowned her in contradictions that even her Duke-level existence couldn’t reconcile.

“I did not mean offense before,” she said immediately, her usual arrogance replaced with something approaching humility. “I am patient…I’m trying to be. I’m just attempting to be like you. To reach your height, your power, your understanding of what Paradox truly means.”

…!

Schrodinger continued his work as she spoke, his hands never pausing in their extraction.

When he finally responded, his voice carried the weight of someone who had seen too much to be impressed by ambition alone.

“It might be possible with enough work.” He paused, adjusting his grip on something that wasn’t quite matter but wasn’t quite concept. “But what I seek to do is something that not many will understand. The path I walk isn’t about power in the traditional sense.”

He turned slightly, fixing her with eyes that contained depths of paradox that made her Duke-level perception struggle.

“Do you… wish to know an utterly abysmal secret? Something revealed to me by something even I still do not fully understand?”

….!

The question hung between them with weight!

Diviticus floated closer, her entire being focused on this moment. When she spoke, the single word carried desperation that transcended simple curiosity.

“Please.”

Schrodinger smiled as his voicd echoed out.

“During an extremely low point in my existence, I floated across the Earliest Folds in despair. I wasn’t seeking anything…I was seeking nothing. Release. An end to the constant struggle of maintaining paradox in an existence that insisted on resolution.”

He returned to his work, but his voice continued, painting pictures with words.

“In that state, approaching the kind of nothing that even Paradox fears, I heard a voice. It said…’I sense a vibrant light wishing to dwindle.’

The voice likely stemmed from one of THE Living Existences…though even that is conjecture as even I do not know for sure. I cannot say for certain what spoke to me that day.”

His hands moved through the Inevitability’s form with practiced precision as he continued.

“I responded with the desperation of someone who had tried everything and found it all wanting. ‘What is it all for?’ I asked. ‘Nothing seems to work. There is never enough power. Fold Dwellers, Living Existences, even Paradoxes…the vast majority of life will never reach the grandeur of THE Living Existences or THE Creature. It is all… for naught.'”

Silence settled over them, broken only by the sound of extraction that shouldn’t have a sound.

Schrodinger’s work continued as he picked up.

“The voice laughed…not cruelly, but with the mockery of someone explaining why water is wet to someone drowning.

‘Of course you could never reach them,’ it said. ‘They have grasped an entirely different Scale of Existence compared to you.'”

BOOM!

Diviticus leaned forward, her entire being focused on what came next.

“The voice explained something that reframed everything I thought I knew,” Schrodinger continued. “It spoke of the Vakochev Scale of Civilizational Existence. Deemed so by someone who theorized that existential civilization wasn’t about numbers, or tools, or magic, or technology, but about the relationship between oneself and existence’s fundamental architecture.”

He paused his extraction, his expression growing grave.

“Here’s the truly abysmal part- You, me… every being we know…we aren’t even civilized enough to be given a ranking on this scale. We exist at what is known as Level Zero…Pre-Civilizational Existence.”

Diviticus recoiled slightly at this, but Schrodinger continued relentlessly.

“Level Zero is where we can meaningfully affect existence, yes. We can tap into the energy of reality, manipulate local Folds, even begin grasping and reaching out unsuccessfully at tools that tip the scales…Principles, the manipulation of Everythings…. But we’re still operating within weavings rather than upon it. We’re complex enough to do many things, but we’re essentially sophisticated animals in a zoo we don’t even know exists. Uncivilized. Weak. Fucking laughable.”

…!

His voice…dripped with immense pain and hatred when he said this- and these emotions quickly disappeared!

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