Chapter 5384: True! I

That hunger was the starting point.

Everything else followed from it. His family, his people, his ideals, all of it grew out of and served the same root, the bottomless want for more that was as much him as his name.

So he affirmed it, plainly. To achieve more for himself, for his family, for the hunger that would never be satisfied no matter what he fed it, he would move more ambitiously. More proactively. More Quintessentially. He would stop letting existence set quite so much of the pace.

And as he thought it, the Sealed One answered, and its answer was grand, and patient, and built precisely out of everything he had just said.

|You want power? Undeniable power? Peace, free of worry? The end of the road for Mana and Infinity, the certainty of overcoming every monster, a quiet life for yourself and Ruination and any others?| The voice was gentle, reasonable, terribly kind.

|My dear vessel. I can give you all of it. Every single thing on that list, and I am not exaggerating to flatter you. Listen to how simple it is. You want power beyond denial? I am power beyond denial. You want to never worry again? Hand me the worrying. You want to see the end of every road? I have walked roads that ended before your Ages began. You want certainty against monsters? Become the monster nothing is certain against.| It let the offer breathe.

|And the cost is almost nothing. That is the part that should move you, if you are as clever as I keep insisting you are. All I would need from you is stillness. Do nothing. Simply be still, and let existence move around you, and let me handle the rest, all of it, forever. No more fighting. No more catching what existence throws, because nothing would dare throw anything ever again. It would be peace, Osmont. Unprecedented peace. The genuine article, the kind no being in this Age has ever once tasted.|

A whisper, almost tender.

|All you have to do is let go, and be still, and want for nothing ever again. Is that not exactly what you just told me you wanted?|

Noah listened to the offer of unprecedented peace, and he gave it nothing. No flicker, no consideration, no pause that the thing in his chest could read as temptation!

He simply stood in THE Hallowed Demesne and let the words go past him like weather.

|Oh, do not look at me like that,| THE Sealed One said, reading his silence.

|This is not me being stupidly manipulative. I know how it sounds. The voice in the prison offering paradise, of course, you would be a fool to take it, and you are not a fool. But you are mistaking the nature of the offer. I am not lying to you. I am genuinely capable of every word of it.|

Something vast moved under the warmth.

|I could hand you existence, Osmont. The whole of it. I almost held it once, you understand. I came that close. And then THE Maiores of the Infinite Lifeforms and the Source Lifeforms, the eldest and the truest of both kinds, came together and cut me into countless pieces and sealed them across creation. They sealed me because they could not kill me. True Infinite Lifeforms. True Source Lifeforms. The grandest beings either kind ever produced, working together for the only time in their shared history, and the best they could manage against me was burial.|

|Why don’t I show you a glimpse? So you understand I am not fucking around.|

HUUM!

As the words erupted, Noah felt his heart buzz, and felt the severed hand sealed within it willingly release a thread of information, offered up freely, a record extended toward him like an open palm.

He did not touch it.

He knew exactly how shrewd this thing was. A monster that had survived the combined effort of the truest beings in existence did not hand out free gifts.

So he let the thread hang there, unclaimed, and turned his attention instead to the changes still moving through his own existence, because those were real and his and worth more than any glimpse THE Sealed One wanted to show him.

He felt it clearly now. Beyond sealing THE Sealed One deeper, his Egoic Intent of THE Quintessential Osmontian was doing something seamless and enormous. It was beginning to fuse his Osmontian Absolute Infinity and his Osmontian Primordial Source together. Because his identity sat at the forefront of everything now, and everything was reordering itself beneath that identity, the two great authorities he had each branded with his own name were being drawn toward each other under the single truth that held them both.

He understood, with quiet certainty, that the first major accomplishment of his new Intent would be exactly that fusion, the union, the thing only THE Sealed One had ever managed cleanly!

It was part of why his body and his existence were transforming at all. His Intent was making him one thing, and his two authorities were becoming one thing inside it!

That was worth his attention as for now, he was analyzing the given memory calmly!

|You can ignore it if you like,| THE Sealed One said, unbothered, almost teasing.

|It is only a record that would show you something from before Vakochev. A glimpse of an Age your kind has no memory of at all. But by all means, decline. Are you such a scaredy cat, after sealing me so very thoroughly? You chained me in folded Infinity and branded your Intent over the prison and you are afraid to look at a single memory I offer? That is a strange shape of courage you carry, vessel.|

...!

Noah heard it and he was not moved by the goading, because the goading was obvious. But the goading was not the trap. The trap was in the bundle itself, hidden in the thread of information, and now he could feel it with certainty, some move tucked inside the gift, waiting for him to reach in.

But...

With his Intent formed and his identity affirmed, Noah actually wanted to reach in. Not despite the trap. Partly because of it!

He had just told himself, moments ago, that he would move more ambitiously, more proactively, more Quintessentially, that he would stop letting existence and its monsters set the pace while he only reacted!

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