Read Daily Updated Light Novel, Web Novel, Chinese Novel, Japanese And Korean Novel Online.
Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse (Web Novel) - Chapter 5833: Those Who Remain!
Chapter 5833: Those Who Remain!
This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl
<THE True Human Emperor>The dead Wheel was still turning above them, whole and humming, when Poona’s voice arrived in Noah’s head.
It came bright and quick down the thread that bound her to his Tree, and it was very excited.
Moriarty had reached out to her, she told him.
The Council of Immense Ones of THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity had reached a conclusion regarding his distinction as THE Legacy’s Son. They wanted her to bring him to Lucy’s Lecture Hall. Now, if possible. Preferably sooner.
Noah opened his eyes!
Bob was watching him from his golden cloud, singularity eyes narrowed.
"Duty?" Bob asked.
"Something like that."
"Go on, then." Bob waved a tentacle at him.
"I’ll be here..."
Noah stood, brushed off his cloud, and stepped out of the dream.
—
Poona was waiting for him at the edge of his Domain, bouncing so hard her golden body kept leaving the grss.
"Hold on to me, Master," she said. "The Lecture Hall can’t be reached by just anyone. Only a recognized Immensity of the Legacy can find the way. Even Progeny who have lived on the mountains for Ages have never seen it."
Noah laid a hand on her small round back.
She took them through!
It felt very different from stepping through a dream. Poona’s Dream Immensity opened, warm and smelling faintly of honey, and pulled them sideways out of the Domain and into the weavings of existence itself.
Noah felt them pass between threads hidden from him until now, strands of Lucy’s old work running through the Legacy like hidden corridors behind the walls of a great house. Some of the threads were older than anything he had ever touched. Some of them hummed when Poona passed, and let her through, as a door knows its own key.
Whatever Lucy had built, it still recognized its people.
Then the threads opened, and they stepped out into light!
They stood at the center of a ring!
It was obsidian, veined with bright gold, laid flat beneath their feet like the floor of a stage. Around it ran another ring, wider, and around that another, and another, each one rising a little higher than the last, ring after ring after ring of obsidian and gold stretching out and up and away until their end lay beyond his sight. They simply kept going, climbing into a distance that had no ceiling.
An amphitheater. The largest one he had ever seen, or would likely ever see.
And on every ring, there were thrones!
Some were carved from stone and some grown from living wood. Some were made of light, or water, or bone, or things he had no name for. They stood on the tiers in a great curving sweep, and on them, or standing beside them, or drifting above them, were the Immense Ones of THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity.
More than a hundred of them!
Noah’s gold eyes moved across them.
Most of them sat Established, their Profundity deep but readable, their bottoms glimpsed far below. Some sat Ancient, so deep his eyes slid off them. A handful, newly risen in the last few Ages, still burned bright and loud.
He recognized a few from the war on the Thinker’s mountain: THE Ashen Cantor with his cinders, THE Keeper of the Unbroken Vow with his chain of oaths, THE Lantern of the Last Shore with his lamp. The rest were strangers.
A woman made of still grey water, her throne a lake standing on its end. A tall thing of rust-red feathers, every feather a tongue of quiet flame. An old man whose beard was a watterfall of tiny written letters, scrolling slowly down to the floor. A pair of twins joined at the shoulder, one laughing, one weeping, sharing a single throne carved with a single word.
Every one of them was looking at him!
The pressure of it was enormous. More than a hundred Immensities, all turned on one man standing at the bottom of their bowl. Noah let it press, and stood straight under it.
Then he looked at the center.
The innermost tiers held the oldest thrones, plain and close to the floor, and one of them was taken by Sir Moriarty, his spectacles mended, his long coat finally clean of green, his tentacles resting on the arms of his chair.
Beside him, on a throne of dark stone that seemed to be part of a mountain, knelt THE Thinker at the End of Existence, his beads clicking slowly through his great fingers.
And beside the Thinker, perched on the arm of his throne with her legs swinging, sat Ling.
She caught Noah’s eye and grinned!
At the very front of the amphitheater, facing all of it, stood a lectern. Plain, worn, carved of pale wood gone dark with handling. Behind it hung a broad dark board of obsidian, and across that board, in faded gold, ran lines of writing too old for Noah to read. A lesson, left half-written. The last line trailed off in the middle of a word!
The lectern stood empty.
In front of it, set a little apart from all the others on the innermost ring, sat a single empty chair.
Noah looked at that chair for a long moment.
Then Moriarty rose!
He stayed beside his own throne, away from the lectern, an old octopus in a long coat, and looked down at Noah with his crimson eyes, and the whole amphitheater went quiet.
"Do you know what we are called?" Moriarty asked.
His voice was mild. It carried to every ring without effort.
"Those Who Remain. Many of us do not like the name. Many of us would rather not think about it. But it is the truth, and we are scholars here, so we will start with the truth."
He looked up at the rings above him, at the hundred thrones.
"Existence is very old, Osmont. Older than any of us. It has turned over more times than any of us can count. Cycles upon cycles. Ages upon Ages. And in every one of those turnings, countless beings rose, and reached, and tried to pass through the doors that would carry them further."
His tentacles shifted on the arms of his throne. "Most of them failed to make it. They went on, or they ended, or they became something we could no longer see. But we did not go on. We did not end. We stayed."
He turned his crimson eyes back to Noah.
"We remained. That is what the name means. We are the ones who were left behind."
Somewhere high in the rings, the weeping twin made a small sound.
"Consider how strange that is," Moriarty went on, and now there was something almost like wonder in his voice.
"Every particle in us...in you, every thread of your existence, was made from something that came before. Old weavings, broken down and built again. You are the ash of older authorities and Dimensionalities. So are we all. And we who remain have watched it happen. We have watched whole cycles of existence rise and fall and rise again. We have stood on the shore and watched everything we knew wash out and come back changed."
He was quiet for a moment.
"We have lived a very long time. And we know, better than anyone, the ones who did not remain. We remember their names. Some of them were our teachers. Some of them were our friends."
His eyes went, very briefly, to the empty chair before the lectern. "Some of them simply had a quality the rest of us lacked. Something in them that the doors recognized, and we have never understood."
He spread his tentacles.
"Every one of us here is still fighting. Every being in this hall is still reaching. Still studying. Still trying. But we know, too, that the doors are nearly impossible for us. We have tried. Ages upon Ages, we have tried, and here we sit."
He let out a slow breath.
"Lucy knew that. Before she left, she left us directions. And she left us something more than directions. She left us hope." His voice softened
"Her words were simple. Sometimes, existence only needs the right key, to open a certain door."
The amphitheater was utterly silent.
"You may be that key," Moriarty said. "You may not be. None of us can say. Not even him."
He nodded toward the Thinker, who kept his eyes on his beads. "But we know our own Legacy. We know what Lucy built, and what she asked of us. And so we take the gamble, whether right or wrong."
He straightened.
"THE Council of Immense Ones of THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity has decided. We enact you, Noah Osmont, as THE Legacy’s Son."
A murmur ran through the rings, low and heavy!
"We ask nothing of you," Moriarty said. "Only this. Keep the hope alive across this winter. The hope that one day, we will be more than Those Who Remain."
He looked up, at the endless rings, at every throne, at every Immense One sitting on them. "In all our existences, we do not only want to remain."
...!
—
The board behind the lectern began to glow!
Its faded gold writing brightened, line by line, and from the center of the half-written lesson, something bloomed.
An orb!
It swelled out of the obsidian board like a drop of ink gathering on the tip of a pen, slowly, the gold writing peeling off the board and drawing inward as it formed. It grew round and dark and perfectly smooth, obsidian clear enough to look into, and inside it, the gold writing kept moving.
Lines of Lucy’s script turned within the orb in slow rings, ring inside ring, every word glowing as it passed, circling and circling like the tiers of the very amphitheater it had been born in. Faint gold veins ran across its surface and pulsed, as though something beneath them breathed.
At its very center, cradled by all those turning rings, hung a tiny door. No larger than a thumbnail. Turning slowly in place.
The orb came free of the board and floated down through the air of the amphitheater, past the rings, past the thrones, down toward the center of the bowl, toward Noah.
It stopped in front of him, at the height of his heart, humming.
"Lucy left this behind," Moriarty said quietly, "for the one who would inherit the distinction of THE Legacy’s Son. None of us have ever held it. None of us were meant to."
His crimson eyes met Noah’s. "Will you take it on?"
Noah looked at the orb.
He looked past it, at the empty chair. At the half-written lesson. At a hundred Immense Ones who had sat in this bowl for longer than his whole species had existed, waiting for someone they had yet to name.
Then he reached out, and took it!
The orb settled into his palm as though it had always been his! Its gold veins flared bright, and the rings of Lucy’s script inside it spun faster, then all at once fell still. And the tiny door at its center stopped turning, and faced him.
|Relic grasped: THE Orb of Immensity.|
|Left by Lucy, THE Acharya of Immensity, for THE Legacy’s Son.|
|The Legacy’s woven Immensity recognizes its bearer as its own.|
|Where the bearer walks within THE Legacy of THE Acharya of Immensity, the Legacy will answer.|
|The writing within the orb is Lucy’s last weavings.|
|The door at its heart has been waiting.|
...!
The tiny door at the heart of the orb swung open!
Light poured out of it, obsidian and gold, and spilled down onto the floor of the amphitheater in front of Noah, and grew. It rose up out of the light in a single smooth motion, taller than a man, taller than a throne, a great doorway of obsidian veined with gold, standing alone at the center of the bowl with nothing behind it but more amphitheater.
Through it, Noah could see only a soft, endless brightness.
|A doorway has formed.|
|Beyond it lies the Domain that Lucy left behind for THE Legacy’s Son.|
|No Immense One of this Legacy has entered it.|
...!
Every throne in the amphitheater stirred!
Noah stood before the doorway with the orb in his hand, and turned, and looked up at them all. At Moriarty, his tentacles very still. At the Thinker, whose beads had stopped. At Ling, who had stopped swinging her legs. At a hundred Immense Ones, all of them leaning forward on their thrones.
"Existence is vast," Noah said.
"Nothing in it can be promised. Not by me. Not by any of you. I have seen enough of it now to know that much." He looked at the empty chair before the lectern. "But I... do not plan to remain."
The words went up through the rings like a stone dropped into a still pool.
"And existence is cause and effect," Noah said. "Everything that happens to me happens because of what came before. Those who help me...will be helped in turn. Cause...and effect. If I no longer remain, then neither will you."
He turned back to the doorway.
"So I will not remain."
...!
He stepped toward the obsidian doorway with Lucy’s orb in his hand.
And on every throne in Lucy’s Lecture Hall, a hundred Immense Ones held their breath, and watched, and waited.
What had Lucy left behind?!
