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Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse (Web Novel) - Chapter 5983: Purified Essara!
Chapter 5983: Purified Essara!
This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl
In a short while, the buds had become two young trees, slender and no taller than Noah, one standing over each mound at the end of the last row, and each bore a single fruit. The fruit over Roxanna’s mound hung heavy and low, its rind the color of burnt gold and streaked with the thin bright trails of falling stars, and when the light struck it, he could see a kernel of red-black strings lying calm and still inside. The fruit over Lifthrasir’s mound was small and storm-grey, veined with faint white lines, and warm in his hand, with a tiny storm turning slowly inside it. Noah stood between the two trees and simply looked at them for a while, full of the plain wonder of a farmer whose field had given him something he had never planted!
|Narrative Fruits of Existence: 2.|
|Contents: a Purified Essara of Destruction, and a Purified Essara of Calamity.|
|Rarity: Rare.|
|Purified: grown, not carved. They carry no wound and no debt.|
|They can be seated, gently, by any lifeform this farm has nourished.|
He could have seated either one himself, and he felt nothing in him reach for them. Why would it? He had a seed in his chest that had been given, not carved, and these had grown on his farm for people on his farm who needed them!
He picked Lifthrasir’s fruit first and carried it to the porch, where Lygara sat on the step with her wings closed, and when she looked at the small grey fruit in his hand, her hands began to shake. "Is that hers?" she asked.
"It grew from her," Noah said, and held it out to her on his open palm. "It’s yours, if you want it."
Lygara kept her hands in her lap. "She would laugh at me," she said quietly. "For crying over a fruit. She would say I was being very slow about this."
"Then don’t be slow. She made her choices. You make yours," Noah said gently, and waited with the fruit warm in his hand.
Lygara let out a breath and took the fruit in both hands and held it against her chest, and the rind softened and opened, and the small purified storm rose out of it and settled into her without any breaking at all. Faint white lightning ran once across the backs of her hands and went still!
|Essara of Existence seated: Calamity (Purified).|
|Rarity: Rare.|
|Shackle broken: the law that destiny can only be watched, never chosen.|
|Veins: 3. Open: 1. Veins 2 and 3 open with Sap of Existence.|
|Vein 1: THE Thread That Spares.|
|Kind: Working.|
|Cost: Immensity, spent while the thread is held.|
|Effect: choose one thread of destiny. No calamity can break it while you hold it, and wherever it is spared, it grows stronger than it was.|
|Shaped by you: one who was spared by a friend at the very end.|
She read it to the last line and pressed one hand over her mouth, and Noah waited, already sure of what she would choose. "I have watched threads of destiny for longer than your existence has had a name," Lygara said at last, very softly. "I have never once been allowed to choose one."
"You’re allowed now," Noah said, and he could not keep the warmth out of his voice. "Which destiny will you choose?"
She looked past him to where Elpis sat in the doorway with her knees drawn up, watching them with her deep blue eyes, and she rose and went to her and knelt down in front of her. "I will choose...your destiny," Lygara said. "If you’ll let me."
Elpis blinked at her, her small face full of surprise. "Mine? Why?"
"Because my dear friend tried to break everything you stood behind," Lygara said, "and at the very end, she still chose to spare me. I would like to spare you. Cruelty came for you once, and I want to make sure it never comes for your destiny again." She held out one small gold hand. "Will you let me hold it?"
Elpis looked up at Noah, and he nodded, and she put her small blue-gold hand into Lygara’s. Lygara closed her eyes, and Noah felt it happen through the roots of the farm, a single bright thread of destiny, Elpis’s, lifting out of all the others and being held, and the molten white rivers across Elpis’s skin brightened very slightly and stayed brighter. "Oh," Elpis said, surprised. "That’s warm."
For the first time since the war, Lygara smiled! Watching them, Noah found that the war had left him one thing he had not counted on, and it was this.
Noah left them there together and went back for the other fruit. Henry was at the coop, mending a corner of the curved wall that had cracked, and he put his tools down the moment he saw what his father was carrying. "It grew from one of the louder enemies, I think you should have it."
Henry looked at it for a long moment without reaching for it. "You...don’t want it?" he asked.
Noah smiled at him, the smile of a man who had taken an army apart without lifting his Hoe and was now handing out the spoils. "I already have a lot, and I can always share with my son," Noah said. "Come on. This is when nepotism is working in your favor."
...!
Henry nodded and held the fruit to his chest, and Noah laid one hand flat between his son’s shoulder blades and let the warmth of his Dreams run into him. The rind opened, and the calm red-black kernel went into Henry, and every eye along his wings flew wide at once! Nothing in it fought him. It settled into him, and stayed.
|Essara of Existence seated: Destruction (Purified).|
|Rarity: Rare.|
|Shackle broken: the law that a son must stand behind his father.|
|Veins: 3. Open: 1. Veins 2 and 3 open with Sap of Existence.|
|Vein 1: THE Breaking That Stands Beside.|
|Kind: Way.|
|Cost: Immensity, for each blow it breaks.|
|Effect: any blow aimed at you or one you stand beside breaks apart, all the way down, before it lands.|
|Against beings of greater Immensity, the breaking is slower. It still breaks.|
|Shaped by you: a son who wanted to stand beside his father, not behind him.|
...!
Henry read the shackle line twice out loud, and then the effect, for everyone nearby to hear, and then he turned around. "I want to try it," he said.
Thalia had been watching from the edge of the Farm Wall, and she came across the field with her golden tentacles lifting and stopped in front of him. "Try it beside me," she said.
Kazuhiko was already there, drawing one of his blades without being asked, and he looked at Henry and then at Noah, and Noah nodded.
"Hmm, I won’t hold back, nepo baby!" Kazuhiko said.
"Don’t," Henry said, and stepped up beside Thalia with his wings spread wide behind him and every eye along them fixed on the blade. He was grinning.
Kazuhiko struck with a clean, fast cut aimed straight at Thalia’s shoulder, and a hand’s width from her, the blade cracked white from point to hilt and came apart all the way down, falling into the grass in pieces that made no sound when they struck the ground.
Kazuhiko stood holding an empty hilt!
Oh! For a moment the whole field was silent, and then THE Emperor Penguin, who had been watching from afar, threw back his crowned head and let out a long, triumphant cry!
RAA!
Henry was breathing hard. Power! This was power!
Noah watched his son’s face with a pride so fierce it surprised even him, then went back to the house and brought out the jar of Sap of Existence, gold in the green light, and set it on the porch table where Lygara and Henry could both see it. "Your other Veins open with this," he said. "When you’re ready."
"How will we know when we’re ready?" Henry asked, his eyes on the gold. He had never wanted anything so badly in his life.
"You’ll know," Noah said. "And if you’re not sure, you’re not ready."
---
Dusk came early under the old trees, and by the time the light had gone from gold to green to almost nothing, the farm had more or less settled into its new home. The chickens had gone to roost without any fuss, which Noah took as a good sign.
On the top step of the porch, Elpis sat with her knees drawn up, humming to herself. The new brightness Lygara had given her that morning still glowed faintly along her rivers, and every so often she held up a hand to look at it, pleased all over again.
Noah was walking the rows with the plain hoe over his shoulder. There was nothing that needed doing, but...
Where would the farm go next? How long could it stay in a forest?
He was halfway down the last row when the air at the edge of the field opened, quietly, and two figures stepped out onto the black-gold soil.
Ruination came first, her crimson hair drifting in a wind that touched nothing else and her eyes full of scrolling lines of light. Behind her came THE Infiniverse, tall and many-colored, her shape changing a little with every step.
On the porch rail, Astarothael’s fur stood straight up. "More of them," she said. "Do you have lifeforms in your pocket, you crazy guy?"
Nobody answered her, which was probably for the best.
THE Infiniverse turned toward the porch, every color on it slowing at once, and looked at the small blue-gold girl on the step. "Hello again," she said.
Elpis hummed back to it, low and warm, as she always had. Then she seemed to remember something and sat up straighter.
"I have a name now," she said. "It’s Elpis!"
THE Infiniverse was quiet for a long moment while her colors turned. "Elpis," she said at last, carefully, trying out each part of the word. "Hello, Elpis."
"Hello!" said Elpis, delighted.
Noah suspected the two of them would be at that for a while.
Ruination crossed the field without hurrying and stopped beside him at the end of the row. Her scrolling eyes rested on the two bare young trees over the graves for some time before she spoke.
She clasped her hands behind her back. "What will you do now, master?"
What would he do? He turned the question over honestly, as it deserved. He could hide the farm and keep moving it...but nah. He could go out and strike first. Or he could do what he had always done, and simply be ready while he did it.
"I’ll tend my farm," Noah said. "Plant, harvest, give, every day. And I’ll keep my promise. I said I was coming for every Narrative that grows by crushing smaller ones, and every King who rules them. I meant it. I’m not going to stop being a farmer to do it. I’m going to do it as one."
"The Kings will not wait for you to come to them."
"I know." He looked out past the great trunks into the dark. "Someone will always look at something growing and want to take it. So if I want to keep a dream, if I want any peace at all, I have to be ready for war, even while I’m planting."
"And when they come?"
"I’ll give," Noah said. "Across all of existence, to anything that wants to grow. And for the ones who only take, and take, and destroy everything they take from," he said, very quietly, "I’ll give them something too. A death. A swift one, and a grand one. And then I’ll plant them, and something better will grow where they were."
From the porch rail came a small, satisfied sound. "Finally," Astarothael said. "Something sensible! And hey, again, I have some ideas...the place my Essara scattered in are actually extremely dangerous on THE Mountain at the Center of Everything as even Abominations of Existence are rampant there...hey, are you listening? Hey!"
He...was not in fact listening to the arrogant cat.
Ruination looked at him for a long time. Then she inclined her head, very slightly as she nodded.
|Existence knows you as: THE Farmer of Existence.|
...!
He smiled a little at that. It was a good name, as names went, and it had the advantage of being true. Behind him, Elpis was talking to THE Infiniverse enthusiastically as everything seemed...at peace.
He was a farmer. But he was a Farmer of Existence!
