Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 4164

Chapter 4164: Unity! I

Countless Living Existences across the Concordat Amphitheater exchanged glances that spoke volumes.

Some were actually laughing...quiet, bitter sounds that suggested Existence had finally revealed its ultimate joke!

The idea that they, who had spent eons defining themselves through opposition to Living Paradoxes, would now enter those lands freely, would allow those same Paradoxes into their most sacred spaces...

Such a thing could only be impossibility dressed in farmer’s clothing.

Yet above them, the Fold Dwellers continued with the patient certainty of those who had seen this resistance before, had planned for it, had brought solutions wrapped in verdant possibility.

Elysia waved her hand with grace, and from her palm emerged something that made reality itself lean in for a closer look.

A seed materialized...not large, barely the size of a child’s fist, but it pulsed with verdant light that suggested forests waiting to be born, harvests that hadn’t yet been imagined.

"I know how Living Existences are," she began, her voice carrying across the amphitheater with the clarity of truth being stated rather than argued.

"The unfathomable hatred that has been sown between Paradoxes and everyone else didn’t grow overnight. It was cultivated, tended, harvested and replanted across eons until it became as fundamental as gravity."

Her gaze swept across the assembly, touching each faction with equal weight. When her eyes found Noah, he met them with a smile of genuine fascination.

"But we came prepared," Elysia continued, lifting the seed higher so all could see its verdant radiance.

"In my hand, I hold the Seed of Unity- not a weapon, not a trap, but a gift from the Sanctuary of The First Farmer."

The name alone carried weight that made several ancient beings shift with something approaching reverence.

"This seed will bloom into the Tree of Unity. All who send their authority into it will receive a Living Mark of Unity...a mark displayed above you for all to see, impossible to hide or counterfeit."

She paused, ensuring everyone understood the significance before continuing.

"If anyone bearing such a mark attacks another who carries it, their identity will instantly be displayed by the Tree of Unity itself. No anonymity, no denial, no claiming it was misunderstanding. But more than exposure..."

Her smile grew sharp as winter wind.

"They will be imposed with the Curse of Disunity. This curse delivers an attack equivalent to all the combined authorities of every entity bearing a Living Mark of Unity within the Tree of Unity. Not sequentially...simultaneously."

...!

The implications crashed through the amphitheater like waves against cliffs.

She was proposing mutually assured destruction on a scale that transcended individual power!

"Effectively," she said, her tone becoming almost gentle, "if everyone here obtains a Mark of Unity, you will be absolutely safe in any Fold. Attack someone, and you face the collective strength of all. Betray the unity, and unity itself becomes your executioner."

She released the seed, letting it float to the center of the amphitheater where it hovered, pulsing with patient possibility.

"This terrifying seed is but one gift from the Sanctuary of The First Farmer. One of many prepared for dealing with this catastrophe."

Beside Noah, Khor smiled with the particular satisfaction of someone watching existence surprise her after eons of predictability.

"It seems the Fold Dwellers are the most efficient and helpful lot now," she mused, her ancient voice carrying amusement.

"How times have changed. Once they hid from power, now they organize it."

Noah listened while his attention remained fixed on the wondrous seed. His mind was already dissecting its structure, wondering if something similar could be produced in his Early Veiled Shore.

The complexity of it...not just the binding but the automatic retaliation, the public revelation, the collective enforcement...

Around him, Living Existences huddled in urgent discussion. Who would be first to trust? Who would risk their authority on the word of Fold Dwellers, no matter how powerful?

The seed floated there, beautiful and terrible, waiting for someone to make the first move toward unprecedented cooperation.

Noah patted Sigrid’s thigh gently...a signal between them that he was about to act.

He began to rise from his throne, genuinely interested in anything connected to The First Farmer’s legacy. The Seed of Unity called to him not as trap but as opportunity.

But just as he started to stand, as Elysia and others turned their attention toward him, a voice rang out with theatrical timing.

"How fantastical that the Fold Dwellers thought of every possible solution to this!"

Schrodinger’s words dripped with something that wasn’t quite sarcasm but adjacent to it. He remained seated on the ground in his beggar’s position, smiling up at the floating seed.

"Even though us Living Paradoxes have been unfairly persecuted and hunted and decimated over the years, even as our numbers keep dwindling from everyone else’s righteous violence, we will be the first to take steps toward unity."

He rose then, his ragged appearance somehow gaining dignity through motion.

"The Living Paradoxes will gladly send our authorities into this so-called Seed of Unity."

The amphitheater went silent with shock.

Schrodinger, who had just spent the entire meeting being deliberately obtuse, who clearly had hidden agendas within hidden agendas...was volunteering to go first?

He raised his hand, and golden-obsidian light erupted from his form.

The paradoxical energy spiraled upward, containing within it the authority of existence that both was and wasn’t, that existed in the spaces between certainty.

The Fold Dwellers watched with expressions carved from winter stone as Schrodinger’s authority reached the seed first.

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