The cost was two Quadrillion. A number that would have been a meaningless abstraction just a day ago. Now, it was a currency he was willing to spend!
The Shore responded. The air grew thick, heavy, as a vast ocean of his internal power was drawn into a single, massive vortex centered on his being. Swirls of green-gold stellar brilliance, the very essence of the Principle, erupted from the ground, from the sky, from his own body!
They were not gentle lights, but violent, beautiful ribbons of pure, conceptual energy, weaving themselves into new, impossible patterns on his skin.
|Monumental Forging Initiated: 20x [Early Living Existential Seed Glyph - Principle of Perpetual Harvest].|
|Expenditure Authorized: -2,000,000,000,000,000 Complexity and Purity.|
|A bold expenditure.|
|Your existence is being refined. Raw, chaotic power is being compressed into stable, potent Glyphs. This is a powerful methodology of the Early Creatures, a way to make power not just a resource, but a part of oneβs very architecture.|
HUUM!
The Glyphs etched themselves onto his form, a constellation of verdant, golden leaves. They bloomed on his arms, his legs, his torso, each one a perfect, intricate testament to the power of effort.
He looked like a being carved from an ancient, living tree, a wonder of the harvest and the hunt!
And then, with the thirty Glyphs now blazing on his body, he gave his next command, his voice a low, tyrannical rumble that shook the very sands.
"Grant me twenty Harvest Festival Endowments. All of them. Now."
...!
The response was a cataclysm of glory.
The sky above the Radiant Shore, once a serene, luminous expanse, was now a roiling, green-gold tempest.
Immense, concentrated clouds of pure harvest energy bloomed into existence, a conceptual hurricane of his own making. And from that storm, the endowments descended!
They did not come as gentle blessings. They were bolts of pure, concentrated reality, each one a physical, tangible blow that battered his existence. It was not an attack, but an infusion so potent it felt like one.
With each strike, he felt his very being stretched, compressed, and rewritten!
|Harvest Festival Endowment Activated|
|Target: Self|
|Measuring accumulated efforts since last harvest...|
|Note: The effort of a multi-front war, the utilization of a new System of Power, the leadership of a burgeoning faction, and the sheer, unadulterated desperation to survive have been detected and quantified.|
|Complexity Gained: +180 Trillion|
|Purity Gained: +220 Trillion|
BOOM!
The first pillar of light struck him, and the numbers were a torrent in his mind.
|Harvest Festival Endowment Activated|
|Target: Self|
|Measuring... Oh, you know the drill. Youβve been busy.|
|Complexity Gained: +210 Trillion|
|Purity Gained: +190 Trillion|
...!
The storm raged. Pillar after pillar of green-gold light slammed into his form, a relentless, glorious assault of his own making!
The Radiant Shore settled into a profound, humming silence, the air thick with the aftertaste of a power so immense it had bent the very firmament of this pocket of existence.
His people, his family, were scattered across the golden sands, each lost in their own private universe of transformation, their auras blazing with the light of their recent, monumental endowments.
Noah stood at the center of it all, a pillar of quiet, terrifying power. The storm of his ascension had passed, leaving in its wake a deep, oceanic calm. But it was not the calm of peace; it was the stillness at the eye of a hurricane, a point of absolute focus surrounded by an apocalypse of unfolding possibilities!
His mind, now operating with a clarity that made his previous thoughts seem like whispers in a fog, turned from the immediate satisfaction of his newfound strength to the single, crushing problem that overshadowed everything.
The Collapse. The Fallout. The end of existence as he knew it!
He thought of his conversations with Khor. He saw the four paths that had emerged from their discussions, four desperate, near-impossible gambles against a predetermined doom.
One, stop the trigger. Find the primordial cause, the being or event that had set this existential clock ticking towards midnight, and simply... unmake it.
Two, breach THE Loom. Find the mythical bunker where the architects of existence had hidden themselves and force his way in.
Three, seek aid from The First Farmer, the legendary cultivator of Principles, and hope that his Sanctuary in the Wandering Territories held a solution.
And the fourth, the simplest and most audacious of all: become a being of the Level 1 Scale of Existence himself. A being of the distinction...THE!
Become so powerful that the rules of the game no longer applied to him.
As he stood in contemplation, his own internal system, now enhanced by his excess Quadrillion-level complexity similar to the Earliest Folds to a state of near-sentience, began its analysis, its thoughts blooming in his mind as a series of glorious, almost clinical, prompts!
|Strategic Analysis Initiating: Existential Threat Mitigation Protocols.|
|Objective: Survival of The Early Creature, Osmont, and all designated assets in the face of a projected, high-certainty, pan-existential collapse event (Codename: The Fallout).|
|Analysis: You have identified four potential strategic avenues. A breakdown of each is warranted. Please hold all questions until the end of the presentation.|
...!

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