Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 4268

Chapter 4268: Discoveries, Inventions, and Glory! II

While two Entities were about to begin their hunt, it was good to understand one of the sources of power that made them.

Principles!

Were Principles discovered or invented?

It is a question that shook the very foundations of power, a conundrum that separates the artisans of reality from the mere observers!

Did the fundamental weavings that govern existence lie dormant, waiting for a sufficiently powerful intellect to stumble upon them, dust them off, and give them a name?

Or were they acts of pure, audacious creation, the imposition of a grand, new idea upon a formless, chaotic reality?

To answer this best, consider for a moment, mathematics. Is it discovered, or is it invented?

Across the Folds, a brilliant Fold Dweller in a world filled with brilliant minds was asked such a question!

He stood on a stage under a single spotlight, the cosmos projected behind him.

He began, his voice a mixture of childlike wonder and profound, academic certainty. "Is math real?" he asks the darkness. "Did we invent the number ’2’, or was the concept of ’two-ness’ always there, waiting in the wings for a clever primate to come along and give it a symbol? Or Pi. That strange, irrational, never-ending number. If you take any perfect circle in the universe, from a single atom to a galactic disk, and you divide its circumference by its diameter, you get Pi. Every. Time. Without fail. Did we invent that relationship? Or did we simply stumble upon a fundamental, pre-existing truth of a universe that happens to like circles?"

...!

This astounding Fold Dweller then pointed to the stars behind him. "Prime numbers. Numbers divisible only by themselves and one. They seem random, chaotic. Yet, their distribution, their very nature, is a fundamental building block of number theory. We didn’t create the primes. We found them, hiding in the numerical landscape like strange, solitary animals. We are...explorers in a jungle of logic that was here long before we were."

"We didn’t invent the speed of light; we just figured out how to write it down. Our mathematics is an invented framework to describe a discovered reality."

WAA!

Discovery or invention!

It is a question that, in a time before time was a straight line, was posed in a different, far grander context.

In the Earliest Folds, when the shackles that had bound THE Living Paradox for eons finally, inexplicably, dissolved, the first entity it went to see was not an enemy, not an ally, but a memory. It went to see THE Creature.

THE Living Paradox appeared before the silent, contemplative being, its form a shimmering, chaotic mirage of all possibilities at once. It wore a wry, cold smile, an expression that held the weight of a billion stolen years.

"Did you miss me?" it asked, its voice a chorus of a thousand different selves speaking in perfect, terrible harmony.

THE Creature, a being of pure, foundational essence, frowned. A gesture that was not of anger, but of a deep, ancient weariness.

"I am not the same as I was all the way back then," it replied, its voice the sound of a Fold being born. "I will not be so easily swayed now."

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