Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 3886: Frost and Crimson Teeth! I

Crossing the gateway felt like walking through the heart of something still breathing.

Weavings of Origin flickered all around them, light and shadow weaving with too much volatility, like threads spun by trembling hands.

Noah stepped forward silently, his gaze watching the shifting patterns with curiosity and calculation. He watched them shift again. Once, twice. Then he frowned.

They were... changing.

Next to him, Sigrid’s brow furrowed deeply, the sharpness in her irises deepening. ”They’re not being subtle anymore,” she said, voice burning with quiet disdain. ”They’re converging paths and trying to push everyone together to ensure I don’t have that much time here...”

Noah nodded, coldness blooming behind his eyes. ”Let them. It won’t change too much.”

The words came as a whisper, but they felt heavy enough to ground even the most stubborn of forces.

And then, the light around them broke.

In the next moment, they were no longer within the thin corridors of the Labyrinth. They stood at the heart of something vast- something immense.

A dome. Tens of thousands of miles in diameter, sealed with translucent membranes of frozen white and Origin light.

It was cold.

Even for Primarchs, it would be cold!

Snow storms danced in the silence. Frost blanketed everything with stillness. Peaceful, at a glance. Suffocating, if one stared too long.

Four great Trees of Yggdrasil, thick as mountains, emerged from the circular edges of the realm. Their roots coiled like ancient serpents beneath the glacial floor, and their trunks rose upward, spiraling inwards, meeting and tangling into one another at the center.

Their leaves shimmered in hues of white and gold, dropping light that clung to the wind like slow-falling embers.

Thousands of golems hovered across the cold skyspace. Statues at first glance- until they moved. Crimson-gold light radiated from within them, their forms humanoid and scaled, their arms ending in gleaming axes of crystal frost. Sentinels.

And beneath them...

Wriggling.

Twisting.

Resting.

Were more than a dozen massive forms.

Colored wrong. Shaped wrong. Moved wrong.

Imitation Mutated Inevitabilities.

Their tendrils coiled around themselves like silk wrapped too tightly, pulsating with low hunger. They hadn’t stirred yet. But the air knew they would soon enough.

And when they did, a bloodbath would unfold!

Because others had already begun to arrive.

The stillness was a lie. There was noise buried beneath the quiet.

Noah turned, and Sigrid turned with him.

In the far distance, along the high branch of one of the Yggdrasil Trees, the clash of Archetypes could be felt like thunder beneath skin.

And there- bloody gold and shivering white, they saw something unfolding.

A battle.

A massacre.

Master Etheopa stood at the front, her Garden of Gold spread open behind her like a field of blooming stars. Her arm shook as she held a great sigil-covered blade. Her other arm...gone. Her face, half-caved in. Blood ran down from her temple like ink over marble.

An illusion of a Tower of Origin amidst a Garden of Origin flashed unstably around her!

Behind her were 15 Primarchs. Shaking. Furious. Shocked. Bleeding. One already missing a leg.

Across from her, on the curved branch of the tree, stood monsters.

Master Hannibal. His golden cloak fluttered like shadows set aflame. In one hand, he held the writhing figure of Kalysta, her arms clawing weakly, her head dangling from his grip.

Golden shield and hammers surrounded him like a bastion that could never fall!

And beside him... a stranger.

A Mannafolds Master of Existence encased in a barrier of white-blue light tinged with blood. He said nothing, letting Hannibal speak.

And Hannibal?

He was chewing.

Another bite.

This time from Kalysta’s thigh.

The sound of meat tearing was crisp beneath the snowy winds.𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Noah’s body pulsed. Sigrid inhaled sharply, her eyes pulsing with rising rage!

Across the branch, Hannibal’s voice rang out, low and soaked in philosophy.

”Give yourself up,” he told Etheopa plainly. ”And I’ll spare them. There’s little joy in breaking Primarchs. They taste... exquisite, yes. But not enough to matter. They wont add much to my existence. ”

HUUM!

Etheopa’s reply came as a scream. Her power flared in golden arcs that cracked the bark and frost of the tree beneath her feet.

”We trusted you!” she spat. ”The Sunfolds let you into our Wheels! And you...”

”I survived,” Hannibal interrupted, voice calm.

He leaned closer to Kalysta, biting again, and her scream was barely a whisper now, her Kismet dancing around her in wild, broken lights.

”You think I do this out of greed? Out of cruelty?” Hannibal licked his lips and stared through Etheopa like she wasn’t even there. ”The Originus Venerant stage isn’t charity. It isn’t purity. It is survival.”

He gazed down at his bloodstained hands.

”To climb... is to devour. To kill. To consume. This is not sin. It is nature. And I am so fucking tired of slow growth.”

...!

The voiced were heavy.

Noah watched it all.

Watched the violence. The tears. The philosophies spoken to excuse them.

Sigrid’s hands trembled beside him, her lips pulled into a tight line.

She stepped forward.

And her aura, her anger, unleashed just so briefly!

A pulse of authority so vast and defined that the wriggling Inevitabilities below were almost stirred awake, their forms writhing subtly as if almost registering the presence of something... high.

Across the frost space of cold winds and storms, Hannibal’s head turned.

So did the Mannafolds Master as his body seethed with seas of mana.

Even Master Etheopa and the Primarchs she protected as they breathed heavily from the assault of two Masters!

Kalysta’s half-closed eyes flicked open, the pain within them flashing with something golden.

Hope.

She saw him.

Noah.

Kismet ignited around her, flooding her bloodied form with flickering golden threads as her lips curled into something torn and trembling, a smile.

And then, tears. Tears of belief!

As if in that moment, the one thing Kismet and Destiny themselves aligned on... was that everything would be okay now.

Because he was here!