Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 4484: Civilizational War! V

The silence within the Injunction Sanctuary of Law was heavy, pressing against the senses like physical weight composed of eons of lost time.

Deborah, The Silent Adjudicator, opened eyes that were not organic orbs.

They were pools of liquid silver set into face of flawless white marble.

She was a genuine Living Law, an entity whose very biology was structure and statute.

She did not breathe air.

She breathed conviction.

Her form was masterpiece of living statuary, draped in robes carved from same marble as her skin.

And...moving with fluidity that defied the rigidity of her composition.

In her hands, she held it.

The Shattered Part of The Heart of Law.

It was jagged, crystalline shard radiating light that should have been blinding.

It should have pulsed with rhythmic, undeniable decree of THE Living Law...the Primordial entity that had birthed them all.

But it didn’t.

Deborah looked down at the shard.

A sensation colder than the stasis they had just emerged from washed over her conceptual heart.

The vibration was faint. Weak.

It felt... orphaned.

”Gone,” she whispered, her voice the sound of two stones sliding perfectly against one another. ”You are gone, aren’t you? Our foundation has collapsed.”

She felt it in the marrow of her marble bones.

The desolation was absolute!

It was not merely that they had been frozen for eons.

It was that the source of their warmth, the sun around which their existence orbited, had been extinguished during their long sleep.

THE Living Law had collapsed.

The Primordial Civilization of Law was no more.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to let the marble of her face crack and release sound of pure, chaotic grief that would shatter the very concept of law and order she represented.

But she was the Adjudicator. She did not scream.

Instead, she looked up.

Her gaze pierced the choking miasma of the battlefield. Looking past the swirling, bruised vortex of the sky.

Past the immediate threat of Emotive and Elemental legions waking around them.

She looked into the far, far distance.

There, across Gigaparsecs of shattered terrain, she saw them.

The newcomers.

A force of millions radiating terrifying, disciplined power.

But her eyes...guided by faint, dying pulse of the Heart fragment in her hands, locked onto single figure standing amidst that foreign legion.

A young man.

He was bathed in silver-white light, his hair shining with metallic luminescence.

Beside him was woman glowing with similar, though fainter, authority.

But the man...

His gaze was piercing.

Cutting through the chaos of awakening battlefield to meet hers with impossible precision.

As if he knew exactly where she was. Exactly what she held. Exactly what it meant.

HUUM!

The Shattered Part of The Heart of Law vibrated in her hands.

Deborah’s marble brow furrowed.

Is he... connected? She asked herself, the thought racing through her mind like verdict being drafted. Is he connected to the Will and Weavings of THE Living Law? Is he the reason the stasis has thawed?

Hope, fragile and sharp, bloomed in her chest.

I must reach him. I must understand what this means!

But then, the view was stolen.

HUUM!

Waves of sickly violet light crashed down between them, cutting off her line of sight entirely.

The air grew thick with stench of weaponized sorrow and artificial despair.

The Civilization Legion of Emotives had fully awakened.

Deborah’s gaze snapped back to her immediate surroundings.

Her expression shifted from wonder to livid, marble-hard fury.

Tens of thousands.

That was all that remained of her once-glorious legion.

They huddled behind her...silver lights dim, postures radiating defeat of people who wake only to discover their empire is dust.

They had been hunted to near oblivion by these monsters eons ago.

And now, the moment they drew breath again...

The hunt resumed.

”Persistent fucking vermin,” she hissed with concentrated venom.

She stepped forward.

Her marble feet struck shattered ground with sound of absolute finality.

She raised the Heart fragment high, letting its dim light wash over her despairing troops.

”Do not weep for the past!”

Her voice was a decree.

It resonated in the souls of Living Laws, straightening their spines involuntarily.

”We are the Law! We do not bend to the chaos of emotion! We do not erode before the elements! They think us broken? They think us remnants of dead civilization?”

She pointed marble finger at rising tide of violet and red approaching them.

”Let us show them that the Verdict... is still ours to deliver! Form up! For the sanctity of structure! For the memory of Law!”

WAA!

The Civilizational Authority of Law flared around them.

Silver-white brilliance, sharp and geometric.

Yet to any observer, it was heartbreakingly dim compared to the blinding radiance of opposing forces.

It was a light of dying star raging against encroaching dark.

They knew the truth.

They knew the true Primordial Civilization of Law had collapsed!

But they moved anyway.

Because that was their Way.

---

Gigaparsecs away, Noah stood with eyes reflecting the grand tragedy unfolding across the sanctuary.

His perception, amplified by his Civilizational framework and Lens of Civilization, saw it all with perfect clarity.

He observed the awakening armies of Elementals and Emotives split their forces with strategic precision.

It was calculated bifurcation.

Half of the massive force, tens of thousands of entities burning with power ranging from 50 Sextillion to 450 Sextillion, turned their hostile gazes directly toward him.

The other half surged forward like tsunami of fire and grief. Intent on crushing the small, silver remnant of Living Laws.

”Osmont.”

The voice of Alexander Asmodeus rang in his mind, tight with urgency.

”I can feel it. The leader of those Living Laws... she holds the Shattered Part of the Heart of Law. It calls to the inheritance within me.”

Alexander paused, watching the violet tide crash toward silver line.

”But they are overwhelmed. Outnumbered catastrophically. If she gets swarmed... if she is systematically decimated before we can bridge the distance... the fragment could be lost. Or worse, destroyed.”

Noah watched the distant flare of silver light struggle against violet ocean.

He felt the anxiety radiating from Alexander. The desperation to save what remained of Law.

Noah’s reply was calm. A flat line of certainty cutting through chaos.

”We will get her. The fragment will not be lost.”

He severed the mental connection and turned his gaze to his own assembled forces.

Fifteen million entities stood ready for deployment.

The Iron Concordat formed wall of obsidian-gold defensive might.

The Verdant Cycle glowed with preparatory healing weaves ready to activate.

But his eyes settled specifically on the Crimson Hunger faction.

Particularly on towering, skeletal figure wreathed in maddening aura of death and appetite.

Arch Lich Ra’Zan.

The Lich had undergone the Hungering Maw Specialization with devastating results.

His defensive capabilities were completely stripped away, and his offensive power multiplied by factors that defied conventional logic.

He was glass cannon of apocalyptic proportions.

”Ra’Zan,” Noah said.

His voice was not loud, but it arrived instantly at the Lich’s consciousness with absolute clarity.

The Arch Lich turned.

Empty eye sockets blazing with green-fire hunger.

”The enemy facing us possesses substantial power,” Noah intoned, his voice taking on a tyrannical cadence of a War Emperor. ”Individually, many of them exceed our average strength measurements. They are relics from the Earliest Folds, hoarders of ancient accumulated power.”

Noah gestured toward oncoming wave of Elementals and Emotives.

”The Defenders will hold them at bay. They will break their assault on our walls. Your goal is not merely to push them back or repel their advance.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed.

”These enemies hold immense quantities of harvestable authority. They possess information from The Earliest Folds that no longer exists elsewhere. They will not surrender it willingly while they draw breath.”

A cruel, pragmatic smile touched Noah’s lips.

”So we will proceed to collapse them. We will make them Dead. And once Dead, transition them to Dead Existences... you, Ra’Zan, will incorporate them into your Civilizational Legion of Dead Existences.”

HUUM!

The air around Ra’Zan twisted with mounting anticipation.

”Consider what it means carefully,” Noah continued, his voice dropping to conspiratorial whisper that somehow echoed like thunder. ”Collapsing even one of these entities means acquiring a Dead Existence with dozens of Sextillions in baseline Complexity and Purity.”

He paused deliberately.

”Now imagine, Ra’Zan... if such extraordinarily powerful Dead Existence were to subsequently undergo our Civilization Specialization...”

He left the thought hanging.

He didn’t need to finish the statement.

The implication was a promise of power so vast it bordered on obscenity!

A Dead Existence with 50 to 400+ Sextillion baseline becoming Hungering Maw specialist...

Oh!

Arch Lich Ra’Zan began to cackle.

It started as low, dry rattle in his skeletal throat.

Then built into crescendo of death and madness that made surrounding existence recoil!

His bony fingers clenched his staff with such force the weapon cracked.

The Hungering Maw armor shifted around him like living thing yearning for the feast!

”KEKEKEKE!”

The Arch Lich surged forward...a comet of green and crimson death leading the vanguard of Hungering Maws!

”My duty... is Death!” Ra’Zan bellowed, his voice scream that tore at souls of those who heard it! ”And the harvest shall be...inevitable!”

Behind him, the Crimson Hunger faction erupted into motion!

Thousands of predatory specialists streaking forward with barely contained aggression!

BOOM!