Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 4259: A Glorious Engineer! II

Names...those arbitrary collections of sounds we use to point at things, including ourselves.

Philosophically, a name is both nothing and everything. It’s just vibration in air, marks on paper, synaptic patterns in brains.

Yet whisper a single horrid name in a crowded room and watch comfort evaporate.

Murmur ”mother” to someone who lost theirs and witness either warmth or wound, depending on the history attached.

A name can make strangers into enemies or allies before a single action is taken. It’s prejudice and preference wrapped in pronunciation.

In the Earliest Folds, when names still had the power to reshape reality rather than just describe it, THE Living Concept and THE Living Emotive were having one of their rare civil conversations.

The air between them wasn’t crackling with tension for once, which should have been everyone’s first warning that something significant was about to happen.

”If you could have any other name,” Emotive asked with the casualness of someone definitely not planning anything, ”what would you take on?”

THE Living Concept was actually in a happy mood...a state so unusual that nearby reality took notes for posterity. It decided to play along with Emotive’s line of questioning.

”If I could have any name,” Concept mused, its form cycling through geometries of contemplation, ”it would be Engineer. Because as of today, I stand on the cusp of a glorious achievement.”

”Oh?” Emotive’s interest sharpened like emotion suddenly finding a point. Whatever achievement THE Living Concept had accomplished would certainly be worth investigating, but for now, the conversation was about names.

THE Living Emotive’s form began to shift, emotions deepening and layering in preparation for something profound.

”Names are everything to an existence,” Emotive began, its voice taking on the weight of fundamental truth. ”Uttering one’s name and distinctions shows not just what an existence is, but what confidence they have in themselves. Whether they believe in their own reality.”

The words grew heavier with each sentence, as if the concept of naming was being excavated from the bedrock of existence itself.

”When you speak your name, you’re not just identifying yourself...you’re claiming your right to exist as that thing. You’re saying ’This is what I am, and I believe in that being enough.’ Belief... knowing who you are and knowing what you can do... that is everything.”

HUUM!

Emotive’s form had begun to pulse with increasing intensity, emotions cascading through spectrums that didn’t have names yet.

”The day you cannot say your own name is the day you cease to truly exist. You become just another thing, another force, another forgotten possibility. I hope there never comes a day when I cannot say my name...when doubt or destruction or simple forgetting makes me unable to claim what I am.”

Then THE Living Emotive rose, its body exploding with unfathomable emotions that made nearby concepts reconsider their stability. Colors that described feelings that wouldn’t be invented for eons rippled through its form.

When it spoke, the voice echoed across the Folds.

”I! AM! THE! LIVING! EMOTIVE!”

BOOM!

Each word landed with the weight of universal constant being established. Not introducing itself but establishing itself, confirming its existence through pronunciation.

The name wasn’t just identification...it was invocation, manifestation, and proof of being simultaneously.

Names.

Sometimes they meant nothing- just convenient labels to distinguish this from that.

”Bob” instead of ”Robert” rarely changed anyone’s destiny.

Other times, they meant everything. They were prophecy and prison, blessing and curse.

They were the difference between ”The Early Creature, Osmont” and just another being trying to survive.

Between ”THE Creature” and something that could be ignored akin to an ant.

The power wasn’t in the name itself but in the weight of existence attached to it.

THE Living Emotive understood this...that speaking your name with absolute conviction wasn’t just introduction but creation. Every time you declared yourself, you rebuilt yourself from sound and certainty.

But there was danger in this too. Because once you’ve declared yourself so forcefully, so absolutely, changing becomes almost impossible!

THE Living Emotive would always be THE Living Emotive, locked into that identity by the very force of its own declaration.

Perhaps that’s why THE Creature rarely used names at all, preferring to be whatever the moment required. When you don’t trap yourself in a name, you remain infinite in potential.

Or perhaps that’s why some beings hid their true names entirely, understanding that to be truly known was to be truly vulnerable.

After all, if names carry such power, then knowing someone’s true name...not what they’re called but what they call themselves in the absolute privacy of their own existence, that’s power indeed.

THE Living Concept, who wanted to be called Engineer, would soon learn just how much power the wrong name at the wrong time could carry.

But that’s a different story, for a different time, when the achievement Concept mentioned turned out to matter.

Because in the end of the conversation, Emotive came back as he asked:

”What of you Achievement?”

And THE Living Concept smiled and said ”Oh, just a little Achievement is a Laboratory of mine. One of the Elderborns finally bore fruit...”

—

The descent into Elara’s personal lab was a quiet, spiraling journey into the heart of a brilliant, frustrated mind.

She hummed to herself, a soft, almost inaudible tune, her eyes sparkling with a distant, analytical light as she seemed to be running through the possible permutations of Dr. Flamel’s imminent breakthrough.

The lab itself was a testament to her nature: a place of stark, ordered beauty and immense, contained potential.

It was a vast, circular chamber, its walls the same pristine white as the rest of the Laboratories, but here, they were lined with shimmering, crystalline glass panels that displayed cascading streams of complex information.

In one section, a veritable mountain of Early Omnichalcum Metal was stacked, a pile dozens of times larger than the single cluster in the outer area, its collective, dormant power a heavy, silent weight on the air!

Another area was a workshop, dozens more of the skeletal, unfinished Living Existential Armors hanging in various states of assembly.

And at the very center was her personal workstation: a simple white throne and a vast, silver table, both currently littered with scattered papers and shimmering blueprints!