Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse

Chapter 4372: Collaboration and Civilizations III

Noah’s consciousness flickered as Temporal Traversal seized him, pulling him forward through rivers of time that flowed in directions that had no names.

His eyes were closed, but he could see regardless, perceiving the multicolored brilliance of temporal streams.

Reality itself became visible as layers of possibilities and actualities interweaving, paths taken and abandoned existing simultaneously in quantum superposition.

His Resplendent Citadels blazed within his existence like beacons, acting as guides that ensured he returned to the correct temporal coordinate rather than ending up scattered across multiple time periods.

The entire Early Atlas of the Folds pulsed within him, that impossible map that shouldn’t exist but did anyway through sheer audacity of will and Mana that refused to acknowledge limitation!

The Early Atlas that made this ridiculous capability possible!

He was crossing eons in moments, traveling from the Earliest Folds back to his current era.

As consciousness began to solidify, as the temporal streams started to deposit him back into normal causality, RUIN/EDEN’s prompts appeared.

|TEMPORAL TRAVERSAL: COMPLETE|

|Duration in Earliest Folds: Multiple days|

|ACCOMPLISHMENT SUMMARY - EARLIEST FOLDS EXPEDITION|

|PRIMARY ACHIEVEMENTS:|

|Early Laboratories Infiltration: Successfully traversed the lands designed by THE Living Concept. Obtained complete methodology for Living Existential Armor construction. Aethelgard infiltration, learning of Everythings.|

|Anaximander Encounter: Established contact with Fold Dweller possessing ridiculous capabilities. Provided alternative perspective on THE Weavers’ guidance. Exchanged information regarding nature of The Way and existence. Parted on terms suggesting potential future cooperation.|

|Way of Existence Declaration: Successfully declared and embarked on a personal Way in region saturated with raw Early Existential Authority.|

|Hunger Experience via Ozymandias: Secondary body successfully experienced and integrated Way of Hunger through consumption-based cultivation. Devoured 847 distinct entities ranging from simple beasts to conceptual manifestations. Gained understanding of consumption as cultivation methodology (applications pending analysis).|

|Secret Civilization Seeding: Most ambitious and dangerous achievement. Successfully isolated group of 47 Fold Dwellers from normal timeline. Established hidden settlement in Wandering Territories with strict isolation protocols. Initiated 47 individuals into The Way of the Mana Architect. Left comprehensive instructions for generational cultivation. Projected emergence: Current Era, upon signal from Master.|

|PERSONAL CULTIVATION GAINS:|

|Mana Glyphs Forged: 42,555 (Total)|

The number appeared in bold, emphasized because it represented something that shouldn’t be possible.

Each Glyph was supposed to become progressively harder to forge after passing certain thresholds. Ten thousand Glyphs was considered a lifetime achievement!

Noah had forty-two thousand.

|Analysis: Addition of Mana Glyphs past 10,000 threshold encountered exponentially increasing difficulty. Each subsequent Glyph required 2.7x more effort than previous. By 40,000 mark, individual Glyph formation required concentration and Mana investment equivalent to forging first 1,000 Glyphs combined.|

|Master’s Response: Continued regardless.|

|Assessment: Tyrannical persistence. Inefficient by normal standards. Perfectly aligned with Master’s operational philosophy of ’if it’s difficult, do it more.’|

Noah smiled as he felt his body solidifying back into normal existence, consciousness settling into flesh that had temporarily been scattered across temporal coordinates.

He looked at himself...at his body currently filled with an overabundance of swirling blue Mana Glyphs that covered his skin like living tattoos, each one pulsing with contained potential.

The sheer density of Glyphs made his entire form shimmer with barely-contained energy!

HUUM!

More prompts appeared.

|PRINCIPLE DEVELOPMENT:|

|Mana Glyphs of the Cheating Architect: 125 (Newly Formed)|

|Mana Glyphs of Perpetual Harvest: 125 (Newly Formed)|

|Combined Effect: Principle Integration accelerating. The Way of Existence becoming more defined, more powerful, more fundamentally woven into Master’s being.|

|EMPOWERMENT UTILIZATION:|

|Daily Harvest Festival Endowments: Utilized 3 times|

|Empowerment Sources: Self-targeting (maximum efficiency)|

|Total Gain: +0.75 Quintillion Complexity|

|Total Gain: +0.75 Quintillion Purity|

|Note: Self-empowerment creates interesting feedback loops. Essentially using power to generate more power to use for generating even more power. A bit confusing...|

...!

These were his gains.

Noah’s smile widened into something tyrannical as he felt the power coursing through him, the accumulated results of days spent in impossible places doing impossible things with efficiency that would make conventional cultivation weep!

But the smile slowly faded as he focused forward, as his analytical mind began calculating what lay ahead rather than celebrating what he’d achieved.

Even this was minimal in his eyes!

Not objectively...objectively, these gains were obscene, reality-breaking, the kind of advancement that should take lifetimes compressed into days.

But subjectively, from the perspective of someone preparing for conflicts against THE Living Existences, against THE Dead Order, against forces that had existed for eons and cultivated their power through time periods that made his entire existence seem like a brief flicker...

He needed so much more.

He needed to continue violating every reasonable expectation of advancement.

Needed to keep pushing beyond what should be possible into what absolutely wasn’t possible and make it work anyway through sheer audacity and Infinite Mana.

Because anything less meant his Civilization wouldn’t survive what was coming.

|TEMPORAL TRAVERSAL COOLDOWN:|

|Time Until Next Available Traversal: 9 hours, 47 minutes, 23 seconds|

|Note: Master’s Temporal Traversal capability recharges faster with each successful completion. Projected minimum cooldown after sufficient repetitions: 6 hours.|

|Translation: Soon Master will be able to spend more time in the past than in the present.|

Noah acknowledged the information with a nod, his mind already planning his next Traversal, considering what needed to be accomplished, calculating risks against potential gains.

In a flash of light, his body shuttled across existence, returning from temporal coordinates to spatial ones, from the abstract realm of time-travel to the concrete reality of his territory.

He appeared on the Early Veiled Shore.

Home.

Or at least, the closest thing he had to home in an existence defined by constant motion and advancement.

The golden sands welcomed this body back with familiar warmth!

—

A distance away.

The Cultivation Citadel of The Early Creature, Osmont.

Even though days had passed in the Earliest Folds, time flowing normally while Noah’s consciousness had been scattered across multiple bodies and temporal locations...only a single day had passed here.

One day in the Cultivation Citadel.

One glorious, brutal, transformative day.

WHOOOOSH!

Noah’s body blazed across the blue planet’s atmosphere like a meteor that had learned flight and decided to show off. He circled the entire planetary body multiple times in mere seconds, his form leaving trails of blue Mana in his wake that took minutes to dissipate.

The weight pressing down on him was tremendous...Level 10 pressure, one hundred times the weight of his normal existence, enough force to compress most beings into singularities of regret and poor life choices!

Oh!

He wasn’t just withstanding it.

He was flying freely while bearing this weight.

Every few seconds, Primordial Fireballs erupted from his hands, each one forced to manifest under pressure that tried to prevent their formation.

They blazed into existence, bore the tremendous weight for moments, then dissipated as the pressure proved too much for sustained manifestation.

Primordial Mana-Flame Wyrms followed...serpentine constructs of pure fire wreathed in Mana, each one struggling to maintain cohesion under forces that wanted to unmake them but existing long enough to prove it was possible.

Noah stopped his circling abruptly, his body pivoting mid-flight to dive toward a specific region of the planet’s surface.

He landed in an area filled with heavy rain.

But calling it ”rain” was like calling a tsunami ”moisture”...technically accurate but missing the magnitude entirely.

Each raindrop that fell here was a battering attack of compressed authority.

The drops were dense enough to be visible as distinct projectiles rather than continuous water, each one carrying force that exceeded 6 Quintillion damage in both Complexity and Purity.

BOOM!

And they battered him!