Chapter 724: True Monster! I

Surrounded by power that pressed against his foundations from every direction, Achilles continued utilizing Persevere on his Inner Dominion and internal existence as it continued its profound transformation, each utterance of that foundational letter driving changes that had already made what he currently was almost unrecognizable compared to what had entered THE Gilded Laboratory Outpost #32.

He stood behind Vireth and the assembled Sororis Prima, Ten beings of terrifying authority who truly stood at Devonian Paleozoic Scale, the third and final tier of THE Third Scale of Existence. Their combined presence made the surrounding Observable Force behave differently, the golden rivers threading through the atmosphere organizing themselves around the assembled power with the deference of something that recognized its superiors.

Around them, hundreds of Ira and Superbius Gilded Ones arranged themselves in military formation with the practiced precision of forces that had conducted operations like this before, oval vessels floating at the center of their configuration while the entire assembled Legion waited in silence for whatever signal would initiate their descent.

The silence itself had texture, the compressed patience of beings capable of extraordinary violence holding themselves in perfect stillness until the moment that stillness needed to end.

It was suffocating to be surrounded by this much concentrated authority.

But Achilles had always wanted to be wild and take risks alongside his calculated patience, and the overabundance of Observable Force saturating this environment represented an opportunity he had no intention of ignoring simply because the surrounding company made it dangerous.

He filled the golden rivers flowing around him with his spores.

Quietly, without any external indication of what his internal focus was actually doing, he seeded the Observable Force currents moving through the assembled Legion with the invisible markers of his existence, targeting specifically the Ordovician Paleozoic Scale and Silurian Paleozoic Scale beings arranged throughout the formation.

The first and second tiers of THE Third Scale of Existence, beings whose consumption would represent the grandest Assimilation campaign he had ever attempted, surrounding him in numbers that made the opportunity almost absurd in its abundance.

With every Persevere he uttered, his existence grew hungrier for advancement and refused to be satisfied by what it had already achieved.

Taylor had asked him to contribute an invisible fragment of his consciousness to her operation shortly after their agreement formed, a piece of his awareness small enough to travel without attracting notice but present enough to observe and respond if her plan required the Persevere she had bargained for.

He had felt that fragment disappear completely from his ordinary perception before a secondary vision opened in his awareness, showing him a perspective that moved through gaps of existence with speed that the conventional architecture of space seemed unable to obstruct.

When he focused on that vision, he observed another figure of Taylor crossing through existence with the efficient movement of someone who had done this before. Her voice arrived through the fragment of consciousness she had borrowed from him.

"This is my other body. We should be arriving where THE Osmontian currently is soon enough, so be ready. If that monstrous existence attempts to destroy me, activate your Persevere immediately. I have no interest in testing whether he can instantly collapse all aspects of my existence from a single fragment of my presence alone."

She was as careful as careful could be!

A few seconds passed.

"AHH!"

Taylor’s body crashed through the fabric of existence to appear in a lower layer of THE Braneworld Observable Existence, a sublevel where the atmosphere carried a fundamentally different character from the golden abundance above, the Observable Force here disrupted and churning in patterns that spoke of recent and ongoing violence of extraordinary scale.

HUUM!

And where she arrived...THE Osmontian was!

Achilles felt the power of this being through the small fragment of consciousness Taylor carried, and it struck his awareness like something that had no interest in being measured and could not be fully measured regardless of effort.

THE Osmontian floated in the space directly in front of Taylor with the presence of something that had not needed to announce its arrival because everything in the surrounding environment had already reorganized itself in acknowledgment of its existence.

Its form was massive and humanoid in its fundamental architecture, multicolored scales covering a frame whose proportions communicated that physical size was an afterthought compared to the authority radiating from every surface.

Clawed hands hung at its sides with the relaxed readiness of something that had no reason to prepare for violence because violence was simply available whenever it chose to access it.

Raging multicolored flames surrounded its entire form in currents that made the surrounding atmosphere hostile to occupation by anything less than extraordinary power, the kind of environmental effect that would make Ordovician Paleozoic Scale beings struggle to breathe within proximity.

Suffocating did not begin to describe what standing near this being would feel like.

The surrounding landscape communicated the history of what had been occurring here before Taylor’s arrival.

A deluge of multicolored rivers carved through broken remnants of existence that had been structured reality before something dismantled it without apparent effort.

Destruction spread across the visible space in every direction with the thoroughness of something that had not been targeting specific things.

Just fucking general destruction!

Achilles could have sworn he felt the residual signatures of Silurian Paleozoic Scale Gilded Ones who had recently died in this place, their existences leaving the particular absence that beings of that magnitude leave when they are genuinely gone.

He had been right not to want to fight this.

Even Vireth and the Devonian Paleozoic Scale Sororis Prima he had encountered did not carry this quality of danger in the way THE Osmontian did simply by existing in a space and allowing others to share it!

Taylor stood up fast from where her arrival had deposited her.

"Sir Osmontian, don’t kill me! Hear me out first!"

...!

Her presentation was not all that dignified, but Achilles understood exactly how she felt and would not have held it against anyone who had just arrived in front of this particular being without significant preparation.

Her eyes moved across the surrounding destruction, back to THE Osmontian’s form, then across the destruction again with the rapid efficiency that defined how her perception operated under any circumstances.

Both hands went up.

"I come in peace! In peace, you hear me?!"

The certainty in her voice competed with the urgency!

"Even though I made a deal with Adrastia to keep me alive through his Persevere, I still have no intention of fighting you!"

...!

Achilles observed the scene through the fragment of consciousness Taylor carried.

This...was the first time he had encountered THE Osmontian directly.

The monster he would later simply call Osmont!