NOVEL NEXT Chapter 465: I Am! I
"ASSIMILATE!"
BOOM!
A command was given not to reality, but to the platinum particles that the Nar'Thyss enjoyed like wine connoisseurs savoring a vintage!
The order resonated through dimensions that most beings didn't know existed, carrying with it the fundamental difference between Achilles and every Nar'Thyss that had ever existed.
The Nar'Thyss utilized and harvested the Existential Authority of Fables.
They collected it, refined it, consumed it like cosmic farmers bringing in their crops.
It was terrifying enough…this ability to feed on the dramatic tension of entire civilizations, to grow strong on the stories of Quintillions.
They had been able to reshape reality itself with this power, to guide the narratives of the Star Seas for eons uncounted.
And yet Achilles was an Adrastia Emperor King.
With an ability to assimilate anything.
So what would happen when, unlike the Nar'Thyss, he did not simply harvest and utilize the Existential Authority of Fables, but proceeded to assimilate it?
To become one with it in a way that the Nar'Thyss, for all their power, had never possessed the capability to achieve?
BOOM!
The phenomenon that followed violated several fundamental laws of existence simultaneously.
The platinum authority that had been flowing into his body…streams of narrative power meant to augment his existence, to make him stronger within the framework of what he was, suddenly changed its behavior.
Instead of merging with him, it was pulled, drawn, commanded to become him. The difference was the distinction between wearing armor and becoming metal itself.
A hurricane of platinum-colored authority erupted around Achilles, each strand a story, each mote of light a narrative thread from lives he had touched.
The farmer's simple tale of survival spun around him. The factory worker's quiet drama of perseverance orbited his form. The dragon's epic of territorial dominance circled like a predatory constellation.
Thousands upon thousands of Fables, from the mundane to the magnificent, created a maelstrom that bent space-time with the sheer weight of accumulated meaning.
Rose reached out instinctively, her water form extending toward him, but her father-in-law's hand on her shoulder stopped her.
The Eighth Adrastia Emperor King's eyes blazed with concern, but he understood…this was beyond intervention. This was transformation at a level that made their previous impossibilities seem quaint!
The hurricane intensified, platinum light spinning so fast it became solid walls of radiance. And then, in an instant that stretched like eternity…
WAP!
Everything disappeared into him.
The sudden absence of the maelstrom was more shocking than its presence had been.
A terrifying calm settled over the Sea of Thalassara, the kind of quiet that followed events too large for normal sound to encompass.
Achilles's body trembled, the only movement in the stillness.
His skin, which had already transcended normal matter through stellar transformation, took on a sheen of stellar platinum that seemed to exist in more dimensions than should be visible.
It was beautiful and terrible simultaneously, like watching someone become a concept rather than remain a being.
Rose's water form rippled with growing alarm. "Achilles? What's-"
BOOM!
His visage…exploded!
Not into fragments of flesh or sprays of blood, but into countless glimmering platinum pages of light.
Each page was perfectly formed, covered in text that wrote and rewrote itself continuously, stories beginning and ending and beginning again in infinite loops of narrative possibility!
The explosion was gentle despite its violence…the pages dispersed outward in perfect spherical symmetry, each one trailing light like a comet of pure story.
The light that followed was beyond supernova classification. It wasn't hot or cold, bright or dark…it was narrative illumination, the kind of radiance that revealed not what things were but what they meant.
Waves of it spread outward from where Achilles had been, extending for light-years in every direction, passing through matter and energy and void with equal ease!
He truly exploded into light!
"ACHILLES!" Rose's scream boomed, her form destabilizing with panic.
"My son!" The Eighth Adrastia Emperor King's roar contained enough force to restart dead stars, but it found nothing to impact against.
They reached out with every sense they possessed…physical, spiritual, stellar. They searched for his consciousness, his existence, any trace of the man who had just transformed or destroyed himself in pursuit of power to fight powers.
But there was nothing.
Not even absence…just a space where detection itself seemed to have given up!
"What happened?" Rose's voice broke on the question, her water form trembling with barely contained grief and solemnity. "What did he do to himself!?"
---
It felt like eons passing in contemplation of a single thought.
And it also felt like an instant between one heartbeat and the next.
Achilles felt like he had closed his eyes for the briefest moment and simply opened them again, yet with his newly opened eyes, he felt unfathomably different.
The sensation wasn't transformation…it was recognition, as if he had always been this but had only now remembered.
He saw… countless stars and rivers of stellar bodies swirling in patterns that told stories spanning billions of years.
Each point of light wasn't just a sun but a node in vast narratives that connected, separated, reconnected in webs of meaning that made constellation maps look like children's drawings.
He saw an endless Star Sea sparkling with unfathomable brilliance, each sparkle a life, each life a thread, each thread part of a Fable that contributed to greater Fables that themselves were merely chapters in stories too large for normal consciousness to comprehend.
A Star Sea.
No…his Star Sea.
The thought should have been megalomaniacal, but it came with the simple certainty of ownership through understanding.
He didn't possess it…he was part of its story now, and it was part of his.
He observed his body, or what his consciousness now inhabited, and understanding crashed through him with the weight of fundamental truth.
He had become a massive humanoid butterfly, his form stretching across dimensions that shouldn't have been able to coexist.
Nine pairs of wings spread from his center, each one large enough to eclipse solar systems, each one inscribed with stories that were simultaneously being written and had always existed.
His perspective had shifted to something beyond…he was observing the Star Seas not from within but from the narrative space that contained them.
He could see it all with terrible clarity. His infinitesimally small Sea of Thalassara, a droplet in an ocean that was itself a droplet in something larger.
He saw Rose and his father panicking within it, their forms tiny beyond microscopic from this perspective yet perfectly clear to his perception.
He saw the Butchering Grounds where his Draconic Hybrids continued their infiltration.
He saw General Lydia on her ship, contemplating their alliance. He saw too many things…every story happening simultaneously, every narrative thread vibrating with potential energy.
A prompt materialized before his consciousness, blazing with stellar words.
|You have attained the distinction of The Liberating Assimilator, The Elder Nar'Thyss Constellation.|
…!
The words hung in his perception for exactly long enough to be understood, then dissolved back into the narrative fabric of reality.
But even as they faded, Achilles felt something vast approaching his consciousness…an influx of information that would either complete his transformation or shatter him entirely!