I Can Assimilate Everything

Chapter 694: THE Last Stand! II

Achilles opened his eyes to an unfathomably vast domain filled with brilliance and power.

It looked like a primeval epochal forest.

Trees rose around him in every direction, thousands of miles tall, trunks wider than star systems, bark threaded with veins of gold that pulsed in slow heartbeat rhythms from root to canopy. Their leaves were not leaves. They were discs of light, suspended in the upper reaches, catching a brilliance that did not come from any single sun. Below, a floor of moss and root-system stretched outward for distances his Architect’s Perception couldn’t finish reading.

Rivers ran through it.

Not rivers of water. Rivers of blue Infinity. They flowed between the tree-trunks in wide slow currents, deep sapphire shot through with paler threads of something older than color, and every time Achilles glanced at them the edges of his foundation warmed in quiet warning.

The Infinity here was not the lethal glimpse that broke lesser minds. It had been arranged inside this Domain the way a landscape was arranged, flowing where it was supposed to flow, doing what it was supposed to do.

Oppressive pressure ground down over everything.

It was not aimed at him specifically. It sat on the entire Domain. The air was heavier here, the trees loomed heavier, the floor pushed back against his weight harder than a floor had any right to. A contestant at the bottom of the First Scale would have been on their knees already. Even now, at the top of his, Achilles felt it.

He looked around.

Nobody could be seen!

Not a single other presence within his line of sight. The forest simply stood around him, massive and patient, and the blue rivers flowed on.

He tried to spread his senses.

They were restricted.

His perception pushed outward and was caught. Something in the Domain gently cupped his awareness the way a hand cupped a candle flame, letting it stay lit but drawing a firm line around how far it could cast. He could read maybe a few miles. Past that, the Domain took the signal and kept it.

Oh.

Interesting!

Before he could push it any further, a voice boomed across the sky.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome, all lineages and all races watching today!"

It was a woman’s voice, bright and overexcited. It filled the entire Domain at once, riding the pressure from above, and behind its cheerful lilt sat a coldness that did not try to hide itself.

"We have a full roster, my darlings! A full thousand! Nine hundred of our dear participants today hail from THE First Scale of Existence, and one hundred of them, oh, one hundred, from THE Second! Such a lovely ratio. So sporting. So generous of our Second Scale friends to come down and play with the little ones!"

She laughed.

It was the sort of pretty laugh a hunter gave when the rabbit ran the exact way the hunter had known it would run.

"The Domain you are standing in today is called the Artificial Primordial of the Last Verdant Hour. It was grown for you. Aren’t you touched? I know I would be. A whole artificial Primordial Realm, just for a few moments of your delightful company."

...!

"Environmental constraints are as follows. Your existence has been cut off externally for the duration of the Game. You cannot receive communication from outside the Domain. You cannot broadcast outward. You cannot ping your mentor, your grandpa, your master, your little spouse, or your favorite mistress. Haha, I’m talking about you fuckers with your amplified Egos of Lust! Whatever happens in here, happens only in here. And whatever you do in here, well. That stays too."

Another laugh.

"Perception is heavily restricted inside the Domain. You will not see who is coming for you until they are already close. You will not know where your neighbors are hiding until something unfortunate begins to happen to them. Isn’t that exciting? I find it exciting."

Achilles’s eyes narrowed.

"In thirty seconds, you may all move freely. The pressure you are currently feeling will release. The Game’s theme, my darlings, is survival. Survival is not the same as combat. If you can hide well enough, and play small enough, and duck quickly enough, you might even find yourself among the last ten regardless of how strong you are! Wouldn’t that be fun? A little worm surviving a few Second Scale tigers through sheer, desperate cowardice! Some of my favorite runs have ended that way."

She giggled.

"Now get ready! Oh, and those of you watching, remember to get your bets in. Ego Crystals are on the line. The house is generous today. The odds are posted. Place wisely."

The voice settled into a soft hum, counting down.

Achilles listened to all of it with cold eyes.

He let his attention fall inward.

His existence hummed back at him, immense. The Miniature Cause of a Gilded One he had assimilated continued to alter him from the inside in ways he could track only in the rearview. His foundation kept thickening. His Architect’s Perception, even restricted, felt sharper than it had been an hour ago. His Primordial Heart beat with a steadier weight. The Second Scale sat close, closer than he had ever felt it, a door almost open, a room almost entered.

But not yet.

He still felt, firmly, that there was something significant he could do to expand his existence without crossing that threshold, and the Game around him looked like the exact shape of that something.

So he would stay First Scale.

He would stretch his legs.

And he would see, with his own hands, what an Observable Existence that had never been stunted grew its contestants out of.

The seconds trickled down.

The pressure receded.

The announcer’s voice boomed again, bright and cheerful and cruel.

"Haha, begin! Begin!"

Achilles looked around with cold eyes.

Slowly, his perception spread out, within the narrow reach the Domain allowed him. Slowly, he began to move.

---

Hundreds of thousands of small balconies ringed the inner face of the Coliseum of a Thousand Ascendant Glories. They were arranged in concentric circular tiers, each balcony its own small enclosed room with a transparent front, stacked above and beside and below each other like the cells of a vast gold-threaded hive.

Rose and THE Watcher occupied one of them.

It was only a small corner of a space so large its far curve blurred into distance. Around them, through the thin walls of their balcony and through the open air of the coliseum, came the dull roar of a crowd that was not one crowd but thousands of smaller ones, every balcony cheering or murmuring or shouting at its own chosen participant.

At the center of the arena, suspended in the air above the pit, hung an illusory outline.

A vast forest.

The audience view. An ongoing projection of the Artificial Primordial Domain, rendered at a size that let everyone across the coliseum see it. The trees of the Last Verdant Hour loomed in ghostly translucent detail, rivers of Infinity traced through their trunks in softer blue, and scattered across the floor of the projected forest were a thousand pinpricks of light.

Each pinprick was a contestant.

Rose had found Achilles’s the moment the Game started.

A warm purple-gold pulse, steady as a heartbeat, standing almost at the dead center of one of the forest’s wider glades. She would have recognized it in a crowd of a billion. She kept her eyes on it now, one hand flat against the balcony’s transparent front, her fiery green hair dimmed to a slow smoulder.

Her eyes narrowed.

Another pinprick was already moving toward his.

This one was not small. Its light was thicker, older, and it burned with the unmistakable light of the Second Scale!