novelraw Chapter 696 696: First Blood! II
Chapter 696 696: First Blood! II
Another laugh echoed out, louder this time.
"Get your bets in, place them right now, the odds have moved and Ego Crystals are on the table, the house is still favoring our Rhyacian of course because he's Second Scale and he's going to win, he is going to win, but the payout on the First Scale line has become very, very interesting, so place wisely my addicts and place quickly!"
The words poured through the Domain meant only for the two combatants and the audience, and the Rhyacian heard them the same instant Achilles did, with the effect on his face immediate as his paradox-eyes went tight and he visibly did not appreciate being narrated like entertainment.
"Enough," he said, and came forward.
Civilization exploded out of him in a torrent, a solid column of paradox-woven chaos that did not fly so much as arrive, covering the glade from end to end in a single sustained push of Second Scale authority that turned the trees translucent and made the moss forget its own texture, and the river of Infinity on the glade's edge paused in its flow before resuming in a direction that was not the same direction it had been going.
Achilles stood in the middle of it with his tattoos blazing and his heart settling into its new weight, and in the back of his mind, calm and cold, he simply spoke.
Assimilate.
BOOM!
White water bloomed out of him from his back and his shoulders and his arms, pouring from his form like tentacles of living tide, each one smooth and sinuous and gleaming with the pure white-gold of the Waters of the Flood, unfolding into the air of the glade with the same slow inevitability as the bridge had unfolded out of the broken sky.
They moved with a patience that was almost affectionate, reaching outward toward the incoming attack first and meeting the paradox-chaos with the soft certainty of a tide meeting a shoreline.
BOOM! HUUM!
Where the tentacles touched the paradox-chaos, the paradox-chaos ceased to be paradox-chaos and became water instead, became Achilles's water, became part of the expanding mass of white tide that was growing second by second across the glade, the tentacles devouring the attack mid-flight the way a wave devoured a word shouted into it.
The Rhyacian stopped where he stood as his paradox-eyes widened for the first time, all the rings snapping briefly into parallel before resuming their disorder, and the words that escaped him was less a question than a failure of grammar.
"Yo, what the fuck?"
Achilles said nothing as the tentacles reached past the dissolved attack and touched the Rhyacian himself, and again, in the back of his mind, the same calm cold syllables.
Assimilate.
Close contact allowed him to assimilate even quicker!
The Rhyacian felt it instantly, his own Civilization beginning to slide off him as his Paradoxical Chaos, carefully cultivated and thickly embedded in his foundation, began to flow into the white tide in slow inexorable rivulets!
He fought the way Second Scale beings always fought for their authority, because Second Scale beings did not give up authority lightly, and he hurled more attacks and he pushed with the full weight of his Civilizational Anchor!
He was paradox! He was chaos! He was....fucking nothing because all of it went into the water, and the water drank every drop!
HUUM!
The Rhyacian staggered backward, which was not a thing Second Scale beings did, his skin losing a shade of its layered purple and his paradox-eyes slowing by a fraction as his mouth shaped a second word that came out weaker than the first.
"What...is this? Huh?! What are you?!"
What was he? Right now, what he was was very simple. He was in a new Observable Existence, and he wanted his exchange of Civilizations! What he was right now...
Achilles finally spoke, softly and without looking up.
"Hungry."
WAA!
He was hungry to assimilate nee things!
One of the white tentacles coiled upward and arched and struck like a wave closing over a rock, wrapping the Rhyacian around the middle and then around the chest and then over the shoulders, and then it kept coming, spiraling around him faster than he could react until what had been a Rhyacian Proterozoic Entity stood in the center of the glade encased inside a perfect sphere of white water. The sphere closed with a soft seal of tide against tide, and once more...
Assimilate!
The sphere began to shrink with the smooth steady motion of a tide drawing back from a shore, compressing inward and taking with it everything inside.
HUUM!
The Rhyacian's last outline was visible for only a half-second, his paradox-eyes wide and one hand raised in an unfinished gesture, and then he was gone, and the water was gone too, absorbed back into Achilles's skin in a slow seep that left his archaic tattoos brighter than they had been before!
The glade was quiet, and the pressure in it had eased!
...!
Above the Domain, the commentator's voice returned as for the first two full seconds, she did not say a single word!
Then she said, flatly..."Oh."
The brightness was gone out of her voice entirely before it came rushing back with twice its former energy, louder and faster and just a touch unsteady at the edges.
"Oh my, my, my, well, well, well! My watchers, we have, we have just, okay let me say it, let me say it cleanly so the replay systems catch it! Our Rhyacian has been eaten, he has been devoured live by a First Scale participant in Sector Nine on your feeds right now! A Rhyacian, a first-stage Second Scale cultivator of Paradoxical Chaos from one of our better houses has just been reduced to a snack! Oh my!"
She laughed, and it was not her pretty laugh but a higher one, and it went on longer than was entirely dignified before she got it under control and continued.
"I want to tell you sincerely that a significant portion of our audience has just lost their life savings, because the odds favored the Second Scale so heavily that the house's payout on the First Scale line was frankly silly, so those few of you who placed on the long side are rich now, congratulations to you. And to the rest of you I am so sorry, I am so deeply sorry... I did warn you all to place wisely and I really did try!"
A long delighted pause stretched across the glade before she spoke again with the satisfied purr of a commentator who had just remembered how much she loved her job.
"It appears our Last Stand has some unexpected things in it this round, and I do so love the unexpected. I love it, so let me refresh the brackets for everyone watching and let me also remind our remaining participants gently that Sector Nine is no longer a quiet sector, Sector Nine has teeth!"
Achilles let the voice wash over him without reacting, turning his attention inward as he felt his Inner Dominion begin to expand rapidly, especially his Realm of Chaos and Assimilation, and the weavings and memories of a Second Scale being much grander than Lamashtu flowing into him!