I Can Assimilate Everything

Chapter 721: Persevere! II

His Inner Dominion cracked.

It was not the controlled expansion of territory growing beyond previous boundaries, but the violent fracturing of architecture that had been subjected to force exceeding its current capacity to contain!

The Realm of Assimilation split along lines that blazed with light pouring through the gaps, territories that had housed consumed existences and integrated memories and the foundations of his advancement suddenly hosting something that dwarfed everything they had previously contained.

The fracturing spread.

His internal existence began melting at its edges, the boundaries between his Realms dissolving under the pressure of integration that demanded more space than his current Inner Dominion architecture could provide without restructuring itself from the ground upward.

A profound sense of power erupted through him simultaneously with a desolation that had no precedent in his emotional experience, the quality of something vast and fundamental making contact with something comparatively small.

He had to roar!

It was a necessity, his existence demanding expression through sound because the alternative was implosion!

"Persevere!"

BOOM!

The word came out internally, and white flames erupted through his Inner Dominion with speed that left no territory untouched, burning through the cracked and melting architecture of his internal existence with fire that did not consume what it burned but elevated it instead.

The fractures sealed behind the flames, becoming something grander, the restructured architecture of an Inner Dominion that had been forced to expand beyond its previous parameters by fire connected to THE Primordial Source itself.

His foundations purified under the white flames with thoroughness that exceeded what any deliberate cultivation could have produced in equivalent time, impurities and inefficiencies accumulated across his entire existence of rapid and sometimes unrefined Assimilation burning away to leave behind something cleaner and more capable.

His elevation surged! His Existence, its depth, its immensity, its glory....it rose!

Externally, his expression remained taut and still, revealing nothing of the cataclysm reorganizing everything within him!

The white flames continued their purifying work!

Persevere was a truly unique word.

Even now, having used it once and felt its effects burning through every territory of his Inner Dominion, Achilles felt like he had not fully grasped the meaning it carried. It was not a technique or a capability in the conventional sense that his other powers functioned. It felt closer to an answer, the kind that existed before the question had been fully articulated, something that responded to adversity not by removing it but by ensuring the one facing it remained standing regardless of what the adversity had done to them.

In using this letter of THE Primordial Tongue, one could rise from damage that should have been permanent. The existence would heal, then reinforce itself beyond what it had been before the damage occurred, the cost being drawn from one’s own Source with each usage. He should have only been able to utilize it three times through the relic Vireth had given him. By Assimilating it instead, he had gained access for as long as his existence could withstand the repeated draws on his Source.

He was still experiencing the first usage moving through him when it happened.

HUUM!

The obsidian plates surrounding him broke apart.

They did not crack gradually or dissolve with the measured quality of something winding down. They simply opened, separating along edges that had been seamless moments ago with efficiency that communicated they had completed their purpose rather than failed at it. The isolation they had provided ended with the same immediacy with which it had begun.

A profound sense of vertigo struck him as his awareness reconnected with external time.

It was the specific disorientation of someone whose internal experience had measured minutes while the world outside had processed hours, duration having moved at entirely different rates on opposite sides of the encasement. His senses scrambled to reconcile the gap, his foundations reaching outward to reestablish connections that had been severed cleanly and now needed to reform across whatever distance and time had accumulated during the transit.

He looked up.

An endlessly vibrant blue-gold sky stretched above him, filled with golden clouds that moved with the particular quality of formations shaped by forces having nothing to do with wind. Rivers and seas of golden Observable Force permeated everything around him, flowing through the atmosphere itself rather than across any surface, saturating the visible reality with concentrations that made the Silver Philotimo feel modest in comparison.

His entire existence screamed in joy, his foundations responding to the density of Observable Force surrounding him the way a starving thing responds to abundance, every aspect of his transformed physiology recognizing this environment as one where growth was not merely possible but inevitable for anyone with the foundations to receive it.

The figure of Vireth floated above him with a tired look that communicated the transit had cost her something genuine despite her considerable power. She sighed.

"Alright, little weapon."

Her crimson hair drifted in currents of Observable Force that moved through this atmosphere like weather.

"Though you are a Bounded Lifeform and would normally not be permitted here, I welcome you to what is known as THE Braneworld Observable Existence. One of the more significant Observable Existences under the authority of Gilded Ones."

Her crimson-gold eyes held the focused quality of someone delivering a briefing rather than conversation.

"In a lower Observable Existence nested inside this Braneworld Observable Existence, that is where THE Osmontian currently is. We, and others who will arrive soon, will be joining a Legion of Ira Gilded Ones who will be sent to that lower existence. We should be arriving at the period when THE Osmontian began stripping Infinity from Gilded Ones."

...!

The words landed with weight that his external expression absorbed without displaying.

Achilles wanted to focus on the letter of Persevere still moving through him, still completing its first usage across his restructured Inner Dominion, still reinforcing foundations that had been cracked and melted and rebuilt into something grander than what they had been before he uttered it. The process was not finished and demanded internal attention he could not fully give it while simultaneously processing the reality of his current situation.

Which was this.

He had now moved from his own Observable Existence, then the Silver Philotimo Observable Existence, and now THE Braneworld Observable Existence.

Three Existences in a span of time that his internal clock could not accurately measure. Each one grander than the last by degrees that made the previous seem like preparation rather than destination. Each one bringing him further from everything he had known and closer to a confrontation with something that had made Sororis Prima into a meal, a confrontation he did not want and would find a way out of it at the earliest convenience!