Infinite Mana In The Apocalypse novel Chapter 3755

Chapter 3755: Resistances IV

And then it came.

As 30 Existential Dimensional Lattices spun all around me, a prompt came as if to affirm my being.

| You have unlocked all 10 True Absolute Existential Resistances at 1%. You may be the first in all of recorded Existence to do so, giving you an exalted distinction.|

Exalted?

No.

Not exalted. But heading towards Infinity.

A being no longer playing within the rules.

One ready... to change them!

The rain continued in the Infiniverse Crucible. Still radiant. Still multicolored. Still beneath me.

But my eyes had already left it behind.

They were fixed elsewhere- away from the Infiniverse entirely! Through the eyes of another body.

Time slowed.

Nine Time Sentinels. Wrapped in yesterdays they couldn’t let go.

I’d seen them before and their status panels, but things should be distinctly different now.

In addition to their Complexity Quotients and Purity Quotients, I should now be able to see something else.

NAME: Time Sentinel Paraxis

TITLE: Librarian of Lost Moments

TRUE SOURCE: Regression

CQ: 162,000 SU | PQ: 158,100 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (3%)

3%.

Too little!

My eyes wandered.

NAME: Time Sentinel Virunys

TITLE: Recorder of Eternal Now

TRUE SOURCE: Moment

CQ: 174,800 SU | PQ: 169,500 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (5%) |

5%.

Powerful. But...still not over the top.

And then...

NAME: Time Sentinel Leader Velmior Thal-Veyr TITLE: Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds

TRUE SOURCE: Interval

CQ: 220,000 SU | PQ: 215,000 SU

RESISTANCE: Temporal Resistance (9%)

The most powerful Time Sentinel.

How many Existential Dimensional Lattices did he fold to attain 9%? A number that seemed low, but its capabilities were undoubtedly grand!

That was what near-untouchability looked like. Almost sacred. Almost.

And then I looked to my left.

Romulus.

NAME: Primarch Romulus, Verdant Flame of Collapse

TITLE: Primarch of Entropic Continuity

TRUE SOURCE: Entropy

CQ: 111,111 (179,999) SU | PQ: 111,111 (180,000) SU

RESISTANCE: Paradoxical Resistance (10%)

Less Complexity Quotient and Purity Quotient, and yet...1% more!

Romulus was a Marked One who had his weavings Compressed, while the Time Sentinels were not.

Romulus was a reason to be calm in this whole ordeal even if I didn’t erupt with my newfound power.

...!

I may or may not be able to touch him in his current stage.

He had after all, trained for countless millions of years while I...how many days has it been since grasping True Sources?

But even I had limits. Temporary ones.

Romulus stood like a collapsed temple of inevitability.

I smiled while looking at this being who was my senior from the same Wheel of Existence.

Not envy.

But a sense of admiration.

A monsters acknowledging another monster.

After all, his True Source of Entropy led him to the strongest Resistance- or what I personally believed to be the strongest Resistance- Paradoxical.

As for the Sentinels?

One Resistance for all of these entities from the Chronosect of Threadbound Folds.

I had ten Resistances. At one percent each. So, how would a clash unfold?

I closed my eyes.

And Existence paused.

I could feel every terrifying possible weaving about to erupt at this moment.

I felt Velmior watching. Judging.

I felt Romulus ready to move against Eluriah Veilnox.

I saw the Time Sentinels and their confidence.

They thought they understood time, and that they understood me.

They would soon come to learn otherwise!

BOOM!

I opened my eyes.

’You see through one lens,’ I thought. ’While I see through ten.’

...!

No rain fell in this Dead Frequency of the End.

The Dead Wheel it was on groaned beneath us.

The Frequency of the End pulsed, barely living, barely breathing- a collapsed monument buried in its own myth.

Nine Time Sentinels stood across the fractured horizon. Each a master of twisted seconds and rewoven instants, their robes fluttering in warped winds that had no direction.

But only one mattered.

Velmior Thal-Veyr.

Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds. A man who had apparently seen every end of every story and simply... yawned.

I stood between him and Romulus.

I had already measured them all.

But I needed to know more and obtain additional data to back how my weavings were unfolding.

I believed in seeing.

In knowing.

And so, I stepped forward.

Voice low. Unmoved.

"Instead of erupting into a chaotic battlefield where a thousand clashes lead to the same end already read a million times," I said, "why don’t we propose something simpler?"

Velmior’s ageless eyes turned toward me, curiosity flickering like a dying clock.

I tilted my head, gaze sharp. "Let the strongest of each side fight. The rest will observe."

Murmurs stirred across the dead weavings. Even the wind tilted in question.

Velmior’s lips parted in what might have been called a smile.

Romulus didn’t move, but I saw the corner of his robe ripple- he was not amused.

I continued, calm and absolute. "If all outcomes are already known, then there’s no need to waste energy on repetition."

That was the trick.

He had already seen all futures where we fought as a whole.

But had he seen this?

Did his infinite echoes cover a variable he didn’t predict?

Velmior chuckled.

A low, resonant sound. Not laughter. Appreciation.

"You wish to watch the truly powerful dance," he said. "To see if the fabric of time can be folded differently."

He raised his hand. Time folded around his fingertips like a child’s toy- the one around him anyways.

"No one interferes," he said.

His voice was not loud.

But the other Sentinels froze and gave an affirmation.

All of them.

Not a breath moved. Not a strand of power shifted. Every timeline paused.

Even Eluriah’s gaze stiffened slightly.

"I will indulge this," Velmior said, walking forward, each step grinding eons into the air.

"And in doing so, show you all... that resistance, even refined, even entropic, is still- futile."

His cloak of moments flared.

Romulus stepped beside me, not glancing my way.

His entropy roared.

Their eyes locked.

Existence trembled.

And above, the Dead Wheel began to whisper!

BOOOM!

The air fractured.

It didn’t break. It didn’t shatter.

It folded.

Temporal pressure and paradoxical entropy collapsed against each other as the two stepped forward- not like men, but like movements.

Romulus, Verdant Flame of Collapse, bore down like the slow end of all things. His every breath exhaled centuries. His robes didn’t ripple in the wind; the wind adjusted its course to avoid disturbing them. Behind him, Existential Dimensional Lattices bloomed. Not three. Not ten. But dozens upon dozens as they should be in the hundreds, or more if he was still holding back.

Each one a geometric prayer written in the collapsing bones of dying chaos.

They spun with violence and entropy, fractal and furious. Each lattice a decree of Paradoxical Resistance made manifest.

And across from him, Velmior Thal-Veyr, Grand Conductor of the Whenfolds, did not yield.

He stood at the nexus of a storm of time. His body did not move- but his echoes did. Countless iterations of himself flickered like spiraling clock hands around him. Some young. Some aged. Some already dead. Some still being born.

His Lattices? Different.

Elegant. Simple. Singular.

They did not roar.

They ticked.

And each tick was a commandment.

I watched as the first clash occurred. It did not begin with motion. It began with presence. When two inevitabilities occupy the same point in space, Existence is forced to make a decision.

Reality blinked.

Time jumped.

Entropy bled.

Romulus struck first.

No war cry. No grand gesture. Just a ripple.

One of his Lattices flared, and the ground behind Velmior aged chaotically a thousand years in an instant. Dead Omniverses that had once stood there in a forgotten timeline turned to sand and ash

Velmior raised a single finger.

And rewound it.

His Temporal Resistance pulsed- not defensive, but corrective. Reality itself hiccuped as the aged sands reformed, recoiled, returned.

But only mostly.

Romulus smiled.

Because a third of the decay remained.

...Interesting.

One percent.

Just one.

It was all it took.

Even among Primarchs.

I stood at the edge of it all, untouched, my hands folded behind my back as I observed the clash of titans.

The difference in power wasn’t in force. It was in finality. Romulus moved as if the outcome had already been etched. Velmior moved as if it could still be negotiated.

And therein was the difference.

Certainty.

That 1% difference between them made one of them certain!

Velmior narrowed his eyes.

Time screamed.

Dozens of versions of himself collapsed into the now, each one wielding a moment from a separate timeline. Together, they moved in synchronicity to box Romulus in.

Romulus’s entropy expanded.

Not violently. Inevitably.

His Lattices burned downward like chains of collapsing logic. Every strike from Velmior aged into irrelevance. Every breath he took aged the air around him. His very act of being eroded timelines.

And then...

He moved.

Not forward.

Not backward.

He slipped.

A paradox.

One moment he was clashing with Velmior.

The next, he slipped and he stood before Eluriah Veilnox!

...!