Chapter 4099: The Purest Hunger! III
Ozymandias stood complete, his form radiating the terrible certainty of something that would never stop hungering. Yet through their bond, Noah could feel something else…control.
His will still commanded this Inevitability, though now it was less like controlling a limb and more like directing a force of nature.
“How does it feel,” Khor asked with genuine curiosity, “to be both predator and prey? To hunger for everything while being everything others hunger for?”
Noah opened his eyes, meeting both Khor’s gaze and Ozymandias’s simultaneously.
“Like understanding why Inevitabilities terrify many Existences,” he replied.
Khor laughed with delight that made the Shore’s light flicker.
“Now you begin to understand, Outsider. Hunger isn’t evil. It’s just honest about what everything else pretends not to be…desperate to continue, willing to consume others to persist, inevitable in its need.”
She looked at Ozymandias with something approaching pride.
“Take care of him. Inevitabilities are like children…they need guidance, boundaries, and occasionally someone to tell them ‘no’ when they try to eat something important.”
…!
The humanoid tentacle form of Ozymandias opened its eyes fully, and reality took a step back.
Seas of stellar obsidian light surged around him like tides that had decided gravity was optional. His presence made the air itself reconsider whether it wanted to exist so close to something that might devour it.
Prompts cascaded before Noah’s vision with urgency that suggested even the system was struggling to process what had occurred!
|All Everythings Stripped Simultaneously from Ozymandias|
|Processing ramifications…|
|Everything of Limitations: REMOVED|
|Effect: No maximum capacity for consumption|
|Effect: No physical boundaries defining form|
|Effect: No temporal restrictions on existence|
|Warning: Without limits, growth has the potential to become cancerous|
|Warning: May consume self if external food depleted|
Noah walked closer to his transformed other self, gazing upward at the terrible beauty of what Ozymandias had become.
He read the prompts with fascination and gravity!
Khor stood nearby, her tiny form radiating satisfaction as she sighed and shook her head with the particular exhaustion of an artist who had just completed a masterpiece.
More prompts materialized, each one detailing a loss that was also transformation.
|Everything of Joy: REMOVED|
|Effect: Cannot experience a true sense of satisfaction from consumption|
|Effect: No pleasure delays the hunger|
|Warning: Endless consumption without reward|
|Note: Efficiency increased by 400%|
|Everything of Rage: REMOVED|
|Effect: Cannot be provoked to rash action|
|Effect: Consumption becomes mechanical, inevitable|
|Warning: No anger means no passion for protection|
|Note: Emotional volatility eliminated|
|Everything of Life: REMOVED|
|Effect: No biological needs or functions|
|Effect: Cannot be killed through conventional means|
|Warning: No growth through living experiences|
|Warning: Existence becomes static hunger|
|Everything of Death: REMOVED|
|Effect: Cannot cease through normal ending|
|Effect: Persistence beyond reasonable termination|
|Warning: No rest, no peace, no conclusion|
|Warning: May continue consuming after existence ends|
The implications stacked upon each other, each loss revealing itself as both liberation and curse.
Ozymandias had become pure in the way a blade was pure…excellent at one thing, not excellent for others!
|Final Assessment Complete|
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