Noah stood amidst the frozen devastation, both bodies radiating power that made the air itself nervous.
The level of a Duke....that impossible height that had seemed unreachable just days ago...no longer felt distant.
He could sense it approaching, like seeing a mountain’s peak through thinning clouds.
Would it be close towards 10 Trillion Complexity? Above it?
"Duke level isn’t too far from me now," he said aloud, testing how the words felt with a smile.
"Duke? Don’t focus on some unknown paltry classifications, Outsider" Khor said, her voice carrying amusement. "What matters is your Age. As an Early Creature, you can barely even be considered young. Your usage of authority was decent enough...brute force applied with some intelligence. But when you fully grasp a Principle or master the manipulation of Everything? That’s when you’ll become truly extraordinary."
...!
So she said.
And Noahs eyes flashed sharply as when he looked at his Existence, his Age as an Early Creature was no longer a thosuandth(1/1,000), and it was now closer to a hundredth(1/100)!
He...was going far.
And he would simply continue!
Noah and Ozymandias began moving away from the glacial battlefield, their synchronized steps leaving impressions in frozen ground that would take eons to thaw.
The noise of their battle would certainly draw attention...predators, scavengers, or worse, things looking to eat whatever had proven strong enough to defeat the Allosaurus.
And if they came across an enemy they could not defeat...this entire trip would have to be ended early!
They moved with increasing speed through the impossibly vast forest. Noah’s enhanced body pushed itself, testing new limits, while Ozymandias’s tentacle-form flowed through space with hunger-driven efficiency, swallowing everything it could.
|Continuous Movement Effort Recognized|
|Traversing Primordial Forest/First Forest at high speed|
|Complexity gained: +500,000,000|
|Purity gained: +500,000,000|
The trees gradually changed as they traveled.
What had been chaotic growth became slightly more organized, as if they were approaching something that had imposed order on wildness.
The ground showed signs of passage...not paths exactly, but suggestions that things moved through here regularly.
Hours passed in minutes of subjective time.
The forest that should have taken years to cross compressed itself before their determined advance. And then, shocking in its suddenness, they saw the forest’s edge after a few minutes.
Noah’s eyes pulsed as both bodies stopped simultaneously.
Beyond the tree line stretched something that shouldn’t exist in a place called the Breeding Grounds...a village.
Noah watched a group of these beings working together to construct what looked like a temple. Each one radiated power that would make Honored Living Existences flee, yet they cooperated with easy familiarity, laughing at jokes told in languages that predated words.
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