I Can Assimilate Everything

Chapter 733: Cornwall I

His main body in the Stunted Observable Existence had established THE Assimilation Cause, THE Primordial Realm of Assimilation blooming with multicolored brilliance across its impossible interior while Rose watched with shining eyes.

His other body remained in the obsidian space with Taylor.

After an unknown amount of time measured in the particular ambiguity of somewhere that did not track duration through conventional means, The Source Lifeform known as Sir William Arthur appeared. He gazed at Achilles and Taylor.

The gentlemanly suit sat on him the same way it always did, without adjustment and without the particular self-consciousness that lesser beings displayed when wearing clothing that communicated something about them.

The tie sat against the white shirt with the same precision. The obsidian sheath at his side rested in the same easy grip. He was the same being who had drawn a blade and spoken a letter of THE Primordial Tongue and carved a crescent through Gigaparsecs of Observable Existence and erased Fourth Scale entities with individual taps of his hand, and he looked exactly as he had looked before all of that.

He began speaking as soon as he arrived, with the directness of someone who found preamble wasteful.

"Duty," he said, "is not a concept that existence rewards. It is a concept that existence requires, regardless of whether the requirement is acknowledged or compensated. The beings who understand this and act on it anyway are among the rarest configurations that existence produces."

His measured cadence filled the obsidian space without effort, each word placed with the same deliberateness Achilles had observed in every previous exchange.

"Swords of Existence are few. Those qualified to become them are fewer still. The weight of what they carry and the adversity of what they face ensures that the position self-selects for a category of being that most existences never produce."

He paused.

"But a sword requires more than a blade. Intelligence gathering. Information networks. Support infrastructure. The analysis of threats before they reach the beings responding to them."

His eyes moved between Achilles and Taylor with the even attention of someone assessing two things simultaneously without favoring either.

"The Attendants of Existence fulfill these functions. The requirements are less strict than those for Swords, but the position remains for those who are worthy, and it carries what all positions connected to this structure carry, a link to THE Primordial Source."

...!

Achilles processed this with the intellectual calm that had served him across every significant decision.

An Attendant.

He turned the designation over in his awareness. He was not opposed to this. The structure Sir William had described carried implications worth examining carefully, and any position connected to Source Lifeforms meant proximity to something that occupied his thinking considerably.

THE Primordial Source.

Similar to Infinity in the warning his existence produced when he reached toward it, that same categorical refusal his foundations had generated the first time a thread of blue Infinity wrapped around his finger and communicated depths his consciousness could not yet contain.

THE Primordial Source had produced that same signal when Sir William utilized it, the boundary between him and those obsidian currents absolute and clear.

He could not get past it to Assimilate even a sliver of what ran through those rivers.

Yet.

But a position connected to the structure meant sustained proximity. Sustained proximity meant sustained observation. Sustained observation of THE Primordial Source across sufficient time, might produce understanding that raw proximity alone could never yield.

And if he ever understood THE Primordial Source sufficiently to attempt Assimilation of it, what that would make him was a question his mind approached and then stepped back from because the answer exceeded his current frameworks for comprehension.

Before he could respond, Taylor exhaled.

"Yes," she said. "I’ll become an Attendant."

Achilles remained quiet beside her for a moment as right after...

"Agreed."

Sir William nodded once with the efficiency of a man who had expected both answers before asking.

"You two will begin in The Cornwall Observable Existence." He straightened slightly. "One of the bases of THE Swords of Existence. Let’s go."

He clenched his fist.

Obsidian rivers surged outward from him in every direction, THE Primordial Source running through the currents. The rivers wrapped around the three of them and the obsidian space ceased to exist!

---

Achilles found himself surrounded by a boundless and grand form of power that simultaneously excluded him from it with absolute completeness, a barrier between his existence and the slivers of THE Primordial Source running through Sir William’s currents that his every attempt to approach simply found present without vulnerability or gap.

He could not get past that boundary.

The Assimilation Cause within him reached toward those obsidian currents with the hunger that had consumed Absolutes and Gilded Ones and the Waters of a Miniature Cause, and found the barrier the same way water finds stone, present and impassable regardless of the force applied.

Not yet.

Whatever method Sir William utilized for the transfer of three beings across the distance between Observable Existences, it produced a sensation that made duration meaningless, hours seeming to pass and seconds seeming to pass in the same subjective span without either measurement feeling more accurate than the other.

POP!

The bubble of obsidian light collapsed around him and he found himself somewhere that caused his existence to quiver with a response he did not immediately have language for.

Inches from where he stood, rivers of pure golden Observable Force flowed with concentration that exceeded anything he had encountered outside his own Inner Dominion, the currents moving through the surrounding space with the ease of something that had been flowing through this particular landscape for eons beyond counting.

An ancient idyllic landscape spread around them with the quality of somewhere that had been tended across incomprehensible spans of time.

Castles rose in the distance with architecture that communicated age and purpose simultaneously, stone that had been placed with intention and had remained placed across ages that made most civilizations look preliminary.

The surrounding grounds held the layered quality of landscape that had been cultivated by beings of tremendous power who cared about what they were cultivating.

He and Taylor turned in the same moment.

In a field near the largest of the distant castles, rows upon rows of Third Scale existences trained in formations.

They followed the movements of a being that dwarfed them, a massive Source Lifeform whose form was that of a winged obsidian draconic eel, three pairs of obsidian wings extending from a body that moved through the air above the training field with the ease of something for whom physical space was a preference rather than a constraint.

Its power pressed against Achilles’s existence from across the field with the same quality he had felt from Sir William, THE Primordial Source carried as a component of its nature, its authority comparable to the being standing beside him in the gentlemanly suit!

Two Source Lifeforms in one location.

The training field below them, Third Scale entities following the movements of something that carried THE Primordial Source in its foundations!

They had arrived at an unfathomable place!