I Can Assimilate Everything Chapter 712: Glorious! I

Existence is fraught with marvels, yet one can never be certain if a marvel experienced is truly the prelude to one's ruin.

Power offers no shield against the specific blindness that wonder induces, for wonder operates on the same frequency as desire, and desire has a knack for narrowing perception to its focal point, rendering everything peripheral as mere irrelevant noise.

There is a tale whispered in certain circles concerning a Royal Gilded One from the Maharanis Royal House, hailing from a distant Observable Existence.

This being had undertaken cultivation for periods that made most Civilizations appear as fleeting candle flames, accumulating power, wisdom, and the meticulous habits of one who had survived long enough to grasp that survival itself demanded discipline. By any meaningful standard, he was immensely powerful, cherished by his House, and held in high regard by his peers.

Then, during his journeys across THE Gaps of Undefinition, he encountered an injured Relictus.

Relictus are monstrous adversaries, representing the most significant threats to Gilded Ones throughout all Observable Existences where such beings thrive. Their power transcends conventional measurements of strength within Existences; they are not merely beings who have amassed tremendous authority through cultivation, Engineering, or the favor of higher entities.

They are something more ancient and fundamental, creatures whose existence seems governed by entirely different principles, causing mortality rates among Gilded populations to surpass all other combined threats throughout recorded history.

For countless eons, no being had succeeded in capturing even a single Relictus.

Yet, here one was, injured, weakened, and apparently vulnerable — reasons the Royal Gilded One did not immediately scrutinize, as the sheer wonder of the sight before him had narrowed his perception to a singular, blazing point of opportunity.

He did not relay word to his House.

He did not summon other Gilded Ones who might have shared in the triumph or, at the very least, offered assistance against a foe that no single being, regardless of their might, had ever managed to capture.

Instead, he isolated the area, sealing the surrounding region to prevent any others from arriving before he confronted the monstrous creature alone, thereby safeguarding his claim to a wonder that his desire had already re-imagined as a guaranteed victory within the framework of his thoughts.

What transpired thereafter was not a battle, but an absorption. The creature tore the Royal Gilded One asunder, dismantling his existence piece by piece and utilizing the harvested authority to rejuvenate itself from whatever genuine harm it had sustained prior to his arrival.

Had he only reached out to his people.

Had he exercised caution regarding the wonder that presented itself, treating it with the suspicion that eons of survival should have ingrained, rather than the voracious hunger that desire produced.

He would not have met such a calamitous end.

---

At this precise moment, Mansa Nguna erupted into unrestrained laughter.

She flung her arms wide with an abandon not witnessed at any prior point in their interaction, rivers of Observable Force permeating and swirling around her form with a density that imbued the laboratory air with a golden hue. Her hands began to disintegrate at their edges, her fingers dissolving into pure Observable Force as if the boundary between her physical existence and the foundational medium of structured reality was becoming a matter of volition rather than necessity.

She herself could transmute into rivers of golden Observable Force.

Her voice, when she spoke, had undergone a complete transformation; the casual warmth of the scientist was replaced by something more monotone and ambient, even her laughter carried the same flattened quality, as if the personality behind it was receding, becoming secondary to something vaster and less individual.

Observable Force possesses no emotion. While not as terrifying as the superior madness of Infinity in its ability to unmake identity, it is still something grand in its own right, and Mansa Nguna was integrating with it so profoundly that its emotionless nature had begun to bleed into her own.

Before this transformation could become irreversible, Achilles ceased channeling Observable Force into her.

She blinked as the torrent subsided, turning towards him with golden eyes that now held a slightly more detached quality than before the process began. Her frown conveyed the expectation of someone whose commands had never been questioned by anything her Engineering had touched.

"Continue."

He regarded her with icy detachment.

He straightened, meeting her gaze with his purple-gold eyes, which now held no trace of the subdued compliance he had displayed throughout their interaction. The full force of his consciousness was present, calculating, and entirely his own, as he looked at a Gilded One and uttered the word that her Engineering was meant to render impossible for him to direct towards her.

"**No.**"

...!

No?

The word struck Mansa Nguna’s awareness with a quality that defied comprehension, a result her framework lacked the capacity to categorize. The sheer absurdity of a Bounded Lifeform, whose very Engineering she personally oversaw, refusing a direct command almost provoked laughter. Such defiance was simply not possible within the established architecture of her world.

Before she could voice her thoughts, Achilles lifted a hand.

"Silence for a moment. I cannot contain this any longer."

BOOM!

Mansa Nguna’s body went rigid, frozen in place!

Her mouth refused to open. The directive to speak originating from her consciousness met with no response from the physical form that should have obeyed. Her own existence declined her command with the same quiet certainty that Achilles had just denied hers. She was immobilized by something that had permeated her very foundations, now wielding administrative authority over aspects of her being she’d never imagined could be externally accessed.

Waves of shock and disbelief surged through her awareness, with no outlet for expression as the usual channels of communication were rendered unresponsive.

She watched the unfolding events with the helpless focus of someone undergoing a procedure upon themselves.

Everything around them shattered.

The laboratory—its sleek walls, floating platforms, preserved specimens, and gleaming instruments painstakingly accumulated over eons of dedicated research—cracked and fragmented as if the fabric of space itself could no longer withstand the unleashed forces. Boundless torrents of Observable Force and Infinity erupted from every direction—the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the very air, and even from Mansa Nguna’s own body. Achilles had spent their entire encounter subtly embedding his existence into her foundations, like invisible spores.

All of it cascaded towards Achilles.

He had completely and irrevocably Assimilated vast portions of himself into a Gilded One. The resultant feedback of power made every prior advancement in his existence feel like the initial, tentative steps of a being just beginning to comprehend the act of walking.

His existence began an exponential ascent and transformation into something magnificently new. The combined authority of a Gilded One’s Observable Force reserves, along with the Infinity she had wielded across eons of cultivation, streamed through the pathways his spores had meticulously created.

His bones and organs took on a crystalline sheen, glowing throughout his entire body as immense power coursed through them. A Proterozoic transformation spread from his already-altered finger bones, outward through every skeletal structure and organ with a speed reflecting the sheer volume of authority now fueling the process.

And yet.

Even as this profound change occurred, even as he felt his physical existence being rewritten into a form capable of truly containing Second Scale authority, it still felt insufficient. The gnawing hunger that defined his Civilization acknowledged no completion, only the anticipation of the next, yet-unundertaken consumption.

He turned, his gaze falling upon the frozen figure of a Gilded One, who inexplicably obeyed his command due to the countless parts of himself he had interwoven into her structure.

His eyes blazed with a light transcending cold calculation, bordering on the distinct madness of a being who had just realized the perceived ceiling above them was far, far higher than ever imagined.

He pointed directly at her.

At a Gilded One.

And...

"Assimilate."

...!

Oh.

Oh!