I Can Assimilate Everything Chapter 748: Directive II

How the hell did one go from THE Source Lands to a place called THE Infinite Carcosa?

THE Elvarna Mining Expanse in THE Infinite Carcosa, at that!

Achilles cursed internally as his existence settled into wherever the crimson chains had dropped him, and the prompts bloomed to tell him exactly how far from where he had been he now was.

|THE Infinite Carcosa is, to Infinite Lifeforms, the equivalent of what THE Source Lands are to Source Lifeforms.|

|However, THE Infinite Carcosa is endlessly vast in comparison to THE Source Lands.|

...!

The lands of Infinite Lifeforms.

His existence buzzed at the realization. He had crossed, in a single tap from that ancient thing wearing a Gilded One’s shape, from the most coveted territory of one category of supreme being into the heartland of another entirely. From the Source to the Infinite. He had spent some time learning to be cautious and respect The Source Lands, and now he had been deposited in another place as cargo!

His surroundings sharpened into focus.

Taylor was close by, and the others too, all of them appearing on the same platform in a cluster of stolen beings. And the place they had been brought to spread out around them in a way that made him understand, immediately, that it had been built for one purpose and would tolerate no other.

THE Elvarna Mining Expanse stretched across distances his eyes could not bound. Blue and crimson rock formations jutted up everywhere, jagged and enormous, threaded through with veins of light. Massive twisting mountains rose and curled against one another in shapes that no natural process would have produced, and between them ran rivers of pure Infinity, blue and churning and dense enough that the air above them shimmered with the strain of holding so much potential in one place. It was a complex, a working operation, and the scale of it said it had been running for a very long time.

They stood on a platform, and on that platform a titanic obsidian Fifth Scale existence stared down at them.

It was enormous beyond the others, its body carved from something that drank the surrounding light rather than reflecting it, its form vaguely humanoid and vastly wrong in its proportions, built at a size that made the captured Swords of Existence look like insects clustered at its feet. Its eyes were cold as it looked over Achilles and the others, the flat assessing cold of something cataloguing tools rather than meeting beings.

Past it rose a mountain.

The mountain was filled with ore, riddled through with massive pathways that brimmed with chaotic Infinity of terrifying density, and across those pathways Achilles could see workers. Hundreds of Triassic Scale beings. Thousands of Third Scale beings. All of them with crimson-blue chaos chains wrapped around their feet, all of them moving with the slow, grinding rhythm of labor that had no end and no hope built into it.

He felt the same chains around his own feet.

WUU!

|Crimson-Blue Chaos Chains have anchored your existence to THE Elvarna Mining Expanse.|

|While these chains are in place, you cannot attack others, nor unleash any authority with the intention to attack.|

|Your existence is bound to this place. Departure is not permitted.|

"Fucking hell," Taylor cursed beside him, her face gone sour in a way he had not seen on her before.

The Source Lifeforms and the Gilded Lifeforms who had been killing each other moments ago stood pale and shocked all around, looking about the Expanse in despair. Their war had not mattered. Their sides had not mattered. The thing that had reached down and taken them had not cared which of them was winning, and now they were all the same kind of thing here. Workers. Anchored. Equal in the only way that counted, which was that none of them could leave!

Achilles kept his calm as best he could and looked up at the titan ahead of him.

|A Warden of THE Elvarna Mining Expanse.|

|Classification: Fifth Scale Existence, THE Mesozoic Scale.|

The Warden looked down at the fresh arrivals, and when it spoke, its voice was cold and cruel and unhurried, the tone of something that had given this speech a great many times and had stopped finding any of it interesting.

"Welcome to THE Elvarna Mining Expanse. You are here because something that outranks all of you, your Swords and your Gilded alike, has decided you are useful. You will not question this. You will not appeal it. There is no one above me here who will hear you, and I will not."

Its cold eyes moved across them.

"You will mine. The ore in this Expanse is concentrated Existential Biomass, and it is volatile. It will try to detonate in your hands. It will try to unmake the existence of any worker careless enough to handle it wrong, and many of you will be unmade learning to handle it right. That is acceptable. There are always more workers."

BOOM!

It let that sit, then continued.

"Once you have excavated your ore, you will carry it there, and you will offer it daily."

It pointed, and Achilles followed the gesture to a distant area where an altar stood.

The altar was an ominous thing even across that distance, immense Infinity and crimson brilliance converging around it in slow spiraling currents, a structure that pulled at the eye and the existence both. And toward it moved a procession, an endless line of Source Lifeforms and Infinite Lifeforms and Gilded Lifeforms, all in chains, all carrying their mined ore, all shuffling forward to lay it down before the altar and then turn back toward the mountain to dig out more.

A line of supreme beings, reduced to this.

OH!

Achilles took it all in, the mountain and the chains and the altar and the cold titan above him, and understood with total clarity the shape of where he now stood.

He had been brought into a terrifying place!

A horrid, terrifying place!