I Can Assimilate Everything-Chapter 598: THE! II
What did it feel like to finally and truly enter a Scale that had a number?
The best way that Achilles could explain it was weight.
Heavy.
He felt unfathomably and gloriously heavy.
Prior to this moment, he had broken shackles that others couldn’t even perceive, and that breaking had felt like freedom, like something that had been weighing him down his entire existence was finally removed. He had felt light and unbound and capable of movement that his previous limitations would never have permitted.
Right now, the sensation was entirely opposite and yet equally liberating.
It felt like his existence was being bathed in the flames of his Way as he, as an individual, represented a genuine Civilization. Not a collection of beings following shared principles, but a singular entity whose philosophy and purpose carried enough weight to shape reality around it.
This was what gave him weight. What gave him Depth.
The feeling was both foreign and familiar in ways that created strange resonance within his consciousness. He had memories of THE Corpse Hierophant and THE Sovereign Catalyst, had experienced echoes of how they felt as THE entities through the fragments he had consumed. But his own sensation of Depth felt even more unique than what those borrowed memories suggested, as if his Way of Assimilation created weight through mechanisms that even other THE entities had never experienced.
When he opened his eyes, he saw multicolored waves and strings as the makeup of all Existence.
This time fully and truly, not as approximation or enhanced perception but as genuine sight that understood what it was observing. The fundamental architecture of reality spread before him in patterns of infinite complexity that somehow made perfect sense to his transformed consciousness.
He felt like he could interact with all of it.
He even reached out to touch the countless colorful waves surrounding him, his hand passing through streams of Existential code that responded to his attention with subtle shifts in their patterns.
And he felt like he understood. He understood!
Oh!
THE Surface Depth was where Existence begins to notice you.
Before this point, no matter how powerful an entity becomes, they remain fundamentally insignificant to the grand architecture of reality. They can accumulate strength and conquer worlds and build empires that span galaxies, but reality itself treats them as temporary phenomena.
Waves upon an ocean that will eventually settle. Flames that will eventually gutter out. Background noise in the eternal conversation of Existence.
THE Surface Depth changes that. He knew this.
He felt this!
When an entity crosses into THE Surface Depth of Absolute Sovereignty, they become a participant in that conversation. Reality acknowledges them not as a thing that exists within it, but as a voice that can speak to it. They have earned the right to be heard.
Achilles had earned the right to be heard!
Imagine spending your entire existence shouting into an expanse that never responds. You can affect things around you, certainly. You can move objects and defeat enemies and reshape continents according to your will. But that expanse itself, the fundamental substrate upon which all things rest, never acknowledges your existence. You are a pattern it tolerates, nothing more.
Then, one day, that expanse turns and looks at you.
That is what crossing into THE Surface Depth made Achilles feel.
There was a moment of recognition, of being seen for the first time by something so vast that one’s mind cannot comprehend its scale.
Your words carry weight now. Fucking literally.
This was the weight of Depth that Achilles felt pressing against reality around him.
When you speak, reality considers what you’ve said. When you assert something to be true, Existence examines that assertion and decides whether to accept it. You are no longer shouting into the void. You are having a conversation with it.
"Yes..."
Achilles had his eyes blaze with brilliance as he processed this understanding. The power that THE Corpse Hierophant and others wielded at THE Surface Depth crystallized in his comprehension.
It was called Assertion.
They were able to Assert their Way, where their words carried the weight of their Civilization behind every declaration.
Achilles felt his mind buzzing as he broke down all the flows of information into a coherent whole.
Assertion...was exactly what it sounds like. You assert something to be true, and reality acknowledges your assertion. This is not the same as making something true through raw force. It is not overwhelming reality with power until it submits. It is making a claim and having that claim recognized as worthy of consideration.
A Surface Depth entity might assert that their blade cannot be blocked by lesser metals. Reality hears this assertion. It examines the claim. It considers the weight and immensity behind the one making it. And if the assertion is accepted, then within that entity’s sphere of influence, their blade genuinely cannot be blocked by lesser metals. Not because the blade has become infinitely sharp, but because reality has agreed to treat the assertion as locally true.
The key limitation is that Assertion requests acknowledgment. It does not demand. Reality can refuse if the assertion overreaches, if the entity lacks sufficient weight to back their claim, or if another entity of equal or greater Depth contests it.
This is what separates Surface Depth from the heights above.
"Haha..."
Achilles couldn’t help but laugh as he looked at Rose and Eyyanah.
Both their eyes were luminous when they looked at him, with his body currently radiating a sense of oppressive power that pressed against reality around them. Rose’s expression held fierce pride alongside her warmth, while Eyyanah’s jeweled eyes showed something between awe and calculation as she reassessed everything she thought she understood.
He was about to tell them how it all felt when a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously resonated through his consciousness.
|Welcome. You have arrived truly and finally in THE Vakochev Scales of Existence. You now...matter.|
BOOM!
The booming declaration accompanied by blazing prompt flashed before his eyes as he was welcomed into this stage of power!
His eyes blazed with recognition as this was what Eyyanah had mentioned before. What every THE entity heard when they attained THE Surface Depth for the first time. The acknowledgment that transformed background noise into recognized voice.
It was grand to hear and see, and truly he found himself wondering about the mystery that had puzzled everyone else.
Just what were these Vakochev Scales of Existence, and why did they hold this distinction of Vakochev?
