I Can Assimilate Everything-Chapter 665: What The Hell? II
Achilles walked toward the two Absolutes that were actually unraveling before him, their existences losing coherence with each passing moment.
His focus settled on the follower of THE Prisoner.
This being had looked upon the natives of this stunted reality with contempt that came from believing himself utterly superior.
And now he writhed on the crystalline floor, portions of his existence forgetting how to be complex.
Achilles knelt down to look at this unraveling being with eyes that held cold curiosity rather than mercy.
"Expectations."
His voice emerged calm.
"I've heard stories about how expectations are the root of all suffering. How anticipating outcomes that may never arrive creates nothing but disappointment and despair. How the wise learn to release expectations entirely and accept whatever circumstances emerge."
He tilted his head slightly, studying the horror spreading across the Absolute's burning features.
"I have always found this perspective somewhat naive. Expectations drive advancement. They push beings to exceed their current limitations. Without expecting something better, why would anyone strive for anything at all?"
His white-gold threaded eyes narrowed.
"But right now, I find myself in an unusual position. All my expectations have been exceeded. The timeline I had constructed for when I could potentially kill Lamashtu has shrunken greatly. What I thought might take years or decades has compressed into something far more immediate."
A cold smile spread across his stellar obsidian features.
"And for this acceleration, I have nobody to thank but all of you. Your invasion. Your oppression. Your Existential Lattice that you believed would break me. All of it has pushed me toward heights I never anticipated reaching so quickly."
...!
The horror on the face of the Absolute deepened as understanding crystallized through his unraveling consciousness. This native, this being they had dismissed as insignificant, was speaking of killing their Master as if it were an inevitability rather than impossibility!
Achilles looked at him coldly.
"Assimilate."
In the next instant, the unraveling bodies of both Absolutes became consumed by the multicolored light of Assimilation. But this light was different than before, holding a lethal edge of undifferentiation that made it sharp in ways his previous Assimilations had never possessed.
The authority cut through their existences with surgical precision, claiming everything they were with efficiency that left nothing behind.
Achilles felt the influx of power flooding into his Inner Dominion.
Strangely, he did not feel as much grandness from these two Absolutes as what he continued to feel from the Half-Formed Heart of a Primordial Architect. That single treasure exceeded the combined value of two Absolute existences, its Primordial origins providing advancement that conventional consumption could not match.
The memories from the Corrupted Terror were barely anything since it had just formed from The Existential Lattice. A brief existence of hunger and pain and nothing else worth preserving.
But the Absolute under Lamashtu...
"Hmm."
Achilles frowned as he processed what he could access. The memories were even more delicate than Ban's had been, barriers constructed by authority that exceeded his current ability to bypass without triggering alerts.
But he did understand one thing right away.
THE Prisoner had placed a mechanism where if any of his thirty-six Absolutes fell, he would know. The connection between master and servant included awareness of death, a safeguard that would inform Lamashtu the moment one of his forces ceased to exist.
He would only know the approximate location where they fell and that was it.
Which was pretty fucking dumb.
If Lamashtu had means to see what killed them, that would have been far more dreadful. Instead, he would only know that an Absolute had died somewhere within The Existential Lattice without understanding what had accomplished this supposedly impossible feat.
But it was all the better for Achilles.
He rose up from his kneeling position with movement that carried new weight.
He thought about many possibilities as right away, he began to move from this location. If Lamashtu began rushing over to investigate what had killed one of his thirty-six Absolutes, that would not be good at all. Not yet.
Achilles was just beginning to get the good stuff.
Right now, his existence continued experiencing the transition into a Primordial Architect, the Half-Formed Heart pumping authority through foundations that grew more robust with each passing moment. Interrupting this process with a confrontation he was not ready for would be monumentally stupid.
If he could find more treasures like that Half-Formed Heart of a Primordial Architect...
Oh!
His Inner Dominion expanded rapidly as possibilities crystallized through his consciousness. With his elevated power, he could actually begin to dwindle down the powerful forces of THE Prisoner one by one as long as he came across them. Absolutes that had seemed insurmountable now represented opportunities for advancement rather than threats to survival.
And if he could understand the power of a Primordial Architect more fully, he might even be able to meaningfully search for the treasures that would accelerate his transformation.
He moved deeper into The Existential Lattice with stellar obsidian wings carrying him toward whatever awaited in the corrupted depths ahead.
—
In another region.
Lamashtu sensed the connection sever.
One of his thirty-six Absolutes had died somewhere within The Existential Lattice, existence ceasing in a location he could only approximate through the fading echoes of their bond. The mechanism he had placed within all his servants triggered with information that was frustratingly incomplete.
Dead. Approximate region. Nothing else.
He did not tell any of those around him.
The other Absolutes continued their harvesting operations throughout The Existential Lattice, unaware that their numbers had just decreased by one. None of them noticed any change in their Master's demeanor.
Because there was no change to notice.
Lamashtu focused on what was before him with attention that dismissed the death of a servant as irrelevant distraction. Absolutes could be replaced. He had elevated dozens of them from lesser Depths across his existence, transforming Fundamental entities into something grander through resources and guidance that only he could provide.
One death meant nothing in the grand scope of his ambitions.
What mattered was what floated before him now.
A Liver of a Primordial Architect pulsed with white-gold brilliance that made even his burning eyes narrow with hunger. The organ had been discovered in a deeper region of The Existential Lattice, its emergence from the forceful coalescence of ingredients representing exactly what he had constructed this cancerous growth to produce.
He reached toward it with chained hands that trembled slightly from anticipation.
The Liver entered his existence through processes he had refined across countless Observable Existences. His Civilization of Unbound Existence broke down the terrifying power contained within, extracting authority that would elevate his foundations toward the Second Scale he had once possessed.
But the process was unfathomably wasteful.
Authority that should have transformed his existence entirely instead dissipated through methods that could not preserve what they consumed. The white-gold brilliance dimmed as he processed the Liver, most of its potential scattering into nothing rather than integrating into his being.
At most, he was gaining less than ten percent of what he consumed.
The rest simply ceased to exist, wasted through inefficiency that Lamashtu had accepted as the natural cost of advancement. This was how consumption worked for beings like him. You took what you could and accepted that most would be lost in the taking.
He did not know that somewhere within The Existential Lattice, a being existed who could claim everything he consumed without waste.
He simply continued his wasteful consumption, burning through treasures that could have elevated lesser beings to heights beyond imagination while gaining only fragments of their true value!
