Chapter 251: Chapter 250: Embodiment Of Infinity

When she finally reached him, Kyubi bit into his wing and threw him down to the ground, then covered the compromised ball of fire in all her aura.

In an instant Carl had returned to her. “That was silly, that flame could have burst. I still have ears you know?”

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me right now. Going for the kill like that isn’t you without a damn good reason.

I get it, he hurt you and Sis back then and I won’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it. If you can’t bring yourself to forgive him that’s fine, just strip him of his power and send him to die in due time as a human.

You can pull out divinity channels can’t you?”

Carl wanted to argue, but it was hard to argue against such a solid stance. She was right on all counts, he didn’t need to make it an execution and moreover it could easily be a part of Margo’s game that the hero could fall from grace and join the enemy.

“Fine, I’m sorry, I just really can’t forgive him.”

“That’s fine, don’t. You are as entitled to your rage and darker side as anyone, just be careful not to go too far.”

Carl took a few deep breaths and tried to get himself under control, then he took his original form and dispelled the fireball as he came to rest on an aura platform.

As he tried to sense all of Mobius’ dispersed power, which unlike Pandora’s seemed to be spreading out farther and farther with every passing second, not just over the world they were on either.

It was like sediment disturbed in a river being dragged along by a current.

Unlike against his fight with Pandora though, he was able to sense ever drop his target’s divinity that was spreading out and in turn, disperse his own to forcibly gather and reassemble those drops back.

It wasn’t what he would call difficult, but it was time consuming and incredibly fiddly, like trying to reassemble a glass shattered, crushed and ground to powder.

Ironically it was at that point that he realised that the easiest thing to do would be to melt the glass and remake it, but if he used so much as an ember, Kyubi would assume he had ignored her and bite first and ask questions later.

He had doomed himself to the difficult path and with every second he took, the Elder-gods were forced to continue the conflict, without Kyubi’s support now that she was entirely focused on Carl to make sure that he didn’t give up and resort to his original plan of kill and be done.

Minutes turned to hours, but then Klaire appeared. “You two have been gone for days from our point of view. I don’t want to rush you, but if you haven’t made much progress, you might need to consider alternate options.”

Kyubi turned to her in shock for a split-second, but then Klaire gave her a look that said “don’t be silly” and got pounced on as she asked them both to stop with the attitude.

Klaire apologised and said she couldn’t resist, but she also did it to try and playfully clear the slight tension she had been sensing between them as she watched. With that gone, Kyubi recognised the intent, even if she had been oblivious to just how distracted she was.

Refocused, she had an idea and asked Carl if he might be able to invest that new power in his primary talent to create a creature better suited to gathering the fragments.

Carl thought for a second, not entirely sure how to go about that particular task, but the truth was it was taking far too long. He examined the situation and realised that he hadn’t gathered even a tenth of what was spread out, since it was dispersing by means not so easily controlled.

“I don’t think I can make a creature, but what if I can make something else?”

Kyubi narrowed her eyes and he held them up to surrender and show he wasn’t up to anything suspect, or hiding darker intentions, which was enough to put her at ease and have him explain.

He spoke honestly, explained the situation and luckily Cronus overheard and stepped in. He explained that from the description Carl gave it was most likely the case that Mobius was trying to completely fuse himself with the flow of time.

As Cronus spoke, it became very clear that it was a worst-case scenario, if he managed to succeed then only one with a specific and powerful command over time would be able to separate him. The issue was that Mobius would eventually exist at all times at once and be able to stop them from intervening, which meant he had to be stopped immediately.

“Fine, Carl, do what you need to do…” Kyubi gave him permission, but suddenly Carl hesitated.

His flames were a burning essence of Death, not simply something that could kill.

He bowed and apologised as he reached a conclusion. “…If I had gone through with it, I could have accidentally mingled Infinity and Death, extending Death’s reach to everything Infinity touched.

Everything could have died the moment it came into contact with time, which means I…”

Carl trailed off, the realisation that his blind desire just to get at least a little revenge, nearly became an act of all-encompassing extinction. It made him feel sick, he had nearly done the exact same thing as Gilgamesh, but without even the framing of a last resort.

Carl had permission to do what was necessary, but how could he do that in a way that could interact with time without becoming something that endangers everything time touches, or something that one day disrupts the flow of time?

“Damn it, I wish I knew more about how time actually works.”

Cronus couldn’t help but chuckle at a question that seemed ironic beyond the bounds of the word. Listening to the father of child that could simply order Infinity to deal with the problem directly seemed ridiculous, but at the same time it would only be a matter of time until Carl became an existence no different to the one Mobius would become.

“Time is a truly fathomless sea, but could you not just ask your daughter to demand Infinity rejects him?”

“We don’t use our kids as tools!… Our kids…”

Carl grinned and accidentally slapped Cronus’ shoulder hard enough to send sand raining down on those below as he celebrated his idea.

He then apologised and got to work immediately, gathering all he could of Mobius’ divinity into an orb that matched those glowing eyes that appeared through the portal on Pluto during the operation to bring Gilgamesh down once and for all.

Infinity wasn’t something he had a great deal of experience in, ideally he’d love to have Tiamutael explain it, or Cronus, or even Eckro, but time was their enemy both literally and metaphorically.

Then he remembered what Lasael had said about his nature just before he used it to create Raziel. “They will grow fiercely protective of anything they are responsible for guarding.”

It was exactly what he needed, an unswayable guardian that would be neither friend or foe, especially since his children would awaken to the ability of travelling through time as and when they wanted.

Carl called Lasael’s name and asked for his permission to use that essence once again, a call that was answered immediately as a portal tore open and two beings of solid light stepped out.

Lasael greeted them with a nod of his head before expressing how happy he was to see Carl had taken Lillim’s words to heart, then apologised for spying but explained that he had been charged by god to observe and decide how much their pantheon involved themselves with him.

“…In short, I have long decided we can’t help in the slightest, but if you ever need advice or a specific essence you will have it. To that end, allow me to introduce my brother Cassiel, angel who observes time and the fastest amongst us.”

The moment he had been introduced, he looked around to observe what was happening around them, then offered up a portion of his essence to Carl before drawing a sword dripping with lighting and disappearing from their unfocused perception.

The battlefield was suddenly filled with flashes of blinding light, which caused thunderous booms to wash over the battlefield as Lasael apologised and described his brother as a solitary type who was uncomfortable when he was required to interact with strangers, so he joined the battle to feel more comfortable.

Carl smiled, since it seemed to be the exact opposite of Lasael, who seemed to only consider violence as means to protect whatever it was he had been charged with guarding.

Carl inspected the essence that Cassiel had left him, then produced the essence of Lasael so he could inspect that and then finally turned to that of Mobius to try and get a grip on the ridiculous complexity of its structure.

After a few seconds of study which felt like hours, he had made no progress whatsoever in unravelling its secrets and in the end Carl realised it was beyond his ability to do in the limited time they had left, so he decided to accept that fact and ask Tiamutael to find an expert on the subject.

“Kiddo! I need you to search everywhere and see if you can find out if Infinity has picked someone to be its embodiment, like Illerion is for Chaos.”

“Dad, I tried to find them all when Illerion told us because I was interested, I couldn’t find any others. I don’t think it was chance that Illerion was picked, I think Ki-ko had seen her that way in the future and simply cut Chaos’ search short but sending it Illerion’s way.”

Carl swore under his breath, but then he had a stroke of inspiration; if there currently wasn’t an embodiment, all he had to do was the same as what his daughter had done and suggest one.

“Hey, Infinity! I’m about to make something that will be the perfect candidate to be your representative, interested?”

The fear Kitsunoko had instilled in them before sending them off to find embodiments was clarified perfectly by the fact they suddenly felt the conscious presence of the law.

Then Carl conjured the essence of the All-Seeing Leviathan and wasted no time smashing the four together. It was a rush job, far from his most careful work, the only influence he exerted on the outcome was an appearance similar to that of Levi, an instinctual need to protect the time-stream and the ability to move fast enough to traverse Infinity fast enough to be effective.

As had happened with the divinity of the vermillion-bird and Nergal, the distinctly different structures resisted the merger, though this time some of the combining divinities had common elements and Carl noticed how they overlapped and merged with a synergism that made the rest of the structure much more solid.

It was food for thought and reignited his desire to experiment with creatures and divinities to create beings both as synergistic and antagonistic as possible to see how they compared.

He shook that thought away for the time being however, deciding that that could be his post-retirement hobby when they left the wider planes of Thingness and Nothingness behind.

When the process finished they were immediately frozen in time, a control so great that only Carl was able to pour enough divinity into the image Cronus had instructed them to make to break free and the moment he did, he found himself immediately the target of his creation who seemed furious it’s realm had been intruded upon.

“Well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Still though, a mindless beast can’t be bribed or led astray, so I guess this will work…”

The creature was almost identical to Levi, but the pupils of its countless eyes were an array of linear clock faces, some of which ticked forward, some of which ticked backward, some were hourglasses with sand pouring downward, whilst some were hourglasses where the sand rose to the top.

It was a living embodiment of time itself, completely neutral and enraged by intrusions. Carl could feel Infinity was still trying to judge the creature as a candidate, but then it lunged at Carl who had no choice but to take on his new bird-like form.

As his body combusted into the wild black flames, he immediately flapped his wings to get away from the others and continued to lead it to a place he could sense was more isolated in case it started rampaging indiscriminately.

As fast as his form was though, the new creation was much faster still and he only managed to stay out of its jaws by using his greater mobility and practically useless ability to look a couple of seconds into the future, but it was still only a matter of time until his creation caught up.

“Hey! I’m sorry for intruding, okay!? Just look! There is someone trying to taint the flow of time! I came to warn you!” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but Carl didn’t have time to articulate the truth as he was forced to barrel-roll into a dive-bomb to escape its jaws.

What was more concerning, was that the creature was gradually growing and getting faster, forcing Carl to attempt increasingly dangerous maneuvers to even have a chance at escaping it.

Even employing such desperate measures, the creature was gradually creeping closer and closer until it finally managed to catch one of Carl’s fiery wings in its draconic maw, sending Carl into a spiralling crash that he was just relieved occured in unoccupied ground that meant he didn’t incinerate any allies accidentally.

The flames recovered quickly, but he was still surprised that his newest creation hadn’t seized the opportunity to finish the job and devour him completely.

It was only when he looked up and saw it writhing in pain that he realised he was saved only because of the fact the beast had been burned quite severely by the black flames of Death.

Carl was relieved to have a second to catch his breath, but then all of a sudden the creature began to glow as it shifted into a form of solid light like that of the angels, before suddenly growing even more as the light died down and revealed a more mature form that was also fully recovered.

“Oh for the love of fuckery it can tag-in its future-self!”

The creature immediately locked onto Carl and then disappeared, Carl took off that same instant but his head connected with an aura barrier as saliva dripped onto and extinguished the flames of his back.

Then they both froze as Infinity made its final judgement, they both felt themselves replaying their game of cat and mouse in reverse, forced back through time to the moment Carl had finished his creation.

This time though, rather than being frozen, they were allowed to bare witness to the birth of Infinity’s chosen representative.

The infusion of power it received from Infinity forced a mutation, causing the blade-like fins it inherited from Levi to metamorphose into sprawling sail-like fins, the draconic head and fangs that were also reminiscent of Levi became more whale like, with baleen better suited to filtering small prey as opposed to teeth.

Carl was just glad that at the very least, if it went wild again, the others wouldn’t have to face being hunted down by a murderous clone of their daughter.

When the mutation had finished the sail-finned whale serenaded them with a song that struck them all differently.

To Cronus it sounded like a royal decree, demanding that no one tresspasses on his domain without permission.

To the angels it sounded similar to the trumpets used announce the end of an age and the beginning of the next.

To Klaire, Kyubi and Carl, it sounded like an apology, filled with nostalgia that made them think of times they felt most sorry.

It was a message easily misunderstood and the somewhat brash Klaire asked aloud if it was trying to suggest they were expected to apologise. A misunderstanding that Cronus had been about to correct, but they were suddenly filled with a sensation of terror filled them as the song changed tone and tempo.

This time it was a nostalgia that made them remember not their own terror however, but the terror Infinity had felt when Kitsunoko tapped into her future capacity and the laws found themselves dominated beneath her irresistible power.

“Klaire, the Laws can’t feel, it was projecting to break through the language barrier. Whatever the song makes you think or feel, is what it wants to express.”

As Carl gave his opinion, the song changed back to apology. Then the whale dived down to the ground and slammed into it, kicking up a massive dust storm as it swam along. As the others moved to stop it from crushing their allies though, the dust cleared revealing that only the doubles had been destroyed.

The longer it swam along the ground, the faster it moved and in just a few minutes it had cleared the ground of doubles and began to fade into the extradimensional stream that would be its personal territory it was created to protect.

Even Carl couldn’t see it working, but it felt the stray divinity particles that Mobius had transformed into so that he could merge with the time and bend it completely to his will, disappear gradually as the whale swam through the current devouring and gathering them in its sail-like fins.

“Remind me never to give Levi super speed, that is a terrifying combination I never want to see again. Though it might be good for keeping Ki-ko getting too big-headed when she wakes up.”

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