Mansa Nguna watched her body gradually turn into rivers of Observable Force.

It began at her extremities, her fingers and the edges of her gold hair dissolving first into golden currents that flowed toward Achilles with the inevitability of water finding the lowest point in a landscape. The process moved inward from there, her arms and shoulders and the elegant lines of her white-gold coat all becoming part of the same golden torrent that carried everything she had accumulated across eons of existence toward a Bounded Lifeform who should not have been capable of initiating this process against anything approaching her level.

She was shaken in ways that transcended the physical dissolution occurring throughout her form.

"Who...are you?"

Her voice had lost its lazy quality entirely, the scientist’s comfortable authority replaced by something more urgent as the reality of her situation pressed against her awareness with weight that her eons of experience had never prepared her for.

"How are you doing this? I am... I am a Gilded One."

Achilles did not answer her.

His purple-gold eyes remained fixed on the process with the focused attention of someone monitoring a transformation they needed to complete correctly, tracking every aspect of what was flowing into him.

She shook her head as the dissolution reached her chest, the white-gold coat and what it covered becoming golden rivers that joined the torrent already flowing toward him.

"I am... a Superbius Gilded One."

Her voice carried the particular desperation of someone invoking credentials.

"My death will be investigated. The hierarchy does not ignore the loss of one of its own, and when they trace what happened here, when they understand what you have done, you... will join me in death soon enough."

Her gold eyes held him with intensity that had nothing lazy remaining in it.

"Gilded Ones are very protective."

Even as she said all of this, Achilles did not pay her any heed.

He Assimilated her faster.

The golden rivers accelerated their flow toward him as the process moved through its final stages, Mansa Nguna’s core existence dissolving into the same currents that had already carried her periphery into his foundations. Her voice faded not because she chose silence but because the physical structures producing it were becoming Observable Force, joining the torrent that represented everything she had been across the entirety of her existence.

And then she was entirely Assimilated.

The prompts that followed arrived with weight that made every previous notification he had received seem preliminary by comparison!

|Assimilation Complete: Mansa Nguna, Superbius Gilded One, Engineer of THE Gilded Laboratory Outpost.|

|Classification: Grandest Lifeform Assimilated. No previous consumption approaches this threshold.|

|Your existence is breaking down and integrating Gilded Engineering at foundational levels.|

|Transformation Initiated: Neo Gilded Observable Lifeform.|

|A Neo Gilded Observable Organ is forming within your existence and becoming linked with your Inner Dominion. This Organ will serve as the primary production and cycling mechanism for Observable Force within your foundations, generating authority at rates that exceed what your Inner Dominion previously produced and cycling it through your existence with efficiency approaching that of natural Gilded entities.|

|Knowledge of Multiple Lesser Causes has integrated into your existence. You now possess foundational understanding of THE Ordovician Cause and THE Silurian Cause alongside fragments of four additional Lesser Causes whose full integration will require time to complete.|

|Eight Pulses of THE Scales have been absorbed from Mansa Nguna’s accumulated cultivation. Current integration depth varies. Full accessibility will develop as your foundations stabilize around their new configuration.|

|Ego Transformation Ongoing: Neo Superbius Ego of Existence.|

|Your Ego of Pride has transcended the amplification Mansa Nguna performed and integrated with the deeper Superbius architecture underlying Gilded Engineering itself. Your Neo Superbius Ego of Existence exceeds the amplified Pride of standard Gilded Engineering recipients by factors that current measurement cannot quantify. Resistance to THE Gamaidjan of infinity has elevated correspondingly.|

|Sovereign Authority of the Amplified has expanded in scope. All beings who carry Superbius Gilded Engineering now fall within your administrative reach regardless of their Scale or distance.|

...!

Minutes passed as Achilles continued his transformation, the integration of everything Mansa Nguna had been working its way through his foundations with the thoroughness that distinguished complete Assimilation from partial consumption. His Inner Dominion expanded with each passing moment as the Neo Gilded Observable Organ established itself within his Realms and began its production cycle, golden rivers flowing through territories that had previously generated Observable Force at rates he had considered remarkable.

Those rates now seemed quaint.

The Proterozoic transformation spread through every bone and organ in his existence as the boundless authority from the Assimilation drove the process to completion that the earlier transformation had only begun. His skeletal structure shifted from stellar obsidian Primordial Architect architecture to something crystalline and gold-threaded that communicated its new nature through sheer presence. His organs restructured themselves around the Neo Gilded Observable Organ at the center of his transformed physiology, each one rewriting its function to operate at the level his foundations now demanded!

After some time, things calmed down.

The rivers of Observable Force that had been crashing through the shattered remnants of THE Gilded Laboratory Outpost #32 settled into steady currents that responded to his will with the ease of something that had always belonged to him. The Infinity that had been flooding through his transformation found equilibrium within his elevated Neo Superbius Ego, the amplified Pride holding it at distances that allowed access without the drowning sensation that had accompanied his first contact with the blue river.

Achilles looked at his hands.

His hair shone white-gold, the purple-gold luster of his Primordial Architect lineage elevated into something that held both colors simultaneously without either dominating the other, strands that seemed to generate their own light rather than simply reflecting it. A loose golden crown of Observable Force hung around his head without sitting directly upon it, orbiting his transformed existence like a satellite responding to gravity it found natural, something that had formed during the transformation without conscious design.

His eyes had changed most dramatically.

Where clusters of differentiation and undifferentiation had previously swirled in purple-gold configurations, star-like pupils now shone gold and blue simultaneously, points of light within his irises that communicated depths extending far beyond the physical space of his transformed body. They held the quality of something that had seen things it could not unsee and integrated those sights into the architecture of its perception permanently.

He looked ethereal.

His body gave off the air of a Gilded One in every aspect of its presence, the authority radiating from his transformed existence carrying signatures that any being capable of perceiving Gilded energy would recognize immediately, the particular quality of something that had transcended the limitations governing Bounded Lifeforms and entered categories that most beingd spent entire existences aspiring toward without ever approaching.

Even though he was not a Gilded One.

He was something that had not existed before this moment.

Something that had no name yet in the architecture of existence.

And somewhere in the expanding territories of his Inner Dominion, the Neo Gilded Observable Organ pulsed with rhythms that would eventually need to be understood, and eight Pulses of THE Scales waited in their integrated state for the moment his foundations became stable enough to begin exploring what he had just consumed.

He looked at the space where Mansa Nguna had been.

Then he looked at the space where the laboratory had been.

Then he looked at the white-gold crown of Observable Force orbiting his head without his permission.

It all felt...unfathomably glorious!