Achilles currently felt a ridiculous level of power that he could not even explain.

He should still be at THE First Scale of Existence by every conventional measurement that governed advancement and classification within Vakochev’s framework. He had not established his Civilizational Anchor.

He had not crossed the threshold that separated the vast majority of beings from those who operated at Proterozoic heights. By the architecture of existence as he had understood it since awakening his Civilization, he remained a First Scale being regardless of what had just occurred within the shattered remnants of THE Gilded Laboratory Outpost #32.

And yet he felt like he could decimate anything on THE Second Scale.

Not the careful confidence of someone who had grown stronger than expected and believed they might be competitive against higher Scale entities under favorable circumstances. The settled certainty of someone whose foundations had been restructured at levels that made the distinction between First and Second Scale feel increasingly administrative rather than meaningful.

He even felt like Mansa Zulu was someone manageable now.

Not to be feared the way he had feared that entity when it emerged from infinite obsidian brilliance above the ruins of Lamashtu’s ritual. The memory of that encounter, which had pressed against his existence with weight that made his transformed Primordial Architect physiology want to collapse simply from proximity, no longer carried the same quality of insurmountable distance. Something had changed in how his existence measured that gap!

But he focused.

He had still done something terrifying by devouring a Gilded One, and the practical consequences of that action would arrive regardless of how powerful he now felt.

Mansa Nguna’s warning about investigation had been delivered by a consciousness that understood the hierarchy she belonged to far better than he did. Covering his tracks required understanding exactly what those tracks looked like and who would be looking for them.

For this, going through the memories of the Gilded One he had consumed was critical.

Achilles closed his eyes and began sifting through the integrated memories of Mansa Nguna with the methodical attention of someone searching for specific information within a vast archive.

What he found first was unpleasant.

He saw a scene of her in this very laboratory, the space intact and gleaming rather than shattered as it currently stood, Mansa Nguna extending invitations to Second Scale Primordial Architects and Antediluvian Ones with promises of Engineering that made her lazy smile seem warm and generous.

They came willingly, these beings of tremendous power and accumulated power, trusting the credentials and reputation of a Gilded One whose facility had processed countless recipients across eons of operation.

She used them for experiments instead.

She studied their Bounded anatomy with the clinical fascination she had displayed when working on Achilles, but without the pretense of legitimate Engineering driving her methodology.

She dissected the living alongside the dead, documenting how Proterozoic Bones responded to stimuli that no ethical researcher would apply, how Primordial Hearts functioned under conditions that no voluntary subject would accept, how the consciousness of Antediluvian Ones processed dissolution in ways that provided data she could not obtain through conventional means.

In the end, she ate their Hearts of Civilization.

Achilles went through many more unpleasant memories like this, each one confirming that Mansa Nguna’s lazy scientist persona had been entirely genuine in its curiosity and entirely monstrous in its methodology. The beings she had consumed across eons were horrid.

He kept sifting.

Until he saw a scene from someplace entirely different.

It was not the Silver Philotimo Observable Existence. The landscape bore no resemblance to the paradise of flowing rivers and hanging continents and multiple balanced suns that he had walked through in the days since crossing THE Obsidian Span of the Nine Crowns. This Observable Existence seemed grander in fundamental character rather than merely aesthetic quality, the atmosphere itself filled with concentrations of Observable Force and Infinity that made the Silver Philotimo seem modest by comparison.

He saw Mansa Nguna floating alongside many other Gilded Ones.

These were not the Second Scale beings he had encountered in the Coliseum of a Thousand Ascendant Glories, amplified Bounded Lifeforms who had received Engineering and cultivated their way to Proterozoic heights. These were Ordovician Paleozoic Scale Gilded Ones, beings on THE Third Scale of Existence, their authority pressing against reality with weight that made even the most powerful Second Scale entities he had encountered seem preliminary.

There were tens of thousands of them.

Each of them Superbius, bearing the amplified Pride Engineering that distinguished their line from other Gilded configurations, their combined presence creating an atmosphere that made the surrounding Observable Existence seem to lean inward with the pressure of their assembled authority.

They were all looking toward a group of terrifyingly powerful Gilded Ones that Achilles now recognized from the integrated knowledge flowing through his foundations.

THE Magna Sorora.

A terrifying organization of Gilded Ones spanning multiple Observable Existences, their reach extending across realities that most beings never knew existed and their authority operating at levels that made the assembled tens of thousands of Ordovician Scale Gilded Ones seem like an audience rather than peers. They were led by Sororis Primas, a women-only force of power and brilliance whose membership was drawn from Gilded Ones who had distinguished themselves beyond what their Scale alone could explain.

One of the Sororis Prima floated before the assembled gathering with a massive illusory screen behind her that displayed something Achilles had not expected to see.

A creature.

Monstrous and majestic simultaneously, the way things that existed at the boundary between those two categories often managed to be both without contradiction. It shone with multicolored Infinity that moved through its form in patterns suggesting the power was intrinsic rather than cultivated, native to its biology rather than accumulated through any process comparable to what Bounded Lifeforms underwent.

A terrifying spiked tail extended behind it with length. Spikes alongside its humanoid spine and back arced outward in configurations that somehow communicated both protection and aggression simultaneously, each one shining with the same multicolored Infinity that saturated its entire form.

Above its head, a terrifying regal crown floated in orbit.

The Sororis Prima’s voice emerged with the compressed authority of someone delivering information they considered important enough to warrant the gathering of tens of thousands of Gilded Ones.

"What you see before you is an enemy that has appeared in THE Braneworld Observable Existence of one of our allied forces."

Her gaze moved across the assembled Gilded Ones with the calm assessment of someone taking inventory of their resources.

"THE Relictus are already terrifying enough. They have killed many of our people to prevent us from getting our hands on THE Primordial Source, and their continued existence represents the primary obstacle to our advancement toward what lies beyond our current Scales."

She gestured toward the illusory creature behind her.

"But this new creature has been identified as THE Primus Apeiron, and it has the capacity and capability to strip Infinity from our existences entirely."

A silence moved through the assembled tens of thousands that had a different quality from the silence before her words, heavier and more personal.

"They can nullify all your eons of hard work. They can make a Gilded One unable to wield Infinity. Every Engineering received, every Ego amplified, every cultivation technique developed across lifetimes of dedicated advancement becomes meaningless when THE Primus Apeiron strips the Infinity that underlies all of it."

Her expression remained composed but her eyes held something that Achilles recognized as the particular coldness of someone managing fear through analytical distance.

"As of now, this monstrous creature is rising repeatedly within one Observable Existence, and although this incident is currently minor in scope, we would like to keep it isolated within that single Observable Existence. We do not want a problem with Infinity when we cannot even grasp THE Primordial Source yet."

Her voice dropped into registers that communicated finality.

"Understood?"

...!

Achilles came out of the memory with shock moving through his transformed existence in ways that his Neo Superbius Ego of Existence processed differently than his previous emotional responses would have.

There was a beast capable of stripping Infinity from Gilded Ones!

A creature that could nullify the foundational authority that all Gilded advancement depended upon, that could reach into the cultivated foundations of beings who had spent eons developing their relationship with Infinity and simply remove that relationship entirely!

THE Primus Apeiron!

He turned the name over in his consciousness alongside everything else he had just witnessed, filing it alongside the information about THE Magna Sorora and THE Primordial Source and THE Relictus and the assembled architecture of threats and powers operating at levels that made his own recent advancement feel simultaneously tremendous and preliminary.

His star-like pupils shone gold and blue as he opened his eyes to the shattered remains of the laboratory around him.

He had more to cover than he had initially estimated.

And considerably more to understand before he was ready for what the memories of Mansa Nguna had just revealed was coming!