Chapter 4838: The Interstices I It was a marvelous thing to see. Once again, knowledge was extremely critical. He had to know about The Interstices first, had to understand that they existed before he could perceive them. And then he needed to know how to open up a doorway into these pathways that extended out across Existence. Spaces of pathways that existed in a state of perpetual uncertainty. Pathways between what was Observable and Unobservable. The shimmering doorway hung before him, a fold in reality that didn’t look like a portal or a tear or any conventional form of spatial manipulation. It simply looked like a place where space had forgotten to be solid. A hesitation made manifest. As he looked at it, Noah couldn’t help but ask. "What are the methods to enter The Interstices? This space between definitions?" The question was practical. If he was going to use these pathways, he needed to understand all the ways they could be accessed. The Phoneme method THE Mnemonic Leviathan had described worked, but were there others? WAA! The massive form of THE Mnemonic Leviathan shifted. Her miles-long body compressed in an instant, stellar crimson-pink light folding inward as she reduced herself to barely two meters. The pages of The First Tongue that had swirled around her vast form now orbited a figure that could float comfortably at Noah’s side. She came to hover at his right, her ethereal body still see-through, still shimmering with that hazy stellar glow. Her ancient eyes found his with the patience of something that had seen everything and found most of it uninteresting. "Each entity once powerful enough can utilize their own methods. There isn’t anything universal." Her voice remained grand despite her reduced size, ancient authority compressed into a smaller vessel. "Someone much more powerful than you can utilize the method of The Moment Between Breaths to create an entry point into The Interstices." She paused, and Noah could have sworn he saw something like amusement in those ageless eyes. "In the instant after exhaling and before inhaling, when the body holds neither old air nor new, neither old authority nor new authority, a being of sufficient awareness can slip sideways into undefined space." "That easy. You just aren’t there yet." ...! Noah smiled as he looked at Pebanista Yacuruna. At THE Mnemonic Leviathan. She was giving him a sidelong glance as she said this, and he recognized the expression. It was the look of someone who had just told you that walking through walls was simple if you were strong enough, and you very clearly were not strong enough. He filed the information away. The Moment Between Breaths. A method for beings more powerful than him. Something to work toward. But right now, he was too curious about The Interstices themselves to dwell on what he couldn’t yet do. The doorway shimmered before him, reality’s hesitation waiting to be stepped through. He took a step forward and entered. And... |Entry Confirmed| |You have entered the space between spaces| |The space between definitions| |You are arriving in the Primary Veins| |More information is being obtained by The First Tongue as your consciousness extends into this place| |This is not a place that forgives inattention| ...! Noah’s eyes flashed sharply as he looked around him to see something that defied easy description. He was standing on top of a massive gray pillar. The pillar extended downward into darkness so complete that it seemed less like absence of light and more like presence of nothing. There was no bottom that he could perceive, no foundation that these structures rested upon. They simply existed, rising from an abyss that felt hungry. Other pillars rose around him, forming a corridor of sorts. A pathway that extended into the distance, each pillar spaced just far enough apart that one could leap between them if one was foolish enough to risk the darkness below. The floor beneath his feet was Primordial Gray. Not gray as in the color between black and white. Gray as in the color that existed before colors were differentiated. The shade that reality wore before it decided what things would look like. It felt stable beneath him, but that stability was a choice rather than a certainty. And the ceiling... The ceiling didn’t exist in a fixed position. Noah looked up and saw darkness that simply continued until his perception decided "up" stopped having meaning. There was no roof. No boundary. Just the point where his mind refused to process any further and declared that direction closed for consideration. The entire area felt like a corridor built from concepts that had never finished forming. |Primary Veins Analysis| |You have arrived in the main arterial pathways of The Interstices| |Wide corridors that connect major nodes of Observable Existence| |Relatively stable, with consistent rules| |Travel through them compresses distance by a factor of approximately 10,000| |A journey of billions of gigaparsecs becomes a walk of seconds| |This is as efficient as travel gets| ...! And he didn’t even have to close his eyes. He didn’t have to look with The First Tongue or reach out with Undifferentiated Fate to perceive what filled this place. Every single surface. Every nook and cranny. Every inch of the Primordial Gray pillars and the darkness between them...man oh man, it was filled with Corrupted Growths! They clung to the pillars like moss on ancient stones, layers upon layers of twisted existence that had accumulated across eons of neglect. They floated in the spaces between pathways, drifting through the undefined air like dust motes made of wrong. They clustered in the corners where pillars met darkness, feeding on the residual potential that flowed through these forgotten routes. To the eyes of others, it might feel like absolutely nothing. Invisible and undetectable! 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶 But to Noah, with his Civilization that had begun automatically purifying Corrupted Growths through THE Infiniverse itself... They were so dense that he couldn’t help but wave his hand! A blue-gold glow extended from his palm, spreading outward like ripples in water, reaching toward the edges of his perception in this undefined space. The light touched everything. The pillars. The darkness. The accumulated corruption that had been gathering here since who knew how long. HUUM! The Corrupted Growths shriveled instantly and completely. Where his authority touched them, they collapsed inward, their twisted forms unraveling as the corruption was stripped away and only purity remained. They turned into golden glows that flowed back into the surrounding existence, some of these glows streaming toward Noah himself, sinking into his foundations with warmth. The space around him cleared. Primordial Gray pillars that had been obscured by eons of corruption now stood clean and defined. The darkness between them seemed less hungry, less absolute. The pathway ahead looked almost welcoming compared to what it had been moments before. |Purification Complete| |You have purified a space without definition| |Your authority has spread to places that you do not even know far from here| |Be careful as there are many unknowns in The Interstices| |But the number of Corrupted Growths cleansed was collectively more than you have cleansed before| |Few have walked in the place you are currently in| |Fewer still have bothered to clean up after themselves| |An Absolute Everything is forming within your existence| BOOM!