The woman with crimson hair existed in the frozen moment as if she had been there before it froze, as if time stopping was simply a condition she moved through rather than something that affected her in any meaningful way.

Achilles looked at her with star-like pupils that tracked everything she communicated through expression and posture alongside the words she had not yet finished delivering.

She held his gaze with crimson-gold eyes that carried the quality of someone who had already seen how this conversation ended!

"I am not able to say too much about certain things."

Her voice carried the compressed quality of someone editing themselves in real time, choosing words with care that suggested the things she was not saying occupied considerably more space than what she allowed through.

"But I can save you at this moment in time from the ordeal you currently face, and then I can promise you a glorious partnership in exchange for what I need from you."

She tilted her head with the slight angle of someone who found the situation genuinely interesting despite having navigated it before.

"We need someone of your particular set of skills because we have an enemy that is nearly unkillable. You do not know him now, but you will come to know him later on, and when you do, you will understand why I have gone to the considerable trouble of traversing time to have this conversation with you before that moment arrives."

The frozen moment held everything in suspension around her words as she continued.

"There is a ridiculous enemy known as THE Osmontian. He is the bane of existence of countless beings across scales and realities that you have not yet encountered, and I am among many put in charge of finding unique ways to take him down, unique approaches that conventional power and conventional methodology have consistently failed to provide."

Her crimson-gold eyes sharpened with the particular focus of someone arriving at the part of the conversation that mattered most.

"You are someone else who also has their own unique part in history. I know your capability, Achilles Adrastia. I know your Way of Assimilation and what it can accomplish when given sufficient access and sufficient power. If powerful enough, if given enough access, I want to provide you with exactly that, the access and capability for you to completely and thoroughly accomplish what nobody else in existence has managed."

...!

Achilles’s eyes shone sharply at these words.

THE Osmontian.

He shook his head internally as the name settled into his awareness alongside everything the woman had communicated around it, the shape of the problem becoming clear even without the details she was withholding. He seemed to be caught in an extremely difficult situation from every direction he examined, because whatever he chose seemed to lead somewhere difficult.

But he thought about it clearly.

If there was an enemy so dangerous that multiple individuals like this unknown woman had been forced to find unique ways to eliminate him, if he was so unkillable that she had been compelled to traverse time itself to find solutions that the present could not provide, then this was undoubtedly an extremely dangerous thing to involve himself with.

And yet.

Between that potential danger and what it could hold, he was curious in ways that his existence had always defaulted to curiosity before caution when the subject warranted it. More practically, he did not really have much of a choice in terms of immediate survival, because this woman who could freeze everything including the Silurian Paleozoic Scale father of Mansa Nguna would likely collapse him shortly after if he declined, and a body that had just undergone the most significant transformation of his existence was worth preserving for the few additional seconds it took to hear more.

So, for the sake of continued survival just for now.

"Can you tell me more about this Osmontian?"

...!

The woman smiled brilliantly with the particular brightness of someone whose patience had just been rewarded after a long wait, her crimson hair catching light that the frozen moment should not have contained.

She snapped her hands.

The two of them disappeared. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

---

Existence unfroze.

Mansa D’Kuku arrived in the space, his blazing rivers of Infinity and Observable Force crashing through the area with the relentless quality of THE Unending Pursuit Pulse still active and searching.

He looked around with rage that had not diminished across the distance he had traveled to arrive here, his gold-flame eyes scanning every fragment and remnant of the shattered laboratory for the signature his Pulse had been tracking.

Nothing.

The signature was gone, not merely departed but genuinely absent in ways that suggested it had not simply moved but had been removed from the causal chain that his Pulse depended upon to function. He stood in the empty space where Achilles had been moments ago and registered the particular fury of someone who had arrived precisely where they needed to be and found nothing to justify the journey.

BOOM!

At this time.

A terrifying river of Infinity smashed down and struck him directly in the chest from an angle he had not anticipated, the attack opening across his foundations with force that threw him backward through the shattered space with violence that expressed power rather than damage, communicating capability rather than attempting to destroy.

He caught himself with the practiced ease of someone whose reflexes had been refined across eons, his expression shifting from rage to something that mixed continued fury with the sudden acute attention of someone who had just been made aware of a variable they had not included in their calculations.

A voice echoed through the space without a source he could locate.

"Let go of the loss of a daughter."

The words pressed against him with authority that communicated they were not a request.

"Your House will then be elevated to stand above all other Superbius Houses in this Observable Existence."

...!

The words were heavy and came with power that exceeded what their volume should have been capable of carrying, pressing against Mansa D’Kuku’s foundations with the weight of a promise from something that did not make promises it lacked the authority to keep.

He looked heavy and conflicted!

A moment passed.

Then he grit his teeth as tears fell for his daughter, genuine and unhidden, the grief of a father that no amount of power or cultivation had equipped him to feel without it showing. He let them fall without attempting to stop them, honoring what he had lost in the only way the moment allowed.

Then he straightened up.

His expression settled into the particular firmness of a decision that had cost something real to make.

"Understood."

...!