Pride was a fascinating thing to observe in beings who hadn’t earned it.

There was a version of pride that existed because it had been produced naturally, forged through genuine adversity and genuine achievement and the earned confidence of someone who had looked at something difficult and come out the other side of it changed.

That version had weight. It pushed back!

It made decisions regardless of consequence because it had calculated the consequence and found the consequence acceptable.

Then there was engineered pride. Superbius pride. The kind cultivated into a being’s foundations through careful Gilded methodology, installed the way any other capability was installed, present as a feature of the existence rather than as a truth of the being. It looked identical from a distance. Up close, it revealed itself the moment a real test arrived.

The test had arrived.

Noah had smashed Dietrich into the ground in front of dozens of Superbius and Ira Gilded Ones and all of them had stood exactly where they were, assessing. Which was sensible. He wasn’t criticizing the intelligence of the calculation.

But intelligence and pride were different faculties, and every one of them standing still while one of their own bled in a crater was giving him information about which faculty was running the room. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

None of the big ones had shown up yet. The heavy power sat deeper in the settlement, further from the wall. What he had in front of him were Seidr Source and Galdr Source Gilded Ones, which was still Paleozoic Scale, still formidable by any standard he had operated within before THE Source Lands.

They were watching him stand on THE Bellum Pulse wall and absorb its continuous pressure and they were making correct assessments about the gap between what they were and what he appeared to be.

He actually wanted to be problematic!

He wanted a fight. He genuinely wanted one. He had come into this settlement carrying the accumulated weight of the Arms Race and the Persevere spamming and a Galdr Source so saturated it had pressed against its own ceiling, and he had been hoping at least one of them would give him a reason to test it.

Not one of them moved.

He looked down at them.

"You know, I always looked up to Superbius." He said it pleasantly, with the tone of someone sharing a sincere memory.

"Oh, Superbius! As a lowly Luxuria, my status was just pleasure and nothing else. I knew the stories though. Superbius and Ira fighting against Source Lifeforms and Infinite Lifeforms, standing at the front of every major conflict in our Gilded history, moving forward when everything said stop." He looked across the gathered Gilded Ones slowly.

"I thought, wow. If only I could do something like that. So I worked hard and I became the Custos of a Superbius Gilded One. I entered THE Source Lands. And now I stand in front of more Superbius Gilded Ones than I have ever seen in one place."

He paused.

"Where... is your pride?" He asked it genuinely, without aggression. "Does a Luxuria like me ever have the chance to move past my designated engineering? Will your pride allow that? Or will you stand there watching one of your own lie in a crater and decide today is not the day?"

BOOM!

He let the aura drop.

The Infinite Radiation of his Source came down across the settlement in a wave that carried the full pressure of what he had become across the last several hours, the dense concentrated multicolored flames around his frame expanding outward as the heat of it crashed into the surrounding Superbius and Ira Gilded Ones and pressed against their foundations from above!

BOOM!

He looked down at them.

These were the fucking people who had authorized the Existential Acedia Ordnances. Or connected to the people who had.

The House that had looked at the lower Observable Existence with its countless Quintillions of beings and its Early Creatures and its Living Existences and its Fold Dwellers and had signed off on the calculation that made all of that an acceptable cost.

These dumb motherfuckers, standing in their bone-reinforced settlement with their engineered pride and their Galdr Source capabilities and their careful assessments.

"WHERE IS YOUR PRIDE?!"

The bellow came out carrying the Prime Cause of Tyranny behind it, the foundational truth of hierarchy pressed outward in a wave that didn’t ask whether the beings it was reaching had opinions about kneeling.

The Tyranny didn’t argue with resistance. It simply told existence what the order was!

The wave moved through the settlement as it was going to make them kneel!

A golden glow intercepted it at that moment!

The glow came from the direction of the settlement’s interior, warm and dense and carrying the weight of a Source that had been developing in THE Source Lands for considerably longer than anyone else present. It buzzed against the Tyranny wave and held it at the settlement’s edge, not dispersing it but matching it, the two pressures finding each other and establishing a standoff.

An old man walked through the gap.

Marxist moved with the unhurried confidence of something that had not been concerned about this situation from the moment it heard the alarm and had taken the time to assess properly before arriving.

His Source garments of beast skin and bone pressed outward with their own ambient pressure. His eyes, sharp beneath the bald head and the long golden beard, were bright with genuine interest.

He looked at Noah.

Then he laughed.

"An exceptional Luxuria among our Gilded lineage!" He said it with the warmth of someone who had found something they had been looking for without knowing they were looking.

"You are right to feel stifled. Someone with what you carry lying back in the throes of pleasure would have been a waste of considerable potential." He raised a hand toward the settlement around him. "We will welcome you here with every grievance intact. Pride is power. This is not a saying. It is the foundational truth of what we are."

He walked forward slowly.

"Look at the beings standing around us who did not step forward when you challenged them. They are not cowards. They are simply beings with less power than you demonstrated, and beings with less power naturally carry less pride, because pride without the foundation to back it collapses under real pressure." He stopped a comfortable distance from the wall.

"You, a Luxuria by designation, carried more pride into this settlement today than every Superbius here because your power exceeded what your designation suggested. That is the only measure that matters in existence." His eyes held Noah’s.

"We need every fragment of power and pride we can find in these lands. You are clearly carrying more than your designation assigned you. That makes you precisely what we need."

He spread his hands.

"Welcome."

Noah looked at him with cold eyes.

The old man was shrewd!