The Primordial Record

Chapter 1903: What Should I Call You?

Rowan had to be careful with every information given by Enoch, and although he could trust the information that was given to him at the beginning, that time had long passed.

When Rowan summoned the power of his Final Form, he was extremely unsuitable to wield that power, and if he followed the vision showed to him by Enoch and his suspicion about the Primordial Record was correct, the Primordials were counting on his lack of knowledge and his character that was fiercely stubborn and foolhardy to push through the limits despite knowing the danger that such a thing would cause.

If Rowan had summoned the power of his Final Form without his absurd luck of following the fundamental rule of End, he would have long ago perished, and the Primordials would have been the winners.

The rule of End was simple: there must be an equal exchange for anything that was desired. This power controlled the fundamental nature of existence, and so to shift existence in any certain manner, one must be willing to pay an equal price for that shift.

Rowan wanted to eat the Primordials, and yet he had given up his Reflection as a sacrifice to hold the attention of the Primordials and endure their consumption, just for the chance to consume them.

Just because it was his Reflection did not mean that the damages he suffered could not reach him, especially from entities with the power of Primordials, but he was willing to take that bet, and for that reason, he satisfied the fundamental rule of equal exchange.

Still, even with this fundamental rule in place, it could not take away the fact that Rowan was unsuitable for wielding the power of End, and so what happened next was either him being very unlucky or extremely lucky.

The hand of Enoch’s Incarnation was present while he was summoning the power of End, and like an uncontrollable storm, it carried it along. If Rowan’s Will was the skeleton, Enoch’s Will became its flesh and spirit.

These were all Rowan’s understanding about what happened on that day, and it was the reason why the boy who once appeared to him was faceless… that void was the remnants of Rowan’s Will that had control over the power of End. It was that power that created this cave and the rules that guided it, after borrowing the powers of Enoch and utilizing certain loopholes about this place to make the cave livable.

Without this cave, Rowan would have perished under the unrelenting tide of bones falling from the sky, but this cave gave him a fighting chance. However, as he had soon noticed, the influence of his power over Enoch had ended, and he had not forgotten that Enoch had thought about killing him when the influence over him had diminished.

Rowan had been weak from his sojourn to carry all the fallen on his back and was standing at the mouth of the cave, and he still recalled the cold hand of Enoch touching his back, a little shove, and that would be all it took to kill him, but Enoch had held back, and Rowan was realizing that he may have disregarded the implications behind his command to ’Eat the Primordials.’

The truth was always within sight, as the faceless boy had told him the rules of End, but Rowan did not want to trust it until more of his suspicions were put to rest.

The power of End controls existence, and when Rowan commanded it to eat the Primordials, and this led to the freedom of the Primordials, he thought he had failed, but what if he had succeeded and was only now understanding what this success meant?

What were the Primordials’ greatest weakness? Their unending appetite took center stage; they could not stop devouring Realities, even when it brought them past the point of madness. Although they were his enemies, Rowan still gave them credit for their ability to plan despite this significant weakness.

The second greatest weakness that was not touched upon was the fact that they could only house a single Origin in their bodies, making them the most perfect, unbalanced entities in all of existence.

Now, with all of these in mind, what was his present situation? Well, according to the boy, he was now the embodiment of the Cradle of Enoch, and Rowan believed this meant he was sharing the body of Enoch, an entity that was powerful enough to house a multitude of Realities inside his body. Did this mean that Enoch was a tenth-dimensional being or something else entirely? That was not the question Rowan was asking at this point because this was what distracted him at first from the answer in front of him.

The question he should have been asking was, if the Primordials were free of these two significant weaknesses, how did he contribute to making that happen? Well, the answer was simple, he was consuming the excess lives and Origin they had gathered from feeding on these Realities.

“You are not just in a where, you are also in a when.”

Rowan was now in the past, and if everything proceeded as planned, if he continued to eat the bones falling from the sky, then it meant that, through his actions, the Primordials in the present would not be held back by their greatest weakness.

He was eating the Primordials, but this was happening from the past all the way to the present!

The only question was whether he would survive long enough to win.

The root of the Primordials always lay in this place, and with Enoch. Rowan opened his eyes; all of these thoughts barely took a moment, and he regarded Enoch before him, even as Enoch regarded him back.

Rowan knew for a fact that he gave no signs, no single twitch that was out of place to give away his thoughts, yet Enoch smiled,

“I see you have discovered the truth, took you long enough,” a pause as he regarded the brief flash of light that passed through Rowan’s eyes and he laughed, “Oh, don’t try to hide your thoughts from me, I cannot read them, and even if I could, that would have no meaning here, after all, I have fed you all the clues you need, and I will even go a step further to prove it to you.”

He waved his hand to show him the current vision of the future inside Eosah’s Reality, and Rowan saw the changes that were taking place after five hundred thousand years had passed, and they were beginning to welcome the birth of three new Primordials.

Enoch chuckled, “Your main body is smart, too smart for his own good, and it is becoming more difficult for me to see inside that broken Reality, and only the last fragments of my connection with Eosah allows me this much sight, but it would not be long before he destroys it and I will no longer be able to tell what is happening, but that is not the reason I am here… From the last vision, I know you understand that your main body no longer trusts the Primordial Record, and that is for a good reason; it has long been corrupted.”

Whatever he was going to say next, he must clearly enjoy it because a large smile was beginning to rise on his face,

“Your main body also believes that the Primordial Record is essential because it holds all the Origin Forces and Essences that the Primordials discarded because they could only consume a single Origin Force, and he is also correct. But… he is wrong about a crucial aspect.”

Enoch tore open his shirt, and Rowan saw seven massive voids in his chest that went straight through his body. The edges around this wound were black, and it pulsated, stretching and contracting, as if these holes were trying to eat through his body, and only his force of Will was suppressing them. He grinned at the realiztion he saw in Rowan’s eyes, and he sighed dismissively,

“The power of End demands an equal payment for anything that is given. Yes, I created the… Primordials and my flesh was the payment for their existence, and they were designed to eat all Realities in existence, the cancer growing on my body and tying me down in this place. They were never intended to have a consciousness, never intended to be able to think! However, all of this changed when they came across the Primordial Record.”

The smile in the eyes of Enoch vanished, and he looked at Rowan deeply, as if he was peering deep into his soul, “I think by now, with your previous revelation, you can begin to understand where I am going with this. The Primordials were designed to eat everything in existence, and that meant they were able to consume all Origin Forces and Essence. They were mindless and did not understand the weight of Origin, but the Primordial Record snatched the bulk of their Origin forces and Essence. In return, it gave them a mind… the Primordial Record…” Enoch spoke softly, “Ate their hunger.”

Spreading his arms wide, Enoch spoke in a grand manner, “In this place, what did you think you were becoming? Should I still call you Rowan, or should I go by your given name, the Primordial Record?”