His answer came with the certainty of someone who had built their entire path on a single principle.

"I choose... to remain idle."

The words weren’t spoken...there wasn’t time, but the decision resonated through his being with profound certainty!

This was who he was, what he was. The Great Usurper who achieved everything by doing nothing.

|Choice confirmed: Remaining idle|

|Synchronization with Idle Gaming System increasing|

|Preparing for existence disbursement...|

The Duke’s authority struck with force that redefined destruction. This wasn’t simple annihilation!

This was conceptual erasure, the kind of attack that removed you from having ever existed.

The entire region spanning distances equivalent to dozens of Wheels of Existence shattered like a mirror struck by the concept of breaking itself.

The explosion sent countless fragments scattering across dimensional boundaries, each piece carrying the echoes of what had been. Space itself cracked, reformed, cracked again, as if uncertain whether it should continue existing after such violence!

The Duke of Living Spirits stood amid the devastation with satisfaction that suggested a job well done. The nine heads surveyed the destruction, ensuring nothing remained of the presumptuous spirit that had dared to spread itself too far.

It looked, and looked some more.

The Duke then nodded with contentment!

A moment later, another presence emerged from a Shamanic Fold Gateway...another Duke of Living Spirits, this one appearing as a constellation of eyes that happened to have a vaguely humanoid shape.

"I don’t know what made you so angry," she said, her voice containing the whispers of every spirit that had ever existed in recent times, "but we have more pressing matters. Another Tool of THE Living Spirit had its trail picked up on. Your expertise is required for evaluation."

The nine-headed Duke nodded, the white coffin it dragged shifting with movement that suggested its contents were still aware. "A presumptuous spirit is dealt with. Let us attend to matters of actual importance."

HUUM!

They vanished, leaving only devastation and silence.

Silence!

In that silence, far away...impossibly far, a consciousness bloomed.

The Great Usurper reconstituted... differently.

He found himself surrounded by a sea of white flames that burned nothing while illuminating everything. His perception had scattered and reformed, spread across distances that shouldn’t have been survivable.

|Existence shattered by: Duke Veil-Render of the Nine Sorrows|

|Distinction: White Keeper of the Spirit King’s Covenant|

|Current Status: Technically destroyed|

|However...|

|Due to remaining idle and maintaining System synchronization:|

|Unique nature allowed enhanced scattering through Spirit Folds|

|Current coverage: 10% of all Transcendent Spirit Folds|

|Existence approaching true idle state!|

|Idle Loot quality increased by 1,000,000%|

|Idle Loot quantity increased by 1,000,000%|

|Purity has exceeded Complexity by factor of 3|

|Current state: Virtually undetectable even by Duke-level perception|

...!

The Great Usurper read these prompts and couldn’t help himself...he laughed.

The laughter echoed through ten percent of the Spirit Folds simultaneously, a sound that existed everywhere and nowhere.

It was unimaginably glorious!

"Duke Veil-Render of the Nine Sorrows," he said, tasting the name like wine, savoring its pretension. "For decimating my existence, for scattering me across impossible distances, for making me more powerful through your attempt at destruction...! I...! I...will do absolutely nothing."

...!

|...|

He paused, his consciousness spreading even as he spoke, becoming more idle with each moment.

"I will remain so perfectly idle that existence itself will forget I’m acting. I will do nothing with such commitment that doing nothing becomes something. And when the time comes...if it comes, which it might not because that would require action, you will understand that the greatest threat isn’t the enemy who attacks...but the one who doesn’t need to. Haha!"

His laughter continued, but softer now, dispersing into the background noise of existence.

"Thank you for the assist, Duke Veil-Render. Your action has enabled my inaction to reach heights I couldn’t have achieved through effort. Truly, you’ve been most helpful."

Action or inaction...at times, it was impossible to say which one would pave the way for more terrifying results. The Great Usurper had chosen stillness and been rewarded with grandeur. Duke Whisker had chosen both in turn and risen to heights that redefined what a mouse could become.

Perhaps the real wisdom wasn’t in choosing correctly, but in understanding that both choices were always available, always valid, always potentially catastrophic or miraculous depending on factors that might only become clear in retrospect.

Or perhaps not.

After all, understanding itself was a form of action, and the Great Usurper had just proven that sometimes, not understanding...simply being, was its own form of power!

—

Above the golden sands of the Early Veiled Shore, where cerulean Sacred Waters lapped at beaches that existed in more dimensions than three, two figures engaged in conversation that would have consequences neither fully anticipated.

Sigrid...or rather, one ordered state of Sigrid, stood with an expression of mounting shock as she processed what the Queen of Matter had revealed.

The stellar light that perpetually bathed the Shore cast her dark white hair in ethereal relief, but her expression was decidedly bound in its disbelief.

"Wait," she said, her voice carrying the particular tone of someone hoping they had misheard. "Are you telling me that Osmont has... how many women he’s involved with? More than a dozen?!"

The Queen of Matter blinked with the slow deliberation of someone who didn’t understand why this was shocking.

Books floated around her in lazy orbits, their Fables occasionally glowing as they updated themselves with new information.

"Yes, Ma’am Most Recent Harem Member Addition," she replied with matter-of-fact certainty that made the title sound like an official position. "Over a dozen at last count, though the number tends to fluctuate depending on how you define ’involved.’ But did you like the other parts of my Fables? I spoke about his progression through the Cosmos, Oppenheimer...oh, I always liked Oppenheimer! And-"

"How does he even have the time?" Sigrid muttered, more to herself than to the Queen of Matter, her mind trying to process the logistics of maintaining that many relationships while also managing an Early Veiled Shore, navigating weavings across multiple Folds, and apparently transcending existence itself on a regular basis!