It was difficult to capture the monstrous horror inspired by the tide of Nether Beasts that came in the wake of Nether Gatekeepers. For while the stronger Nether Gatekeepers had foes above to keep them company, the Nether Beasts were free to swarm below across the cracked and floating boulders and then only the solid ground.

Inch by inch they came, devouring the color of the orange ground by screening it with their bodies. They were so densely packed that Randidly couldn’t even begin to count them. It was like watching an army of ants, thick enough to blot out the ground, crawling on top of another army of ants thick enough to blot out the ground.

All marching forward to reach the Aether’s fortifications.

To make matters worse, Randidly had imposed a rather strict, and likely necessary, limit on himself. Because he still needed more time to prepare himself to condense a Fate, he couldn’t reach Level 50. So none of the Nether Beasts could be killed by his Absolute Grasp. Or at least, not enough to actually affect the outcome of this fight.

Which, considering the fact that very few of these Nether Beasts were below the three-star level, wasn’t such a big deal. It would be extremely time-consuming for Randidly to kill more than a couple, especially when he was attempting to intervene across the battlefield on such a wide scale. But then the battle continued to drag onward.

It was liked the Nether had heard the compliments that Randidly could stop any number of Nether Beasts and decided to test it. And honestly, Randidly did not think he faired so well when presented with the challenge.

One hour passed, then two, then three. Still Nether Beasts roared forward and still Nether Gatekeepers pinned down the Aether Commanders.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 267!

Randidly’s headache rapidly accelerated from dull ache to ice pick in the back of the brain stem as he sat cross-legged at the back of Lady Iellaya’s forces and orchestrated the entire left flank of the battlefield. Although his grip weakened the more images obscured his senses, he was still able to use mass, blind attacks of roots to at least hamper the Nether Beasts’ advance up to three camps away. Yet beyond that...

One problem was the images, definitely. When so many powerful images were going on at once, there was a lot of different information signals to comb through. Randidly’s Skills and more directly his Grim Intuition gave him the ability to handle a lot of information at once, but this was more than simply ‘a lot’. It was also a lot of information flooding into his brain in situations were a few shreds of a second decided whether one of the Aether soldiers lived or died. Randidly needed to be constantly sharp.

Or someone else would end up paying the price.

Randidly’s emerald roots, gleaming with sharp thorns and golden engravings, came up in huge bands to cut sideways and hamstring the absolute flood of monstrous Nether Beasts that surged downward and crashed against he assembled fortified Aether forces. But even more than wounding the Nether Beasts that were actually engaged, most of what Randidly was doing was acting as a levy that could buy some precious seconds for the Aether soldiers to actually deal with the Nether Beasts in front of them in a fight, rather than needing to swim through the tight bodies of their enemies.

The grand fortifications that Randidly helped build were certainly the most deadly of all the Aether’s defense points, but even with several inner gates and outer gates, those areas filled up fast if the Nether Beasts were allowed to continue forward unimpeded.

Row after row of thorns jabbed upward and ripped into the soft underbellies of the attacking Nether Beasts. Although these wounds would probably heal very quickly without any follow-up attacks, it delayed the Nether Beasts slightly as the stumbled and tripped. This, in turn, caused the Nether Beasts behind those Nether Beasts to growl and flow away from the areas where Nether Beasts were slowed up by Randidly.

Drops became currents, currents became eddies, eddies became rivers.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 268!

Like a maestro, Randidly waved his hand and orchestrated the entire battlefield. His far-flung roots reported where the surging masses of Nether Beasts was headed and Randidly made minute adjustments to slowly round them up and create conflicting currents of movements among their lines. Then, less than a second later, Randidly reviewed the information he could have and made minute adjustments.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 269!

Besides, this is the role that only I can play. Randidly’s eyes burned with emotion as his gaze flicked up to Lady Iellaya. Then it drifted back to the unending tide of Nether. And even if it cuts me to the bone, I won’t abandon the people here.

The order to act as a field commander was a mission that Randidly took very seriously because he was somewhat moved by the fact that as the Nether Gatekeepers descended, Lady Iellaya had called him up and asked him to be the acting commander while Lady Iellaya and Abiodun were engaged with the Nether Gatekeepers above. Randidly guessed that it was a test of some sort, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t agree.

After all, no matter the broader schemes, there were lives at stake. Lives that he could save. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t work as hard as he could to save them.

Wincing, Randidly was forced to close one eye as the pain of his Skill overuse headache grew difficult to manage. Without saying anything, Zauna passed Randidly a Mana potion provided by the Nexus exclusively for the frontlines. Randidly knew that relying on external sources would exacerbate the problem later, but he was simply burning through too much Mana too quickly. Even with the absurdly low cost of the Skill, there were simply too many Nether Beasts that he needed to affect.

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The area that he covered was monstrous. Slowly a single Nether Beast wasn’t enough. He had to juggle an entire sea.

Congratulations! Your Skill Pain Resistance has grown to Level 149!

Yet Randidly gritted his teeth and pushed forward. And as he did so, a million issues tugged at his attention, all pulling his formidable Control to feeble tendrils as they were unwound and forced to operate independently across the battlefield.

One of Lady Iellaya’s Captains stomped his foot twice on the ground, which was the signal to draw Randidly’s attention. Then the man growled out. “Good here, send more.”

Even as Randidly began to shift the waves of thorny pitfalls harassing the Nether Beasts so more would be shunted toward that Captain’s gate, another Captain stomped his foot twice.

“Need reinforcements here, these bastards are strong.”

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 270!

Three more Captains stomped their feet to draw Randidly’s attention before he had even begun to direct forces to the struggling area. Two were requests for more enemies, while one was a report that one of the Captain’s best subordinates was missing and Randidly should do everything in his power to locate the woman before she was killed by the sea of Nether Beasts seething around Lady Iellaya’s fortress.

Pressing both his eyes closed, Randidly did his best to address these issues. The image of Yggdrasil flickered briefly to life behind him as he was forced to rely on it to control so many roots so finely for so long. The Nether Beasts around Lady Iellaya’s fortress hesitated, looking up at the towering image of the tree with apparent unease.

Yet Randidly had already relied on the image of Yggdrasil too much over the past four hours. At this point, he needed to only rely on it sparingly or it wore away at the edges of him. And already too much of Randidly’s focus was cut into pieces for him to be able to afford to lose any additional scrap of his attention.

Congratulations! Your Skill Pain Resistance has grown to Level 150!

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 271!

When the issues in front of Randidly were solved, they returned after multiplying. Randidly’s grasp was far, and absolute, but the Willpower behind it was beginning to show signs o strain. And the whole time a smidgeon of Randidly’s attention remained warily fixed on the fight against Nether Gatekeepers going on above. Even as Ileot continued to hold fifty back, the other fifty descended upon the Aether Commanders.

Abiodun ferociously fought against two, but he could only tie them down, not inflict any lasting injury. It was Lady Ielllaya who had boldly challenged six of the descending Nether Gatekeepers, even going so far as killing one while sustaining several moderate injuries herself. It was only Lord Miln who gathered more, occupying and slowly suppressing ten of the Nether Gatekeepers.

The attention above were a few scraps of time every minute where he was just a bit too slow and one of the Aether soldiers were wounded. It was time he dearly needed.

Yet Randidly knew he could not look away. Because should one Nether Gatekeeper descend toward this end of battle lines, no one was more aware of how ill-prepared the Aether forces would be than Randidly Ghosthound. There was no one else left with the strength to step forward in the leftmost three camps; if a Nether Gatekeeper made it past, Randidly would need to be the one to fight it.

For the briefest moment, Randidly allowed his attention to wander. His head twisted to the right, looking toward Vualla. Due to the thick clash of Nether and Aether, he couldn’t sense her any longer. But he had watched earlier as she had stepped forward to help against the Nether Gatekeepers, and as she was forced to fight one alone.

So many times Randidly had considered intervening as she roared and bled. But he could instantly tell from the set of Vualla’s jaw that now was not the time to intervene. Some part of her needed to prove to herself that she could do this. Randidly had been there before himself.

Sometimes the battle was all about surviving. But sometimes it was about proving you weren’t afraid, even when that very desire proof should have been all the proof of fear you needed.

Their clash was a long and brutal battle. And the heat that Randidly felt from her wavered a dozen times over the course of the fight. Although Randidly couldn’t be sure, he believed that the cooling of the heat was a sign that the effect that he had on her, the variation from her past life that he had apparently caused, was in danger of reverting.

But then the heat burned as hot as the sun as Vualla had won. And when she had returned to the ground she had raised her head to the sky and bawled her eyes out while Commander Terith’s soldiers came to assist her.

Before she was taken away, Randidly wasted a few precious split seconds to reach across the battlefield and open the ground in front of her. There was just the cracked ground for a split second, and then there was a thorny azure lily that slithered upward and bloomed at her feet. Unfortunately, Randidly had to pull his attention away without waiting for her response. Around him, the battle still raged. With his self-imposed limits of not gaining a Level, there was simply too much to do.

Although Randidly slowly put less and less effort toward the endeavor as the battle continued to drag onward, he still paid very close attention to the usage of Nether, especially by the more powerful Nether Gatekeepers. It was difficult to follow the movements of the four-headed one that Ileot was toying with, but Randidly saw Lady Iellaya’s fight in great detail.

Yet what he saw left him frustrated. Because he wanted to see some great power that the Nether Gatekeepers used, some utilization of Nether that let them transcend from a menial Nether Beast and become a Nether Gatekeeper. But there was nothing of the sort present in the way that the Nether Gatekeepers behaved.

Nether Gatekeepers just had more Nether and had a corrosive and condensed type of the same energy. They seemed generally better at fighting, but that could be explained away by age. Nothing about them spoke of any transcendent mastery or understanding of Nether.

Of course, there was a qualitative change to the Nether when it was dense enough. Yet the steady accumulation of dense Nether was not the solution that Randidly had been looking for. To have wasted so much time and attention following the movements of the Nether Gatekeeper for nothing…

One of Lady Iellaya’s Captains stomped three times, the signal for emergency help. Randidly created an arrow of roots and directed the last bunch of reserve troops forward to assist. From now on, he would need to draw from those wounded who had some small measure of recovery in order to reinforce any problem areas.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 272!

No rest for the wicked. Randidly sighed. Zauna passed him another Mana potion.