Hindsight on Randidly’s own process of crafting his Fate equipped him with a much more well-honed series of tools with which to address this project. Randidly started by wading into the tall grass adjacent to the longer path/shorter path sign and using Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil to clear out a large area of all the grass. A clearing of dirt would be the site of this strange ritual. Then he began steadily engraving sigils into the ground, using both Aether and Nether to create a protective circle around a central area where Lady Iellaya would stand.

Honestly, Randidly’s primary goal was safety. So he was extremely careful about making sure there wouldn’t be any ambient energy that would reveal what they were attempting here. Lady Iellaya watched him creating the safety array for a long time before she spoke. “...that… you are also Engraving with Nether.”

Randidly simply nodded and continued to Engrave; what else could he say? Lady Iellaya didn’t comment anything further, seemingly content to wait until he was finished. But Randidly didn’t miss how her eyes flicked over the whole of the working, taking note of the key parts. And from the accurate way her eyes went to the important bits, it was clear that she had more than a passing knowledge of Engraving herself.

Still, Randidly didn’t begrudge her this knowledge. While the process was actually happening, she would be too distracted by the sensations to notice the actual functions of these arrays. Randidly was doubtful that she would be able to replicate it later by only experiencing it from the inside.

There were costs to having to perform surgery on yourself, but those costs brought with them hard-earned benefits. ...which is just me taking the long path...

Randidly shook his head and focused on his work. Runes for gathering energy, focusing energy, and containing energy flowed naturally from his fingers as he set up the base of the Aether mechanism within the safety arrays. Then Randidly proceeded to carefully run pathways of Nether veins through it all in order to stabilize the energy flow. Once he finished, a sudden thought made Randidly wince and begin to draw elaborate containment runes for the Nether veins.

After all, his Nether was only keyed to his Aether. And Randidly didn’t want the presence of the Nether to corrode Lady Iellaya’s images; that would invalidate all the efforts they had made to reach this point. The containment runes would dial back the effect that the Nether could have, but Randidly didn’t have much choice. He suspected Lady Iellaya would be very aghast to have her inner world exposed to raw Nether, no matter how strong her image was.

So then he made several more sigils that would organize the energy in predictable ways and combine those energy sources smoothly. Which meant that Randidly needed several larger containment arrays to handle the larger area…

All told, Randidly spent about a half-hour efficiently scribbling across the cleared ground the pointer finger of his right hand. The ground glowed in a steady pulse as he left the arrays dormant until he needed them. By the end of it, Lady Iellaya was looking profoundly confused.

“Is all this… really necessary…?” She said after a brief hesitation.

Randidly also hesitated before his answer. “...it honestly shouldn’t be. But I rather wouldn’t risk it otherwise. I suspect that the way your energy potential will manifest is different from the way mine did, but… I thought it was best to be thorough.”

Which was enough of a satisfactory answer for Lady Iellaya to nod and proceed to sit in the center of the formation. After cracking his knuckles, Randidly took several deep breaths. With his right hand, he raised his Philosopher’s Key. I’m not positive this will work, but it likely won’t hurt if it fails. And if it causes some damage, we have time to recover before attempting it again… might be a bit awkward though. Reduce some of her trust if the first attempt fails… best not to think about it.

“Ready?” Randidly asked.

Lady Iellaya nodded. And so it began.

Randidly moved his hand and the Philosopher’s Key flowed forward. Although Randidly stood outside of the array, fully fifteen meters from Lady Iellaya, it wasn’t a physical distance that the key needed to cross. It was a bridge of karma.

As the touch of the key slid cleanly forward through the gleaming connections between them, Randidly felt the threads of karma in the air that he passed. Instead of looking for locations to open a portal, he instead felt the karma of the surrounding area. Immediately, Randidly could feel the fabric of this dream as insubstantial. Yet the karma of it burned exceedingly brightly to his senses.

He felt the karma of the grass around him, the rocks, the dim grey sky, the reassuring breeze that rustled the grass, and the mountain that rose above them. Randidly could even clearly feel the powerful karma that waited upon the peak for one to risk to the challenge of reaching it. More than that though, Randidly felt the flow of karma from the tight knot at the core of this dream, tied to the two paths that would eventually lead to one of three places.

One destination for those that followed the purely short path, one for the purely long path, and another for those who picked any combination of the two choices. And on the way to those three destinations, there was a tiered stacking of karmic enchantments that would warp the time around them to match their path. The longer the path that was chosen, the longer the time they would have.

The way it was organized was fascinating. Randidly only had a fleeting glance as the key brushed against the strange structures of karma, but he made a mental note to spend some time studying them before they left. One thing was for sure; they were significant. For the first time since he had heard of the Nether Prince, Randidly had an inkling why they were so valuable.

Which at least makes it that much more unlikely that Lord Miln would stumble in on us...

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The Philosopher’s Key touched the karma of the sky and then the karma of the elaborate runes Randidly had drawn. It passed cleanly through the tight weave of Aether and Nether, rapidly arriving before Lady Iellaya. Just as he was about to touch her, Randidly felt Lady Iellaya tense up in a flash of suspicion. Her gaze was narrowed at the key he held in his hands, instinctively paranoid.

It seemed like now, finally, the dense image waiting within that key was made clear to her.

Yet Randidly felt as Lady Iellaya forced that suspicion down. The powerful image she had been gathering to protect herself faltered and then parted. The path toward her inner Aether world was now open to him. Not bothering to be polite at this point, Randidly’s Fate raced forward into the provided opening.

Lady Iellaya’s current Class was called Raven Winged Vanguard. It had been pushed to Level 99 and then crossed that boundary to Level 100 with a Great Path. As Randidly arrived at her innermost core of who Lady Iellaya was in the System, he could see it all. The tower of her Class, raised to the peak of what a Class could be, capped by a powerful Great Path that really did seem like another Class, added on top of the first.

Looming beyond that was a Fate, one that followed the dreams and images of the Raven Winged Vanguard. A huge, midnight black, crystalline claw.

His perception spread out around Lady Iellaya’s inner world to understand the situation. Randidly could also sense the vast sea of energy that lapped up against the base of the tower of her Class; this was what he was looking for. It wasn’t concentrated at all, but all of the potential that Lady Iellaya had gathered swirled around the tower. Which was probably why Lady Iellaya was so frustrated by the amount of power she had gained. Unlike a steady and organized construction, all this potential spread out. In the end, it could barely buoy her current ability higher.

Her inner world was filled with the watery and relatively light potential, but she had no way of turning that into power.

It was quite unlike the problem that Randidly experienced, where the concentrated power of his prepared foundation overwhelmed the process. No, Lady Iellaya’s current problem was much more like trying to use sand as a foundation to build a home. Certainly she had a lot of it present, and it could easily raise her goal. Yet it was extremely difficult to create a base that would remain steady with sand.

With his emerald eyes glowing, Randidly rapidly began to repurpose the arrays that he had drawn for Lady Iellaya, even as his Philosopher’s Key remained poised and inert outside of the core of her. Instead of coolant, the veins of Nether became structure. The containment fields of Aether functioned more like a bowl that would control the potential Lady Iellaya had taken from her followers and would gather it in one place.

Although the original drawing took quite a while, the repurposing was actually quick and relatively painless. Using an extremely useful application of Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil, Randidly rapidly carved out a whole slew of changes to the sigils with plants in a matter of minutes. Of course, the only reason he could do so was because of the time he took to make the original array by hand, but that didn’t mean Randidly wasn’t glad to have a shortcut.

See? I can use the short path too...

Lady Iellaya would likely be similarly pleased that he had made the adjustments relatively quickly. She seemed profoundly uncomfortable, with Randidly’s Fate hanging in her chest like that. She continually glanced down at it, then over toward Randidly himself with a grimace.

It’s only going to get worse from here.

The Philosopher’s Key finally slid forward, making contact with the karma that ran through all of Lady Iellaya’s Class, Fate, Great Path, and the resulting Great Fate that she had created. All of it shivered as Randidly’s Fate began to thrum with power. Lady Iellaya’s face went white.

Randidly looked down at the key in his hand in wonder. Perhaps its a little niche. And not combat-oriented. But I can see it now. See how this was my dream. A key to open up all of the System. A key to allow my world to escape the dominance of the System… and the key to unlocking the secrets that are waiting within. So I can take everything apart and rebuild it.

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 41!

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 42!

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 43!

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 44!

The understanding of its role blossomed in Randidly’s chest and he could feel the power that he held in his hand grow more influential. The image within the golden key became more dense, coiled like a spring. But it also felt like it slowly spread outward into a recognizable shape as he understood it, becoming less inscrutable. It was a tool that was a part of him, and an important method for achieving the impossible.

“Unlock,” Randidly said lightly. His hand turned the key he held, but that wasn’t the important part. It was the weight of his Willpower and that dense image shifting, sending shivers up and down through all that formed the base of Lady Iellaya’s power. Her mouth opened and her eyes widened, but she didn’t make a sound.

The key slowly turned.

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 45!

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 46!

…

Congratulations! The Level of your Fate the Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 56!

Crack.

As all that Lady Iellaya built was rapidly disassembled into the hopes and dreams and images she had created on her own, The component parts hung lazily for a second, then began to tumble downward. Randidly’s grand array surged to life. With a whirling roar, it gathered up all of the spread-out potential and began to rapidly condense it into a much smaller area. All the while, Randidly’s Grim Intuition surged through the tumbling pieces of Lady Iellaya, identifying and sorting them for the reconstruction.

There were no plants present, but an image of Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil was enough to catch the falling component parts and keep them safe.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 276!

The potential was pulled forward into a tiny spot and another array surged upward, hemming it in now that it had been gathered. Then a smaller array activated and stirred it up further, spinning it around and around until it could be gathered into an extremely tight disc and compressed further. Randidly began to sweat as he rapidly refined that sea of potential further and further, bringing it down to a solid-state.

Not that he needed to hurry, but Randidly wasn’t sure about the long term consequences of leaving Lady Iellaya without anything. So he pushed himself. His fingers danced as he reshaped the arrays to their new purpose. The Nether veins became the internal structure and the refined and condensed potential was the concrete that Randidly poured down over it. And as it began to rapidly harden into something solid, Randidly’s eyes went to the glimmering pieces of karma that had fallen from the unlocked System creations.

“Time to build a tower,” Randidly whispered. Then he got to work.