Randidly narrowed his eyes and tried to handle the tasks of both distracting the Nether Gatekeeper and assisting against the surrounding Nether Beasts. His attention was stretched to his limit. Chimeric Avoidance.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Avoidance (L) has grown to Level 230!

The strike from the Nether Gatekeeper’s middle right arm whistled past Randidly’s shoulder as he leaned to the side. Acri twisted its own shaft to urge Randidly to attack, but Randidly held back and retreated another two steps. His ribs groan piteously from an earlier strike they had taken from the Nether Gatekeeper, but at least they weren’t broken. Yet launching an attack with his ribs in this condition was asking for trouble.

So Randidly had to open a little more space. Which in turn allowed the Nether Beasts that were following behind the Nether Gatekeeper to explode outward and launch more attacks on the Aether soldiers that were standing nervously behind Randidly’s back.

But what choice do I have…? Randidly thought grimly. Vines struck like vipers from the ground, limiting the damage that the spreading Nether Beasts could do. Yet very quickly, Randidly’s attention was yanked back to the foe in front of him.

Gathering up its strength, the Nether Gatekeeper raised its head and released another pulse of dense Nether into the surrounding area. Instantly, Randidly activated Cursed Appetite of a Wraith to pull a portion of that dense Nether away. Which eased up the pressure on the normal soldiers, but it reliably brought the Nether Gatekeeper’s ire back right toward Randidly. And at the moment, it was very difficult for Randidly to resist the Nether Gatekeeper directly.

Even if this was a relatively weaker specimen, Nether Beasts that had become Nether Gatekeepers had three main strengths. First, they were incredibly resistant to images. With the images Randidly had, expending his Willpower barely added enough to be worth it against them. Second, they could manipulate large quantities of dense Nether, making them an absolute nightmare for the average Aether individual. And third, they possessed overwhelming physical bodies.

This is what I get for waiting so long to start pouring Stat points into Strength… Randidly thought rather sourly as he eyed up his opponent; an attack was coming soon.

The Nether Gatekeeper charged forward, cracking the ground with the force of his acceleration. Randidly couldn’t afford to give up more ground, so he had no choice but to use the Skill Man is Proud, but the Chimera Takes and catapult himself forward to slow the opponent’s advance.

Congratulations! Your Skill Man is Proud, but the Chimera Takes (L) has grown to Level 189!

The two bodies smashed together and produced a concussive blast that knocked several nearby Nether Beasts off balance. Several more chunks of Sulfur flaked away in the collision. With a wiggle, the living central portion of Sulfur pushed more of is old body away and rapidly began secreting more armor. Armor that was empowered by the memory of endurance Randidly had found in the Nether Prince and was becoming much more capable of defending against strikes like this.

...which was the positive result, but the huge blow that Randidly took to his torso wasn’t without costs. The process of helping Sulfur shed its old skin meant that Randidly had to physically bear the brunt of the powerful Nether Gatekeeper while Sulfur struggled to evolve. There was only so much his Endurance could handle and so much his Vitality could heal on such short notice.

Congratulations! Your Skill Monstrosity’s Appalling Physicality (A) has grown to Level 240!

Congratulations! Your Skill Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 216!

With his Vitality up over one thousand, Randidly had quite a few tools to make the rapid recovery much easier, even while he attempted to continue fighting the Nether Gatekeeper while healing. But the larger problem was a whole slew of minor injuries that were slowly popping up as wave after wave of force spread across his body.

Randidly clenched his fist and the manifestation of the Grim Chimera condensed around him like a dark cloud drifting suddenly across the sun on a summer day. Monstrosity’s Appalling Physicality was the more useful of the two passive physical Skills here, as it continued to allow Randidly to move adroitly around the Nether Gatekeeper’s attacks. Because after smashing into each other, the Nether Gatekeeper was only slowed for a split second before its six arms were raised.

The Grim Chimera’s two tails, one on its neck and another growing from the tailbone, flicked side to side. It hissed provocatively. Three fists blurred outward from the Nether Gatekeeper to smash this impudent image. Grim Intuition and Intelligence picked apart the attack patterns he had seen so far and he could only grimace; this was going to hurt.

Randidly ducked under the first punch and allowed the second one to deflect off of his side. The wave of force that was transferred through the fist was enough to cause him to waver and unable to dodge the approaching third punch, even with Chimeric Avoidance roaring to its full potential.

The strike took Randidly in the left shoulder directly. Randidly felt a huge chunk of Sulfur’s armor crack and shatter, and Randidly’s face was sprayed with debris. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the trouble; the strike also directly damaged Randidly’s metallic left arm.

It was quite a weird sensation, to feel a dep crack emerge in the limb, but even worse to feel the short-circuiting of the Aether Engravings that Randidly had used to connect the metal to his body. Aether hissed rather wastefully up into the air, escaping the broken runes and bleeding into the surroundings.

One of the Nether Gatekeeper’s lower two arms, which had been largely kept back in reserve during the fight so far, twisted back and viciously forward for an uppercut. But Randidly raised his two hands and activated one of the Three Wishes in his Sun’s Teardrop Belt and blasted the Nether Gatekeeper directly in its center of mass with an Ignition Bolt. The emerald/gold blast of energy punched against the Nether Gatekeeper’s chest with enough sizzle to burn its resilient physique and force it back almost ten meters.

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Congratulations! Your Skill Ignition Bolt ® has grown to Level 135!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ignition Bolt ® has grown to Level 136!

But eventually, even that energy fizzled out, leaving a glaring Nether Gatekeeper looking at Randidly like he was a bug that had crawled across the turkey dinner.

Still, that ten meters of space was exactly what Randidly needed right now. Even as his body continued to throb painfully from the beating that he had endured thus far, Randidly was able to hastily adjust the Aether runes on his shoulder and arm to keep the limb working. However, Randidly couldn’t get around the fact that the fissure in the scale mail of the limb would only grow worse as time dragged on.

In addition, Randidly took that opportunity to sweep away some nearby Nether Beasts with Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil. The Aether soldiers saw the chance and began to launch attacks to push the foes back to the edge of the trench and uncomplicate the defensive formation. Meanwhile, Randidly also had the spare attention to commune lightly with Sulfur.

I don’t have much more in me, buddy. I need you to step up.

There was a brief hesitation, but then Sulfur acquiesced; it believed that it had absorbed enough kinetic force from Randidly’s brief stint as a punching bag to turn this whole thing around. On cue, Randidly felt Sulfur’s actual body heat up as it quickly got to work.

To oversimplify Sulfur, Randidly’s pet armor was essentially a weirdly shaped snake made out of minerals and plant cells. Just like a snake, these plant cells periodically shed their ‘skin’ and created the rigid exterior that Randidly used as armor. During their time in the Nether Prince, Sulfur had absorbed something that had given it the inspiration to completely revolutionize its plant cells.

A tireless image of the long path. The epitome of a lifestyle with no other options but enduring.

So Randidly’s past several minutes were him frantically gathering the energy by directly absorbing force to complete those renovations while doing his best not to end up broken in the process. And now Sulfur was pumping out darker, more imposing armor to more effectively absorb the force. But that wasn’t all that this new and improved Sulfur could accomplish.

Sulfur’s body temperature spiked even further upward, making him burn against Randidly’s torso. Randidly leaned his body forward so the thick liquid that Sulfur was creating oozed down to cover his left arm. It forced itself out through the cracks in Sulfur’s almost completely shattered grey exterior and had gotten down to Randidly’s elbow before he had to readjust his position for the arrival of the attack.

With another ground shattering step, the Nether Gatekeeper accelerated forward so quickly that even Randidly’s Grim Intuition struggled to pin him down. This strike Randidly took directly in the chest. Randidly reflexively sucked in a breath and activated Cursed Appetite of a Wraith to give him a slight buffer to handle the attack.

Congratulations! Your Skill Cursed Appetite of a Wraith (L) has grown to Level 265!

Congratulations! Your Skill Monstrosity’s Appalling Physicality (A) has grown to Level 241!

“God, that hurts,” Randidly hissed through his teeth as the remaining grey portions of Sulfur were blasted away. Randidly endured as much as he could with the elasticity of his muscles and then took a single step backward. His whole torso was now covered in the new gleaming black armor that Sulfur produced. And as the hardening excretion from Sulfur covered Randidly’s left arm, Sulfur itself moved.

It spiraled around up to the left shoulder and then down the interior of the arm. Slowly, the physical body of Sulfur was growing. The burning, productive plant cells at its core were multiplying.

Unfortunately, Randidly still had five more fists to deal with after he physically gritted his teeth through the first punch. And it had seemed that the Nether Gatekeeper had realized that something was up with Randidly’s ability to endure its blows because it no longer wasted any time in trying to overwhelm him.

The first two punches Randidly coped with by relying heavily on Monstrosity’s Appalling Physicality and Chimeric Avoidance, but the following two were coming at the same time to hit Randidly’s ribs from both sides at once like Randidly was a nut to be cracked open. Tsking lightly, Randidly activated another one of his three wishes and used the Skill Chimera Weeps, But Man Mourns to unleash a half dozen burning golden thrusts in short succession.

That knocked away two more of the follow-up punches, and for the last one, Randidly stepped sharply forward and unleashed a Molten Fang of the Pariah and skewered the final arm right through the bicep. Barring his teeth, Randidly twisted Acri and absolutely mulched the muscle to nothing.

With a scream, the Nether Gatekeeper swung down with the same fist that had thrown the first punch, this time aiming for Acri. Because the spear still skewered the Nether Gatekeeper’s arm, Randidly had to release the shaft of Acri and allow the weapon to be flung away rather than trying to resist such a powerful strike directly.

Of course, a normal spear would have been rendered useless by such a happening, but not Acri. Even as it tumbled through the air and into the ditch packed with Nether forces, Randidly didn’t worry. After it landed, Acri just began to slither back toward unsuspecting Nether Beast’s back and harvest their experience. But it did mean that Randidly had lost his weapon for the moment.

Sulfur’s presence flared to an almost feverish heat at Randidly’s left shoulder, signaling that it was ready within the metal arm. So when the Nether Gatekeeper threw his next punch, Randidly raised his left arm and met it with a left straight of his own.

Crack.

Randidly staggered backward as the hastily created covering on his metal left arm shattered and revealed the deeply flawed scale mail within. The collision had widened the flaws in the arm once more. But Sulfur was furiously producing more excretions, acting a furnace that smelted an entire limb, fueled by all the energy that it had absorbed by directly meeting the Nether Gatekeeper’s strike. Very quickly, Randidly’s left arm became more of a giant, blob-y cudgel than a real arm as more and more of Sulfur’s cells seeped outward.

Still, the Nether Gatekeeper didn’t slow down. The next punch Randidly could dodge, but the punch after that Randidly had to chop down with his right hand to deflect away from his body. The third punch Randidly begrudgingly endured on his right arm and clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. And finally the fourth was another angle that Randidly could meet, so he raised his hardened arm and smashed it against the punch.

CRACK!

The two strikes met. A shiver ran through both of their bodies, but neither stepped backward. The misshapen exterior of Randidly’s left arm cracked and fell away, revealing a sleek, if oversized fist waiting within. One that was very noticeably reminiscent of Vualla’s heavy gauntlets.

“I’m not as strong as you,” Randidly said lightly to the likely uncaring Nether Gatekeeper. “But I’m not alone. And honestly… I’m your worst fucking nightmare. It must be frustrating, to have us counter you so directly. Your Nether is useless. And I don’t need an image to handle your physical strength.

“And if you want to get into a slugging match… heh, well, be my guest. I’ll bury you within the hour.”