Randidly's grip on the heavy golden key was extremely light. Just his fingertips were touching the warm surface. Raising the key, Randidly felt the strange lines of karma spreading out throughout the Great Rift around them, resonating with the tip of the key. Which did confirm that karma was a force present everywhere, but Randidly didn't examine the situation too closely at the moment.

Not when Ileot is glaring up at us like that...

Instead, his Grim Intuition spread slowly outward, passing by Lady Iellaya and Vualla and their complicated situations. Then Randidly felt the lines of slowly dispersing karma from the huge area of land that had been reclaimed by the Great Rift. Feeling somewhat overmatched, Randidly sensed the powerful lines of dormant karma that were slowly coming back to life as the Great Rift once more ruled the area.

No matter how this ended, the Nether had won a battle in the ancient war against Aether.

As he slowly slid the key forward through the air, Randidly also felt the strange karma of the Nether King. He could feel its pain and agony, but also there was a confusing swirl of pulsing emotions that kept the impressions shallow and capricious. Almost like the determined and obnoxious presence of commercials on television. And Randidly turned increasingly solemn as he saw the way that there seemed to be two types of Nether present in the Nether King. The first was the substance of the Nether King, but around it...

Quite like the System was based heavily on Nether Rituals, whatever was wrapped tightly around the Nether King seemed to be based on Aether. It created a tight weave of Nether based upon Aether principles, giving shape to the Nether King's wild emotions. But it also functioned as a natural break, preventing the Nether King’s emotions from spinning out of control.

Perhaps that’s what grants the Nether King it’s intelligence…?

Shaking his head, Randidly focused toward his main target: Ileot Swacc. The black veins that covered his face had only grown more pronounced in the past thirty seconds. At this point, they were long oily serpents that stretched across his head and down his bulging neck. The whites of Ileot's eyes looked very pale as those black tears stained the area surrounding his eyes.

Small amounts of that blackness spread to the eyes themselves, staining slowly outward like ink in water.

"Are you afraid, Randidly Ghosthound?" Lady Iellaya asked quietly when it had become clear that Randidly didn't intend to go along with her plan to fight against Ileot Swacc. Despite the casual delivery of the question, her stiff spine hinted at her hidden fury. Randidly, for his part, grew only more sure of his decision to avoid a confrontation as he finally sensed the lines of karma that led to Ileot's core.

As Randidly touched that core of that man’s karma, he suddenly saw how the strange knots that had troubled him were slowly connected with each other. With a small frown, Randidly followed the karma from Ileot to the surrounding area to the Vualla standing beside Randidly and the Vualla riding within her and then to the Vualla that now became a part of Ileot Swacc himself. Randidly also traced the karma out to the unconscious body of a duplicated Eliot who was likely hidden in one of the nearby pieces of stone debris by Vualla.

Unwilling to let the issue go, Lady Iellaya continued to speak as Ileot's aura continued unceasingly to rise. "Inactivity is a choice. Life will not wait for you to seize the chances it provides for you-"

"Trust him," Vualla interrupted. She raised her hand and put it on Randidly's shoulder that was covered by a bulging Sulfur pauldron. "Randidly is just saying this isn't something that we can fight our way out of. We aren't that strong. But do either of us seem like we’ve given up? There are other ways to survive this."

After a long glance, both women turned to look toward the ominous form of Ileot Swacc. At this point, the thick rivers of white lightning had wrapped themselves together to create a flowing circle of energy that spun around him. Small wisps of flames sparked outward and then hung in the area around Ileot, rapidly creating almost a hundred of those passive white lightning blasts just while they watched.

More were created every second.

Meanwhile, Randidly's mind was rapidly following his instincts. The sudden decision of Ileot to ambush Randidly was too quick, even for a powerful and decisive individual raised in the System’s bloodthirsty manner. Whatever has happened today had clearly pushed Ileot into an unusual emotional state... Most likely because he was tainted by the same problematic opinions on karma that Vualla had mentioned before...

...and based on what I can see, that opinion on karma came from the other version of Vualla that is riding as a passenger in her body right now... Wielding the Philosopher's Key, Randidly rapidly attempted to sort through the dense karma extending out from Ileot Swacc. And it seems like that passenger is actually the original!

For a short time, Randidly followed that maze of karma down the rabbit hole to try and understand the different versions of Vualla. He saw that the original was wounded and then was saved by Eliot, who sustained a mortal blow while protecting her. The original dearly wished to be able to save her brother that saved her but was unwilling or unable to do so in that frantic moment.

At the same time, Eliot activated his duplication ability... and ironically, the first duplicated Vualla was that cold darkness that took the original Eliot's life. And much of Ileot's current fear was that this would be a repeat of that situation that had taken his original life... But the complicating factor was that, as a result, his fear wasn’t tied into the Nether King, but that first Vualla duplication...

Congratulations! Your Fate, The Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 87!

Ileot began to stir to action. His gaze focused on the three of them who floated uneasily in a tight clump above him. More and more tiny, white flames hopped off of that ring around him to float ominously in a steadily growing stockpile of blasts.

"You better hurry," Lady Iellaya said with forced calmness. “I refuse to die here.”

“If you need to run away, we’d understand. I’m sure Ileot would kill us before chasing after you.” Vualla said playfully. If he hadn’t been frantically combing through the karma in the area to understand how they could escape this, Randidly would have rolled his eyes.

But to his surprise, Lady Iellaya responded very seriously. “I don’t forget the debts I owe. As long as you might need my help, I’ll be here.”

Randidly bit his lip and ignored the rest of the conversation to focus on his own understanding. Lady Iellaya's idea about targeting the Vualla duplication that was currently latched onto Ileot was probably the right idea... but hell if I know how to target her in the short term. If there a way to stall for time-

Then Randidly smiled. Even as Ileot began to raise his hands toward the trio, Randidly pushed forward with his key until it settled into a groove of karma. The Philosopher, the shy boy who so quietly watched the people around him change and decide that the world was a certain sort of way and that truth would never change, the boy who had been on the brink of losing his spark of wonder before the System arrived, glanced casually toward Lady Iellaya. The spark of possibilities danced across his gaze. "Be ready to throw up something to keep us safe."

Lady Iellaya pursed her lips. "If I could block Ileot's attacks, we wouldn't be in this situation, now would we?"

"Ileot isn't what you need to block," Randidly said lightly. But he turned his attention back to the key in his hand without clarifying. For all that Lady Iellaya was in an extremely pessimistic mood, she would still act appropriately when the time came. Randidly released the key and held his palm over it. The key didn't waver, seemingly fixed in the air. Karma became concrete before his key.

Before him was the solid wall of power that threatened to force them to die. Randidly's emerald eyes flashed as he pressed his will against the Philosopher’s Key. "Open."

Congratulations! Your Fate Philosopher's Key has grown to Level 88!

There was an extremely strong resistance at first, but then the Philosopher's Key in Randidly's hand slowly turned. The weave of Nether that was created based on the principles of Aether strained for a second to keep itself together, but then it ripped to shreds.

The Nether King’s core was freed.

OOONNNNNNNNNGGGG.

An ominous and very familiar noise spread outward as whatever strange substance that bound the Nether King’s remaining strength was ripped away. The Nether in the surrounding area instantly became tumultuous and acidic. The remaining pieces of stone floating in the Great Rift shrunk at a visible rate. Even Ileot, nearing the peak of his power by being fueled with the energy the duplicate Vualla prepared, went pale and was forced to turn toward the wounded remnants of the Nether King.

Randidly's hand twitched painfully as the powerful reverberations the Nether King released resonated with his Philosopher's Key. Gritting his teeth, Randidly used his trembling limbs to remove his key from its spot within the Nether King's karma. Every second that his hand was clenched around the golden key, agony forked up his arm. By the time that Randidly managed to tear it away, blood dripped from his lips from the gash his teeth made in his cheek.

Jesus, that was horrible, Randidly released a shaky breath.

"Did you-" Lady Iellaya hissed, but before Randidly could even respond the Nether King's fury seemed to have realized that it was no longer bound. Its energy ballooned upward.

OOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

The Nether in the area seemed to slowly begin to rotate as the Nether King imposed his will on his domain. The Great Rift shivered in recognition of its power. Ileot, who had just been maliciously eyeing Randidly, Lady Iellaya, and Vualla, now glared furiously at the revived Nether King. Lady Iellaya's image of the serpent that had ripped off its own raven wings wound its way around the trio, insulating them from the worst of the damage.

"I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!" Ileot bellowed. The wriggling black veins in his head slowly tightened as madness consumed Ileot's gaze. Soon it looked like a black cage covered the skin of his face.

Although Randidly already gave a lot of his forcefully recovered mental strength drained to open up the weave around the Nether King, he still paused to spread out his Nether Gatekeeper bubble and superimpose it on Lady Iellaya's image. Together, only the smallest portion of the damage seeped through. And although none of them were capable of rivaling the forces that now clashed once more, also none of them were weak.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

What we need is time, Randidly thought calmly to himself. Or rather, I desperately needed time to figure this out. The Nether King seemed to have been deeply wounded and was slowly depleting his own strength previously. But this way the Nether King's remaining strength will be depleted more quickly and spent to distract Ileot. Admittedly, there is a small chance that Ileot is overcome and the rest of us will need to now fight the Nether King, but our prior situation was one with a powerful entity determined to kill us anyway... the consequences of failing this gamble were the same as us doing nothing.

Of course, Ileot certainly won't want to discuss whether he should kill us after this... Randidly winced lightly, then shook his head.

Vualla squeezed his shoulder in encouragement and Randidly flashed her a smile. Then he closed his eyes and focused.

Randidly had only experienced the briefest contact with the duplicated Vualla, the one that was now fueling Ileot’s rampage. At the time, he had assumed the Vualla he sensed in his mind was one of his own imagination. It was only after he had felt that strange, familiar shadow in the remaking of Lady Iellaya’s Class that it had occurred to Randidly that whatever he felt was more concrete than momentary speculation.

Hers was a life that was defined by the decision to not go and speak with her father. Or at least that was what Randidly had assumed at the time when he had listened to Ileot slander her. But the karma that Randidly now felt as he stretched out the unadorned Philosopher’s Key was more complicated than that. There wasn’t a single instance that curdled her life; it was a series of decisions that repeated that unfortunate point that would eventually define her.

She was raised by the duplicated Ileot who was desperate to gain strength. She had learned from his repeated lessons how terrible the price of failure was. Ileot’s brush with death was conveyed to Vualla in its entirety and she learned never to face that fear.

To her, Ileot was the father she never spoke to, despite his obvious pain. So from observation, Vualla learned that pain should be eternalized and forged into a sharp blade. Through her every action, she couldn’t escape the shadow of death. Everything was to avoid that tragedy. All fear was ignored until it could be smelted into something violent and useful.

She adhered to those principles so strictly that she never reached out to anyone. When she returned to the real world from the projection, she had absorbed Eliot’s life without even thinking about it. And if she realized the enormity of what she had done later, she ignored it until it could become power.

In every fight, the duplicated Vualla was all alone. She drowned in her own darkness as her own ignored emotions piled up faster than her power could grow.

Most interesting to Randidly, in both the situation with the original Vualla and with Ileot now, she didn’t act independently. She didn’t have the will for it any longer. All of her desire had been buried. She could only provide that power she so desperately sought. It was by becoming entirely a source of power that Vualla could avoid facing the ignored emotions.

In a way, the duplicated Vualla had pursued power so long that she no longer knew what she wanted.

...well, I can help with that, Randidly light touched the drop of liquid Aether in his chest. He might not need it to affect Ileot and the duplicated Vualla, but he couldn’t take the risk of failing on the first attempt. Besides, just glancing beyond the barrier of the serpent image and Randidly’s rather fragile bubble revealed how minuscule Randidly’s power was here. He was an adrift sailor as the darkness of a night time sea threated to drown them all. Storm clouds were heavy overhead.

Seven huge veins of white lightning smashed aside a huge wave of caustic Nether. The titanic collision jarred Randidly teeth, even through their defenses. Strange, twisted masses of grey putty the size of small houses were produced as the two types of energy were forced into close proximity. Just as quickly as they formed, the swirling Nether eradicated that putty by devouring it in small, rapid bites. Weird currents of Nether gathered to force the river of white lightning backward, but Ileot’s power continued to climb.

All the while, the Nether King’s keening cry continued.

OOOOOOoooooNNNNGGGGGGgggg.

BOOOM!

Three of the riverlike veins of Aether spun together and smashed apart another wave of thick Nether that the Nether King’s cry had created. Then two more rivers forced its way forward, attempting to cut through the extremely dense Nether directly around the Nether King that continued to shroud its body from view. Ileot wielded them like massive whips to viciously dismantle the Nether King’s defense.

Ileot’s eyes were completely blank now, as the strange side-effects of hosting the duplicated Vualla continually stained him. Those terrible emotions that the duplicated couldn’t handle slowly overwhelmed his reason. His attacks hadn’t the slightest hint of artifice at this point; Ileot simply used ferocity to smash its weapons forward and bludgeon the foe.

Perfect. All I need now… Randidly narrowed his gaze, then blinked as Vualla turned him to face her directly. Her eyes were shocking azure.

The corner of her mouth quirked up as they gazed at each other. “You don’t need to handle everything yourself. You still need a path opened up?”

Apparently Randidly didn’t hide his hesitation as well as he thought, because Vualla rolled her eyes at his response. “Relax. I won’t be doing it alone… isn’t that right? Will you help me make this choice?”

Lady Iellaya frowned as Vualla just looked down at her own feet while asking the question. “Me?”

But Randidly immediately understood that Vualla hadn’t aimed the question at Lady Iellaya. Instead, Randidly could feel the other Vualla, the original Vualla, stir within his Vualla’s chest.

The original Vualla hesitated. Vualla simply smiled shyly at the ground and waited. Outside of their little alcove, Aether and Nether howled its eternal fury and ripped into each other. Nether and Aether grasped and ripped at each other in desperate struggle. The original Vualla sighed and seemed to ask Vualla a question.

“I trust you because we are the same person.” Vualla spared Randidly a glance. “...and because no matter what happened in the past, we would make the same decisions about our future. Those decisions are how we earn our karma.”

As Randidly felt the other Vualla slowly agree, Randidly returned his golden key to his belt.

“Ready?” Randidly asked lightly.

“Ready,” Vualla responded, and Randidly could sense the difference in her voice. In fact, he abruptly realized that the Vualla he interacted with earlier in the day hadn’t been the usual Vualla.

...which explains her strange words when I kissed her earlier… Randidly thought. But he dismissed that thought as less important than the current crisis.

Sighing, Lady Iellaya shook her head. “Even if most of the front is destroyed, I’m still the highest ranking soldier remaining… yet why do I feel like you two are ignoring me…?”

Yet despite Lady Iellaya’s complaints, she lowered her image at the same time that Randidly pulled back his Nether Gatekeeper bubble. Instantly, the three were buffeted by the roaring discharge that washed outward from the struggle between the two powerful figures below them. In that moment of hesitation, Vualla stepped forward with such unassuming and determined movements that she cut cleanly through the unpredictable energy.

First one punch and then a second, the original Vualla paved a pathway down toward Ileot’s back. With his Grim Intuition, Randidly felt the way that the skin from Vualla’s knuckles bubbled and then was torn off, revealing cartilage and bone. Flecks of blood dribbled down her fingers but Vualla didn’t slow in the slightest.

Each punch cut open the wave of energy, but there were so many waves that each punch only freed up a single step. So Vualla took another step forward and punched again, perfecting that image of sharpness to keep abreast with the increasing frequency of the energy waves as they neared Ileot Swacc.

Randidly’s Willpower tightened around the thrumming drop of liquid Aether in his chest. It was as though it knew that its time would soon come and it was trembling excitedly. It was the last bet that Randidly was going to make, and the one that might see him quite dead if it failed.

But there is more than enough fear present here already. I won’t waver. Ten more meters.

OOOOONNNNGGGG!

“JUST DIE ALREADY!” Ileot roared with enough volume to briefly suppress the groaning sound of the Nether King. But just as quickly, the Nether King continued to steadily grind at the surrounding individuals with its powerful and monotonous song.

Randidly reached back and seized Lady Iellaya’s wrist. In a low voice, he whispered. “Don’t look when I produce this light. But after the light ceases, grab Vualla and me and pull us back as quickly as you can. Flee right back to your fort. Hopefully, my plan will take care of Ileot and then we can wait out the Nether King.”

After nodding, Lady Iellaya gave Randidly a somewhat helpless look while inclining her head toward Vualla. Both tried to not look as Vualla in front of them wavered from the constant barrage of energy. No matter how much her image improved, she still couldn’t improve the body she currently possessed. And that body had begun to fail. But Vualla quickly took another step forward and continued to chew through the intervening distance.

Five more meters…

They were nearing Ileot’s back now, so when he screamed in fury, Randidly could see over his shoulder to the black drool that extended in ropey clumps from his mouth and drip across his torso. The quantity of Aether in his body was almost blinding to look at with his Aether Detection. There seemed to be no limit to his power as the horrible speed of the rivers of white lightning increased. Two or three smashed down against the Nether King’s defenses every second. The reverberations became increasingly violent as Ileot steady beat the Nether King back.

Two meters…

Vualla threw punch after punch. The bones of her left had been almost completely exposed along her knuckles and now smoked ominously. For every one punch of her left hand, she threw five with her right. Yet because of the disparity, the flesh on her right hand was quickly suffering a similar fate.

One meter. But this is Vualla’s limit.

“You are gonna need to push me-” Randidly began, but before he had even finished his thought Lady Iellaya grunted with exertion and forced him forward. Vualla glanced sideways as he was moving forward but she graciously stepped to the side as he passed.

Give me a chance to gather myself! Randidly thought with an aggrieved expression as he dove headfirst into the chaotic energy in front of him. Even with his the Nether Gatekeeper physique that Randidly possessed, submerging himself in that sea of dense Nether was like diving into an artic stream. The energy chilled him to his bones.

But still, Randidly was a half meter short. So he groaned from the exertion and forced himself to dive a small distance deeper into the Nether. His limbs flailed but he managed to cross the important distance. He had arrived close enough that the powerful energies around Ileot Swacc’s body began to ease the pressure that Randidly was under.

Finally, the drop of liquid Aether ignited. Randidly’s power surged upward. He wasn’t close enough to reach out and touch Ileot, but he was only a few short inches farther than that.

“Hey, Ileot, Vualla.”

More instinct than reason drove Ileot to twist around in suspicion. His black eyes locked onto Randidly’s figure.

Randidly smiled sadly as he looked at those pitch-black tears. He thought about the woman who imagined herself as a miasma hanging over a battlefield, then as wings that were so large and heavy they functioned as an anchor to bind someone to the ground, and then settled on horrible tears. Even though he thought he already knew the answer, Randidly still asked the question he needed in order to touch on the duplicated Vualla’s weakness.

“Why are you doing this?”

Reflect, Vualla. Just for a single second. Look at who you’ve become.

His liquid Aether burned through the Lantern of Harsh Truths vastly increasing its power. The passive effect became an active one as he forced the Skill to pulse with power. His eyes began to glow until it seemed like emerald beams of light were shining out of his irises.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Lantern of Harsh Truths ® has grown to Level 50!

...

Congratulations! Your Skill the Lantern of Harsh Truths ® has grown to Level 82!

Almost immediately, the tears stopped from Ileot’s eyes. Something vital in the duplicated Vualla fell to pieces. Vualla looked at herself and faced a truth she had run away from for most of her life. Probably since the moment she had used Eliot’s life to seize power.

The air seemed to whisper the answer that the entire battlefield could hear. Nether didn’t obscure the words in the least.

“I... hate myself.”