Through the tenuous and thin threshold that was a Nether Ritual, Randidly released waves of Yggdrasil’s image to alleviate the exhaustion and image dehydration that Vualla was experiencing. She absorbed the image’s ambient energy and her breathing eased. As always, the process made Randidly’s mouth tighten in dissatisfaction. The Xyrt Brigade had not done much to earn Randidly’s affection.

At least the situation with Earth was a high-level political move; that much he could at least forgive after he had defeated Kaan. But the suffering they claimed was training and forced Vualla to endure…

“Stay focused. Your other image is expanding, and it wants to eat me,” Vualla chuckled. “Your Stillborn Phoenix’s bedside manner is shit.”

Randidly shook himself and quelled the rising hunger of his egg of hunger. “Sorry about that. I’m just… well. I’ll be heading to the Nexus soon. I’m just trying to take some notes about the debts I’ll have to collect when I arrive.”

Through there connection, Randidly could feel every detail of Vualla’s smile. “I’ll be waiting. Don’t have too much fun before I finish this. Seven more months and I’ll be free.”

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 172!

Although he was unwilling, Randidly let the connection fade after a few more minutes. Vualla had told him that his timing was rather poor; there was only a short time remaining before she would be allowed out of the isolation chamber and return to the training. So they didn’t have much time to interact. Randidly simply had to frantically try and let Vualla’s image heal so that terrible wasting sickness of her personality he had encountered last time wouldn’t recur.

Sitting on his floating island, he waved a hand and cleared a sightline to the night sky. His manor here was getting rather close to being completed, so the noises coming from the construction site had changed drastically. The quieter and more methodical noises of the wood and stone being carved replaced the heavy assemblage of the past few days.

It was almost peaceful here. He reached out to the side, dragging his fingers through the silver mist and watching the moonlight spirits happily twining around his hand. And with dawn still some time away, Randidly could do engage in some training to relax.

He first stretched his body, then beckoned Acri over and practiced utilizing the spear. The post-Kaan Acri was still quiet lethargic, but it was clear that Randidly’s Soulseed weapon was steadily shrinking. Apparently, the amount of experience his spear had received was even greater than Randidly had expected; he wasn’t done digesting it even though two weeks had passed.

Acri’s next form is something to look forward to, however.

After Randidly set Acri to the side, he moved calmly shifted into the movements fo Cosmic Necessity and practiced fighting without the spear. As his skin heated, the night air began to turn to steam as it brushed against him. His heart rapidly began to pound and the physical force that his body could manifest shot sharply upward. To the point where Randidly needed to be very careful in his movements and direct his force toward the largely invulnerable sky. Otherwise, he might shatter his island and ruin the buzzing construction that he had endured for quite some time.

Still, despite the annoyance of restraining himself, Randidly quite enjoyed the sensation of throwing punched and seeing holes erupt in clouds hundreds of meters away. The effects of the gradual physical condensation of his images in his body was ridiculous. He whipped his left hand sideways and watched as a massive cloud was shredded into thin strips of water vapor in the distance. Sometimes, it’s difficult to believe that I’m still human…

Congratulations! Your Skill Abomination’s Grim Vigor (M) has grown to Level 321!

The timing of the Skill Leveling up forced a chuckle out of Randidly’s mouth and he shook his limbs. Gradually, his heart rate fell back toward its baseline and his breaths stopped coming out of his nose as steam. From there, he activated each of his images in turn, checking in on their substance and making minute adjustments.

Even now, Randidly could sense that a gap still existed between his image and someone like Lady Iellaya that he had seen fighting on the front line. It wasn’t so large a gap that he couldn't bridge it with his immense Stat, Nether, and physical advantages, but in terms of raw image, he still had a long way to go. That realization was both exciting and nostalgic.

There’s always someone stronger… Randidly thought, looking out at the slowly healing holes in the surrounding clouds. It amused him to think about other people below might be looking up at the same clouds and thinking the same thought for different reasons. In a way, the entire universe was a large circle of perspectives.

Governed by life and death and powered by time, the cycle steadily churned everything to dust.

After musing on the nature of the world, Randidly focused back on his images. The process of pushing them up to a higher potency wasn’t that complicated, as far as he could tell; he just needed to iron out the small, almost unnoticeable inconsistencies and sharpen the details. It was a refinement process that couldn’t be rushed, just undertaken steadily.

The process was somewhat satisfying, although it was monotonous. It was similar to running one’s fingers across a silk blanket. If you did it for long enough, you would notice small tears in the fabric and could then repair those flaws.

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But with the big flaws out of the way, smaller flaws would gradually emerge as the largest deviations from the smooth blanket currently present. In a way, it felt like the refinement would never cease.

After adjusting his images for two hours, Randidly had a new thought and focused instead on his Nether Nebula. The core continued to thicken and turn slightly grey as the meaning of overseeing this tournament flowed steadily into Randidly’s Nether. Honestly, the effect was so good that Randidly was looking forward to how much significance he would be able to extract from the quarters, semis, and finals.

Outside of the Nether Nebula’s core, Randidly’s powerful Willpower pressed the Nether into a flat disc that spun slowly around him. But inspired by his work with his images, Randidly released the Nether and let it bulge outward. Almost instantly, small stones near where he was standing began to levitate off the ground. There was a strange grinding sound in the air and visual distortions appeared around Randidly’s body as space near him destabilized.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 322!

With small purple-black flames at the edges of his emerald eyes, Randidly began to take that wild and raw Nether and condense it. Not to the point that it would begin to shift into the intimidating grey of that bubble Randidly had condensed, but close. He didn’t force it into a ring, but instead spun and concentrated the substance of the Nether. The visual deviations began to settle as Randidly brought the Nether under control.

He created thick strips of Nether and then wove them into that same condensed disc. But just as soon as he finished, Randidly’s lips twitched; he honestly didn’t have much experience weaving and the result was rather unsatisfactory. The visual distortions flared back to life as he shredded the result and started again.

Spinning and weaving, spinning and weaving, over and over.

Each time Randidly finished the weaving of Nether around the Nebula, he saw the possibility for improvement and decisively tore his previous effort to shreds. Iterations passed by the dozen as Randidly relentlessly pursued a veil of Nether that possessed the same, near organic flow as it had in its natural state while also increasing the density of the Nether.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 239!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 250!

It was almost hypnotic to work with the raw Nether and artificially shape it to mimic natural lines. Because the folds of the weave needed to be soft to facilitate the flow while the actual intersections needed to be so tight inserted that there was no space between the different flows. Randidly wanted it to reach the point that an observer wouldn't be able to tell that there was a weave at all. They would only sense the subtle presence of Nether around Randidly without understanding the overwhelming powerful contained on his person.

Randidly paused in his work after ripping another failure apart and looked to the sky. To the East, the sky was beginning to lighten. Randidly released a deep sigh as he considered the prospect of the day before him. The actual matches won’t be so bad, but with only sixteen, I’ll bet that Tatiana has already arranged for me to be meetings for the rest of the time…

Yet Randidly couldn’t feel too annoyed at Tatiana. She was doing what he asked; preparing Kharon to survive without being able to rely on Randidly Ghosthound. Not that he would be barred from returning to Earth, but also… despite his recent discovery that his image hadn’t contaminated Kharon as much as he thought, he still didn’t want to interfere with the first two Calamities.

Right now his focus was keeping Earth from appearing any more unique than it was already. The attention of the Nexus had only brought complications so far. It was better to proceed through the Calamities in a mundane manner while Randidly gathered power in the Nexus.

Shaking his head, Randidly returned to his Nether practice. After making several attempts, he had an idea of what he would actually like to do; he wanted to draw Nether from several sources and weave it together into one whole tapestry. Randidly sensed that if he were to teach others to properly utilize his Nether Wells and then combine all the disparate Nether, he would finally be close to creating the Nether equivalent of a Class.

However, that would be quite dangerous, and require everyone to have their own Aether to balance out the Nether… Hum… I wonder if there are other ways to mimic the effect… Humming to himself and with the sun slowly rising, Randidly continued to train.

*****

Unable to fall asleep and feeling too agitated to meditate, Huang Li quickly ascended the stairs and reached the roof of the housing they had been provided by the Orchard. Tomorrow they were matched up against Richter and Blackhand, the representatives of Zone 1. They were surely the most difficult foes they had yet faced in all of their time living under the thumb of the Nexus.

Huang Li sensed that Huang Shou was struggling with something internally, but hadn’t pressed the issue during their dinner of steamed fish and rice. They both seemed locked in with their own thoughts, separated by the gulf of distance created by their opposed beliefs. And now Huang Li needed time to think.

But when he arrived at the roof and looked up at the night sky, Huang Li didn’t have much time for thinking. Instead, he watched with wide eyes as he failed to sense even the sliver of an image reverberation and yet someone was casually punching holes in clouds.

This…. This must be the work of Randidly Ghosthound… Huang Li clenched his hands into fists and stared fervently upward. The casual power displayed was overwhelming. The distance between them was immense.

But gradually as Huang Li watched, he was able to calm down. But I always knew I wasn’t a grand character who would become a hero, didn’t I? It is only with years of hard work and the guidance of my betters that I was able to reach this point. And now… those facts about myself haven’t changed. If I want to improve, I need to observe carefully and learn…

And these palm strikes… the reason they are powerful is not that they utilize an image to dominate the surroundings all the way to the target… but instead, the Ghosthound just physically pushes aside all obstacles…

An image that doesn’t bother to attack the opponent’s image… an image that just draws a clear separation between them and cuts forward…

Gradually, his eyes began to glow and the long body of a dragon appeared with him on the roof. Then Huang Li hurried back down to his room to retrieve his interspatial amulet and his wo dao within. He needed to practice before the inspiration passed.