He stood alone on his island, the surrounding space flickering and cracking just from his presence. His two tails flicked back and forth, conveying his barely suppressed anxiety. His black hole of a left eye had extended to mask the whole of his face, greedily devouring the surrounding light. His veins pulsed with golden light as his powerful heart continued to steadily beat.

Even though his carefully radiated image had strengthened the island beneath him, he knew that he needed to be extremely careful about his movements right now. His body contained immense potential energy. Enough to become the cataclysm that sent his island crashing toward the ground.

Randidly Ghosthound gritted his teeth, dealing with a painful tightness in his chest that reminded him of heartburn. Luckily, the horrible sensation emanating from the grey core of his Nether Nebula was gradually receding as he sent thin threads of Nether flowing through his veins. The hyperdense Nether gradually interacted with the physically condensed images throughout Randidly’s body, reaching a strained equilibrium.

But the digestion was a painful one. The light grey crystal that had formed in his Nether Nebula stubbornly refused to shrink. It continued to press against his chest, acting as a burden on his image. Without meaning to, Randidly had bit off far more than he could comfortably chew in terms of Nether significance with his weave.

Congratulations! Your Skill Abomination’s Grim Vigor (M) has grown to Level 331!

Randidly couldn’t help but smile. The dense Nether is so dangerous that it’s driving up my Grim Chimera’s physical Skill…

It was mostly due to the dangerous surge of Nether inside of him that Randidly had decided to make the break between matches a two-day affair. As planned, he had successfully gathered quite a bit of Earth’s significance with the weave he had slipped into the System’s thin space for Nether. And he could now feel how, as that Nether density was incorporated into himself, his own Aether was being stirred to greater heights. The contrast between Aether and Nether served as a method to strengthen him. If he wanted to, he might be able to create eleven or twelve drops of liquid Nether now. The improvement was immediate and obvious. If this process of acclimation went off without a hitch, Randidly held great anticipation toward what he could gain from the final.

But he also felt a deep sense of helplessness. Because for the first time, Randidly had an inkling about how Elhume could create a mountain range of crystalized Aether that was the size of a small country. That man had thousands of years world of Nether interacting with his Aether to strengthen it. And that knowledge didn’t give Randidly any confidence that he would be able to replicate the feat in the short term.

Yet his growing understanding of the task he had set for himself only made the flames of his determination grow brighter. That strength hasn’t come freely; according to Octavius, Elhume’s body is actually trapped by the sheer amount of Aether around him. So as long as I can handle the manifestation of his will…

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Understanding (A) has grown to Level 175!

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 299!

Randidly winced again as his chest spasmed painfully. But he allowed his images to manifest further in the surrounding area. The fingers of his left hand curled into long talons. The ground around his bare feet rapidly turned into a field of lush grass. Small bushes sprang into existence, their roots digging greedily in every direction. As the Stillborn Phoenix’s influence grew, the air was filled with the shrill sound of it sucking away small amounts of air.

Randidly had his island floating high in the air, hoping not to affect anyone with the waves his image was releasing. But he could sense the clouds nearby slowing being influenced by his image. They circled like massive, insubstantial buzzards, content to absorb any stray images he left behind. The comparison was so apt that it earned a smile from Randidly. But then he returned to the delicate task of refining his Nether.

I need to finish this by tonight. Tomorrow… I have so many meetings to get through…

*****

Theodora Greyman woke up coughing in the dark. Her initial impulse was to push herself to the sitting position, but she ended up just flailing around and burying her face into the blanket. Her left arm twitched but otherwise didn’t move no matter how she struggled. Her right arm felt like she was sticking it into a campfire. At the same time, a vice of iron tightened in her chest, pressing her two lungs together into a useless lung.

Needless to say, the blanket in her mouth didn’t help with her cough.

She could only blink away tears and resist the urge to panic that crept through her brain like a lurking tarantula. The darkness around her refused to part and she just tried her best to endure her body’s response. Very gradually, her limbs stopped twitching and Theodora experienced a cough big enough to scoop out the gunk that lined her throat. Unfortunately, with her face pressed against the blanket, she simply coughed it up right in front of her. So as her coughs subsided, she stared at the yellowed phlegm oozing slowly downward and felt the strangest sense of relief.

“I’m… alive…” She whispered. Then she pressed her eyes shut as her torso trembled; speaking almost set her into another fit of coughs. In that arena, she had truly resolved herself to die. She had thought she was dying.

And it had made her immensely afraid. Death reminder her of cold rooms in her childhood and looking at pictures that didn’t quite look like the deceased. It reminded her of vanilla puddings she was given to keep her quiet while adults talked about who would take care of her.

Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Determined Tenacity (A) Level 1!

Determined Tenacity (A): Despite the difficulties you have experienced, you continue to persevere. In the face of adversity, your stubborn personality continues to propel you forward. Each point of your Willpower is slightly more effective based on the obstacles in your Path. Effect slightly increases with Skill Level.

When the pain eventually passed, the pressure in her chest slowly eased. With great care, Theodora began to experiment with her different limbs. She felt like a toddler. Despite the fact that she was alive, her physical capabilities weren’t encouraging. Both legs appeared to function fine, but the left side of her torso was completely numb and that arm was almost useless. Her right arm appeared to follow directions, but flashes of pain made it difficult to maintain extended actions.

Even now, Theodora could sense the extended damage that channeling the Nether had done to her body. It ran parallel with her veins, leaving a thousand tiny cracks that fanned outward from the vital thoroughfares of her body. Suddenly, she was a woman made of glass. With great care and about ten minutes, Theodora repositioned herself so she was once more lying on her back. From that vantage, she could see that aside from her bed and a curtained window on the far wall, the room was empty.

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But mostly, she stared at the ceiling. The vivid emerald eyes of Randidly Ghosthound floated in front of her.

“Why…. why do I always lose to you…?”

“Madam Greyman… We were never competing to begin with.”

It was such a strange contrast. After her parents had died, no one looked at her so directly like that.

Soon, Theodora couldn’t bear it anymore and closed her eyes. But that just made the strange visions worse. She had been there on the arena, her body filled with agonizing ice, bitterness, and resentment bubbling in her chest. And when she threw it all in the Ghosthound’s face… his reaction said it all. He looked at her directly. She could tell that he was being honest. In his eyes, they had never been competing.

He had been genuinely trying to help her the entire time. Perhaps not her specifically, but the Earth in general; he wanted people to prosper. Her pride had simply prevented her from seeing it in the past.

After her parents died only a few feet in front of her in the car crash, she was eventually placed with a cousin who worked as a news anchor. Idly, Theodora now wondered who would take her now that she was this weak.

When she had been standing in the arena, that realization that she had been pointlessly responsible for such suffering in Zone 1 had hit her with such force that she had lost consciousness. Her grip on reality had slipped as some of her fundamental premises were challenged. Yet she had awoken now, crippled and injured as she was, and felt a lot more at peace than she had in the past.

“Image, huh…” Theodora said, carefully lifting her right arm off of the bed. Her fingers spasmed intermittently and the exercise seemed to light her right shoulder on fire, but it was somehow satisfying to reach toward the ceiling. She had been impeached she had used her body to the point that it seemed like even the System couldn’t heal her wounds. The only emotion her grand ‘rival’ felt for her was pity.

Yet she still lived. She could still reach. She still had things she wanted to accomplish.

Weirdly, she wanted a vanilla pudding. She hadn’t had a pudding cup in years.

The door to her room opened. And a rather large and strangely shaped man walked into the darkened interior. For a few seconds, Theodora couldn’t tell if her vision was worse than she thought or whether the man was partially a crustacean. It turned out that it was the latter.

The man sat next to her bed. “President Greyman, I’m glad to see you have recovered your consciousness. How are you feeling?”

“Former president. Just call me Theodora.” Theodora corrected, almost absently. Then her gaze sharpened somewhat. This man didn’t seem like he was associated with the Order Ducis or Zone 1. So why was she lying here…? But that wasn’t her primary concern. “How is Richter?”

“Recovering well down the hall. His body acclimated to this… Nether much more ably than yours.” The man said as he shifted his giant claw. “We believe it’s because he could establish a closed system within his legs to contain the… corrosion that results from this energy being allowed free reign. Meanwhile…”

“Meanwhile, I acted with no regard to the consequences,” Theodora confirmed, thinking about more than just the Nether in her body. She could feel the truth of her culpability in the subtle wheezing of her breathing. There was suddenly an inherent frailty to her body that she hadn’t experienced since the System arrived. But in away, that frailty was reassuring. It felt extremely real. This was what it meant to be human.

This was it meant to be an orphan.

With a lot of effort, Theodora turned her head to the side and looked at the strange figure more directly. This man possessed the head and arm of a crab; he must have been one of those affected by Thomas Karmin’s experiments. “Also, who might you be? To be blunt, I don’t quite understand why I’m laying here in a dark room right now.”

The man seemed surprisingly hurt by her words. “Ah… I apologize for not introducing myself sooner. My name is Mr. Syllo; I’m a Tier 2 Citizen of Zone 1. I simply believed… well, that your privacy was of the utmost importance. Considering your political position-”

“I don’t have a political position any longer,” Theodora said frankly, and then she began to laugh, which soon turned to another bout of coughing. Truly, she didn’t have anything. She then felt Mr. Syllo activate a Skill and several tendrils of warmth lightly touched her body. Although it couldn’t combat the damage done by Nether directly, it could ease the negative symptoms. Gradually, her coughing settled down and she released a sigh of pleasure.

Congratulations! Your Skill Determined Tenacity (A) has grown to Level 2!

Congratulations! Your Skill Determined Tenacity (A) has grown to Level 3!

I become crippled and all I get in exchange is an almost meaningless Skill… She somehow found herself smiling.

“Thank you for your Skill. Just to confirm, this is the state of my body after all the available methods were used to attempt to reverse the damage done to my body by Nether?” Theodora asked.

For a second, Mr. Syllo was silent. “...all typical methods have been exhausted, yes.”

Theodora’s mouth twitched. For whatever reason, she was having a very hard time resisting the urge to laugh, even though every time she did so, her body was wracked with agony. “And I suppose part of the reason you are here is to offer me an atypical method, yes? Let me guess: it involves the research of Thomas Karmin, moving my mind into a more robust body that might even be superior to my mortal coil.”

This time, Mr. Syllo was entirely silent as he considered her.

So Theodora continued to speak around giggle fueled coughs. “I’m probably angry, right? That- ahem, that I was so obviously defeated, all of my methods blowing up in my face. I probably want someone to blame. I probably need to build a shrine to my rage and mount Randidly Ghosthound’s head atop it. But right now…”

“Why…. why do I always lose to you…?”

“Madam Greyman…We were never competing to begin with.”

A young girl sat in a chair too big for her and mechanically brought a spoonful of vanilla pudding to her lips. She didn’t eat it; she just wiggled the spoon back and forth, watching the pudding shake. The adults in the other room raised their voices.

Congratulations! Your Skill Determined Tenacity (A) has grown to Level 4!

Congratulations! Your Skill Determined Tenacity (A) has grown to Level 5!

“... right now, I just want to find out what these hands of mine can do.” Theodora finished. Then, with a jerky gesture that set Theodora giggling again, she shooed Mr. Syllo away. Her hand looked like the bastard child of a handshake and the frantic movement of someone trying to dislodge a snake. “Thank you for the offer, but I won’t be needing your help, Mr. Syllo.”

After a few seconds of silence, Mr. Syllo stood. “Well, of course, the decision is yours. I’ll let Richter know that you are feeling better.”

I’ll give him this, Theodora thought as she watched the crab man leave. He knows when to withdraw cleanly. His pitch was completely without any glaring flaws. Completely invulnerable to reproach. But you know, Mr. Syllo…

Theodora Greyman closed her eyes. Randidly’s intense emerald gaze was suddenly there once more, seeming to peer into her very soul. Images are becoming dominant not because of the power that is associated with them, although that’s important. Rather, they are becoming dominant because you can finally shape who you really are. Images are vulnerable and genuine. Building that truth for yourself… that’s a powerful thing.

And I want the chance to build who I want to become.