As Lyra had indicated, the location of the main terminal was obvious once Randidly started looking. The Nexus Ways were like invisible flumes that ran across the surface of Expira, and when he stepped into the thickest one he was pulled through to a spacious gleaming stone cavern. In the center of that cavern stood two tall stone pillars that reached all the way to the ceiling. On the floor between those pillars was a mystical looking Engraving. Motes of slight drifted upward from the ground, a testament to the residual power present there.

Randidly walked forward, delighting in the sensation of the cool material of the ground on his bare toes. He paused above the Engraving and studied it. Despite the fact that he had been doing his best to keep up with the slew of insights that Neveah made and reported to him, the Engraving in front of him was completely indecipherable. He recognized some pieces that would transfer energy, but he couldn't get any real grasp on the actual function of the thing.

Of course, the function was rather obvious; this was the portal.

When Randidly approached, his new piece of Aether attached to him prompted him with a question.

What is your Destination?

A hitherto never-before-seen menu appeared in front of his gaze. There was a space for prior destinations and also a place where you could enter in the coordinates of some random place you wanted to go. Randidly wondered idly how far the Nexus Ways stretched. Considering the size of each Cohort, the coverage must be absolutely massive. Probably to the point that his brain wouldn't be able grapple with the amount of space that this portal could move him. Probably, Randidly wouldn't even be able to cope with how far he was traveling simply to the Nexus. He was heading toward a scale that persisted past the limits of his imagination.

And this was the enemy he had chosen for himself. Randidly couldn't help but grin. The refined Grim Chimera stirred in his chest, its tails flicking back and forth. But Randidly forced himself to relax; now wasn't the time. But certainly, he could hold his head up high in the face of the Ways. His Philosopher’s Key held just as much juice as this infrastructure. Plus, it was a much more convenient size.

But I cannot deny I have a soft spot in my heart for ambient motes of light… Randidly thought. His mind briefly drifted back to the development of his house and floating island, but he forced himself to let go. Dwelling would only make this journey more difficult.

In addition to those other functions, there was a rather large selection at the top of the Teleportation Screen: Nexus.

Randidly clicked it and stepped onto the runic Engraving on the ground. He could feel the metal disc that held the Engraving begin to heat as energy churned and bubbled through the runes. The pillars on either side of him began to tremble. Randidly glanced around as light steadily began to congregate around his person. It was like the runes on the ground were sucking it out of the surrounding cavern and concentrating it within the circle. So as Randidly watched, the surroundings steadily dimmed to monochrome shapes, and then toward pure shadow. The metal beneath his feet continued to grow hotter and hotter. Distantly, Randidly could sense that the Engraving was now reaching out and gripping the surrounding space. That space was thoroughly squeezed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 227!

When the surroundings faded to pitch black, there was a light pop. The screen of borrowed light and squeezed space that had been wrapped around him cracked and faded away. And a sea of new sensations flooded in to smack wet and stark against Randidly's senses.

The very texture of the air around him seemed unfamiliar.

The first thing that he noticed, while his eyes adjusted to the returned light, was the smell of the surroundings. The air smelled of sweat and iron, reminding Randidly a lot of his time working in the metal refinery. Next to his Grim Intuition came the Aether, flooding around him at a density that was at least double that of Expira. It was choppy and irregular, but it was immediately clear that the Nexus was certainly a place filled with rich energy. The people who lived at the core of the System did not want for Aether.

Next came the heat and the awareness of how many people were in the surrounding hundred meters. Their voices lapped against each other in the surroundings, reverberating and mixing into a muddy torrent of words that reached his ears. As Randidly's Grim Intuition rapidly gathered and categorized these sounds, he discovered something rather stunning. Perhaps someone with a Reaction lower than Randidly's wouldn't have noticed it, but there was a sliver of blurred noise in the voices. Especially to the quieter ones, near the edges of her Perception. There was a hint of a delay to when a noise was produced and when it became intelligible.

And then it hit him. There are so many voices that the translation software is having difficulty keeping up...

"Sir, please move and allow the next arrival." A voice said, interrupting Randidly's thought process. And it also woke him up to his current situation. He was standing on a perfect replica of the portal on Expira, bearing the same Engraving with the two pillars. But each of these pillars were standing alone, without a roof. And each pillar served as the pillar for two of such portals, as the portals chained off to Randidly's right and left for quite some distance.

"First time in the Nexus?" The voice spoke again and pulled Randidly's attention forward to the speaker. He leaned against the edge of a wooden platform in the middle of the path, clearly made so he could monitor the situation in the surrounding portals. He was wearing an official-looking grey uniform, with a badge that had the letters NLC on his right breast. Around his platform, there was a constant flow of bodies heading toward Randidly’s left.

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It was then that Randidly realized these people were moving on a central path that wound between the two rows of portals on either side. Randidly took another quick glance around. People of all different shapes and sizes were trooping dutifully forward along the path, appearing to know their destination. The lines of portals seemed to to stretch and curl like ribbons, meaning that the surroundings were a maze-like network of portals tightly packed portals. During that one glance, Randidly could sense at least thirty portals beginning to activate in the surrounding fifty meters. Across from Randidly, the light popped and an officious looking lizard man walked purposefully forward and joined the flow of traffic.

The uniformed man's gaze began to harden and Randidly felt the Engraving beneath him beginning to heat. So he walked several steps forward and looked around. Once he was off the platform, the worker seemed to lose interest in him, turning to glance casually around at the rest of the portals. Meanwhile, Randidly solemnly looked up at the sky above. A man with snakes for arms sauntered past him chittering in annoyance as Randidly simply stood in his way.

His Grim Intuition fed him more information about the surroundings, slowly transforming the expression on Randidly’s face. Above him was the milky way highlighted in wide golden strokes. Two absolutely massive stars lingered overhead, each taking about as much space as Randidly's fist if he held it up toward the sky, shedding yellowed light across a glittering space that was filled with asteroid debris, cosmic dust, and the remnants of what clearly were destroyed worlds. The destruction was so close to his current position that Randidly could see the wreckage and broken rocks tumbling end over end, suspended eternally above these teleportation relays.

Because the location on which Randidly was standing on was just one of six hundred floating platforms that were covered in serpentine lines of teleporters. Randidly's platform was part of a massive ring that stretched in both directions. The flow of bodies was toward a massive teleportation Engraving at the center of the relay where groups of five hundred at a time were sent forward to the Nexus proper. That train of thought had Randidly slowly pivoting and looking toward what sat coiled at the center of so many teleporters.

Randidly's emerald eyes narrowed as he gazed at the hazy form of the Nexus. It was so distant that even he, with his powerful Grim Intuition, couldn't make out any of the details. There was only the massive form, hunched and shadowy in the distance. Although perhaps perspective was playing tricks on him, the Nexus appeared even more massive than the stars coloring the nebula. It was lopsided and heavy, with only vague lines indicating the towering buildings that dominated the Nexus proper.

Yet despite that, Randidly's gaze was pulled down to the deep darkness sitting below the Nexus. The lines around Randidly's eyes tightened and his Nether Nebula briefly stalled in its eternal churning. Even from here, Randidly could sense the massive concentration of significance.

If it's this horrifying from this distance... Randidly gritted his teeth. But he forced his feet to move forward, joining the flow of bodies around him. It makes sense why someone would be driven mad by it. That power...

Randidly followed the path for about ten minutes of winding walking. The sparse stream of people became a rapid river of bodies as the portals around them continued to activate and add their passengers to the flow. A massively muscular humanoid stepped directly in front of Randidly, blocking his path. His rather undersized and bald head looked down at Randidly from between his massively over-muscled shoulders. The effect was a bit like an apple sitting between two cantaloupes. Then the humanoid sneered at him and strode forward.

Perhaps because he was busy internalizing all this new information about the Nexus, it took Randidly several seconds to realize that he had just been insulted. When it finally hit him, he blinked and snorted out a gust of laughter at the humanoids back.

But now that he had noticed it, he could start to sense that there was an increasingly competitive edge to the crowd around him. As more people arrived, there was less space for them all. Especially as they approached the plaza with the large scale teleportation formation, the various figures seemed determined to make themselves out to be the top dog on this relay, one of six hundred similar relay platforms.

Perhaps the sheer scale of the two golden suns above them made these ants try their best to feel meaningful. At the edge of the horizon, the dark and hunch form of the Nexus sat like a disapproving moon.

Around Randidly, there were several lightning-fast collisions of images as various individuals postured against each other. And ultimately… Randidly was rather stunned; all of the people around him were incredibly weak. Basically any of the individuals in the top eight duos of Expira would have been a dominant force here. Which was perhaps proof that Randidly’s attempts to strengthen Expira’s development worked… but wasn’t this a little much…?

How did these people use images like this to pass the Calamities…? Or were they special cases like me that were invited before the Calamities? No, that seemed even more unlikely…

A few aggressors came for Randidly and the comfortable bubble of space that he maintained around himself, but unlike the first humanoid who seemed completely oblivious, the traces of Randidly’s physicalized image meant that most challengers quickly balked and backed off. Randidly grinned. Although most people here were pretty weak, their Perception wasn’t too bad.

When they finally arrived at the platform, there was something of a queue for the massive central teleporter. Randidly would have been content to wait, but he caught sight of that muscular humanoid strutting forward toward another uniformed NLC employee at the front of the line. “Hey, you. Do I really need to wait for this? What’s to stop me from just flying toward the Nexus myself?”

The employee didn’t seem impressed at all by the humanoid’s bluster. He simply chuckled. “Heh. If you have to ask whether you can do it… you cannot. It’s just one of those things.”

The humanoid’s expression darkened. “You-”

But further conversation was cut sharply off as a figure flashed downward and slammed into the crowd. Most people were taken completely by surprise, so Randidly had to use his metal left arm to guide bodies lightly to the side as they were blown back toward him. The muscular humanoid was knocked forward toward the employee, who grinned wickedly and brought his arm around in a brutal hook that slammed into the humanoid’s stomach.

The humanoid slumped to the side, almost insensible from the pain. The employee laughed. “Like I said… if you have to ask, you cannot.”

A violent place, Randidly observed.

Meanwhile, the figure that had slammed down amongst the group resolved itself into Octavius Shrike. His rhinoceros horn gleamed coolly in the golden light; it was clearly freshly polished. The officious looking Rhinoman cleared his throat. “Apologies, Mr. Ghosthound. I didn’t mean to make you wait. If you would please follow me…”

Everyone turned to look at Randidly with wide eyes.