Randidly paused in his training when he received the message from Lady Iellaya. The cable underneath him swayed slightly with his movement. But then he finished through his current cycle. As he breathed out two long trails of steam from his nose, a hidden current of fierce and terrorizing emotions hid within the exhale. Those emotions rapidly turned upward and accelerated, as though sensing that there was easier prey than Randidly waiting above.

He messaged Lady Iellaya back. How quickly do you need me to return?

If you could arrive within five minutes, that would be ideal. Lady Iellaya’s reply came so quickly that it seemed like she had prepared it.

Randidly glanced upward through the gloomy Web and grimaced. Although honestly, the distance was the least of his troubles. While reaching up and cracking his neck, Randidly tentatively communicated with the Stillborn Phoenix, asking whether it could control the release of emotions for a short amount of time. After all, blowing out these insidious and violent emotions in the faces of the interviewers would probably not make a great impression.

The Stillborn Phoenix was practically radiating righteousness when it informed Randidly that it could not stop spewing emotions because that was just how it breathed. Asking it to stop was akin to asking it to die.

Randidly suppressed the urge to press his palm to his face. He suppressed a secondary urge to strangle the Egg of Chaos. Unfortunately for him, all of his images had inherited his stubbornness. So he could already sense that it would be rather pointless to remind the image that it hadn’t learned to breathe until only a short two hours ago. It would undoubtedly refuse to admit that was the case.

Luckily, the Grim Chimera stepped forward and offer an alternative. It had already been sensing that its exterior had reached its limits for this type of training and now it needed to train its interior to match. So it suggested that the volatile emotions be released directly within Randidly’s rib cage, mirroring the act of breathing more directly. Randidly’s body would become the entire world for the Stillborn Phoenix, containing the very air it breathed. Yggdrasil then added that it could reinforce the surrounding organs and purify the emotions further, preventing anything dangerous from occurring.

Randidly shook his head in disbelief as he stood. “Y’all realize that this is MY body, right? You have no proof that there won’t be consequences from this.”

The images pretended not to hear him and Randidly could only sigh. But he had already accepted that he might not become a Drill Sergeant after that initial rejection. Although he would return for this opportunity, it did not move his heart much. It was part of a grander scheme to earn Citizenship Coins and free up Edraine, Randidly understood that. But more than anything else, training was his highest priority at the moment. He wouldn’t sacrifice everything for this position.

While the Stillborn Phoenix cautiously released the seething emotions within his body, Randidly once more produced Acri and launched himself directly upward. It was a bit more difficult than simply allowing himself to fall, but as he flung himself against the wall and repeatedly launched himself diagonally through the Web, he quickly gained speed while heading upward. Once more his heart rate began to rise. The physical limit seemed to recede before him, allowing his body to explode with power.

The Grim Chimera sat within the emotions, practically bathing in them. They caused abrupt and strange changes to the substance of the image, but the Grim Chimera’s eternal ability to adapt meant that it soon suppressed the twitches and the tremors that ran through the Grim Chimera’s body. Soon, it generated a film of its own pure emotion that kept these other emotions from approaching.

That desire to survive and grow was indomitable. The Grim Chimera’s eyes burned as it tempered that deep yearning it held within the emotions.

The air cracked and ripped as he passed through space. His limbs were wrapped in tight currents of air that blasted any cables that were near to his person.

Meanwhile, his veins once more began to glow with golden light as Yggdrasil formed a seal on the released emotions within Randidly’s ribcage. Obviously, the emotions took up no actual space. So it was relatively simple to compress them. But with so many emotions clashing and weaving amongst each other, a qualitative change began to come over them.

Aether as an energy was primarily comprised of two things: substance and emotion. The term substance could also be freely be interchanged with shape. Aether was an energy that responded to the depth of emotions and the integrity of the shape given to that energy. Which was why so many emotions gathered in one spot, specifically having been cleaved from their shape by Yggdrasil, began to behave… strangely.

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As he accelerated up through the Web, Randidly’s stomach began to gurgle as the emotions managed to influence him physically. He clearly radiated displeasure to make sure his images knew that this wasn’t an acceptable side effect. The golden light that Yggdrasil was releasing grew stronger. Meanwhile, the Stillborn Phoenix continued to steadily exhale more emotions, as though it didn’t notice his ire. One of the Stillborn Phoenix’s Skills began to activate, taking over the process of ‘breathing’.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Golden Roots of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 297!

Congratulations! Your Skill Tide of the Void (L) has grown to Level 235!

Without a distinct shape for the energy, the emotions would normally disperse outward and gradually decompose naturally. They needed a physical vessel or detail shape to anchor them. Aether needed both emotion and shape to remain in a stable form. Randidly had studied the System Aether that had largely been stripped of emotion in the past, but he had never seen the opposite composition. And while he continued to rush upward to his call-back interview, the gradual exhale of the Stillborn Phoenix pushed all that raw emotion into a space without shape. His body hosted a natural experiment.

And due to the seal that Yggdrasil had constructed within his body, the emotions were suspended within a relatively isolated environment. They continued to compound and clash, increasing their simmering intensity with each passing second. Soon, the emotions had shed all pretense of shape and just mixed together in a chaotic mass within Randidly’s stomach. Honestly, it was difficult to even sense what was occurring within himself; the emotions were chaotic and messy to the point that they barely resembled Aether at all. They were raw, pink, and slightly uncomfortable, like the revealed penis of a dog.

Sensing that Randidly’s mood continued to sour on this experiment, Yggdrasil stretched a golden root downward toward the emotions in an attempt to assuage his doubts. The root began to shine brightly, carrying with it the nascent sense that Randidly’s Skills could purify the emotions.

Just as soon as the emotions encountered the image, the tip of that imaginary root ballooned outward like it was displaying the time-lapse of a tumor’s genesis. The light it released became tainted, rapidly shifting to a red-pink hue. Decisively, Yggdrasil sliced off the root before the taint could spread. That hunk of image dropped down into the stewing emotions, twisting and morphing until it became so swollen that it had lost all articulable shape.

Then it popped like an overinflated balloon, spreading glittering notes of pink light like a handful of thrown confetti. Randidly coughed lightly. Unless one possessed the adaptability of the Grim Chimera, it definitely seemed like these emotions were a deadly poison.

Yggdrasil hurriedly upped the energy it used to suppress the emotions, no longer daring to stretch out its image to touch them directly. They continued to churn, rushing and gurgling like the interior of a washing machine, will all of the same disturbing lack of awareness of what happened within the contraption.

Luckily, that was around the time that the Stillborn Phoenix stopped producing the emotions. It rapidly began to slurp the strangely mutating emotions within itself. It didn’t seem to mind the changes at all.

Feeling some unconscious relief as the emotions were taken from within his body, Randidly accelerated further the next time his foot hit one of the walls. Man is Proud, But the Chimera Takes.

Crack!

Congratulations! Your Skill Man is Proud, But the Chimera Takes (L) has grown to Level 296!

While the wall beneath his foot fractured from the force, Randidly blasted rapidly upward. He purposefully activated Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold right before his jump, so he could peer upward and arrange for a path through all of the hanging cables. He streaked past with all of the subtleness of thunder, once more shocking those proceeding through the area at a more normal pace.

At almost exactly six minutes after Lady Iellaya had sent the message, Randidly rushed through the hallways of the military base and reached those familiar double doors. Octavius was there, waiting for him. He stopped Randidly before he could proceed directly into the room, reaching up to fuss at the collar of his uniform.

As though this was the first time that he had noticed it, Octavius examined Randidly from head to toe and blinked when he looked at his bare feet. “You… what happened to your shoes? Did you lose them while you were exploring?”

Randidly shook his head. “Never had them. I always liked actually being able to feel what was beneath my feet. And now that my body can grow to be as hard as steel… there’s no reason to restrain myself.”

“Huh. Even if you are fighting on dangerous terrain, you never put on a foot covering…?” Octavius seemed puzzled.

Randidly wanted to point out they had passed plenty of individuals who were literally naked while they had been on Bray Street, but decided just to shrug. He couldn’t deny that his few opportunities to fight on lava had been particularly painful. “Nope. Never have.”

“I wonder if it violates military code…” Octavius whispered to himself.

Frowning at the delay, Randidly purposefully asked. “...shouldn’t I be heading in there?”

Octavius’s eyes widened. “Oh! Yes of course! Don’t keep them waiting for even a second longer!”

Shaking his head, Randidly walked back into the interview room.