DiOrtho Vant was trembling, but he had enough physical capability remaining in his body to take one further step forward. Perhaps a meter in front of him, Overseer Helen glanced back over her shoulder at him with a cool gaze. Her entire figure was partially obscured both by the chaotic images that the Ghosthound was throwing off and by her own crimson flows that spiraled tightly around her every move. The air was so thick with images that it was somewhat oversaturated.

The clicking machine horror conjured by DiOrtho strained, trying to push back the waves of force around him. Every second saw his image turning even dimmer.

Even through the haze of his exhaustion, he could tell that Overseer Helen looked at him with genuine pity. “Turn back, Vant. You are overmatched here.”

Fury bloomed raw and hot in DiOrtho’s chest. He meant to growl, but the noise came out as a groan. But at least those emotions could briefly become fuel for his image. Perhaps four more meters in front of Overseer Helen was the Ghosthound’s training pod, a rumbling core of seismic activity. DiOrtho’s eyes were bloodshot as he did his best to ignore the Overseer and observed the powerful image rising in the air above them.

His muscle spasms were increasing in frequency, but the movements were still manageable. DiOrtho’s mouth twisted open. I must endure here. I refuse to give in. I’ll show them that I have what it takes. Someday, I will have the power to never be beholden to fucking anyone...

Through the haze of image and the hum of the Engravings of the training pod, it was only possible to see the broadest strokes of the blurry figure standing in the air in front of them. Yet despite the fact that the details were muffled by the surrounding chaos, it was like looking through a filter and suddenly seeing vivid and vital color for the first time. That figure seemed real and concrete in a way that spoke to a horrifying depth of Willpower possessed by the Ghosthound.

DiOrtho took another step forward. The trembling grew worse as his image was steady ground away by the veritable sandblasting of ambient image that was whipping around the Ghosthound’s image. The whirring of his machine horror became an unsteady whine. Meanwhile, the Ghosthound was pressuring his image so forcefully with the array that debris was being ripped away and that debris was enough to completely defeat DiOrtho’s image.

It was humbling. It was humiliating.

Someday… I swear, someday...

Overseer Helen shook her head. “He’s right at the cusp, kid. And you think the pressure is high right now? What is about to happen is an increase of an entire tier. Don’t let your pride blind you to the truth. Look at yourself. You could die.”

DiOrtho knew the Overseer was right. He couldn’t miss the current fractured state of his body. His blood vessels had burst and his organs were struggling to maintain themselves. He also could tell that the Overseer was being genuine. But that just made it worse. Despite the warnings, he tried to take another step forward. But due to the damage to his body, he only swayed in place.

If I’m meant to die here… then so be it! DiOrtho clenched his teeth in a tiny attempt to brace himself against the forces buffeting him. I won’t run away from my own weakness.

Above them, the blurry figure raised its head and roared. It spread its arms and through the veil, DiOrtho could see the skin its limbs tear like feeble gift wrapping before the greedy fingers of a child. His hanging skin flapped and fluttered like a flag. The hulking image form then reached over with its right hand and began to rip large chunks of its own flesh off. The pressure shot sharply upward and DiOrtho suddenly found that he could not breathe. Even so, he didn’t mind. He didn’t look away for a single moment.

The tiles beneath DiOrtho’s feet began to crack.

Or, he would have not looked away, had that sudden flesh rending not unleashed a gale-force wind that blasted outward. DiOrtho blinked and had to fall to his hands in knees in order to not get blasted backward. His image sputtered and was extinguished beneath that assault. A split second later he had to lower himself further, so it appeared like he was scuttling along the ground like a common beetle, to avoid being shoved backward. Yet with the advent of the stupefyingly powerful wind, the clarity of the image overhead sharply increased.

Even as the wind continued to howl, the veil parted.

DiOrtho recognized the figure of the Ghosthound, looking frail and slender after so much flesh had ruptured and been torn away. Only his left arm remained formidable, a massive claw of bulging muscle and heavy bone. Again, the Ghosthound raised his head and roared. But after that roar, his body began to fail.

It started with his right wrist. The joint simply collapsed, spraying flecks of fractured bone and gore into the surroundings. Then his left hip began to twist and groan. His left foot seemed to explode, spraying blood everywhere. His right forearm snapped like a twig, the bone thrusting up through the arm and revealing the fractured end. His lower jaw was ripped away, letting blood dribble down over his neck and torso.

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With wide eyes, DiOrtho watched the overwhelming pressure slowly crushing the Ghosthound’s image body. Joints and long bones failed first, with the larger muscle groups slowly being shredded from his form and leaving only a cracked skeleton in its wake. That is, except for that massive left arm. The pressure ruptured the thing’s blood vessels and had it constantly leaking crimson liquid, but its massive weight resisted cracking.

The pressure continued to tick upward, causing DiOrtho to squint. Once more visibility dipped as the Ghosthound was situated in the core of a whirlwind of gore and viscera. Yet DiOrtho could still barely make out movement within that bloody screen. The Ghosthound’s left arm was slowly reaching upward. Its creaking claws spread wide.

Strangely, that enormous claw pressed to the Ghosthound’s chest, with enough size to engulf most of his upper torso. Then that claw began to tighten, even as the rest of his body continued to splinter and spatter.

Thump.

DiOrtho’s hair began to stand on end. From the Ghosthound’s image, a rumbling sound echoed outward that was so real that it almost didn’t seem like a part of an image. And perhaps it wasn’t, because it moved perfectly in parallel with the Ghosthound’s physical heart. Yet as DiOrtho listened, every sense told him that the image floating in the air above him was the source of the noise. It felt like the heart in question was right next to DiOrtho, resonating with his body.

Thump. Thump.

The pressure increased as the heartbeats continued. The noise grew stronger, each beat smashing outward with such power that the pressure was forced briefly backward. Then it gathered up in a wave and smashed against the Ghosthound’s image, furious about this transgression. Something was rising in the air around the hunched form of the image gripping its own chest with its talon. Yet the image wasn’t the Ghosthound’s only creation; he was the architect behind the suppression array as well. And as though it was infuriated by this show of defiance, the array upped the pressure further.

The image’s legs were annihilated in a sudden spray of gore so that the body simply hung in the air. His right arm began to writhe and bubble-like it was being roasted over a fire until it shriveled and was physically torn away at the shoulder. His cheekbones splintered and cracked, his skull shuddering and splintering.

Meanwhile. The enormous claw continued to tighten, clearly shattering ribs with the force of its grip. In a way, it looked like the claw of the image intended to take its own life before the array could do it. It was one of the most perfect acts of spite that DiOrtho had ever seen.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

In front of DiOrtho Vant, Overseer Helen lowered her stance and increased the thickness of the crimson flows around her. Just as he was feeling rather gratified that she was also being visibly tested by this powerful image, a wave of heat smashed against DiOrtho. His skin was almost instantly scaled. Blisters gradually began to form along his face and hands, the closest exposed skin to the image.

DiOrtho’s vision began to grow blurry, but he blinked rapidly so that he wouldn’t miss a single detail. The heat wasn’t from the suppression away; it was the Ghosthound’s image itself that seemed to be boiling itself. The heart was the source of an unending inferno that began to completely warp the rest of the image.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

The massive claw that had protected the heart from the pressure around it to this point began to ooze and melt. The mixture of bone, metal, and sizzling flesh oozed down the image’s waist and dripped across the space where its legs used to be. The fractured skull of the image dripped across its shoulders. A strange light emerged in the Ghosthound’s image, slowly warping the surrounding space-

DiOrtho snapped awake as his forehead hit the ground painfully, sending his scalded skin screaming. The pressure must have briefly knocked him unconscious. He raised his head back up to look at the image, but the light had become blinding-

DiOrtho’s head hit the tiled floor once more. This time, the contact did not wake him back up.

*****

Warning- Please see the nearest Village Spirit-

Recalculating… Synchronicity detected!

Congratulations! Your Skillset the Descent of the Grim Chimera (M) has evolved into the Supremacy of the Grim Chimera (T)! Some Skills have also evolved. Skill Levels will be maintained.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Avoidance (L) has evolved into Chimeric Impunity (M)!

Congratulations! Your Skill Abomination’s Grim Vigor (M) has evolved into Grit of the Ascendant Bane (T)!

Congratulations! Your Skill Molten Fang of the Pariah (L) has evolved into Pernicious Fang of the Shade (L)!

Randidly released a long breath, savoring the sensation of Chimeric Impunity almost making the previous physical suppression irrelevant. He barely seemed to feel the effects of the array any longer. With a small grin on his face, carefully released his left hand’s grip on his chest and raised his arm-

Rummmmmmmmmmmmbbblllllllleeeeee

The whole of the Rally Station shook. Randidly’s eyelid twitched. The boost in power is so much that the energy passing along the sympathetic relationship between me and the Rally Station can shake the entire hunk of rock...?

He might very well have been tempted to continue to experiment with the new capabilities of the Grim Chimera, but he had a killer headache; the strain on his image of the Grim Chimera was truly ridiculous. He would need to take a long break before he tested his new limits.

The process of evolution had been a close thing, too. Randidly had underestimated how stubborn the Grim Chimera was. It wasn’t until the end, as the image truly began to disintegrate at the edges, that its basic form began to change. By the time that the process was finished, even Yggdrasil was completely drained from frantically healing the damage to the Grim Chimera.

Randidly huffed out another breath and deactivated the suppression array. But seeing that the Rarity had gone up on the Skillset, he knew that the attempt was a huge success.