Wheezing a breath out, Randidly finally reached up and seized upon his emotional tether. This time, he needed to squeeze his eyes shut and helplessly grasp for… well, he couldn't know how long the process took, but he felt like it took much longer than it had previously. Not only were the emotions more stretched and strained as he proceeded deeper, but he was absolutely exhausted.

His broken ribs steadily knit themselves back together.

The automatons had doggedly pursued Randidly as he had tumbled deeper into the shaft, smashing him against the walls and each other whenever they could. The physical form that he had once held with such pride had certainly been humbled against Velio Dunn, but it was now as he was pushed deeper and deeper, that his arrogance was completely broken. His bones repeatedly cracked and blood sprayed from his ruptured skin.

In darkness, he fell downward, dogged constantly by the automatons. But at a certain point, his Grim Intuition’s constant warnings eased. He took a few seconds to gather himself.

I’m still so weak… Randidly wiped blood from his mouth and glared around him into the empty space in the direction he believed to be up. No attacks came and he continually scanned the surrounding space; soon, his expression eased. He now had the confidence to hold his current position. Because although he still couldn’t detect the automatons until they were right on top of him, he sensed the change in the air.

Randidly ran his tongue across his teeth as he furiously studied the surrounding environment in order to keep his obsessive motivation happy. 90% Nether content in the air… I’ve proceeded very deeply. And this situation…

Randidly sensed several powerful creatures floating below him. Their auras stained the air a variety of colors, a precariously balanced series of territories in the darkness. Nether Heralds and Nether Gatekeepers glared up at him briefly as he arrived, but they quickly turned their attention back inward. They were thickly clustered in this area, all hovering in a meditative stance with surrounded by their various boundaries with each other.

Combing through the air with Grim Intuition, Randidly was shocked to discover that he could feel almost a thousand of these powerful Nether soldiers just in the area around him, each more potent than any of the Nether Heralds he had fought on the front lines. In his mad flight down the shaft, he had completely lost sight of the walls; he now simply felt alone in the vast darkness. The bones had receded gradually, leaving only emptiness.

The worst part of his current situation was that his grasp on his emotional tether was steadily slipping. He could shift his grip to steady himself, but in that moment he would go a little deeper into the abyss. Randidly silently clicked his jaw shut, testing how the bone was healing. For the moment, it was still quite sore.

We are all now truly caught by the significance below… those automatons can move relatively freely, but even they dare not come down here. They batter any strong Nether Beasts that escape upward and force them back downward… in a way, they are the jailors for all the Nether forces down here…

Scanning the significant Nether power that the nearby Gatekeepers possessed, Randidly shivered inwardly. But on the other hand, he couldn’t help but be excited; much more than the areas that housed the weak Nether Beasts above, this place provided a lot of helpful examples of successful Nether Cores for Randidly’s experiments.

It was only a matter of acquiring the relevant data.

For several seconds, Randidly eyed the closest Nether Gatekeeper that floated in the darkness. It was a humanoid creature with dusky and hairless skin for a torso, but its legs were covered in black fur and ended in hooves. Upon its head were an impressive rack of black antlers. Then he shook his head.

Studying could wait. For now, he needed to reestablish his equilibrium. Yggdrasil flared to life in his chest, illuminating his veins with golden light and expediting the healing process. And, to his relief, there were no interfering pulses from above. But honestly, his body was the least of his worries.

Unleashing all that Nether bought him some time, but his current Nether Nebula had weakened significantly. Even with the incorporation of his Nether Engravings in the expanding flow, he was steadily losing Nether to the significance below. So Randidly ignored his aching body and hurriedly mobilized his Nether Nebula with his Willpower.

The Nether Nebula spun faster and faster, churning out Nether. Randidly gritted his teeth and forced himself to reaccumulate his own dense Nether.

When he had once more built himself back up, Randidly released a sigh of relief. Then, without the ability to take a break, Randidly forced his tired mind to focus its efforts on his images. He carefully refined the details while his body gradually healed from the beating it had taken during the descent. The fire in his chest continued to urge him forward, forcing him to push at his limits.

Then, although his flesh was still tender and recently healed, Randidly needed to once more strain himself against the current of significance and focus his efforts on physical strength; his mind just couldn’t take any more effort. He was dangerously close to the foggy exhaustion that would have him struggle down here for years without any effective improvement. He needed the chance for his mind to recover.

So he forced his reknit flesh to move. It was especially painful training. As his muscles trembled, Randidly felt the unfamiliar impulse to surrender; he truly wanted to give up and just surrender. But his instincts told him that he couldn’t. Although it was much less obvious than his body’s current situation, allowing the oblivion of the mind to swash him away was just as dangerous.

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The pain and anguish of his current struggle had Randidly wandering in his memories, to those days where Shal took him into a Tellus prison and forced him to fight against the inmates there. He remembered the endless field of tall grass swaying in the wind. He could picture perfectly the color and shape of blood dripping off the tip of his spear.

And gradually, the pieces of Randidly’s consciousness came back together while his body bought him time. He could allow his strained body to relax and turned to other pursuits. Namely, he had stumbled across some insights into the significance of the Grim Chimera while being bludgeoned by the automatons.

I always felt like I was missing something when I was younger. Randidly spoke quietly to himself, in the emptiness of his Soulspace. Why was I quieter than my peers? Why couldn’t I walk so easily among groups? Why was I always so nervous? Why did I always struggle in social situations? So I think I internalized that I was missing a piece of myself. And if I could only find that piece… I would be normal. I could fit in.

Part of that emptiness was reassured when I met Sydney and Ace, along with my few other college friends… but the hole never really went away. It just took a backseat to the other concerns in my life.

But that… that is the core of the Grim Chimera. The desperate belief that I have the ability to evolve. That someday, I won’t remain helplessly inadequate in a way that others rarely seem to be.

Yggdrasil craved stability, but I also developed desperately wanting to change…

Randidly fingers glowed with the congregation of Nether. Then he began to trace his appendages through the air, leaving sinister trails of darkness in their wake. Within Randidly’s senses, these trails were the purest absence of color, forcing away even the powerful emotions that Randidly subconsciously released from his body. At the moment he had no walls and didn’t bother to utilize a physical medium for his initial attempts; he knew in his heart that he was still finding the shape.

One step at a time… Randidly reassured himself.

But with his impression of the Grim Chimera’s significance in his life, Randidly carefully attempted to solidify these concepts in Nether. The shapes gradually grew sharper and more refined as he continued to draw shapes. Those refined runes were steadily incorporated into his Nether Nebula. Even though Randidly continually was losing his grip on the emotional tether, the improvements to his Nether Nebula added the slightest hint of buoyancy.

Closing his useless eyes and letting his other senses fall away, Randidly only shaped Nether; no threats could reach him here. The automatons didn’t travel past the 90% Nether content line and the surrounding Nether Gatekeepers were more concerned with their own troubles. Time became ephemeral, flowing freely around Randidly.

His fingers flicked back and forth, moving quickly and lightly. He buzzed with burning inspiration.

But soon, he began to approach the limits of his current understanding of the Grim Chimera. He worked the core base inspiration, the shape of the image, the way the image had helped him, and his different Skills into the patterns of significance that he traced through the air. When the shape seemed stable, he practiced upon some metal ingots until he was confident that he was on the right track.

Then those concepts were incorporated into his Nether Nebula, where the patterns of significance for both Yggdrasil and Grim Chimera became tested constantly through the flowing avenues of energy. The incarnation within the Nether Nebula was slightly different than how a core would exist, of course. While the core would be a closed system, in the Nebula these shapes were drawn only from outflows; they were never reinforced by a second revolution of the energy.

For this reason, his Nether Nebula could never truly be his Nether Core. But on the other hand, the constant repetition of the shapes allowed Randidly to observe their behavior closely. He could only see the way that energy would pass through the shapes in the first revolution, but experience with those first revolutions gave him insight into the small flaws in his thinking. The shapes grew more polished and refined, even as Randidly accumulated experience layering the two very different concepts of significance.

Randidly pulled back his lips; that balance was difficult. It was exhausting to refine the shape of both Yggdrasil and Grim Chimera at the same time; they were far too different from each other and the balancing between them needed to be done very purposefully, or he would get nothing from the experience. Randidly hoped that this was akin to balancing on a two-legged chair versus a three-legged stool, so the process would get easier when he worked in the Stillborn Phoenix. But the boat of rosy outlooks hadn’t been what carried Randidly to his current strength.

That honor belonged to practice. So he practiced.

Soon, or perhaps not soon and only soon to Randidly’s impression, the Visage of Obsession called Randidly once more. He paused in his Nether Engraving practice and allowed his attention to be devoured by the canvas. Whereas Randidly’s attention had previously been an inert liquid, he now flowed into the colorful emotional world with attention as shapeless as a gas. But with a wick of focus, he condensed into a solid form to walk forward.

For the first time in a while, a defined landscape had returned to the Fatepiece. The ground was a luminous golden color, feeling warm and kind to Randidly’s senses. The sky had lightened to a hopeful pink. But in the distance, a horrifying grey tower could be witnessed, piercing through both the bright ground and sky.

Randidly floated forward and observed the occasional thin grey root that seemed to poison the color in the Visage and turn everything monochrome. The reach of the grey tower was quite long, it seemed.

Before too much time had passed, while he was still quite distant from the grey tower, Randidly encountered Shal’s projection.

Shal shook his head at Randidly. You are quite talented at foiling my good intentions for you. Why do you refuse to throw yourself into your training?

You are an unhealthy impulse, Randidly replied while silently clicking his tongue. Useful for focusing on one goal, but largely unhelpful otherwise. Let’s skip this part, please. I’ll be quite glad to no longer deal with you and make it to the last projection of this maddening Fatepiece. What sacrifice do you require?

Shal chuckled. If you think I’m unhealthy… heh. Well, this sacrifice is an easy one. To proceed further… you must give up all memory of your name, Randidly Ghosthound.