At Randidly’s name, the man at the desk paused in his listless examination of the papers in front of him. He looked up at Randidly with widening eyes. Then he hiccuped, while his small wings fluttered rapidly, the right one moving faster than the left.

Randidly suppressed the urge to grin at the fool. They might not know what I look like, but it seems they recognize me by name… Which is both reassuring that I’m not paranoid, but also makes my life more difficult.

“Uh… M-Mr. Ghosthound…” The young man stuttered. His eyes kept getting wider and wider as he stared at Randidly. The rest of the office was bare, with long hallways leading out to the left and right from the bland starting room. The building material of the tunnels was heavy and grey-green, as though the stone were partially covered in moss. “You… without an appointment… Ah….”

Randidly smiled at the young man. “No harm in asking, right? He owes me that much.”

He owes me all that and more, due to the way he put Vualla in danger by tracking my whereabouts, A flinty Randidly thought beneath his casual expression. All I need to do now is find out whether the leash was purposeful.... And whether there is anything that I can do about it now.

“Ah… yes… I’ll just-” The young man stood up abruptly and turned away, only to trip over his chair and sprawl out on the ground. Randidly twitched in amusement; for the first time since the Challenge, the embers of his fury dimmed. Was this young man truly such a low Level that he could trip accidentally…?

When the young man hopped to the feet and looked back over his shoulder, his nose was running. Then he dashed off to the left, leaving Randidly alone in the waiting room. The echoing footfalls of the retreating clerk sped off into the distance.

Scratching his cheek, Randidly looked around; they didn’t even have any chairs.for individuals to recline while they waited. But he supposed that this sort of place wasn’t really a doctor’s office. With a shrug, Randidly moved behind the lone desk and sat in the young man’s chair. He yawned and leaned back. His emotions still pulsed with tension, but the shock of seeing the young man trip had helped Randidly adjust his mental state. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, the wounded specter of Charlotte Wick was still haunting him.

Finally, she had begun to fade. Life moved forward.

Maybe I should have visited her, to make sure she was alright, Randidly’s heart tightened unpleasantly. He felt guilty for allowing her to be so seriously wounded. I suppose I should still be able to, as long as this meeting doesn’t take too long…

Randidly looked up at the sound of footsteps but narrowed his eyes when he realized that they were coming from the entrance tunnel, not from the way that the young man had fled. A few seconds later and a familiar figure walked through the doorway with words flying out of he mouth. “Inform Gabriel Swacc that I… Oh. Oh my. What a delightful surprise. Surely you don’t belong here, Randidly Ghost-”

Neshamah Rex walked forward through the door with a small smile on her face after recognizing Randidly, but just as soon as she did so and examined him more fully, her words stumbled to a halt. Her eyes widened in a queer mimicry of the expression of the young man earlier, although for very different reasons. Waves of shock rolled off of her.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 393!

Randidly grinned wickedly. First, he tagged the name Neshamah said as the same one that Raymund Ballast had just asked him about earlier in the day. Apparently, Gabriel Swacc had something to do with the difference of Techetadore Ballast. Second, he could easily tell the reason for her shock; when she viewed him fully, she had been stopped dead by the unmistakable energy of his Nether Core flowing around his body.

Almost instantly, Randidly adjusted the thick flows around him screen his core from Neshamah’s vision, as she had done to him on their first meeting with a playful wink. In addition, Randidly used this opportunity to study the Nether flows that he could rapidly parse apart around her; his senses were much more acute at this moment than they had been previously.

Her shock put Neshamah a half-step behind Randidly in obscuring her Nether Core and that time was all Randidly needed to peer through the veil and briefly glimpse the Engravings that were the source of her significance. His eyes glimmered. While Randidly’s Nether Core was currently a Runic Nether Core, Neshamah’s was already a Mythic, two tiers above him. Yet if they were to compare either their Weight or the raw power coming off of the significance in their cores…

Randidly pressed his lips together to keep himself from smirking. The Path I ended up taking was the right one.

Neshamah blinked again, but soon she managed to return to that familiar expression of relaxation and control. “My, my, my, you’ve certainly been busy over the last two weeks. It seems you won’t need my assistance at all to manage all that pesky Nether. And your Nether Core is… robust, to be sure. You made a deal with the Engraving Guild then…?”

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To that question, Randidly didn’t bother to answer. A fear he hadn’t even realized that he had that his Nether Core was somehow deficient, even after carefully studying the Nether Gatekeepers in the shaft was alleviated by their comparative capabilities. He simply shrugged. After she had treated Randidly so dismissively in their first meeting, it felt nice to keep Neshamah in the dark.

Besides, it was interesting to learn that the Engraving Guild had the capability to produce Nether Cores. The process required Engraving knowledge, but also some ability to sense and control Nether. The more he learned about the various organizations within the Nexus, the more he realized that there were a lot of powerful factions lurking beneath the surface.

Tsk, sorta seems like I owe Raymund a favor from keeping me from slaughtering all those Drill Sergeants… Randidly thought inwardly. Who knows who I would have had on my ass in the aftermath… and I might have no choice but to go to the Commandant for support. Urgh.

Neshamah pursed her lips, the first shift away from her easy and free expression of their interactions to this point. Her eyes flashed with a harsh light. “I’m honestly disappointed. Even from just looking at the density of Nether around you… you have so much potential. Had, so much potential. More potential than most people I’ve encountered… but ultimately, if you hitch yourself to the Engraving Guild’s precious “Lattice” your growth will be stopped short. A Runic Nether Core is all you will ever be. You must have brought them quite a lot to even get this far.”

By the end of her statement, Neshamah’s voice became cold and condescending; all of the previous playful interest in her eyes was gone. Randidly was slightly bewildered by the change. Did the Rex’s have a bad relationship with the Engraving Guild? And what was the Lattice that she referred to…?

As Randidly opened his mouth to respond, the young man and his fluttering black wings scrambled back into the room. He was panting, likely because he seemed to have dashed the entire way to his destination. “Ah, Mr. Ghosthound, Nathaz says-”

The young man froze again at the sight of Neshamah. This time his left wing fluttered too quickly to follow “R-R-R-R-R-R-R-”

“He’s just down this way?” Randidly asked, unwilling to allow the young man’s slow-motion heart attack to proceed any further. After a strangled gulp, the young man nodded. Randidly straightened from the desk and turned to look at Neshamah.

Although her eyes showed only distaste, Randidly winked at her. “Goodbye, Miss Neshamah. Perhaps in another two weeks, I’ll prove you wrong once again.” Then he turned and walked away down the hallway.

Eventually, he reached an intersection with several signs, one of which directed him toward the offices of Nathaz Eloise. As he proceeded deeper through the corridors, he encountered intersection after intersection, leading down into a maze of dank offices and strange workers. Several times Randidly’s determined walk meant that he passed by a half dozen different beings that were drifting back and forth through the hallways. Most seemed hollow-eyed and exhausted, barely even bothering to acknowledge Randidly.

With a bemused expression on his face, Randidly finally arrived at the door that he had been looking for. After knocking, he let himself into the room.

Randidly’s first impression of the room was of an angsty teenager's room due to the sense of clutter and dim lighting, but it wasn’t exactly accurate to call the place dirty. Maps covered the wall on his left, strange graphs on the right, with two large terminals sat directly opposite him. The reason that the room appeared ‘messy’ was that there were wooden spikes sticking out from every surface. The bristled out from the floor and wall, making space that was otherwise empty appear rather full.

Nathaz Eloise raised his scaled head. A serpent’s tongue flicked out, tasting the air. “So it’s true. You’ve finally arrived, Mr. Ghosthound. Ah… the joy of finally meeting the progenitor of so many rare phenomena within the System...Come in, let me have a look at you…”

While Randidly stepped forward, the obsidian serpent began to shift. Truly, Nathaz Eloise was entirely a serpent; his massive body stretched after his triangular head for about ten meters, although it was difficult to accurately gauge the size, wound and wrapped as it was around the dozens of wooden spikes sticking out from the walls. The snake shifted some of its bulk and freed up its body so it could raise its head to about Randidly’s height. As the two looked at each other in the eyes, Nathaz opened his mouth slightly.

Honestly… this guy is a bit… The shadow-y opening of the snake’s still mouth was somewhat off-putting.

Randidly was about to open his mouth and speak when the snake released a soft hiss. “Mr. Ghosthound… I am truly sorry for how things turned out. The mark that I had left on you so I could study some of the other System deviations around your person… has now been used by those who wish to do you harm. Please… you have my deepest apologies.”

Randidly tilted his head to the side. His physical and emotional senses examine the serpent in front of him. His heartbeat remained even. The expression on the snake’s face, as much as Randidly could understand it, was genuine. Still, it struck Randidly as strange that this topic came up so quickly after he had arrived, without him even bringing it up. “...as long as you understand. After I condensed my Fatepiece, I took some actions that drew quite a bit of negative attention my way. So at the time, your actions really weren’t even that important...”

It’s just since then that I’ve developed such a nose for trouble. Randidly thought, even as he tried to gauge the honesty of the snake in front of him. Then he started to wonder where everything had gone wrong.

Even if it was just the disappearance of Ileot Swacc, Randidly’s proximity to the event meant that he was no longer the nobody he had been before. Combined with the fact that Randidly and his images had a concrete effect on the outcome of the battle against the false Nether King…

“Even so. I abused my authority to satisfy my own curiosity and it has caused you grief.” Nathaz’s tongue snaked out again. “As such… I owe you. Ah… I might not look it, but I am actually quite sensitive to such obligations. It has been difficult for me to stop thinking about what I owe. So I have a gift prepared for our first meeting.”

That had Randidly’s attention. “A gift...?”

Nathaz nodded. “I can give you the location of your next Fatepiece. In addition… I have found its name: The Hierarchy of Burden."