Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 318!

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 245!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruin is Inevitable, Yet this Too Shall Pass (T) has grown to Level 305!

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Inoculation (M) has grown to Level 179!

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Herald (M) has grown to Level 243!

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 403!

Randidly coughed and blinked as he was spat out by the Path completion and found himself collapsed on the Nether Pinion. His vision swam and every part of him ached as though he had been ambushed by thugs with baseball bats while he was unconscious. His jaw seemed to have somehow wrenched itself permanently shut from extended clenching. His hands were trembling.

Yet as he overcame the nausea and settled back toward normalcy, Randidly’s first response was to chuckle. His eyes were blank and sightless from the mental overload of the last few minutes, but he still looked up at the sky and grinned. “Last time I encountered an individual so titanic as that, my Class was hollowed out and my Skills were ripped to shreds from the impact. But this time… I survived with only a few flesh wounds.

“It’s proof. Proof that I’ll catch up eventually. Be warned, Nexus. I’m fucking coming for you.”

Despite the progress, his moment of victorious relish was soon interrupted by another batch of bloody coughs that wracked his body for a full minute. He had definitely survived and endured those three words without any permanent damage to his Soulspace, but that was because most of the damage was soaked up by his body. And his body was more than powerful enough to recover, but the lingering damage was a little sprinkle of reality on his dreams.

If that speaker had wanted to do anything more intensive than talking, Randidly still would have fallen short. The truth was simultaneously liberating and demeaning.

So Randidly sat for a while with his elbows on his knees and he simply breathed as his body stabilized itself. His Uncommon Metabolism did its job with enthusiasm. His shattered arm knitted back together. His popped organs steadily regenerated and reassimilated into his bodily systems. His heart-healing blood through his person while his bone marrow rapidly produced additional liters to make up what he had left within the Path.

And when his body had reached a completely functional state, Randidly leaned back and cracked his neck. He looked up at the grinding clash of Nether and Aether above and considered what he had witnessed within the Path.

His first impression was just that there was too much information; he might not has received Stats, but what he witnessed was extremely valuable. So Randidly broadly divided the insights and took them one at a time. First, and perhaps most importantly, he thought about the source of that terrible voice.

Remembering those tumbling limbs within the abyss, Randidly couldn’t help but suppress a shiver. It hadn’t hit him at the time, but the ambient significance it produced would have crushed him like a tin can, had he not obtained a Nether Core. Some powerful being capable of wielding both Aether and Nether, and therefore intimately connected to the Shallah, had asked Randidly to come locate it. His initial thoughts were that the pieces Randidly had witnessed revealed the culprit; he may very well have just been contacted by Pine, the unstable son of Yystrix and Elhume.

Yet at the same time, Randidly couldn’t forget the chilling emptiness that he witnessed within the floating eye of Pine he had seen. Although he had observed what was likely Pine’s body… he truly hoped that the force that had contacted him was not that being. If that hollow and emotionless gaze had locked onto him…

But it made the most sense because Randidly had gone into the shaft in the past…

Randidly shook his head helplessly. No use worrying about it now. Plus, this is a longer-term issue. To reach the base of the shaft… I would first need to understand the defenses that the Nexus has left there to protect its secret.

Hah… I’ll need to talk to Edraine about this…Could it be that this being is also aware of that investigation? Damnit, there are too many uncertainties about this...

Despite the fact that the glimpse of the ‘Shallah’ was tainted by a remarkably bitter prospect of sneaking down into the shaft, Randidly was still quite interested in the other large chunk of information he had captured inside the Path Completion vision: the progression of the two energies.

Randidly had already condensed his own drops of liquid Aether and Nether bubbles, but he also learned a lot from witnessing their evolution to their third stages. Both the crystalized Aether and the grey chrysanthemum were incredibly sophisticated. It wasn’t just a matter of raw power, but both required the proper preparations and precision in order to create.

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It could be said that where the second stage required an accumulation of power, the third stage was all about the manipulation.

Yet as he remembered his visions, Randidly began to frown. More than the way the energy can be used… what might be most unfortunate is the way that Path portrayed the uses of the energies...

To the front, Aether and Nether were steadily condensed into their concentrated forms. At the end of that Path, the two concentrated forms of energy were brought together. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to witness that moment, but from what Randidly could sense, the result had been extremely positive.

Even now, he felt aggrieved to have been spun around right as he was about to step forward.

Yet behind Randidly lay an entirely different Path… one that seemed to lead to the isolation and destruction sitting at the base of the shaft below the Nexus. And Randidly seemed to be following in those footsteps, by focusing his attention on creating a Nether Core and his Aether physicalizations.

Randidly looked down at his hand and slowly made a fist. By this point, he had mostly recovered from the physical damage, so he didn’t hesitate to flex to the limit of his abilities. His right arm became spectral as his image physicalizations settled over his limbs. But… are the interactions between the two energies truly that predictable...? Was Velio Dunn being honest when he said this method was a mistake…?

For a second, he frowned down at his hand that was wrapped in the power of his images. Golden veins pulsed with light beneath the translucent skin. But as the seconds ticked past, Randidly’s expression gradually smoothed out; the wrinkles around his mouth vanished. He could look down at his hand and recapture just a bit of that smug satisfaction that he experienced earlier.

“I don’t believe that there are only two answers to how Aether and Nether can be used,” Randidly said to the air. Then he rolled his shoulders. “And at the very least… I’m on a very different Path. While the visions that I saw along the Path had Aether and Nether develop separately… aren’t my energies woven together?”

Randidly raised his hand to the sky. Even as the struggle between Commandant Wick and the Nether Herald continued to rage, his enthusiasm didn’t ebb. “With these hands… I can seize it. I’ll create something entirely new; I’ll continue to step further beyond the bounds of the Nexus. And then someday… when I have gained the perspective I need…

“I’ll tear this all down.” Randidly finished softly.

RUMMBLLLLLEEEEEE

Randidly froze for a split second, wondering if his declaration had some magical effect. But he could only chuckle awkwardly when reality asserted itself; the noise was obviously the rumbling clash between the two forces in the sky. Shaking his head, Randidly pushed himself back up to his feet and looked again at his Paths.

After chewing on his lip for a while, Randidly decided to rush through a few more Paths. He started with a Path that he had for quite a while: The Bell of Doom Tolls.

Congratulations! You have completed the Bell of Doom Tolls Path. On your wanderings through the wilderness, your steps have echoed with the lingering note of death! As you have moved forward, you have chosen not to stamp out the gradual reverberations that have gathered around you. Since you have stayed your hand, their particular music grows. Soon, all will know of your coming simply by the horrific tremors of your steps.

Congratulation! Intelligence and Focus +20! You have gained the Skill Deadly Reverberations (R)!

Resonance detected! Recalculating…

Your Skills Deadly Reverberations (R) and Burning Footsteps have combined to form Aura of Wildfire (A)! Skill Level will be maintained.

Randidly had an almost indulgent smile on his face as he looked at the Path completion notification. Ha, such a minor Stat boost… plus, Burning Footsteps is a Skill I haven’t even thought about in a long time. I don’t mind the Aura of Wildfire… but ultimately, the only reason to grab weaker Skills without an overarching image is to farm PP. But at this point, I think it’s clear that PP isn’t going to be a problem for me, either in the short or long term.

Perhaps in the middle stretch of time, it would be useful, but also…

Randidly’s eyes began to glitter as an idea occurred to him. He crossed his arms and tapped a finger against his metal elbow. One of the reasons he focused on his newer Paths was because he always assumed that the newer, and due to circumstances longer, Paths would provide more relevant Skills. Which had indeed proved true.

But Skills were tiny image blueprints. Randidly had developed his images recently by simply relying on his own mind and attention to refine them, but purposefully introducing impurities into a material was a strategy that he used quite commonly while he was forging. Generally, the impurities gripped most tightly onto other impurities, allowing the final product to be much more robust.

As he hummed to himself, Randidly slipped into his Soulspace and spoke to the Grim Chimera. Of all the images, you are the only one that hasn’t risen all the way to Pinnacle. Do you think you make some progress toward that by devouring a few Skills?

When the Grim Chimera responded to Randidly with a predator’s smile, he only chuckled. Then Randidly looked back through his Path list, his gaze changed. No longer was he solely focusing on which Paths would lead him to obtain more Stats, but now he saw in each Path the potential to obtain a valuable fertilizer. And with his PP still sitting at over 25k, he could certainly obtain quite a few tons of the stuff.

Just as Randidly was about to start dumping PP into his Paths, however, a change in the sky gave him pause. There was no noticeable change, but the quality of the Nether in the air changed.

Randidly steadily began to frown as he looked upward. The Aether structure around the planet was beginning to shudder and bend. The small motes of Nether that formed and dissipated in only a few seconds seemed to be becoming increasingly numerous. Randidly's expression shifted toward concern and vague surprise. “Commandant Wick… is losing?”