Randidly was honestly having fun toying with the kids. Everything was chaotic and light like he was hopping along in a bouncy castle of play-violence. None of the bloodthirstiness he had routinely encountered in the Nexus was present. But perhaps even more than he was enjoying the experience itself, he savored the genuine resolve radiating off of each of these students.

This was why he had founded Kharon Academy. To teach kids how to channel that energy. To make a place where the entire point was to struggle and attempt and fail and try again to address the great flaws of humanity. There was something so genuine and irresistible about their obvious enthusiasm. Randidly felt himself shifting, steadily morphing into the mountain that the kids were throwing themselves against.

Imperceptibly, he lowered his speed a few iotas and made his avoidance just a few hairs closer to their attacks. He hoped that they would feel how impassable even the smallest fraction of distance could be in the hands of a true expert. He hoped they would be motivated to keep improving.

And then-

“Entangling Roots!”

A single voice cut through Randidly’s self-control. The ground beneath his feet quivered and thin and feeble roots wormed their way upward to seize upon his ankles. He couldn’t resist smirking. Subconsciously, he released a pulse of Nether into the surrounding space. Anything else I would endure. But this Skill…? Heh. No.

Let me show you how to properly use this.

The smallest fraction of Yggdrasil manifested itself, but not in the air above him. The ground of the main Kharon Academy skyisland rumbled beneath their feet, briefly hosting the vast and overpowering root network of the World Tree. The buried veins were oozing with pure golden energy, enough that anyone standing on the island abruptly had their Regenerations double, just from exposure to that vibrant aura.

Hum, I’m not as good as I used to be at remaining low-key… Randidly winced slightly as his image soaked into the ground beneath his feet. Likely, quite a few individuals on Expira had the capacity to notice that, especially if they were near. But honestly, it didn’t matter; he wasn’t trying to hide.

He just wanted to investigate the state of Kharon Academy. And if he had fun at the same time...

Influence +29!

Randidly shamelessly knocked aside Eileen’s grip on the Skill and hijacked it. Nether was hurtling through his veins, pulling meaning from the surroundings and from his Nether Core to spin together in a perfect concoction of potency. The roots Randidly touched with his will instantly swelled and thickened, before exploding out of the ground in a mess of shattered organic matter.

Randidly had planned to just seize them all with the roots, but then he remembered Todd. He had another idea on how to proceed.

Already, Randidly’s hand was moving through the air. His touch was lazy, watching the ripples of natural energy swirling around his person. He guided those broken pieces of roots together like they were brown threads, rapidly weaving the pieces into a flat bottomed vessel that was a mix between a surfboard and a canoe. There were small sides, but most of the material formed the body and the raised prow of the vehicle, which displayed a tree with its branches stretched skyward.

He affectionately dubbed the vessel the S.S. Yggdrasil.

Randidly’s arm on Todd tightened imperceptibly as the surrounding ambushers paused, looking in shock at the sudden appearance of the vehicle. “Todd? A Scrawl?”

It only took the kid a few seconds to realize Randidly’s plan. Laughing uproariously, Todd’s hands were moving in the air, weaving Mana into a dense nucleus of energy. A second later, the ambushers realized what was happening. Above them, Eileen Krouse shouted. “Stop them! Destroy that… thing!”

But it was too late. Todd’s fingers fluidly wove the Engraving and then tossed it down to impact the miniature S.S Yggdrasil. The lines of energy expanded upon contacting, turning at sharp angles as it spread to cover the whole of the repurposed root surface. Behind them, the ambushers were firing more Fireballs to incinerate the wood, but Randidly stepped and swayed forward to stand with his knees slightly bent on the item.

The roots shuddered beneath his feet and then Todd’s Scrawl activated, pushing them abruptly up into the air. The projectiles slammed harmlessly into the ground and shattered some of the cobblestones that they left behind.

With air rushing around them as they ascended into the wide blue sky, Randidly clicked his tongue and looked downward. Tsk, I don’t want this to cause much damage to the surroundings. If only I didn’t need to be near the projectiles to neutralize them with Ripple of Amenonuhoko-

Then Randidly paused. Wait a second… Do I really need to be so close to make use of the natural energy I’m gathering…?

Randidly divided his attention in two. One part of himself was in the moment with the giggling Todd, reveling in that sense of intoxicating freedom as they spiked upward away from Kharon Academy with an honor guard of emerald moss spirits swirling immediately into place around them. But the other part of his attention split itself out from the ripples that surrounded his own body. First, he looked down at the S.S. Yggdrasil beneath his feet, then more widely at the other skybikes and box-like public transportation vehicles cruising between sky islands in the swirling space above Kharon.

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The sky was so wide, but around Kharon it was thick with activity.

Realizing he could look was the hard part. And once Randidly looked, he was stunned to see the small ripples produced by everything in the surrounding sky. For a brief moment, he was struck by the lapping waves of energy that passed between the skybikes, the beating heart in his chest, the massive drifting skyislands floating even further above him, and the ever-present wind. Even the clouds above produced a massive wake of faint ripples, a glacier of water vapor gliding above the human world.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 361!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 362!

Randidly moved his hand lightly. His eyes were vague and unfocused. Ripple of Amenonuhoko tapped him into this natural pattern that spiraled endlessly around him. The more his consciousness expanded, the more Randidly could picture him in the middle of the grand design of the whole of Expira, subtly influenced by the flowing natural energy from other sources just as much as he was influenced.

For a brief moment, Randidly felt a flicker of understanding; he could see the seed of the Nether King’s grand pattern. His Nether Core howled into overdrive as he struggled to capture that vague impression.

Standing slightly behind Randidly, Todd raised his head and grinned. He rapped his knuckles seriously against Randidly’s metal left arm. “Wow, where did you get this thing? You completely blocked Eileen’s attack! She’s pretty strong, you know. But man, the expression on her face-”

Todd looked down and paled. “Shit. They are still coming.”

The intoxicating sense of grand understanding faded. Randidly’s Grim Intuition reluctantly pulled itself back to the ambush. Below them, Eileen Krous and her cronies had pulled out their own haphazard vehicles and imbued them with an animating Scrawl. A swarming wave of pursuers launched themselves off the ground and quickly closed the distance, as Randidly had allowed their progress to stall as he embraced the universe of ripples around him.

But two things brought Randidly’s focus fully back to the present. One was his warm feelings toward Todd: he wanted to give the kid a chance to obtain this broken spear, whether it was originally Randidly’s or not. And secondly, Randidly needed a way to check whether he could make use of his new understanding of the natural ripples in the world.

He leaned forward and pressed the tip of S.S. Yggdrasil downward. All of their upward momenta shifted around and brought them hurtling downward, right before the noses of their rising pursuers. The teenagers howled out their climbing sense of aggression and twisted their vehicles in mid-air to follow after them.

The wind was howling past as they accelerated downward and Randidly was blinking rapidly to capture the near-infinite ripples that spread out through the surrounding space. Natural energy quickly accumulated into a veritable slipstream around him, so that his pursuers accelerated along with the S.S. Yggdrasil. They ripped past an agricultural skyisland at such speeds that Randidly could sense some of the farmers pausing in their work to look up at the noise. Then he tilted his foot and skidded them around the edge of a commercial highway of Kharon, where buses and skybikes moved sedately along a path of moss spirits.

The ripples spread out from everything, impacting each other and being impacted, an endless cycle of energy.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 363!

Behind them, one of the whooping pursuers could finally take it no longer. She raised her hand and unleashed a sharp Mana Bolt toward the back of Randidly and Todd’s vehicle. And seeing someone else shoot, soon they were all firing their Skills in a burning, freezing, electrifying rain of attacks.

Randidly’s toes flexed against the wood of the vehicle. He deftly guided their path through the space between ripples, surfing on air currents and sliding sharply sideways to avoid various projectiles. As the slipstream around him gathered more and more natural energy, the reach of the natural phenomenon grew. And as its strength was magnified, the pursuers had an easier time cutting the distance between themselves and Randidly.

Meanwhile, Randidly’s left hand was tracing ripples through the air. When the projectiles missed, he tugged on the ripples around him, setting of complex chain reactions through the wind currents. It depleted his natural energy, but he was accumulating it so quickly that the amount he utilized was negligible.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 364!

With a snap of the fingers, the ripples blasted outward. A Mana Bolt that had missed them was smashed with a highly pressurized blast of way. Both dissipated. Randidly’s Grim Intuition spun outward, cataloging all of the projectiles he so effortlessly dodged and releasing ripples to negate them from afar.

His goal wasn’t to block the attacks, that would show his hand. But he enjoyed secretly wiping away all the collateral damage.

An Arcane Orb was popped. A Shadow Bolt was smothered. A Spark Grenade was shredded.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 365!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ripple of Amenonuhoko (M) has grown to Level 366!

Perhaps strangest of all, Randidly could feel the way his new Control Stat, Fidelity of the Ascendant Moirae, was resonating with the challenge. There was something about his covert operations that it inherently supported.

“Uh…” Todd gulped and looked down with wide eyes as they slid out of the way of another few projectiles. “T-t-the g-ground-”

Randidly blinked. Then he grinned; they were only ten meters or so from the ground, and traveling much faster than ten meters per second.

He leaned back and the S.S. Yggdrasil pulled sharply up, practically skipping across the sandstone ridge beneath them and blasting up a cloud of dust. While manipulating Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart to makes sure none of the pursuers pancaked themselves into the ground, Randidly opened up the throttle on their vehicle.

The natural energy that spun after him smashed into the ridge. The pursuers were shouting and firing, their joy rising more quickly than any actual conviction to due them harm, as the energy spun up a growing sandstorm in Randidly’s wake.

By this point, the projectiles had once again entirely ceased. The children rode at the lip of the storm, cheering and steadily turning to head back toward Kharon. Randidly couldn’t help but grin and roll his eyes as he felt their spirits lift with the wild freedom of the moment. You do realize you are supposed to be ambushing us, right? Don’t lose heart on me now! Let’s put on one more big show...