Randidly scrutinized the three interconnected wind blades as they buzzed through the air toward him. Wreathed in darkness from the steadily improving image physicalizations, his left eye traced the complex lines of air that wove these three wind blades into a single, dangerous whole. Around it, a whole slew of normal, tier 2 wind blades drifted and swooped, following the constant waltz of the Grand Pattern.
He stood poised in the center of a deadly game, calculating his best route forward.
Randidly’s toes curled, gripping the stone beneath his feet. With several gracefully half steps, he swayed between the appetizer wind blades and stepped into the small bubble of space before the more dangerous, sewn together blade trio. He lifted himself up onto the balls of his feet.
Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level 376!
He raised Acri and cut decisively, dragging the brutally sharp edge along the wave of natural energy he had gathered. At his urging, the energy surged forward to meet the triple wind blade. Immediately, his eyes crinkled in triumph; the strike severed the key ties that bound the three wind blades together. Based on Randidly’s calculations, now the other two should pass harmlessly by him-
Smack-Smack!
Blood spurted from his left collarbone and right shoulder, after an airflow he had missed in the chaotic churn of connections tugged the other to blades to lash at his body. The trio of strikes was designed to snap shut like a bear trap as soon as they were disturbed. Randidly’s accumulating image physicalizatinos blunted most of the damage, but the tier two wind blades were still strong enough to cut into his flesh.
Growling, Randidly released his careful control of natural energy and just brute forced the followup avalanche of wind blades with Dreadful Alacrity. After thrusting upward and unleashed a blast of natural force to obliterate the first wave of wind blades, he stored away Acri and focused on his movements. During his ascent to this he had learned from his mistakes of trying to catch back up with the pattern once he had been impacted; it usually ended with him bloody and scowling.
Better to just cut his losses and rely on his monstrous Stats. His Grim Intuition tingled as he took in the entire storm system rushing down to wound him.
The wind howled gleefully, prodded by the watching storm to collapse on top of him now that it tasted his blood. Randidly shuffled back and forth on the narrow path so quickly he left after images, his bare feet unpleasantly warm from the friction between his callouses and the rough stone. His eyes gleamed with purple black energy that gave him the insight to overcome the net of wind thrown at him.
Congratulations! Your Skill Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 472!
Congratulations! Your Skill Dodge has grown to Level 333!
After ten minutes of its bloodthirsty blitz, the wind began to settle. He could feel the storm rumbling above, seemingly disappointed that it hadn’t managed to worsen his injuries despite its attempts. Already Randidly’s flesh knit closed, his injuries erased just as thoroughly as though they had never existed.
Not that the mountain should want me to bleed, Randidly glanced backward Fist sized holes dotted the wrecked path behind him, where his powerful blood had ate away at the stone mountain. Just one more type of wreckage on this insane, threat laden climb.
However, Randidly quickly turned forward and produced Acri once more. He moved the spear head back and forth, until it seemed to be swimming through the air, accumulating natural energy as quickly as he could in the relatively calm air.
At this point, Randidly was a bit over halfway through the second tier of this storm on the mountain. Constant torturing from the Grand Pattern had increased the efficiency of his image physicalizations and his familiarity with working within the bounds of his body. His Nether roared through his veins, empowering each of his steps. Yet he still felt oddly stifled by the restrictions of the mountain, unable to deal with the wind blades from afar.
Which was why his current fixation was on natural energy.
Of course, I only find dealing with the tier two wind blades to be a hassle because I already had basic image physicalizations and a powerful body. Randidly clicked his tongue and glanced around at the lonely granate slope. Meanwhile, for a typical Nexus citizen… they would be diced. Not a surprise that I haven’t encountered anyone out here.
He drew Acri sideways as he spied the next wave of tests coming, led again by one of the woven triple blades that had appeared at the halfway point of tier two. Power spun out in chaotic swirls from his spear as he rapidly accumulated more force. His fingers tightened on the shaft of the spear.
Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tides of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 502!
Natural energy came in all sorts of varieties, but essentially Randidly’s Skill allowed him to collect the kinetic and radiational forces that bled out from the interaction between images and the universe’s natural laws. Or just the the universe, but the result was more impressive when the inflated force of images was added to the mix. It was a true and raw power that constantly disintegrated and was usually lost to entropy, but Randidly dipped his fingers into that flow and accumulated a meaningful amount for himself.
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His ability was limited in scope by the forces in the surroundings, so during these more laid back periods he couldn’t gather very much natural energy quickly. And conversely, once the Grand Pattern started bombarding him, Randidly had difficulty managing both the energy and keeping his body from being brutalized. But the more he practiced, the more he felt the transition becoming easier.
Even if I don’t want to make the Skillset yet, my usage is pushing several of my Skills together. Which is good and bad. Hah, I never thought I’d see the day where I just wanted a day or so to sit and meditate, Randidly pursed his lips and glanced upward. This mountain is just as bad as the Visage of Obsession.
Sensing what he believed to be a slight flaw in the ties between the three blades, Randidly thrust Acri forward and unleashed a concentrated blast of force. This time, he came close to successfully dismantling the attack; the left most of the three blades was severed and careened off to the side. But that left the other two to tumble toward Randidly’s legs.
He hopped up over the strike and then pivoted to deal with the punctual follow ups from the Grand Pattern. Luckily, he was a split second behind but still not in a dangerous area. He kept Acri out and skimmed energy rapidly from the whirlwind of hyper-sharpened air. Quickly and decisively, he started to dance forward. He advanced, steadily generating a tail of natural energy that followed behind him. Randidly quickly detected two triple blades swirling down toward him, but he ignored them for now.
Being forced to rely on natural energy also helped him firm up his framework for understanding of Aether and Nether. Aether was the energy that created something from nothing. You used Willpower to generate an image which could interact the laws of the universe and would generate ripples of natural energy.
Of course, these ripples rapidly decayed in power; the image was ultimately false, and there seemed to be a natural mandate that the power of images would diminish more quickly than logic would dictate. Randidly supposed that part of reaching the Pinnacle would be overcoming this resistance from the universe.
However, there was one strange way that this decay could be avoided; two images clashing produced disturbances that wouldn’t fade nearly as quickly. Which was why battlefields were such a fruitful area for Randidly to gather natural energy. He wished he could experiment with these principles, but without the ability to project his images beyond his body, his speculations only remained theoretical for now.
Besides, he had enough on his plate without other ways to train.
Meanwhile, Nether energy could add nothing to something. However, this nothing, while not adjusting the aspects of the force, added ‘Weight’ that made it more than it would normally be. The restriction on Nether was the same: Weight rapidly diminished as the ripples spread out further from the source. But Randidly suspected there might also be a way to trick the laws of the natural universe into allowing that Weight to persist. And since one of his core advantages was Nether, he intended to investigate this-
-as soon as he had a moment to breathe.
The two triple blades cut at Randidly from either side and he took several steps backward to avoid the impact point. The attacks swerved to follow. With the massive amount of natural energy he had gathered, he raised Acri and spun all that accumulated force around him. As he did so, Randidly realized that the energy he possessed naturally accelerated into this established form, almost happy to have been gathered one place. He formed a whirlwind of power that lashed out and struck at the various wind blades.
His eyes were lantered, one emerald and one grey.
Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tides of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 503!
Of course, Randidly sharp eyes followed the impact between the various wind blades and his his pseudo-domain of natural energy. The efficacy is increased when I establish control over an area. It’s not just riples anymore, but tides.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOOM!
Controlling space with his natural energy made him a larger target, but Randidly could handle it. Some of the wind blades were deflected, while others were directly smashed to pieces. However, Randidly infiltrated a few of the glancing attacks with his tides and pulled them into his whirlwind directly. Quickly they empowered his natural energy and whirled gleefully in the newly directed flows.
Unfortunately, the process of incorporating the wind blades required a vast impost of calculating power and understanding of the Grand Pattern. So he spent more than he gathered and the size of his whirlwind shrank. At the same time, the storm above rumbled. It was not a noise of fury, but again just curiosity at his behavior.
The thing didn’t seem to care what Randidly did, so long as he rushed up the side of the mountain.
Grey clouds rapidly accumulated and shifted into a dark anvil directly above Randidly’s position. Lesser clouds clustered around the main one like a fluffy skirt. Distantly, he sensed a tide of wind blades gliding down to test this new method of resistance he had developed.
Randidly’s lips twitched. The portion of his shirt not torn or crusted with dried blood was soaked with sweat. Can you just give me a minute?!?
Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tides of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 504!
The two triple blades finally caught up with him. Randidly reached out with his much depleted natural energy and wormed his way into the connections. He raced through the complicated flows, his mind calculating rapidly the shape of these woven wind blades. And soon, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He had found the bow that held them together.
Gotcha.
Randidly smashed the core of the two triple blades with the last dredges of his natural energy just as they were about to cut into him. But as he had hoped, both unraveled once their cores had been destroyed, leaving only a breath of wind to ruffle his hair.
Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level
Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tides of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 505!
Randidly stored away Acri and then switched back to his intense dodging, having completely run out of natural energy and feeling the impending rush of wind blades heading for him. But just as he began to shuffle, the storm above him rumbled.
He glanced up and grimaced; the storm produced almost a hundred triple wind blades right on the heels of the rush it had already unleashed. Randidly could practically hear the storm’s haughty tone. Feeling smug for handling a few of these? Well here is a hundred.
Randidly’s competitiveness flared. “I’m seriously going to climb to the summit of this place and crush you. Just wait for me.”
The storm trembled and then belched out a giant sphere of ten interlaced wind blades that spun and rotated on itself. It rolled down toward Randidly with all the slow inevitability of a bowling ball pushed by toddler.