Congratulations! Your Skill Philosophy within the Boundless Deluge (M) has grown to Level 412!

Randidly released a breath and opened his eyes. His time on the swaying rope bridge was almost up. He had used it as best as he could, both resting his mind and then reviewing the movements of the Grand Pattern that he had witnessed in the ‘Second Step’ of the mountain. Although his Skill Level gains during this break time were small, he was much more confident in predicting the movements of the storm.

In terms of utilization of his Skill Levels, Randidly had become much more confident.

“However…” His eyes flashed with a manic stubbornness as he looked at the drifting currents of mist that masked the Third Step of this damnable mountain. The murky depths remained impenetrable to his gaze. Somehow, his perception was limited by the aura of the mountain.

Still, Randidly shook himself off and then walked toward the far end of the bridge as he made his final mental preparations. From what he could tell, the dangers of this next step were two-fold: first that his senses were muffled and second that the damage dealt by the wind blades sharply increased.

To the point that being hit directly with as few as five wind blades posed a serious threat to Randidly’s life.

Randidly stretched out his hand and touched the mists that flowed down into the bottomless seeming gorge. Immediately, his expression flickered. This sensation… it’s similar to what I felt on the frontlines, but not the same. The faux-Nether stars. Looks like the mountain altered the base restriction on the presence of Nether and attempted to replace it with something more manageable. Is that also why perception is so restricted?

Well, ‘attempted to replace’ is too meek a word for this mist. Whoever created this place clearly succeeded. But there’s something… stale about it. And dangerous. Even from just touching the edge, I feel a pervasive melancholy.

Still, the weird emotional forces that Randidly felt only made him hesitate for a second. His six-hour break was almost entirely up. Not that he couldn’t handle it, but he didn’t want needless physical restrictions. So he took one last breath of the clean air on the bridge and stepped back forward onto solid ground, covered with a thick and muffling layer of mist. His toes tingled at the slightly damp stone ground.

As he passed through the threshold, he glanced down at the churning life force within his left arm. Sulfur continued to digest his gains. Keep sleeping, buddy. I’ve got this from here.

With another step, Randidly found himself in a grey expanse, his perception constricted down to about five meters in every direction. The cotton-edged obscura was almost comforting. Although he could not see it any longer, he could sense the curiosity in the storm above him activating and targeting him once more. He couldn’t predict the details, but Randidly didn’t doubt that it was churning out wind blades to harry him.

Deadly wind blades that could rip away his tough flesh and lay his bones bare.

Of course, this was early in the pattern. Which meant that the attacks would be rather formulaic and spaced apart, to give him a chance to acclimate. With that space, Randidly intended to study the surroundings a bit.

First, without his path, he was literally just on a grey rocky slope. The globe of his awareness showed the gentle rise of the ground beneath him, but Randidly didn’t intend on walking directly upward; he wanted to feel confident in the current pattern before he reached the halfway point of the Third Step and had to deal with intermittent force spikes.

Congratulations! Your Skill Tide of the Void (L) has grown to Level 399!

Secondly, once he was immersed in it, that sense of depressing melancholy grew stronger. It directly tried to influence him. Randidly happily allowed the foreign emotion that attempted to worm its way into his heart to be devoured by the Stillborn Phoenix. With such a constant pressure from the outside, the Egg of Depression could finally open its wide maw and feast to its heart’s content.

Because the more that Randidly examined the fake Nether, the more he could see its downsides. Normal Nether established connections between related entities. Most of the power from Nether came from those connections and their significance. However, the environment here was one of constant connection. Randidly was honestly pretty impressed that someone had been able to engineer a strange replacement energy at all, but what it did was release a rather constant emotional radiation.

It was too conducive.

Still, there weren’t only downsides to this energy; the more deeply that Randidly studied its behavior, the more his eyes began to glow. A darkness began to swirl around his left eye, adding motes of purple and black to his iris. He could peer through that conducive energy and see.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 475!

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A ghostly humanoid figure stumbled forward through the mist, looking like they would disintegrate at the slightest touch. Through the conducive energy, he felt their panic. They also definitely had much less Perception than Randidly did, rendering them near-blind. Time accelerated as Randidly examined this remnant, giving the figure time to force their way up the slope-

-until they were summarily beheaded by a wind blade they hadn’t detected scything in from behind. The specter slumped to the ground and bled out, becoming one with the heavy stone ground. The mist disintegrated, leaving the figure to reappear and repeat the pattern.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 476!

So I have a bit of information about my deceased predecessors, huh?

The light dimmed in Randidly’s eyes as he scanned around. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Randidly could find hundreds of remnant paths that scattered around the surroundings. They somehow straddled the line between feeling insubstantial and well preserved. The details had been wiped away by time, but the tragic ends to these journeys remained clear.

However, the weirdest thing is that… based on this sensation, it’s been a long time since anyone has made it to here… But Randidly looked sharply up before he could study further. He sidestepped easily and then began to take a circuitous route to the left. A wind blade crunched the ground where he had been just standing.

Their power was just as vicious as he remembered.

They came in low, swooping patterns, aiming to strike at him from the sides and back. There were a few frantic moments where Randidly had to hop over wind blades he hadn’t predicted cutting toward his legs, but then it occurred to him that the Grand Pattern had just flipped itself; the attacks that used to come from in front of him now came from behind.

Which explained why so many of the remnants died so quickly. Probably, the approach was randomized, even if the pattern was the same. And once Randidly understood the reorientation, he began to walk forward with more confidence, trusting his observations from the Second Step. The attacks began to come more frequently from the mist-shrouded sky, but Randidly ascended without being touched.

Congratulations! Your Skill Dodge has grown to Level 356!

Congratulations! Your Skill Philosophy within the Boundless Deluge (M) has grown to Level 413!

Of course, the sound of those wind blades crunching the stone ground doesn’t exactly instill confidence, Randidly’s lips twitched. But at the same time, his mind was rapidly scanning through the vestiges to gather more information. He watched the ghastly movements of previous climbers briefly, watching how they handled the wind blades.

As he moved further away from the starting point, the remnants thinned out. But there were still about a hundred shades that lingered in the fake Nether around him, repeating their endless final struggles on the mountain.

After sifting through about twenty, most of which were quickly slaughtered with upsetting regularity, Randidly finally latched onto a single remnant and observed it closely. The figure was a short woman with spiky hair. As she moved forward, she effortlessly stepped around the various wind blades that lashed at her. The orientation she dealt with was different than Randidly’s, but her confidence was palpable. It was clear that she had a deep understanding of the pattern.

The mist continued to churn above, evidence of the growing movement of wind blades above him. Watching her movements was a strain on Randidly’s attention because he truly could not slacken his guard against the wind blades. Their edge would cut him deeply if they landed on his body. Yet he could glimpse a deeper understanding of the Grand Pattern by watching her decisive steps.

The corner of Randidly’s smile curled upward as he continued to wade forward in the mist, gradually imitating the woman’s shade and responding to the wind blades as soon as they cut into his bubble of perception. He spoke out loud, enjoying the way his voice echoed on the empty mountainside. “Of course, avoiding the Grand Pattern entirely is not my path. But having this ability in my back pocket can only be a good thing, right?”

Congratulations! Your Skill Philosophy with the Boundless Deluge (M) has grown to Level 414!

The mist began to churn with the accumulating force of the storm. The Grand Pattern shifted toward a more difficult segment. Wind blades cut through and crashed into Randidly’s surroundings as he lightly waltzed forward. But, as the intensity picked up, Randidly raised his right hand and began to drag his fingers through the thick air. As he did so, he couldn’t help but chuckle; the conducive fake Nether made it comically easy to accumulate and retain natural energy.

Plus, with the raw force contained in these extremely sharp wind blades-

“Alright then. You think you know how to brew up a storm? Well let me show you what Randidly Ghosthound can do,” He grinned upward and began to swirl force around him in a very particular pattern.

Wind blades began to rain down more quickly, a sign that the consciousness sensed what he was doing and wanted to stop him, but Randidly had observed the remnants for long enough that he could predict the general shape of the responses. Even as a fragile framework of energy flows emerged around him, he climbed the mountain with just as much evasion as a phantom.

The wind above began to howl and the blades came more quickly, aiming for his vitals. They traveled so quickly from the edge of his perception to his body that even Randidly would have struggled to just rely on Reaction to cope, considering the physical restrictions.

Yet Randidly’s eyes danced. He truly began to see the Grand Pattern. And as long as these wind blades obeyed their own rules, they could not hurt him.

After he burst several steps forward to avoid several dangerous ambushes, the energy flows solidified. Randidly grinned from the middle of his own wind blade orb, empowered with the dangerous force of the Third Step. As soon as it came into being, the wind blades cut toward it, not even worrying about hurting the Randidly strolling within its framework. Since all he was doing was twisting the forces to balance themselves out, he didn’t even need to worry about the wind blades being more dangerous.

He redistributed the natural energy he had gathered from the vicious attacks and allowed this storm to grind against itself.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tide of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 516!

“Let’s begin,” Randidly said lightly. Natural energy churned around him, dragging more and more mist together into a hissing maelstrom.