An invisible pulse spread out from the shattered pieces, soon enveloping the whole of the area.

Around Randidly, the fabric of this place began to quickly unravel. Even his grinding grey firestorm was smoothly rubbed away as the switch back to their actual bodies began in earnest. Without the strange carved stone, there was nothing holding them here. However, there were a few strained moments of transition where he was able to discover some new information from the broken remnants.

First, behind him, Wick began to scream when his hand pierced the stone. Not a roar that befitted his hairy bear form, not a bellow. Not some outcry of rage or indignation or shock. No, his voice vibrated with pain as the pitch rose to become a shrill shriek. It seemed the combination of emotional attacks or the central piece of this place shattering had inflicted a serious wound upon him.

Second, the two Unborn finally seemed to wake up from their post-emotional-meal stupor. Several vapors flew out of the shattered stone, which they pounced forward and gobbled up without any hesitation. Randidly felt somewhat disturbed to see that their bodies pulsed with thick veins in a much more visceral fashion, their forms growing more concrete.

First veins and probably organs, he reflected. What comes next?

Finally, a small few bits of fabric hung in the space where Randidly had knifed his hand into the stone to destroy it. What immediately grabbed his attention was how much of the dense significance clustered around these few small fluttering bits; it possessed even more density than the chunk Neshamah had given him.

The whole of his attention got pulled into that significance.

The tattered bits flickered and began to tear as soon as they were exposed to the air, but Randidly could recognize a few things. The largest and densest copper piece of fabric bore the name Wick upon it and had been wrapped around the others. However, that knot steadily unraveled, revealing three wispy threads and two more substantial bits of fabric.

Randidly’s pupils dilated. Is this- does that mean that there are already six people crammed into Wick’s body?! Is that why-

Right before everything was whisked away, Randidly focused on a dense cord that had been wrapped tightly by the other bits of cloth. He couldn’t make out the name across it, but he would recognize that rust color anywhere. It stank of madness and rot.

Whooooooossh!

Then suddenly they were back in the dark underground courtroom, the wreckage of their earlier clash settling and breaking. A muffling blanket of darkness lay across them, slowly settling due to the stillness. The two remained in their previous positions, he collapsed on the broken stone and the Commandant reaching down to touch his shoulder. Randidly’s eyes flashed; Wick’s binding spikes had faded and now he smashed his foot directly into the bearman’s stomach and sent him skidding back across the ground.

The darkness remained, but the noise suddenly seem to rouse the whole of the room.

Hopping to his feet, Randidly mobilized his Nether Core. His image physicalizations flared to life, filling him with potency. At the same time, he produced the Philosopher’s Key and prepared to create a portal out of this area. His nerves were strained as he observed the surroundings.

Randidly gritted his teeth as he stood transfixed, ready to move but waiting for the situation to nudge him one way or another. Wick continued to crash along the ground and then obliterated the low tier of seating opposite Randidly’s position. Stone crumbled and cracked underneath his body, but that did little to alleviate Randidly’s worries. He still wanted to fight against Wick, to kill him and finally receive payment for the debt Helen was owed. Yet he knew that what he had broken was valuable not just to Wick, but also to Devick. If she showed up-

Well, Randidly was willing to let the issue of Wick slide for a bit more time if he had to fight his way through Devick to kill him. Some risks weren’t worth it.

Exposure to both Elhume and Devick had taught him that.

However, seconds passed and there were no ominous rumblings or rising tides of madness in the surroundings. With Nether Sensation, Randidly could clearly view the disturbed significance that spread around them; the air in this deep room grew thick with the consequences of the actions he had taken. He could sense the connections that stretched from here back to Devick.

Yet she didn’t appear. And whatever else he knew about Devick, that woman did not strike him as a particularly patient person.

Even so, Randidly’s palms tingled. He didn’t let his attention waver for even a second. Considering her power- If it took her a while to recognize what had happened-

His attention ripped sideways, to the spot where Wick had forced himself to a standing position. The Commandant, now strangely silent, tottered sideways several steps as though he couldn’t find his balance. Then he righted himself, his head tilted strangely to the side, and used his paws to began gripping at his body, as though ascertaining his situation.

A heavy pressure began to radiate from Wick. Part of it was raw emotional potency, but there was also a few new, and dangerous, notes to his aura.

Randidly released a hissing breath and this time Wick ripped around, overbalancing himself with the force of his response to the noise. However, before he fell to the ground, a strange limb of twisted flesh and exposed muscle grew out of his back and steadied himself on the ground. Wick straightened again, his eyes glowing red. The image arm fractured and faded away. However, the ripples that spread out from Wick clearly indicated that something had changed. The flavor of his energy felt profoundly different. Several different notes wove together, sometimes cooperating, sometimes clashing against one another.

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But despite their differences, they soon began to build an image projection.

For another few seconds, Randidly held the Philosopher's Key and hesitated. Whatever twisted, emotion-addled amalgamation of images that existed in Wick’s body roiled behind him, forming into a massive titan of twisted rust-colored flesh and spikes of copper driven through his various joints. The oppressive aura of his image grew stronger. Dark clouds spiraled above the image’s head and when the titan breathed, it produced more of this lingering exhaust.

The flesh-titan version of Wick took a step forward. His antagonism shredded through the air, possessing physical force. Every moment Randidly hesitated, this foe grew more used to this bodily form.

“Shit,” Randidly swore aloud. The fleshy titan cracked its neck in response. Not in a casual movement, but in a brutal twist that would likely snap the neck of a lesser being. And if anything, the oppressive pressure of the image just grew stronger in the aftermath. Emotional force became the engine to fuel this monstrous shape.

Randidly inserted the Philosopher’s Key into the air and opened a portal to the depths of the shaft. He left the portal open and began to churn his Nether flows around him as Wick bounded forward. Devick might be a risk, but a Wick that had lost himself to emotions was one that was vulnerable.

Yet as he examined this foe, something occurred to Randidly. It bore a remarkable resemblance to him, in that it combined several images. Just rather than all the images being a part of him, Devick had forced several powerful personalities into one body, each with their own image.

The titan gathered momentum as it galloped across the intervening space. Randidly spread his arms and created a thousand sharp claws of gravity that surged out of the triple image activation. Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart. The Wrathful Calamity Rends. Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil.

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 501!

...

Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 528!

The spectral talons, empowered by the flickering flames of Nether Weight, dug into the flesh titan’s body like a thousand and one small hooks. They shredded through its flesh, but it didn’t even seem to notice; more grey clouds floated out of its wounds and added to the illusion of the two of them fighting on an overcast wasteland.

Randidly pursed his lips. The image of the flesh titan had grown so concrete that he couldn’t spot Wick’s body any longer within its depths. It had been lost in the giant’s mass. Which meant he would need to attack the image to get to more vulnerable bits waiting within. But the storm of Nether he maintained had gathered a veritable sledgehammer of natural force through his earlier clashes with Wick.

Unfortunate that the energy in the mental arena wasn’t maintained, Randidly raised his glowing left hand. Otherwise, the whole basement of this place would be leveled-

Raw kinetic power erupted from his fingers, setting Sulfur to a pleasurable vibrating state and warping the air with the violence of its passage. His body trembled to channel such force, but Randidly endured.

The blast hit the fleshy titan in its midsection, almost completely annihilating its waist. The image flickered, but to Randidly surprise, it didn’t collapse. In fact, as the torso fell forward without the support of the waist, the image’s joint’s pivoted smoothly into a new form. Soon the rust-colored monstrosity was dragging itself forward by its arms, while the legs had flipped up and swollen until they were two massive scorpion tails, ending with sharp copper spikes.

As it neared, he could see its mouth moving, constantly muttering to itself: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill-

Randidly’s eyes narrowed. Wick’s really gone insane. I just wish that would have dulled the edge of his image-

One of the tails blurred forward and Randidly cleanly sidestepped. The rust-colored flesh stretched and extended so that rather than a quick strike, the tail drilled forward like a torpedo, boring into the stone behind Randidly and causing several more portions of the seating area to collapse. Randidly sucked in all the generated ripples and rapidly accumulated more kinetic power. He couldn’t manage the environment very well, mostly due to those strange and ominous grey clouds that the titan released that were part of some strange third image, but he started ripping away the flesh of the titan’s eyes with a constant bombardment of Nether flares.

So, by the time the titan was only a few meters away, Randidly could spin all that gathered kinetic force and unleash an even more powerful beam-

Congratulations! Your Skill the Dragon Queen’s Sinister Tongue (T) has grown to Level 529!

The second tail bulged and shifted abruptly, piercing forward to meet Randidly’s beam. All that oppressive image power gathered into the sharp point at the end of the tail. Two more heavy copper spikes spun together to form a single ‘stinger’. When that image attack met the beam, it carved its way forward. Before Randidly could react, it had obliterated the kinetic force and scored a deep gouge across Sulfur.

At the same time, the first tail flailed sideways and slammed into Randidly’s stomach with enough force that he was thrown back. The shock of the impact was immense. His ribs popped unpleasantly, overpowered by the raw emotional torrent contained in the Wick who had descended into madness.

There was a sense of tumbling and then Randidly hit stone and served as a wrecking ball. Grimacing, he pressed a hand to the ground and threw himself out of the debris. Strange, jagged grey clouds loomed closer above their heads. Damnit, I might have a superior physique, but this image of a titan is just as strong as me, if not stronger. This is definitely-

Finally, the titan opened its mouth, revealing hundreds of off-center and needle-sharp teeth. His voice came out with another belch of grey smoke. “Kill…”

“Me…”

Randidly blinked. As he watched, the titan lifted itself off the ground with the two stingers, which had now morphed into heavy legs at the top of a dangling torso. It used one of its small hands to reach into its chest and pull away flesh, revealing a wizened and black heart. As Randidly looked at it, he saw superimposed over it the rust-colored cord and a deep well of significance. It mangled hands cracked, but then it pointed at the small organ.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 660!

Yet as soon as that weakness was revealed, molten copper flowed down and covered the opening, forming a thick armor. The titan slammed its fist against the defenses, furious. Above, the grey clouds churned. It was hard to tell how that image fit into this dynamic. Then, when its claws could find no purchase on the armor, the titan’s frightful gaze turned to Randidly.

It stepped forward, that brief moment of clarity passing and the frustration and aggression once more flaring around it. The emotional force surged through its shape and Randidly almost felt strangled facing down such a powerful image.