As it turned out, his images were just as stubborn as Randidly was.

Three days of teeth-grinding torture later, Randidly felt himself nearing the moment of sublimation. Thick beads of sweat dripped down his temples and ran along his jaw. The dirt ground around the lip of the volcano around him began to smolder from the ambient heat produced by his body. A muscle spasmed in his back from the period of prolonged tension, but he couldn’t spare even a moment to relax it away.

But the worst of it was the soul-wracking pain as he forced Yggdrasil beyond its comfort zone. Far beyond, to the point that the image itself began to sustain damage. As the powerful bark of the World Tree ruptured, the collapse of the image dug claws into the soft matter of his brain, leaving him slightly trembling in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time. His awareness became hazy and flickering at the edges. Yet he gritted his teeth and continued to compress his energy; he knew that growth required sacrifice. He had spent his entire time under the Nexus’s thumb learning how little you could accomplish by taking things easily.

If you don’t move forward, you will stay in place and regrets will catch up to you. Randidly’s eyes were bloodshot. A few more drops of superheated energy were forced within the trunk of Yggdrasil. That near-living conglomerate of energy shook itself, doing its best to break out of the shell, inflicting more agony on him in the process.

Warning! Your image-

Within the sphere of his image, Randidly felt a massive rift burst open along the sides of the World Tree’s bark. The swirling Engravings along that torn area began to flash crazily as energy and air forced themselves out through the divide and widened the hole. Soon, Randidly’s Soulspace was filled with a thunderous crackling roar, reminiscent more of a wildfire devouring an entire forest than the transformation of a single tree.

But in the face of Yggdrasil’s stability, he had no choice. To overcome the sturdy and reliable foundation he had built, he needed force.

Warning-

Recalculating… Please visit your nearest Village Spirit. Failure to do so will result in weakness and death-

Synchronicity detected! Your Skillset Yggdrasil, the Universe that was First a Tree is evolving!

Warning-

For a moment, right as a dozen more fissures opened on the trunk and spewed out golden light and heat, Randidly sobbed. His head pitched forward and he couldn’t help the gulp of hesitation. The pain was existential, making him simultaneously delirious and desperate. The haziness crept into his thoughts. That seething being of plasma within the World Tree forced its way outward, leaving the image feeling vaguely hollow.

Yggdrasil seemed to break fire out through a dozen holes, the forces of stasis and change perfectly balanced.

But Randidly raised his head again and squeezed with his Willpower one last time. The plasma began howling out of the cracks in the bark, the friction and force of its passage forever altering the World Tree. And begrudgingly, the Skillset evolved. The sensation of release splashed across his face and left him blinking.

Congratulations! Your Skillset has evolved! Partial evolution: Skillset will retain the same name. Incorporating elements of upheaval and magma into the Skillset! The roots and branches of Yggdrasil dig out into the fabric of the universe, weaving itself even more closely to the essence of existence! Life and destruction sit within Yggdrasil’s seed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yggdrasil’s Unruly Ichor (M) has evolved into Yggdrassil’s Plasm Animus (P)! Beyond just carrying the nutrients and energy required for the World Tree, the user’s bodily fluids now carry a hint of the primordial spark that gave birth to life. Healing significantly increased. Damage inflicted on enemies who touch the blood is vastly increased, for a few seconds after leaving the body. Resistance to foreign influences slightly increased. Blood has a small chance to try and flow back into the wound, providing extra resilience for a short time.

Congratulations! Your Skill Reign of the Eidolon Crucible (L) has evolved into the Spirit Realm of Marshalled Endeavours (M)! User gains the ability to maintain the area even while he isn’t using it, for the usage of his followers. Others may use the Realm to sharpen their images and emotions even while the user is otherwise occupied.

Congratulations! Synchronicity detected! Your Skill the Inscrutable Mien of Genesis (M) has incorporated elements from the Torch of Fast and Slow Silences (A) and evolved to Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T)! User incorporated elements of pure, unfiltered light of the origin into the Skill. Viewers will be struck by an immense pressure when witnessing the Skill. Weight of the aura released is significantly increased. Obtained the mantle of a being beyond time.

Congratulations! Synchronicity detected! Your Skill Inexorable Toll of Exodus (T) has incorporated elements from Sigil of an Approaching Fate (A) and evolved into Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T)! Skill will now ramp up effectiveness for as long as it is activated. The violence of the Skill has greatly improved. That lurking darkness had been strengthened, given wings and fangs. Enemies exposed to the Skill will remain marked and marred by the Skill until user removes the effect or they can thoroughly overpower it.

Randidly released a gasp and allowed his spasming back to twitch. But the burning within the image world continued, huge chunks of charred bark cracking and falling away from the massive trunk and crashing to the ground. Wide swathes of vegetation in the image zone caught fire and soon everything was fed the voracious inferno. The massive, arching roots of the World Tree shattered and collapsed, becoming ash and smoke that blotted out the sky.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Up and down ceased meaning anything within the image space. Time vanished. There existed only fire and fuel, and the natural inclination for both to spend themselves on each other.

Shuddering, Randidly tried to corral the destruction that ripped through his image. But that incandescent force he had created took the driver’s seat. In lashed out with massive tentacles of liquid fire, ripping up the ground and demolishing everything that he had so carefully curated. Huge typhoons of orange flame leveled hills and evaporated streams. The pure glee with which it erased all his efforts left Randidly lost.

At first, he felt a sliver of fear. However, the more he watched, the more he began to sense the thrust of what it was trying to accomplish. A nascent intelligence labored within the inferno, birthed by his own desires.

So… trust the process. Follow the patterns.

Literal flames licked across his physical body as Randidly’s superheated skin ignited the oxygen and nitrogen in the air around him, but nothing compared to the piercing brightness of his emerald eyes. His lips curled into a snarl and he continued to struggle, pushing forward. He raged with the flames, devouring everything he could find. In some small way, expending his fury on the image helped mask the continued agony he experienced.

The massive tree creaked and groaned as it swayed in place. Currently, the leaves couldn’t rustle; they had burst into a massive conflagration, a fireball of prodigious size that gobbled up the emerald color. Soon the branches were bare and smoldering, many snapping and falling away as the plasma force thoroughly eviscerated the interior of the tree.

Randidly hacked and coughed, spewing some of the contents of his throat onto the sizzling ground. Contained within the phlegm was a fair bit of blood. However, his lips twitched as those few drops of blood wiggled and came alive, inching back toward him like worms.

Really, there’s no need for the phlegm blood to crawl back toward me, is there…?

A new jab of pain wiped away the distractions. The roar of the flames ravaging the underbrush and other plant matter became deafening. Distantly, Randidly could feel the various animals he had placed into the environment either burrowing down as deeply as they could or wildly fleeing away, seeking an escape from this cataclysm.

But he just watched, almost deaf, as the massive trunk began to fold in on itself. Bits of wood and bark were sprayed sideways as that fold deepened. It resembled more a mountain bowing than a tree, such was the size and width of the vital tree’s trunk. But soon Yggdrasil fell, moving in slow motion until it had the ground with enough raw force to carve a new riverbed of plasma and charcoal into the ground.

A massive cloud of dust, burning embers, and ash spread out across Randidly’s Soulspace. He suppressed a groan, desperately keeping the pressure upon his image. Closing his eyes, he followed the tingling nutrients and image fragments, the broken pieces of the grand story that had been writ on in looping sigils across the bar, as they seeped into the ground of his image area and began to create a resonance.

Some part of Randidly could finally relax, as most of the pain began to fade, but his attention didn’t waver. He scrutinized his energy’s descent into the soil with a murderous intensity. A few core ideas began to congregate. Already his mental acuity was pushed to his limits, but he couldn’t afford to miss his chance. Because in this final transformation, he had one more Skill in mind. Those congregated ideas condensed into a solid ovoid.

He waited. The flames across the transformed hellscape gradually dimmed and went out. The heat vanished, leaving carbonized wood and animal carcasses that represented a frozen, bleak version of the World Tree.

Yet within the ground, the heart of life beat with great force. But no urgency. This was the cycle of things, for life to give way to death. In time, it would reverse. Dawn would come and the sky would open.

Randidly’s awareness briefly flicked to his Nether Core, where his Nether Penance sat. He was running low on the stored seconds, but he resolutely turned back to the wreckage of his previous image. He had no choice but to build up a debt to the Penance, if his image would remain stubborn.

As the heat and ferocity dissipated, a wind brushed across the surface of these carbon statues and began to pull away bits of ash. In an altogether more lonesome rustle, some trees with tenuous grips on structural integrity gave way and collapsed. Soon new, smaller clouds of ash dominated the area, masking the hollowed-out forest with an ashy fog.

More sweat dripped down Randidly’s forehead. Again, he didn’t dare look away from that solid core that gathered itself. He simply waited.

All at once, the seed of Yggdrasil spread its influence. Golden tendrils shyly wandered away from the heart, sipping from the various charred tree corpses, popping up beyond the soil only long enough to absorb the energy it required. Meanwhile, underneath the soil, that core began to swell, with glittering gold and emerald writing that spoke of a different world.

Randidly sat with his legs folded beneath him and observed. The trickle of energy became a gush, pulling more and more of the previous force and warmth and vital energy that Yggdrasil contained into the whirlpool that was the seed of the World Tree. Its growth continued but slowed to a glacial pace.

Randidly’s eyes glittered. Mostly, the runic sigils across that beating heart deepened. The story told by Yggdrasil strengthened itself, pulling from the demolished previous image and creating something truly compelling.

As his vigil continued, the Stillborn Phoenix and the Grey Creature both visit. They bore Nether-laden bits of images and sprinkled them through the burned field, allowing them to sink into the soil and join that swirling reality that began to be born within Yggdrasil. Tiny pieces were slowly teased apart and reincorporated to deepen its power.

His expression tightened. A tremor ran through the seed.

A thin verdant tendril wormed its way up from the core. It squeezed between the powerful waves of energy and circumvented the remnants of the original Yggdrasil trunk that had embedded themselves into the ground. The sprout poked itself out of the dirt, edged aside a chunk of charcoal, and tasted the air for the first time. Two pure leaves spread, quickly giving a space for ash to alight.

The ground rumbled. Golden and emerald light became a physical force that surged up through the stalk and forced itself into the sprout. However, not a lumen of this energy was displayed; all was devoured by those two innocent-seeming emerald leaves.

Now. Randidly reached out the touched the image. His Soulspace rose in response.

Recalculating…

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) is evolving! Detecting influences…

A third small green leaf unfolded to join its two brothers. A small dust devil of ash began to swirl around the sprout.