To Randidly’s surprise, the dream-fight after the Path did not go the way their fights had gone while Helen was alive.

Helen’s spear sheered through Randidly’s image physicalizations and slammed against his chest. Scowling and deprived of the benefit of his monstrous Stats by the dream, Randidly staggered backward.

The maroon-colored mists had solidified into armor around her body. Her face and lithe form were completely covered by angular plates and bulwarks. She stood, metal and cool violence, memory and sizzling ash, ready to fight. The Helen projection gave him a moment to recover and then raised her spear to follow up.

Not taking a break, even in death, eh? Randidly rubbed some blood from his lips and took a stance. He didn’t want to admit to himself how floored he was, but he had been caught flat-footed by her force. More than anyone else, he knew Helen’s power and potential. Yet after three minutes, he was being thrashed. True, the dream kept him from manifesting his Stats and relying on any portion of his Nether Core but the flames of Nether Weight.

Yet the difference was-

Emotion. And the way it flows through her Domain. Randidly moved into his own fighting stance. For a second they stood, her spear high and his held low with the tip almost dragging against the ground. Then she accelerated forward, the maroon waves of the Depths of Horror Domain lapping forward against him. Eight long talons ripped out of his left arm and cut a path through the currents, his Resonant Fangs of Extinction moving to counter her. Did she always-?

The two Domain’s pressed close up against each other, embracing after so long apart. Hers attempted to engulf him, tainted with the tang of ash that defined her current existence. His gouged deeper through her Domain, aiming to strike at her directly.

Their bodies moved next, hers borrowing Randidly’s monstrous Stats and his moving to counter some of her force with deft movements. Her spear flicked out, a serpent’s tongue, licking and tasting. He burned with the heat of his newly acquired Wicked Waltz of Tartarus, but he remained distracted by the singing joy and fury riding in her armor.

“Your emotions-” Randidly finally opened his mouth.

Helen’s ashy projection responded with an absolutely scathing thrust toward his open mouth. He jerked his head sideways and her spear wound like a riverbend, its tip cutting a small chunk out of his neck.

The reason that Randidly felt so shocked was how wholly Helen’s emotions merged with her attacks and Domain. Obviously, her Skillset and the image she developed from it had a wide base. But the varied elements that she managed to include in her emotional affect-

His eyes flickered as he gave ground, sweeping Acri at her waist. Helen swayed around the blow and kept coming, unleashing a brutal onslaught of attacks that hammered at his image projections each time. His joints ached and he shuddered to withstand the blows. The unfamiliar pain of being physically overmatched began to take up residence in his shoulders and hips.

He suddenly saw it, the reason her emotions felt so complex and random, not bothering to seek the resonance of emotional affect that he had spent months refining.

Her Domain and individual Skills held different emotions surging through them. They felt fickle and capricious, riding the highs and lows of her small victories and scowling disappointments. She loved fighting but also hated and feared it. And all of those emotions swirled through each strike. But the reason that Helen possessed so much power-

The different emotions communed with each other as a Skill ran its course through the Domain. In a weird way, there was a dialogue between her simultaneous yet conflicting emotional states. And from those meetings, the fractious rubbings, a strange power emerged.

So emotion could be used like this as well, Randidly’s eyes glowed as he avoided a thrust but couldn’t avoid being cracked in the shoulder by the butt of her weapon. When he regained his footing, he began to mimic.

Congratulations! Your Skill Soulful Vigor (L) has grown to Level 240!

He eased back from the forceful emotional affect and let different aspects of his three images flow through each other. Immediately, he felt relieved to set down that mental weight; part of his current struggles was trying to incorporate his separate emotional affects into his attacks. With that freedom, all his own complex emotions began to seep outward.

The comfort of seeing Helen again, his wry acceptance that their brief connection in this Path be done through a fight, the sense of helplessness he felt to feel her enjoying thrashing him so thoroughly-

Incorporating that sort of emotional power didn’t happen quickly, so Randidly could only sweat as he used the Acri projection to absorb the thunderous and unpredictable blows Helen unleashed. His grip was almost jarred loose several times as he tried to find the right sort of peaceful flow for his emotions. And Helen’s momentum gradually built, the haze of blood-colored mist thickening around her thick armor. Her helmeted head was completely obscured, swirling in the deepest portion of her Depths of Horror Domain.

Randidly’s Resonant Fangs of Extinction were deflected and sent tumbling away. The waves of her Domain crashed against him, but Randidly gradually found the sense of emotional balance that gave him the flexibility he needed. He adjusted his footing and attempted an intervening thrust, knocking Helen’s attack away.

The weapons clanged together and hummed in the wake of their parting. The tip of Helen’s spear scored a deep hit along Randidly’s arm. But his chest burned with a box full of violence and his limbs blurred into familiar motions. His fist cracked against the armor around her neck and sent small pieces of ashy metal flying. His weapon whipped around and he caught her spear.

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They stood for a moment, locked in a strained embrace until her dream Stats let Helen just toss Randidly backward. Joy, raw and beautiful and heartbreaking, bloomed in Helen’s ashen form before it was quickly suppressed.

His eyes narrowed, noting the inexplicable pause in her fighting as her emotions surged. His bare foot smashed into her knee joint, cracking the armor as he was tossed away.

His toes struggled to find purchase in the ground and disperse his momentum, even as Helen rumbled forward. She seemed more scrap metal and brutality than person, all hints of flesh hidden beneath her thick armor. Her joy suffocated beneath the maroon tide of vindictive aggression in response to his kick. Still, Randidly could feel his emotions slowly rising to her challenge, casting aside the rigid application of emotional affect he had been struggling to perfect over the past several months.

Helen’s spear whipped around with such force that the shaft curved into a half-moon and then snapped straight right before it arrived. Randidly ducked underneath the strike, barely avoiding it. His left hand erupted forward to land a palm strike on Helen’s chest, but she brought her elbow back and deflected the attack sideways.

Randidly stepped back quickly, different emotions surging through his body. The difference between his emotional affect he learned from imitating powerful forces in the Nexus was the difference between a classical piano concerto on stage and just jamming out with your friends in a garage.

Helen planted her foot and accelerated, her spear snaking out and only barely missing his throat. He couldn’t help but grimace. Jeez, she really keeps aiming to rip out my throat...

Randidly stomped a foot to stop himself and allowed all the disparate responses to Helen’s familiarly bloodthirsty attacks to rise within him. The ache that he bore now that Helen was gone, the guilt over her death, the double guilt over making the strange decision to spare Wick, the genuine joy he felt having a spar with her-

His images whispered to each other as he whipped his heel around and smashed it into Helen’s side. His emotions surged together with enough force that she paused in her assault and stumbled backward. Another small crack begrudgingly opened on her ashen armor.

Light on his feet, Randidly landed and stalked forward. His heart was pounding. A thread of frustration swam up throw Helen’s emotions.

Obviously, the perfect emotional affect, the piano concerto, was the ultimate goal. It would be the way that Randidly could catch up with the elites of the Nexus. But when it came to practicing with emotions, jamming freely with your friends in a basement was a much smarter method, compared to forcefully trying to host a concerto from the jump.

Because more than anything else, what he needed right now was experience.

Helen growled and spun her spear above her head. The mist darkened around them into bloodstained mud, cutting down visibility. Yet Randidly didn’t worry about the shift- he was too busy following the singing chorus of his emotions.

Spears danced and blurred, slamming and rebounding into one another without either of the fighters possessing an advantage. Randidly felt his method of fighting shift as he gradually captured his emotional force. Although his three images all manifested in different ways, those emotions wove themselves together into a firm base from which to strike.

Randidly accelerated, learning to fight with this new method. His body was in constant motion; Helen continued to harry him, seeming to predict some of his responses. He wondered whether she was relying on her experience fighting him while alive or whether he was just imagining it.

He felt more and more flashes of joy from Helen as they clashed, but these were tinged with a grey pity.

Ultimately, he had to set those concerns aside as he simply fought. His emotions became a constant heat in his body, empowering each movement.

The emotional notes weren’t perfect, but they were organic and true. And from that, they drew immense power. Randidly’s eyes were brilliant emeralds as he tightened his grip on the dream Acri and started to let loose. He began to feel the wholistic surge of his strikes, relying on the wide foundation of emotion.

Within ten minutes, Helen’s armor had shattered. She sat on the ground, the only remnant of her steely visage was half of her shattered helmet. Randidly’s chest rose and fell, his emotions still sizzling within his body. The dark red mist seemed to settle against the ground, making it seem like she reclined in a throne of bloody mist as she looked up at him.

Her eyes were bright as she looked at him. Her emotions had waned during the end of their fight, until now he couldn’t sense them at all. She just seemed like a puppet, bearing her face and shape. It broke his heart. “Congratulations, challenger. You bested me. Shit, it’s honestly pretty surprising you could… especially considering this version of me possesses a very… generous portrayal of my fighting power.”

“I know of no one else who possesses your single-minded passion,” Randidly said quietly. When he opened his mouth to ask the projection another question, he realized that she was crying. And that she was keeping her emotions from leaking out.

Because although Randidly couldn’t sense them in the air, the ghost of a Nether connection lingering between them resonated with the force of her sorrow and grief.

“This version of myself. The designed one. The body that had the same amount of Stats as Randidly Ghosthound. His Bloody Knight, through and through.” Helen’s projection trembled as tears slid across her cheek. “This was supposed to be the version that could defeat him. I thought… at least this way…”

“Helen-”

The projection shook her head, bringing her hand up to wipe away her tears. But her fingers began to flake away into charcoal. “Do you know why I adored him? Because he would never go easy to spare my feelings. No matter how meaningless or the spar… and do you know why I resented him? Because he would make up all these dumbass rules, restrictions he placed on himself, to make the fight more advantageous to me. And even with all that help, I couldn’t catch up to him. Ever.”

She looked directly at him as she said that last word and Randidly instantly knew that a flicker of her consciousness remained. He spoke rapidly, “Helen, don’t you dare claim that you never defeated me-”

But the image fractured into scattered motes of ash and Randidly was left with a sour taste in his mouth and a notification.

Congratulations! You have earned high honors, facing Helen in single combat and emerging victorious. You walk out of the valley, soaked in her bloody currents, feeling empowered by the vestiges of this proud woman. Dreadful Alacrity +100! The stirrings of Helen’s powerful images are settling within your Soulspace!

A special reward! You feel the powerful currents of the Ghosthound’s Knight taking up residence in your body! You can feel her breath on the back of your neck. Synchronicity detected…

Congratulations! Your Skill (Domain) Resonant Fangs of Extinction (M) has evolved into (Domain) Mournful Sea, Helen’s Pernicious Riptide (T)! Skill Level will be maintained.