The notifications continued to quickly pop up in front of Randidly.

Calculating gains… detecting influences… Searching for resonances… plunging significance…

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) is evolving to the Mythic Rarity! Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation has evolved to Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose (M)! Skill Level will be maintained.

Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose (M): A viscerally sensitive physical connection to the strange energy of Nether. Only possible due to very unique circumstances and an almost perfect physical form. The Ghosthound’s body has evolved to be able to detect faint traces of Nether in the air and understand their patterns and sources, even from vast distances. Sensory organs are centered above the sinuses, right below the brain. Skill slightly increases the ability to understand different varieties of Nether. Gives a small amount of insight into individuals based on their Nether. The efficacy of these effects increases exponentially as the Ghosthound approaches. All effects increase with Skill Level.

Randidly’s nose began to burn and twitch. He coughed and sneezed at the same time, the burning spreading up through his nostrils.

Due to reaching a Mille with a new, and Legendary, Skill, seeds of this Skill will be spread throughout your home-

Error, recalculating… detecting System failure… please see-

The Alpha Cosmos Pantheon has intervened! Reconstituting benefits to more relevant forms…

Seeds of this Skill have been spread throughout the Alpha Cosmos! Citizens of the Alpha Cosmos will have a much easier time learning this and related Nether Sensitivity Skills. Their ability to interact with Nether has naturally increased! The base environment in the Alpha Cosmos has been slightly adjusted. Sensitivity and natural talent will rise as the environment in the Alpha Cosmos shifts.

In addition, one massive amount of significance has been added to the Alpha Cosmos! Generating a special Class Lighthouse, based upon the Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose…

Main Class of the Lighthouse set as Nether Avenger!

Finally, you have received the specialty Path, Achieving a Mille I 0/5000! As you reach this milestone in other Skills, further Paths will unlock! Continue to advance, for the Path in front of you remains long.

Almost unable to help himself, Randidly sucked a deep breath through his still twitching nose. He instinctively closed his eyes as humming lines of information flowed into him from every direction.

Very quickly, a new and unfamiliar awareness of the surroundings filled his mind. It took him a few second to pick apart the pieces and recognize how his nose would interpret familiar sensations. The densest Nether he could detect was his own. But he quickly shouldered past that information and felt the small notes of Biamat’s bodies squirming in the surroundings. He sniffed again. Beyond that was the broader, curdled significance of the Nexus, likely receiving a heavy influence by the strange behavior of Elhume.

What he hadn’t expected to find were tiny orbs of self-contained patterns that seemed to reflect connections from the surrounding space as they bobbed in place. The strangeness of the mirroring sensation is what ultimately drew his attention, that and its proximity; Randidly readily admitted to himself that he likely would have missed it if not for it hanging in the space above the Fifth Cohort Rally Station.

He took another deep breath through his nose, zeroing in on the nearest source.

When his Nether approached and curled around the strange little orb, it immediately popped and dispersed in innocuous-seeming patterns. His eyes remained closed, but his browed furrowed. He drew in another deep breath through his nose, trying to capture the particular sensation, but he was relatively sure of the source.

A coincidence the strange orb hung above the Rally Station? Specifically above the place where my original training for the Vulpis Squad was located? Perhaps just an insurance policy during the invasion? Randidly opened his eyes. Or was even the Nether King watching my actions this whole time?

He brought his hands up against his cheeks, refocusing his mind. The Nether King, at least so far as he could tell, wasn’t that interested in him. Otherwise, the experience with Don Beigon would have gone very differently. “Alright, one more reward to get through.”

Randidly opened his Path screen and smirked. Probably other individuals who achieved a Mille and received a five thousand PP reward Path would be stumped for a year or two before they could finish it. Maybe they were even warned by their fellows that they should save up PP in anticipation of the reward Path, depending on how valuable the prize received at the end. But to Randidly-

Five thousand PP wasn’t even worth mentioning. He felt a thrill to complete the Path immediately, earning a free Stat every 10 PP spent. Randidly’s eyebrows went up; even before the Path completion reward, he had gathered five hundred free Stats. He wondered if this was the method the System used to entice its oldest lurkers to push Stats over 1000.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Congratulations! You have completed the Achieving a Mille I Path! On your Path to the Pinnacle, you have not ceased for even a moment in your quest to hone your base Skills. Your dedication to training is tireless and admirable. At the higher Levels, there are some individuals that begin to look down on Skills. The constructs are a rigid and ultimately limited tool to acquiring power, especially once your Willpower has become such a prodigious force. In terms of efficiency, continuing to hone your will admittedly pays more lucrative dividends.

Yet when part of a larger whole, combined into a fighting style using other complimentary Skills, these base formations can achieve something amazing. Skills’s rigid structure means that creativity in application is especially valuable.

The slow accumulation of Skill Levels is proof of the time you spent struggling to survive. Those long lessons shouldn’t be forgotten, even though the quality of your capabilities has vastly increased. Continued compounding and reinterpretations of the basics will always give you a competitive edge.

Congratulations! Health, Mana, and Stamina +500. Due to being one of the five fastest to accomplish a Mille, you have received a bonus reward! Please select TWO of your base Stats to evolve to a higher Tier Rarity!

Please note, just like Skills, Stats contain hidden value. Rarity will be randomly determined, with the range based on the influences of your Skill and images.

Randidly chuckled at the reward. But his laughter grew when he realized… he only had two base Stats remaining: Intelligence and Reaction. This reward would transform all of his Stats into evolved forms. Based upon the way the System had functioned in the past, he suspected that he would be rewarded for that as well.

His first selection was Reaction.

Congratulations! You have selected your Stat Reaction to evolve. Detecting synchronicity… searching for resonance… calculating final Rarity…

Congratulations! Your Stat Reaction has evolved to the Ancient Rarity! Your Stat Reaction has evolved into Predictive Synapses (A)! Level will be maintained.

Predictive Synapses (A): Gives a minuscule glimpse into the future, on a physical level. In addition, your moods and hunches will be slightly more accurate in their predictive ability. Provides a slight boost to your ability to recover from traumatic shocks. The quality of your nervous system is refined; most of the communication happens through an internal Nether network. As such, the physical severing of limbs will not prevent sensation from continuing.

Randidly hummed to himself, neither impressed nor disappointed in the result. He felt a little crestfallen that the Stat wasn’t related to one of his images, but he supposed it likely drew its inspiration from a combination of the Grey Creature, Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold, and the Nether perspective shifts that had given him glimpses into the future.

“Plus,” Randidly muttered to himself. “I could pull off a couple of cool pranks with the ability to amputate a limb and still activate the nerves.”

Just as he was proceeding to evolve his final Stat, he received a message from Don Beigon. You are cordially invited to tea with me, in the next ten minutes. Please don’t be late, my schedule is extremely busy. If you have any difficulty entering into the estate, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Despite how valuable my time is, I will provide immediate assistance.

Randidly couldn’t help but roll his eyes; the Don had clearly blocked off entrances into his estate in an effort to further deplete the actual debt he owed to Randidly. Obviously he couldn’t have done it too directly, but the old man was canny in his arrangements.

Setting the issue of his last stat evolution aside, Randidly stood and brushed himself off. Right now, he needed valuable information most of all. And in the past he might have needed to contact Claudette again and asked some questions about the Beigon Estate defenses, but Randidly suspected that would no longer be necessary.

He flicked his wrist and produced his Alchemist’s Passport. In the small root dwelling, the jangling of the geometric bits of metal dangling off the end were especially loud. His eyes went unfocused as he waved the key in the air. Space rippled around him. In the next moment, he stood above the Beigon Estate, floating just beyond the sizzling defense Engravings that circled the entire area.

Randidly glanced briefly upward and grimaced; because it was located very high and along the periphery of the central Nexus, the Beigon Estate had a grand view of the massive drilling having above them. Because it was directly below the construction, it looked less like a drill and more like a massive, churning disc. All the rotations and the glittering exhaust proved vaguely hypnotic.

Shaking his head, Randidly pulled his gaze back down. He waved the key again, feeling the firm defenses before him. Space around the Estate was entirely sealed. Two separate images were contained in the grand Engraving, pressed against one another and without a single flaw. Even now, as Randidly tentatively stretched his senses into the additional layers of existence he had access to with citizenship, the defenses were firm.

He hummed to himself as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. He examined the area with Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose. Nether took up only a minuscule portion of the space, forced outward by the images.

Still, that didn’t deter him. His Nether Core accelerated in excitement as he began to fold his perspective. Everything the defenses covered he folded away, on top of each other, again and again. For a while, the fabric of existence that was revealed by the folding provided to be also covered in defenses. He simply continued to fold, the whirr of his Nether Core accelerating.

He enlarged the area that was governed by Nether until it was the dominant framework in his perspective. To Randidly’s begrudging surprise, the defenses were still present here. Deeply flawed, but still there, as though the Don had made some allowances that he might be attacked by a being of Nether.

Randidly waved the Alchemist’s Passport. He slithered into the alternate perspective and through into the estate. Flawed defenses couldn’t slow him down.

It wasn’t until he was right outside the door to the Don’s quarters that Randidly’s skin prickled in threat. He glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed a shadowy figure down the hall, glowering at him. However, the bloodlust seeped out for just a moment. As soon as the figure revealed itself, the feeling receded back into the shadows.

Little too late, Randidly smirked and knocked on the door. After hearing a grunt of acknowledgment, he pushed his way into the room.

Don Beigon was sitting at a desk, several brightly colored pieces of paper strewn before him. He leaned back in his bamboo wheelchair, raising a hand and rubbing his immaculate mustache and beard. “Mr. Ghosthound, you know what I respect about you? You arrive on time, even when it pisses me off.”