Randidly sat in the middle of a Nether Storm, bulldozing his way toward this Drum that the orcs spoke about. He manipulated gravity so he floated in the sky with the stormy clouds, his legs folded beneath him. Huge chunks of stone were plucked up by the force of the kinetic energy and Nether that churned around him. Energy swirled and spiraled, the momentum of the storm growing as it moved and consumed more area. These chunks of ground obliterated any rock outcroppings, unlucky stretches of ground, or orc defensive fortifications that got in Randidly’s way.

An image pulsed out from the central area and passed harmlessly through the Nether Storm. If anything, the image began to rot and collapse when exposed to so much raw Nether. Randidly just shook his head at Drum’s efforts.

The fact that his image is so detailed even so far out from his body is impressive. He has a strong emotional affect. But this… won’t slow me down at all.

Underneath the cover of the storm, a growing number of orcs staggered after Xershi. Randidly wasn’t sure what the metal liger said to them, but an increasing horde defected and turned to his side. Which was for the best, because they gleefully executed any orcs unwilling to follow their new leader.

On a nearby hill, a small fort bristled with activity. It was designed more as a housing compound for the orcs than an actually strategic building, but they did seem to have a way to amplify images in the fortification. When the next central pulse came, it concentrated inside the fort and then came out even more vicious.

Randidly observed the movement stoically. Then his eyes went to the orcs. He didn’t want to kill anymore; crushing that first orc’s skull put him at the cusp of leveling up. Acri was now on the ready to absorb any experience that went his way, but he’d prefer not to gamble.

The storm slid over the hill, roaring like a hungry grizzling bear.

Ahead, a score of orcs abandoned their stone fort as a massive stone pillar piledrove through their main entrance and a slew of smaller stone projectiles cracked open their two-meter-high walls. Their eyes were wide and white with fear as they left their small building and found themselves in a howling gale. Dark currents of Nether lined with dust smashed most to the ground so the allied orcs could lope forward and demand they switch allegiances or die.

Meanwhile, the storm churned around and drew huge trenches in the ground, picking up additional debris in preparation for what waited in the middle of the layer. A few of the likelier-looking stones Randidly began shaving very purposefully, both to resemble spearheads and to be covered with aerodynamic lines. The failed pieces he used to crush and level the fortification to the ground.

Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tide of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 911!

Another image pulse swept past, sharp and poignant but harmless. Randidly paused and waved a finger through the air. Gold roots curled out from where his finger touched, lingering in the air for a moment before vanishing. At least I can feel the image amplification on this floor. Still not too impactful, but I’m starting to understand why so many people flock to the Sonara.

Glancing around, Randidly saw that only corpses or converted orcs remained. He hummed the storm into motion, everything churn around him. Best not to give Drum too much time to figure out a way to leverage his powerful image in a way that would affect him. While he floated there, he did his best not to think too much about the stillness that remained around his body. The emotional flaw still lingered.

What Randidly did think about was how unfortunate their matchup was for Drum. Randidly had encountered these image interference types quite a bit in the Nexus. Against foes of a similar tier, it generally gave them a favorable matchup. After all, most of the fighters in the Nexus devoted themselves entirely to their image. Aside from that image, they had nothing. If you took that away, you could easily win.

Randidly Ghosthound was not the typical fighter type. His entire storm had only the slightest hint of images.

Which was why Randidly could feel an increasing amount of desperation amplified out of the central area, followed by the tightening of the restrictive image. Another image crackled across the entire area, pounding harmlessly against the Nether Storm. Randidly found it difficult not to smirk. If this is all you can manage, this will be smooth sailing.

But somehow, I doubt you’d be such a force in the Sonara if this was all you could do. Even if you are in charge of a low ring…

They arrived at Drum’s base with an army at their back, under the cover of howling winds. Thick clouds of Nether and dust cast a shadow over the entire area. The orcs grew increasingly excited, stumbling near-blind through the storm to become the vanguard and then stream forward in a chaotic mass toward the base of their former master. They raised their weapons and banged them against their armor to be heard over the storm. Randidly couldn’t help but wonder if they planned on re-switching sides if the odds turned against them.

Out of the cover of the clouds loomed those sharpened and streamlined shapes, empowered with a healthy dose of Nether and ready for a confrontation. They rotated slowly, energy rushing in tight circles around them to add a bit of last-minute polish.

Rather than the squat bases Randidly had demolished to get here, the citadel of Drum resembled a massive anthill. Small openings scattered across its surface. allowed orcs to pour freely out. They raised their weapons and bellowed defiantly in the face of the storm. With their voices came another desperate lash of the image suppression.

The shouted denial found no purchase on Randidly’s approach. Then came the ‘rain’, starting with pebbles and ending with condensed gusts of wind and Nether so tough they cracked the exterior of the base open. They were Randidly fists, pummeled the building into rubble and submission.

They burst tunnels and collapsed levels, so the area around Randidly’s target finally began to clear.

Like a true ant hive, the warren erupted with activity when kicked. Even as the upper tunnels began to crack and collapse, a surging tide of orcs ran out with their weapons raised. For a moment they were stunned by the seething tide of darkness that blanketed them, but Randidly watched as most noticed the charging host of orcs that had switched to Xershi’s side.

Their enthusiasm was almost contagious as the two sides rushed at each other and began to clash in a wild melee. Weapons smashed down. Pieces of armor were shattered, blades bit deeply into exposed muscle. Blood began to leak and pool beneath their feet, making the footing treacherous. The defenders had the high ground, but the orcs that followed Xershi had the Nether wind at their back. Very quickly, the defender’s lines began to buckle.

From the middle of the base, a flash of a different image rose. Finally, the real threat revealed itself. Randidly clicked his tongue at the particular flavor he used; the image was of an unbeatable warrior, a variation of the same sort of image that Paolo possessed. Drum came striding out of his cracked open base with four of the largest and most intense orcs Randidly had seen.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The owner of this ring of the Sonara was humanoid, but it was difficult to tell anything more than that due to his equipment. The man wore steel armor fitted tightly to his body and wielded a long poleaxe. He slammed the butt of his weapon to the ground and the power of his image rose. Because Randidly hadn’t bothered to bring out his images in the face of the orcs’ ability to suppress, Drum’s image quickly gained traction in the surrounding space. Heedless of the Nether Storm, it grew and grew, amplified by the special quality of the Sonara.

The note of the image was a braying clarion call, a pure bugle-horn that invigorated the soul. As Randidly had suspected, image suppression wasn’t the only trick in Drum’s toolbox.

He continued to admire the image as his attention spread out; on a larger scale, the amplification became extremely impressive. He felt the image pressing up against his skin, screaming at him that he would have his bones broken and his face crushed into the ground. But from within the Nether Storm, the first of his four honed projectiles stirred. A massive spearhead spun silently as he made a few final adjustments to the lines across its face and then exploded into motion.

The side of the Nether Storm bulged and then erupted, the building-sized projectile breaking past the sound barrier right as it revealed itself.

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 690!

Congratulations! Your Skill Dragon Queen’s Sinister Tongue (T) has grown to Level 700!

The hot Nether knife slid through the image that had begun to spread and dominate the area. Drum noticed the attack at the last second, his helmeted head jerking up. He pivoted cleanly into a defensive stance and swept his poleaxe around to meet the giant stone spearhead.

The two clanged together and briefly blasted away the dust and Nether of the storm, creating a moment of clarity around Drum. The ground rumbled and cracked around the impact. The stone arrowhead shattered, the pieces spinning off and shredding through the limbs of Drum’s orc honor guard. All four tumbled to the ground, near-dead just from the shrapnel. And while the projectile itself was deflected, the targeted Nether cut directly into Drum’s body.

The wild melee continued, the two sides of orc armies swarming each other in a blood frenzy.

Randidly extended a hand. His Nether now embedded in Drum’s body flared in response. The First Authority: Seize.

His hand tightened into a fist. Drum stiffened. Already he began to fight against Randidly’s grip, but Randidly wasn’t really trying to get himself in a fight to the death with this figure. He simply gripped Drum’s body, whipped him up through the storm, and then smashed him down in a nearby field with all the kinetic force he could muster. All the force through the system of the storm was funneled to pile-drive Drum into the stone ground.

Randidly earned a meadow-sized crater for his troubles.

Robbed of its energy, the storm turned sluggish and began to disperse. Randidly touched his feet on the ground. Out of courtesy to Xershi, he turned his head to the side and said. The last impediment to the staircase would be indisposed for a few seconds after that impact. “We are going.”

The metal liger nodded. Randidly planted his feet and accelerated up toward the collapsed base of Drum. He leapt over the continued melee between the orcs and took several long hops to arrive at the previously locked-down staircase. The stone walls that had screened it from his vision had collapsed.

“WAIT!”

Drum’s voice boomed out over the area. A shiver ran through the orcs. The undefeatable quality sharpened to a metallic tang in the air. Randidly paused in his movements and grimaced as Drum used some displacement Skill to appear between him and the staircase. This is what I get for letting him dominate the area with his image.

“You… if I let you simply climb as you wish, those above will punish me. I’ve failed too often in recent decades.” Even through the tight slit in Drum’s helmet, Randidly could make out his bloodshot eyes. He hefted his poleaxe in a naked threat. “You will not simply waltz past me-”

To spite him, Randidly did almost exactly that, accelerating from stillness with the overwhelming power of Dreadful Alacrity. His body wove through the air and moved around the frantic man trying to stop him. The undefeatable image shrieked, but obviously, Randidly was only obliquely trying to defeat him. Once more, Drum’s likely superior image couldn’t quite impact him directly.

Yet then something changed.

His senses tingled; Randidly jerked sideways. He landed even before the poleaxe swung toward him, which meant he was way ahead of danger. But he blinked in confusion. For a split second, he had felt a horrifying sense of danger. Right now, all he felt was a weird surge in the Nether-

A few fractions of time later than he already adjusted to it, Drum’s activated ability finally triggered. A Nether Ritual popped and flared. The battlefield fell silent. Randidly felt all of the orcs die, all at once. Then, in a rushing stream, all the significance from the abrupt deaths rushed into Drum’s body. All their history roared into his body and bloated the nonexistent Nether within his person. The poleaxe belatedly swung down and struck the ground.

Randidly’s pupils dilated. The force of the impact threw even him backward. The orc warren collapsed, sinking into the ground and burying all the still bodies of the silent orcs. Randidly stabilized and floated in the air. Drum hung above him, between himself and the staircase, which possessed Engravings that kept it fixed in place.

Randidly took in a deep breath. Drum had activated some strange ability to devour the entire history of his raised orcs. Dark flames flickered across his armored body. All those lives, those emotional interactions, those connections, and all the individual humanity, all of it was thrown into the fire of Drum’s body. Physically, he wasn’t strong enough to threaten Randidly. But he became a dense and unstable mass of Nether. Each strike meant more than his strikes ever could, because of the significance behind them.

Randidly’s skin tingled he flicked out Acri and settled into a fighting stance. Even if his opponent used some crude Nether tools, he wouldn’t back down from a fight. He would need to be careful, but-

However, Randidly’s face soon crumbled in a weird mixture of confusion and vague loss. The System engaged in response to Drum’s action, humming to life to drive away the excess Nether that crowded around Drum’s body. There was some gravity to that much significance coming together, but it was nowhere near the black-hole absorption of Pine. Drum raised his poleaxe and slung it across his shoulders and already half of his plundered power was gone. “Don’t fuck with me, boy. You have no idea the sort of enemies you will make for me if you ascend now. The Sonara is filled to bursting. You will not pass.”

How cheap are lives to you…? He thought, watching the flesh of Drum’s body begin to react poorly to the Nether. It was such a meaningless display.

“I don’t want to have to kill you.” Randidly exhaled as he spoke. With the storm gone, the silence around them was deafening. The humming of Xershi’s body was the only break. Weirdly, Randidly suddenly wished he would have asked the orcs why they had switched sides.

“Heh. Do you understand what I’ve just done?” More and more significance was shaved away from Drum, leaving him with about a 20% increase over his originally dominant power. The boost vanished because he didn’t know how to protect it. And he didn’t even seem to notice. “I’ve used an ancient method to pull back the investment I made in the orcs long ago. All of their accomplishments have become mine. That first strike? It was just a drop in the-”

For a brief moment, the emotions of the Grey Creature stirred along with Randidly’s will. The lonely being cried that this didn’t need to happen. The emotional affect began to resonate. His image cut through the last of the hanging image suppression, which admittedly had already begun to fade without the orcs to prop it up.

The Wrathful Calamity Rends.

Drum swayed. His and Randidly’s face were suddenly close. Randidly looked with pity at the confusion he could see through the thin helmet opening, while he exploded with Nether and Yggdrasil into the hole Acri had drilled into Drum’s body.

Drum’s image surged to resist, but it continued to sizzle against the Nether that he had stuffed into his body. The unearned benefit had vanished, leaving him only with a massive weakness. Randidly twisted the spear. “I really would have preferred it any other way. But if you think lives should be toyed and reaped like this, I’ll do the Nexus a favor as I’m passing through.”