Devick had been rather stunned when she got the summons. Lady Iellaya had been pale when she delivered the news, displaying a rare show of unprofessionalism. Considering the circumstances, Devick decided to forgive her.

Besides, she couldn’t just go around killing good help. Not when Randidly Ghosthound seemed intent on doing the same, and she burned with pride to see him exercise his power.

Now, the Actus Suprem thumped her way down the stairs, meeting the figure that waited in front of the repaved front area of Military High Command. He glowed with an inner, flickering light. The energy around his body was so dense that his figures were blurred. But no one would mistake him.

From whatever task he had been gone and handling for the past stretch of time, Elhume had returned to the Nexus.

Devick eyed him, suppressing several bad impulses. Even she felt wary when exposed directly to his crushing amount of power. He had once reached the Pinnacle, albeit by relying on his son Pine. But you didn’t ascend to those heights without learning something about power. Its scent lingered on his skin, wrapped around his attacks.

She dearly wanted to peel off that skin and sniff it, searching for an answer. Yet she didn’t dare. The fear and the desire warred in her chest, infuriating her. With a great effort, she calmed those emotions, binding them with rusted chains.

“I have a mission.” Elhume’s voice cracked the ground beneath his feet. Devick’s lips twitched; now she would need to fix it again, or leave the entryway wrecked. This was only a projection, but one built with a significant portion of Elhume’s image. As such, it only operated at the destroy tier of power. It was not a deliberate offense, no matter how much it felt like it.

This was a tool, finished with its previous mission and now being repurposed as it headed back to be reabsorbed. Devick felt a great deal of pity for the Swacc Family, which hadn’t been seen or heard from since their sudden actions to reach the Pinnacle. This thing had probably been their undertaker.

“Of course, Elhume. What’s the mission?” Devick raised her head. She was head of Military High Command. Despite her complaints about their leader, she had a role to fill.

“Devick.” Elhume’s voice thundered again. “Go-”

“Actus Suprem,” Devick interrupted before she could help herself. A bit of her rust-colored madness leaked out to push back the force of his voice. Elhume paused in his speech. He tilted his blurred head to the side. Actus licked her lips, adrenaline making her flush. She had insisted on the title almost unconsciously, so used to torturing her subordinates with it over the past few months. She felt a shiver of fear, followed by a flood of excitement when she considered testing herself directly against the head of the Nexus.

She might die, but it would be glorious.

For a tense moment, he considered her. “Keh. Actus. Suprem. Go to the Sonara. Fetch me a particular individual.”

Devick, pleased and simultaneously disappointed he had chosen to ignore the disrespect, nodded. “Of course, Elhume. Who shall I fetch for you? Actually, an errant subordinate of mine is currently wandering around there. He can perhaps-”

“No. Do it… personally.”

*****

Randidly looked down at the stair in front of them. His body moved mechanically, the pulsing darkness of the Stillborn Phoenix wrapped around him even though it didn’t need to fight the spatial pressures on the central stairwell. After he had revealed what he saw in the space of taboos, Fiona had asked him a question: ‘Why would retiring be forbidden to you?’

A plethora of justifications appeared in his mind. But in a way, their sudden defensiveness was the reason he understood that Fiona might have a point. It’s not like this lack hadn’t occurred to him before. He had never really taken much time to consider what he would want to do if he didn’t feel compelled to run around and address the constant slew of threats that rushed toward Expira.

Some part of his mind probably just assumed that the struggle to free the Alpha Cosmos from the dangers of the Nexus would be so complete that nothing would be left of him in the aftermath.

Which, even Randidly had to admit, was a rather depressing assumption with which to live.

For better or for worse, the effort of climbing helped keep his mind from lingering too long on this issue. Fiona had followed along with the steadily accumulating group, but almost instantly Randidly sensed that something was lost by her addition. Or perhaps more accurately, her push toward examining personal taboos hadn’t helped the group dynamic.

Just like him, each had turned introspective.

Pullas remained flushed and distracted, relying on the dull-eyed Fiona more and more to keep the pressure off Xershi. Although she claimed that she felt confident about her choice to embrace living in the moment, her behavior seemed to indicate the opposite. Xershi was similarly preoccupied, although Randidly believed this was more because he was perplexed by what he had seen, rather than shaken.

Should I say something? Randidly wondered. He took another step on the middle staircase, resisting the constant bombardment of the image echoes with a combination of the Stillborn Phoenix and his body. He gritted his teeth. The longer he lived and the more responsibilities he accumulated, the more he had been forced to expand his emotional capabilities.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Yet at the moment, with Pullas walking with a vaguely hunted expression behind him, he felt woefully inadequate. No words came to him.

We’ve been traveling together for only a little over twenty-four hours, Randidly bit his lip. There was almost immediately a feeling of intimacy, but… what do I really know about her? What can I do to try and shake off this funk?

Randidly hated himself a little for climbing in silence. The question lay heavy across his shoulders. His frustration began to mount as his mind spun without producing any idea of note. Thankfully, on the twenty-fifth ring, the promised ambush did, in fact, occur. And a threat was a distraction from this emotional problem that Randidly embraced whole-heartedly.

The defenders manifested their images immediately when Randidly led the way and stumbled through the golden barrier to the next ring. The air began to warp; the perpetrators were strange metallic beings whose bodies undulated like a lava lamp without the suspension liquid. The surroundings were grey and flat, with the only interesting feature the crackling electrical storm that filled the sky.

With preternatural quickness, Randidly recognized the threat. His emerald eyes blazed. All that pent-up frustration and sense of helplessness he built while feeling unable to help Pullas roared out of him. His Nether Core buzzed itself into a maelstrom of motion and energy.

The First Authority, Randidly gritted his teeth in the face of this blatant attempt to dominate the Aether of the environment, while Randidly was alone. Seize.

If two images clashing was a physical grappling match, Aether and Nether meeting was tossing water into a furnace. Both were left depleted in the aftermath. The two forces mixed and devoured each other.

In the face of these seven sympathetic images, Randidly staggered backward. His First Authority failed, leaving his Nether Core twitching unsteadily as it tried to spool together some more significance to stabilize itself.

So devastated was his usual Nether flows that the inner area of his storm, regarding the emotions of his Grey Creature, had to expand to help hold down the fort. Emotions began to stir within him.

At the same time, the seven froze in their preparations, briefly stalled. They had a moment where Randidly was completely battered down and unable to respond, but they didn’t take advantage of it. Their bodies bubbled and morphed. If anything, they seemed rather thrown by his successful delay of their efforts.

By the time their bodies condensed with renewed purpose and their Aether once more rose with grim intent, Pullas, Xershi, and Fiona shifted through the portal. Fiona’s bright eyes caught the movements immediately and she pirouetted in place, shifting to become a sharp-edged, isometric life form that seemed to be directly mocking these beings. Her image hummed with a thunderous roar of power that shocked even Randidly. It slammed more traditionally against their efforts and delayed them another second.

By that time, Pullas and Xershi both mobilized their own images, moving with an impressive display of unspoken communication to blast a divide in the line of seven. The metal liger rode with the pale light of a good death to sever the targets. With the combined image split, Randidly lowered himself and accelerate, physically clotheslining two and sending their semi-liquid bodies careening through the air.

Fiona moved next, waving away Pullas and Xershi as her block form shot to combat the remaining group of three. After exchanging a glance, Pullas and Xershi shot after the remaining two from where Randidly had plundered his own opponents.

Randidly’s mouth quirked up at the corner. Fighting against only one opponent, Xershi has such a pout on his face…

Then he crashed into the ground, sending a wave of debris toward his two targets. Yggdrasil grasped out immediately and transformed those pieces of broken ground into roots that lashed at the two. Behind his back, he felt the images of his companions clash against these strange metallic beings.

Distantly, he could feel a change approaching. Something in his heart had cracked in the shift of the Grey Creature's emotions. Drops of heat seeped out into his body.

Surprised they might have been by his Nether stopping their image and then Randidly being able to so quickly overpower them physically, but they were still powerful warriors in the Sonara. Both stabilized almost immediately. They created weird, waving shapes in the air around them. Rather than a concrete image, they seemed to be releasing a certain energy frequency. Randidly felt it grating on his ears as he pushed forward. Chimeric Impunity-

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Impunity (M) has grown to Level 728!

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Impunity (M) has grown to Level 729!

Randidly almost missed his step as he ripped his way through the image of his opponents. The Skill stuttered and activated with a searing bolt of emotion so that he passed through the first layer of their defenses without even seeming to slow. His lack of focus meant he crashed into their energy pulses after that, but he could rely on his body as he did so.

Something shifted in his heart even more noticeable with that overly powerful manifestation of the Grey Creature. He could feel it prowling inside of him, begging to be utilized again. A horrifying heat wafted off of its limbs. Weirdly, his mind went back to the visage he saw in the area of Fiona. This time, his attention was drawn by an almost forgotten small detail: that red sun hanging low in the sky. What he had taken to be the source of her passion now felt lodged in his heart, bleeding its overwhelming fire into his limbs.

He sucked in a breath and gave in to that bubbling feeling as he crossed the last few meters and then pivoted to face the left of the amorphous metal creatures. Waves of grey particles, glowing orange at the edges like dying embers, began to spiral out from his body. The Ashen Doors to Pandemonium Unlock.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Ashen Doors to Pandemonium Unlock (M) has grown to Level 502!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill the Ashen Doors to Pandemonium Unlock (M) has grown to Level 599!

The heat rising through him was so intense that he couldn’t breathe. That red sun dripped directly into his bloodstream, full portions of solar heat and force. Yet a horrible, dark undercurrent ran through it as well. That negative vindictiveness seized control of his body.

Randidly didn’t have Acri, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t even need his other images or his Nether, as a tide of caustic emotions surged up through him. Those grey motes from beyond the threshold of pandemonium spun together and condensed into a harsh triangular blade around his right fist. He lashed out.

Without much resistance, he sheared through the opponent’s image and bisected his body.

That river of negative emotions howled for more. It required a much deeper river of blood and gore before it would be sated.