Randidly’s eyes widened slightly at the bite of the threat thrown in his face. He clenched his hands. So many forces pressed against him: the heat, the intensity of Duulys’s image, and the constant waves of vicious emotions the man released. The metal bangle on Duulys’s arms glittered from his own silver fire.

Around them, the idyllic scene had almost completely vanished. The stone arches folded down to the ground, likely sensing the devastation that would soon sweep through the area.

Yet within the conflux of emotion, Randidly began to understand something as he looked at this man. He’s focusing on me because he doesn’t want to get wrapped up in the wounds that Fiona is showing, just by being here. In the end, the feet are just a pretext for the distraction.

Well, that’s fine. Randidly settled down into a fighting stance. He flicked his arm and Acri slithered down into his hand. I’ve wondered how much I’ve improved, rushing through the Sonara. It hasn’t taken much time, but the pressure and echoes of this place are a great training ground. You’ll be the measuring stick for me.

Duulys recognized Randidly’s small movement to ready himself for battle; his expression tightened, somewhere between indignation and pleasure. His image resonated with the entire ring, growing in oppressive momentum. Xershi growled and stomped his way forward into the pressure, alleviating the image that Randidly had to handle. He looked like he was about to antagonize Duulys, but Pullas moved forward and beat him to the punch. Her eyes were bright and her words were sharp. “Do you really have nothing to say to Fiona?”

“Pullas,” Fiona whispered. The name seemed to be crushed underneath all the force radiating from Duulys, yet Randidly’s eyes widened as he sensed the significance rapidly beginning to shift in new directions. Her voice was a single note around which the entire arrangement began to pivot.

Duulys slammed both his fists against his chest and roared. A silver lion raised its head above him, majestic and weirdly defensive. His knife-like gaze cut to Pullas. Still, he refused to even look at Fiona. “I’ll handle her after. Between us… all that needs to be said, has been.”

The sudden show of emotion once more scrambled the flow of significance. With Fiona remaining silent, the tension once more pressed the group toward combat.

The impossible task of apologizing to this man… well, I get why it would be revolting for her to do. Randidly thought grimly. Fiona continued to stand there with a bleak expression and Randidly began to feel some protective fury pulsing through his veins. Once more steam began to waft from his body. Image physicalizations spread out across him, transforming his limbs, hair, and the upper left side of his face. All of the force he could muster spun within him, steadying him in the face of the image pressure.

He exchanged a meaningful glance with Xershi. Their Nether Ritual hummed between them, their purposes aligned. The ligerman might enjoy showboating and swaggering around when there were no threats, but he also valued the Ascension Pact. A twin of Randidly’s protective fury burned in his chance.

At the same moment, their eyes flicked back to Duulys Ambar. Their thoughts moved in unison. If you don’t want her to face her right now, we will just pummel you until you do.

Through the Nether Ritual, Xershi pulled from Randidly’s Nether Core. A cloak of Nether Weight and the Grey Creature’s Impunity spread across both their bodies. Duulys’s smile widened, thankful for the provided distraction. The significance now fully sloshed around in violent currents. Waves of silver fire began to gush from his limbs and spread from his silhouette, spreading into progressively larger outlines of himself until they dissipated and the next wave bloomed into existence.

The three fighters stepped at the same time. Images swirled and clashed as they spread out to fill the air around them. The Stillborn Phoenix howled and devoured, clearing a path. Randidly accelerated forward-

And staggered backward in the next split second, rebounding against the brutally solid projection of a Silver Lion that manifested in the area around Duulys Ambar, curled up defensively in the face of his attack. Randidly gritted his teeth and stabilized himself. More than any serious injury, he felt shocked by how completely his strike had failed. The manifestation snapped into place with a high amount of speed, but even a half-formed attack from Randidly should break through a casual defense.

Seeing the result of Randidly’s charge, Xershi danced sideways to get behind their opponent. Duulys just laughed and beckoned them closer. More and more silver flames poured out of his body.

Randidly shook himself slightly; even now, he couldn’t quite believe that his Stats were so easily rebuffed. Acri hissed in displeasure, a hint of silver flame damaging the edge of its blade. Randidly’s expression shifted to become more grave. He rotated his Nether Core, drawing the flames of Nether Weight across his body but to full height. So far in this posturing, Duulys had just been figuratively waving his giant weapon of an image around. Randidly had felt the admittedly powerful blasts of air from his strokes.

But it was another thing entirely to feel the heft of the weapon itself.

This is the man who stands at the top of the lower Sonara. Randidly’s eyes blazed. He spun Acri across his body and then once more raised the weapon, the small embers of silver flame sucked away by the Stillborn Phoenix. His images, after being so summarily rebuffed, sizzled with intensity. The World Tree Sips from Every Realm, Wicked Waltz of Tartarus, Grit of the Ascendant Bane.

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Randidly pulled deeply from all the energy of the surroundings. Some came from his companions, but Duulys had already dominated most of the space with his image. From that deep well of influence, he happily ate. More and more force crammed itself into Randidly’s body, coiling within the muscles and lining each limb with potential energy. Just slightly, the air and heat fell still around him, devoured by the infinite roots of Yggdrasil.

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Silver flames continued to drift up and fill the sky, horrible brushstrokes of intolerant fire painting the horizon.

The ground cracked only slightly when Randidly moved this time, a testament to how long this place had been refined by Duulys’s Aether. His body blurred, his Dreadful Alacrity and Primordial Nether Juju demonstrating the impossible capability of a body that had gone beyond the System and then evolved even further, its moorings completely reconfigured. His movements tore open space, his insights earned via the Hierarchy of Burden adding credence to the phenomenon.

Opposite, Duulys raised an arm. A massive specter of a silver lion superimposed itself across his muscular torso. The two limbs moved as one, sweeping down. Randidly planted his foot and thrust out Acri, pivoting so all that absorbed force exploded out through the weapon-

The impact smashed Randidly into the ground with enough oomph that his teeth clamped down on the soft flesh of his mouth and ripped off a chunk. He skidded back five meters, ending up close to Pullas and Fiona. Meanwhile, Xershi pounced at Duulys’s back. The powerful man twisted around and thrust out a palm, releasing a plume of silver fire. Yet what stunned Randidly was that the metal liger’s claws clashed against the image and deflected most of the force.

Pullas rushed forward to assist with the pale light of her death as Duulys swiped a hand and stunned Xershi’s image. Randidly started when Fiona’s hand descended on his shoulder. She crouched down and spoke into his ear. “I expected this somewhat; had I not been distracted, I would have warned you. Duulys Ambar… well, your body means you won’t be instantly eviscerated by his counter-attacks, but he honed himself to overcome exactly you.”

“What do you mean?” Randidly replied. This time, small flecks of silver flame had landed on his right shoulder, greedily burning his flesh. The pain focused him.

Duulys puffed out his chest and allowed his silver lion to roar again. His bulging muscles quivered with each exaggerated movement. Blasts of silver fire clashed against the light of a good death, without either giving ground. Unnerving, dangerous-looking black sparks were spat out from the collision point, burning their way into the dried ground. Pullas glowed and a hooded figure manifested behind her. Her image waved a hand, the overwhelming desire to protect and help a friend giving more potency to her slashes of dusty light.

Yet Duulys didn’t back down at all. He laughed as his silver lion continued to swell in size. His emotional affect did not lose at all to Pullas, who continued to advance through the image fulfillment stage.

Underneath it all, Randidly could sense the way that Duulys continued to stir the currents of significance. Using whatever methods necessary, he muddied the connection between himself and Fiona.

Fiona had that broken look on her face again, watching her former husband fight. She didn’t acknowledge Randidly’s gaze as she answered. “In the Nexus, the common development is to create an image that boldly announces ‘the world is like this’. That’s the way the top figures have maintained their control with overwhelming power. You’ve developed against them, learning to use your physical body and Nether to break that reality and weaken the image, while your own images aren’t as potent.

“Meanwhile, Duulys grew to prominence on the front lines, fighting in the worst of the Nether Wars. His image makes no claim on the whole world, he simply reaffirms his own power with his projections. Which has always limited his ability to be truly elite in the Nexus. But against you-”

Over the course of Fiona’s explanation, Duulys continued to grind directly against the rising power of Pullas’s image. The dangerous negative energy exhaust stained the ground beneath them into a swamp of seething decay. The ground seemed stained by the failure of Pullas’s image to achieve a good death.

Meanwhile, Duulys waved his other arm and continually battered Xershi’s giant liger, opening up an opportunity to thrust both palms in Pullas’s direction. A concentrated blast of fire manifested as a silver blade and shot forward. Immediately, it destabilized Pullas’s energy and pushed the struggle back toward her.

“I guess I’ll have to sharpen my images a bit then,” Randidly hopped to his feet, already recovered from the damage he suffered. He pulled his senses back from the weird tides of significance and focused on the actual fight. He shot one more glance at Fiona, but she made no move to join the fight, her trauma peaking out through the haphazardly assembled emotional pieces. Perhaps she didn’t even notice the influence her word had earlier.

He turned away and jumped forward, intent on becoming involved before Duulys’s attack reached Pullas. The pale light of death continued to shiver and fade beneath that silver blade. In Randidly’s chest, he left his Nether to the side. As Fiona had pointed out, this foe had plentiful experience against those sorts of methods. Instead, he roused his images, dragging deep into their emotional affects.

The desire for growth and progress flowed smoothly into him from Yggdrasil. It stretched out and became the framework for the three emotional affects to move together. The desperate hunger of the Stillborn Phoenix came next, laced with thick anticipation as the image considered Duulys’s silver lion. Those small flecks of flame had vanished from his shoulder, absorbed into the unending abyss at its core.

And finally, the Grey Creature came forward with a storm of violent emotions that suppressed the hunger and rattled the framework. Randidly cut through the indiscriminate intensity, reaching for the beating core of the affect. He dug deeper and deeper, seeking that volatile mixture that had so plagued him these past few weeks. His body seemed to be moving in slow motion as he dug deeper and finally found what he was searching for.

When he seized the affect, his thoughts stalled out for a moment; rather than anger or a wild urge to survive, what Randidly found at the heart of the Grey Creature was shame.

The shame of telling adults you really were okay and sitting with your arms crossed on the low concrete step in front of your school, waiting to be picked up. The shame of moving into a room and feeling eyes and mouths moving silently around you, about you.

Randidly’s breath hissed through his teeth. With a pure effort of will, his hand tightened on that emotion and brought the storm along with it as he pulled his images into one effort. All three images moved together, burning through his body. The framework held. Stepping up next to Pullas, Randidly thrust out an Acri wreathed in all the emotional force his images possessed. Randidly’s middle finger on his right hand tingled as his attack merged smoothly with Pullas’s pale death.

A massive shudder rushed up Randidly’s arm as he met half of Duulys’s attack. That silver blade sought not to cut, but simply annihilate. It was a door to a world of bleak fires and desecrated land. But combined with Pullas, they dispersed its force. Randidly clenched his teeth, allowing his body to absorb most of the rebound for Pullas.

Duulys seemed surprised and annoyed that the attack had been stopped. The man threw a backhand blow that caught Xershi and sent him stumbling backward, then turned to face Randidly and Pullas again with glowing eyes.

Pullas reached up and put her hand on Randidly’s shoulder. “I think I’ve figured out my tattoo. Are you ready?”

Randidly didn’t even have time to reply before the space around them folded. He blinked; he now stood behind Duulys Ambar. Across the battlefield, Xershi stood with a bewildered expression and Pullas’s hand on his shoulder. For a moment, Randidly felt so lightheaded he almost collapsed. It didn’t take as much as Fiona’s image devouring, but it was still a large chunk of his Nether siphoned away.

Yet Duulys was still turning away from him, only now recognizing the strange switch. Randidly’s eyes blazed. His Willpower clamped down, sharpening his focus with cruel intent. Your image might be strong, but how fast is it?