With his third activation of his two Fatepieces in tandem, Randidly started to retain a slight awareness of the space he passed through with the wicked, physic melting speed. The knowledge felt insubstantial, but it was better than nothing. Even his senses had difficulty reacting in time to the harsh limit waiting at the edge of the Sonara. But luckily, he could feel the spatial distortions created by the capturing barriers much more clearly.

Like some ancient knight riding in a jousting tournament, Randidly eviscerated the Engraving wall and deactivated his two Fatepieces as quickly as he could. The slap of air against his face felt like a cool shock. His momentum carried him forward another ten meters however, plowing a way through a bunch of porcelain dolls that had gathered around Xershi’s small cage.

As he slowed down, his own uncontrolled kinetic force became a weapon Randidly used to clear the area. He brushed a bit of porcelain dust off his shoulder. With a single step, he appeared back next to Xershi, who just stared absently at the ground without even acknowledging his freedom.

“You alright, Xershi?” Randidly asked, wondering if some mental attack began when the barrier became fully realized.

Thankfully, Xershi’s voice was clear when he spoke. “Yea. Yea, I’m fine. Just… How do I put this… do you ever wonder- who you really are?”

For a split second, Randidly tilted his head to the side. Then he made the executive decision not to get involved in this sudden question, not when he felt those bulging-fingered hands moving back into position around the two of them. He gripped Xershi’s bicep and once again activated both Fatepieces at once. The edges of the world blurred and melted, becoming jagged shards that ripped through their bodies. Randidly did his best to absorb most of the light radiation. The strobing red light softened to a dripping pink, periodically lapping against the surrounding space as they cruised across the layer.

Because he didn’t need to activate the Entropy layer to shred space, he and Xershi came out of the dual activation relatively unscathed. They again bowling-balled their way through a crowd of porcelain dolls, half of which had become the voltron form and had made Fiona and Pullas flee up onto the base of the staircase; for whatever reason, the dolls seemed unwilling or unable to ascend.

At least this was one areas where the omnipresent Engravings across the layer actually served a purpose.

Randidly, still dragging Xershi behind him, just blasted his way through the few dolls unfortunate enough to be in his way. The liger man remained strangely listless, allowing himself to be tugged along. Once on the stairs, he nodded at Pullas. “Glad to see you are up.”

“What the hell was that? That attack-” Fiona sucked in a breath while Pullas could only manage to nod tiredly at Randidly’s words. Both still seemed weak after experiencing the faux-Nether Ritual of those sausage-fingered hands. When he turned to look at her, Fiona still flinched and looked away. But her words were agitated. “That feeling… was that Nether?”

“I don’t quite know how it works, just that its a fucked up process Elhume managed to create,” Randidly responded, turning his gaze upward rather than address the simmering cauldron of emotions he still held in regards to Fiona’s actions. They didn’t have time for so many things right now. “Aether behaving like Nether. Energy twisted to be something other than what it is. Anyway, we need to prepare for more of those as we ascended. Next is the forty-seventh floor, right?”

“Only forty-sixth,” Pullas managed to wheeze. Randidly grimaced at the number of layers still under Elhume’s dominion above them. Now on the stairs, some of Pullas’s death’s pale light flickered around her body, stabilizing her condition. Xershi finally snapped out of his existential daze enough to crouch next to her, produce a handkerchief, and wipe some dried blood from the corner of her mouth.

Fiona gave Randidly a long look, with enough resolve she didn’t flinch away from his glance. “My thoughts exactly; We need to speed this up. How many times can you activate that ability? If we could just skip all the little digressions, we can get out before serious resistance gathers.”

Randidly squinted upward, feeling out the situation in his body. That grainy feeling in his joints had returned with the two quick activations to assist Xershi. Apparently, it was less a result of the impact and more some sort of residue from the intense collisions of Aether and Nether that the combination required.

He released a long breath. “I should be able to manage to move us quickly. It’s not without costs, but a few more floors shouldn’t matter.”

Fiona nodded and the group began to ascend with determined stomps. Xershi and Pullas were leaning against each other, one still limping and the other lost in his thoughts, making it quite unclear which was supporting the other. The Engravings of this stairwell activated almost immediately, speeding their ascent. As they neared the golden portal to the forty-sixth layer, Randidly bounced from toe to toe. He put his hand into the membrane and tsk’d. As he had suspected, the discomfort had vanished.

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He moved through the barrier and twisted his body to avoid the beams of dirty Nether that awaited him. They whizzed out into the blank expanse behind the entry point, where they would eventually terminate themselves against the edge of the Sonara a massive distance away. In front of him were five of the tiny-palm thick-fingers hands, each with about three voltron-form glowing porcelain dolls protecting them. Randidly’s eyes glinted as he abruptly settled into an aggressive stance; he should have about two seconds before the Ascension Pact joined him, and he wanted to figure out how durable these bastards were.

He didn’t need that much time to handle these weaklings

The voltrons blurred to block his path, but they were nothing compared to the walls of the Sonara. Even with only the speed he could generate off of Dreadful Alacrity with a single step, they cracked and collapsed in front of him. Their bodies bore the inverse of his shape, dominated by his physicality. Randidly raised his Sulfur arm and reached for the fucked up hand he had chosen to crunch first.

The thing flared with grey light, a complex faux-Nether Ritual writing itself out across its body. Randidly’s expression twisted into a snarl, reading the ritual and understanding it was about to self-destruct and unleash a sizable pulse of its dirty Nether. He flared and whirled his Nether Core in response. All those instances of exhausting his energy and having it return thicker and more domineering suddenly became worth it; a torrent of dense energy exploded and smothered the thing’s attempt before it could even begin.

His Nether was a glass cup and the hand possessed only a tiny little candle flame. He strangled its attempt out of existence on contact.

He felt several of the twisted Nether blasts coming at him from the other hands, but the rapid pivot to a suicide bombing piqued Randidly’s interest. Why had it reacted so decisively? The vicious beams landed on his back, earning a grunt from him and making his Nether Core strain to eliminate the impure energy. But Sulfur seized one of the fingers in front of him, squeezing and deforming the dark metal of its exoskeleton.

The other fingers bent like wet noodles, whipping and smashing against his body in an attempt to fight him off. They burned with acrid imitations of flames of Nether Weight. Randidly could literally endure an assault of this caliber all day, his Egg’s Illusory Plume manifesting almost lazily underneath their bludgeoning. An even more dense and invasive wave of his Nether surged through the physical connection, filling the hand’s body and locating its core Engravings. These were isolated and neutralized, causing the hand to collapse into an inert form.

Randidly hissed through a few more beams landing on him, but he stored the neutralized hand within his Alpha Cosmos, for Neveah to study. Whirling around, he avoided another hand-beam and stomped his foot. The kinetic force stumbled the voltrons and gave the hands a brief pause, which was enough. He moved back to the entrance, just as the rest of the group came through.

As he raised his arm, his Alchemist’s Passport and Hierarchy of Burden harmonized with each other. Powerful flows of Aether and Nether moved in concentric circles within his chest, building up momentum. His three companions put their hands on his back right as he activated it.

They blurred away, right as he felt the Nether in the space around them beginning to turn strange. Randidly felt a sinking feeling in his chest, even as bolts of electricity and jagged beams of light groped at his body.

There had been more hands, hidden in the area around the entrance. Waiting, preparing to activate some sinister trap on the climbers. And based on how they responded to the three-hand, antagonistic, dirty Nether Ritual, a massive working fueled with that energy might be deadly.

They arrived at the far edge of the layer to no ambush, but the group still hurried up the stairs. Aside from a few glances at the increasingly complex machinery along the wall and three trapped individuals who had made it to this layer, only to be stopped, the group rose at double speed to the forty-seventh layer.

Randidly, prepared for another sudden blast of twisted energy, stepped through the golden barrier humming with tension. Almost immediately, his skin began to crawl. Engravings moved beneath his feet, rapidly rising to create an isolating barrier around Randidly. He hadn’t activated any image, so he simply pulled out his Fatepieces and prepared to rip his way through. But very quickly, he realized something was different about this barrier. As he created the two flows of energy, the process accelerated.

An idea occurred to him. Randidly reached into his Nether Core and slowed its rotation. The pumping flows shuddered and then tapered off. In response, the Engravings faltered. Groaning, Randidly slowed the flow of Nether in his body even further. He pulled away his Nether density, forcing it into the Alpha Cosmos, until he had the density of the energy in the surrounding space.

His body ached; his muscles had become far too used to Nether to not complain without it.

Of course, this at least meant that the hand spiders weren’t waiting to pounce. Even if their energy wasn’t true Nether, they apparently couldn’t function in this anti-Nether area. That, or they were just waiting in the distance, waiting to spring an even bigger trap on him…

Randidly rubbed his neck. Almost instantly, the Engraving’s whirred back to life and a wall began to coalesce in front of him. He cursed quietly and laid down on the ground. He held himself very still, holding his breath. The Engravings once more dissipated and vanished.

How the hell does it know? Randidly’s face twitched as he kept his face from scowling.

The rest of the Ascension Pact walked through the portal with their hackles raised, only to find Randidly laying on the ground. Pullas squinted down at him in concern. Fiona cleared her throat. “Why are you on the ground?”

Aggrieved, Randidly spoke quickly to avoid triggering a full isolation bubble. “This layer suppresses Nether. My Strength Stat-” He took a break while the barrier began to form. Then he spoke after it had faded. “-has evolved into Primordial Nether Juju. It seems like movements-”

Again, he needed to take another pause. The three looked blankly down at him.

He cleared his throat. “Someone will need to carry me.”