The Path Screen remained as familiar to Randidly as it had in the beginning. With a few touches, it spread before him, laying out the possibilities. He had managed to earn a little over five thousand PP. Which was just enough to complete the first reward Path waiting for him, but not the second.

He briefly scanned through the other Paths he had available to him, but ultimately dismissed them. Nothing I’ve seen so far is as reliable as the Mille reward.

Congratulations! You have completed the Achieving a Mille II Path! Your growth underneath the System defies explanation. Few others have found such powerful loopholes, to allow them to steadily accumulate more and more Skill Levels and travel so far down diverse Paths. Despite all the progress you’ve made, the Pinnacle remains far ahead. Yet it can also be observed that for those just starting out in the System, you seem just as unreachable as the Pinnacle itself.

Your dedication to polishing up your base Skills proves you have not forgotten from whence you came: without the cycle of Skill Levels, PP, and Paths, all that you’ve accomplished would have been impossible. As you continue to follow Skills to their limit, not only do you see beyond the limits of the rigid system of Skills, but you can also appreciate their advantages! The shape gives structure, which gives reliability and support.

Congratulations! Health, Mana, and Stamina +1000! All Stats +10! You have gained the Unique Skill Ghosthound’s Proficiency (U)!

Ghosthound’s Proficiency (U): Your familiarity with Skills, as well as with the underlying energy of Aether, means that you are able to extract a slightly increased effect from activating Skills. As your comprehension increases, so does the extra effect you can achieve with the same Skill. Warning! It is very difficult to increase understanding. Current Understanding: +3% in all Skill Level Effects.

Congratulations! You are the second fastest to finish the Achieving a Mille II Path! Due to your speed, you have earned an extra reward! All Stats +100.

Randidly grinned as he looked at the notifications. Not only had he received a boost his to Attributes, which honestly didn’t matter much to him, but a wholistic 110 increase on all his Stats was very valuable, even with his already monstrous Stats. Accumulation added up. In addition to that, he received a Unique Skill that would slightly boost the effect of all his Skills, with the hidden possibility of those bonuses increasing.

“Still… if my current understanding of Skills is only 3%, how much understanding do you need to get to something like 10%...?” Randidly muttered to himself. He considered how intuitively he understood the shape, construction, and resonance of Skills. He could even now just look at the level of detail on a crystalized Skill within a Soulspace and estimate its rarity.

If that was only worthy of 3% understanding… maybe he was missing something.

One interesting point was that most of the reward, the +100 to all Stats, had come from his speed in reaching the Second Mille. Randidly pursed his lips as he reread the notification. He had been the second fastest to complete the Path. He looked again at his Path screen, rather disappointed in the fact he only had five hundred PP remaining.

If he managed to complete the next Mille Path… he might be able to achieve the reward for the quickest journey to the Third Mille. Which should come with a commensurately impressive reward.

After chewing on his lip for a few seconds, Randidly threw his hands up in the air. “Alright, alright, I know I’ve looked down on such methods in the past… but I probably do need a bit of a break from the mentally intensive training regimens. For now… maybe its time just to farm some PP the old-fashioned way.”

The storm had taken advantage of his inward focus to reform above his head, the first drops of rain cooling his skin. Nodding to himself, Randidly began spreading out his awareness. He couldn’t find any living beings within the surrounding space so he freely began to spread his influence out across the area. As his three images manifested in the surrounding, the storms once against sputtered uncertainly, suppressed by the pressure he released.

His Nether Core revved, spreading out energy to make the environment even more favorable to him.

In a manifestation that Randidly hadn’t utilized in quite a while, he created a few dozen root avatars of himself. They swelled from dormant plant matter in the ground and ripped themselves out of the cracked dirt. One by one, they pressed their forming hands and leveraged themselves up to stand.

He allowed his emotional sea to distribute little pinches of fire into the chest of each one of the root avatars. These beings rapidly formed rather well-develop hands and legs, getting closer in resemblance to a humanoid. Weirdly, it was much easier to keep them human than trying to imitate his current form, but Randidly supposed that was related to familiarity.

With Randidly sitting still on top of his stone platform, the root avatars began to train in the slow rain. Considering his goal in not straining his mental capacities, he didn’t control them directly. But the pinch of aggression from his emotional sea was more than enough to get most into a grand melee. He just needed to add some focus, limiting them to his least used Skills for the greatest potential for growth.

Heavy Blows, Roundhouse Kicks, and Calculated Blows shot back and forth between the green beings. These attack Skills, all left at around two hundred Skill Levels, rapidly began to increase.

Root legs whipped to smash root chests. An avatar growled, the location of their eyes glowing with emotional intensity as one raised imitation Acri’s and smashed them down. Another brought their spears sweeping around with such force the shafts bent into crescents.

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Congratulations! Your Skill Heavy Blow has grown to Level 299!

Congratulations! Your Skill Cutting Tide of Amenonuhoko (T) has grown to Level 980!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Calculated Blow has grown to Level 400!

A few more violent root individuals began leaping into the air and coming down with a crash, activating Randidly’s almost forgotten Earthquake Skill to destabilize others’ footing. Despite the relatively pedestrian Skill Level of 150, each of these was fueled by a combination of his Cognition of the Aberrant Alchemist and Unnatural Capacity. The ground shook and seethed, several of the other root avatars scrambling back to avoid falling into a newly opened fissure.

The competition between the avatars became more intense. They eyed each other for a few seconds before the anger burning in their chests drove them to clash.

Congratulations! Your Skill Earthquake (Un) has grown to Level 154!

Congratulations! Your Skill the First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 900!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill (Domain) Mournful Sea, Helen’s Pernicious Riptide (T) has grown to Level 851!

Congratulations! Your Skill Earthquake (Un) has grown to Level 290!

To counter their fellows beginning to destroy the ground, essentially every root avatar began incorporating the Skill into their fighting style. Randidly watched as one root avatar feinted toward a Roundhouse Kick but changed the movement into a stop at the last moment, as the target raised their fake-Acri to block. So instead of deflecting a kick, they could only stagger awkwardly as the ground beneath their feet began to seeth.

A crack wormed its way up through the foundation of Randidly’s hill, coming from the absolutely heaving stone platforms that had replaced the small valley in which the melee had started. The seismic buzzing beneath him had become almost constant.

His lips twisting, Randidly raised his hand and jabbed a finger. As one, the root avatars sheepishly paused in their violence and lowered their weapons. They trooped a few hills over, still well within Randidly’s sphere of awareness, but far enough that he didn’t need to feel it in his ass every time one used Earthquake. With the extra space, the fighting continued. And if anything, they had been holding back before. Very quickly, the hills around their chosen location had shaken themselves to pieces.

Congratulations! Your Skill Earthquake (Un) has grown to Level 205!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 954!

Congratulations! Your Skill Idiosyncratic Cut (Un) has grown to 300!

Synchronicity detected… incorporation into Moirae of Ripples currently impossible. Recalculating…

Congratulations! Your Skill Idiosyncratic Cut (Un) has evolved into Inexorable Slash (Ru)! Skill Level will be maintained.

Randidly nodded to himself, observing his own state. After allowing the root avatars to rumble for only five minutes, he had already gathered almost three hundred PP. He wasn’t sure if he could keep up this pace all the way to five thousand, to unlock the next Mille reward Path, but he would definitely get a good chunk by spending a few hours like this.

It wouldn’t directly improve his combat strength, but it would perhaps give him access to a reward that would.

He briefly glanced at Cutting Tide of Amenonuhoko, sitting at 980. Randidly wavered for a second; improving this Skill would actually benefit his current fighting ability. The only downside is if I get the five thousand PP in one sitting, but one of these other Skills becomes my fourth Mille. Won’t I just want to stay here for a while longer, getting the fourth reward as well…? And I definitely don’t have that much time.

Randidly pushed that impulse down. He couldn’t forget the reason he was here; compared to Nether King Bleak Sky and Faelmac Westrisser he was inferior. Strong enough to survive a confrontation, but not enough to overcome.

Not that he believed he would need to fight against them and overcome either of the two, considering he was here just to observe the memory. But he needed to be sure he wouldn’t be forced back and miss any truth about the second Cohort. He allowed his eyes to unfocus and his mind to drift instinctually through the violence happening below.

By this point, he had trained his subconscious to the point it reacted almost perfectly to threats. Relying on those instincts, the root avatars gave themselves fully over to the emotional fires in their chest.

Congratulations! Your Skill Roundhouse Kick has grown to Level 300!

Congratulations! Your Skill Heritage of the Origin Beast (T) has grown to Level 701!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Smothering Inevitability (L) has grown to Level 499!

Congratulations! Your Skill Casting Blades from Insatiable Grievances (M) has grown to Level 412!

“Ah, at least the emotional Skill will grow this way,” Randidly muttered to himself.

Across the low hills, one root avatar pounced at an unsuspecting third right as its footing was destroyed by an Earthquake activation. Before the vulnerable root avatar had even recognized the new threat, the aggressor had gathered energy-momentum with Smothering inevitability and unleashed a crushing kick into the small of its back.

Taken by surprise, the victim was sent shooting out of the melee, skipping off the edge of the first rock outcropping and demolishing the second. A low rumble spread through the hills. The avatar that had used Earthquake and the one who kicked met each other’s eyes for a split second. A strange resonance occurred between their two emotional cores. They also drew in energy from Heritage of the Origin Beast.

When they turned to face forward, something had clicked between them. In the melee, they had become allied with each other.

Humming to himself, Randidly created almost a hundred more root avatars and sent them to join in the fun. Something strange is happening here. Significance is beginning to pool… and because of that, the training is becoming slightly more draining. Not too bad, though. The mental energy required is still low. Might as well give it a bit more oomph, to see what happens.

He refocused on himself. First, he activated both Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae and Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose. His awareness spread out, flooding his mind with information. He didn’t even attempt to parse it apart, just allowed it to flow through him. His Nether Core revved marginally, tightening his grip on the memory.

Then he created three more root avatars, keeping them in the area around him. Into each of these he injected his images, one Yggdrasil, one the Stillborn Phoenix, and one the Grey Creature. They began to manifest their image empowered Skills, each individually demanding more than the melee combined.

These three flew to opposite sides of the battlefield and landed. Each released pulses of energy, animated by a burning emotional core. Resonance formed between the various root avatars and they quickly split into three factions.

“Alright, now we are really training,” Randidly grinned.