Randidly didn’t go to see Elhume and his Patrons off as they departed. All but the Patron of Feathers agreed to go with their leader, despite the danger of the mission. As he had anticipated, without Randidly’s presence, the Patron of the Borrowed had brought up his connection to the being within the forbidden zone. They rushed away in the night, thoroughly on the track of history.

Duo would go with them. And the Patron of Truth, too, who Randidly believed would have been elsewhere training in the original timeline. In the end, it turned out Malloon’s survival mattered very little. History rumbled forward.

Significance began to swirl slowly in the sky. The period of Nether Core strain passed, to his great relief. This time, Randidly finally had some confidence that he could bring his full power to bear without the risk of tearing his way out of the Upper Sonora. Repeated tempering had made its substance much more reliable.

Some part of Randidly still wondered if he was making a mistake standing by while Elhume lit the inferno that would be the war between Aether and Nether. However, he suspected the conflict was almost inevitable. A few very influential figures were pulling the strings, bringing the two sides into stark opposition.

Randidly clenched his right hand. He stood in his small room in the farmhouse, preparing himself for the day. Allow the flow of history to continue in the same general direction as the original timeline. So when the Cult of the Savior finally reveals its actual plan… it makes a move for Pine, letting me understand what the hell happened at the end of the second Cohort, then I step in.

I break every plot, I rip out every truth I need from the past. So that when I return to the present, I understand the Elhume I need to overcome.

The sooner, the better. Right now he flew under the radar, but that would likely soon change. This Prophet of the Cult of the Savior probably wouldn’t ignore the fact its prediction of Malloon’s destruction hadn’t come to fruition.

Randidly sighed and forced himself to relax. He rolled his shoulders and spared a single glance for the horizon out the window of his room. He wondered if, during Elhume’s journey to Wyndaos, the first user would begin his journey of compromise and invent some of the domineering fists that Randidly struggled to block in the present.

Or did an even more devastating loss loom ahead?

“There’s only so much a single person can do,” Randidly whispered to the sky. Small tendrils of significance spiraled down from the mass above and created a lazy halo around his body. Unintended consequences rippled out from his person, a small force, but one that hadn’t been present in the Second Cohort originally. He huffed a breath out through his nose. “...but this time, Elhume, I’ll see if we can prevent everything from going to shit.”

He turned away from the window of his room and refocused on his own issues. He wasn’t ready to fulfill those promises quite yet. Randidly walked out through the farmhouse and into the yard. Several workers, hired by Jotem to run the still very lucrative farming business after the Hobfootie tournament, flinched and straightened at his presence. He ignored them and headed back toward the Ara Fruit area.

The painful pulses from Sulfur had slowed into a constant burning that ran through his body. His instincts had informed him that his Soulseed’s transformation would soon be completed. Which was good, because the evolution to the Moirae of Minute Repercussions brought Randidly to face with a rather humiliating truth.

Considering his accumulated advantages, he should be a much more overwhelming force than he was. He hadn’t been utilizing his abilities very effectively.

Several Arakis Beasts raised their head as Randidly passed through the area, glancing at him for a second before looking away out of respect for his strength. Out of their individual caves, the three Arakis Beasts that had imprinted onto him slunk out and followed behind them. Randidly noted that their size had increased again, almost nearing the weight of an elephant, before ignoring them. He analyzed his own movements as he walked, the ripples of his step and his presence radiating out around him and fading into the environment.

He traveled a few miles before he stopped, reaching the edges of his restructured weather array. Rain tingled against his skin. He finally gave the three Arakis Beasts a look and they stopped. Then Randidly looked forward and snorted.

His desires became a mandate, pressing against reality.

The Stillborn Phoenix stirred, its eagerness palpable. Randidly’s emotional sea shifted easily, a powerful force within its depths rising and revealing itself. The impossibility had tasted existence and now wanted more. Emotional force surged to lend weight to its desires.

The Egg of Depression opened its eye and gazed at the rugged ridges stretching in front of Randidly. Its attention crushed everything to dust. The few specs of substance that survived were irrevocably changed.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe (T) has grown to Level 911!

Awakening obliterated the impediments. Then its warping influence melted and transformed the crushed stone into a plateau of glossy stone that almost resembled obsidian tile. Randidly pulled back almost immediately, much to the Stillborn Phoenix’s disappointment. Some part of ti believed it was just a matter of warping the environment enough for it to be born, but Randidly knew better.

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A theoretical barrier still lay between the Stillborn Phoenix and manifesting, but now wasn’t the time to assault that roadblock.

Randidly walked out onto the surface and flexed his toes. When it seemed solid, he took a few tentative steps, then stomped, then leaned forward and launched himself across the length of the reinforced ground. He hit the other side hard, all the force of his momentum transferred into the ground.

He skidded a few meters from his speed, but Randidly grinned and looked around. Good, this material would be able to withstand his movements. When the time came to test out new methods, he needed a solid base from which to work.

Almost languid, Randidly padded his way to the middle of the flat black area he had made for himself. His heart began to beat more quickly, spreading heat through his limbs as he considered the way forward. At the moment, all he had was an impression and an instinct for what needed to be done. And the direction his instinct nudged him made him nervous. His emerald eyes began to glow as small trails of steam began to wisp off of his body. When he reached the exact center he paused and twisted his body, generating a massive crack from his spine. Nether seethed in his body, prepared to be used.

However, he didn’t yet move. Randidly would need to wait for Sulfur’s transformation before he could begin this next bout of training in earnest. For now, he traced the shape of the impression, fleshing out his conclusion.

If he was going to retool his methods like this, he needed to be sure.

For most of Randidly’s existence under the System, his greatest advantage had been his awareness. With information, he had found ways to utilize his broad array of Skills and survive in several harsh environments. His strengths in this area had continued to grow, but also as he fought more talented foes, they all possessed their own capabilities that rivaled his own. That particular specialty began to fall by the wayside, even as Randidly gathered a slew of Skills that made him unrivaled in his perception.

Truthfully, there were very good reasons that awareness beyond a certain point had diminishing returns. Even after remaking his body based on different Stat anchors, the amount of information Randidly absorbed overwhelmed his brain. Experience and understanding patterns helped cut down on that flood of information, but it didn’t alleviate the problem entirely. Even worse, there were obvious limits to how Randidly could take advantage of all this information. The Nexus had taught him for too long how important it was to have an overwhelming power. He charged forward, thrust with Acri, and empowered the effect with a focused image or lately with three images acting in concert.

Not to say it was a weak attack, it had earned Randidly a seat at the most powerful figures in the Nexus, but it was simple and direct. Additional information could only do so much to improve its performance.

So mostly additional information had been superfluous and he had been rewarded for direct methods. Randidly’s storms of Nether and kinetic force benefited more directly, but it had always been a supporting tool. The memory so far had been especially unstable when he wielded Nether, so he had gotten away from wielding his overwhelming Synechdochence. Now that the memory had been strengthened, he wanted to once more return to such a fighting style.

But that was the easy part. The harder ask was changing his fighting style completely, to become a method where he could leverage his understanding of energy and ripples. So all the awareness he received could be turned into capability.

Randidly raised his hand and snapped his fingers. His emotional sea stirred again, a lesser amount of force swirling together and descending upon the stage around him. The emotional force split itself into three tendrils and sketched out the barest hint of Randidly’s three images. Into those holes, the three pillars of Randidly’s existence descended.

Yggdrasil, the first of his images, had grown and developed once more into a towering force. The massive trunk stretched up toward the sky, covered in golden runes that told the story of existence. Its emerald canopy jangled lightly with the wind, more wind chime than plant matter. Underneath the ground, the golden roots dug until they found the heart of this world and sipped at the power resting there. The strong and sturdy boughs created a powerful system of connections, while also casting long shadows.

Randidly’s eyes grew unfocused as he examined his first image. Dense ripples surrounded the World Tree, lingering touches from Yystrix herself, guiding him to this point. He wondered where she was currently hiding, within the memory. He wondered if she had known he would eventually use the image to support an inner world when she had nudged him to learn the Skill from Bert of Donnyton’s sister village.

He shifted his attention.

Suddenly bombastic, the Stillborn Phoenix keened out a luxurious cry. The glossy black ground began to gleam with impossible energies. The event horizon unfurled and warped the fabric of space around it. Randidly didn’t want to push his luck, so kept the amount of power to this image as only a thin trickle. Yet even so, it pulled and pulled energy from the world itself, gradually stabilizing its appearance and swelling to the size of a car.

Randidly’s final image, the Grey Creature, came quietly. A version of him with claws instead of fingers and a body covered in slate-grey chitin formed behind the real Randidly, its arms hanging slack at its sides. Its gaze was harsh and cutting as it scanned the surroundings, looking for external threats.

More and more significance wandered down and curled around this moment. Randidly sucked in a long breath. His heart continued to beat quickly. It was time to make a change.

“We are all connected,” Randidly said quietly. The three images each acknowledged him with a small shift. “So I won’t belabor the point for too long. Our direct style of fighting has served us well for a long time, but there are limits to it. The advantages we have earned should amount to more than this. So we need to shift to a new paradigm. One where the patterns of the world become central to our power, a method impossible to those with a less total ability to perceive the world.

“The Stillborn Phoenix took the first step, learning to open its ‘eye’ and truly see. It is a heavy gaze that corrodes the fabric of reality, but so long as it can see, Aether can be mobilized to cope with the information. Yggdrasil, as usual, will serve as the bridge. Handling the flow of information, supporting the body. And finally…”

Randidly twisted on his heel and looked at the Grey Creature. A crooked grin stretched across his face. “Grey Creature, we need to talk about how you need to evolve. Because the premise of this shift… hinges on you.

“You… perhaps even more than my other images, you can be better than this. You can devour all the information… and create a path forward.”