The soldier with his cross-cropped blue-grey hair looked so young. Randidly didn’t remember feeling as young as he looked for a long, long time. Probably since he had been separated from his body on the frontlines. Which felt like an age ago.

The uniformed soldier had looked vaguely familiar when he arrived but hadn’t made the connection until he placed the child was. From his origin, other characters who would have been alive around the same time came to mind. One who he had not met directly, but who had cast a long shadow over the entire existence of the frontlines.

“I… I am surprised you have heard of me Nether King,” The soldier replied. The faint tremor in his hatchets revealed his nerves, but he kept his voice steadier than Swacc. He hadn’t had time yet to mature, but his eyes were bright with fighting spirit. “I am Domon Matteo, yes. But do not think any feigned familiarity will save you; for trespassing within the limits of Homewell during a time of war and displaying overt aggression, you are under arrest.”

A breath hissed out from Randidly’s lips, leaving his face crumpled and moody. In front of him were the seeds of tragedy that had once bloomed on the frontlines. While the monstrous world duplicator Eliot was used as a shield, even while he was a child, Vualla’s own father Domon Matteo attempted to arrest Randidly. A strange chill spread across his skin.

“If you come quietly, the consequences will likely just be… detainment,” Domon added, as though trying to plead with Randidly to agree.

Yet Randidly’s eyes were glazed, tracing the patterns in Nether as far as he could see them into the future, outlining the shapes of who they would become. They were minor characters now, caught up in the currents of history. But once they had a chance to develop, they would dominate the Third Cohort and beyond.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 1002!

How nostalgic. I wonder what your duplicated daughter is doing right now… Randidly sighed. Considering I spent so much time refining my emotions and facing my blindspots in the Sonara… it’s appropriate to remember her and the connection we had. The connection… I allowed it to wither and die because there was always one more problem that needed solving.

Then his gaze hardened. But in front of him was a more pressing issue, one that he would not fail by having divided attention.

Randidly flexed his left hand. The air around him shivered and then a swirling abyss emerged in the whole inside of his palm. Sulfur rumbled, antagonism seeping through the sealed Nether in his body and into the limb. He raised the hand, even while Vualla’s young father and Swacc watched him with alarm. Gravity gathered around his fingers. Before he actually attacked, he needed to-

Swacc bit his lip and slapped a hand against his chest. In the next instant, a halo of light erupted around his body. A powerful of image manifested in that light, a figure of denial and reflection. Randidly couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows; certainly, that activated Engraving contained a lot of power. Whether it could withstand the full force of his attack… remained to be seen. However, Swacc himself hadn’t been Randidly’s target.

He wanted to cover his bases first.

With a gentle hammock of gravity, he plucked up the child Eliot Swacc and lifted him up to a nearby roof. The kid spun and flailed, but wasn’t harmed in the process. Randidly didn’t think he would be able to activate his ability as a child, but it was best not to take any chances.

The last thing he needed was for the boy to activate his abilities and for the memory to suddenly have a duplicate, likely collapsing the whole thing on top of his head.

The light faded to reveal a stunned Domon Matteo looking over his shoulder and an ashen-faced Swacc. Randidly allowed a slow and cruel smile to stretch across his features. The darkness within his left hand grew increasingly oppressive. One knuckle at a time, he cracked his joints. “An interesting trick, Swacc. Did you think I was about to attack you and react prematurely? I hope that wasn’t single use.”

Swacc gnashed his teeth, but couldn’t even speak, such was his constricting frustration. Into that space, Domon Matteo stepped, his arms stretched wide, his hatchets gleaming. An image of unstoppable momentum began to swirl around his body, one relatively impressive for his age. “I say again, if you are truly a Nether King, you made a grave mistake coming here. Drane Swacc is under my protection. And so long as the lifeseal remains in place, your Nether is out of reach. If you believe you can walk out of this place unscathed just due to the strength of your body-”

Randidly stepped in what he planned to have been a graceful movement that breezed past Domon and allowed him to finish the business with Swacc, before more attention was drawn to the confrontation. However, he had perhaps spoiled himself for so long training on a surface with enough stability to withstand his motions.

The foundations of Homewell did not possess the same sort of structural integrity.

When he moved, the ground collapsed and cratered beneath him. Most of the street shattered, bits of stone flying in every direction. And even the buildings along the road shuddered and cracked, forced to withstand the concentrated force Randidly Ghosthound held within his body. So what he meant to be a graceful advance became a slightly off-target spear tackle.

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Randidly sighed but didn’t adjust his vector. This will work.

So he bulldozed his way forward in a blur of motion, smacking into Domon Matteo and sending him careening sideways. The strange, impossible retroactivity of images allowed the blue-grey haired man to solidify his image into a defensive barrier at the last second, but he was still too young. One of his hatchets shattered on impact and his body tumbled sideways. When he crashed into the stone base of a building, his ribs cracked and blood began seeping from his mouth.

Randidly’s toes tapped the ground a few times, dispersing his momentum much less disastrously than he had generated it. He stopped right before Swacc, even as the ugly little gremlin took a half step backward. He activated a second Engraving on his body, this one much weaker. However, his body became insubstantial; he seemed to be borrowing through space to escape from any threat.

Randidly’s eyes glowed with indulgence. Yggdrasil?

Congratulations! Your Skill The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 937!

The flow of Engraving on Swacc’s equipment shuddered underneath the holy aura of Yggdrasil, eventually capitulating to the superior force. When those energies attempted to bow, they twisted themselves until they snapped. Swacc’s alarm grew as he popped back into corporeal existence right in front of Randidly.

“Do you think I didn’t expect this?!?” Swacc bellowed. Strange, whorling patterns covered his cheeks and he screamed, a sonic blast of rejection.

Finally, Randidly raised his left hand. The darkness cradled there rotated more and more quickly until the appendage appeared to disappear and light turned milky around the event horizon. In the deepest portion, an eye trembled and then opened. It saw the attack, truly and completely.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe has grown to Level

The sound vanished. The air stilled. For good measure, Randidly sucked the Mana in a few more Engravings that Swacc had secreted around his body. Already, he could feel more powerful figures moving from the heart of Homewell, racing to stop the disturbance. Time to finish things.

“This, is karma, Swacc,” Randidly breathed. He settled into a fighting stance and for a brief moment, his awareness spread out through the bright filaments of energy that animated the environment. Then he peered through and saw all the ripples and unintended consequences spiraling outward from this killing, which did not occur in the original memory.

For how much of a shit Swacc was, he would leave a surprisingly large wound on the timeline.

The edge of Randidly’s lip curled upward. He didn’t care about the consequences, not this time, not after the suffering he had endured, the crimes committed for a thousand years, starting with this wicked individual. Vualla, Charlotte, Shal, and a thousand others who had the misfortune to labor under these sociopaths…

Finally, he settled into his new fusion Domain: Helen’s Sea, Cradle of Unlikely Lives.

Congratulations! Your Skill (Fusion Domain) Helen’s Sea, Cradle of Unlikely Lives has grown to Level 1080!

All of Randidly’s various awarenesses were layered together into one super composite. Existence swirled with the disparate currents of a choppy sea, a surface wracked by chaos, the depths animated by ancient forces. Ripples and waves blended together. For a split second, Randidly had an almost perfect understanding of the life in front of him and every aspect of the environment. He threw his punch.

There would be no escape.

Just as that certainly crystalized, conflicting information arrived. His lips twitched. Swacc frothed at the mouth and scrambled backward, animated by panic. However, another force managed to arrive in time.

“Nether King Hungry Eye. We do not take kindly to disturbances of the peace.”

Ripples exploded behind Randidly as two figures manifested on the destroyed road. The first was an ancient-looking turtle humanoid with a heavily lined face. He leaned upon what looked like a heavy lead walking stick. This was likely a Turtleline.

Next to the first figure was a creature representing the mix of an ostrich, a peacock, and a raptor. The man had long legs and a long neck, with two small arms hanging around his body. Around his eyes was a beautiful sunburst of red-orange feathers, with more serving as an alluring tail.

All this information came from a shard of an impression, the briefest hesitation before his blow continued. Both figures unleashed their images, interposing a woven barrier between Randidly and Swacc when he didn’t acknowledge them.

The moment stretched, Randidly’s body moved smoothly, channeling both emotional force and all the kinetic energy he could gather in the surroundings through his body. The two defenders of Homewell completed their barrier; Swacc remained practically rabid with panic, not even understanding the situation had shifted to his benefit, ever so slightly.

Yet, maybe Swacc actually has the right of it, Randidly shivered as that realization and its implications filled him. For the first time in a long time, he felt afraid. Not of the repercussions… but of the realization that they probably didn’t matter to him.

The only being worth fearing in Homewell… was himself.

I’m going to go into an area filled with civilians and break the peace in order to fulfill a personal desire. One that will likely alter the course of the Nexus for the better… but I suppose it’s worth admitting I’m simply justifying my own agenda. The widely feared villain in this version of the memory… might very well end up being Nether King Hungry Eye.

Randidly’s eyes began to glow. His muscles continued their smooth execution. From the private place of transformation, the evolving Grey Creature stirred, with a powerful resonance generated by change and transformation. But even so. Why did I struggle for so long, if not to be able to overcome the established forces that refused to do the right thing?

And Swacc dying for his crimes is right.

From the depths of its transformation, the Grey Creature laughed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimera’s Suffocating Rebuke (T) has grown to Level 980!

With just emotion, image, and the physical force of his body, Randidly cracked open the defensive barrier the two new arrivals had erected. His fist continued forward and crashed into Swacc’s chest, destroying his chest cavity. And to be sure that his target couldn’t survive, the Stillborn Phoenix screamed and devoured every scrap of energy within a meter of that manifestation in his palm.

The light in Swacc’s eyes died.