The black wicker symbols gathered their foul energies, but Randidly just laughed.

With sound restored around him, he felt incredibly light and potent. His body ached from forcing his way forward through the Nether mountain, but he could twitch now and vanish from his current position to another. The Cloak of Utter Night wrapped reassuringly around his body, making the possibility of harm even more remote.

Still, his defensive barrier didn’t prevent him from half-stepping several times in quick succession, avoiding further blasts from the black wicker symbols. They drifted closer, making the possibility of dodging more fraught as their volleys came in tighter clusters.

A glimmer of understanding emerged in Randidly as he scanned around. Elhume’s future, locked inside an entire mountain range of crystalized Aether… Enmya is in the beginnings of a Nether equivalent. Either power pushed to extremes without the other results in being just as restricted as you are empowered by the abilities you wield. The damage they can create is massive, but to activate them is unwieldy.

However, he couldn’t consider that further. Each moment without the Nether Mountain pressing on them, the symbols began to move more quickly, their harsh energies lashing out even more wildly in the air. Their influences conflicted with each other, but they didn’t appear to notice. They were locked in on Randidly’s position, hunting him while the wolfman stood solemnly and watched.

In the end, Enmya was the problem. Without him, the rest would fall into place.

Randidly spun Acri quickly and settled into a low stance, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. Tension hummed through the muscle fibers of his legs, taut with readiness. His eyes gleamed, the thin golden tendrils stretching out like laugh lines around his gaze, from the depths of the hood.

In the brief moment of stillness, the other half of the Dread Homunculus rose to the fore. It was an artificial being, created for its incredibly resilient body, but also because of the computational power it wielded. The successor of the primordial goddess of night, who understood the universe deeply enough to weave the fates into existence. A designed being able to channel the vast information available in an entire world.

The image looked at the small hurdles arrayed in front of him and smirked.

Six concentrated blasts of Nether shot toward Randidly’s back from various directions. Perhaps even more dangerously, several of the further away symbols released discordant vibrational notes to infect his Nether Core. These traveled in the shadow of the damaging beams, bouncing off of each other at unpredictable angles.

Randidly’s smile stretched wider and wider. The Dread Homunculus devoured the small details, tracing the path of every threat aiming for his life. He hopped quickly over the first few blasts, paused to allow several notes to smash together in front of him and dissipate harmlessly, then lowered his head and blasted forward.

He flicked Acri left and right, creating waves of specter attacks that he manipulated into alignment as he shot ahead. Two beams attempting to stop his advance shattered when ten-thousand strong attacks met in a single point, right at their exact weakness. All the information, and more, poured through Randidly’s sizzling mind, fed to him through his many awareness. The base of his spine began to burn, even his reinforced nerves straining underneath the load.

Congratulations! Your Skill Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1025!

Congratulations! Your Skill Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae (P)(U) has grown to Level 1135!

Randidly pierced through a new wave of spewed Nether, the energy continuing to be vomited into existence by Enmya’s low-key Nether Core. He planted his feet and prepared to thrust. Yet at that very moment, his opponent brought his hands together for a soft clap that jangled the bracelets he wore across his bulging arms. “You are certainly determined. Yet you still transgress. Meditate with me. Reflect”

The silence came slamming back, leaving his ears ringing. His body still moved through the familiar motions of a thrust, but everything felt strangely unmoored. The physical mechanics of his body came out of alignment the more he moved. His vision exploded in rippling consequences, a blinding bloom of shapes and interactions even his new image couldn’t keep up with.

To his surprise, the foe opposite him finally moved, pivoting sideways and batting the spear to the side. His foe seemed to be swelling up, his muscles shredding themselves to pieces to proliferate into an even more exaggerated version of himself. Then the foe lowered his head and swaggered forward.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

He sidestepped, the move preternaturally fast but echoes of the movement happening over and over, making him feel slow and almost underwater as the movement continued to be repeated. The strange development distracted him, grains of sand in the gears of his processing. The foe lashed out with a backhand blow and he leaned back to allow the strike to pass, then followed it closer to go back on the offensive, strange sensations be damned.

They were too close to use the spear, so he simply whipped his left hand around, slamming the incredibly potent event horizon against the foe’s ribs. He received a satisfying crack and the widening of his opponent’s eyes for his efforts.

The hole in his hand yawned wide, sucking down some of the strangeness of this silence.

Grimacing, the wolfman fell back. He moved to follow-

He? Why am I-

He paused in confusion, floundering like a dreamer who woke himself up by reaching for an object that didn’t exist in the real world. His movements were echoing and exaggerated, leaking out of the tightness he expected into these wide, hollow processions. Something about the environment-

Several blasts of dense Nether punctured through his defenses and ripped holes in his body, sending him stumbling forward. His flesh tightened in pain. Quicker than he would have expected, the wolfman whipped around and brought his right heel slamming against his chest while the Nether beams distracted him; his foe might not be quite up to his standards, but he was no slouch either.

Cursing, he rolled back and popped to his feet. He reached for-

He blinked, looking around. Phoenixs, eggs, and roots tumbled through the air around him. Specters swayed and danced, confused and conflictory, slamming into each other in the process. All the pieces of what he wanted tumbled about. He tried-

This fucker’s real ability is to take away Names, He thought with a sense of surprise with a pinch of awe added on top. Without the uniform delineations of name and shape that Aether relied upon so heavily, all the aspects of him were beginning to drift apart and filter out into the world. All the carefully constructed power he had shaped for himself drifted and refracted into the hundreds of influences he had incorporated. They weren’t useless, but the longer he existed here, the more the connections seemed to thin.

He dodged sideways to avoid more follow-ups, this time sensing the approach of the blasts from the symbols. They, annoyingly, seemed completely unphased by the weird Domain his wolfman foe erected; they had already been stripped down to become soulless tools anyway, incorporated into a vicious, walking Nether monster.

His mouth twisted into a frown. Perhaps the real threat were their infectious notes; he felt his Nether Core, thrumming and rotating constantly, but the sensations were jumbled. He probably wouldn’t notice any damage to it until it was too late.

The wolfman saw his hesitation and recalibration and rushed forward with claws raised. However, a smile broke out across his face. This is likely a pretty effective method to smother Aether users; nameless images lose their shape pretty quickly. Nether Kings too, whose Authorities are very specific and need to be heralded.

However…

He reached for his Nether Core. He pierced his way all the way through the thick spools of energy and the amorphous clusters of his authorities so mixed up by this aura, and reached the foundation. His gaze flickered as he touched the first of his three base desires. Grow.

His images didn’t just have names, just like his Authorities didn’t just have functions. They had whole identities.

Behind him, a massive tree exploded into existence. Branches thick with emerald leaves stretched up while golden roots drilled down, a simultaneous expansion in every direction. The manifestation gobbled up space within the echoing ‘vigil’ created by the wolfman. The leaves attempted to rustle, but the strange underwater quality had the effect of deepening it.

The tree rumbled, buzzing against his skin. And his Skills might not be able to have specific names, but there were aspects to the tree’s growth that were undeniably regal. Liberated of logic and boundaries, its perfection grasped at all the black wicker symbols and held them briefly immobile.

The tree demanded their fealty. For a few seconds, they couldn’t help but capitulate.

He smiled wickedly at the wolfman, snapping his spear into a ready stance. He thrust forward and the wolfman attempted the same deflecting swipe. But he had already seen this and flicked the spear around, cutting a long gash across the wolfman’s forearm. In the strange immersion without names, the blood seemed to burn ruby. It almost looked… alchemic.

He laughed as he shifted two his second foundational desire. Show me the impossible.

The lonely, desperate beast lurking in the abyss reached for the surface. The blood dripping from the wolfman’s arm inflated rapidly into the form of an egg. The wolfman looked at it with widening eyes, incredulous.

Normally, such a display wouldn’t be possible. When names and boundaries existed with more vehemence, there were limits to how images could work. But the wolfman had chosen to blur those lines, hoping to lead to a collapse into wild chaos. Unfortunately for the wolfman, he had chosen an opponent that thrived on chaos.

The blood egg popped. A being that didn’t exist yawned through the brief void, birthed for the first time.

Now that it had grabbed existence, it knew true hunger.