“Your resistance just demonstrates foolishness,” Nether King Bleak Sky snorted, literally looking down on Randidly. His horrid cloud heads released huge gouts of water vapor and tainted significance from their mouths, gradually adjusting the environment. Randidly stood and looked up without fear.

The first step, then.

Energy began to spin around their position, in a wide cyclone. The two side Nether Kings, one resembling and arch-demon with two serrated horns and red skin while the other appeared to be some sort of merperson, wove together a wider Nether Ritual, aimed at keeping Randidly boxed into a single location. Their working lacked sophistication, but its simplicity would make it more difficult to foil with just a clever twist of energy.

Randidly’s smile sharpened, but he didn’t bother to fight against the Nether released by all three of the Nether Kings. His emerald eyes glittered as he followed the flows of energy. The sky seethed with friction between different threads of fate. The rush of energy seemed a single variable away from igniting into a vast conflagration.

With a subtle gesture, Randidly pulled his carefully wrought Nether orbs into his Soulspace; they weren’t necessary, not yet. Across the second Cohort, Randidly could feel Elhume making his own preparations to create humanity.

So, not only did he need to break through this trio, he had a time limit to do it.

Congratulations! Your Skill Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1037!

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 1120!

“Bleak Sky, you are looking much better,” Randidly rolled his shoulders, practically trembling with anticipation for the conflict. All the details Randidly had been trying to juggle fell away. For now, he just needed to win. “Did you make a full recovery? Looked a bit hollowed out last time. Fatia Cerulean certainly got the best of you.”

As Bleak Sky scowled Randidly’s ears quirked; the Nether army had been marching toward Homewell, but now Cerulean’s army began to shift to meet them. Fatia hid in the center of his army as they stalked forward. Some Engraving activated in the middle of Homewell, strengthening the Turtleline’s defensive Lifeseal. All the minute reverberations came to him through the ground, up through the soles of his feet.

Already, he began pulling together kinetic energy. No such thing as too much, not with this many dangerous foes lurking around.

“This time, you will not be able to flee,” The arch-demon spoke up. “You false Nether King.”

“Am I only the false Nether King?” Randidly verbalized his true curiosity. He narrowed his eyes and tried to feel the flow of energy around Bleak Sky, but he was unable to discern how his Nether Core seemed functioned. “You became an Apostate King, did you not Bleak Sky? Your Phaea has been severed.”

Above him, Bleak Sky didn’t even bother to respond to the question. He chopped down with his hand. “Ominous Squall.”

A dense blade of Nether cut down toward Randidly, but he had already stepped forward and slipped past the projectile. The ground cracked and shook from the impact; Bleak Sky might be an Apostate King, but his Nether felt just as oppressive as it did previously. Yet his opponent’s strength only made Randidly’s blood warm more quickly. A sharp gesture from the merperson produced chains of Nether to tighten across Randidly’s shoulders, but he ignored them.

His images hummed with anticipation. The Egg of Depression rocked back and forth. The canopy of the World Tree rustled. The Dread Homunculus drank deeply of Randidly’s emotional sea and then wiped its mouth with a wicked claw.

His opponents weren’t idle. The chains tightened, trying to bite into his flesh, but the Cloak of Utter Night meant they couldn’t get a solid grasp on him. The Arch-demon Nether King appeared in front of Randidly, a confident smile on his face. “You blind lemming. I heard you consider yourself something of a brawling-”

Time to begin.

Sulfur cracked the Arch-demon’s head back with a sharp left straight. Force poured through his joints, corralled and unleashed with enough power to shatter a mountain. Randidly kicked off the air to accelerate upward, but the merperson clapped their slimy hands together. “Authority: Jealous Depths.”

Abruptly, Randidly’s ears popped. The chains of Nether that Randidly had been rather casually ripping his way through on the ascent tightened. And then multiplied. A dozen manifested in the space around him and tightened across his body. His body wrenched to a stop, leaving him scowling.

The Cloak of Utter Night could make him extremely difficult to affect, but an Authority possessed enough juice to counteract that. These two Nether Kings weren’t just fodder.

As though to prove his point, Randidly heard a growl from below him. He pressed his lips together, rolling his shoulders; it wouldn’t be easy to rip through this Authority with raw physique. Not only did the arch-demon recovered and dash back up to block his path, but Bleak Sky cut again and unleashed another Ominous Squall.

Randidly stared upward with glittering eyes, measuring the roadblocks in front of him. His Nether Core had continued to accelerate over the past few seconds, so now it roared in his chest. Veins of Nether rushed through the container of his body, feeding into the nascent Nether Organ Sulfur’s connection to him produced. Already, he could feel the way it weaponized and steadied his Nether Weight. Small, tendril-like growths began to uncurl from the sides of the Nether organ. If he wished, Randidly guessed he could use this new development in concert with his Authorities to great effect.

However, Randidly also knew he would need his Authorities, especially Hollow Needle, to help with his work with humanity. So for now, he would brute force these issues. In the previous confrontation with Bleak Sky and Cerulean, Randidly had felt like he was just slightly below their capabilities.

And now he would step onto the same playing field, and dominate them.

Muscles bunched underneath his skin as he gathered all the force he could. Thin capillaries fed energy up through the ground, stolen from the rumbling armies around Homewell. His muscles began to burn. He brought his right hand up and gripped the chains of Nether manifested by the foes Authority. The Arch-demon unleashed a relatively respectable jab, but Randidly head slipped right past it, so the two were chest to chest.

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It had been a good thought to bring someone who specialized in physical prowess, but Randidly had developed too far beyond the regular scale for it to be an effective tactic. The Nether King’s eyes bulged. “You-!”

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1015!

Randidly’s arm exploded forward and his Skill conjured a thousand specters in its wake. With a little bit of careful manipulation, Randidly aligned those attempts into a respectable amount of force, using the army of the damned to drag the chains off of his body.

A thousand spectral triceps bulged, forcing the chains back.

Randidly wiggled and slipped out of the restriction. Sulfur blurred into motion. He brought a hook around and slammed his fist into the Arch-Demon’s side. Rather unexpectedly, the bastard managed to see and react, so the blow was mostly blunted. However, that just made Randidly clench his fist tighter, so the next blows to his diaphragm and to his jaw had quite a bit of extra suffering added on top.

All the generated momentum Randidly plucked up and brought into orbit around his body. His own storm rapidly built up momentum.

While the Arch-Demon spun away, spluttering, Randidly looked upward. That Ominous Squall had arrived before him, the wind howling and the air torn by the force of the Nether writhing in the strike. Randidly showed his teeth and raised his left hand. In the end, Bleak Sky, your pride masks a weakness; you’ve lived for too long.

You’ve achieved triumph so many times you’ve forgotten how important it is to want it.

Finally, his three images spun together into a single intention. “Married Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil. Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart. The Wrathful Calamity Rends.”

On the last word, Randidly pulled on the anxiety that he had mostly ignored for the past week. Part of that insidious emotion seeped through the Soulbond from Neveah, but he also couldn’t deny he was horribly out of his depth, struggling to keep his head above water as circumstances compounded within the memory. He felt so, so afraid of failure, because if he failed, he did not just die. All those people counting on him would also suffer for it.

The weight of responsibility was a constant needle of frigid suffering pricking his heart, even now. Luckily Randidly had a habit of not thinking too deeply about the price of failure. Because it was enough to know the cost would be high, enough to trigger his survival reflex, to stubbornly cling to victory through the toil. But now he tasted it, the vast expanse of fear. He forced his eyes open and looked at it. Acknowledged it.

He accepted weight he had carried for so long, to the point his most crippling negative emotional heart had been exhaustion.

His emotional sea exploded in response. He strengthened his body with the reliable bark of Yggdrasil, twisted and gathered gravity until it coiled and hissed around his fingers in the shape of claws, and then he rent open existence with all the wild desperation he possessed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 963!

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 921!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 950!

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 939!

Bleak Sky’s attack was condensed wind and ill will, a grey, fuzzy crescent cutting down toward Randidly’s position. Randidly’s attack was absence and desperation, a rough edges black void burning across the retina as space collapsed. He showed his teeth in a joyless smile; even his slashes now had that element of endeavor, reaching for the impossible. He felt the uphill battle against the universe as he felt another twinge of disapproval from Deganawidah’s imperative, left within his Fateset.

And yet on impact, Randidly’s Rend shattered the Ominous Squall.

With deliberate malice, Randidly stomped on the Arch-Demon’s face and shot up to his next foe on the way to face the fearsome Nether King. He gathered an orb of gravity and corruption in his left hand, unleashing a blast of absence directly in the merperson’s face as he shot past. His Authority might be potent, but his face was wan and pale. Which just left Bleak Sky, still floating above and watching with disinterest as Randidly approached.

“Your lack of purity muddies expectations, I give you that,” Bleak Sky nodded. “Yet if you drink from too many sources, you inevitably pollute yourself. You have grown abruptly strong… just like other Aether filth. Yet the Nether has been aware of these… Fates. And has made preparations. Definitely, it is worth expending one of these upon you.”

Bleak Sky flicked his wrist and produced a scroll. It flipped out to between the two of them, then exploded in a nova of violet light. Randidly wove a shield of Nether around his body and also conjured the Cloak of Utter Night across his shoulders. Yet when the energy arrived, it almost ignored both of those barriers, squeezing past… and targeting his Fateset.

Randidly lurched to a stop as he felt a burning force sear through and begin to burn away parts of his Fateset. The pain felt so familiar; although it was a different portion of him targeted, it brought him viscerally back to his second visit to Tellus, where he had been submerged in an ever-deepening pool of lava to avoid the image of the sun. For a split second, he couldn’t breathe.

Warning bells rang in his ears as his Fateset began to rumble. He desperately reached into his Soulspace to find the Fatepieces. They were being stripped of their bindings, taking them from a unified identity to just tools-

Although it continued to be horribly painful, Randidly blinked. Then he began to laugh. It makes sense, Nether would know to attack Fates like this. However… heh, aren’t you just clearing the path to make it much easier for my first attempt? Don’t mind if I do.

The restriction on the impossible left by Deganawidah was so overwhelming it simply ignored the cleansing blasts. But everything else… the context of his Fatepieces, the arrangement, the history of each, the small leanings that had begun to develop and affect the Paradox of the Alchemist… all of that was scraped away.

After a few seconds of fiery scourings, the violet light receded. Randidly floated opposite Nether King Bleak Sky, the ancient being looking him up and down. Something in his countenance must have revealed his satisfaction, because the Nether King's face darkened. “Desolate Horizon.”

The hanging cloud faces were obliterated by the smashing pressure brought down by Bleak Sky’s powerful Domain. Everything was flattened by the pressure. Randidly felt almost suffocated by the force of Nether squeezing around his body. Compared to his merperson companion, Bleak Sky’s Nether possessed an absolute discipline that made it much more forceful. In this, the Nether King benefited from his age.

Yet, feeling the technique for the second time, Randidly could tell Bleak Sky still bore wounds from whatever he had released on Fatia Cerulean. Or becoming an Apostate King had a steep cost that lingered. The pressure… didn’t feel quite as absolute as it had on their first meeting. Not only had Randidly grown since the previous encounter, but Bleak Sky had weakened, just slightly.

“Not enough,” Randidly said softly. His eyes glittered and he raised his hands in supplication toward the sky. All the gathered kinetic force from his earlier movements churned around him, the beginning of his maelstrom. “Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe. The Chimera’s Suffocating Rebuke. Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs.”

From within Randidly’s heart, a single seed sprouted. The manifestation of the World Tree sent up slender green shoots and split open the horizon.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe (T) has grown to Level 1007!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimera’s Suffocating Rebuke (T) has grown to Level 1001!

Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 993!