Actus Suprem Devick stood in the middle of the wide space in her glittering robes. The orb in the middle of the chamber was horribly depressing; looking at it would literally allow emotions to be sucked right out through your face. She amused herself for a bit by thinking of people she hated and then feeling those memories slip away, devoured by Pine’s corpse’s ceaseless hunger.

She liked to imagine that when the memories vanished, the people themselves would vanish as well. A wide smile broke out across her face. However, that glee quickly faded.

First, she couldn’t remember who she didn’t like.

Second, she was almost sure that, if she had really not liked these fucks, they would already be dead.

And third, it REALLY pissed her off that she could no longer remember whether she still had to kill these blurry annoyances or not.

She bit her lip and sucked on her blood for a bit, trying to keep her temper in check. In the hollow chamber of this task, the air cried rust-colored tears in reaction to her powerful image. From her feet, a blood puddle began to stain the floor as her madness seeped out and corrupted the environment.

With a great effort of will, she drew herself back. And when she returned to why she was here, her eyes began to glitter.

She couldn’t remember being this excited, not in the longest time. Discovering Randidly Ghosthound as her child brought her a warm joy, but this request made her bare teeth crusted with drying blood, a monster sniffing a long-craved meal. Her eyes danced with anticipation. “You… what an honor to be selected for this task. Hehe, no one can sew misbehaving organs back together quite like me. And I can do whatever is necessary to obtain the pieces? If they resist, not that they will, but if they do-”

“It must be done,” The blurry projection of Elhume moved his head. His voice boomed out to the distant, cracked walls of the room. The two were alone, brought here so he could impart to her this task and give her the platform with which to accomplish it.

Devick swirled her finger in the air. Little fuzzy snakes of malice formed and devoured each other, following her pointer finger. “Your lack of squeamishness is a sign of your ingenuity. Leave this to-”

Devick perked up and whipped her head around, peering through the edge of this secret room in the Nexus as a massive phenomenon rippled outward. At first she thought that the Sonora finally finished its boringly slow collapse, but this energy didn’t seem to quite match that. And her eyes widened when she sensed Randidly’s distinctive tang, albeit with an altered flavor.

What a studious boy, always sticking your nose into the most unusual sort of perversions. Pride surged in Devick’s chest, flecked an obsessive need to rip Randidly to shreds and understand the way he ticked.

For now, she suppressed the impulse. She had other toys to play with.

“Handle this. I will eliminate extraneous elements.” Elhume rumbled. Then his projection faded, leaving Devick alone in the chamber.

“Don’t die on me, Randidly Ghosthound,” Devick whispered. Her mutant heart labored in her chest, so close to being so stuffed with emotions that it tore right down the middle, where it had been sewn together with bonemarrow thread and madness. “Because you know I’ll find your weak soul if you do. And you’ll spend the rest of your sad consciousness regretting being such a disappointment. Kekeh.”

*****

Randidly Ghosthound floated in the middle of a dawning apocalypse. He had severely underestimated the forces involved in this trick. The massive electrical discharge and the growing Nether Ritual/kinetic storm meant he was completely stuck in place, helpless while making his attempt.

Congratulations! Your Skill Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 971!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 995!

At least some things haven't changed. Another day, another tortuous test of physical resilience.

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The gears of Aether began turning, force traveling down the axel of Randidly from memory to reality. The friction of straddling those two existences increased, but when it came to his physical body, Randidly had a lot of confidence. He had remade himself from the ground up, with completely empowered Stat anchors. Blood flushed through his muscles, the flexible fibers gamely absorbing the dangerous radiation.

All the System pillars came alive around Randidly, amplifying the world-shaking impression even further. The outer cage of the Nexus activated, bringing with it surging waves of Aether that ignited when it impacted Randidly’s horrifying supernova of world-spearing energy. The electric vivification sputtered and failed at the edges in the memory, where all the critical pieces had been folded back on themselves for convenience, but honestly, that was a relief.

With a great deal more reluctance, Randidly felt distantly those same mechanisms activating in the larger Nexus. The isolated universe hummed to live and made its preparations to absorb a new Cohort. He opened his eyes as wide as they would go, peering through all the patterns spinning themselves around his body.

Congratulations! Your Skill Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae (P)(U) has grown to Level 1175!

Congratulations! Your Skill Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae (P)(U) has grown to Level 1176!

The sky quaked and seethed, forged into an undulating whole by the reality-straining forces rampaging. The flickering light of Pine pulsed as its momentum leaned further and further behind this madness. And of course, Pine’s movements carried with it connections to the entire memory. The fighting below stilled so that only isolated pockets continued their violent encounters.

Just as he was about to be boiled away by the energies coursing through him, he pulled with Yggdrasil and fed the energy into the Songstress of Absence. Just a hair away from melting, his skin twitched and tingled.

In a single gulp, Randidly’s kinetic storm had been almost wiped out just from sustaining the superposition, so he gladly began recycling the chaotic discharge as the Nexus activated. As the sky began to tear itself in half with the heavy pieces of Aether machinery, all those forces were folded, purified, circulated with his Nether, and then released in an overwhelming tidal wave of force.

Just as quickly, he drank down the whipping maelstrom and strengthened the superposition connection. Randidly’s jaw ached as he pressed his Songstress of Absence to keep the two exactly aligned. His body already ached from channeling so much force.

Randidly bowed his head in acknowledgment toward the World Tree. I couldn’t do this without you. Probably any of it.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 983!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill the Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 998!

Though the haze of the temporal barrier, Randidly felt the true-Nexus mechanisms also shifting. Because they would be accelerated in comparison, the static tension sizzling through the Songstress was much worse coming from that direction. But for now, both moved, with the memory Pine pushing for the process.

Randidly sucked in a breath as Pine’s support, moving the mechanisms from the interior, grew wilder and more violent. Steam began to waft out of his ears as his body tried to keep abreast of the energy process. Well, I’m glad you are enthusiastic, but at this rate-

A thunderous crash interrupted his thoughts. If Randidly thought that the world had been ending previously, this taught him he had been being dramatic.

One moment he floated in his melting, surrealist sky and the next he slammed into the ground with the wind knocked out of him. For a moment he wildly wondered who could have sneak attacked him, especially through the branching snakes of annihilating lightning that flayed from his person, but then he felt a sinking feeling in his chest. For a brief moment, the singing of the Songstress of Absence faltered in her music. His Nether Core ached.

Probably, if she hadn’t been given a strengthened grip by his First Authority, the superposition would have been directly obliterated.

The blow had come from the modern Nexus, and there was only one who could punch like that. Elhume had sucker punched him. Because he channeled the force through his body, he had been physically slammed into the ground.

A surge of fear gripped Randidly’s heart. Too much was happening at once for him to spare attention, but he raised his head and looked around. What he saw made him grimace; he had been knocked down to the West, in no man’s land between the Aether and Nether hosts, but the energies he unleashed still scythed their way through the edges of the two armies, annihilating innocents.

Bolts of lightning arced off his body and ripped deep trenches in the ground. He became a thousand-legged insect, his vicious legs skittering around incinerating any flesh they could find. And that was before the winds came down, yanked in his wake as he went through the process of pulling the discharge from the activated constructs in the memory into his storm and then feeding it up into the superposition-

Congratulations! Your Skill Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 999!

Damnit, Randidly squeezed his eyes shut so he didn’t see some unfortunate soldier blended by the sharp-edged winds he produced. The ground shifted uneasily underneath him. He refocused. Because with the time dilation, he should have some time before the next hammer blow. But he didn’t want to underestimate Elhume. He activated Infinite Incendiary Filaments and peered out into the Nexus.

All the while, the enormous Aether wheels spun toward the creation of a new Cohort.