Even after he suppressed his presence, Randidly Ghosthound lingered and observed the Nether King as he descended into the ravine that housed Helen’s Nether Prince. The decision had been made, but he still wavered.

Randidly wasn’t in the habit of regretting a choice, but all the sticky emotions he tried to suppress in his heart latched onto this parting.

He saw the Nether King’s slow gait. He watched as the Nether King paused in front of the swirling orb of energy, grown larger since Randidly had last viewed it, dense with the lessons, impressions, and personality of Helen grown more ripe. The Nether King gave this Nether Prince a bow.

Although he had no body, Randidly’s jaw clenched. Helen… is this the right choice? Would you really have wanted to be a part of this…? Heh, you’d gladly embark on the journey to create an entire world… Or, am I really just scared of letting the Nether Prince remain here and become something obviously not you?

Letting go… is suffering.

Seconds trickled past against his skin like scalding grains of sand. In the end, Randidly could only turn away. If he couldn’t move past the issue, he could at least distract himself. He was in the middle of his Reverie, the last chance he would have to prepare himself before he needed to follow Laplace into the depths of Pine and subdue this invading Eternity. Once this process started, Randidly knew he would be on a hurtling ride to the conclusion of this challenge to revolutionize the Nexus.

Randidly had overpowered Elhume and Fiero, leaving the duo no choice but to invite an even more powerful ally deep into the Nexus to stop him. Once he pried this thing out of here, Randidly Ghosthound would have won.

His Legend would have reached its conclusion. The shape of his story will have reached its end.

Again, the passage of time snapped Randidly back to focus. It whispered against his skin, a constant reminder of necessity, lurking right outside this brief interlude. With a soundless growl, his manifestation vanished and spread out to cover the whole of the Alpha Cosmos. His inner universe glittered beneath him, the combination of the Reverie state and his energy halo awareness turned the world into a place of frozen time and luminous rainbow rays. He had spent a single one of his Reverie points already, to read the intentions of the Nether King.

Which meant he had six more remaining, to prepare a miracle.

What had calmed Randidly’s anger was not the plan of the Nether, which while Randidly believed would have some effect seemed likely to stop short of creating a Shallah, but rather the pure intensity of the Nether King’s emotions. After piercing past the enigmatic expression and patterns that had always been the modus operandi of the Nether King, what Randidly encountered was a quiet resolve to do whatever necessary to provide some safety for his people.

And for that goal, Randidly felt quite a bit of empathy.

He shifted and returned to his body/nonbody standing in the Nexus. He opened his eyes and looked up. Despite the activation of the Reverie, the maelstrom of Pine churned with a glacial momentum. Even more ominously, Randidly could see the lingering effects of Laplace, Fickle Crossroads of Time, rippling out and infecting the Nexus. Every second, it sank deeper into the fabric of existence.

Randidly pressed his lips together. Alright, one point of Muse’s Reverie spent, six to go. How do I best prepare to halt an eternity?

Humming softly to himself, Randidly raised his hands. His six Fatepieces, floated out of his body and spun around him, tumbling in the air. Each possessed an ability under normal situations, but a Reverie intensified that power even further. The Reverie was the ultimate state of inspiration and insight of the Alchemist. At its core, it wove the dreams of a Heretic into reality, one small impossibility at a time.

With the Alchemist’s Passport, distance lost meaning during a Reverie.

The Visage of Obsession allowed existence to be paused and parsed apart, the valuable goal extracted freely from the complicated mess of reality.

The Hierarchy of Burden could unleash a blast from the boundary of the universe, striking a foe while they were completely unprepared for the attack.

The Dreamcatcher of the Long Night, a place of resonance and connection, could ‘store’ a version of time or memory with the utmost clarity.

The Codex Hexahedron was a wondrous source of both examination and understanding, allowing the dreamer to gain insight into any object or individual.

And the most recent of his Fatepieces, the dangerous Keystone of the First Ghasthund, had the ability to extend an invitation to any individual. It was a temptation given teeth. Although accepting it might lead individuals to hell, Randidly had been able to use it to make the memory individuals real.

His mind raced, even as the limited time of his Reverie continued to flow past. Randidly projected out how he wished to make his final preparations. Because his original plan had been to take different elements from the Alpha Cosmos in preparation for his Grand Fate and Penance transformation. In Randidly’s eyes, with his Control having evolved into Privilege of the Half-Shallah, the thrust of his choices was obvious.

He would create the situation to nudge him up from a half-Shallah to a full Shallah.

And yet-

Nether King, should I be cursing you, or thanking you? Randidly scowled up at the slowly rotating maw of Pine. Because very clearly, when confronted with the Nether King’s plans to make a Shallah, Randidly had experienced a distinct sense of wrongness-- his instincts assured him it would not be so simple to create the fundamental energy beings of existence. Becoming a Shallah required a sort of magic akin to his own creation of reality from memory, but this was not a one-time effect. That genesis was a repeated phenomenon, over and over again, consistent and powerful enough to create an entire universe from scratch.

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And then populate it with inexplicable, dazzling miracles.

The unsettling realization was that Randidly’s own plans contained a similar hole where the valuable, animating heart should have been. Should Randidly go through with his original plan, there definitely would have been some effect. But now he did not believe that would quite be enough to overpower Laplace.

Time continued to flow past. Randidly made plans, thought up patterns, drew up Engravings, and then hissed and discarded them all. He folded his perspective and tried again. He considered new angles and altered his methodology. Yet again and again, he couldn’t quite make the equation work. Just like that, two of the seven minutes allotted to this reverie had vanished.

His mind continued to churn. His intellect jumped to the beginning and rapidly scanned through his most well-considered plan. Originally, his plan had been to make his Grand Fate the other ‘half’ of the qualifications of being a Shallah. Randidly planned on making a grand unification of his three ‘truths’ he contained, relating to Pinnacle events based on the base System, on his Ghosthound’s Deviation, and also on the Devick’s Deviation he had managed to obtain. A triple Pinnacle event, he had theorized, could have pushed his Truth to a higher level.

But would that have pushed it into the realm of a Shallah? Now Randidly wasn’t so sure. In the end, could a Truth be considered alive?

Maybe, the Alchemist in his heart whispered, with the right materials.

His plans for the Penance had been more vague. He understood he would need to give up much to create a Penance worthy of the Grand Fate he developed, having the two become opposite sides of the same coin. A solid foundation to take the other half step toward becoming a Shallah. Originally, had a general idea for the Penance to be his self-imposed unreality; he had now put himself at the whims of the Alpha Cosmos. However, in retrospect, it was obvious that wouldn’t have been enough, and also he couldn’t now re-sacrifice that control in order to make a pittance of a Penance.

He needed more.

Randidly chewed on his lip. At least in the matter of Penance, Randidly had been inspired by the presence of Laplace. He needed to heal all the wounds left on the Nexus due to the Fickle time. With his powerful body and evolved Stats, perhaps he could endure even the dangerous scars of the Nexus.

Randidly’s eyes sharpened. Checking the extent of this damage, at least, was very much within his power right now. Codex Hexahedron? Go. Cover the whole of the Nexus, including the Alpha Cosmos. Tell me how deep these wounds run.

A point of Muse’s Reverie vanished as the cube made up of thirty-six smaller metal cubes expanded and spun outward. Space parted, allowing the cube to fold the universe into a witnessable shape. The pieces rushed out in every direction, spreading to the ends of the Nexus. The pieces avoided Pine and Laplace waiting within; he saw no need to break through the barrier around this just yet, not while he had a bit of time to compose himself.

Soon, Randidly’s awareness buzzed with a sense of vastness. He breathed and the whole of the Nexus hummed in response, resonating with his Reverie-empowered Fatepiece.

He felt the Codex Hexahedron complaining as it began to feed information back to him, requiring another point of Muse’s Reverie. Decisively, Randidly narrowed his focus; at this point, he couldn’t afford to waste a single point. So he looked only at the fabric of time. An awareness of the full state of time across the Nexus flowed into him.

Randidly sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t realize it was already this bad…”

With Reverie eliminating the pulses that ran through time, he had the ability to completely read the fabric of time lying draped across the Nexus. And what the examination revealed was that the damage was much worse than Randidly had thought. What he witnessed was the fabric of time was like a knitted quilt which, as it spread outward from its origins, had invited basically anyone with yarn and knitting needles to join in its creation.

As it turns out, people’s ability to manage time… was extremely unreliable.

There were solid, reliable portions that had been tightly woven together, but there were also gaping holes and lumpy sections. Sometimes there were wide tears that probably had persisted for a thousand years. In other places the base threads of time wisped outward, where a particularly powerful individual might have just ripped through the fabric to impose their will on existence.

Randidly couldn’t help but cough. He didn’t look too closely, but his powerful Deity’s Ruthless Cerebral Scope found several chunky gashes definitely attributable to him.

Honestly, the fabric of time had probably been under attack since the dawning of the Nexus. But what Randidly had done when he struck out against time earlier was the equivalent of kicking out his legs to untuck a sheet that had been wrapped around a mattress. When the fabric of time had been pulled tight, the wounds weren’t so noticeable, the great wounds were just narrow slits. But now-

“What am I missing?” Whispered to himself. The understanding of time was valuable, but already his mind shifted back to the problem of the Shallah. Several bits of insights fell into the hole in his understanding, trying to fit. Yet none filled the gap and Randidly felt frustrated. Although his energy had become increasingly powerful and valuable, his Nether translucent and an increasing amount of his Aether liquid, it did not appear to be approaching any sort of grand fusion he would have expected from the precipitation of a Shallah.

Randidly remembered the horrible visions that had stricken him on the Glimpse of the Shallah Path. He had seen the two wrong Paths: Aether and Nether individual, pushed to their extreme. Aether solid and unmoving, a massive crystal mountain range. Nether concentrated to the point that it devoured everything else, a substance that took but did not give. The horrible ends reached in the Nexus, due to Elhume’s clumsy attempts. At the time, Randidly turned around and glimpsed the truth of the Shallah, albeit vaguely.

He had thought he was taking that path. Yet now, it seemed obvious he had somehow gone down a third Path. One that took him to power, but perhaps not to Hallohym, the ancestral eden of the Shallah.

Randidly rubbed his forehead. But he also felt a bit of clarity; he understood a few weapons he needed to gather from the Alpha Cosmos to fight specifically against Laplace. He felt confident about those choices. And his Muse’s Reverie points might be tight, but he should have enough to ask a few questions about the Shallah. And about Eternities.

His awareness filtered down into his Soulspace. From there, he proceeded to Pangu’s Asymptote, the tool that made the impossible acceleration of his Nether Core possible, which had allowed him to escape Laplace’s technique earlier. As she had been earlier, Nyx floated there, regarding him with worry.

Randidly considered trying this with the Codex Hexahedron, but suspected the amount of information contained within an Eternity would not be small. Instead, after a bit of hesitation, he reached out and touched the Keystone of the First Ghasthund. He extended an invitation for a conversation with a foreign Eternity.

Nyx accepted.

The corners of Randidly’s mouth turned down as he felt not one but two points of Muse’s Reverie being taken to facilitate the experience. This better be worth it.