Randidly’s eyes bulged, standing with mounting temporal pressure conveyed through his spear and Sulfur rapidly breaking down as it bought him a few seconds from Laplace’s monstrous physical power. His mind stuttered and stalled. He simply watched as the threads of Truth began to drift apart without impacting each other in the least.

Again, his plan to create a Penance failed him. His Truths seemed… profoundly uninterested in aiding the process. They swirled around his Soulspace, agitated but independent. Should he just allow them to blossom fully and let him reach the Pinnacle? Set aside the issue of a Penance?

No, if all I end up accomplishing is reaching the Pinnacle, even with three separate Truths… I don’t think it would completely narrow the gap between my current state and a powerful Eternity. The muscles in Randidly’s jaw twitched from clenching for far too long. I need to achieve a decisive advantage… and part of my strategy for growing is balance. So if it won’t happen naturally…

Randidly knew he was doubling down on bad decisions, but he couldn’t help himself. His Nether Core began to rev and hum. He gave in on one more impulse, fixating his attention on the three Truths.

The First Authority: Seize.

This time, Randidly targeted the three Truths he had managed to accumulate. He put the whole of his existence into this manifestation of his Authority, not worrying about conserving any Nether for later. All of the history and significance he had earned tightened around those wavering notes of Truth. He pressed and pressed, constricting around those Truths until he had pulled them into a tight marble, exactly resembling the gleaming marble that had been created before his Grand Fate.

Well, a version of that marble. An eclipse to the gleaming nugget of possibilities he possessed earlier.

With the space they could operate restricted, the notes of the Truths became increasingly shrill, beyond the limits of human hearing. The frequency of their vibration was so high that Randidly felt his imaginary organs beginning to tear just by being in metaphysical proximity. His mucous membranes were shredded, blood leaking from the corners of his eyes, his nose, and his ears.

He squeezed even tighter. Despite the strain, at the very least the marble gave him a glimmer of hope.

Sulfur groaned in pain, the high notes of Truth penetrating his defensive capabilities and damaging the vulnerable marrow. While simultaneously, Laplace’s claws ripped through the fractured armor.

The next wave of temporal wounds crashed against Acri and vibrated their way up into Randidly’s body. His form distorted, the pressure high enough that even his Legend began to waver in the face.

Through sheer force of will, Randidly Ghosthound held himself together against forces both internal and external. He believed in himself and refused to concede on that point. His Nether Core spun faster and faster. He allowed the three Truths to slowly join and merge together into one domineering harmony. The Truth ball darkened. It drifted closer to the frame of Aether. Randidly felt his imagined heart begin to race.

They struggled against him, but he ignored their quivering. He wasn’t sure what sort of Penance would be condensed from all these powerful Truths, but once both were condensed, he would receive the promised reward from the System regarding the Shallah. And with that, if he couldn’t manage to overcome this measly Eternity-

Randidly felt the palpitation from his significance and knew something had gone wrong. His First Authority immediately weakened as the damage spread out through his Nether. The tight grip he maintained on the Truths weakened. The slight weakness was enough for the dark bead to explode outward.

Randidly felt his mind go blank as the so called seed of a Penance instead became a bomb that detonated within his body. The wave of force ripped outward, obliterating what little emotional force he had managed to muster and destroying his image manifestations that covered his form. Sulfur cracked and shattered completely.

Reeling backward, Randidly barely managed to corral a portion of the explosive pressure he had created and use it to beat back the deeper waves of temporal damage radiating out of Laplace’s body. The swipe completed its arc, smashing Randidly back and bouncing him off the ground.

He cracked against the crouched form of Pine’s corpse, finally ceasing in his uncontrolled tumble. Everything hurt. And worse, the pressure within his Soulspace had only increased from the attempt to force a Penance into existence. The Truths had only become more agitated. A fault line would soon rip open his entire Soulspace

Randidly coughed up blood and pressed his lips together as he watched it pool on the ground beneath him. From the beginning… that was a bad idea. How could Truths be forcefully merged together like that? At least, not without significant preparations. And even if I had succeeded… what sort of Penance would that have become?

Randidly forced his head upward. He looked at Laplace, looming closer every second, a wicked grin stretching its mouth wide even as tears of blood ran down the Eternity’s cheeks. The flesh of its chest was warped into an ugly spiral where Randidly had healed a portion of its temporal damage, but comparing the two of their states, it had emerged relatively unscathed.

Randidly attempted to lift himself up to his feet, but his hand slipped and he face planted directly into the dribbled blood. After coughing for a few seconds, he tried again, moving up from a lying position. “Fuck… I refuse… to let it end like this.”

“Fickle time…” As it spoke, the Eternity’s long tongue lolled out of its mouth. “Will allow you to re-attempt this confrontation as many times as you wish. Do not worry overmuch, boy.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Randidly suppressed a wild laugh as he staggered to his feet. He leaned back, pressing against the surprisingly warm grey goop of Pine’s corpse for support. He could feel the shuddering tension running through the anchor of the Nexus, but his attention was elsewhere. His mind raced as he tried to find the way forward.

“It’s always like this, isn’t it?” Randidly spoke, almost to himself. His shoulders heaved up and down. He likely had reached the requisite power that it would be extremely difficult for Laplace to kill him, but it would also be similarly difficult for Randidly to reverse the changes to the Nexus, should Laplace use this anchor to resonate his world-state image outward and infect the Nexus. He needed to succeed here. Yet he felt sardonic, as he considered what prices he needed to pay to do so. “Even at the last second… all you can do is ignore all the warnings and-”

Randidly felt a tremor in his exhausted Nether Core, accompanied by a warm note of satisfaction. His eyes narrowed— somehow, his Penance was related to ignoring?

He quickly cast around his senses for the environment, searching for further clues. The environment right here, pressed up against the side of Pine’s Corpse (setting aside the relatively morbid proximity), was surprisingly mild. Rather than the calcified Aether and Nether of the rest of the Nexus, the energy here was extremely pure and basic, likely due to the constant ravaging from the spatial storms. The two energies didn’t have even the slightest impression, not developed significance or history, no emotion or shape. They were raw-

“Wait, seriously?” Randidly froze, distracted by a completely unrelated thought. And with Laplace only a single meter away, Randidly followed the instinct.

He held up his right palm. He guided two small motes of pure energy, one Aether and one Nether, to his palm. Raw energy, untouched and unrefined, approached one another. Learning his lesson from the failure of squeezing his Truths together, Randidly just allowed those two energy motes to drift closer to one another.

Completely pure, without the slightest touch of being developed… the two motes swirled cautiously around. Then they kissed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Alpha Cosmos Births a Shallah (S) has grown to Level 1300!

“Holy shit,” Randidly blinked as he looked at the crackling orb in his palm. It was small, but it rivaled the heights of the power he could unleash at his most focused and well-rested. A warm and powerful radiance swirled around his creation. Yet beyond that, it didn’t have any sort of flashy aura or ominous reverberation. Aether and Nether encountering each other freely, at their most basic form, was the trick. Just like that, he understood how to open the door to a Shallah.

Now this was just a trace of their energy, not an actual Shallah, but if he could accomplish this-

In front of him, Laplace roared. His eyes snapped up, but to Randidly’s surprise, the Eternity wasn’t even looking at him any longer; it might not even have noticed what he now held. Which felt like a foolish oversight, until Randidly realized the Eternity had extended an arm and pressed its fat palm against Pine’s corpse— they both had been a bit distracted by their own goals. And now, its furious and bleeding eyes raked across the hunched form in front of him.

Laplace didn’t even acknowledge Randidly. Instead, it began to clamber up the corpse like it was an artificial rock wall.

Congratulations! Your Skill Alpha Cosmos Births a Shallah (S) has grown to Level 1341!

Randidly looked down at the floating power in his hand, groaned slightly, and forced his exhausted body to bound up and follow the Eternity. They moved up across its back, the snake moving quickly and Randidly trying to keep up, while also making sure the unstable bit of Shallah energy he had managed to create remained contained.

Very soon, Randidly understood the reason for Laplace’s strange urgency. On the corpse’s back… there was a crack. More than a problematic flaw in the Nexus’s anchor, it seemed to hint this was less an anchor… and more discarded skin. Stretching out from the crack and into the distance was a thin connection, the core anchoring point of the corpse, leading off into the distance.

Laplace waved a claw and time distorted. The wound this time was deep, but it also began to display what happened. Randidly watched along with Laplace as a thick maggot wormed its way out of the corpse’s back. Through the temporal distortion, Randidly could even sense the shift that had caused the reaction. It was due to his confrontation earlier, the reverberations echoing out throughout the Nexus. But it was not his side of it.

It was the note when Elhume and Fiero joined hands that animated this small bit of struggling life.

After looking around, the thing crawled away. The vision followed the wriggling thing as the maggot grew fatter and fatter, until it exploded and transformed into a small lizard.

Randidly’s eyes widened as he encountered one more surprising truth: Pine was not yet dead.

As a lizard, drawn by the image of his adoptive father, Pine moved to an unfamiliar location where there existed two statues. Randidly recognized these two, although he could hardly believe it. He saw a statute of Yystrix… and one of Deganawidah, although Deganawidah as a young man with a wild and unruly expression.

There, the lizard waited until-

“Devick,” Randidly’s whispered. The lizard became a bunny and hopped out to talk to the familiar, red-haired woman. He felt a mixture of exasperation and panic; how did she always end up in the worst places at the right time?

Having seen enough, Laplace waved his hand. The distorted vision vanished. It dragged its body forward, following the tether. Randidly’s gaze sharpened as he lifted his right hand. “Hey, asshole.”

Laplace looked over its shoulder with a curling lip. Then its eyes finally landed on the small and unassuming orb on Randidly’s palm. For the first time in their confrontation, the Eternity seemed genuinely taken by surprise. Randidly barred his teeth. He unleashed his discovery.

The beam of pure white cut forward. The flesh of his hand burned away just to release it. But when the attack landed on the unprepared Eternity, the effect was even more pronounced. Rather than its temporal wounds being healed, it was simply annihilated. Half of its body vanished in a moment of absolute silence.

The beam hummed out into the darkness, quelling even the silence and stillness.

Then Laplace began to wail, its body from its stomach down through its tail melted into nothing.

Randidly’s arm hurt, but the effect was almost nothing compared to the obvious agony of the Eternity. Just like that, Laplace’s aura had diminished by half. Randidly pulled the last dregs of his Animation Nova through his body, restoring his physical form. He rolled his shoulders and started forward. Perhaps like this-

Laplace used its arms to force itself into a sitting position. Hate radiated off of its skin and its voice was chilling as it spoke. “Samsara: Fickle Time and Regretful Heart.”

Remembering the explanation of Nyx, Randidly understood that this was Laplace’s most powerful move. He leapt sideways to avoid it, but felt the area around his body turning milky even as he dodged. The present situation swirled away… and he felt himself falling into his own memories.