Devick could barely breathe, she was so filled with (questionable) intentions for this dashing hero. Taking several steps backward, she allowed Randidly space to face off against the Eternity. She barely noticed the monkey sidling next to her, until it spoke. “So. This is the man who is going to change the Nexus. Isn’t he… a little bit of a braggart? Hmph hmph, I know from experience the difficulties of supporting an entire universe. Yet he dismisses my concerns out of hand!”

“Little monkey, I didn’t realize you also had this cute side to you. You definitely have a lot of experience supporting a universe… but do you think that Randidly would miss your inclination toward self-sacrifice, after all he’s been through?” Devick patted the monkey’s back. Her expression turned more serious. “I know how difficult it is to let go of control. But you can trust him.”

“Trust has earned me little in the past.” The monkey said.

“If all we needed to learn about the future was the past, we would be like Laplace,” Devick countered. “Time isn’t fickle for a reason. Because the context of our decisions matters. Because the tiniest detail can change everything.”

She could sense the monkey’s unwillingness, but it remained silent. So the two watched as Randidly Ghosthound walked toward an Eternity.

*****

“For a cosmic dimensional entity, you sure bleed a lot,” Randidly felt quite invigorated as he stepped forward to examine Laplace. He almost felt like he hadn’t been going through a constant series of fights and crazy arrangements over the past six hours.

Waves of temporal pressure derived from all the frozen fabric of time stuffed within the Eternity washed against him, ground against him with a physical intensity that set his teeth on edge, but now he was mentally prepared for it. Even as it pressed against him, Randidly’s aura began to unravel the tight grip Laplace maintained over time. His Grand Fate flared and grappled with the Eternity’s aura directly.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 1050!

Congratulations! Your Nether Penance Empty Vessel Forsakes the Path has grown to Level 1050!

Laplace gnashed its teeth. Those hollow eyes, hemorrhaging blood due to the clock hands stabbed into their soft flesh, fixated on Randidly. He could see the agitation in the quivering of the Eternity’s fleshy body; it understood that he had broken through its Samsara to return here.

It hated him, with every ounce of its ancient being.

“Enduring the Eternity sucked. Worse than almost anything else, because it was all of my most agonizing memories, intensified. But it didn’t kill me.” Randidly settled down into a crouched ssfighting stance. Acri slithered out and settled into his spear form. The bright chip of emerald that was his pupil flashed. “Now it’s my turn for some attempted homicide. You will regret waltzing into the Nexus without any fear.”

Randidly took a few seconds to speak for two reasons. First, because the return to reality meant that his two versions of Yggdrasil merged. Even now, the World Tree spread its roots deeper and deeper into the fabric of the Nexus, meeting and fighting against the insidious world-state image of the Eternity.

Congratulations! Your Skill The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 1429!

For as long as possible, Randidly wanted to beat back Laplace’s more subtle influence. Even if he managed to expel the Eternity itself, it would be a pyrrhic victory if the Nexus was warped by his presence to have an altered view of time.

Congratulations! Your Skill The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 1480!

Randidly’s toes curled, preparing to launch his body forward. Laplace roared, conjuring a wave of floating tomes, each containing a complete history of a universe.

Secondly, he didn’t launch an immediate offensive because he wanted to give his other two images some time to adjust. Both the Dread Homunculus and the Songstress of Absence were implicitly connected with him and sensed the changes in his person, specifically the long-awaited condensation of his Nether Penance. But the isolating effects of the Samsara meant that his newly developed muted quality, which could by itself be considered a growing world-state image, hadn’t had the chance to wash over them.

They embraced it now, each in their own way.

The Dread Homunculus took the stifling quality, inserting it directly into the Aspect of Eternity given to him by Nyx and now incorporated fully into his image. Beyond his shoulders fluttered an inky oblivion. He felt the Skill becoming more and more oppressive, a darkness that promised absolute isolation.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ghosthound’s Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons (GD) has grown to Level 1503!

Meanwhile, the Songstress of Absence took the quality of peace— this effect was derived from the natural reinforcement of unaffected space he possessed. Randidly could feel the bubbling percolations of this mysterious creature, as it took its first tentative steps away from simply promising oblivion. With the peacefulness borrowed from Randidly, the Singularity of the Inhospitable Depths began offering another alternative; it mourned the vicious cradle of its birth with every note. A listener couldn’t help be caught up in the ambient nostalgia, making the devouring quality of the siren almost an afterthought.

Congratulations! Your Skill Siren’s Dirge of Bottomless Taking (P) has grown to Level 1457!

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All at once, the tension in Randidly’s body snapped. The attack began. Genesis Opens the Door and Baptizes All Comers. The Wrathful Calamity Rends. Siren’s Dirge of Bottomless Taking.

Randidly exploded forward as his three images moved together. Deaf to Truth, he could no longer find the perfect buzzing notes of emotional anchors for his three images. But before Randidly had even understood the importance of emotion, he had been learning to balance his three images. They had merged and blended, bleeding slightly into one another. He allowed them to follow their instincts now, rising and jostling together as his body zipped forward.

His new Duty, Harmony, aided in the process. But perhaps more importantly, these three images had grown together. They had interacted with each other across multiple evolution iterations.

Randidly felt how natural the cooperation had become. You three… really never needed Truth, huh?

The Dread Homunculus curled up its lip and settled all its viciousness across Acri’s spearhead. Yggdrasil brought with it all the blessed light of dawn, incorporating the brilliant sparks of ‘power’ learned from the Aegiant memory, and embedded them in Acri’s shaft. The Songstress came last, crooning out in her new voice, ripping and devouring with her aria.

Perhaps the three images had a little bit of instability between their respective shapes as they found the fullness of their potential. But all of that was made up by the physical power Randidly had earned, with the combined Stat boosts and the presence of his Creeds, Duty, Balance, and Vengeance.

Of the three, his highest was Vengeance. And for being tossed into that Samsara, Randidly hammered his revenge with such force that the first few tomes directly exploded in puffs of paper confetti. The suppressive physical effect of Laplace tore.

The ground beneath him cracked and shuddered on the first impact, but Randidly continued zipping forward. He left behind a trail of Nether in various states of refinement and jagged flows of time from the broken tomes. The air around him grew filmy and strange as Laplace tried to slow him down, But Randidly’s Grand Fate happily rushed forward and wrestled with the influence of the Eternity. As the effect stalled out, Randidly closed half of the remaining distance.

Laplace shook his massive head, sending rotting, fist-sized clumps of blood tumbling around him. The foreign monster conjured another wave of tomes. They barely had time for their covers to swing open before Randily was there, driving Acri directly into the thickest temporal wall in front of him. His momentum had been somewhat depleted, but he still managed to drive his way forward and stop only a meter from the armed serpent.

Randidly’s feet touched the ground, his knees bent, preparing for another explosive thrust. His eyes focused on the opponent’s head.

Yet Laplace suddenly seemed triumphant, its tongue flopping back and forth. “Samsara: Fickle Time and Regretful Heart.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Randidly’s pupils dilated, the emerald expanding out. He had broken through the temporal waves created by the tomes, but his Grand Fate hadn’t yet had the time to purify and restore the fabric of time to its usual state. As such, Laplace used the fact that Randidly had pierced directly through so many dangerous temporal currents to try a second activation of his Samsara. It used the pierced remnant as the building blocks to expedite the process. The jaws of the working formed almost instantly. They snapped shut-

Randidly earned VPs almost constantly due to his alignment and constant Skill Levels, pushing his current total to a little over 10,000. Right as the Samsara attempted to trap him once more, he spent five thousand in a single go. 2000 each for Duty and Harmony, 1000 for Vengeance, bringing them all up to 4000.

Randidly felt the subtle shifts in his Vessel, from the development of the Creeds and from the +10 to all Stats spending 10k VPs earned him. With all that new physical power, he practically evaporated from his position, right out of the grasp of the Samsara.

Appearing right above Laplace, Randidly spun in the air with his spear raised. But his eyes remained fixed on the bulging edges of a Samara, quivering with all the intensity of a breaking storm cloud. Tsk, based on what I’ve seen of the internal mechanisms, it will continue to reform and attempt to devour me… Unless I want to watch my back for the rest of this fight-

The Alchemist mused over the issue briefly and came up with a countermeasure.

“The Second Authority: Hollow Needle,” Randidly announced. His Nether Core spun and seethed, its translucent significance gleaming like fresh honey.

He kicked off the air, shooting directly toward the Samsara. It twisted, bulged, opened, and snapped toward him, but Randidly had already skated sideways out of the danger area. Laplace hissed and spat out a concentrated blast of temporal energy, which slammed into Randidly’s back. He gritted his teeth and endured it.

Because when the Samsara missed for the second time and snapped shut, Randidly raised Acri, which had become a needle. His Grand Fate fed reinforced, healing time into the needle to create a thread. His spear thrusts were quick and seamless.

Randidly Ghosthound sewed the ‘mouth’ of the Samsara shut.

The sophisticated working sensed the change and yanked on the threads. After a few strained fragments of time, they held. At least in the short term, his Grand Fate was enough to restrain the Samsara. Instantly, the Samsara rolled back on itself, accepting the sewn portion into its interior and exposing a new mouth that stretched wide.

In front of Randidly, the Samsara snapped forward with all the subtlety of a starving wolf. Behind him, Laplace conjured another five tomes and unleashed them toward his back. Pinched between them, Randidly only offered a wicked grin.

In the touch with Pine earlier, Randidly had absorbed the tiniest wisp of unrefined Aether. Breaking down the tomes coughed up bits of untouched Nether. He cupped the two in his hands and pressed those two extremely rare energies together.

Part of him wished to save this move, but he also knew it would be foolish to surrender the momentum he had gained.

Congratulations! Your Skill Apostate Moirae’s Seditious Touch (GD) has grown to Level 1400!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Alpha Cosmos Births a Shallah (S) has grown to Level 1491!

Randidly held the birth of endless potential in his hands. He might be deaf to Truth, but he felt his Vessel seared on a fundamental level just from being near the ignition point. The radiance blasted outward, annihilating the tomes and knocking back the Samsara. He tossed the brilliant seed at Laplace and flitted in the other direction. Acri thrust out a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times. He drew thread after thread of reinforced time and bound the Samara shut.

For the second time, and with a lot less suffering, the Samsara had been beaten.

By the time he pivoted around, his brief blossom of potential had spent itself. Laplace roared again, but no sooner had the sound ceased than it released a hiss of pain— Randidly had bounded back across the distance between them and drove his spear into its forehead, right between its bleeding eyes.

Vessel and Grand Fate immediately began a land war with the horrific amount of time stored within the Eternity’s body.