Chapter 2201 (Patreon)

ToC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23899958

Just one, but this is a doozy. Heh, enjoy.

The Grey Creature was born when the Grim Chimera admitted to itself it was a monster. When it looked at its own reflection and no longer feared the lack of humanity it found there.

Now, the Grey Creature looked even deeper at its shape, seeking the path forward.

In the darkness of Randidly Ghosthound’s Soulspace, with currents of Nether forming a pulsing heart of possibility around its coalescing elements, the Grey Creature considered its form. The unwavering emerald blaze shone out through its shadowy existence, the hammered scales of refined darkness and vicious glee whispering just out of sight. The huge urges and desires at the Grey Creature’s base drifted past each other like icebergs on moonless nights, mere silhouettes that only hinted at the depth and weight they possessed.

Brief glitters in the darkness hinted at the claws and teeth that had yet to form, yet always lurked in any iteration of vicious Grim Chimera of Randidly Ghosthound.

The Grey Creature’s consciousness spun slowly as it considered the problem. It wanted to fulfill the main body’s desire for a quick transformation, yet it could not quite manage to assemble a cohesive whole with all its separate elements. So it sunk into a meditative trance, calling on the methods learned through the Fatepiece the Visage of Obsession. The distractions steadily fell away as the image pruned down its awareness until only its next transformation remained.

Birth, the darkness whispered.

So the Grey Creature began at its own beginning. An origin of char and violence, in the Seven Kata of the Ashen Spear. A rare and unrefined ideal of overwhelming power, leaving scorched ground in its wake. To finish the developing brew, fate added the horrible desire to survive birthed between the brutal training methods of Shal… and the insidious machinations of Yystrix, as both molded who Randidly Ghosthound would become.

Ash and desperation to forge a grim survivor in the heart of a scared human.

Even then, Alchemy, The darkness observed. Thin tributaries of significance slithered out, infiltrating the pulsing heart of potential. A shift beyond equivalence.

The Grey Creature felt itself drifting down, settling into those definitive moments that had guided its evolution. The sweaty desperation of fighting against Shal until Randidly couldn’t move his arms. Until his muscles were torn and his skin blistered from acid baths to toughen up his mentality. The times he was prodded by spear to ignore both exhaustion and broken limbs. The way he had been worked and pressured until all the details of his life before the System became almost smoothed away.

All his prior problems and insecurities felt inadequate next to the possibility of his throat being ripped open by a spear.

With his spirit hardened and a growing focus on the spear as used by horrifying spectres, Yystrix herself stepped into the watercolor painting of Randidly’s life. Wreathed in barely hidden grief and fear, with long fingers she reached and began to meddle. Both in ways that benefited him, like nudging him into starting in the Dungeon and providing some extra Aether, and by trying to create some sort of isolated time zone in the Raid Dungeon to escape Elhume forever.

A being beyond ken. Eventually humanized with knowledge… but that impression of her wasn’t what created us, was it? No, it was the implacable, twisted, other that corrupted us.

The Grey Creature felt its body beginning to seethe and compact. It might not possess the acute awareness of the main body, but its whole structure pulsed with unintended consequences of Yystrix. Its limbs contained her darkness, her vicious desperation, merged with Randidly’s desire to survive. The fusion of those two aspects turned out to be unexpectedly overwhelming. Relying on those two aspects, the Grim Chimera was birthed onto the scene, possessing the hard edges and quick reactions to thrive even when separated from the main body and forced to fight against Nether Beasts on the frontlines.

Another impossibility, although one only necessary for a limited amount of time. The forged scales of darkness careened off an invisible edge like a waterfall, fluttering in the air and crashing in a hushed mass. The beginning of a direction emerged within the accumulating flows of Nether. Perhaps… seeking to resolve all the details is not the correct method.

More distractions fluttered away, striped from the Grey Creature’s mind. The streamlined and gleaming purpose of evolution steadily grew more apparent, in the depths of its consciousness. Birthed from the many forms of chaotic violence the Grey Creature had experienced to get here, but born from a single word.

Advance. A dark smog of possibility wafted up over the impact sight of the scale waterfall. Ripples set the diffused arrangement to quivering. What does it mean to advance?

The Grey Creature remembered twisting and evolving, becoming a monster with Randidly’s face, a beast designed to survive no matter the threats arrayed around him. A pure horror that survives during the nightmare, no matter how else it need exist. When the brimstone and ash Grim Chimera finally accepted the role that Yystrix played in its life, in its formation, it could take another step forward. With that acknowledgment came power. One method of advancement was taking a long look at yourself without looking away. Being able to see and accept your truth, even if it is uncomfortable to you.

Yet to shine the light into every dark cavity isn’t the method that got us here. Because the focus shifted from perspective to defined shape, The darkness hummed. Images are powerful in their detail, true. The Grey Creature is a form of great potency. And yet…

No longer does it hint at impossibility. The alien horror vanished, replaced by the cruel mother.

Nether began to whirl more quickly around the Grey Creature. Thick veins of significance branched off and sank into the depths, connecting with the emerald eyes Randidly had possessed since the day he was born. Sharpened and made almost magical by the System, but whose rich color he had gotten from his parents.

An anchor, to support a powerful framework. With space enough to possess a detailed foundation and depths mysterious enough to inspire awe and fear.

Visions of Randidly’s parents appeared before the Grey Creature. A father with a compulsion to advance through his career, morphed into a beast with an endless hunger with the arrival of the System. Who had met his son and seen how much he had accomplished and been so aghast and fearful and proud he had hidden away. On his own, he fought against his hunger until he quietly starved away. A man whose only answer to his weakness was to die with his pride.

A mother who hadn’t been ready for a child. Who had done her best, when she could, but who needed more space than a child knew how to give. A mother who left Randidly alone in his bedroom while she indulged in her desires.

The base elements in conjunction, generating a result at least passably understandable. A humanoid… and yet. The deeper one digs, the more questions arise.

The bitter ash hanging around the Grey Creature’s nascent form began to stir and swirl with the flow of Nether. His Nether Core began rotating with so much smooth speed heat seeped outward, born of the friction of significance on significance. The light of the emerald eyes began to dim, allowing the shadows to caper as dragons, mixing and devouring each other.

In the core area of the transformation, the Grey Creature breathed deeply of its own essence. It tasted pain and struggle. It tasted a thousand wounds, both physical and mental. Its body shuddered, burdened by scars. A thousand passages, the great labyrinth of its existence carved into its bones.

The image found itself laying on Randidly’s childhood bed, staring up at the ceiling. Dark clouds and pulsing clouds of energy formed its body. A cloak of hammered darkness and subterfuge spread above its head, a rippling sheet of silky darkness. The Grey Creature sat up, the cloak whispering across the bed as he moved.

Right now, to advance… is to break out of this place. The Grey Creature raised its hand, the fingers flickering and multiplying, still short of settling on a final form. Yet as the desire to break out of this memory rose within him, a burning intensity surged through his chest and limb. To break out of myself. To shatter my own understanding. Because what have I been doing by advancing my mastery of Aether and Nether but reinforcing the limitations of my own perspective?

And that is many things, but it is not Alchemy.

The Grey Creature remembered Alta Bounty’s body toward the end of her self-destructive crusade, metal and furnace replacing flesh and heart. The power she craved, found in searing heat and sacrifice. A power sought at the expense of all else. A path chosen without the assurance of success, followed without regret.

Penance… another tool of balance. As Nether advances, it becomes increasingly structured. Which means I’ll need to rely on Aether more and more… to maintain that sense of dread I grew to expect from the System.

The dread of never knowing what next pitfall toward which I walk.

The walls of the memory began to tremble. Beyond that first memory, the Grey Creature also recalled Randidly Ghosthound’s moment of confusion earlier in the Sonara, when asked what he would want when everything was over. Because truthfully, he had given so little thought to what he would become after the final threat was dealt with. Or perhaps even when Randidly Ghosthound became the most feared being in existence.

A single human in the System who took steps slightly faster than his peers. Who learned, who survived, who grew until he could devour planets.

That… sounds like advancing.

That sounds like a being all others will begin to Dread, when they see his long shadow.

The burning in the Grey Creature’s chest intensified. Little cigarette nubs fluttered up and away from his torso, ignited and shredded. Partially smoldering still, they drifted around like fireflies. It hurt, but the Grey Creature knew pain intimately. And if this was the Path to improvement, he would advance directly through it.

Despite all the distractions having been forced away, one relevant moment fluttered to the surface. In his recent meeting with the Prophet, the horrid being’s eye-mouths leering at him. “A man cannot be a universe.”

The Grey Creature began to laugh. The thin skin of his current form began to flake and peel, unable to withstand the scorching certainty he held. Perhaps. Perhaps the cost is greater than I would like to admit. But it falls to me to bear the cost, doesn’t it? I am not alone. The Egg of Depression will never stop seeking a way to overcome impossibility. Yggdrasil will pulse with life and growth, healing even self-inflicted wounds. And I…

Memories fractured in front of the pulsing heat that the Grey Creature radiated. The walls of Randidly’s childhood bedroom cracked and disintegrated. The pulse of Nether around the Grey Creature grew stronger. Out in the darkness of the subconscious abyss, brief impressions waited.

Shal, his eyes wide and confused as he faced off against the Spearman to lift Tellus past the Second Calamity.

Yystrix, her face warped into a vicious sneer, demanding that Randidly submit to her.

Shal, his spirit broken and eyes empty, bearing the Armaments of the Swacc Family.

The heat within the Grey Creature’s body became pillars of white agony. Its lips curled up as it flashed its teeth. More and more of the shadowed possibilities of its form flaked away as incandescent nuggets, all the fat seared off the bone by the bonfire of his determination. He would advance, no matter the cost.

He did not fear the hungry maw of entropy waiting to drag him down to oblivion.

More memories flickered across his consciousness. Yystrix, laying peacefully on her tomb. The quiet tragedy of her existence, simply wishing to escape from the all-consuming obsession of her husband. Having given up on the child she birthed with a Nether King, feeling powerless and broken.

Elhume, chastened and desperate, asking Nether King Hungry Eye for his help to save Pine. The look of ugly shock on his face when Randidly had said no.

The Grey Creature’s rage spread like a plague through the subconscious. Distantly, even sheered away with the focus of the Visage of Obsession, it felt Randidly’s emotional sea begin to resonate with his desires. Huge waves of indignation and fury smashed against the carefully constructed edges of the streamlined obsession consciousness.

The Grey Creature felt its body grow numb, the nerve endings of his arms, back, and chest all fried and flaked away. In the expanse of the subconscious, its body became a living hive with thousands of burning embers fluttering around it, bobbing and weaving in constant motion. Nether seethed and tightened, creating a condensed core from which everything else came.

When actual substance couldn’t withstand the heat of its desire to advance, it could only create a body of pure significance.

However… this alone isn’t enough. The Grey Creature blazed higher and higher, its power rising, its long cloak of scaled whispers spreading wider and wider, with enough density and volume to smother even its own heat, but wasn’t satisfied. It stirred, stretching out blurred arms ending in claws and tearing at the subconscious.

With a few deft rends, a portal opened. The Grey Creature didn’t even worry for a second, simply trusted its instincts and walked through. To get here, I’ve kept moving and survived. However… the threats I now face won’t simply vanish if I flee. The dangers won’t dissipate or let me grow.

And… honestly, there is only so much more growth that is possible.

Moving into this new darkness felt like slipping into a placid lake on a moonless night. The darkness felt cool and all-consuming for several seconds before the Grey Creature’s body continued to release smoldering bits of ash to provide some illumination to the surroundings. The Grey Creature’s lips curled again as it stood within the Alpha Cosmos and stared down at the dark side of the moon.

“If this is here, then…” The Grey Creature looked up and grinned. Above, the bobbing and sloshing Sea of Dreams waited. Part watercolor aurora borealis and part dense energy field stolen from the Master’s Mountain, the vivid greens and harsh crimsons within the fickle depths seemed like an invitation.

The Grey Creature walked forward and the Nether Core of Randidly Ghosthound began to churn out a vicious tide of Nether. “Woven darkness, forged dreams, molten desire, alchemy and desperation… My edges will be pitiless and my feet ephemeral. No Path will bar me. If my foes use the world against me, I will target even the balance of this existence. Hear my footsteps and weep, universe. I come into my dire inheritance.”

Recalculating…

Your Nether Core is advancing! Rotation has reached perfect equilibrium, significance begins to gather. The Second Authority of your Nether Core will soon condense!

The being that had once been Grey Creature took three steps forward, dragging a long cloak of whispering darkness behind it. It smiled as it plunged into the waves of dense emotional energy and the whirling dark substance of its body began to boil.

With your Authority-

Recalculating…

With all of your Authorities, your Nether Core nears it next evolution! Once you have chosen a Penance, your Nether Core Rarity may advance to Pinnacle!