Chapter 2214 (Patreon)

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

Randidly’s emotional sea rose in response to his need. Emotions flooded through his body, desperation, fear, anger, hatred, and a pure admiration for violence. These spun together in a whirlwind-like form, eventually each emotion settling down and siphoning off to the image it most matched with.

Enmya walked forward, his symbols orbiting around his body like a black wicker posse protecting a celebrity. Randidly moved to meet him, spinning Acri, feeling Sulfur’s Combat Furnace activate. But even though Randidly’s body had been repeatedly reinforced with Nether, his skin began to smolder and burn underneath the energy released by this strange being.

The purple-black mountain of Nether in front of him seem so high he felt like he should be able to see the Pinnacle from the top. More rolled down the surface every second, spewed out and intensifying the hurdle. Now, he just needed to carve a path.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nyx’s Successor Births Fate (GD) has grown to Level 999!

With narrowed eyes, Randidly followed the flows of energy. Compared to the dense and violent energy patterns coming out from the symbols, the original note from Enmya’s own Nether Core felt much more manageable. A smile crossed Randidly’s face as he squeezed his spear. Let’s check whether the blunt approach really won’t work.

For the first time, Randidly pulled his three images together in a single activation, each shimmering with their emotional affect. Each with a thick river of Nether flowing through them, image and history working in tandem. Cloak of Utter Night. Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil. Diffracted Corruption from an Avaricious Impossibility.

The three images burned with power. The combined activation missed slightly; Randidly couldn’t quite balance the aggressive new Dread Homunculus compared to the others. But he had plenty of experience utilizing simultaneous activations and the attempt didn’t fail. So he rushed forward, cloaked in darkness, driven by the powerful physique of Yggdrasil. To fight against the radiation of this strange Nether Apparatus, Randidly released his tight grip on the corrupting power of the Stillborn Phoenix.

He blazed with the invasive light of an alien animus, shredding the nearby Nether simply with sheer incompatibility.

The edges of the event horizon on his left hand trembled, sending liquidized light rippling outward. It was a mouth that wanted to curl into a gleeful smile, while also hungrily sucking down as much as it could manage. Strange, chaotic ripples buzzed out from Randidly’s hand as he pounced into the edges of Enmya’s Nether mountain.

He crashed against the edges, earning a pounding headache as tight bands of significance wrapped around his body while simultaneously scratching at his psyche. His radiation might have sheered through the new layers dripping down the mountain with every eruption, but the dense energy around the black wicker symbols had more spin. With a growl, Randidly tore his way directly through the physical impediments and shoved his images forward. But the pulsing effect of Enmya’s zone strengthened with each step.

Even worse than the pain was the silence. Randidly felt abruptly underwater after he forced his way into the layered Nether, with only the buzzing chords of the symbols around him.

“You are a minor individual in a universe beyond your understanding.” Enmya’s vicious eyes closed briefly as his voice cut through the silence. The signal from his Nether Core shifted. The different sigils hanging in the air began to shift slightly, most of them drifting in Randidly’s direction like the tips of icebergs poking out into existence, dragging behind them huge masses of significance. “Chance has conspired to give you a poor understanding of your situation; some tests are impossible, that is simply life. It is just a matter of how long you can live in ignorance before you limits are revealed.

Randidly gritted his teeth. He felt even the Cloak of Utter Night, resonating with his Second Authority to possess power beyond understanding, beginning to shrink back. The Nether mountain was so dense, such a solid edifice it simply endured Randidly’s images without response. So he physically churned through the energy, slashing with Acri and moving into the small flawed energy.

Enmya studied him as he continued to stomp his way forward. “Likely, I will spare you, once your primitive Nether Core has been broken. You can start again, following a more enlightened path.”

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 975!

Congratulations! Your Skill Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 936!

Randidly flared the whole of his Willpower, throwing it behind the furious rotation of his Nether Core and the way his images crackled and flared against the onslaught of Nether. Yet gradually, he could feel himself faltering before the vice-like Weight brought against him. He felt the deceased Nether Kings and Nether Heralds watching him, small beads of consciousness lingering in the black wicker symbols that signified their power.

To exert himself without even the smallest noise might have been humiliating for others, but he didn’t let it distract him.

Randidly’s toes curled against the ground to gather some small pinch of leverage before he took the next step. He could tell his heartbeat had quickened by the vibration in his chest, even if the noise was smothered. Perhaps Enmya believed he was the first and would be the last to deliver such a sanctimonious speech to him. Randidly didn’t waste the breath to tell him otherwise.

He stalked forward, never waving from his goal.

His opponent did not remain idle as Randidly approached. The environment belonged to Enmya almost totally. The sigils emitted their jagged energy signature, ripping into the fabric of Randidly’s images. The Cloak of Utter Night absorbed much of the damage and another chunk was directly perverted by the diffracted radiation of the Stillborn Phoenix, yet a little passed through.

Rather than doing any more damage or making an attempt to suppress him, any energy that squeezed through his defenses had an even more ominous goal. It sunk into his Nether Core, affecting the rotation with a slight vibration. However, the tremor only lingered for a half second before his energy stabilized it.

Randidly’s eyes flashed as he plotted his next step forward. Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe. Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs. Erebus’ Baleful Waltz.

This time, the images came together much more smoothly. Being in the midst of the aggressive resonance of Enmya’s sigils set the edge, allowing the three images to balance each other perfectly in a sudden burst of power against a common foe. The event horizon of the Stillborn Phoenix became the eye, cracking open. Randidly felt his Nether Core shiver in response, the moniker ‘Hungry Eye’ almost becoming a part of his existence.

The name became an implied Authority, for even the Nether mountain shivered in response.

Congratulations! Your Skill Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe (T) has grown to Level 931!

Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 895!

Once the eye opened, the ‘sky’ broke. Thick spatial cracks rippled outward, a forceful rejection of the Nether suppression across his body. With an opening, Randidly and the thousands of specters within his Cloak of Utter Night leapt forward, passing close between sinuous two sigils. His skin sizzled, the energy so thick and caustic it felt like goopy acid lathered across his body. Moving nearer to Enmya took him deeper under the thumb of the history born in these refined pieces of Nether Core.

But Randidly also sensed he needed to break this display from the inside.

He scraped through and landed, his feet aching from the assault of the foreign energy. Yet the wicked smile remained in place on Randidly’s face as he traced the chaotic interactions of the different sigils. They pivoted and drifted closer to him, but that meant their sharp energies buzzed quite close to one another. Your ability to handle so many different notes is truly sublime. But what happens when those interactions begin to break down?

Randidly hopped sideways in the purple haze of partially condensed significance, hyperfast, his exposed skin still burning. A split second later, six hundred and twenty-three specters groaned and attempted to imitate the motion. But by that point, Randidly had rolled forward. When he popped to his feet, the first specters still swinging their arms, he jittered side-to-side, right hand ending in claws and left-hand housing an event horizon swinging in a particular pattern.

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 995!

Two, three, four, five, six waves of specters came into being, struggling to follow his movements with their clumsy and misshapen limbs. Opposite him, Enmya’s eyes opened, as though realizing Randidly hadn’t simply capitulated and allowed the lesson to be delivered unto his body. Almost simultaneously, a bit more of those strange, discordant notes pressed through Randidly’s defensive images and reached his Nether Core. From within the core of his bleak mountain of energy, the Sovereign wasn’t idle.

A silent vigil it might be, but not a casual one.

The light from the emerald blaze of Randidly’s gaze brightened. He wants to bring my Nether Core into alignment. Pull it into this fucking symphony and grind it to dust.

Not that knowing would help Randidly stop it. It just meant his resolve to shred this strange Nether Domain intensified. Once his shifting movements had created eleven flailing waves of movements, he refined each gesture into a series of repeated, overlapping motions. Standing under the Cloak of Utter Night, he became a faceless force that waved a thousand arms, grasped with ten thousand claws.

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 996!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1001!

He found the thin fault lines between consequences and lashed out. Hallucinations of the Bloodless Heart. Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Carrion Stirs. The Wrathful Calamity Rends.

His three images came together perfectly. The dark specters of Erebus’ Baleful Waltz were hallucinations, but the Stillborn Phoenix armed them with need and the vicious blades of gravitational force. Empowered by the image, they surged like an army within his form, aspects of darkness that touched and stilled Enmya’s core signal.

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Carrion Stirs (T) has grown to Level 950!

And once the churning waves of significance stilled, those thousands of hateful hands could rend open the flaws.

For a split second, the heavy silence remained, likely the oppressive reason Enmya had been called the Sovereign of the Breathless Vigil crouching across the whole volume of his energy mountain. But then the bubble popped. Then Randidly heard the sounds of his own breath, the buzzing presence of the sigils, the mutter and whispers of the nearby Nether Warriors. The working had been broken, with this Nether Core not yet infected by whatever insidious energy Enmya wielded.

Randidly pounced forward toward Enmya’s body; he had rent apart the opponent’s ability, but all the sigils lingered in the air. He didn’t want to waste any more time. His fingers tightened around Acri’s shaft and he gathered his images for a thrust-

Enmya shook his head, almost sadly. “As expected, you dig your own grave.”

Randidly’s skin crawled, just as unpleasant a sensation as the caustic Nether gnawing at him. Wrapped in a cloak of night, he jittered sideways out of the way as a concentrated beam of Nether aimed to pierce his heart.

His eyes fixated on one of the black wicker sigils, which blazed with flames of Nether Weight now that the Nether Mountain had fractured around him. It had been the first, but soon the score of others in the surrounding space also began to shimmer with power. Small seeds of Nether Blasts formed around the symbols as they drifted closer, their harsh notes tearing at the air.