Chapter 376 (1/2)

Randidly had… a lot of emotions. Sure, these things seemed amazing, and an improvement on his previous skills… and the names were cool... but…

Did he really need to fucking have 19 Skills become 4?!?!? And these were Skills that he used all the time too! Most of them were near 100 in level, and would likely continue to grow, independent of each other, fueling his Path craze… but he supposed if he was switching to the Class track anyways….

It was still frustrating. But Randidly could only sigh, and turn to the most recent notification that popped up.

Congratulations! You are the first individual on your planet to obtain a Legendary Ranking Skill! You have obtained access to “the First Legend 0/???” Path.

Another reward path? Well at least there would be some positives out of this… Randidly dismissed that notification, but then was greeted by something that made his heart sink.

You have abundant vital energy remaining! Cascading Synergy detected!The effects spread.

“Noooooooooooooooooooooo! My skills!” Randidly shouted, falling to his ‘knees’ in his Soul Zone. Lucretia and Neveah spared him a glance, then shook their heads, and muttered to each other about shirking responsibility, and slacking off.

Consolidating… the Skills Anguish, Rejection, Torment, Curse Resistance, and Flesh Eating Virus have been consolidated… Creating new Skill… based on other available themes, the Skill “the Cruel Indignation of Yggdrasil (A)” has been created! Based on the average level of your skills, the Skill level has been set at 92.

Cruel Indignation of Yggdrasil: With the same hands you support life, you can take it away. There is an active and passive effect. The Active unleashes your inner horrors upon the world, warping and damaging the fabric of reality in the area around you. You will also experience the repercussions. Effect increases with Skill level. Passively, all attacks, Mental and Physical, will inflict increased pain, susceptibility to status ailments, and weariness upon recipients. This effect remains for 10 minutes, and the timer will reset if another stack of the effect is added. The effect stacks to the level of the Skill.

So… the final count was 24 Skills become 5, huh…

Randidly chuckled to himself, falling to his knees. Well… now at least… he had other things to test and experiment with….

Sighing, Randidly left his Soul World. At this point, he wouldn’t be able to focus on studying Aether, not with all the strange and sudden changes that occured. Instead, better to address the strange turmoil in his chest, figuring out what exactly had changed. So he felt himself slip back to his physical body, touching it.

Immediately, everything was roaring around him, hot and present, a vibrant heat that seemed to fill him, illuminating his insides with pure heat and fire. The strange sensation was so sudden that as Randidly’s eyelids trembled, he gasped.

Was he being attacked…? But now, this-

A breath of air rushed into his lungs, filling them, setting them on fire. They tingled and twitched, and his whole body began to spasm lightly. With his eyes still pressed shut, Randidly rolled on the ground of his cabin, flailing around for something to grab onto. Everything was burning and tingling, not really in a bad way, but in a way that was so present that it was overwhelming. It was like every part of his body had fallen asleep, and now it had to slowly wake back up again.

Finally, his hand landed on something, and Randidly desperately gripped the item. It snapped instead, crumbling into powder under his fingers.

Furious and feeling profoundly stupid, Randidly tried to open his eyes, but found his eyelids continued to play hookey, simply spasming. Randidly rolled a little further, and felt something give underneath his shoulder as he rolled. Then he felt something else collapse on him.

Randidly lay there for several seconds, savoring the strange new feeling of his sharpened senses, which were slow adjusting to his new body. It didn’t feel… more detailed, really. It just felt… strangely intimate. And of all the Skill effects to strike him… Randidly first noticed the understanding of the natural world. Around him, he could feel the warmth of the ground, as the sun’s heat slowly was syphoned off by the cooling night. He could feel the roots and bugs and small rodents around him, struggling. He could feel how they would eat each other, get eaten by something larger, and then die, giving food for the least and smallest.

Randidly let out his breath, his consciousness tracing across this grand cycle. Another mistake, however, because his breath came out too fast, causing him to sneeze. His whole body seized at this twitching, and threw the portion of the roof that had collapsed on him off of his body.

“Fucking…” Randidly slowly stood, on one leg, from laying on his back, straightening the leg under him and pushing himself up without any problems.

At the end of it, he found himself striking a strange sort of yoga pose, his arms at his sides, leaning backwards, bent at the waist. His other leg stretched out in front of him. The leg underneath him was rock solid.

Hmm…. This level of balance...

He hopped on the leg a few times, delighting in the perfect balance. While he was doing that, Randidly discovered that he could move his other leg, with basically no change in his balance. He began to spin it in a great circle. Except, during one of his little hops, his instincts somehow got spooked as he stepped on a small bit of debris.

Pinwheeling his arms, Randidly attempted to straighten, but overcorrected, unused to his new reactions. He ended up face planting on the ground.

It didn’t hurt, exactly, except his pride, but his face did buzz pleasantly, seemingly delighted to have new sensations flowing through it. With an aggrieved expression, Randidly stood up the normal way this time. He found himself face Neveah, who was showing him her teeth.

Worse than me. She said, annoyingly smug, delighting in the destroyed cabin and the wreckage he had made of the tables and chair. Randidly wanted to say something about being new to this body, but could only hold his tongue bitterly. After all, Neveah had the same excuse…

And his body hadn’t changed completely like hers, just the passive, underpinning Skills that he had grown so used to using were replaced by something bigger, newer. A strangely powerful new engine, that left him shocked.

Randidly checked around, but no one was here. Carefully, he lifted up a hand cupping it to the sky.

And then he showed the world the Cruel Indignation of Yggdrasil.

Instantly, the air in front of him began to roil and twist, mixing with itself and hissing. Very quickly, the effect spread to his entire body, and then to the surrounding area, creeping outward. The ground crumbled and cracked, the wood of the cabin rotted. Then another wave spread from his hand, and Randidly was forced to grit his teeth as the pain and the strange buzzing grew stronger.

The air was popping now, the ground seething beneath him, warping and self-destructing, even as the wood had melted into a puddle of steaming liquid.