Chapter 558 (1/2)

As the group headed South, Randidly checked in with Tatiana. To his surprise, the woman he had felt so close to recently spoke distantly, and only when prodded. She did inform him that the doctor was with Kenneth, and as of yet, there was no sign of the Unity Church coming back to make trouble. It had only been a few hours, but the lack of anything was a little disconcerting.

Meanwhile, Nathan assured Randidly that he would soon be able to get in and see Kenneth before anything happened. He was just less mobile than Randidly and would need to walk back from the shantytown.

The actual process of cleaning out the lake worked surprisingly well. Randidly used his Incendiary Eruptions and a huge amount of monsters charged to the surface, enraged by this disturbance to their normal activities. Although they were all mid-30s, they came out confused and most were destroyed by Tykes and Dinesh before anything could happen.

The two of them worked in perfect sync, which Randidly made a note of. It seemed the two of them had been practicing in the borderlands without him.

The real trouble was keeping their actions out of the scanning radiuses of the military bases that had been set up around the lake. This was made more complicated by the fact that the recent attack had really pushed the tension present on the bases to a new high. There were patrols almost every hour.

Randidly was very tired of throwing dead Raid Boss bodies back into the lake in order to avoid later detection. It would be hard to avoid them noticing something, but that wasn’t really an issue. Once they were gone, there was no way that they could figure out who had killed them all, even if they had figured out that much.

In fact, things were so boring that Randidly very quickly lost interest in the actual killing and turned his attention inward. More and more he spent time contemplating the way the weight and mass would be concentrated at the tip of his spear. Specifically, he focused on that destructive power, and what it would feel like.

Through his previous thoughts, he had slowly refined the image of the collapse of the weight. But what Randidly was missing now was actually a sense for what that weight meant. Randidly was almost bitter; why was this so simple the previous time?

He supposed that a lot of what he had accomplished previously was due to stealing the image from his opponent in the fight. That had added the necessary density to what he was trying to accomplish. Now, he had to build it all on his own. It was a different sort of labor.

As he was looking at the lake, however, Randidly wondered if they would soon connect to something like the ocean. Although it was probably dangerous, heading to deep waters might give him some insight into the pressure that that sort of density would possess. At the bottom of the sea, Randidly believed you would truly feel like the world was on you-

Randidly’s eyes sharpened. The flicked his wrist, and several Spearing Roots shot upwards to block the plasma bolts that were aimed for Dinesh and Tykes. Both of them reacted and leaped backward out of the water, but Randidly handled it much more efficiently.

Most of the Raid Bosses had been mopped up, but there was a lone figure standing in the shallows. It had blended in with the press of bodies and acted now to strike for something that would likely pass for a deadly blow against lesser men.

With another flick, more plants surged into motion. As he did so, Randidly scanned the horizon; no drones. Since he was using the Plant Dominance, safest to kill whoever this was. Besides…

As Randidly turned to regard the figure his eyes hardened. The body was metallic and steaming as it stood there. This was not a member of the military. It was either an independent or someone who actively wanted to protect the Raid Bosses that were breeding here. An agent of the Raid Bosses themselves? It wasn’t likely, based upon just seeing the metallic exterior.

That was man-made.

The figure reacted more quickly than Randidly expected. As soon as its attack failed, it turned and fled, diving into the water.

“Fuck no you aren’t getting away now,” Randidly growled, and he reached out towards the figure. “Grasp of Lava.”

The molten rock spurted upward and engulfed the body of the figure. The figure spasmed several times and then was still. Cursing quietly to himself, Randidly approached the mound of rock that was sitting in the shallows of the lake. With pure strength, he began to rip away the layers of cooling rock around the body.

Although he believed that the crushing attack of the spell likely killed whatever this was, he didn’t lower his guard.

“Dinesh, what’s the time looking like?” Randidly asked as he continued to free up the body.

Dinesh checked his watch. “We have three more minutes of safety. Four if you really want to cut it close.”