Chapter 726 (1/2)

Randidly found it academically interesting that the people in his Soulskill subsisted mostly on using secondhand images of his to fight, but it swiftly became clear that this Alta was not someone who could be a fair benchmark of Randidly’s mastery of images. Hell, if what Randidly believed was correct, no one could match him here.

After all, he was the source of everything. The best they could hope for would be to pull him into a draw.

So he waved his hand and hit the smoldering ash that Alta had summoned with an image of frigid ash. Like a sandcastle, Alta’s image collapsed and the air was suddenly clear.

Still, the fact that she could do so much with her images was pretty impressive. Especially since the images were essentially his. That line of thought, of course, made Randidly wonder whether he and the woman in front of him were similar in some strange way. But ultimately, Randidly knew it was more than that. Randidly felt it deeply, the karma that he and this woman shared.

But he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. In the air around them was a... magnetic attraction. This moment was supposed to happen. Yet it was thought Randidly was pushed into an acting role without being fed his lines. He felt lost.

What he had been able to figure out was why he was having such periodic chest pain. It seemed like there were several places on his World Tree that people were drilling into it and extracting its energy for their own uses. Normally, this wouldn’t have affected Randidly quite as much as it did, but he could also sense that the Ashen and Frigid images that he was flooding his Soulskill with could not be easily handled by the tree.

The combination of the damaging images and the siphoning of his energy were combining to destabilize the Seven Lands. That much was for sure. Now all that remained was to speak with Lucretia at length and figure out if there was anything he could do about it.

Abruptly worried, Randidly reached out and felt realty. His Absolute Timing Skill informed him it had been a little less than 30 seconds. That was reassuring. Although it wasn’t as great as laying in that dark suppression chamber, being out in the air certainly let him practice his images much more freely…

And more than anything, light-!

It had only been a week, but Randidly had been surprised to find how much he missed the warm light of the sun. Well, it wasn’t really a sun. It was a magical phenomenon that mimicked the behavior of the sun here. Still, it was satisfying to feel its light on his skin.

More than the Mana Engraving, Randidly had a newfound appreciation for what light could accomplish.

“You are very strong,” Alta said suddenly.

Randidly looked over at her and couldn’t keep a twisted smile off his face. She looked up at him with an expectant expression, but he had no answers for this thing of karma twisted to look like a person. “What is strength…?”

After all, although he was able to overwhelm her image, was that really impressive? She was a minor figure inside of his soul. And in the real world, Randidly was stuck in a room that he couldn’t escape from. Sure, he was using the situation as a whetstone to improve his strength and he had some ideas as to what to do, but…

He was long way from being strong. The brief and violent clash against the Propagator had proven that.

Randidly’s expression turned grim. That was the lowest level of opponent waiting on the world stage, and already Randidly had fallen. It was a temporary setback, Randidly knew. But the brief taste of fighting against real powerhouses made him wary. As much as he could, he needed to improve himself now.

Some part of Randidly knew that after this, his next opponent would not be so gentle with him.

Abruptly, Randidly looked guiltily up at Alta. But it seemed that instead of feeling ignored, she was… oh, she was thinking about his question. That was fine in Randidly’s eyes.

After a few minutes, Alta had an answer. “...strength is the prerogative to consume. It is the ability to control how this world will end.”

Randidly’s eyes were sharp as he considered Alta and her strange answer. “That is not a what. That is one possible way it can be used.”

“Is it?” Alta said lightly. It seemed that some of the deference she had gained after their fight was rapidly departing. Instead, she offered him a teasing smile. “What is strength but the ability to destroy? You are a user of ash, you should understand it as well. All things are Ash. From ash we have come, from ash we will return. That is life.”

Randidly’s gaze held Alta’s for several long seconds. Somewhere deep in his chest a tightly wound ball of sadness sighed.

But now Alta was building up steam. “You ask what strength is, but it is a false question. Strength implies an absolute value, whereas the only important thing is the relative positioning. Compared to me, you are strong. But compared to Creta…? You are just as helpless. Because strength is a label given to those that have the clout to dictate how the world will be consumed.”