Chapter 754 (2/2)

Perhaps one solution was to simply flood it with Aether and hope for the best, but Randidly figured that would be foolish. What he wanted was a base that would last. Originally he had planned to destroy the image associated with the Class itself and then remake the legs underneath it, but now that he was here Randidly realized it wasn’t realistic. For all that the Progenitor of the Four-Shaded Evolution was broken, the Class itself was thriving.

With the legs behind it, it was too powerful. That meant building from the bottom up, and then use that momentum to smash the Class image to remake it.

“Well then,” Randidly said, making hammers and pillars purely out of Aether. “Let’s begin.”

BOOOOOM.

His whole Soulspace trembled as Randidly smashed into the five legs that held up the Class. The way it worked was the Class itself was truly like a scaffolding around his core, which was a tall tower of layered energy and images. Those were what his Class had created by existing. The Skills and Stats he had absorbed from it. So he couldn’t strike with his true mental strength. But it needed to be enough.

Randidly needn’t have worried. The weakened leg gave way immediately, and afterward, the surrounding legs collapsed. They weren’t actually the Class, just this added meaning that was being woven into himself.

Of course, seeing that truth laid out like this rankled, but he couldn’t deny that he had obtained benefits from it. So he would ignore it for now.

But in the collapsing of the legs, Randidly did confirm that the image suffusing the whole of the Class was rock solid. It would cost him too much to reform it like this. He needed energy, momentum, and a pattern.

So as his pillar of Aether slammed into place to stabilize the shaking central substance of the Class, Randidly reached out for the place where the weakened leg had been. This had been the whole issue, and it was the signal that his Soulskill was so far off the beaten path that he truly needed to intervene to fix it. In naming this leg, he needed both to strike a blow at the hold the Ashen Image had on his Soulskill, and leave room for him to remake his Soulskill. After all, this would be pointless if the same thing happened in fifteen Levels.

Randidly grinned at the spot and raised his hands. “For you, Rejt, Allica, and Alta… I’ll be the Lighthouse of the Boundless World.”

In his mind, the brilliant emerald light of his Ignition of the Emerald Essence exploded like a beacon at the top of a tower. That would be the guiding light of inspiration that the people of his Soulskill would need to survive.

Already his Aether pillars were giving way, so he poured himself into the crafting of the image of a boundless world spreading outward from that lighthouse. A place where there were no more lands giving them a hierarchy. Just a world to explore, with that lighthouse at the center that was the hope of home…

As the support pillars began to buckle and his Class substance shook, the first leg snapped into place. It steadied the Class somewhat, but Randidly still pulled deeply from the Aether vortex. He needed power. He felt a blood vessel in his hand pop in the physical world but ignored it. The support system was rapidly propped back up so Randidly could move on.

To his surprise, when Randidly reached for the next leg, he touched the Creature’s addition: Poison of the Fickle Aether. His first reaction was shock, which was swiftly followed by anger. But then came a strange sense of melancholy. For all that Randidly hated the Creature… he was tied to it. His Soulskill and Class were tied to it. He couldn't’ escape that truth.

Just like the Creature would never escape the fact Randidly would annihilate its plans for Earth.

“For you… Longing of the Banished Wind,” Randidly said softly. With the pattern in place, this leg came together more quickly. No, it wasn’t due to the pattern, Randidly had to admit to himself. It was because Randidly had experienced the Creature’s sad existence in those memories recovered from the charred portion of its soul. Randidly knew intimately its deep fear and paranoia. He had seen through its eyes.

All it wanted, in the beginning, was peace, but it was being pursued. So, like the wind, it fled. But in fleeing, it had seen itself warped beyond recognition.

As that leg snapped into place and rapidly assisted one of the bowing pillars, Randidly reached again. This time, he came back with Mrs. Hamilton’s Leg. Protector of Humanity’s Final Enclave.

“I will be the Loyal Benefactor of the Weak,” Randidly said, even as he felt his Crown stir. “I have been away for too long, and too easily allowed others control. I won’t make those mistakes again. “

Quick as a spark, that one was repurposed and reassembled. Randidly reached again. Aemont this time, appearing in one last burst to give him Phantom of the Foreshadowed End.

“Lodestone of the Black Wanting,” Randidly said, feeling Aemont’s constant unwillingness to cease. Such was Aemont's dedication to the love of his life that he broke the constraints of the images of Tellus and created a Skill that could slay a Propagator. Randidly had learned recently that Propagators weren’t nearly as immortal as they had been made out to be, but the reality of it was that those who could kill them, hadn’t.

Aemont had been the first. That was how much he had craved it. It was greed and it was ambition and it was a deep stubbornness that Randidly still carried with him.

That was the fourth leg, so when Randidly reached he found the final one easily. The leg from the Patron of Ash. The leg from Ulaat, the young boy who had burned down his whole world and been consumed by the ashes.

“I’m sorry. Here you lie, buried. And I will stand above you, a monument. A Lesson for those of Brittle Will.” Randidly said. He bowed his head. The final leg snapped into place.

But even so, as the Aether began to swirl faster around him and other blood vessels in his body ruptured, he remained silent. That was the deep respect he felt for what Ulaat had accomplished, for all that he had hurt Randidly with his lack of control. A small show of literal bloodletting as the energies crashing around in his Soulspace made themselves felt in his physical body.

Only after five seconds passed did Randidly move.

Slowly, Randidly looked up toward the top of his Class, where the heavy image of the Planting of the Forest of Enmity stood. Stripped of its legs and assailed by strange images, it trembled. Grinning, Randidly made a fist and smashed it to pieces. Then with a thought, he floated up and gathered those fragile shards, buoyed by the legs’ surging power, to land atop his Class.

“From now on I will be… Lord of the Baleful Wood.” Randidly intoned carefully, for when he named himself he felt the immediate becoming. “Weep, Tellus, for tomorrow, I will ride to war.”

The image of that Class formed a singularity, sucking the Aether into it like a rip in the fabric of space. Even Randidly was caught up in the rapid restructuring, swept away by the energy to rest in a deep slumber as his body rushed to catch up with what was happening.