Chapter 759 (1/2)

When Randidly awoke, the first thing he felt was panic.

...wait, how long-

Thirty days, came the answer from his Skill, completely oblivious to the danger of laying around even a single extra day.

Randidly’s first instinct was to explode outward in a swift current of power. Although it wasn’t the best, momentum and the element of surprise were good enough weapons in a pinch. And yet just as Randidly gathered his Aether unto himself, more cautious parts of himself prevailed.

I’ve been left in here for this long without anything happening, so it’s not like there is any reason to move forward without a plan…

After shifting himself around to a more comfortable position, Randidly snapped his fingers and created a thin tongue of emerald flame to see by. Then he took a quick mental inventory.

His Class was remade. Randidly could sense the information pressing at him, but he wouldn’t experience it until he left this prison. But to know that he succeeded without any negative side effects was a relief. Ever since he had been infected by the Ashen Image, things had seemed to come with a price in his life. It was good sometimes to be able to just add a tick mark to the win column.

The other task that Randidly wanted to accomplish was reforming his Soulskill, but the threads of karma that he had woven during his brief visits to the Soulskill recent warned him to stay away for now. Although he would much prefer to do the work now, it wasn’t yet time; the Soulskill was still struggling to handle the changes Randidly had introduced with his new images.

After making a mental note to check in with his Soulskill this evening, Randidly scanned the prison. Then he grinned.

Time to leave.

It wasn’t like there were any great preparations to be made; Randidly had laid the groundwork before he had begun work on his Class. Now it was just a matter of using Aether to increase the power of those runes by an order of magnitude. They flashed bright and began to smoke. As the power reached a critical mass, the strange material of the prison shuddered.

Crack.

As soon as there was the smallest flaw in the exterior, Randidly’s vines and roots from the surrounding area dug their way into the break and ripped it apart. Randidly clenched his left hand into a fist and summoned a neon green Ignition Bolt that he held at the ready. With a flicker, his Crown of Cataclysm and Gloom was hanging over him, sharpening his every sense.

Ridding a wave of charred and ashen plant life, Randidly rose to the surface. It appeared that Randidly was in a sub-basement beneath a series of buildings, and Randidly opened up several Eruption of the Blazing Leylines underneath these buildings. The brilliant green energies hissed outward and began to gleefully consume the structures.

On a whim, Randidly gathered the spreading emerald flames into a long cloak that he called to himself. With the prison broken, notifications began to flood Randidly, but for now he ignored them. With his eyes burning like a chemical fire, Randidly rose from his prison ready to fight.

He was faced with the charred wreckage of the farm he just destroyed and nothing else.

Coughing lightly from the soot, Randidly let several seconds pass by, just in case the bad guy hadn’t gotten his cue. Several more seconds passed. With methodical movements, Randidly’s plants had eviscerated almost all of man-made structures on the farm. Nobody had emerged.

Where was Aiden Darke? Where was the Propagator?

Had they really just… thrown him in prison and intended to leave him there…?

Sighing, Randidly stepped off his plantlife and onto solid ground. But then a grin spread across his face. It was dusk, and the sky was purple red as the boldest of the star crept out to join the night sky. Even if he didn’t get the chance to fight today, Randidly was free. Almost in wonder, Randidly looked down at his hands. His fingers flexed powerfully.

In many ways, his time in the prison had reduced him to a purely mental creature. It was with relish that Randidly twisted and stretched his body without encumbrance. The speed at which Stamina replenish itself made Randidly sigh with pleasure.

Notifications filled his gaze like a sea. Randidly skipped through most of them, regarding his Mana and Stamina Deprivation, and also all the notifications about Skill Levels. Randidly was looking forward to filling up a Path, considering all the PP he seemed to have earned, but that wasn’t what Randidly was looking for. Even if he could intuit the meaning of the Skills he had gained, Randidly had gone unconscious soon after gaining his new Class.