Chapter 913 (2/2)

The stars slid across the horizon, and after a long night of rest, the sun yawned and strolled upward into the sky.

Sighing, Randidly leaned back and cracked his neck. There was progress, but it wasn’t enough. The combined style was too flawed. It certainly combined the offensive power of both Styles, but it lost a lot of the defensive capability from both of the originals. Although Randidly could still borrow the momentum in a capacity with the new Style, it wasn’t as complete of a feat. He could not always avoid harm.

Now, at this point, Randidly had quite a bit of Health, so he could create a Style that relied heavily on his high Attributes, but…

Randidly looked up sharply to see someone was walking up the path toward his hut. The figure was cloaked in a heavy coat that seemed to ignore the warm rays of the sun, but it only took a small sample of the other’s Aether for Randidly to sense who it was: Helen.

Then his eyebrows rose. Holy hell, Helen pushed all the way to Level 50 since we’ve arrived in Donnyton?!? And she-

There was a clear flavor in the air. A Fate hung over Helen. Randidly’s focus rapidly shifted to the woman slowly walking up the path toward him.

This one, quite like the one that Alana possessed, was formed totally out of energy that she had taken from him. And unlike the Fates given by the System, it did not bind her Aether in a way that made it entirely unrecognizable to Randidly.

Randidly remained silent as Helen moved quickly up the path. She clearly had something to say, because she trudged up the hill with her head down. An aura of contemplation filled the air around her, urging silence of the surroundings.

When she arrived she looked sharply up at Randidly and spoke. “Randidly. Back from your vacation?”

Likely Helen had meant that comment as a jovial way to break the ice, but her clearly anxious mood made the comment sound extremely scathing. But despite that, Randidly laughed. “Ha! Yea, I’m back. I assume I know why you are here.”

Baring her teeth, Helen nodded. “The challenge. Fighting against all of Donnyton. I want to be part of it.”

“Why?”

Helen blinked. It seemed she had expected Randidly to reject her out of hand, so his casual question appeared to have thrown her for a loop. She blinked several more times as her mind scrambled to find an answer.

Obviously, Helen’s immediate response was something like ‘it seems like fun to fight so many strong people’. For all that the final image Shal used to ascend wasn’t focused around chaos and death, it did glorify violence. And Helen was born and bred on that wartorn planet of the spear.

But Helen was also sharp enough to know that such an answer wouldn’t be enough to sway Randidly if he really didn’t want her to fight.

As Helen struggled with her own thoughts, Randidly settled his.

Some part of Randidly’s pride didn’t want to allow Helen to participate, but she had clearly exhausted herself in an endeavor to power up enough to participate. Due to her actions, both her own Level and the Skill Level of Randidly’s Domain had moved steadily upward. Those actions alone earned her merit enough that Randidly was willing to consider her participation.

Yet there was another motivation factor: Helen also had a powerful image.

It was one thing for Randidly to demonstrate his personal strength in this challenge. But what he wanted to impress upon Donnyton was how influential images were. It was possible that his ability to suppress them might be written off simply as his own overwhelming strength, but both of them acting in tandem would prove to Donnyton how important images are.

Or at least, that was the hope.

...Even though it seems like Sam has already picked up what images can do. Randidly thought with a grimace. What would the older man say if he found out that his items had created a whole new continent in Randidly’s Soulskill…?

But there were two prerequisites for Helen participating in the Donnyton challenge. The first was sheer power. Randidly would need to make sure she had the oomph necessary to fight by his side against Donnyton. A weak image would just muddle his message.

Not that he believed Helen’s image was weak. But it might still be overly restricted by the bindings of his Domain.

And the second reason…

Finally, Helen seemed to come to a decision. After releasing a breath, she looked Randidly directly in the eyes and said, “Because I’m your knight. If you fight, then it is my duty to fight as well.”

Randidly’s eyes flashed. Exactly. You need to be strong to fight at my side. But for this fight… we also need to be connected by a concrete image.

“Fine,” Randidly said lightly.

If Randidly thought that Helen was blinking before, this flutterstorm of eyelashes put her previous shock to shame. “Uh…. what….?”

“You can fight,” Randidly said again with a nod. “...provided you can help me with something important.”

Behind Randidly, the root avatars tightened their grip on their spears. Randidly had pushed the solo training as far as it could go in a short amount of time. It was time to test out the merged styles on a real opponent.