Chapter 980 (2/2)

-mutated, Randidly thought with a grimace. Probably my fault. I’m just adding so much Aether to air so quickly. But still… they probably have very valuable bodies…

“So, you both want your reward?” Randidly asked aloud. The leader of both groups nodded. But then they each sent a very confusing mental message to Randidly. After struggling to decrypt it for a few seconds, Randidly blinked and realized what was being asked of him. And the content of both messages was essentially the same.

Randidly rubbed his temples. “You want me to name your groups…? Both of you?”

They nodded. Randidly thoughtfully chewed on the inside of his cheek. Truthfully, Randidly understood where this was coming from. As soon the Riders had displayed intelligence and growth, he had generally expected something like this to happen. After all, the name of the Skill was Riders of the Baleful Court. And they emerged from his own Class.

Court likely in the older style, as in a court of nobles. Randidly’s suspicions were confirmed when they began to split into factions without an outside threat of any true capability. They were ultimately loyal to Randidly, as their Lord, but that didn’t mean they had to get along with each other. And if they were separate factions from each other, they would need identifying names or banners to tell themselves apart.

For a noble, as with a spear user of Tellus, their coat of arms and pride was almost more important than their own life.

So Randidly had already spared a few moments to these considerations between his intense image and physical training sessions. Nodding slowly, Randidly opened his mouth. He turned toward the medieval castle group first. “Alright. Henceforth… you will be known as the Legion of the Unbreakable Bulwark.”

A bruised and miserable figure briefly appeared in Randidly’s mind. When his emerald gaze focused on the leader of the new Legion, Randidly’s smile became bitter. “And as their leader… you need a name. From this day forward, you will be Kingsley.”

Then Randidly turned to the other group. “And you… will be the Legion of the Unavoidable Pivots. Your name, sir, will be… Trap.”

Although Randidly’s first visit to Tellus was one that was filled with bitter training and bloodthirst, there were a few moments of extremely precious interactions that Randidly treasured to this day. No matter how the both of their Paths diverged from his own… Randidly missed the simple days of beating up Roger and exchanging Earth business ideas with Claptrap.

At the moment, those spirited days truly felt like a different lifetime.

Then Randidly nodded shortly. “I’ll be gone for some time finding a new mine. Make sure you keep the monsters thin in the surrounding area.”

Before anyone else could bother Randidly, he rushed off. Flexing his fingers, Randidly signaled Acri to slither up his arm and form into a spear. For all that he had practiced combat Skill every day for the past month, it was still somewhat suffocating to spend so much time thinking about images and usage.

Sometimes, Randidly just wanted to let loose and lose himself in the thrill of exertion. Let loose his tight grip he kept on his skyrocketing Stats and simply run wild. Which was exactly what Randidly planned on doing now.

Due to the arrows pointing ominously toward the plateau, Randidly avoided that area for now. But this high-Level Dungeon was large enough that there were plenty of portions of the jungle that even Randidly’s zealous Riders hadn’t yet raided. Randidly headed South and East until he found an area that was infested with extremely large chameleons.

They came at him with remarkable aggression for a species that had natural camouflage abilities. Their sharp claws emitted a high pitched keening as they cut through the air toward him. Grinning, Randidly flexed his fingers and welcomed their valor with the infinitely sharp tip of Acri.

Randidly didn’t stop pushing roughly through their domain until even Acri was sated with experience. A trail of broken trees and charred bodies was left as a testament to his passage. Feeling rather refreshed, Randidly closed his eyes and spread out his Infinite Fingers of Yggdrasil while enjoying the even beats of his heart, searching for any sort of ore within the ground.

It took several hours, but Randidly eventually found a rather impressively sized silver mine into which he quickly dug. Although silver was much less suited to combat and industry, it had its own sort of appeal. For currency, jewelry, and for more delicate pieces of technology, silver was an acceptable substitute. Plus, it would serve as a good test to understand how effective Randidly’s knew smelting process really was.

He had been working with iron and the queer copper found in the mounds so far. Silver would help broaden his understanding of how his process impacted the metal.

Satisfied, Randidly returned to his base almost twenty hours after he had departed. One day of his promise to the mollusks down. Which would likely give him time to move the forging area farther away from his image training. Still, that relative peace didn’t come without cost; the Mana drained by the vast forming apparatus Randidly had cobbled together would skyrocket as the distance increased. Even with Randidly’s ridiculously cheap Skill, the number of roots he was manipulating would quickly add up.

Feeling rather pleased, Randidly took his time returning to his base. Yet when he encountered the patrols of his Riders on his way back, Randidly stopped dead. He blinked several times to confirm that he was currently seeing clearly.

Overnight, both groups changed. Or rather, their mounts changed.

The mounts were originally a strange combination of a rhinoceros, a camel, and a spider. They had four spindly limbs, the hump and lengthened neck of a camel, and their joints and forehead were covered with the wickedly dangerous horns of a rhino. Their skin was uniformly a dark grey.

Today, however, someone had fiddled with those knobs.

The Impenetrable Bulwark Legion now rode on something much, much closer to a rhino. The legs of their mounts had shortened and thickened. In addition, the rhinoceros horns had grown increasingly large and long. Their skin had become almost pitch black. As they moved, they left only trampled jungle in their wake.

The Unavoidable Pivots, perhaps appropriately, had chosen to up the spider content of their mounts. The legs were the same size, but now there were six spindly legs instead of four. Long fangs jutted out from the mount’s mouths. The skin had shifted to a hard shell, which was a deep navy blue.

Ultimately, Randidly shook his head and walked past the patrols without a word of comment. Better to focus on my own training.