Chapter 1069 (1/2)

After Vualla’s lonely pronouncement, Randidly had nothing to say. In his adventures, he had learned exactly how important it was that your images and your actions aligned almost perfectly. To allow for dissonance was to invite a fatal weakness into yourself. And when Vualla had asked her question to the empty night, Randidly had felt the gentle reverberation of denial from her image.

No, the woman who will destroy the System wouldn’t run away from a fight.

Yet even as Randidly recognized that, and recognized that his instincts would come up with the same answer, he couldn’t help but think of the main body. The main body had fallen for the arrogance of such an outlook many times and been thoroughly chastened by reality each time. In order to survive, the main body might recommend Vualla take a step back.

That is, of course, if the main body stopped wishing for her to die...

Perhaps because of the fact her veritable waterfall of hair was now done up in a braid, Vualla’s back looked extremely slender as she turned away and moved across the badlands back toward her camp. Even her huge metal gauntlets couldn’t cover up the desperate uniformity of her steps. This was the choice she was making, but it was not an easy one. And Vualla was aware of the consequences.

Although her image was prodding her toward this Path, Vualla was well aware of how this would likely end.

Even heroes need time to grow into their strength.

Silence was the only answer Randidly had for the Vualla who resigned herself to fight against every foe that was thrown into her path. He watched her without moving until she vanished back into her camp.

Yet despite the fact that he allowed Vualla to walk away without asking to accompany her, that did not mean that Randidly didn’t intend to help her. He was just aware that he would receive exactly the opposite answer that he had received when he had asked to accompany her on a walk a few days prior.

No, if Randidly had shown any desire to accompany her, she would have taken measures to stop him from doing so. Therefore, Randidly watched her go in silence. His eyes glittered as he slowly made plans for tomorrow. Then, still maintaining the silence, he returned to his tent and began to meditate.

Every chance to improve himself counted, especially now when he planned on heading to somewhere very dangerous. And suddenly, Randidly had a pretty fair hope of improving himself. Because one thing that Vualla had mentioned had given him a bit of inspiration.

The people in the camps treated the Nether stars as solely a source of the bubble; with that outlook, they were completely unable to control the bubbles to the point that too many of them could stack on top of one another to a troublesome degree. Even powerful individuals who had made it to the frontlines were unable to move underneath the stacked bubbles’ influence. Opposite but just as incorrect as these individuals, Randidly had been trying to move the cores without thinking about them in terms of what they were.

Both methods were insufficient because the core and the bubble were intimately connected. Treating them as anything other than a whole was squandering their abilities. They were intimately bound.

So this time, when Randidly turned his focus inward, he didn’t attempt to just move the core around. Instead, he focused on the connection between the core and the bubble. He felt their relationship. His energy and effort began to flow into that space between the two. Because he had two stars, there were two cores that slowly drifted apart and resonated with the surrounding bubble as his attention began to cause a reaction.

Feeling that change, Randidly didn’t try to control what was happening at all. He simply let the resonance build within himself. Soon, the cores began to align themselves naturally within his body. One settled in his clawed left hand, the other within the tip of his bone spear.

As they did so, Randidly felt the bubble around him change. Rather than staying uniform, much of the strength of the bubbles followed the cores to concentrate the thickest portion of the bubble around his arms and torso. Because of that, the covering around his head and legs became extremely thin. The covering was still present in those areas, but the concentrated force that now emanated from Randidly’s arms put the thinner areas to shame.

It was additional defensive energy, that was all at the moment. Still, Randidly grinned at the discovery.

His focus narrowed to a point as he carefully gathered his Willpower. Rather than let the resonance continue naturally, Randidly continued to pour himself into stimulating the connection between core and bubble while consciously moving the core out of his clawed hand. With great care, he pulled that core across his body and over toward his bone spear to join its sibling at the tip of the spear.

Of course, the difficulty of continually stimulating the resonance sharply increased as Randidly tried to move the cores around. It became even worse by the time Randidly had moved the other core to his right arm. Maintaining them in such close proximity was a lot like putting two magnets near each other; at close distances they repelled.

There was so much resistance that Randidly was sweating and gritting his teeth as one core was in the tip of the bone spear and the other had made it down to his elbow. But to proceed forward…

As was typical for his time at the frontlines, a headache was building behind Randidly’s eyes. Still, he continued to push and strain at the cores. They inched toward each other while digging in their heels like fanatical mules. Randidly let out a hissing breath between his tightly clenched teeth.

Then there was a glimmer of response from his core and abruptly the effort he was required to expend vastly decreased. Curious, Randidly turned his attention inward and discovered that a thin flow of Nether had diverted from the Nether Well and was spiraling down toward his right arm.

With increased density of Nether in the surrounding air, the two cores were able to drift closer to one another. Very soon, both were present in the tip of his bone spear and rotating rapidly around each other. A thin seed of Nether formed a ‘core’ between them and the two rotating cores became the ‘bubble’ of this new arrangement.