Chapter 1086 (2/2)

Nothing was more frustrating than the fact that these early attempts had yielded him Skill Levels, even as they had sputtered out and accomplished nothing. It seemed to hint that these strange workings were indeed not like Engraving at all, where it was repetition and precision that earned him his Skill Levels. As the text of Nether Rituals had implied, these were a more ephemeral construction.

And they required faith to function.

Shaking his head, Randidly just closed his eyes and attempted it again.

First came the desire. That much was ‘clear’, in so much that the word desire was a clear guide to beginning. Which honestly, for Randidly, was a little bit of a non-starter. He had tried focusing on Stats and Skill Levels as a desire, but both of those ‘rituals’ had ended in failure. But other than that-

“No, there is something I want.” Randidly’s eyes blazed intensely green for a brief second. “I want to see Vualla. Just to know that she’s alright.”

At the sudden thought, Vualla’s face popped into Randidly’s mind. Tumbling turquoise hair, raised eyebrows and curious eyes, the quirk at the corner of her mouth that Randidly had taken to interpreting as she was amused. With picture-perfect clarity, Randidly could recall every detail of her, every stray hair curling out of her braid and every freckle on her nose.

And in a way that he hadn’t before, Randidly felt desire.

There was a shift and immediately the sensation that Randidly felt as he activated the Skill became a reassuring hum. Suddenly, his ritual had shape where it hadn’t before. This was a desire that the Nether Ritual accepted. Vualla’s face became the core and mental grooves materialized around it that seemed to call for Nether.

In Randidly’s inner world, the ‘core’ and the ‘bubble’ slowly began to undulate. Lines of power stretched and rotated, a series of concentric circles spinning about that image of Vualla’s face like a hula hoop would slowly dance across someone’s hips.

Baring his teeth, Randidly began to feed Nether cautiously into the strange working that was balanced precariously in his mind. Again, he hesitated at the beginning and fed the Nether into those whispering lines of power slowly. But very quickly it became clear that the structure was beginning to warp and wither without sufficient Nether to sustain it.

“Fucking shit,” Randidly swore. After a split second of indecision, he opened his two Nether Wells and allowed Nether to pour out and sink into the shape of the ritual. Very quickly, it grew steady and dark energy began to grow branchingly upward like a vine on the invisible infrastructure of the ritual that Randidly had created. Those hula hoops began to twist, each rotating on a different slightly off-kilter axis.

With a few seconds, it had become an extremely thick three-dimensional weaving of Nether. Yet as it grew, Randidly’s attention was tugged away from the details because what he was seeing abruptly struck him as incredibly familiar. Not in this particular shape, but considering the way it was weaving itself together-

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 5!

As his attention wavered, so did the whole structure. Shaking his head sharply, Randidly tried to bury his attention back into the process. The Nether Ritual stuttered and swayed, but slowly its momentum built back up. The dark energy spiraled inward, and Randidly felt a strange sense of deja vu.

All that energy followed the lines and began to congregate at the central point, becoming an anchor that held down the image of Vualla’s face that Randidly had conjured. As he looked at the bead of energy that everything was being woven toward, he could feel Vualla. Her presence. That tingling happiness that he had started to experience around her. That sense that she was someone who had struggled beneath the same sort of sins that Randidly had endured. That her enemies shared similar names and faces. That she truly understood the reasons that Randidly felt the need to cut himself to the bone every day in order to grow stronger.

They craved power for the same reasons. And they hated the System with the same chilling intensity.

It was an instinctive recognition Randidly felt around Vualla, that signaled that they both understood each other. In an implicit way that had nothing to do with shared words or cultural expression, but was instead grounded by the fact the things in life they believed to be important were significantly similar. And because of that, their proximity became harmonious in a way that Randidly would never have dared believe.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 6!

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 7!

Randidly’s attention was transfixed on that bead as it grew more robust and powerful. If this truly could give him a vision of Vualla-

And it was then that Randidly realized why the Nether Ritual shape was familiar. Another image superimposed itself on what he was seeing. One he was intimately familiar with.

“Holy shit,” Randidly whispered as his distraction caused the ritual to collapse inward on itself. Nether blasted outward, searing Randidly and causing him to wince in discomfort. But of course, his three cores rapidly jumped to the task of healing the damage while Randidly hurriedly regulated the amount of Nether running through him.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Acclimation ® has grown to Level 138

Even though his chance to see Vualla collapsed into nothing, Randidly was too shocked by his realization to really put much disappointment into the result. The truth he had discovered was that important. He began to chew on his lip as he looked down at his hands.

“It seems like Nether Rituals are just like-” Randidly paused. Then he began to chuckle. “No… it’s not that way, is it? Nether Rituals probably came first.”

Randidly raised his head and looked at the sky. “So the question is… who adapted the principles of the Nether Ritual in order to fashion the Nexus’s Class System?”