Chapter 1097 (1/2)

Although he had mostly recovered, the first thing that Randidly did in this small nostalgic cabin was rest. He spared his two subordinates and one watchdog a glance: Salazar was explaining excitedly to Zauna about his skill with herbs while Zagnal was sitting with his arms crossed beneath a tall maple tree.

The area was about the size of a football field, so there was space enough for the three to wander around in the short term. They would swiftly grow bored, but it was a diversion for now. So Randidly entered into the cabin and settled himself on the familiar straw met pressed up against the West wall.

Randidly had gotten a few moments of rest immediately after leaving the armory, but what he did now was completely let down his guard. With the current Aether density around him, Randidly didn’t think it was possible for the Nether to approach without causing significant reverberations. Plus his three companions might not have his same Nether Sensation as he did but they would still recognize a significant force heading in this direction.

Despite their presence in the Great, Randidly felt safe. Although it was clear Lord Miln wanted to kill him, all he did was send him out here. Which meant no one would be able to watch how Randidly made the impossible possible.

The tightly clenched pieces of Randidly and the Grim Chimera gradually loosened as Randidly concentrated on breathing and let everything else fall away. Some part of Randidly was aware that time was slipping quickly past, but he ignored it. If anything, it was better this way. Plus, his attention swiftly became drawn into his internal area.

Aether became form and motivation, while Nether connected the disparate fragments Grim Chimera in a way that Randidly couldn’t quite explain. It gave him a core and a surface, while Aether filled in everything in between. His whole being seemed to be slowly approaching a sort of harmony… but the note at the core of this transformation was slightly off-key.

Randidly’s relaxed thoughts seemed to intuitively follow that strange feeling of dissonance to the source. The strange half-dream around him whirled and suddenly Randidly was standing in front of the answer. He looked deeply at his three cores. So it’s because these three things are fake, huh… but if the cores were real…

The dream logic twisted and Randidly mentally shrugged. Who could say what would happen if the cores were real? It certainly wasn’t like he had seen a true Nether core in action.

Well, that technically isn’t true. Ripples ran through Randidly’s dream as he shifted to the base of the Nether Gatekeeper. There was an open doorway he didn’t need to step through and he was there. Even in the dream, the Nether sizzled annoyingly at his skin. Because it was a dream, Randidly felt the pain not as the true agony that it had been but just a constant tingling along his skin.

Looking around, an endless parade of Nether beasts seemed to be pressing in from every side. With a haphazard flourish, Randidly’s bone spear ripped through large swathes of Nether Beasts. In the dream, the frustration Randidly held as he was forced to flee without fighting was finally given an outlet.

The Nether Beasts died without any noise or struggle, but the distinctive sensation of them remained; Randidly narrowed his eyes and allowed the sensation of the Nether core to echo through his body. His bone spear impacted Nether core after Nether core, sending subtle reverberations through his arm. His extremely meticulously created skin tingled with the vibrations.

Eventually, Randidly ceased struggling, abruptly realizing that this was a pseudo-dream, and any information he gathered here might be corrupted by his perception. The Grim Chimera was so annoyed at the pointlessness of being here that he raised the bone spear above his head with the intention of shattering the whole area, but he paused at the last second.

His gaze had caught on Vualla’s unconscious face. Even though this was a dream, or perhaps because it was a dream of that place, she was clutched in his left claw. Her lips were red and several of her azure hairs had escaped from her braid and were curling away from her chin. To his sensitive claws, she was as cold as the grave; the body he held couldn’t even be considered a corpse.

Slowly, Randidly lowered his bone spear. For several minutes, he studied Vualla carefully. What is it about you? Why do I keep seeing your face in strange places?

Then Randidly woke himself up.

Shaking his limbs, Randidly stood and stretched. Then he crouched down and meditated for about ten minutes, allowing the resonance in his chest to slowly build. In only a few minutes the notification that he was waiting for appeared before him.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 169!

Randidly grinned. Was Aether Detection always this high of a Level? Seems like the main body truly hasn’t just been sleeping in the meantime… well, all I really need now is to figure out a way to free him from Lord Miln’s fucked up suspension pod…

Shaking his head, Randidly turned to the wooden chest and examined it with his newly recovered Aether Detection. As he suspected, not only the ivory lock but also the whole of the wooden trunk was covered in meticulous Aether Engravings.

Some of his original knowledge of Engravings returned with Aether Detection, but not all of it. So it was extremely slow going to try and interpret what the Aether on the wood was doing. Even after spending several hours examining it, he couldn’t be entirely sure what most of the more intricate Engravings did. But Randidly did have a pretty good idea that the Engravings main purpose was to make the box impossible to open without the key.

Which is basically what I already knew.

Snorting, Randidly crouched down next to the box and reached out with his claw. A shiver ran through him as he activated Nether’s Caress. With his Nether Sensitivity, Randidly carefully examined the process of the Skill. That familiar pain came, but now Randidly had a better understanding of why it had hurt so much to use previously.

Because the Skill Nether’s Caress seemed to open a portal directly to… somewhere that was filled with extremely dense Nether. It wasn’t as dense as Randidly had experienced in the Nether Gatekeeper’s base, but it certainly would have done incredible damage to both his physical body and his image when he used it on Earth.

As Randidly experimented, he realized that he was able to independently close that small portal in his hand while keeping the Skill going. Of course, the Skill then quickly failed without Nether, but Randidly opened up his Nether Well’s and supplied ample Nether to the Skill. Very quickly, thin tendrils of black energy danced across his long talons. With a much, much diminished feeling of dull pain in his hand.