Chapter 1172 (2/2)

Some part of him worried it would latch onto him and Randidly would need to burn it away with Nether, but the more Randidly looked at the apparatus, the more it appeared clear that it was going to use the connection to the System Aether as a fixture point.

So Randidly watched silently it slowly descend. As it neared, the mechanisms activated and the legs of Aether shuffled down to attach to Randidly. They thrust forward and pressed toward the substance of Randidly’s Aether.

….and nothing happened. They slipped across the exterior of Randidly’s inner world without finding any purchase. There was a pause. The huge mass of Aether appeared to be trying to understand, in its limited way, what had happened. It adjusted its positioning and tried again. Once more, the arms couldn’t find the place where Randidly received Aether from the System.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to 175!

Obviously, because such a connection didn’t exist. And with the tool to condense a Fate closer than ever, Randidly didn’t stop studying it for a second.

Slowly, it was becoming clearer what sort of thing a Fate truly was. Because Randidly had always been somewhat confused that such a powerful tool as a Fate could be acquired without much cost. Was it really just a natural result of reaching Level 50?

Of course not. As Randidly’s eyes traced the shifting sigils of the hapless mechanism, he could see how it was designed to mortgage the karma and images you’ve built up so far in order to condense something that had the weight of your past accomplishments behind it. It was less a prayer and more of an offering.

The drawbacks of this were obvious; if you abandoned the Path of your Class, you would lose everything to the System. You would be bound by karma to the point of impotency. But honestly, Randidly was pretty impressed with how deftly this bit of Aether wove principles of Nether, threads of karma, and the building components of raw Aether together into a cohesive whole.

In a way that Randidly hadn’t really felt since seeing Vualla work her finger casually through the orange dirt of the badlands and draw energy conversion sigils, he looked on at the core of the tool to condense a Fate and felt wonder at the mind who invented it.

So for a brief moment, Randidly offered a short mental bow to this distant stranger. Truly, there lurked extremely powerful and capable individuals within the hidden depths of the System.

But that didn’t mean that Randidly felt any qualms about stealing such a tool for his own uses.

Just as Randidly was preparing to push away this unfortunate tool and begin his own work, a voice whispered in his ear.

“You… what are you…?”

Randidly froze. The delicate balance he had maintained between his images swayed dangerously as his mind frantically tried to understand what the voice could mean. And where it came from.

Even worse was the horrible sense of being completely seen that Randidly experienced in that elongated moment. Grim Intuition was shouting that whatever this being was, it was studying him intently. It appeared that this apparatus of Aether that gave a Fate was not just a random mechanism, but something that someone operated.

More than anything else, it was the deftness and lack of intrusiveness of this stranger’s frank study that gave Randidly the shivers. It didn’t overwhelm him, those eyes were just too clever to fool. It felt like it could see everything.

Then it spoke again, the tone light with amusement. “Interesting. When you make it to the Nexus… look me up. My name is Nathaz Eloise. I think… our dreams might lead us to the same place.”

Then the voice, the gaze, and the tool all disappeared. Gritting his teeth and clenching his hands, Randidly began to spin his images once more, building back up to the momentum that he needed. Although the voice was important, it hadn’t threatened him, which was a nice change from most of his interactions from beings with the Nexus.

So Randidly focused on the problem at hand: his Fate. He was rattled, but the detailed nature of the activity meant that a lot of the sense of pressure Randidly felt vanished as the process of condensing a Fate on his own consume him.

With an unhealthy fervor, Randidly began to weave Aether and Nether together to create the base that he wanted. Just like the typical Fate, a mortgage on what had come before to create a focus for what would follow. An offering. A knot of karma: he would follow this Path to the end or he would follow none at all.

As opposed to a normal Fate, there would be three spines for Randidly’s. Not a tower… but a pyramid.

The sense of fear toward what that voice implied was pushed completely down for the moment. Instead, Randidly turned his attention inward and allowed the energies of his three images to flow freely. He could feel their joyous harmony. With a deft touch, Randidly began to rapidly shape three sets of the Aether to accept the offering and funnel it inward.

His initial attempts were rather clumsy, but Randidly soon grasped the knack of working Aether in the manner of Nether and rapidly created the mechanisms he would need. Then, based on some of the principles that Randidly learned from Vualla, he created a central point where all of the energy from these offerings would be brought together and combined to form his Fate.

An apex where all the energy would gather. The top of the pyramid.

Then Randidly leaned back and allowed everything to grind into lumbering motion.