Chapter 1199 (2/2)

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Lifeless Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 224!

A slightly strange combination of Skills grew as Randidly endured the mental static that wafted out from Lady Iellaya, but he didn’t give those notifications much attention. Instead, his eyes were on the impending collision in the sky. The blast of darkness swirled forward and the Nether Herald’s form cracked and twisted in response; within a second, an angular, almost bug-like bipedal creature stretched itself outward.

Randidly couldn’t help sucking in a breath as he that form weirdly unfurled in space from nothing. It was immediately clear that the density of Nether within this form was much higher than a normal Nether Gatekeeper. Even just looking at its ant body, there seemed to be an ominous pressure that it exerted over the surrounding area. The reality built upon Aether could barely handle it.

The ant and the darkness smashed into each other. The ant ripped through the other side without much fanfare, leaving the sky behind it filled with motes of dispersed darkness that scattered harmlessly like dust blown off an old bookshelf. After witnessing the failure, Lady Iellaya released a forced chuckle. “Fine then, I’ll hand this myself.”

With a single step, she launched herself upward into the air above the battlefield. Below, Randidly could feel the strange, seething mass of emotions the soldiers felt as they looked uneasily up at the first contact between the two foes. They saw Lady Iellaya’s darkness lose. Already, the brief respite was retreating from the forefront of their minds and leaving the chaos of the earlier fighting the panic-inducing center of their attention.

As Lady Iellaya flew upward, the raven-winged serpent twisted away from its collision course from the ant Nether Herald and swam through the sky to meet Lady Iellaya. It opened its stubby mouth and simply swallowed her. Perhaps the most grotesque part of the maneuver was the audible gulp that it produced as she entered into its body. Then it sinuously twisted its body around, turning to face the Nether Herald that been on its tail the entire time.

It was immediately clear that the details of the raven-winged serpent grew incredibly clear as Lady Iellaya herself became the focal point of the image.

Yet Randidly didn’t miss how just the presence of the Nether Herald’s extremely dense Nether was enough to send a ripple through Lady Iellaya’s image despite her presence. It was immediately obvious that this was not going to be an easy fight, as evidenced by the initial clash.

But she’s just getting started, Randidly assured himself as he looked upward. I felt her potential… and I feel the presence of this swirling darkness. This isn’t her limit.

Raven wings flapped outward, crashing against the exo-skeleton’ed arms of the Nether Herald. The sky shook. Lady Iellaya’s image trembled once more. Yet Lady Iellaya dodged the Nether Herald’s next attack and raised her ugly snout to release a rallying cry. The surrounding space steadied as her dark image dug its claws deeply into the area for leverage. Then Lady Iellaya surged forward, smashing her image’s head directly into the Nether Herald.

...she’s stronger, but she’s not at as good at controlling her strength, Randidly thought with a frown as she looked up at the two figures. Once more, the Nether Herald twisted its body strangely, bending all the way over backward to dodge the raven-winged serpent’s jaws as it swept past. Then its torso spun independently of its legs, allowing it to twist and strike up toward the serpent’s vulnerable belly.

Bellowing in pain, Lady Iellaya released a much more powerful pulse of hungry-darkness. It knocked away the Nether Herald, who crashed into the ground and caused a low ridge to rumble slowly down on top of it. For a split second, everything silent. Then the stone shifted and the Nether Herald leapt back out of the scattered debris. Above, Lady Iellaya had twisted her head and was preparing to fire another bolt of darkness up toward the pattern of blue veins in the Great Rift. The Nether Herald accelerated.

Of course, the approaching threat of the Nether Herald had Lady Iellaya’s image twisting around, blasting out a concentrated arrow of energy that was obviously created to attack the Nether Herald, not the working in the sky. Even the flexible Nether Herald with its preter-natural reflexes wasn’t able to dodge such a sudden attack completely and was knocked sideways by the strike.

Randidly was honestly becoming increasingly optimistic about the confrontation as he witnessed the initial exchanges, but then the thicker blue veins manifested again in the Great Rift. Another large comet of Nether was thrown down toward Lady Iellaya. The comet once more split halfway and a figure shot directly over to join the battle.

Another Nether Herald.

Randidly sucked in a breath, trying to do some mental gymnastics to figure out whether Lady Iellaya could handle two of these foes at once. Seconds ticked by as he attempted to estimate both of their strengths. His initial response was yes it was possible, but it would be difficult for Lady Iellaya to attract more attention than this with two Nether Heralds devoting their energies to stopping her.

Which meant that perhaps Randidly needed to act. Even if his images weren’t yet powerful enough that they could alter the face of this fight, his interference could be a fulcrum point to pivot the balance in Lady Iellaya’s favor. To that end, Randidly gently pulled the Philosopher’s Key off of his belt. He ran his thumb across the smooth metal surface.

This was his most powerful tool currently, yet as Randidly lifted it up and looked at the battlefield, he hesitated; how should he intervene in the battle above? Especially because the Philosopher’s Key was an instrument with relatively few applications-

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a third huge comet of Nether that was thrown out of the Great Rift. Perhaps it was because of the element of surprise, but this one looked even larger than the prior two. Before the second Nether Herald had even arrived to tussle with Lady Iellaya a third was thrown out to seal the deal. No matter how much Lady Iellaya had improved, she hadn’t improved enough to handle this.

Suddenly, Randidly realized what he had to do. The Philosopher’s Key in his hand was warm. What he held in his hand was a key, which possessed two main functions. To open up a door… and to lock it.

It had even been explicitly stated in the notification that Randidly received when he obtained the first piece of his Fateset. He just had to lock the sky.