Chapter 1282 (1/2)

He was so angsty back then. Decklan used to hint very heavily that he would kill me someday...

Shaking his head, Randidly looked at the second item hanging on the wall. It was an extremely familiar dagger, one that he obtained during his time in that first Dungeon with Shal. After being thoroughly brainwashed in the superiority of the spear to all other weapons, Randidly had quickly given the dagger away after he left the Dungeon.

Decklan had been the one to take the dagger.

Of course, Earth had long since evolved past the point where a dagger such as this was useful as a weapon. But Randidly couldn’t help but reach out and touch the dagger after seeing it so prominently displayed in the small room Decklan had constructed. Compared to the metal used for his left arm, the materials felt cheap and light. Still, it was… nice to know that the dagger had meant something to Decklan.

“Decklan the Killer,” Randidly muttered to himself. Then he turned to the final item pinned to the wooden wall, which was a press release. Frowning, he leaned forward to examine the strange shape of the clipping. After reading the first line, Randidly froze in horror.

Decklan and Terra Hyde were married on a beautiful spring day in Franksburg, with almost one thousand people in attendance.

The next line almost stopped Randidly’s heart. The ceremony was officiated by the Village Spirit of Franksburg, Nul, who had watched the couple from the very beginning of their wondrous journey within the System.

The piece of newspaper stunk of Ileot Swacc’s energy. It was a blatant manipulation in its most egregious form. Yet at the same time, the events described quite plausible. Although Randidly would likely never know for sure, he could very easily believe that this piece of paper had come from an alternate Earth where Randidly hadn’t existed at. Where the first Zone on Earth was instead Franksburg, and the Village Spirit was Nul.

“And seeing this…” Randidly could only shake his hand as he pressed his fingers against the edges of the flimsy paper. From the way that the text was wrapped around a missing piece of the news story, there had once been a picture attached to the article. “What did it do to Decklan…?”

This was a consequence of Randidly’s capability. He had drawn the attention of Ileot Swacc and that had caused Decklan’s pain to be twisted beyond all recognition. It hurt. It hurt knowing that the chain of events that led to Thorn’s pain could be traced back to Randidly.

More than that, Randidly couldn’t deny that Randidly’s heart ached too. No matter how callous Randidly had become in the face of death, Decklan was one of the original people he had fought with to protect Donnyton. And now he was dead.

Randidly couldn’t forget that the Grim Chimera had turned away from Decklan’s pain. He had been disgusted by it. By the weakness of the man. By the lack of resolve he possessed.

Sometimes I can be arrogant, Randidly thought bitterly. Azriel’s warning about thinking the only way to survive was to win remained present in his mind. Randidly raised his head upward and released a long breath. The tips of his fingers tingled.

With Grim Intuition, Randidly quickly and accurately finished his search of the rest of the room; aside from the items he noticed earlier, there really was nothing. This was a room that had been stripped down to nothing but those things of which Decklan could not let go.

After Randidly was sure of his search, he snapped his fingers and created a spark of Ignition Essence. His heart was heavy as he looked at that shimmering source of light in the bare room. Without glancing behind him, he left the emerald and orange flame in the center of the wooden floor as he walked out of the building. By the time Randidly had casually about twenty meters along the dirt path toward the port city proper, cries of alarm could be heard from the area around the inferno that was once Decklan Hyde’s home.

Still, Randidly’s control of his image was extremely acute. His Willpower pulsed with cold fury and grief mixing freely together. Although some of the surrounding buildings were singed by the powerful Ignition Essence flames, the fires didn’t spread. After a little bit of panic, the situation quickly stabilized.

But by that point, Randidly was gone. And for the first time in a while, he wanted to work off some steam.

His first bad instinct was to rush toward the islands out in the sea where he could sense the Creature’s peculiar energy. That at least would be a fight where he wouldn’t have the luxury of being distracted. And he eventually resolved himself to begin using Nether Rituals and Grim Intuition to investigate the Creature’s movements tomorrow, but with the powder keg of emotions in Randidly’s chest, making that move now didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Instead, he went to another task that he had been meaning to get around to since returning to Earth, but had continually put it off: Leveling his Class.

Honestly, the value of each individual Level that Randidly received wasn’t that much in comparison to what he already had accrued with his many finished Paths. But because his fighting prowess was so far above his Level, it would be easy for him to grab quite a few Levels in a short amount of time. And with the amount of Stats that Randidly gained with each Level, enough Levels would quickly add up to improvement.

Controlling his anger as best he could, Randidly walked North. Eventually, he moved from sandy hills by the sea to a low mountain range that was covered with thick and leafy greenery. Although the temperature was still dipping down to the closest thing the Earth has had to winter since the System arrived, there seemed to be some geothermic heat rising up from the mountain range that kept the forest steamy.

And it was there that Randidly found his first targets: a dozen Level 72 Red-Scaled Raptors.

This was the Path Randidly had chosen. As a leader, he couldn’t avoid letting the pain of others influence him. But even more important was the fact that Randidly couldn’t try to cut himself off from these feelings. Sensitivity was important. Understanding was important.

Decklan had died. He had conspired to kill innocents before that in a mad bid to revive Terra, but he had died. It was a tragedy.

Another human, taken by the unfeeling Nexus that had them all dance to its tune. And as Randidly thought that, his cold grief quickly ignited to fury.