Chapter 1300 (2/2)

“Serious,” Randidly said just as lightly. None of his images mobilized themselves, but he quickly sank to the core of his Soulspace and immersed himself in the swirling nebula of Nether that he found there. “I will just be fighting with my physical body… but I don’t want you to take it easy because-”

“No worries, I’ve waited for the chance to smack you around for months.” Helen hissed. The surrounding air turned immediately crimson as her powerful image pressed them deeper and deeper into the Sea of Blood. Then she spun a spear deftly and leveled it at Randidly. “Don’t blame me when I break you and your pride.”

“I wish you would,” Randidly said in a rough voice. And he truly meant it. The numbness of his emotions was slowly passing, leaving him in a bubbling cauldron of confusion, rage, and sorrow that threatened to destabilize dangerously at any moment. And being in his Nether Gatekeeper core demonstrated that the weight of the Creature’s death was already causing noticeable improvements to Randidly’s mastery of Nether.

Something was gradually changing in Randidly’s heart, and the shift was not a painless one.

Both moved at the same time. Both charged directly toward each other. Helen raised a spear while Randidly casually moved his hands to meet it. Nether leaked out from his silhouette like poison, corrupting the surrounding air.

Helen’s thrust was sharp, but Randidly slapped it to the side with his metal palm and stepped forward to close the gap between them. Seeing that the Tides of Blood couldn’t bind Randidly’s Nether empowered body, Helen instead relied on the flows of energy to accelerate her own movements. With the combination of Tides of Blood, her passive Skills, and her Stats, Helen bridged the gaps between their physiques. Just as quickly as Randidly stepped forward, she stepped back and brought her spear across in a sweeping motion.

Randidly didn’t bother to dodge. His Nether core spun dangerously in his chest and every pumping beat of his heart circulated more of the energy through his body.

In a way, Randidly wanted to see how much of an advantage Nether alone was.

A huge gaping maw appeared around the head of Helen’s spear, her image empowering the attack further. It crashed into Randidly’s side, causing him to grunt and take a step to the side. The arena floor groaned dangerously. Despite the fact that a lot of the image was dissipated by Nether in the air, purposefully not using any image to contest it still made the impact a heavy one.

Several sharp lacerations ripped across Randidly’s chest. For the first time in quite a while, Randidly bled. The crimson drops fell to the ground and sizzled as the powerful properties in his blood corroded the reinforced metal ground.

Randidly laughed aloud. His emotions were buzzing in his chest in time with the beat of his heart, which was sending jolts of light pain through his wound.

Then he planted his feet and took another step forward. Nether swirled even more tightly around his core. Helen raised her spear and thrust it forward.

Randidly ducked sharply under the blow faster than even he expected to. Her response was to bring the butt of her spear around but Randidly dodged that too and swiped with his hand, more like a cranky bear than a human. But the casual attack still ripped through the shaft of Helen’s spear and sent her stumbling backward.

Which opened up enough space for her to unleash an even larger attack by one of the spectral monstrosities that inhabited the Sea of Blood.

Randidly’s vision was red and he wasn’t sure if it was from Helen’s image or just from his rage finally being given space to swell. He just stepped forward and raised both of his hands to grab the bloody, spectral jaws that were attempting to swallow him whole.

BOOOOOOM!

His hands struggled for a second to find a grip, but then Randidly gritted his teeth and allowed his feet to skid slowly backward as he directly engaged the attack. His left arm held back the upper jaw, while his right kept the bottom of the jaw from snapping upward. The muscles and Engravings in his arms strained, relying on raw physical Nether Brawn in order to handle the assault.

Of course, Helen wouldn’t let him futilely strain like that for long. She acquired another training spear and suddenly shot out of the murky Tides of Blood to Randidly’s left.

Randidly’s whole body spasmed as he pulled at his physical presence, demanding more power. The veins along his arms stood out grotesquely and pulsed with the beat of his heart. His emotions were erupting. Gradually, a small quantity of Aether began to flow along with the Nether in his body, supplementing its power.

“DAMNIT!” Randidly roared. He strained and twisted, but Helen was only a meter away and he couldn’t triumph over the combination of the Skill and image with just his body. Narrowing his eyes, Randidly changed his tactics.

His hands flexed and the teeth he was gripping shattered. Rather than overpowering the entire jaw, he was forced to resort to cheating to get out of this. In that brief moment of hesitation while the images teeth shattered, Randidly stomped forward into the mouth, avoiding the closing jaws. Then he erupted in Nether, ripping the interior of the Skill to shreds with raw energy.

It annoyed him that the effect was only so exaggerated with the boost from the small amount of Aether, but since he didn’t use any image, Randidly supposed it was fine.

Then Randidly brought his hand up just in time to catch Helen’s thrust. But an image or a Skill empowered the tip enough that it cut his right palm to the bone. His blood rapidly corroded the tip of the spear into a useless state, but Randidly snapped the offending weapon in half just to vent some of the heat that was circulating through him.

“Sloppy,” Helen said with a grimace as she looked at blood dripping from his hand.

Randidly stomped once and then twice. The second stomp he timed so that the metal ground beneath them cracked and shattered right as Helen was preparing to open up some distance between them. There was a secondary dirt floor below, but both were now floating.

Although Randidly was shooting like a zooming cannonball toward Helen.

But Helen produced another spear and was buoyed safely out of his path by her Tides of Blood. She floated then in the air above him as he landed, looking down at him surrounded by a crimson vortex.

“Are you really taking this seriously?” Helen asked.

Nether swirled through Randidly’s body. His grin was wide as he waited for her to attack. With every circulation, the small pinch of Aether seemed to be even more fully integrated into his body. The aura that Randidly released caused the nearby stone ground to bubble and warp.

“I’m just warming up,” Randidly hissed.