Chapter 1394 (1/2)
The air seemed to crackle with a strange electricity as Randidly’s gaze shifted to Neveah’s rising form. Luckily for his nerves, her time resting was only a fourth of what Randidly had required to recover. The more time passed, the more his instincts realized that soon he would be fighting against Kaan Swacc, the first truly dangerous fight he had to look forward to in quite some time. As the edges of his mouth curled upward into a grin, the Nether Nebula in his chest began to stir
With a light touch, he pushed it back downward. Soon. Soon I won’t need to restrain myself any longer. Soon we can create an enjoyable memory.
Neveah stood and Randidly rolled his right shoulder around to loosen the joint and familiarize himself with the motion. Truthfully, Randidly had to set his excitement aside for the moment. Because he first needed to address the relatively uncomfortable task of attaching his new metal limb. And he hadn’t overlooked the fact that the increased complexity and power flowing through Neveah’s new Aether Engraving would likely increase the pain of the process.
As soon as Neveah shook her head like a wet dog and yawned, she looked around at Randidly and said. “Want me to grab a box of tissues before we begin?”
Rolling his eyes, Randidly didn’t bother to reply and simply approached the stone that supported his new arm. Unlike his prior arm, the exterior of it was now and would never be bright or eye-catching. It was just the color of aged rust. Although the surface of the limb was smooth, the mottled color palette across the limb made it seem rough and uneven. Even setting aside the base color of the ore, the patterns were likely caused by the forceful forging process.
Rather than a Legendary ranked equipment, it looked like old trash left out in one too many rain showers.
Somehow, this made Randidly love it all the more. A legendary arm based on me.
Carrying Neveah’s hope...
Neveah approached with a pout when Randidly didn’t rise to her words. But then energy began to crackle around her fingers. She reached out and dragged her pointer finger across the elbow of the limb. From that contact, the lines of Engraving flashed outward across its surface, shimmering in the projected shape that the Living Engraving would one day take.
The symbols shifted and blended before Randidly’s eyes, lines of violet color swimming freely across the scale mail as the Mana depth warped the shape. The effect was lovely to watch. Then Neveah pulled her finger away and the light dimmed. “Are you ready for this?”
“Let’s hurry,” Randidly growled. His heartbeat was slowly accelerating. He shivered. “I want… to fight.”
“You always were a masochist,” Neveah said with quite a bit of fondness in her voice. Breathing out through her nose, she hefted the dark, orange-red arm and brought it with great care toward the stump of Randidly’s shoulder.
Closing his eyes, Randidly also released his breath. The metal of the arm pressed against his body and he was surprised by how warm it was already. Likely it was still cooling from the Engraving that Neveah had done, an hour and a half earlier. There was a hissing noise as the Engravings activated and Randidly’s skin stung as it was seared as a side effect of the high-energy Engraving activating.
Then Aether crackled between metal and flesh as the control runes for the limb began digging into the skin of Randidly’s body. His veins along his torso bulged outward as the electrical charge produced by the Aether blasted outward through the medium of his flesh. But these veins had withstood the trial of his heart’s ferocity precipitously increasing, so none of them ruptured from the strain.
But then the Aether Engraving connected to his nervous system and the sensation ran like truant lightning through his spine.
To Randidly, pain had come walking hand in hand with the System. From the very start in that Dungeon the first day, Randidly had been covered with acid that had quickly taught him that the new changes to the world weren’t playing around. Then he had met Shal, who seemed determined to make Randidly realize that his own body could be the producer of just as vicious a sort of pain as an attack from enemies.
Shal had also told him that sensation after training was ‘satisfaction’.
And pain had always come to Randidly in the form of colors. Pain came as black when it was pain that threatened to rob Randidly of consciousness. This was the pain Shal taught Randidly. It crept inwards from the edges of his awareness and ripped away at the edges of his thoughts. It was a consuming pain, one that sapped his will.
It was a pain that asked him to give up.
Meanwhile, white pain annihilated. It pierced through the brain and left nothing but brilliant emptiness in its wake. That sort of pain numbed him rather than straight knocking Randidly unconscious in the past. Still, it was a more dangerous variety in the heat of battle. Black pain could be resisted, but white pain had to be essentially ignored. Addressing it directly was impossible. The void it left in its wake was simply black from exposure to that vicious pain.
This pain, appropriately, was rust-colored. It hit his entire nervous system at once, setting every nerve ending on fire as the power of the Aether contained in the Legendary arm burned through him. Then, after the connection was thoroughly established, the initial rust darkened and everything in his body seemed to age and decay.
His muscles trembled. His heart rate continued to rise. Randidly gritted his teeth as he fell to his knees. “Seriously… fuck.”
Neveah shook her head sadly as if to say ‘I told you so’.
Still, the pain quickly passed, followed swiftly by tingling in his newly attached left arm as sensation came to it. Coughing Randidly sat back and did his best to control his breathing as the pain began to fade. He looked sharply up at Neveah. “Alright, set up the barrier.”
Neveah’s eyes gleamed. Even without relying on their connection, Randidly could tell that she wanted to wait a little longer. But Randidly also knew that the more time that he used to recover, the less effective this move would be. If they waited too long, the gamble would fail. Perhaps sensing Randidly’s determination in his gaze, she lowered her eyes to the ground and began to carve a complicated Engraving into the stone around them.
Randidly glanced warily around while flexing his left hand. The surrounding highlands were a series of wide slopes, periodically dotted with caves. Not a bad place for a final showdown. Definitely important that it’s so far away from anyone else. Now, let’s see if my gamble on Kaan Swacc’s nature will pay off…
Randidly didn’t know anything about the Nexus Ways that surrounded the Earth. He had learned a little from Octavius Shrike, but in the short term, he would not be able to compare with Kaan Swacc, who had used them for most of his career in the Xyrt Brigade. But what Randidly did understand was the Ways allowed Swacc to observe people on Earth without typical Skills being able to perceive the former Special Investigator.
It was the equivalent of two-way glass for Skills. So while Kaan Swacc could watch Randidly like a hawk, Randidly had very few ways of observing his opponent. Perhaps he could use the Philosopher’s Key to open a portal to next to Kaan Swacc, but that would both reveal his ability to use the Fatepiece and also perhaps take him into a trap that Kaan had been preparing.
Perhaps Randidly would be forced to try that, but the best case was to lure Kaan out of the Ways.
The more time passed, the longer a period of time Randidly couldn’t work on his Nether Skills, and the greater the cost of that absence became. Already, he could feel his Nether Nebula beginning to go slightly haywire from the suppression. The importance of several upcoming events was too great; he couldn’t resist the evolution of his own Nether for much longer. It was too important a part of him.
So Randidly needed to pull Kaan Swacc’s attention. And more importantly, he needed to make Kaan Swacc commit to a fight. Considering Kaan Swacc’s sense of superiority, this was rather simple; once Kaan made any move at all, his pride as a member of the Xyrt Brigade would likely carry him forward to a direct confrontation.