Chapter 1450 (1/2)

Theodora Greyman was dying slowly, Randidly could sense it. Her body was rejecting the Nether that had flushed through her veins. As with the original Skill he had earned, whatever she was doing just created a faucet that she could turn and bring in Nether from the Great Rift. And her physical body wasn’t being healed by the System as the Nether continued to further corrode her.

Yet Randidly hesitated, then turned away from her. Fight the foe in front of you, Theodora. You chose this. Now its time to see if you have the resolve to see it through.

When he returned to his vantage point on his island, Randidly’s mind was racing. More than anything else, he was struck with the immediate desire to train.

Randidly realized something important when Huang Li pulled from the ambient images in the air; he had missed something vital for the past several months. Something that probably should have occurred to him as he was starting to understand Nether. Just being the entity that stepped in and protected the former President Greyman from the consequences of the tournament, he could feel his Nether roiling and bubbling as it experienced a heavy influx of memory and weight. In all likelihood, Huang Li and the other participants were experiencing something much more pronounced.

But of course, Huang Li didn’t have his own personal Nether. He subsisted, almost unconsciously, on the thin film of Nether that the System allowed people to possess. That small amount kept the semblance of balance between the energies, but it was a slight space that made it impossible for weight to accumulate around someone.

Yet the weight was still being produced. The function of Nether wasn’t being affected, just suppressed. Randidly had sensed the process happening in the air. He had experienced noticeable gains to his already developed Nether Nebula as he drank from a tributary of that weight. The main river was undoubtedly thick and powerful. So where did that weight go?

Or to put it more directly, what did the System do with that weight?

The other matches ended without any incident like Huang Li’s attack against Theodora Greyman and Randidly turned his attention away from the arena below. His silver wrapped island drifted back over toward Kharon. The top 8 of the duos tournament had been safely determined. There would be a rest day tomorrow, so Randidly would have quite a bit of time to investigate this phenomenon he finally identified.

Unfortunately, studying the actual Aether Constructs of the System revealed little to Randidly. The actual infrastructure was that sophisticated. Even when he tossed the problem to Neveah, she was unable to give him any real insight after an hour of examination. She did add that perhaps a more extended investigation would lead to more, but Randidly told her not to bother. He had another idea.

Actually, his idea was two-fold. First, he would see what was happening with that weight. To that end, he split off a poignant memory and created a globe of Nether to house it. The memory was Randidly’s first recollection of meeting Shal, finding him sitting in the safe room in the healing pool. Then he simply placed it outside of his body, letting it get flattened and squeezed by the tightly pressing constructions of Aether.

Gradually, as Randidly watched that compressed memory, he detected it flowing away from him and toward the sky. In the process of being forced through that thin membrane, the walls of the memory began to crack and break. The details were rubbed away but the significance remained. The strain was enough to damage Randidly’s thick Nether. It would take a few days to fully crack it, but Randidly couldn’t help but be impressed by the quietly efficient method of extracting weight.

That was the genius of this portion of the System. It syphoned this weight off and destroyed its individuality and even now, to Randidly’s concerted focus, it only seemed like a side effect. He couldn’t detect the source of the phenomenon at all.

Randidly grinned up at the dark grey sky, but his eyes weren’t really taking in the clouds. He was seeing that swirling Aether constructs beyond that. Randidly was peering up toward the location that a Nether King had come to attack the Seventh Cohort. His emerald eyes searched for any lingering traces of the Nexus. There aren’t that many actual coincidences here, are there? Just how deeply did your schemes run, Elhume?

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 253!

The night stretched onward. Randidly coolly watched his memory being smushed and stolen by the Nexus. Then, right before dawn of the break day, Randidly reached out and plucked the memory back out of that thin membrane area.

To Randidly, that memory was quite precious. It was enough to see that the weight of all these moments was really being stolen on a mass scale. Now it was time for him to work on his second idea; to take all of that Nether weight for himself.

Clicking his tongue, Randidly began to weave Nether once more. He suspected that his arrangement would need to be near-perfect in order to work.

*****

Huang Shou chuckled. They sat in the main room of their allocated suite, savoring the day of rest they had before the matches tomorrow. “Looking at it now will change nothing. Rest for another few hours. There is no rush to fight.”

“I understand, grandfather.” Huang Li said as he steadily worked his jaw. For whatever reason, Li just couldn’t find it in him to relax. He had always known this roadblock was coming. He had prepared himself mentally for it quite far in the past. But now, having made it here, having felt the vast, subconscious image in the air above the tournament and briefly made use of its power, Huang Li was strained and fraying.

Of course, even if it wasn’t Paolo and Kayle, it is not like any of the duos left at this point are push overs… Huang Li grimaced and looked at the full schedule of matches for tomorrow.

Match 1: (9:00 AM) Huang Shou and Huang Li v. Paolo and Kayle

Match 2: (12:00 PM) Donny and Glendel v. Tykes and Dinesh

Match 3: (3:00 PM) Alana Donal and Wivanya v. Lucifer and Guiliana

Match 4: (6:00 PM) Hank Howard and Ancho v. Lyra and Stan

Of the remainder, Huang Li had to admit that the Zone 7 team was the one with the smallest chance of victory. The power of the move that Huang Li was able to unleash captured the imaginations of the crowds and kept them relatively even with the more established duos in terms of bets, but even Huang Li had to admit that his control over that image was shaky.

But that power… the fact that I wielded that power in the past… Why is it now so hard…? Li gritted his teeth.

Alana and Hank had proven themselves multiple times against multiple enemies of Earth over the last few years. Lucifer had led a team to clear the challenge Danger Zone faster than any others. Donny and Glendel were basically the original dominant main force of Donnyton, a pair of individuals whose leadership skills meant they hadn’t needed to act publicly in years. Tykes and Dinesh were former members of Donnyton and heavily involved with the Order Ducis and the spread of images to other Zones.