Chapter 1485 (1/2)

Randidly had been hunched over when the shattering shift had happened, so the first result was that his weight carried him forward in a slow somersault. His Grim Intuition buzzed while it attempted to relocate its bearings and then snapped back into place, flooding him with information about the surroundings. Randidly then knew exactly where he was, but he couldn’t muster up the spare energy to deal with the change in scenery. The whole reason that he had leaned forward in the first place because some part of him sagging underneath the weight of his own image.

His image physicalizations were dormant ‘physicalities’ that manifested in the real world when moved by his Willpower. Compared to the usage of raw images, they were less impactful, but much more efficient to utilize. However, in regards to the Grim Chimera, Randidly had overused his Willpower to the point that the cost of the physicalizations was approaching the speed at which his overtaxed mind replaced his mental zeal.

A little bit more and the physicalizations would reach a tipping point. Randidly suspected they would cannibalize themselves then to keep them physicalized, eradicating all the effort that he had poured into them over the past few months.

Randidly Ghosthound was currently exhausted beyond his own understanding. Not physically; he had thousands of Stamina to spare. He had moved past the point where Stamina was ever a barrier to what he wanted to accomplish. To a lesser extent, he had also gained a near-infinite supply of Mana. But in terms of Willpower and psychological determination…

That tipping point was so close. Randidly could practically feel it, his thick and clumsy gathering mental energy in increments the size of grains of sand. Leaning forward, Randidly committed everything he had to carefully picking up a few more grains to maintain this form.

In his mind, the Grim Chimera swayed under the unrelenting scouring that these attackers inflicted upon him. Just as Randidly was able to find the new physical shape of the Grim Chimera, they had begun to tear it to pieces. Of course, that was exactly the method by which the image would grow the quickest. But the combination of the brutal training followed by these small attacks...

In the lonely space of his mind, Randidly asked himself why he was so insistent on propping the Grim Chimera upright.

“Don’t hold anything back,” Alana shouted to her assembled Expira dream team, and even through Randidly’s weariness, the corner of his mouth quirked up. Around him, the remaining fighters shifted into a new formation and Grim Intuition continued to dispassionately catalog their aggressive movements around him.

Randidly gathered five grains of mental energy and carefully put them into the central area of his Soulspace. His Nether Nebula was churning seriously, rapidly absorbing the surrounding significance, but Randidly couldn’t spare his attention to notice. Two of those gathered grains was spirited away to support the Grim Chimera physicalizations.

Randidly gathered four more valuable particles of energy.

The surrounding clouds were spiraling together, steadily forming into a vast dragon that sucked in a deep breath as though it would swallow all of existence. As Randidly continued to tumble forward in a lazy rotation, the head of the dragon accelerated in its growth, pumping its body to stretch and spiral around enough to catch up to its own tail. Then it opened its jaws to slurp up the surrounding clouds, extending its amorphous body even further. As Huang Li raised his sword, that massive dragon twisted and regarded Randidly with sinister eyes.

You are next, those eyes whispered.

Above the clouds, a massive violet moon was descending. It hung, fat and low in the sky, dominating at least one-fifth of the horizon. Even some part of the distracted Randidly dispassionate admired the sublime light released by this celestial body. So bright was the light that the red-violet moon released that the color seemed to flow together into a drop of liquid light. After trembling at the edge for a short while, that drop fell down from the moon with all the suddenness of a tear. It streaked across the sky with all the violence of a meteor seeking to eradicate all life on the planet. Lyra reached up and caught that brilliant drop of liquid light between her palms.

Randidly released a breath. Three more granules of mental energy. One went to the physicalizations. There was less and less to recover as he pulled deeper and deeper on his own brains reserves. The issue wasn’t that he didn’t have methods to defeat the people arrayed around him. Even if he dropped the physical manifestations of the Grim Chimera and fought primarily with his physical abilities, he was confident that he could defeat them. It wouldn’t even be a contest at all if Randidly activated either of his other two images to assist in the fight.

One issue was that Randidly barely had enough mental energy to deactivate the physicalizations. The process would undoubtedly be messy, perhaps leaving some lasting scars on the Grim Chimera in the process.

But it had also become a point of pride for his image. The essence of the Grim Chimera had been barred and that essence refused to allow any compromise before these foes. Which was why Randidly had tortuously fought, relying only on the weakening power of the Grim Chimera to persist. To the point that the last dregs of his mental energy were devoured keeping the Grim Chimera active.

This time when Randidly pulled, he could only produce a single shining granule of energy. For the moment, this was as much recovery as could occur.

If we just rely on solely you, we might lose. Randidly observed to the hunched form of the Grim Chimera. The gathered mental energy flowed through his brainstem, returning his focus to a sharpened state. A loss would have… unpredictable results on Expira.

Huang Li flourished his sword. The howling wind in the surroundings became almost deafening as both the intensity of the wind increased and the participants began to fall back down to the ground while they vigilantly watched Randidly’s motionless form. “Sky Slaying Sword!”

The air around them rumbled as that massive cloud dragon began to move. Randidly continued to tumble forward, seemingly oblivious to the approaching danger. The dragon was certainly impressive, and fueled by a towering image, but it was slow. He still had a bit of time to gather himself.

Within his Soulspace, the Grim Chimera sneered at Randidly. An unpredictable loss? There is only one consequence of a loss: death. That is the way that it has always been. That is what it means to be the Grim Chimera. It has been your privilege to be in situations where that is not the case… but that is why I refuse to relent. I will face this threat alone or I will be crushed, alone. That is the Path I walk.

Randidly wished he could be mad at his image, but it was an all too familiar refrain. He had taken a similar stubborn Path in the past. This result… was just a result of those previous choices.

Huang Li’s sword cut downward, perhaps a bit superfluously. The maw of the cloud dragon opened as it accelerated downward, seeming to gather the whole of the sky behind it as it built up momentum toward its target. Randidly felt so tired from the training he had endured and then this attack that he couldn’t sustain both experiencing emotions and physical movements at the same time. So for a few scattered shards of time, he simply mused about the gamble that he was about to take.

This was a targeted threat at the Grim Chimera that his image hadn’t really experienced since it had become a part of him. There was great meaning to this unprecedented sense of crisis; as he had obviously experienced with the rapid condensation of a new form of the Grim Chimera in the past few minutes. But there was an equal risk.

With his current mental state, Randidly was unsure how the Grim Chimera would fare after any more direct confrontations with another’s images. The outcome that he feared most would be that his image would shatter, damaging and forcing him a large step backward in terms of physical image manifestations.

But in a way, he had no choice. It was either willingly maim the Grim Chimera directly or dance on the edge of a knife. Survival… above all else…

Of the two dozen cradled grains of mental energy, two were stolen to fuel the physical manifestations. If he was going to do this, he needed more mental energy than this.