Chapter 1497 (1/2)

After staying in that dark hollow for some time with his images acting at full capacity, Randidly realized that Octavius had been right. There was some very mild time distortion present down here due to the thick Aether, which meant that while Randidly spent time here training, less time passed above in the Nexus proper.

Which just resolved Randidly to go deeper into this well next time, but for the moment, he was thoroughly benefiting from his time down here. Yggdrasil had stabilized in the surrounding area, churning rapidly through the raw Aether that was radiating upward from the depths of the Nexus. The Glittering Leaves of Yggdrasil had been steadily gaining Skill Levels as it separated the emotion from the energy present. Plus, once Yggdrasil caught up with the Stillborn Phoenix’s demand, it used some of its extra potency to normalize the chaotic Aether that it was processing anyway.

The result was a much more palatable stream of Aether heading upward. Randidly raised his head and grinned. Compared to the total volume of energy flowing here, I am only affecting about one-fifth of it… Perhaps as Yggdrasil gets stronger, I’d be able to cleanse all of it… But for now, a small positive side effect of my training, which is quite rare…

Honestly, I usually destroy or poison the surroundings… I guess this just goes to show that the Nexus operates on entirely another tier...

In fact, Randidly had an ulterior motive for allowing the purification: He had felt a subtle shift in Yggdrasil as it took on this new task. The exertion was different enough from what Yggdrasil usually did that he sensed that the Inscrutable Mien of Genesis could move toward a more purifying effect in the future. Randidly allowed the gradual shift for now while he considered the long term consequences of such a change.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Inscrutable Mien of Genesis (M) has grown to Level 269!

Meanwhile, Randidly’s body was steadily being covered with dark grey scales. The Grim Chimera assumed almost complete control of Randidly’s body while the two other images focused on the ambient energy. Rather than trying to access or utilize the Aether, the Grim Chimera simply stood by and allowed the rapid flows of energy to temper its body.

In this case, that tempering involved his exterior muscles and skin gradually toughening beneath the onslaught of energy. It was an intermediary step in pushing the Grim Chimera to the next level. This process was helping, but Randidly sensed that he was still missing something to complete the transformation.

Finally, the Stillborn Phoenix continued to devour the emotion that Yggdrasil purified for it. Luckily, its hunger wasn’t actually infinite. At the volume of one-fifth of the ambient energy in the massive hollow spine of the Nexus, the Stillborn Phoenix couldn’t handle anymore. So the egg of darkness just sat there and happily devoured more and more ambient emotion at a constant, if massive, rate. The change for this image, too, still seemed a bit away, but it helped familiarize Randidly with the details of the Stillborn Phoenix.

It was a strange, broken phenomenon that dreamed of being a living phoenix.

Meanwhile, a small part of Randidly was intently watching for changes in his Nether Nebula. As Octavius had said, the deeper he had gone down here, the more the System restriction on Nether had loosened. At his current depth, there was about double the amount of Nether present than there had been on Earth. Which certainly allowed him to loosen the tight spiral he maintained within his own Nether Nebula and relax a bit.

But Randidly found that if he let his Nether stray too far from him, it was sucked down to the waiting hell below. Which made him regard the abyss quite solemnly. He licked his lips. “Someday… someday I’ll have to see how deeply I can safely go. If I can strengthen my mental defenses… I’d like to see the way Nether is orchestrated at the core of the Nexus…”

For the moment, it mostly functioned as an extra bit of strain to help him train his control over Nether, which was certainly worth the trip.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 307!

So Randidly lost himself in the familiar rhythms of training. Yggdrasil steadily stretched outside of its comfort zone. The Grim Chimera steadily resisted the churn of energy and evolved into a scaly chrysalis form. The Stillborn Phoenix continued to engorge itself on the lingering emotions from the images that were probably being smelted below. His Nether Nebula continued its steady steady rotation.

But then, something changed. The rate at which the Stillborn Phoenix was absorbing emotions began to drop. Very quickly, it was only able to stomach a trickle of emotions. Yggdrasil was confused, but it just shunted the extra emotions up with the refined energy anyway; honestly, the World Tree didn’t really care what happened to the energy once it purified it. Yggdrasil was just savoring the experience at the moment.

Randidly began to frown as he felt for changes within his image. Of course, the dense folding of light around his eye did little to reveal the state of the image on its surface. But after almost a minute of investigation, it really seemed like nothing was wrong with the image; it was just literally full. Very soon, that trickling of emotions it continued to absorb stopped altogether.

Then a shudder ran through the Stillborn Phoenix and Randidly’s attention instantly heightened to its limits. He had taken the emotions rather lightly because of the nature of the Stillborn Phoenix, but if there was actually some permanent damage-

There was a sudden, massive blast of emotion out of the Stillborn Phoenix. If the emotions that had gone into the Egg of Depression had been at a three in terms of vibrancy and violence, their time within the egg had upped their impact to something closer to a seven. They erupted upward in a wave, joining the purified energy and instantly turning it even more chaotic and violent than it had been originally. It was a veritable sea of mania and violent emotions.

Randidly’s eyebrow twitched. All of the purification that he had done was immediately obliterated by the sinister and hungry emotions that raced upward with all the bloodthirsty glee of a pack of grey wolves that had caught the scent of prey. His impression that he was engaging in some sort of community service by working with this Aether immediately evaporated. It was once more confirmed that he was a dangerous strain on the environment, no matter where he was. Suddenly, Randidly was quite glad that he could only handle one-fifth of the ambient energy flowing upward.

From what little that Randidly could sense from the emotions that the Stillborn Phoenix regurgitated, if a weak-willed person thoughtlessly absorbed some of this energy, they would be quickly overwhelmed by their darker impulses. The air was suddenly thick with hatred, envy, rage, and bitterness. Randidly could practically see those emotions smashing against the walls of the Web above him, bounding back and forth and growing stronger on adversity.

After about five minutes, the torrent of negative emotion stopped. The Stillborn Phoenix radiated puzzlement, as it tried to understand what had just happened, as though it hadn’t been the one to unleash that emotional calamity toward the Nexus. Randidly couldn’t help but be amused by its casual destructiveness.

Well, maybe I’m overreacting. Randidly thought, taking another glance upward through the mass of swaying cables above his head. Perhaps those emotions aren’t as dangerous as I thought. Maybe they just seemed especially violent because of how suddenly they came out of the Stillborn Phoenix…

While Randidly was thinking, the Stillborn Phoenix began sucking in emotions once more. Around ten minutes later, that absorptions slowed and then it spewed emotions that were definitely more volatile than they had been previously. The process repeated. Gradually, Randidly just accepted this as a function of the image.