Chapter 1498 (1/2)

Randidly paused in his training when he received the message from Lady Iellaya. The cable underneath him swayed slightly with his movement. But then he finished through his current cycle. As he breathed out two long trails of steam from his nose, a hidden current of fierce and terrorizing emotions hid within the exhale. Those emotions rapidly turned upward and accelerated, as though sensing that there was easier prey than Randidly waiting above.

He messaged Lady Iellaya back. How quickly do you need me to return?

If you could arrive within five minutes, that would be ideal. Lady Iellaya’s reply came so quickly that it seemed like she had prepared it.

Randidly glanced upward through the gloomy Web and grimaced. Although honestly, the distance was the least of his troubles. While reaching up and cracking his neck, Randidly tentatively communicated with the Stillborn Phoenix, asking whether it could control the release of emotions for a short amount of time. After all, blowing out these insidious and violent emotions in the faces of the interviewers would probably not make a great impression.

The Stillborn Phoenix was practically radiating righteousness when it informed Randidly that it could not stop spewing emotions because that was just how it breathed. Asking it to stop was akin to asking it to die.

Randidly suppressed the urge to press his palm to his face. He suppressed a secondary urge to strangle the Egg of Chaos. Unfortunately for him, all of his images had inherited his stubbornness. So he could already sense that it would be rather pointless to remind the image that it hadn’t learned to breathe until only a short two hours ago. It would undoubtedly refuse to admit that was the case.

Luckily, the Grim Chimera stepped forward and offer an alternative. It had already been sensing that its exterior had reached its limits for this type of training and now it needed to train its interior to match. So it suggested that the volatile emotions be released directly within Randidly’s rib cage, mirroring the act of breathing more directly. Randidly’s body would become the entire world for the Stillborn Phoenix, containing the very air it breathed. Yggdrasil then added that it could reinforce the surrounding organs and purify the emotions further, preventing anything dangerous from occurring.

Randidly shook his head in disbelief as he stood. “Y’all realize that this is MY body, right? You have no proof that there won’t be consequences from this.”

The images pretended not to hear him and Randidly could only sigh. But he had already accepted that he might not become a Drill Sergeant after that initial rejection. Although he would return for this opportunity, it did not move his heart much. It was part of a grander scheme to earn Citizenship Coins and free up Edraine, Randidly understood that. But more than anything else, training was his highest priority at the moment. He wouldn’t sacrifice everything for this position.

While the Stillborn Phoenix cautiously released the seething emotions within his body, Randidly once more produced Acri and launched himself directly upward. It was a bit more difficult than simply allowing himself to fall, but as he flung himself against the wall and repeatedly launched himself diagonally through the Web, he quickly gained speed while heading upward. Once more his heart rate began to rise. The physical limit seemed to recede before him, allowing his body to explode with power.

The Grim Chimera sat within the emotions, practically bathing in them. They caused abrupt and strange changes to the substance of the image, but the Grim Chimera’s eternal ability to adapt meant that it soon suppressed the twitches and the tremors that ran through the Grim Chimera’s body. Soon, it generated a film of its own pure emotion that kept these other emotions from approaching.

That desire to survive and grow was indomitable. The Grim Chimera’s eyes burned as it tempered that deep yearning it held within the emotions.

The air cracked and ripped as he passed through space. His limbs were wrapped in tight currents of air that blasted any cables that were near to his person.

Meanwhile, his veins once more began to glow with golden light as Yggdrasil formed a seal on the released emotions within Randidly’s ribcage. Obviously, the emotions took up no actual space. So it was relatively simple to compress them. But with so many emotions clashing and weaving amongst each other, a qualitative change began to come over them.

Aether as an energy was primarily comprised of two things: substance and emotion. The term substance could also be freely be interchanged with shape. Aether was an energy that responded to the depth of emotions and the integrity of the shape given to that energy. Which was why so many emotions gathered in one spot, specifically having been cleaved from their shape by Yggdrasil, began to behave… strangely.

As he accelerated up through the Web, Randidly’s stomach began to gurgle as the emotions managed to influence him physically. He clearly radiated displeasure to make sure his images knew that this wasn’t an acceptable side effect. The golden light that Yggdrasil was releasing grew stronger. Meanwhile, the Stillborn Phoenix continued to steadily exhale more emotions, as though it didn’t notice his ire. One of the Stillborn Phoenix’s Skills began to activate, taking over the process of ‘breathing’.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Golden Roots of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 297!

Congratulations! Your Skill Tide of the Void (L) has grown to Level 235!

Without a distinct shape for the energy, the emotions would normally disperse outward and gradually decompose naturally. They needed a physical vessel or detail shape to anchor them. Aether needed both emotion and shape to remain in a stable form. Randidly had studied the System Aether that had largely been stripped of emotion in the past, but he had never seen the opposite composition. And while he continued to rush upward to his call-back interview, the gradual exhale of the Stillborn Phoenix pushed all that raw emotion into a space without shape. His body hosted a natural experiment.