Chapter 1513 (1/2)

Randidly floated downward in the Web, the hollow spine at the center of the Nexus, his eyes narrowed as he carefully monitored the churning mass of chaotic Aether that was blasting up from below. At this depth, there basically wasn’t any wall fixtures that provided a reprieve from the seeping gloom. He had already gone past the place where he had helped temper Heiffal and his crew for a week, seeking to draw closer to the weight of significance at the core of the Nexus.

In terms of absolute distance, Randidly wasn’t sure how far he was from the bottom. But at this point, even ten meters deeper downward had Randidly’s Grim Intuition warning him that this was a dangerous descent.

Still unwilling to risk losing himself for a time in this mass of significance, Randidly slowed himself and grabbed a cord so he would not fall any further. There he carefully examined his condition and discovered Grim Intuition wasn’t exaggerating the threat of this space; it was currently a negligible effect, but Randidly could feel some of his ancillary thoughts vanishing into that mass of significance below. Thoughts without a sizable backing in significance or emotion were too light to currently resist that pull.

It was easy to extrapolate from the fact that even Randidly was currently being affected by it how someone could have their mind deeply wounded by direct exposure. The Nether Nebula in his chest furiously churned, almost as though it was trying to justify itself in the face of the obviously much larger Nether stewing below the Nexus. Thick veins of Nether flowed through his body, struggling to ground him.

Randidly settled himself onto a cord and adjusted his mental state. He watched the steady ebbing of some of his ambient Nether away from his body through half-lidded eyes. The core of his Nether Nebula was safe, but some of the Nether that flowed through his veins was being steadily leached away.

Whatever is down there is strong… Randidly reflected.

What was peculiar about the process was that the flows of Nether left his body from strange angles. They then wound their way downward in peculiar spirals. Randidly couldn’t determine any rhyme or reason for the methodology, but since it was strange he studiously observed the stolen Nether. Perhaps in the future, this spiraling absorption would help him make sense of how to utilize Nether more generally.

But when it seemed he had seen the same curling spiral over and over, Randidly turned his attention inward. His skin continued to darken, the Aether here volatile and frothing against his body. Into that horrible churn of this by-product energy Randidly opened himself and dumped the emotions that had been steadily refined by the Stillborn Phoenix over the past few days.

As had happened previously, the almost gelatinous emotions were partially inert as Randidly released them into the surroundings, having been refined down to a condensed form. But as the emotions encountered the raw Aether and more impurities were introduced, the substance seemed to catch fire. The entire process was invisible, but Randidly’s newly tuned senses could detect the way that the energy flowing upward had increased in image ‘temperature’, as it were. The violence and desperation of the emotions shot sharply upward.

I hope I’m not inciting any riots in the Nexus...

Shaking his head slightly, Randidly turned his attention to below, looking into the flowing river of Aether runoff. Then, with the Stillborn Phoenix almost trembling with excitement, he began to breathe deeply of the dubious flow. Yggdrasil quickly wove a net of branches to filter out the energy and leave only the emotions as the Stillborn Phoenix greedily drank.

Congratulations! Your Skill Tide of the Void (L) has grown to Level 251!

Congratulations! Your Skill Abomination’s Grim Vigor (M) has grown to Level 364!

As Randidly sat and waited for the Stillborn Phoenix to sate its appetite for emotions, he reflected on the current conundrum afflicting the Grim Chimera. With all the tempering that he had put the Grim Chimera through in the past month, he had greatly hardened its exterior. While the recruits had been running laps, Randidly had been within his nearby training pod, experiencing a physical strain almost triple what they were enduring to continue to push his own limits. The process was excruciating, leaving his arms and legs covered with giant, oozing gashes akin to the result of ripping away a scab prematurely.

Despite all that force that he used, the rough exterior of the Grim Chimera only grew back hardened even further. He was a butterfly stuck within a calcifying cocoon, strengthening his own prison with his struggles.

Now, Randidly wasn’t worried that he would be stuck in this form permanently. But he did realize that it would require a powerful dose of necessity that he couldn’t generate for himself in order to escape this form. Unfortunately, it seemed like the Grim Chimera was going to stubbornly refuse to abandon its new, crusty visage until it had to.

Probably will need a mid-fight power up… god, one of these days I’m going to fight someone who attacks without pausing to revel in my struggles and I'm going to be punished for this, Randidly grimaced. Then he received a message from Helen, calling him back to the Fifth Cohort Rally Station. So he finished up the emotional absorption and returned to the Overseer housing facility.