Chapter 1538 (2/2)

Randidly tapped a finger against the side of his jaw. Cook in there for as long as you want. I’ll be out here when you are ready.

Helen quirked an eyebrow upward if she should intervene, but Randidly shook his head and gestured for her to retreat a bit. As he walked forward toward the now-howling recruit, Randidly concentrated on Yggdrasil. Around him, his golden roots wove themselves upward to form a dome around Randidly and his quarry. “Seal off the surrounding space. This thing can’t threaten me, but I don’t want it to target the rest of the recruits when it gets desperate.”

Helen nodded and Randidly cracked his fingers. The image inside of Djark Quewn’s body finally seemed to recover itself from the shock of being flushed out with Nether, bursting out of the recruit's lower abdomen in a spray of gore. There was a horrible hissing as the image shifted from the milder Nether inside of recruit's body to the caustic and openly hostile energy in the air, but now the image had come prepared.

In a flash of pale green light, the image forced the ambient Nether backward and manifested in all its splendor. It was a dark-skinned humanoid that stood proudly before Randidly with his chin raised. His eyes were wrapped in dirty bandages and both of his arms were severed. But unlike Randidly, the image seemed completely whole even without his two arms.

The golden greaves lovingly wrapped from the man’s foot to his knee radiated a formidable amount of power. This one wasn’t a pushover, despite the image’s obvious discomfort to be exposed to Nether. Randidly’s smile widened. “Who do you work for? For what reason did you infiltrate my recruit?”

On the ground, Djark Quewn spasmed slightly. His side steadily knit together due to the System, but it was obvious that the recruit’s own image had taken some damage as this image had forced itself out of his body. The image remained silent, his wrapped eyes focused on Randidly’s person.

As Randidly calmly walked forward as he was speaking; when his opponent didn’t answer, he shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. I have too many foes; identifying one won’t make a difference. Instead… your annihilation will do great to send a message.”

The image pressed his mouth into a thin line, but still, he didn’t respond. Instead, he kicked with his right leg, bringing the limb almost immediately from a relaxed position to straight upward, his toes pointing to the sky. A wave of force blitz forward due to the brutality of the motion.

Randidly’s heart began to pound. Besides, it’s about time to test the limits of this new image.

A ripple spread through Randidly’s body as his image physicalizations snapped into place. This time, it was only the Supremacy of the Grim Chimera that roared to life. His skin paled until his flesh seemed almost immaterial, but at the same time, a black lacquer surged out from his torso and spin around him.

In a split second, his left shoulder was soaked in this material, to the point that it dripped down his arm. It ran across his collarbones, covering the highest part of his torso. The material flexed and settled into heavy armor. Just as quickly as the physicalizations took form, Randidly raised his left arm and spread his oversized, blunt figures. A massive black gauntlet seemed to cover his hand, making the limb seem ominously solid.

As the lacquer further refined its shape on his left arm, it became increasingly sharp and brutal. This was the gauntlet of a conqueror. That conqueror’s hand reached outward toward the wave of force rushing at Randidly.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

Congratulations! Your Skill Grit of the Ascendant Bane (T) has grown to Level 375!

Those heavily armored fingers simply seized that wave of force and crushed it to oblivion. Thin lines of that lacquer continued to run down from the heavy armor that concentrated around his shoulders. Two relatively thick strips ran down Randidly’s chest from his collarbones to his waist, where they spun around and formed into a tightly woven belt.

Just as the lacquer continued to spread outward and drip onto a segmented tail behind Randidly’s body, the blindfolded image launched himself forward. Despite the fact that it was only an image, it moved quickly and in a physical manner; it seemed that the image was focused on the mechanics of physical movements, quite like Vualla.

Which meant that this was a very, very bad matchup for the image.

The image pivoted sharply in his charge and arrived at Randidly’s right side, unleashing a brutal roundhouse kick at Randidly. The black lacquer continued to draw faint accents across Randidly’s legs and feet, but it never touched his pale right arm with his long fingers sharpened to points. And aside from those two thick lines on his chest, Randidly’s torso was only the faintly luminous flesh.

So as the attack streaked forward, Randidly’s uncovered body turned translucent. The air hummed with the brutality of the images force. And the attack passed directly through where he had been standing without affecting Randidly at all. His body was insubstantial. The ghost of the Spear Phantom had returned to the Grim Chimera.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Impunity (M) has grown to Level 337!

Before the image had recovered from its whiff, Randidly’s right hand slashed out and drilled into the place in his chest where a human’s heart would be. In that half-beat of time before the image jerked backward, Randidly unleashed a powerful pulse of Nether directly into the image.

The image instantly retreated with a blurry hole in its form, but almost instantly the details returned to startling clarity. But a lot of the pale-green luminescence of the image had dimmed.

Randidly’s smile was a slow one; more than most other people, he understood how unsustainable it was for an image to keep receiving Nether wounds. “No need to rush. Let’s get to know each other a bit.”