Chapter 1541 (2/2)

This many-armed visage was a beast. The grand villain of the world tree… was much more sinister than that.

Randidly walked forward along the branch, enjoying the sensation of his bare feet against the bark. As he neared the Implacable Price of Exodus, the image hissed once more and took a step deeper into the shadows. Randidly ignored the Skill’s warning and continued forward. As the monster withdrew further, Randidly snorted and simply reached out and seized the Skill directly.

Compared to me… Randidly showed his teeth.

As soon as he touched the image, his hands began to blister and sizzle. In truth, the Implacable Price of Exodus was an extremely dangerous concept that Randidly had managed to conjure within himself. It possessed the power to even damage its fellow images. Which was why Randidly fully intended to weaponize it further.

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 306!

Heh, Randidly grinned at the squirming monster in front of him. It was clear that the creature wanted to use its many arms to push Randidly away, but didn’t want to exacerbate Randidly’s pain by creating more contact points between them. You think something like this is enough to scare me? You should know me better than that. And that kindness of yours… you are a natural disaster and you feel pity for those that are steadily destroyed by your existence. Your power is almost regretful.

That is what we need to change.

Although Randidly didn’t have new-image fairy dust this time, he had a reliable source for this transformation; the Alpha Cosmos. He hadn’t been particularly involved in the Alpha Cosmos in quite some time, which was a testament to how stable things had been since Yystrix was no longer around to periodically invade.

However, that didn’t mean that life in his Soulskill was perfect. There were heroes and villains, self-righteous monsters and quickly forgotten saints. To generalize greatly, the Alpha Cosmos was rife with individuals struggling with their own humanity. Occasionally, Randidly would give himself a break by just watching the people within the world going about their lives.

Before him, the Implacable Price of Exodus whined as its form began to melt and shift like wax before a furnace.

Perhaps the original prototype for this sort of character was Alta Bounty, who sought to destroy the Alpha Cosmos for the sins of its creator. She was an individual who had sacrificed everything to achieve her goal. And she had felt such destruction was justified the entire time. Because she had truly believed that there was no other way to escape the cycle of pain.

That was why she had been so dangerous. That was the crazed certainty Randidly had seen within Wick. That was the monstrous rationalization that he wanted to be at the core of the Implacable Price of Exodus.

As his hands continued to sizzle against the Skill’s skin, Randidly steadily built an altar to the hubris and narcissism of humanity.

Of course, Alta wasn’t the only such individual. There were hundreds of people who had hurt others within the Alpha Cosmos because they believed that the ends justified the means. There were people who sold their family or their bodies or their souls to accomplish their goals. Sometimes these journeys were brutally short, other times they were painfully extended. Either way, there was a thick layer of bitterness that accumulated in the dark places of the Alpha Cosmos.

Not to say that this was the dominant emotion. Currently, the Alpha Cosmos was doing quite well. There were bright spots of hope that periodically would cleanse some of this bitterness, just as there were times that the light of hope would falter and dim before the harsh weight of reality. Such was the balance of the human condition.

Such was the weight of a true world.

Randidly channeled that bitterness, that helplessness, that craving for change. He also pulled from outside the Alpha Comos, drawing from the determined figure of Kaan Swacc. The man who was so sure that Randidly had been a Nether spy that he would stop at nothing to try and eliminate him.

For several minutes, Randidly was a conduit to these complicated and dangerous emotions. That holy sense of necessity made motivations irrelevant. It was a towering monster that demanded obedience and silence. During that time, he didn’t panic or really react to those emotions. He allowed them to rage within himself, lashing out against him but doing no permanent damage. And gradually, they began to organize themselves. The stronger, more volatile ones settled to the bottom, hiding in the depths.

Randidly opened his eyes. The monster in front of him was gone. Instead, Randidly was holding the shoulders of a lovely young woman with gold skin like she was constructed from pure metal. She had long lashes as she slowly blinked, consciousness and understanding blooming in her eyes.

Then she gave Randidly a deep look as he released her.

Meanwhile, Randidly looked at her back, where strange lengths of metal stretched back into the darkness behind her. The way they were arranged made it seem like she was held in place by some sort of restraint, but Randidly knew that was a lie. Those were her greedy arms, made as inconspicuous as possible.

A second after he released her, she pulled herself back into the dark places of the World Tree, quickly vanishing. Randidly shook his head lightly. That figure… is now something that genuinely believes destruction is the answer. She will be an unstable element within the image… but that is why it will become powerful.

It was a risk.

Randidly took it without hesitation. He would walk without regrets toward the Pinnacle.