Chapter 1558 (2/2)

Congratulations! Your Skill Tide of the Void (L) has grown to Level 289!

Of all the repeated Skill growth he had seen, the most was definitely Tide of the Void. A portion of his attention was now constantly maintaining the pull on emotions that resisted the grasp of the significance below. The strain was tiresome, but compared to the alternative… Randidly reassured himself by checking the Nether content in the air: still 49%.

Yet he twisted his mouth as he looked downward. “I might need to come to kill you, huh?”

Just like how the connected emotions could hold Randidly up… there was a sinister existence that persevered below, using its connection to him to prevent itself from being pulled any deeper into that grinding power plant on which the Nexus was built. A hunk of flesh that had apparently gained sapience and the desire to survive.

Randidly scratched his chin. Aside from the attacks, no information flowed upward. Truly, he wondered how the warped thing below managed to sense him.

What was most frustrating about the connection was that the growing piece of flesh Randidly had cast away had one significant advantage over him: the time dilation was even stronger where it was because it was closer to the significance. This was why its control over emotions was rapidly increasing to the point that it could launch concerted attacks against Randidly from its position. He had to assume its ability to detect him also stemmed from a mastery of emotions that he didn’t possess.

Randidly tsk’d, but he had a smile on his face. The madness in him liked the presence of this hateful doppelganger. It’s attacks brought him a threat; the scent of danger was back in the air. Randidly could sense the precipice of death once more, and his growth again quickened due to its proximity.

But it was a dangerous gamble. Made worse by the very few recourses Randidly had to deal with the problem.

The ideal situation was to figure out a method to pull himself out of the Web. In the past week, he had been familiarizing himself with the behavior of Nether in the air non-stop. He didn’t have any true results, but the accumulation of such experience was important. He also used small scraps of Nether to experiment with different Nether Rituals, but he didn’t have much to spare. His resources were still limited.

Ultimately, if Randidly needed quite a lot more time to figure out how to escape, he would probably need to deal with this escalating threat in order to have that time. It was possible that the doppelgangers attacks would plateau… but it was foolish to rely on that possibility. The System might be displaying misleading Skill Level notifications, but the pessimistic part of Randidly assumed that the more unfortunate possibility was the true one.

Below him, that weird chunk of his flesh that had been infected by strange emotions was gaining Skill Levels. Even if it wasn’t quick, it time on its side.

Descending further also seemed manageable. After all, Randidly had a method to hold himself steady against the pull of the significance. So he could annihilate the doppelganger now, while it was weaker, and simply establish a new equilibrium.

Ending the threat would make this place insufferable… but on the other hand...

One moment there was a fluttering of excitement in Randidly’s chest at the thought of going down to seek a fight with the doppelganger, but the next he sighed and shook his head. Heading deeper had some disadvantages. Right now, he was steadily accumulating more Nether. As his ‘weight’ of the Nether Nebula increased, the speed of his accumulation accelerated. Deeper in the spine, accumulating Nether would be much more difficult. His experiments with Nether Rituals would be slowed even further.

In addition, Randidly suspected that the strain of holding himself against the grasp of the significance would increase as he went deeper. Based on the fact the emotional doppelganger managed it, such an effort wasn’t herculean. But Randidly was still a bit from his peak capability. Based on the increasing sophistication of the attacks from below, he still had some time.

Besides, there were also some advantages to staying here. First, there was an increasing complex Nether flow around him that had nothing to do with either his own efforts or the significance. It seemed that this extended confrontation between him and the emotional mutant was triggering something from the Nether.

Which made sense; such a confrontation was significant. The patterns, due to their strange relationship, were unfamiliar to Randidly and extremely educational.

In addition, even time Randidly’s images crushed the emotional attacks, they naturally absorbed a portion of the shattered emotions used as weapons. From them, Randidly could feel he was incorporating some… instinctual understanding of how to utilize emotions. Just from that, the emotional weight that each of his images possessed grew more profound.

Due to the time differential, Randidly had quickly set aside the idea that he would practice weaponizing emotions in a similar way; his opponent simply had more practice time. Besides, wouldn’t he just absorb those same lessons by defeating the attacks with his own strengths?

But Randidly’s emerald eyes looked down with a hint of greed. The connection and desire within the emotions that attacked him…

Didn’t that hold a hint of resemblance toward Nether?

“I’ll come down for you, one way or another,” Randidly whispered to the air. Then, feeling like he was saying the lines of a villain, Randidly began to laugh once more. But while his face was crinkled in revelry, the fingers of his right hand continued their controlled movements. A small Nether Ritual was formed, tested, and banished upon that palm, over and over again.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 201!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Ritual (A) has grown to Level 201

“Holy fuck, I might be going insane,” Randidly grinned downward. He blinked several times. Then he snorted.

He didn’t hate the feeling.