Chapter 1581 (1/2)

The man floated absently for a while in the darkness, feeling somewhat lost. His limbs felt separate from him, as though the body was barely his. He looked at his hands, one metal and one flesh, almost in wonder for several long moments.

But then the fire in his chest urged him toward action. No matter the strange sensation, he had work to do.

The man shrugged. Clearly, I had to give something up in order to proceed with the Fatepiece. Yet… nothing seems different…? Am I just going to be numb this whole time? Hum… Well, best not to dwell on it. So, to finish my Nether Core, all I need is the significance of the Stillborn Phoenix… And then to actually Engrave the thing...

The man stretched his limbs, feeling his joints crack pleasantly. As he moved, the numbness was steadily disappearing. The horrible heat in his chest continued to char his organs to urge him to move forward, but somehow that drive was blunted by the strange emptiness that the man felt in his head. Rather leisurely, he used his Grim Intuition to peer at the surroundings. Particularly, he examined the Nether Gatekeeper floating nearby very closely.

Due to the dense aura of Nether the creature projected outward, it was difficult for him to get a good look at its Nether Core. But as he continued to press his Willpower, the general shape of the Nether Core was revealed to him…Grim Intuition took great pleasure in slowly peeling back the layers of obscurement.

Gradually, the Nether Gatekeeper appeared to sense the intense scrutiny. It looked upward with sharp eyes at the man. The ‘territory’ around this Nether Gatekeeper was a vivid teal color. Yet as it appeared to grow more and more incensed at the man’s unrelenting attention, that strange being raised its antlered head and hissed up at the man; the color of the area grew closer and closer to white.

After adjusting his grip on the emotional tether, the man grinned down at the Nether Herald below him. “If you’ve got the ability, come and stop me. Otherwise…”

Even as the Nether Gatekeeper began to gnash its teeth and swipe menacingly at the air, the man gradually forced his senses through the thick layer of swirling Nether and could study the Nether Core within the creature. Immediately, the man’s mood improved; compared to the average Nether Beast, the Nether Core of this Nether Herald was created with such complexity and acute curves that even his initial examination proved fruitful. Some of the subtle layerings of patterns present helped point the man toward solutions for his own complex layering problems.

The man grinned downward in satisfaction. And the Nether Gatekeeper could do nothing to stop him.

So a new variety of training was incorporated into the man’s normal schedule. There were some other nearby Nether Gatekeepers and the man antagonized them all with his invasive stare until he could observe their Nether Cores while they were still functioning. His understanding of complex Nether layering finally reached beyond his initial sense of helplessness. As the man drove himself forward in this new manner, he also felt his ability to observe Nether growing at a prodigious rate.

Still, he didn’t masquerade as a peeping tom all the time. He also spent a significant amount of his energy revising his images. Strangely, the man in his current iteration felt like he had been such an idiot in the past; why hadn’t he been able to see all the simple ways that his images could be improved? So he started making large scale changes to the three main sources of his strength.

For Yggdrasil, the man’s focus was two-fold: first, he adjusted the runic symbols that covered the bark of the World Tree to utilize some of the principles of Nether. Although the effect was small, some portions began to resemble his new progress in Nether layering. In his mind, it was silly to expect that the story of the universe would be solely writ in the shape of Aether.

Secondly, he began to add some surrounding plant and animal life to his image. Beings now existed in the biome generated by the World Tree. Yggdrasil’s main power came from the aura of life that it released into the surrounding area. Yet that most powerful weapon wasn’t demonstrated properly in the image; the effect was simply reliant on the faith the man had poured into it. Now, as smaller shrubs and ferns blossomed beneath the auspices of the World Tree, that aura of life became concrete.

Birds fluttered from branch to branch while foxes sat below and watched them with cunning eyes. A smattering of brightly colored flowers bloomed near the base of the massive trunk. Yggdrasil was a spring of life, invigorating plants and animals alike. The very air changed nearby, becoming pure and wholesome.

And already the rejuvenation effect has increased, the man thought with a smug smile.

For the Grim Chimera image, the man focused on the tails. The spectral tail starting from the base of his neck grew more translucent and mysterious, seemingly not even present most of the time. Sometimes an observer would see it flicking to the left, yet in the next instant, it was somehow curling around the opposite shoulder. Its behaviors and traits were misleading and dangerous for the man’s foes.

Meanwhile, the lower tail had its bone armor completely overhauled. The spikes were blunted; this wasn’t a weapon of puncturing, but bludgeoning. In addition, the length doubled. In terms of power, the blows that the Grim Chimera could execute with the lower tail were now more powerful than any strike the man could make with his other limbs.

As the tails became more central to his image, the man could feel his balance shifting. The structure of his legs shifted, with more muscles clustering around the knee joint. His explosive power steadily rose as he refined the image.

The man was most hesitant with his changes for the Stillborn Phoenix, considering he hadn’t yet figured out the significance of that image. He was missing a key component. Because of that, he focused only on one specific aspect: the black hole’s ability to devour emotion.

The man hadn’t thought deeply about it before, but it was strange that his image could absorb emotion when even the horrifying significance below him in the Aether Refinery couldn’t manage to restrain that fickle Aether energy. But instead of justifying this deviation from the norm, the man offered up some capability as compensation.

Now, when the Stillborn Phoenix was active, spectral forms would sometimes wander out of the event horizon. Monstrous hunched beasts, humanoids with hollow eyes, even a starfish-esque amoeba drifted out of the Egg of Depression as the man shifted the black hole’s focus. These phantasms were hollow ‘shapes’ that rapidly disintegrated after departing the black hole. Without their energy and emotion motivating them, they rapidly fell to pieces.

In the man’s view, if he could restrain one portion of Aether, he should be less effective at influencing the other portion.

Much to the man’s delight, those remnant pieces of shape left behind a thick thread of significance, which the man was only too happy to devour into his Nether Nebula. He hadn’t been focusing on the development of his grey bubbles in quite some time, due to the more dangerous threat of being dragged down by significance, but these occasional phantoms rapidly bolstered those grey bubbles.

Previously, the man had only a single grey bubble floating at the center of the whirlpool, with a small bulge hinting at the formation of another. Yet as he continued with his training, he gathered more and more, to the point that three bubbles clung to each other in the core of the Nether Nebula.

Feeling pleased, the man continued his ceaseless training.