Chapter 1592 (1/2)

Influence +2!

Randidly woke up after twelve hours feeling extremely refreshed. He stretched and yawned, then hopped up from the smoldering remnants of his couch. He walked over to the window and grinned outside, enjoying the sunshine.

The constant aches and discomforts that he had carried with him since he had left the shaft finally were smoothed away by Yggdrasil. His soul, body, images, and Nether Core came into perfect alignment with each other. There was no visible sign of the change, but Randidly could feel the working shift something vital about himself.

Balance was finally achieved.

Reflecting on what exactly that shift meant… Randidly could only scratch his cheek awkwardly as he turned away from the window; he had no clue. But he firmly believed that, should he continue to earnestly train, his efforts would soon be rewarded.

With only ten days left until the final Drill Sergeant Challenge, which was the day before deployment to the frontlines, Randidly threw himself into training. For now, PP was his primary concern. His Soulskill’s Tithe was the most effective improvement he could receive in the short term.

To that end, Randidly’s first order of business was refining his training array even further; his exercise with Weight had proven that he still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of his current physical capabilities. After a sizable breakfast, he immediately went to his personal training array and mobilized his Mana. He tightened the bindings against his body and also created an approximation of the image dispersal of the porcelain automatons that was reverse-engineered from one of their broken corpses.

Randidly couldn’t get the effect of complete dispersal from a single pulse, but he was able to incorporate a constant weakening of images into his training array through a persistent buzz of energy. He sent another few broken dolls to Neveah to see if she could have some better luck reverse-engineering their effects, but for now, his current array was sufficient.

With a wide and wild smile on his face, Randidly Ghosthound stepped into his training array. With a shudder, the Engravings activated. Tight coils of compressed space clamped down over his body and weakened his images.

Night and day Randidly trained, aiming to accumulate PP. He started with his images. He aimed for the Skills that were close to reaching a new threshold and focused his attention on sharpening the details. The musculature and body of the Grim Chimera was reinforced. The ecosystem around the World Tree was slowly filled out. The powerful and mysterious energy released by the Stillborn Phoenix became increasingly ominous.

In the process, he earned quite a few Levels in Conviction of the Smiling Horror, reaching Level 389. Grit of the Ascendant Bane became his second Skill to reach Level 400.

Randidly also spent quite a bit of time working with his new Ruin is Inevitable, Yet This Too Shall Pass Skill. With the newfound focus of the image, it became much easier to connect to the parallel Randidlys and seek out survival information in difficult situations. From there, it required much less energy to activate the adaption portion of the Skill as Randidly already understood what he was targeting. With his concerted effort, that Skill soon reached Level 301.

Upon taking an hour-long break in his training, Randidly checked his PP and grinned; he had reached the needed 1750 PP. He had even exceeded it by a bit. For a moment he was going to utilize it now and at least receive the PP Tithe, but he decided to wait.

On the one hand, he still hadn’t really mastered all of his current abilities yet. A few days would enable him to sort that unfamiliarity and be ready for his next spurt of growth. But also, Randidly would feel better to go to the Challenge without using the Tithe, where he knew he was going to be observed by other forces. Then, if Velio Dunn and his ilk planned an ambush for him later based on observations from that event, his explosive growth in Stats could catch them by surprise.

Influence +4!

All the while, his Influence continued to accumulate.

Cheered by the thought of surprising that fuck Velio Dunn, Randidly bided his time and continued his training as though he hadn’t gathered the required amount of PP. From the individual Skills, Randidly began utilizing three images at once with the multiplicative boost from Weight. His three images spiraled together under the pressure and coalesced into a solid core. The Engravings of the array shined bright as the suppression increased. With this, Randidly truly intended to discover his limits.

Ethereal flames sprung to life across his limbs, pushing his potential upward.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Smiling Horror (L) has grown to Level 390!

Which was why on the fifth day of training, Randidly forcibly shattered his training array. The wave of force he unwittingly unleashed damaged all the surrounding training arrays and wounded several recruits in the process. Luckily the two closest to Randidly were DiOrtho and Raymund who both possessed tough bodies, otherwise there might have been actual casualties.

Feeling chagrined, Randidly asked Heiffal and Helen to increased the base difficulty of the recruit’s training even further. Then Randidly simply went back and made an even more powerful training array, utilizing the insights Neveah had gained from studying the broken porcelain automatons. Then, around the training array, he created a variant of the defensive array he had made around his area.

Better safe than sorry, after all.

It was right when Randidly finished the training array that he abruptly remembered the Nether Gatekeeper that he put in the Alpha Cosmos before he had escaped from the shaft. Because he could use some information on the usage of Nether, he immediately swept his senses through the Alpha Cosmos. But to his surprise, the Nether Gatekeeper had vanished.

With a growing frown on his face, Randidly began to use his Nether Sensation to track down the Nether Gatekeeper. As a being of Nether, there were minute energy disturbances that Randidly could track. And it was only due to this investigation that he discovered the strange archways on Expira and the Alpha Cosmos, which opened at sunset and allowed small amounts of people to pass from one world to the other.

He finally tracked down the Nether Gatekeeper at the Frost Dragon Village, but Randidly reasoned that he already had enough on his plate learning to understand his weight and images. For now, letting the Nether Gatekeeper have some free time was fine.