Chapter 1601 (1/2)

Randidly could feel how nervous the recruits were as they followed behind them, but they moved quickly for all their confusion about his presence; Heiffal and Helen had done their work well. But still, they didn’t have any time to spare. As they descended from the plateau on which the Military Headquarters sat to the plains between themselves and their target, the ground beneath their feet shuddered several times.

The Nether Invasions was crashing to the ground with enough force that no one could ignore its arrival. Randidly noticed other similar groups heading in different directions as they began to head toward their destination. Quite a few similar groups spread out from the base to accomplish similar missions.

Let’s make sure that this group’s result catches the eye of the lazy Commandants...

When they hit the tall grass of the plains, Randidly glanced around at the people around him. This pace wasn’t enough. “How much faster can we go?”

DiOrtho scowled and the other Squad Leaders looked at each other awkwardly. Even Vizzeret Clamman, who had always been rather cowed in the wake of their challenge, looked at Randidly with sharp eyes. The flames of determination were bright in his pupils.

“We can keep up,” DiOrtho affirmed.

Randidly chuckled to himself and shook his head. Well, it was typical for the inexperienced to bite off more than they could chew, but Randidly wasn’t going to call them out on it directly. Instead, he would do his best to help them protect their pride. For the first time in a long time, he activated his Ruinous Drive Skill. A pulsing heart of energy formed within Randidly’s body.

When that heart was fully formed and luminous, Randidly began to rush forward, practically gliding through the tall grass. The recruits moved to follow him in fits and starts. Every second that energy would pulse and spread an aura into the surroundings that clung to his subordinates. Their eyes brightened and they suddenly moved with increased explosiveness and vigor. In the past, he had used it to solely increase damage, but the current Randidly had drastically improved from that time in his life.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruinous Drive (Ru) has grown to Level 115!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruinous Drive (Ru) has grown to Level 116!

“So you even had a Skill like this,” Charlotte Wick whispered to herself. All of the recruits soon grew used to the pace and followed behind him in a tight group.

Randidly chuckled and accelerated a little further. “You don’t know the half of it.”

As they ran, Randidly began to tinker with the associated image of the Skill. When he was satisfied with that, he moved on to the way the energy was dispersed. In the past, it was enough to simply have an empowering aura. But his five years in the shaft had been a crash course in organic and meaningful energy flows. So very quickly, he swirled the energy of Ruinous Drive around his person in a whirl.

The flows split from each other and reunited in different combinations as they spun out from his body. In this manner, each recruit was continuously exposed to slightly different variations of the same energy. He could feel more and more accumulation in the bodies of his subordinates.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruinous Drive (Ru) has grown to Level 117!

...

RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMBLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEE!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruinous Drive (Ru) has grown to Level 139!

While the group surged forward to the agreed-upon location to deal with the descending Nether Sphere, the conflict in the sky remained deadlocked. The dark moon loomed over their heads with determined ill-will. Commandant Wick remained pinned down by the confrontation, mobilizing his significant image in order to hold the Nether King at bay.

Meanwhile, Randidly was exchanging messages with Lady Iellaya, who was managing the larger response in the large continent to the South of Military Headquarters. She fed him information regarding the broader situation.

The attacks were apparently not solely coming at this planet; all of Aether’s bases in the Fifth Cohort were being attacked at once. And these Nether Sphere’s were aimed to establish a foothold on the planets so the Nether King or his Heralds could expand their Nether Rituals down the surface. The more of these spheres that the various forces couldn’t eliminate, the more difficult it would be to prevent the space from being folded by the Nether Ritual.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ruinous Drive (Ru) has grown to Level 140!

Yet what Lady Iellaya mostly shared was that while the foot soldiers were panicking, the influential military personnel weren’t taking the attack seriously. There were also several strange ‘irregular’ units that were wandering around the command building, treating the situation like a fun hunting game.

Randidly pressed his lips together as he thought of the individuals that reigned supreme in the Nexus. His anger flared back to life. Just how many fucking lives will be lost to this game…? How big would that number need to be to get you to notice…? Shit-!

To distract himself from his fury, Randidly began to move the energy flows of Ruinous Drive in seemingly meaningless patterns. Instead of separating them into split flows, he segmented the energy into minuscule pieces and attempted to bring them together. Over and over again, that wild and oddly captivating chaos of the Nether King’s Ritual replayed in his mind. A flat plane with discrete bits of energy swimming as randomly as tadpoles moving on nascent instinct. They formed and died with all the performance of sparks.

Pieces to flows, flows to pieces, pieces to nothing, nothing to flaring pieces...

Yet even if the individual pieces faded as quickly as they joined and separated out from an energy flow, they contributed to a broader flow that was somehow maintained despite the minuscule longevity of the pieces… The whole was permanent, even if all the factors that created that meaningful whole were transient.