Chapter 1651 (2/2)

Randidly felt oddly flattered but tried to keep it from his expression. Even now, the ground rattled itself to pieces beneath their feet. He pointed to Helen, who was just dismissing her black wicker image and hopping back up onto solid ground. “I’ve had my subordinate dig a deep ditch around our group. If one of you could use that to create a powerful image that runs both underneath it and around it; ideally, it would almost be solid, so that-”

The temperature around the group dropped and walls of frost grew at a speed visible to the naked eye. Soon, the entire Pinnacle Seeker Group seemed to be sitting inside of a snow globe made with light blue glass. The Frost Matriarch offered Randidly a quiet smile with her massive and blunt features.

Randidly coughed lightly. “Perfect. Now let me-”

Elhume’s hand lurched into motion, pushing through the Nether King’s defenses.

RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEE

CRACK!

The latest bout of shaking sent a resounding fracture that cut up the unraveling land even further. A vast rift opened into the ground about fifty meters away from their current position. Almost instantly, thick Nether began to geyser out of the ground, forcing the already wide chasm to swell even further.

That pressure acted like the signal for the rest of the land. Prying one divide wider started a chain reaction as the ground endured new pressure from every direction. Soon the rumbling changed to the staccato of the ground fracturing to pieces. More and more Nether spewed out of these wider openings, forcing them to expand. At the same time, the spatial walls along the sides of the isolated area began to thin and unravel as the ground fractured into floating islands and they drifted outward.

The original crater area was a jigsaw puzzle being taken apart in slow motion. The shifts were punctuated by the triumphant chuckle of Commandant Wick as Elhume’s hand continued to force its way downward.

Randidly’s hands were trembling, so he took a deep breath. Unknowingly, his heart rate had been steadily rising as he watched the powerful forces tear the area to pieces. His skin was beginning to redden as his body temperature rose, quickly overpowering the chilling ambiance of the Frost Matriarch’s image. When he blew out a breath, he blew out steam.

Randidly conjured Nether down to his fingertips as he walked toward the edge of their stable ‘snow globe’. After visualizing the array he would need to create to withstand the force of Elhume, Randidly began to draw.

The start was simple; Randidly needed to ground the array and make it whole. He needed a seal. There couldn’t be a single flaw in the sense of oneness that he was creating. His fingers blurred as he traced symbol after symbol in quick succession along the icy wall in a circle. After completing each series of runes, Randidly took a step to the left and began again.

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level 421!

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 263!

Randidly had quite a bit of inspiration by watching the way the Nether King had both made his preparations above and his preparations below. Rather than meeting the hand directly with Nether, what the Nether King was doing was creating a buffer of faux-space. Space was the currency of Aether generally, but the Nether King deftly used it as an insulator to keep Elhume from overpowering him immediately.

Randidly planned on borrowing those principles to create a similar effect, with one notable exception. His fingers continued to move faster and faster, even while his heartbeat increased its pace to keep up. Steam began wafting off his powerful body as he accelerated through the tight motions.

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 264!

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 306!

At this point, the crimson bolts of lightning that clustered around Elhume’s massive fingers were constant. The growing tornados howled that they wouldn’t be so easily extinguished, but that noise was blanketed by the rumbling of the ground, which was in turn blanketed by the grinding roar as Elhume’s hand overpowered the Nether King’s strike and continued to distort the spatial walls.

This sound, too, was soon covered up by the horrifying grinding as the carefully woven spatial walls began to tear; they could help hold back the fingers of Elhume no longer. The sky shuddered, screamed, and collapsed.

Randidly’s expression tightened. He had almost traveled 180 degrees around the edge of the frozen igloo area, but from the way the situation was deteriorating, he wouldn’t finish in time. Even after finishing his circuit, he would need to build up the infrastructure of the Nether Array; this was just the base.

He needed more time.

The spatial walls flickered and died. And at that moment, the horrifying arrangement beneath their feet began to move. Standing near the middle of their group, Randidly heard the Frost Matriarch release a hissing breath. Outside of the protective igloo, large chunks of land were pushed further apart as the Nether rushed upward.

Their igloo was originally on one of the largest remaining chunks of land, but the land kept being cracked and split. Huge chunks fell away, revealing a deep darkness that waited below. The darkness had been previously been kept locked away, but now it was given free rein to expand.

And such was the ferocity of that explosion that Randidly watched a nearby chunk of ground, one that started the size of a football field, meltdown to a pebble in only a few seconds. With an entirely different kind of rumbling, those heavy veins of Nether that were hidden beneath their feet began to reveal the horrifying veins that fueled them.