Chapter 1705 (1/2)

For the third time in only two hours, Randidly ended up at the base of the staircase leading up to the gates of the Beigon Estates. The ripples of spatial distortion around him steadily calmed back down after Don Beigon kicked him to the curb. He could only shake his head and click his tongue. But even if he was annoyed by this dramatic and manipulative family, Randidly couldn’t resist a smile.

In a way, he could understand how they could be so dramatic and brutally powerful and yet still be so popular; they were charming. At times, it was very easy to see the fun in the games they played.

Yet that was also the reason why the Beigons were so deadly.

Randidly turned away from the staircase and then paused. His lips twitched as he realized that the area behind him, which used to lead to a teleporter, was now replaced with a mirror image of what was in front of him: the tall stone staircase at the base of the mountain. Randidly looked back and forth, wondering how he had somehow been placed in this valley where the only option was to climb the stairs once more.

And walk right into whatever surprise you have planned for me at the gates…? No thank you, Don, Randidly produced his Philosopher’s Key and felt around for the essence of Nrorce’s farm in the air in front of him. The tip of the key moved slowly, feeling out the faint connections. There was definitely a shielding over this area so most typical methods of escape would be blocked, but Randidly’s Fatepiece was quite atypical.

Enough so that it had attracted the attention of the Nexus. It was the first and most general of the Fatepieces that Randidly had obtained.

After putting back on the Skill suppression gloves and passing through the white lightning corridor, Randidly was glad to find that Nrorce was only mid-preparation for the meal within his small cottage. The air inside smelled as tantalizingly delicious as always. The blue-skinned dwarf grunted and waved for Randidly to take a seat while he finished.

The meal was a bed of grits with stir-fried onions, peppers, and strips of pheasant breast dumped on top. Randidly hummed with pleasure as he ate and savored the raw spiciness produces by Nroce’s homegrown peppers.

Nrorce, as he always did, had accumulated another long list of menial tasks for Randidly before he wandered off, heading to the spice room. The toil on a farm could never stop, even with superhuman Strength. So Randidly slapped his cheeks and walked out into the warm sunshine of the day.

For a few seconds, he stood there and felt the real differences between this warmth and the strange, presumptuous heat of the Beigon Estate. The natural smells that formed the comfortable base of the experience here had been completely absent in that strained paradise in the mountains; that place was artifice, this was the dirty truth.

Randidly flexed his toes in the dirt path, savoring the feeling. Then he got to work.

Influence +41!

While his body toiled until the Engraving plates on the gloves were superheated and smoking, Randidly’s mind began making some calculations. Two months was the timeline that Claudette wanted for him to begin work on refining her image… and Randidly still had no idea how the process was supposed to go. He had sent a message to Octavius, but the Overseer of the Seventh Cohort confessed that his image was never powerful enough to warrant lavishly spending on having a specialist refine it; he was just as clueless as Randidly.

Still, there were several organizations in the Nexus that specialized in nurturing image refiners. Octavius assured Randidly that with his name and reputation due to the recent battles in the Fifth Cohort, they should be able to find a group that could assist him through the basics. And in the end, what were the more sophisticated methods but applications of the basics?

Randidly grimaced. But before I work on Claudette… I want to get my own transformation out of the way. Which means I need to accumulate a lot of Nether within my Nether Core and finally settle these debts by adding the Nemesai’s debts to the Alpha Cosmos… accumulating Influence more quickly is helping that process… but I don’t think I can avoid a few more trips into the shaft to allow some time to pass…

And after that, I’ll need to finally allow the Grim Chimera to complete its transformation…

Randidly sighed and shook his head. One of the reasons he lingered here on the farm in the sun was to distract himself from the Calamity that was approaching for Expira. The sunlight on his skin and the smell of growing things were soothing, keeping him from dwelling excessively. Yet in the murky darkness of the shaft…

The temptation to turn his focus inward...

“But I have to do it,” Randidly said to himself. And he meant it.

That night after dinner, Randidly told Nrorce that he would need to spend his nights outside of the farm dealing with some personal business. The goblin accepted the news with his usual stoicism while he carried the dishes to the kitchen. “Good. Give me time to inspect the Engraving without you skulking or loafing around. Something about it feels a bit off, you know? It’s just not the same as it used to be.”

Randidly hid the smile that was tugging at the corners of his mouth. Yea, because the warehouse used to be the bastard child of a cesspool and a fire hazard…

Once outside of the farm, Randidly used the Philosopher’s Key to portal down into the bottom portion of the Web. Then he accelerated downward, blasting past the porcelain guardians and sinking into the howling maw of significance that would devour anything that didn’t possess its own Nether Core. The Stillborn Phoenix gleefully opened itself up, releasing a wave of dense emotions that spread rapidly outward and infected the other emotional energy that flowed upward in a constant current.