Chapter 1712 (2/2)
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Congratulations! Your SKill Sharpness has grown to Level 322!
Burning with Aether, Nether, and the queer inevitably of Randidly’s Primordial Nether Juju, Acri ripped through Velio’s image and met the dark grey bastard sword directly. Metal kissed metal and released a humming reverberation that possessed enough power that blood spurted out of Velio Dunn’s nose and mouth. Even Randidly’s remade mucous membranes tore slightly and began to leak blood and snot as his limbs blurred into motion.
Randidly ignored the small wounds and pursued Velio, who had been directly overpowered by his strike and sent drifting backward. After a small moment of stillness to trigger Dreadful Alacrity’s special effect, Randidly practically teleported beneath the tumbling Velio and raised his hand with his fingers splayed outward. Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart. Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil. Cursed Appetite of the Wraith.
Velio spun around and brought his shattered images back together into a burning whole, even as more crystals formed across his skin… but then Randidly poured everything he had into pulling that vibrant Aether from his opponent and into himself. He couldn’t steal an opponent's image like Raymund Ballast could, but Randidly could siphon off a fair chunk of charge.
Especially when his target was so brazen with it.
Congratulations! Your Skill Cursed Appetite of the Wraith (L) has grown to Level 368!
Energy flooded into him. The boost Randidly experienced made his image physicalizations briefly condensed even more fully, seeming more solid than reality across his body. At the same time, Velio cursed and spun around. Randidly’s Grim Intuition caught the way the thin layer of crystalized Aether spreading across his body slowed without that power fueling it.
Randidly kicked off the air and accelerate upward. Velio slashed downward, but Dreadful Alacrity and his images flared. His eyes glowed with an impossibly prescient awareness. Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold. The Glittering Leaves of Yggdrasil. Ruin is Inevitable, Yet This Too Shall Pass.
Randidly saw the minute adjustments to Velio’s attack even before Velio made them. He squeaked underneath the blade, raising Acri; he did not intend to allow this battle to drag out for the full ten minutes. The sooner he demonstrated to Velio he was not prey, the better.
His Soulseed weapon again ripped through Velio’s defensive image and stabbed into the spot beneath Velio’s right armpit.
Crack!
The feedback from penetrating just a half-inch into Velio’s flesh warned Randidly that something was wrong. He narrowed his eyes and used Chimeric Impunity to rapidly generate space between them.
Raw, liquid Aether gushed out of the small crack that Randidly had made in the ‘skin’ of Velio Dunn. The man sneered down at his side, but none of that hostility appeared to be directed at Randidly. Around the wound, crystalized Aether began to spread across his side and shoulder at a rate visible to the naked eye. “Heh. Even now, I cannot escape my own sins, eh…? A broken, forsaken toy. Well… so be it.”
Velio glanced up at Randidly. The radiating waves of danger he had been releasing dimmed further as his image died and cooled. “I never believed I was anything special. My only unique trait… was the fact that I survived, even when so many more admirable specimens died. Do you know what I’ve seen boy? The feeling of watching your people turn against your god? That is why you must die. Because you… you could open us all up to a return to that hell.”
“You kill to protect the status quo…” Randidly snarled. Velio Dunn’s rambling made no sense to him and he didn’t intend to dwell on it. Meanwhile, his Nether Core had fully returned to its glory, now erupting with extremely dense Nether as his growing Influence continued to improve the foundation of his Nether abilities. The spectral flames of Weight across his body grew more numerous. “Don’t you dare try and damn me with what I might do in the future.”
Velio appeared to be finished talking because he simply accelerated toward Randidly rather than responding. Thankfully, his speed hadn’t increased as the crystalized Aether spread across him and he continued to leak liquid Aether.
But the sword he swung at Randidly now was… different. The horrible darkness of Velio’s image continued to intensify with that weapon at the core. But even more strangely, the runes across his bastard sword once more activated… but didn’t glow. Instead, the surface released a strange mist, even in the vacuum of space.
Randidly settled himself and gathered all of his force for another strike. Before this broken, ancient being, he would not balk. Man is Proud, But the Chimera Takes. Piercing Gaze of the Egg. Yyrwood Flesh of Yggdrasil.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!
Immediately after the weapons impacted each other, he felt the wrongness. Randidly furiously activated Chimeric Impunity and his powerful physical body and tossed himself to the side. The mist-shrouded bastard sword sliced cleanly through the space where he had just been standing.
In his hand, Acri keened in agony and writhed. The tip of Acri’s spear was actually made out of three appendages, spun together and sharpened to a deadly edge. But in the last clash, Velio Dunn’s sword had completely severed one of those appendages and sheered a bit of material off of the other two.
That image…. Randidly’s grimaced to look at the small bit of Acri twitching and floating in the air between them. Velio smoothly pivoted and brought his sword up for another slash. Crystalized Aether continued to climb up his neck and over the edge of his jaw.
This then was Velio Dunn, the man who had approached the Pinnacle. He raised his sword slowly, glaring at Randidly with the resolve to kill him within the next nine minutes.