Chapter 1718 (2/2)

...but now I need to pay back Nrorce for sacrificing his planet. Randidly’s brow furrowed. Everything has its costs.

While he continued to descend, he contacted Neveah to help Claudette find a comfortable spot within his Alpha Cosmos to train. Then he sent messages to Edraine and Octavius, telling them about his fight against Velio Dunn, the strange image remnant he had seen and affected, and now the announcement of the pursuit of the ancient dog of the Swacc Family. Those two had their fingers more closely on the pulse of the Nexus; they would try and ferret out what was happening much more easily than he could.

For a few seconds, Randidly considered sending a message to Commandant Wick about the situation, as he was his direct superior in Military High Command. But Randidly didn’t trust the bear-man at all. Directly revealing his capabilities was not something that he wanted. Even now, thinking of his image and the overtures that the Commandant had made toward him made his skin crawl.

Instead, he leaned forward and activated Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart to descend more quickly. The ambient Nether rapidly rose and the rush of significance began to accelerate the time he experienced. He blasted past the fifty percent Nether content layer and rushed through the zone filled with porcelain guards before they could swarm around him.

Only when he had descended and settled at his familiar perch above the Nether Gatekeepers did Randidly relax and decelerate. Eventually, he settled quite a bit nearer to the Nether Beings than usual, but he intended to keep the scope of his activities small. He released a long breath, adding two thin streams of steam to the murky darkness. His Nether Core swirled, giving him plenty of independence from the hungry mass of significance that waited below.

His mind quickly settled into a low activity state. His pulsed slowed. His powerful body might have healed, but Randidly’s mental blurriness was becoming a serious problem. With the help of some gentle pules from Yggdrasil, he gradually wiped away the strain that had accumulated in that brief fight. His mental acuity slowly returned.

He continued to slowly breathe, taking almost a full hour for both his inhale and exhale. The air circulated through his body in powerful waves. Energy and images spun together through him and reinforced each other. As his mind remained settled in that deep state, some subconscious part of Randidly moved through his three images and adjusted their peripheries until they were even more conducive to each other.

Occasionally, Randidly’s eyelids would twitch and his eyelashes would flutter. But ultimately, he stayed in that one position for another three days, allowing all of the exhaustion to pass through him and out of him. His muscles gradually relaxed. This time, he did not rush to wake.

So when his eyelids twitched for the final time and then his eyes opened to reveal emerald irises, his gaze was sharp and cutting. The force of his Willpower spread out through air, gripping the surroundings with such force that space began to distort. Some of the nearby Nether Gatekeepers paused in their own meditation and over at him with strange gazes.

But quickly, Randidly eased up his focus. Then he patted himself and did a mental check-up. His gaze steadily wandered until he looked rather helplessly at his left arm. His forearm was warped and a small portion of the elbow had been directly annihilated. The fight against Velio Dunn had ripped away a significant quantity of metal, and the parts that remained had been warped either by Velio or Randidly’s image. His fingers especially, were burned and stubby, from that last slash of his left hand to open up a path for his spear thrust. His ring finger was longer than his middle finger my a fair amount.

I’ll need to repair it… but I don’t really think that I’ve made much progress when it comes to forging a metal arm in the last few months… Randidly’s eyes glittered as he flexed the limb. Besides, right now it should be better to focus more fully on my images in preparation for Claudette’s image refining…

Randidly hummed to himself and stretched his back and arms. A brief scan of his Alpha Cosmos let him see that Claudette was safely occupied training with Neveah, which meant that he could focus on his own business for a while. Her messages indicated she was content. So Randidly closed his eyes once more and sank into his Soulspace.

Before he proceeded toward Yggdrasil, he paused and looked around at his Soulspace. He could see portions of his Skills and Class that still had minute flaws after withstanding that memory fragment of Elhume and Yystrix. However, what shocked Randidly was that there was also a whisper of wind that flowed through his completely isolated Soulspace. Due to his past experience with such strange internal occurrences, he was immediately vigilant. He spun, examining every corner of the shadowy and ethereal realm, but he was still not able to determine the source.

However, the more he listened, the more tortured Randidly’s expression became. He paused and floated over toward his Class and studied the minute flaws in it for several seconds. As he expected, as that mysterious wind brushed through his Soulspace, his Class steadily began to knit together. Compared to the rapid healing of the System, this recovery was closer to the way an injury would heal prior to the System’s arrival. But Randidly couldn’t help but grimace when he noticed the effect.

This… the only source could be the Aetherium that Nrorce gave me to help me recover. Randidly pressed a hand to his chest. That image that didn’t feel like an image… or that clear memory that felt like an imaginary scene… I thought it dissipated completely, but I suppose that wouldn’t make much sense; it was a fragment of a powerful image. It simply… became a part of me…

In a way, it was humbling to have this image be so far about his current level that he couldn’t locate its core. It simply seemed to have soaked into him in a subconscious way. And even worse, it was very clearly beneficial to him.

For now, Randidly could do nothing to pay back this favor; his Alpha Cosmos was genuinely full. Attempting to absorb Nrorce’s home planet would only backfire. But Randidly swore to himself that he would release a wave of Aether when he returned that would at least stabilize the situation before he could sit down and talk to Nrorce about it.

And now finally… Randidly approached his Yggdrasil image. Time to see whether I learned enough to really improve my images…