Chapter 2135

Chapter 2135

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mae Myrna gave Westrisser a frank look. The two sat in a rather mundane room, considering this must be one of the deepest chambers within the Westrisser compound. The walls were bare stone, with only a small candle to provide lumination. A few beaten pillows provided only the barest hint of comfort beneath their folded legs.

Mae kept scanning the area, looking for something she missed during her first examination, but there truly was nothing of note. She couldn’t decide if that made her feel better or worse about this private meeting with Westrisser. Between them was an unassuming wooden table. Judging from the dust around its legs, it had remained here for a long time. Yet the point of contention was the strange, vulnerable look Westrisser gave Mae from across the table.NewW novels updates at novelhall.com

He cleared his throat, his face settling back into a much more palatable look of apathy. “I am not a man who shys away from his works. If your image will be refined by me, I will claim responsibility, no matter if your mind breaks under the strain or if you actually manage to make something of yourself-”

“From that ordering, I can tell which you believe is most likely,” Mae muttered. She pressed her hands against the ground, enjoying the coolness of the stone.

Westrisser ignored her. Instead, he gestured around at the bare room. “This is a recreation of the room I lived in before I escaped my home and found my own Path. The leader of our clan, when I was born, placed all feathered serpents youths into such rooms. Only when you had confidence in your own powers were you allowed to step out. And if the overseers didn’t agree with your confidence... well. From within my room, I had heard many claim greatness and then be ruthlessly cut to pieces for their inadequacies.”

“Wait, what?”

Again, Westrisser didn’t acknowledge her. His voice took on an unusual cadence, almost as though he was repeating a mantra he had spoken to himself thousands of times. “The room serves as a reminder; without power, we are nothing. We return to this room. We are trapped. All options are stripped from the weak, leaving them with nothing. To avoid this, we train tirelessly. We push our limits. We grow.”

“How could you know whether your power had increased enough to receive the overseers’ approval?” Mae felt strangely fascinated by the offhand admission. For the first time in her life, she felt a glimmer of curiosity about the glum father of her childhood friend. “Were any guidelines given?”

Westrisser serenely continued with his own thoughts. Yet somehow, the shadows in the room seemed to deepen the more he explained. “I have some passing familiarity with your image. I have not seen you manifest it in a few years... but based on the aura I sense from you, the foundation is stable, if a bit unexciting. If you are to be changed by me into an individual worthy of respect-”

“Hey now,” This finally wiped the smile off of Mae’s face.

“-then we must begin by strengthening the bonds of casualty in your world projection,” Westrisser leaned forward. His eyes flashed with something not too dissimilar from excitement. “I’ll speak frankly; some of my own personal experiments have led me to a very fruitful area. What you need to do is learn to incorporate some Nether principles in your image construction. The presence of the actual energy won’t be necessary. Simply resembling the shape will add an adhesive quality. That way the very presence of your image will beget itself. The energy you spend maintaining the image will be cut in half.”

“Experiments?”

With most of his immediate worries assuaged, Randidly took time to simply breathe. Once his mental energy recovered to a usable point, he focused inward on his emotional sea. The fourth core of emotion hadn’t exactly been incorporated directly into his emotional sea, having instead been consumed by the Authority based on the Stillborn Phoenix. But at the same time, it also no longer weighed heavily against his consciousness.

Randidly took a long breath in through his nose then exhaled through his mouth. He felt the subtle pressure building from the Alpha Cosmos at an all-time low, since he first discovered it was leaking into his subconscious.

He had made his choice and had finally caught up to the present. His emotions were under his exclusive control. There may be another bill coming due in the future, but his current self had more pressing concerns.

Randidly’s eyes flashed open. I need to train using the emotional affect and see if I can incorporate it into the other images. But first... I need to get things started here. Bleak Sky’s presence proves the situation will develop soon: he strikes me as someone without much patience.

Randidly stood and stretched, intending to head to his skyislands and get them off the ground. Right on cue, Devick sat up and unleashed a loud burp.

“Morning sunshine,” Randidly said casually. He walked over next to her and crouched down next to her. As her eyes focused on him, still clearly very confused, Randidly rather unsympathetically rapped a knuckle against her forehead. “What you did was very, very dumb. You don’t have a Class, you can’t Level, and your Health is a pittance. If the Arakis Beasts hadn’t been piled on top of you and soaked up some of the energy radiation, you would just be a corpse. Can you imagine how obnoxious Jawem would have been if you had actually died?”

“He would have tried to attack you,” Devick smiled at the thought, then winced. Even though her hair was thickly crusted with blood, it was easy to overlook it if you didn’t focus on it. The color of her hair was such a vibrant crimson. “I... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get involved. But considering your capabilities, I couldn’t resist the chance to watch you fight.”

Randidly pressed his lips together. “Have a bit of self-awareness. Compared to fighters like this, you are a gnat. No matter how much you’ve studied Engraving, that won’t help you survive at all.”

“Would you be sad if I died?” Devick glanced sideways at Randidly.

He gave her an unamused look. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Devick grimaced. “Jeez, it was just a question. But anyway... did you manage to drive the storm guy away?”

Randidly snorted. Only when he saw Devick’s even more confused expression did it occur to him that she probably had passed out before the worst of the fighting and wouldn’t have been able to interpret the movements with her low Perception anyway. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “...in the end, we had no real quarrel. But I suspect it had more to do with the watching eyes of Faelmac Westrisser than me. That Nether King... Bleak Sky didn’t want to reveal all of his capabilities.”

“...somebody means to attack Malloon?” Devick’s eyes widened. Then she clicked her tongue. “How audacious.”

“Anyway, let’s get a move on,” Randidly offered her a hand. “There’s a lot to do.”