Chapter 2215

Chapter 2215

The black wicker symbols gathered their foul energies, but Randidly just laughed.

With sound restored around him, he felt incredibly light and potent. His body ached from forcing his way forward through the Nether mountain, but he could twitch now and vanish from his current position to another. The Cloak of Utter Night wrapped reassuringly around his body, making the possibility of harm even more remote.

Still, his defensive barrier didn’t prevent him from half-stepping several times in quick succession, avoiding further blasts from the black wicker symbols. They drifted closer, making the possibility of dodging more fraught as their volleys came in tighter clusters.

A glimmer of understanding emerged in Randidly as he scanned around. Elhume’s future, locked inside an entire mountain range of crystalized Aether... Enmya is in the beginnings of a Nether equivalent. Either power pushed to extremes without the other results in being just as restricted as you are empowered by the abilities you wield. The damage they can create is massive, but to activate them is unwieldy.

However, he couldn’t consider that further. Each moment without the Nether Mountain pressing on them, the symbols began to move more quickly, their harsh energies lashing out even more wildly in the air. Their influences conflicted with each other, but they didn’t appear to notice. They were locked in on Randidly’s position, hunting him while the wolfman stood solemnly and watched.

In the end, Enmya was the problem. Without him, the rest would fall into place.

Randidly spun Acri quickly and settled into a low stance, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. Tension hummed through the muscle fibers of his legs, taut with readiness. His eyes gleamed, the thin golden tendrils stretching out like laugh lines around his gaze, from the depths of the hood.

In the brief moment of stillness, the other half of the Dread Homunculus rose to the fore. It was an artificial being, created for its incredibly resilient body, but also because of the computational power it wielded. The successor of the primordial goddess of night, who understood the universe deeply enough to weave the fates into existence. A designed being able to channel the vast information available in an entire world.

The image looked at the small hurdles arrayed in front of him and smirked.

Six concentrated blasts of Nether shot toward Randidly’s back from various directions. Perhaps even more dangerously, several of the further away symbols released discordant vibrational notes to infect his Nether Core. These traveled in the shadow of the damaging beams, bouncing off of each other at unpredictable angles.

Randidly’s smile stretched wider and wider. The Dread Homunculus devoured the small details, tracing the path of every threat aiming for his life. He hopped quickly over the first few blasts, paused to allow several notes to smash together in front of him and dissipate harmlessly, then lowered his head and blasted forward.

He flicked Acri left and right, creating waves of specter attacks that he manipulated into alignment as he shot ahead. Two beams attempting to stop his advance shattered when ten-thousand strong attacks met in a single point, right at their exact weakness. All the information, and more, poured through Randidly’s sizzling mind, fed to him through his many awareness. The base of his spine began to burn, even his reinforced nerves straining underneath the load.

Congratulations! Your Skill Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1025!

Congratulations! Your Skill Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae (P)(U) has grown to Level 1135!

His mouth twisted into a frown. Perhaps the real threat were their infectious notes; he felt his Nether Core, thrumming and rotating constantly, but the sensations were jumbled. He probably wouldn’t notice any damage to it until it was too late.

The wolfman saw his hesitation and recalibration and rushed forward with claws raised. However, a smile broke out across his face. This is likely a pretty effective method to smother Aether users; nameless images lose their shape pretty quickly. Nether Kings too, whose Authorities are very specific and need to be heralded.

However...

He reached for his Nether Core. He pierced his way all the way through the thick spools of energy and the amorphous clusters of his authorities so mixed up by this aura, and reached the foundation. His gaze flickered as he touched the first of his three base desires. Grow.

His images didn’t just have names, just like his Authorities didn’t just have functions. They had whole identities.

Behind him, a massive tree exploded into existence. Branches thick with emerald leaves stretched up while golden roots drilled down, a simultaneous expansion in every direction. The manifestation gobbled up space within the echoing ‘vigil’ created by the wolfman. The leaves attempted to rustle, but the strange underwater quality had the effect of deepening it.

The tree rumbled, buzzing against his skin. And his Skills might not be able to have specific names, but there were aspects to the tree’s growth that were undeniably regal. Liberated of logic and boundaries, its perfection grasped at all the black wicker symbols and held them briefly immobile.

The tree demanded their fealty. For a few seconds, they couldn’t help but capitulate.

He smiled wickedly at the wolfman, snapping his spear into a ready stance. He thrust forward and the wolfman attempted the same deflecting swipe. But he had already seen this and flicked the spear around, cutting a long gash across the wolfman’s forearm. In the strange immersion without names, the blood seemed to burn ruby. It almost looked... alchemic.

He laughed as he shifted two his second foundational desire. Show me the impossible.

The lonely, desperate beast lurking in the abyss reached for the surface. The blood dripping from the wolfman’s arm inflated rapidly into the form of an egg. The wolfman looked at it with widening eyes, incredulous.

Normally, such a display wouldn’t be possible. When names and boundaries existed with more vehemence, there were limits to how images could work. But the wolfman had chosen to blur those lines, hoping to lead to a collapse into wild chaos. Unfortunately for the wolfman, he had chosen an opponent that thrived on chaos.

The blood egg popped. A being that didn’t exist yawned through the brief void, birthed for the first time.

Now that it had grabbed existence, it knew true hunger.