Chapter 2300
Actus Suprem Devick stood in the middle of the wide space in her glittering robes. The orb in the middle of the chamber was horribly depressing; looking at it would literally allow emotions to be sucked right out through your face. She amused herself for a bit by thinking of people she hated and then feeling those memories slip away, devoured by Pine’s corpse’s ceaseless hunger.
She liked to imagine that when the memories vanished, the people themselves would vanish as well. A wide smile broke out across her face. However, that glee quickly faded.
First, she couldn’t remember who she didn’t like.
Second, she was almost sure that, if she had really not liked these fucks, they would already be dead.
And third, it REALLY pissed her off that she could no longer remember whether she still had to kill these blurry annoyances or not.
She bit her lip and sucked on her blood for a bit, trying to keep her temper in check. In the hollow chamber of this task, the air cried rust-colored tears in reaction to her powerful image. From her feet, a blood puddle began to stain the floor as her madness seeped out and corrupted the environment.
With a great effort of will, she drew herself back. And when she returned to why she was here, her eyes began to glitter.
She couldn’t remember being this excited, not in the longest time. Discovering Randidly Ghosthound as her child brought her a warm joy, but this request made her bare teeth crusted with drying blood, a monster sniffing a long-craved meal. Her eyes danced with anticipation. “You... what an honor to be selected for this task. Hehe, no one can sew misbehaving organs back together quite like me. And I can do whatever is necessary to obtain the pieces? If they resist, not that they will, but if they do-”
“It must be done,” The blurry projection of Elhume moved his head. His voice boomed out to the distant, cracked walls of the room. The two were alone, brought here so he could impart to her this task and give her the platform with which to accomplish it.
Devick swirled her finger in the air. Little fuzzy snakes of malice formed and devoured each other, following her pointer finger. “Your lack of squeamishness is a sign of your ingenuity. Leave this to-”
Devick perked up and whipped her head around, peering through the edge of this secret room in the Nexus as a massive phenomenon rippled outward. At first she thought that the Sonora finally finished its boringly slow collapse, but this energy didn’t seem to quite match that. And her eyes widened when she sensed Randidly’s distinctive tang, albeit with an altered flavor.
What a studious boy, always sticking your nose into the most unusual sort of perversions. Pride surged in Devick’s chest, flecked an obsessive need to rip Randidly to shreds and understand the way he ticked.
For now, she suppressed the impulse. She had other toys to play with.
“Handle this. I will eliminate extraneous elements.” Elhume rumbled. Then his projection faded, leaving Devick alone in the chamber.
“Don’t die on me, Randidly Ghosthound,” Devick whispered. Her mutant heart labored in her chest, so close to being so stuffed with emotions that it tore right down the middle, where it had been sewn together with bonemarrow thread and madness. “Because you know I’ll find your weak soul if you do. And you’ll spend the rest of your sad consciousness regretting being such a disappointment. Kekeh.”
Randidly bowed his head in acknowledgment toward the World Tree. I couldn’t do this without you.Probably any of it.
Congratulations! Your Skill the Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 983!
...
Congratulations! Your Skill the Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 998!
Though the haze of the temporal barrier, Randidly felt the true-Nexus mechanisms also shifting. Because they would be accelerated in comparison, the static tension sizzling through the Songstress was much worse coming from that direction. But for now, both moved, with the memory Pine pushing for the process.
Randidly sucked in a breath as Pine’s support, moving the mechanisms from the interior, grew wilder and more violent. Steam began to waft out of his ears as his body tried to keep abreast of the energy process. Well, I’m glad you are enthusiastic, but at this rate-
A thunderous crash interrupted his thoughts. If Randidly thought that the world had been ending previously, this taught him he had been being dramatic.
One moment he floated in his melting, surrealist sky and the next he slammed into the ground with the wind knocked out of him. For a moment he wildly wondered who could have sneak attacked him, especially through the branching snakes of annihilating lightning that flayed from his person, but then he felt a sinking feeling in his chest. For a brief moment, the singing of the Songstress of Absence faltered in her music. His Nether Core ached.
Probably, if she hadn’t been given a strengthened grip by his First Authority, the superposition would have been directly obliterated.
The blow had come from the modern Nexus, and there was only one who could punch like that. Elhume had sucker punched him. Because he channeled the force through his body, he had been physically slammed into the ground.
A surge of fear gripped Randidly’s heart. Too much was happening at once for him to spare attention, but he raised his head and looked around. What he saw made him grimace; he had been knocked down to the West, in no man’s land between the Aether and Nether hosts, but the energies he unleashed still scythed their way through the edges of the two armies, annihilating innocents.
Bolts of lightning arced off his body and ripped deep trenches in the ground. He became a thousand-legged insect, his vicious legs skittering around incinerating any flesh they could find. And that was before the winds came down, yanked in his wake as he went through the process of pulling the discharge from the activated constructs in the memory into his storm and then feeding it up into the superposition-
Congratulations! Your Skill Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 999!
Damnit, Randidly squeezed his eyes shut so he didn’t see some unfortunate soldier blended by the sharp-edged winds he produced. The ground shifted uneasily underneath him. He refocused. Because with the time dilation, he should have some time before the next hammer blow. But he didn’t want to underestimate Elhume. He activated Infinite Incendiary Filaments and peered out into the Nexus.
All the while, the enormous Aether wheels spun toward the creation of a new Cohort.