Chapter 2420

Chapter 2420

“No... this is horrible. A pathetic attempt.”

“Keh, a shape like this? Try again, there is no Path forward for you like this.”

“You... were you even listening to me? This is bad as well. From what I can tell, not a single portion is salvageable.”

“Haaah. Friendship isn’t enough to cover up your lack of talent. Has this been a joke this whole time? Do you have any other images?”

“I’m saying this as your friend— give up on the thought of your image reaching the Pinnacle. These past efforts could barely even be considered a coherent endeavor. Even a genius such as I am without any helpful advice when I witness your eclectic foundation.”

Devick’s face had settled into a constant state of twitching. She gnawed off a sizable chunk of her cheek Even if you keep saying you are my friend, it’s becoming difficult to believe you if all you do is vomit trash onto me! What does a bunny know about the Pinnacle anyway?!?

The past fifteen minutes had started with quite a lot of hope; although the strange, shapeshifting bunny was alternatively prickling and haughty, it had still agreed to help her refine her image. It seemed genuinely willing to help. Plus, Devick was at the height of the Nexus, in a location where pushing an image to the Pinnacle was the easiest and most natural thing in the world. Just by being here, she felt Malice growing in cruelty and power.

What could go wrong?Upstodatee from n(0)/ve/lbIn/.(co/m

Well, first off, Devick rapidly realized that whatever remnant bit of the first Pinnacle event this bunny was, it truly had never interacted with people before. She had her suspicions about whether it could manifest its own image, but its Aether was at least dense. In terms of communications skills... Compared to her dazzling charisma, the bunny was a long fart in a shallow pool. It spoke only harsh and condescending words, even though Devick could feel she improved every second in this place.

Second of all, the bunny itself was very distracting. Not only did it constantly hop around her, but its form continued to change as time passed. From the cute red-furred bunny, it had rapidly grown over the course of Devick’s attempts into a bunny as large as a hog. Its fat ears became extremely droopy. In addition, its fur had darkened to black and a curling horn grew out of his head.

Then, just as Devick finally had a bit of inspiration and Malice stretched its bane hand out to grasp a new tier of power, the bunny popped like an overfilled balloon. The noise and image fluctuations in the conducive environment snapped her back to the present. All those new insights evaporated at the shock.

Where there had been a bunny, there was now a handspan-tall girl in a white lace bridal dress. She frowned at Devick, seeming unwilling to even acknowledge her obnoxious transformation. “Have you given up? Perhaps abandoning this foolish hope is also a good thing. Continuing like this... haah... You’ll only break both of our hearts.”

You... I wish you would have just died from being overfilled with hot air. Devick bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping out some harsh words. Blood had become a constant taste on her tongue.

Because the true aggravating quality of this transforming remnant... was that it was right; she wasn’t moving any closer to the Pinnacle.

After the first couple of harsh comments, Devick had been unwilling to believe. So she forcefully used the surrounding space to its fullest and expanded those image directions as far as they could go. But the result... even Devick, who could admit in her heart she possessed a little bit of bias toward her own superiority, rapidly realized she had made a mistake. These sorts of images would not help her. Her Aether was tempered, but the shape remained flawed.

The bunny/former lizard/current small girl used harsh and insulting language, but she wasn’t wrong.

Over the past minute, the small girl had grown to be about the size of a carrot she shook her tiny head as she watched Devick trying to stumble back across those insights into her bane hand, which might have been a step in the right direction. “Language is insufficient to convey the depth of your deficiencies. Ah, even my divine friendship teaching skill is restricted by reality!”

At this point, Ezekiel once more released a string of keening notes. Randidly felt a constriction through his temples just listening to the noise, but the Commandant ignored it and continued. “-your greatest wisdom was not to slay Devick. Obviously squashing such a cockroach would have taken an incredible amount of effort... but what you are about to see is a secret that we have long kept. If her final insanity had arrived here... even I would feel fear at the result.”

“Wick! We don’t have time for this.” Ezekiel snapped.

“Would he not see anyway? Preparing him now time will be saved as he need not react. Laplace... is not the only Eternity that has forced its way into the Nexus, boy. Just the first one was much more willing to negotiate.”

With that strange announcement, Randidly slammed into the eighth barrier of Pine. Like the seventh before it, this barrier had developed resilience. Its thick strands wrapped around Randidly to impede him. The earlier barriers were easily traversable because he had already given up his body. Yet these later barriers had more to do with his worldly desires. To carry these thoughts deeper would be a great burden. The barrier would not let him proceed easily.

There would have been a time, perhaps only a few days ago, that this barrier would have been nigh impassible to him.

With three kernels of truth burning in his chest and a growing amount of Penance accumulations, Randidly didn’t care. When the barrier refused him entry, his eyes flashed. His Alchemist’s Passport resonated with his sharp movement. No doors will bar my passage. Dread Homunculus! The Wrathful Calamity Rends.

His claws forced open the barrier and the dead roared their approval at this savagery. Randidly charged forward... and found himself in an entirely different space. The vast, misty realm of darkness vanished. Even jagged flows of significance calmed. Suddenly, Randidly found himself standing in a vast building.

To his right, an empty coffee mug sat on a table. Randidly’s brow knitted together as he tried to rationalize what he was seeing.

From the wooden benches covered in tools, the near-infinite shelves stretching up toward the ceiling, and the half-finished dolls lying around... he seemed to be in a cross between a workshop and a warehouse.

Randidly’s heartbeat quickened as he sensed the incredible significance coursing through this stable place; his momentum stalled out somewhat as he considered the environment. Rather than rampaging freely, all that torn Nether had been channeled into establishing and strengthening this strange space. Looking around, he realized that the energy of this place felt somewhat familiar.

Then, in his Soulspace, he felt a quiver of recognition. His other gifted Momento, Pangu’s Asymptote, released a faint quiver of acknowledgment.

Randidlly’s mind went blank. He might have completely caused all the built-up efforts of his Erebus’s Baleful Waltz if Commandant Wick hadn’t appeared at his elbow and given him a sour look. “We cannot waste time here. Move, boy.”

After a moment to blink and adjust, Randidly stepped forward. The moment of stalling had hurt his patterns running through the specters of the dead, but they quickly regained their vigor as he dragged them back up to speed. Besides, the way forward was quite clear: opposite Randidly’s entrance point, several worktables had been smashed to pieces and a few of the tall metal shelves had holes drilled directly through the middle.

Because the significance in this place had been used to stabilize these manifestations, Laplace had needed to break his way forward toward Pine’s core.

Randidly accelerated forward, even as his thoughts remained uneasy. The deeper I go, the more secrets I’m crashing into. Just what is Pangu’s game? What sort of negotiations did this other Eternity enter into, that such a deep area could be converted into a workship...?

Most importantly, what the hell has been manufactured here...?