Chapter 2421

Chapter 2421

The group raced through the scattered chips of wood and metal that Laplace’s rampage had left smoldering on the ground of the strange workshop. They passed several areas of temporal wounds, but the restricted nature of this portion of Pine’s corpse meant that the wounds had almost healed naturally on their own. But what Randidly noticed most of all were the vibrations running through the ground.

Ahead of him, he saw a particularly powerful reverberation bounce a half-finished doll off a shelf and have it shatter on the ground. Randidly’s gaze sharpened. Laplace... hasn’t passed through the next barrier. I’ve almost caught up with him.

This realization was almost enough to push down his rising unease at the mysterious purpose of this facility.

Behind his back, the dead began to get excited at the prospect of contact. The Dread Homunculus released a noise somewhere between a hiss and a sign, trying to cope with the pressure of all these souls borrowing the momentum of the image. Their small movements were insubstantial on their own, but they learned from the patterns Randidly sent out through their ranks. The damned increasingly moved as one relentless entity, multiplying their power to a ridiculous degree.

In a way, he had become a tireless legion. And he provided all the fuel for the army gnashing his teeth from his shadow.

Randidly rolled his shoulders and focused as much as he could. His feet kicked off the shattered ground and chased an Eternity. His three images roared with their individual emotional affect. The notes came into harmony. His Nether Core continued its rotation, the healing of temporal wounds adding more and more interior substance to the function. Very soon, he sensed that he could begin the process of condensing a Penance.

Randidly’s three half-formed Truths buzzed and sharpened. They stood in stark contrast to the simple and firm Truth passed to him by Nyx: You can’t have it both ways. Or to put it another way, a choice always needed to be made. Randidly understood why Nyx had given this particular Truth to him: These powerful moments of the Pinnacle and Eternity represented an opportunity.

But there was always an opportunity cost.

Randidly’s jaw clenched. He raced forward, the speed of his passage and the train of dead following him knocking delicate shaving tools to the ground and starting a small clatter. When he stood at that crossroads, what would his choice be...?

But while most of Randidly’s attention focused on these last-minute preparations, he couldn’t keep his gaze from flickering out to the strange workshop around them. As the Songstress of Absence began carving a path in the ground in her ‘vocal’ warmups, they moved from the shelving area to a place filled with three-meter-wide basins of water. Most along the path made by Laplace were cracked and drained, but further away Randidly saw an endless plateau of the pools stretching to this left and right. Small sparkling clouds of light glittered over the unbroken pools, filled with esoteric patterns.

Yggdrasil stirred with interest as they passed through to an area covered in wooden frames with draped silk in a thousand different hues. The long materials fluttered in a nonexistent wind.

The Dread Homunculus growled and gnashed its teeth, almost driven mad by the pressure of the dead, as they moved to an area filled with bookshelves. Randidly pressed his lips together; could the entire knowledge of the Nexus dead be gathered here?

It was only when they passed through to the final portion of this space, the rumblings of Laplace’s violence shaking the air, that Randidly finally put together the true meaning of this place.

Broken chalkboards littered the ground in this section, but from the shattered pieces, Randidly saw complex Engravings of a style that Randidly didn’t recognize. Different portions of the ground were covered with Engravings of poured and set gold, making glittering arrays of indeterminate purpose. In the distance, Randidly saw marble pillars with immaculately made dolls sitting atop them. He didn’t recognize the dolls, but he could feel the general aura of this place, so similar to his own Pangu’s Asymptote.

The epiphany came when Randidly looked across the vast distance to the left and saw one doll in particular, with half of its face and its left arm missing, but with an emerald for a right eye. The doll sat beneath a flowering tree, with a monster for a shadow and cradling an event horizon in its arms.

All details matter.

A Truth had naturally formed in Randidly’s chest, with the accumulation of all his efforts in the Nexus so far. Ghosthound’s Deviation finally had a concrete name; as each second passed, its volume rose and rose, searing the inside of his body.

Randidly pressed his lips together. After a moment of indecision, he sent out a strand of Willpower and quieted the approaching crescendo. Discovering the shape of my Truth couldn’t have come at a better time. But I need all three before I’m willing to step onto the Pinnacle. If all details matter, timing is also very important.

Almost unwillingly, that calculative perspective on existence shivered and settled down within his body, waiting for its chance to explode.

Randidly planted his foot against the ground as another wrath-filled temporal explosion occurred in front of him. He felt grateful for the tightly bound significance of this workshop as he mobilized the whole of his Primordial Nether Juju and Dreadful Alacrity. His physical body, pushed beyond the bounds of the System, accelerated, He tore through the air, dragging the dead behind him.

The vision of Laplace sharpened. The snake’s long arms, his scaled back, his fat, dragging tail were clear. The Eternity raised a clawed hand and jabbed it forward. Arrayed against this monster were a half dozen souls of the dead, but even to Randidly’s eyes, they blazed with powerful energy halos. Their Aether and Nether did not move in concert, but at least did not sizzle and weaken their auras.

Yet when the temporal hammer fell, the dead soul faltered and fractured. His history had been sundered and his energy sputtered and died. Laplace cackled with glee.

The remaining dead didn’t move to attack but instead bellowed out keening whispers, the trickle of grave dust, the scrape of dry bones shifting against each other. The spoke in the language of the dead, hoping Laplace could hear their words. But Laplace simply waved one of its fat hands. Time spun in whirlpools. The keening noises reached its senses, but in a scrambled order.

Like all others, the language of the dead was still a language. When jumbled, it would lose all communicative power.

Laplace slithered forward, its horrific world-state infecting outward. It slapped one defender to the side and smashed another to the ground. It’s black clock eyes turned to the soul of a young woman, who released a piercing note.

For a moment, the Eternity paused. But then it pounced forward and shattered her body. This horrific being cackled again, releasing a burst of its dreadful significance. The last of the defenders were knocked to the side. Laplace turned and faced the far wall of the workshop, where the final barrier of Pine’s corpse remained.

The Eternity reached-

But then it jerked to a stop: Randidly’s hand had been faster in seizing its tail. For the first time since it had arrived, its confusion weakened the temporal significance it released.

Those black eyes turned around and regarded a grinning Randidly Ghosthound. He settled into that familiar stance of a spear thrust as he inserted his image of a clock hand along Acri’s edge. Behind him, all the dead and damned began their stampede forward. “Are you ready for round two?”