Chapter 2422

Chapter 2422

For a long moment, Randidly Ghosthound and Laplace stared at each other.

The Eternity seemed shocked, deaf to his words. Randidly ran a light mental finger over all the weapons he prepared, making sure each was in its place. This was it, all his preparation and growth, just for this moment.

Power existed within just attention. Randidly felt his own temporal reality unravel, just slightly, from the extended focus of the Eternity. Laplace seemed to maintain a constant aura around its body that pulsed with dangerous shape the significance had been hammered into for untold amounts of years. But while Laplace used that attention just to puff up its aura, Randidly fully uncorked the bottle holding all the vicious emotions of the dead riding on his cloak. Darkness, violence, and howling desperation distorted the air with its intoxicating presence.

Very few events could unite the bitter dead like the presence of an invader in their midst. They breathed out spite and settled, ready for the explosion.

The long and fat tail of Laplace twitched. Randidly’s left hand tightened as he leveled his spear. Both strained, their eyes still locked on one another. Image, the emotions of the dead, significance, Truth, vessel...CHeCk for new stories on no/v/el/bin(.)c0m

All had been prepared.

Randidly felt a grim pleasure as, even through the black expanse of those clock faces Laplace had for eyes, he could read the shock in the Eternity’s expression as he physically held it in place. He planted his left foot. He pivoted, power flowing through his waist as he unleashed his thrust.

The dead burst past him with a keening roar. An invader was in their midst, a foreign being that had bulldozed through all the restrictions of Pine’s corpse, seeking to destroy, devour, and manipulate the core of this land of death. Randidly nudged them slightly with his Synechdochence, layering the various specters upon one another until they became an endless torrent of caustic emotion. Despite the powerful shape aura of Laplace, they scythed forward without pause. His body had been reinforced beyond belief on his journey through the Nexus, but even he trembled as he channeled all this dangerous force.

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1123!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ghosthound’s Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons (GD) has grown to Level 1259!

Even if only a rotten dreg lingered of a soul after their death, Randidly had scooped up all those dregs and erupted like a necrotic volcano. He rode the wave and attacked.

Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’ Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1201!

Congratulations! Your Skill Ghosthound’s Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons (GD) has grown to Level 1313!

Randidly’s spear made contact with the dense skin of the horrible serpent. The dead followed a split second later, all their accumulated rancor smashing directly against the significance of the Eternity.

Space tore and time stuttered as the two powers smashed against each other with all the subtlety of an avalanche. A few nearby pillars cracked and collapsed, the half-finished dolls upon them falling to the ground and shattering. The dead physically inundated Laplace and began to dig with their fingers, trying to find purchase in the Eternity’s grey body. Yet even with all this built-up momentum, they stopped just short of being able to wound this foreign monster. The dense barrier of its significance only began to waver— Randidly’s eyes flashed in recognition.

Not there yet, He hummed to himself, his body screaming from the reverberating feedback of his powerful thrust being stopped dead. But as he shifted his weight backward and reset himself, his three images all gathered together. Randidly nudged the prepped image back into place and attacked again.

However, Laplace recovered just as quickly from the first calamitous impact. Those handless clocks seemed to grow larger and larger on its sagging face. A piercing bolt of the Eternity’s power ripped through the intervening space, creating several whirlpool temporal distortions, and slammed into Randidly’s chest. His experiential time wrenched in several directions, almost scattered by the force of the smite.

Upon Laplace’s arrival, a glance had been enough to lock Randidly within the complex and poisonous currents of significance.

He reached into deeper rings of experienced time and his body began to break down.

Randidly’s stubbornness, and the bead of the same he had taken from Shal, grew even more adamant in the face of this suffering. The sensation of time vanished; without the fabric around him, it was difficult to feel how the situation truly developed. Randidly felt suspended in the moment of struggle, his muscles constantly rupturing and straining. He pushed and pushed.

A huge and oppressive wave of time settled across his arms and back. He rose to meet it, drawing on all the grand potential of his vessel-

Yet he was locked in the moment of strain. Every extended experience suffocated his hope that he could escape this. He pushed and nothing seemed to change. His muscles trembled and he squeezed out every drop of sweat and effort from his physical form, but all he seemed to accomplish was damaging his own body by fighting against a weight that greatly overmatched him.

Randidly almost laughed aloud as he felt the pressure increase again; the existence of an Eternity was ridiculous. He knew that Elhume and Fiero had somewhat faked their way to the Pinnacle, but the difference in accomplishment felt comical. His images slowed in their rampage and were forced back. The constant charge of the dead stalled out behind him. He could maintain a thin film of his superior Nether around his person, but he could no longer cut through the sheer weight of memories that the Eternity had experienced.

For all the dead Randidly now unleashed, Laplace had probably seen ten times more die and had never felt even a tremor. The density of his significance was impressive, but a sufficient quality could overmatch him with just the horrific power of memory. That was what it meant to be an Eternity.

“So this... is the extent of your power.” Randidly let out a self small laugh. He felt the memories grinding away at his vessel... and his vessel slowly being pushed back. The bend in his knees increased. His toes were pushed back, desperate for purchase on the ground The trembling in his legs grew worse and worse. His smile widened. “Well, I always figured a direct confrontation would be dumb... but can you blame a guy for trying?”

Those blank clock faces bored into Randidly, still not even seeming to acknowledge his words. Finally feeling his limits nearing, Randidly flicked his left hand and produced the Alchemist’s passport. Normally he wouldn’t be able to affect such a powerful creature, but the wound to the temporal fabric left spatial tears all around.

Just because Randidly wasn’t prepared to perform the grand finale of his three miracles didn’t mean he was above a few sleights of hand to warm the crowd up.

With a grunt, Randidly did two things simultaneously: activate his Fatepiece and rip Acri out of Laplace’s fat and grey flesh. The sense of relief he experienced while no longer needing to endure the echoes of Laplace’s manipulated time was so strong he couldn’t help but stagger backward. It was the equivalent of stepping off a tiny boat and forgetting the ground would no longer be undulating beneath you.

Laplace didn’t miss the opening as Randidly’s balance failed him— the massive creature whipped its tail sideways. Randidly barely was able to get Acri up in time to block, gritting his teeth through the splash of its horrible weight.

As Randidly staggered backward, Laplace turned away from this annoyance and pounced toward its original goal— the Eternity crashed face-first into one of the nearby storage shelves. Still leaking that horrible pressure, the metal warped and the other building materials directly imploded. The explosion set off a series of smaller collapses as debris were sent flying in every direction. After a long moment, the Eternity pressed itself up out of the wreckage and turned to glare at Randidly.

Randidly laughed, the air rippled softly behind him. With the Alchemist’s Passport, he had rotated the two around. Not only had he caught up to the Eternity, but now he stood between it and the last barrier before Pine.

Shal’s bead of stubbornness had brightened to the piercing beam of a lighthouse. Even now, even if its hopeless, we can still advance, Shal.

“My Grand Fate will be to harmonize three Truths,” Randidly proclaimed as he leveled Acri at the monster. “And my chosen Penance will be to heal all the wounds you’ve inflicted on the fabric of time-”

Laplace attacked, still unwilling to allow him the pleasure of some verbal banter. But also in that moment, Randidly felt a tremor from his Nether Core. One that felt... bad.

For whatever reason his Nether Core didn’t like the framing of his Penance. Which felt like a pretty late moment for this realization to suddenly manifest.