Chapter 2458

Chapter 2458

“Oh? You are quite sturdy, aren’t you?” The blindfolded woman tilted her head to the side as she considered the devastating fallout of her strike.

Randidly Ghosthound felt like the part of his torso not immediately annihilated had been repeatedly run over by a planet-sized chariot, reversing and jerking forward across his ribs. Calling his current mangled condition ‘abandoned roadkill’ would elicit judgmental sniffs from half-smashed squirrels everywhere.

Blood filled Randidly’s mouth. He trembled, willing his abused body not to collapse. The sheer force of the woman’s attack had caught him by surprise. One part of him shivered in anticipation; there were even taller mountains for him to climb in the future.

A more practical part sent pangs of agony through his body, reminding him to remain focused. His images had been pressed out of existence and struggled to reform. Even as his cells began to regenerate, his own significance trembled and sloshed in his body, multiple inefficiencies created when she had torn through the patterns maintaining the connection between physique and images.

But each remaking of his interior vein patterns streamlined them slightly. His Nether evolved, to be more resilient for the next time.

Yet his attention fixated on a notification that had popped up in front of him. The last piece he needed.

Congratulations! For surviving the strike of a powerful Entity from outside the Nexus, Muse’s Reverie +1! Muses Reverie: 8/8

“Guess it’s my turn to seize the initiative.” Randidly grunted out the response as his organs reformed. He took a breath as he forced back the lingering pressure of this blindfolded woman’s power. His images blazed in his body as they manifested again, screaming for vengeance. From the depths of his Nether Core he plucked out Acri, with the new portion that had been slowly assimilated into the spear over the last twenty minutes.

Time to work a little bit of magic. Look, I’ve got nothing up my sleeves...

He raised his spear. He channeled his three images. His bright pupils dilated. He needed to pour everything into this strike. Now, truly, he was glad of the training with Visage of Obsession. He allowed any thought not related to the present to drain out of his head.

Randidly Ghosthound’s muscles exploded with force. He was motion and violence. This sort of strike... was not the strike of a man who had a plan for the follow up.

The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty. Singularity Engulfs the Finite. Alpha Dragon’s Fell Smite.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 1811!

Congratulations! Your Nether Penance Empty Vessel Fosakes the Path has grown to Level 1811!

Randidly Ghosthound had Truths no longer. But over the course of this experience, his opinions had grown increasingly firm. His three images moved together as a single attack. They brought shape and emotion and the three mixed together. Perhaps not perfectly, but without any slack, any sense of weakness.

He raised Acri in a javelin throw and launched it directly at the blindfolded woman’s face. Emotions erupted through his body. They became wings that sped the strike forward, faster. For threatening his Alpha Cosmos, Randidly Ghosthound would make her bleed.

*****

The golden Engraving had grown larger and larger until it pressed against the edges of the Nexus... and then extended past them. It was an enormous thing, impossible to view in its totality, each stroke of its execution having fattened underneath the ministrations of the World Tree. To the point it took on a shape that could support a universe.

With a broad source, the light of this half-made new order became soft and filled with possibilities.

Pine stood in the center, staring in wonder at the work done by Neveah, his half-sister. The sentiment caused by her presence felt strange and unfamiliar in Pine’s, almost alarming. A different, intimidating sort of hunger he had no idea how to satisfy.

Yet that feeling also filled him with an impetus. Suddenly, all the darkness that had clouded him for so long, which he used as a shield even as it poisoned him, seemed so small. An entire world waited beyond his fears.

He had a sister. Yet that fact only made him more aware of the rumblings through the Nexus. Because now he felt his frozen hesitation thaw. His perspective had shifted as the Engraving had grown.

He could feel the three outer portions of the golden Engraving, the way they would come to balance one another. Already, the Nexus moved to settle around his father, who remained steadfastly in place. As the rotating Engraving built up momentum, more and more of the Alpha Cosmos manifested in the second space.

In that final circle, Pine could sense a fitful consciousness, observing her environment closely.

“You truly need me,” Pine said, suddenly seeing how all the patterns aligned. He hadn’t believed Randidly Ghosthound earlier when the intense man had been so insistent on this fact. Pine’s emotions might be a roiling storm inside of his body, but at the same time, an intense clarity had seized him. “Not just my presence, but my cooperation. Otherwise... the Engraving will tear the spatial fabric before it can be shifted to its new location.”

“Creating a new realm must be done... delicately.” Neveah bowed her head, still radiating guilt. “Yes. We don’t mean to be one more group requiring your assistance, but-”

“You asked,” Pine’s voice broke. He remembered Randidly Ghosthound’s stubborn emphasis on the formality. He remembered Elhume’s immediate response when his son had asked even vaguely. Pined blinked and blinked, trying to remain focused, even as his emotional storm threatened to break across him and leave him scattered. “That... makes all the difference. You asked me.”

The Engraving groaned as it stretched further, pushing beyond the bounds of the Nexus to the point where the original universe was just a portion of the whole. The dark subconscious sat in the middle of a seething storm of destruction as it began to destabilize a larger portion of the space, given more environment to corrupt with the expansion. Huge rifts yawned open around its edges, large enough for entire worlds to vanish without a trace.

The three circles spun and Pine felt his consciousness stretching. The spatial fabric trembled as movement settled them in a new location. They had left the Nexus behind, so that the Engraving could cup all of it in that first circle with Elhume. The Alpha Cosmos settled into place in the second circle. As the Engraving wheeled around... the third circle popped open and scooped up all that heavy darkness.

Huge, root-lined golden gates stretched wide. The darkness, too, was welcome in the order Randidly and Neveah wanted to create.

The whole working shuddered as it wrenched to a stop, the third circle abruptly burdening the rest of the Engraving. The gates closed to drag along the dark subconscious, but it had sat and pooled and deepened and simmered for too long. It refused to shift. Pine’s consciousness snapped down, grasping onto the edges of the third circle even as the roots tying everything together began to stretch and pop with the strain of edging it forward.

Pine grimaced as almost realized he had jumped forward to help without thinking about it. His instincts told him what he wanted, even if he wouldn’t have been able to name it.

He ignored his hunger, he ignored his chaotic heart, he ignored all the glittering light and darkness. The universe soul simply wished with all his being. He reinforced the third circle as best he could.

Hold. He prayed. Hold and begin to move. So long as we begin to move...

...everything can change.

Pine felt time tear first, but didn’t care; they could fix time. Randidly Ghosthound would fix time, so long as they endured through this difficult beginning. Pine’s existence buzzed as the stretching became tearing and he had to throw more and more of himself along the edges of the third circle to keep it held in place.

His soul stretched, even his sense of self put on the line to hold the third circle in place. Everything became agony. Fiery consumed his confusion, his knowledge of a sister, and even his ever-present hunger. He felt the sweat and the pain and nothing else. Without time, the strain seeped deeper and deeper into his being without any chance of easing.

His grip loosened, slightly. It was just so hard. Pine wished with all his being... wished for a different life. He felt a different sort of hunger growing in him.

And yet-

Golden light congregated, energy flooding in from the World Tree. The Engraving wrenched again but couldn’t unmoor the implacable and hungry oblivion. The darkness wouldn’t shift. It was too much, too big, too heavy.

Pine’s wish began to fade. His grip loosened even further, just so he didn’t hurt so much anymore. He felt himself curling inward. He felt guilt, a familiar guilt forming in his gut. He stirred himself into one more titanic effort, but he already felt his heart seeping out of it. Everything was too painful.

Pine felt tears in his eyes. Was changing always this painful?

And then, a mysterious figure exhaled. Pine felt a light touch and someone whispered in his ear. We deserve better than this.

In one corner of the Nexus, a group of individuals hadn’t stopped working despite all the turbulence across the rest of the universe.

The Upper Sonora Society had created a massive array in order to accomplish an act of terrorism, undercutting the System. Despite all the chaos of Randidly Ghosthound’s battles, they had continued on their project, allowing their Engraving to stretch and sprawl. They had given their all to the process for hours.

Perhaps, compared to the rest of the involved individuals, only Randidly Ghosthound had given more sweat to revolutionizing the Nexus than these toiling rebels.

And unbeknownst to them, a Monarch of Karma awoken by an old memory, fresh from his conversation with Shal, had stumbled across the working. He had witnessed their efforts and determination and had felt a kinship with their struggles. His presence, his wishes, had nudged the working just from an act of terrorism to a manifesto of hope.

We deserve better than this.

When the working created by the Upper Sonora Society finally activated, the System had largely been neutralized by the Pantheon working overtime. Neveah’s Engraving had already begun to shift the status quo of the underlying Aether framework. The connections at the moment were more chaos than System. So while the original target of their project had vanished, the hope lingered. It spread and suffused more and more of the Nexus. And then eventually, it stretched past that. It whispered out an assurance, even while everything hung in flux.

We deserve better than this.

In the Alpha Cosmos, Fatia Cerulean stiffened as he felt a strange sense of reluctance fill his heart. He wondered whether he had been wrong to pursue the Narrow Path for so long. He looked down at his bloody claws and the corpse of a horned stag in front of him, and sighed.

On the Kharon Academy grounds, a thousand teenagers and children looked up at the sky, where glittering motes of light had begun to fall like a monsoon of gold dust across a shifting universe. They clenched their fists, each individual joining a group resolved to leave the world a better place than they found it.

Devick stood in the middle of the golden Engraving, standing on the back of a disgruntled Frost Dragon, pumping her fist wildly in the air. She felt everything shifting and changing, she screamed herself hoarse, riding the wave. She couldn’t wait for what happened next.

We deserve better than this.

Delilah, the first child born after the System arrived, leaned against her mother. The sky was beautiful and the world may or may not be ending, but she trembled from the fallout of a heart being torn to pieces by an apathetic boy. She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. She couldn’t look up as she spoke. “I don’t think I’ll ever find someone who will love me.”

“No one exists who deserves to love you,” Dozer rumbled from across the room. “By the way, what’s this young man’s name-”

Annie shot her husband a sharp glance and then squeezed her daughter. “Don’t give up hope quite yet. Life is all about the looking, darling. Because so long as you keep looking-”

We deserve better than this.

Pine felt those words, those sentiments, wrapping almost gently around his body. He felt all the souls that shivered and agreed, even if they didn’t know how to express it. The alignment of desires brought them all together, and lent him their strength. His soul relaxed by a small margin, no longer on the brink of tearing.

That unified belief wrapped tightly around the frayed lines of the Engraving. They all helped hold the third circle together.

And the words also reached the darkness. They echoed out through the vast home of the dead. Some of those who had been driven wild by hunger, who had been prepared to ravage the universe, paused. They eased their tension, remembering their hopes. Remembering how chaotic and desperate it was to be alive.

That easing lightened the darkness by degrees.

And that was enough for Pine to shove and for the darkness to shift. The third circle held as the golden Engraving churned and created a whole new tableau.

*****

The blindfolded woman actually laughed as the spear rushed at her face. Randidly Ghosthound’s image burned through the austere fabric of the multiverse, in an attempt to bridge the gap and damage one of the inert statues. The tallest and most monstrous of the individuals in front of him.

She didn’t even flinch, despite the concentrated Aether and Nether Randidly had poured into the attack. It was, without a doubt, the most powerful attack he had ever thrown. With the attack, he felt completely hollow. His images faded, struggling to maintain their presence in the oppressive environment.

“Please, allow me,” Pangu, as Randidly had gambled, stepped forward to intercept the attack. He adjusted his monocle and waved a hand. A new shadow interposed itself, the layered form of Pangu, Eternities and Pinnacles managed together to for a sharp shape that scraped away everything else. Acri crashed against the force Pangu created and stopped dead.

“Itzpapalotl, handle the sub-universe. We don’t have time to play around any longer,” The blindfolded woman said. The shadowy figure snapped up its dagger and ghosted forward. Randidly narrowed his eyes and prepared to intercept, but Pangu chose that moment to offer him a warm smile. He gestured just as vaguely as he had to defeat his attack.

Power suffused Acri as the weapon shrieked and shot directly back in Randidly’s direction, but empowered with some spite from Pangu.

Gotcha, Randidly hid his glee. You just couldn’t resist, could you? Predictability is a weakness, Pangu.

Congratulations! Your Skill Deviations Inevitable Machinations (GD) has grown to Level 2101!

Congratulations! Your Skill What the Ghosthound Sows, He Will Soon Reap (GD)(U) has grown to Level 2000!

Vessel Layers: 7

Creeds: Germination (20000), Enigmatic (20000), Impossibility (27150), Tolerance (27000), Duty (28000), Vengeance (16000), Harmony (19000), N/A (1000)

VPs: 1,446,974

(Infuse VPs to unlock further options)

He had earned a total of 240 for each Stat. Randidly’s eyes flashed. He only had a split second now. This wouldn’t be enough. He began pouring his VPs away, so quickly he barely noticed the notifications popping up in front of him.

You have condensed a Vessel Layer! Current Vessel Layers: 8

For earning a new Layer, you have unlocked access to a new Creed. Creeds will be distributed differently, based on the Vessel Layer. For the eighth Vessel Layer, you have been randomly distributed the Creed Generosity!

...

You have condensed a Vessel Layer! Current Vessel Layers: 9

For earning a new Layer, you have unlocked access to a new Creed. Creeds will be distributed differently, based on the Vessel Layer. For the ninth Vessel Layer, you have been given a Creed by the Pantheon! You have been distributed the Creed Vulnerability!

...

You have condensed a Vessel Layer! Current Vessel Layers: 10

For earning a new Layer, you have unlocked access to a new Creed. Creeds will be distributed differently, based on the Vessel Layer. For the tenth Vessel Layer, your actions have earned you a Creed! You have earned the Creed Experimentation!

The sword shot toward Randidly’s chest, but his flesh wriggled and flexed, attempting to keep up with the shift. His Creeds became almost like armor, reinforcing his body, transforming his entire person.

Vessel Screen

Randidly Ghosthound

Vessel Layers: 10

Creeds: Experimentation (100000), Vulnerability (100000), Generosity (100000), Germination (120000), Enigmatic (120000), Impossibility (127150), Tolerance (127000), Duty (128000), Vengeance (116000), Harmony (119000), N/A (1000)

VPs: 446,974

(Infuse VPs to unlock further options)

Just by spending VPs, each of Randidly Ghosthound’s already impressive Stats had grown by 2240. His flesh hadn’t even caught up with the change in his capability. A boost that big meant that his Physical Defense Stats, Homunculi’s Engineered Adaption and Carrion Dragon’s Carapace, more than doubled in only a heartbeat.

A half a hummingbird’s heartbeat, even.

The copper sword arrived, quelling the universe with its motion. Randidly accepted it, refusing to back down.

The Creeds shifting was one thing, but perhaps just as valuable were the three sinking of anchors. Elhume, Devick, and Enmya all settled as Neveah’s Engraving reached its final form. They had been in formation, but now the locks snapped into places as the three dimensions operated around each other.

Randidly released a breath.

Behind the tip of the sword was an Eternity’s worth of scorn and indignation.

His flesh rippled first, almost a frightened shiver, before the weapon arrived. His skin parted, his muscles pulped, his blood evaporated. His images roared out their personal refusal, channeling their power into the defense. Yet the hammering of the blindfolded woman smashed back the shapes and emotions before they could manifest. She forced back his significance with sheer violence.

They stared at each other as her static intensity began to eradicate him, almost on a philosophical level.

Then, buoyed by the settled triverse, a wave of Creeds, reinforced by the population of the newly reformed Alpha Cosmos, pushed back. It joined with the pulsing, invigorating wave from the Shallah energy Randidly conjured. It endured Eternity, one twisted and built upon exploitation.

Randidly could see the blindfolded woman clenching her jaw with force enough to chew through a planet like a gumball.

Obviously, the impact hurt. More than anything he had ever felt. The essence of Randidly Ghosthound served as the battleground between two overwhelming forces: the pressure of an Eternity and the hope of a new universe. Yet he cackled wildly as blood spurted in every direction, bones splintered and vanished, his organs withered and caught fire just from a rough impact.

Because her sword stroke ran out of steam first. The blindfolded woman snarled at the stalled conflict. “You-”

He didn’t give her a chance to finish that thought.

She didn’t step back, but the pressure eased. And Randidly stepped forward into the fading pressure, with a slight gesture of his hands. His fingers tugged on the Aether strings of Providence. He conjured that horrid maw of the Field Identification... and stepped into it.

Randidly felt a fusion reactor of the partial Shallah swirling in his chest, almost as dangerous to him as the Eternities. Its energies blasted out in every direction, chewing on the Nether flows in his body. His eyes narrowed. Just a bit more...

The essence of Randidly Ghosthound, his Aether and Nether, exploded down the field identification. Because of his skilled manipulation of his energies, he wove himself around the vicious spikes of the Field Identification as he moved through it. He shot forward along the trap of the Providence System, ignoring its intentions to pin him in place like a deceased and rare beetle.

Because Randidly wanted to teach these bastards a lesson.

Identifying in progress, please wait...

“Thematica, you must stop him, now,” Pangu’s eye, the one not hidden behind a monocle, bulged.

“If you have time to speak, fucking do it yourself,” The blindfolded woman, Thematica, snarled over her shoulder at him. Which, delightfully, earned Randidly another second of heretical indulgence.

Energies exploded out, the shape of Randidly Ghosthound, his images, his patterns, his flows, his memories, his feelings. A lonely boy, who became a grey monster, who forged his body into a homunculus. A tall tree, dedication and care and focus, giving life to those around him, breathing energy in and out. An absence, a strangeness, a different dimension that craved life and found music.

His hands were blurs, spitting out little sparks of plasma as they moved right up to the edge of the speed of light in order to stay ahead of those pinning spikes of the identification as he wove his energies forward. At the core of this rocketing energy explosion, Randidly cradled the Shallah of potential, of forgone possibilities.

His eyes flashed as he remembered his early days in the System.

He remembered all the benefits he derived from, and all the trouble brought to his door on Tellus, by his Engravings.

It was one of the areas which gave him a definite advantage in his preparations. Not only did he have Sam create for Randidly some of the best equipment in existence, but then Randidly would work tirelessly for weeks in order to create an Engraving to match the equipment. And it was the combination that made him unstoppable, before he had a Class, before his Skill Levels had become truly ridiculous.

In the multiverse, Randidly had to twist and wound himself more quickly, more tightly, in order to avoid the spikes. He clenched and squeezed, barely managing to continue advancing.

And the change that completely made him unstoppable was the moment Randidly learned to create Living Engravings. So they would grow with him, just one more Skill.

Life... from static shapes.

The blindfolded woman paused in her ire at Pangu and pivoted back around. Her Aspect, the copper sword flashed up with its deadly point. She pounced forward-

Randidly finally couldn’t wind himself anymore tightly as his energies hurtled through the identification process. The pinning spikes pricked him, preparing to settle and bind him into a static form. But at that very moment, Randidly detonated the Shallah moment held within his body. For good measure, he activated his Nether Core’s Fourth Authority, Animation Nova.

“Your’s is not the only way,” Randidly told the multiverse.

Welcome to Providence, Randidly Ghosthound. You have been assigned Identification No. 403921029281-

Error. Processing...

A wave of pure light exploded from Randidly’s body. Thematica’s attack paused, held at bay by the brief and all-consuming energy of a combined Pinnacle and Eternity, and naught the twisted version practiced in the outer multiverse. She couldn’t pierce through his power...

...even as Randidly drew small shapes into his freely given identity. Just an arrangement with small, repeating patterns that could naturally shift and adjust. He had done this a thousand times, with the nascent form of this made when he created the emerald motes that dwelled within Kharon. And this time, they had both the benefit of Animation Nova and the giving ambiance of a Shallah event.

Those little shapes flexed and swelled, testing the limits of their new home. The helixing rails of the Identification groaned and crackled at the bustling curiosity contained with Randidly Ghosthound’s ‘identity’.

Randidly stopped then, no longer guiding the development. He only needed to wait a second. From stillness, life exploded in every direction.

Welcome to Providence, Randidly Ghosthound. Assignment clarified! You have been assigned Identification No. 403921024263-

Error. Processing...

For a multiverse filled with the austere stillness of a tomb and power derived from weighty shadows, a repudiation.

As the Shallah moment exploded outward, the rails of the Field Identification snapped. A riot of light, color, image, possibility, all the flouring tenacity of Randidly Ghosthound opened up like a curling bouquet of flesh spring-time blooms, yellows and pinks and oranges. These flowers of Aether and Nether grew in every direction, curious about the environment.

Welcome to Providence, Randidly Ghosthound. Assignment clarified! You have been assigned Identification No. 426342634263426-

The fabric of Providence shook. The multiverse almost seemed to recoil from the presence of the spreading vines and growths of energy. Without the typical, liquid energy medium of the Alpha Cosmos, the identity Randidly provided needed to slither closer to individuals and wrap around them for sustenance.

Chuckling, he watched as his brilliant, life-giving identity spread. Even as Providence tried and failed to name it.

“Thematica! We cannot linger here any longer. The outer Republics will have sensed the disturbance. Either we call reinforcements, or we retreat,” The bark-skinned man pleaded. Next to him, his female counterpart growled and waved a hand. The shadow pressure from her statue smashed against one Randidly’s tendrils of energy.

The main vine withered and died, but the bulb at the end of the living pattern burst. A hundred small seeds, static patterns that could transform into vibrating life, flew and spread in the surrounding space.

Thematica stilled, even as all her subordinates began to wield their vast powers against the ‘identity’ Randidly had released. They were definitely more powerful than these small sprouts, but it was like a cohort of hurricanes trying to stamp out dandelions. While they wrought great destruction... they also served as the impetus that would spread some seeds far and wide.

Every bit of the blindfolded woman’s posture and intensity radiated hate as she considered him. “Randidly Ghosthound. I will not forget this.”

“Good,” Randidly Ghosthound, soul of the Triuniverse known as the Alpha Cosmos, winked at the blindfolded woman. “I wouldn’t want you to be bewildered when the seeds I plant begin tearing down everything you’ve tried to accomplish.”

“You’ve changed nothing,” The shadowy figure Itzpapalotl hissed.

Randidly barked out a laugh that echoed out through the vast space of the multiverse. His amusement rolled out and allowed his amusement to congregate in the secret cracks of this static edifice built by the Eternities. He spoke full of certainty, his voice humming with the promise. “I’ve planted a seed. And you know what they say about seeds...”

Congratulations! Your Skill What the Ghosthound Sows, He Will Soon Reap (GD)(U) has grown to Level 2500!