As the Creature spoke, the weirdest thing happened in Randidly’s chest. He felt a sliver of excitement. The strange sensation of disappointment wavered at the Creature’s fanatical words.

It wasn’t because it talked about giving him power. That poisoned prospect would never have excited him, despite how much he knew he needed some kind of power in the real world where Lord Miln and Ileot Swacc were watching him with greedy eyes.

No… the reason that Randidly felt briefly excited was because… this confrontation with the Creature had been profoundly boring. The threat to the Soulskill was a real thing, and this much Nether was extremely dangerous. And yet… to so quickly overwhelm the Creature in a fight…

It felt like he was missing something.

Perhaps it was because Randidly had built up the Creature in his mind, but Randidly was left somewhat at a loss to see him so easily overwhelm the Creature’s tests and then proceed to be able to suppress the Creature completely with his own strength. After all, the Creature had manipulated Randidly’s entrance into the System so he had initially appeared in a Dungeon. Through the Creature’s machinations, he had been given half of the Aether Crossroads that he now held in his chest.

Many parts of his Class, Soulskill, and Skills were tainted by the Creature’s touch. It had taken everything Randidly had to escape the Creature’s grasp previously.

But in retrospect… could the current Randidly have accomplished the same sort of manipulation with his current abilities? Combined with several thousand years to study and refine his knowledge of Aether apparati?

Yet that was what probably gummed his perception up, wasn’t it? The age of the Creature. Because now Randidly had met individuals like Nadia, Kailm, Lord Miln, and Cail Tweocs. He could see the potent power of images that could be achieved over time. Even if this was simply a projection… It should possess some of that power, shouldn’t it?

Had Randidly’s perspective gotten skewed by the foes that he now faced from the Nexus, or was there a dagger waiting within this trap the Creature laid?

No… something’s definitely wrong. Randidly assured himself. His eyes flicked from the decaying flesh of the Creature to Azriel on the dais and then up to swirling pieces of ivory metal. But what is it…?

Either way, Randidly didn’t intend on following the Creature’s intended conversation path, no matter how much he somehow was disappointed by this weak version of the Creature. “What I was saying earlier was true. I met a being that seemed suspended in a continent’s worth of crystalized Aether… surrounded by huge obsidian pillars. And when he felt me, he said ‘Yystrix! I’ve found you at last.’”

Lyra’s face twisted into confusion, but then a glimmer of understanding dawned there. The Creature’s gloating expression slid off of Lyra’s face almost instantly. For the first time, Randidly saw through the callousness built up through an eternity of escaping the System and saw a raw and gaping wound in the Creature’s expression. One that gurgled up blood at Randidly’s words.

Lyra’s lips twitched. “Elhume… found me…?”

Like Achilles struck at the ankle, everything about the Creature in front of him fell apart. A low thrum ran through the Nether Ritual around them and the movement of Nether once more turned sluggish. With a whisper, the glamour of Lyra unraveled around the Creature and revealed a thin and elderly woman with steel-grey hair done up in a bun above her head. There were deep lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes as her gaze grew dull and she considered the ground in front of her.

Her voice came out again, so soft that Randidly’s ears couldn’t pick it up. It was only with Grim Intuition that Randidly was able to snatch her words from disappearing into the abyss right after they passed her lips.

“Did he… miss me that much…? But I…” The Creature’s eyes fluttered and closed.

Randidly was somewhat stunned how well his offhand comment had cut to the core of the Creature. To see her so clearly vulnerable… was he wrong about missing something? Was the Creature he had so long feared-

“Well… that’s fine.” Just as quickly as the fissure in the Creature opened up, it snapped closed again. It was with clear eyes that the Creature looked up to regard Randidly with a newfound intensity from this elderly face. “I… cannot run away from my fate forever. You, boy… are proof of that, I suppose. Yet my statement remains unchanged. You cannot avoid the choice before you. Accept this gift I’ve prepared… or drown your Soulskill in Nether.”

Randidly’s jaw worked slowly as he took in the rapid return of determination to the Creature’s new, and maybe natural, features. “...I have a hard time believing that’s the case. And also… let’s not pretend as if you would ever prepare me a gift that didn’t come at a cost. So, what’s the cost?”

“Well, this vessel’s life and Fate,” The Creature said in a wry tone, and Randidly almost cracked his teeth as the muscles in his jaw flexed at the callous dismissal of Azriel’s death. Yet then the Creature continued to speak. “But… yes. There is a shape to what I’m making that you will not be able to escape.”

Randidly forced a snort out. “Is that so? Just like I shouldn’t have been able to pass your test…?”

After giving Randidly a reproachful look, the Creature shook its head. “You fool. Do not confuse variance with a grand miscalculation on my part. I have long prepared for this day. You… what truly can you do?”

Beat the shit out of you, Randidly thought in annoyance, but he let this monologuing Creature continue.

“The working before you is approaching its completion. When it reaches that moment of release, it will birth in the vessel a weapon that you may use to strike at the Nexus.” The Creature raised its hands high above its head. Its grey hair was strangely luminous in the light from the giant spinning ivory pieces that circled the platform. “And yet you are right; within this working lays a millennium of bitter hatred I have toward the Nexus. To bear this weapon is to labor under my geas. To carry the weapon will demand that you use it.”

Randidly flexed his hand. “...that’s a long time. So taking this… gift would mean allowing your image into me. That’s why you are willing to give such a ‘powerful’ gift.”

“Precisely,” The Creature’s hands dropped to its sides. “And if you don’t accept it… well, you will need to act quickly. And likely all the Nether that I’ve been slowly summoning to fuel it will explode out over your Soulskill.”

Even as she spoke, the Nether around them once more accelerated. Then it continued to accelerate, causing more and more thin tendrils of dense Nether to flow up through Azriel’s body and into the small marble floating above her. And also it immediately became clear that the marble was floating slowly down to plant itself in Azriel’s chest.

...and maybe even more dangerous than a Nether explosion… Randidly looked up to the small bead of Nether floating above Azriel’s body. Likely the reason that you are so weak right now is your image is bound in there, ready to infect me. If I felt overconfident after trouncing you and simply ignored your warning, thinking I could protect my Soulskill from the Nether, you would have gladly let me shatter it all and seize back your strength, wouldn’t you?

Randidly shivered, but some part of him felt much more comfortable after he had found at least some of the dangerous hooks waiting within the situation that the Creature had prepared for him. When it had seemed weak and incapable… all of the efforts Randidly had taken to defeat it previously seemed foolish.

Yet it likely did show that some of its superiority was running out if it was willing to play possum in order to get Randidly to lower his guard. And even now, Randidly was still wary of what other tricks might be waiting in the Nether Ritual that was trying to plant something into Azriel and birth a weapon.

“I’m willing to take that risk if I need to,” Randidly said tightly. Then he finally let his senses extend outward toward the whirling ivory bones that seemed to form a ribcage around the beating heart of Nether below them. If he was going to stop this working, this was the engine he needed to foil. All of that energy was spiraling up through Azriel into the tiny, tight marble of Nether that Randidly began to suspect contained the Creature’s image.

Or perhaps more accurately, its memories.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 60!

Even though Randidly spoke with confidence about stopping this, he could only let his breath hiss through his teeth as he expended his senses to accurately feel what was going on in front of him. He had some ability to manipulate Nether, sure, but it wasn’t until he felt the scope of what the Creature was making here that he felt a tingle of trepidation at the prospect.

The weight of the swirling Nether was immense. It was easy to tell from how vast and thick the intertwining streams were that the Creature was a little less proficient than Randidly himself at concentrating it, but that wasn’t the issue here. Even if the Creature could only manipulate Nether at the three-star tier of density, it simply had been in his Soulskill for far too long preparing for this.

As Randidly looked at the Nether around him, his frown deepened. ...that’s why the Nether Skill she gave me was so strangely made that it conjured a portal. The whole idea was probably to slowly siphon a bit away through the portal portion to fuel this. Luckily I didn’t use the Skill much… but I was eventually surrounded by quite a bit of ambient Nether that would flow into me… and I experimented with Nether’s Caress quite a bit to rescue my body…

“You sense it, I’m sure,” The Creature said softly. “There will be consequences in trying to dismantle it. So why struggle? Is this one’s life truly that valuable?”

For a split second, Randidly’s mind was scorched away by fury. But he hurriedly suppressed it before annihilated the fucked up projection in front of him. He forced himself not to respond to the Creature’s cruel words, mostly because he didn’t have a useful comeback.

But as much as he hated to admit it, the Creature seemed right about the size and difficulty of this demolition job. Although Randidly was superior in his manipulation of Nether, the sheer weight of the thing that the Creature had slowly crafted was too much for him to dismantle quickly.

Even if it hadn’t had quite a bit of time to work with Nether, these engraved ivory-like metal pieces that so resembled Skills… having those clearly gave focus for the Creature’s work. Once it fed Nether through them, the momentum built and built until his Soulskill partially ruptured and began to flood with Nether.

Of course, all these issues avoided the elephant in the room, and the reason that Randidly wanted to tear the Creature in front of him to pieces.

Randidly looked over at Azriel, her hands folded in front of her chest. Her pale hair lay spread out from her head in uneven clumps. She didn’t appear injured, yet that small orb of Nether drifting down toward her would likely soon change that.

Her life and her Fate… huh.

“Even so. I have no choice. I will not sacrifice Azriel to save myself,” Randidly said lightly. The Creature smiled evilly at Randidly, but said nothing.

Releasing a breath, Randidly closed his eyes and gathered every scrap of Willpower he possessed. Ignition Essence, Yggdrasil, and the Grim Chimera all gathered around him, flickering in the air as he concentrated all his potency on this one task. Then Randidly began to squeeze.

His head throbbed painfully and he squeezed even more tightly. When he could feel his will being ground away by the motion of Nether, the Grim Chimera raised its head and roared. Ignition Essence began to sizzle and crackle. Last but not least, a light wind blew through the air, filling the surrounding area with the slight rustling of leaves.

Growling, Randidly squeezed even more tightly. He saw ash and blood-soaked claws and shadows against a cave wall and beams of sunlight through warm brown branches. Randidly’s images spread outward from him and filled the air, adding their weight to the surrounding air. Nether and image hissed antagonistically, but Randidly’s images had a drop of Nether at their core grounding them.

And that made all the difference.

Slowly but surely, the steady churn of Nether below ground to a halt. Step one accomplished.

Great, Randidly thought as the fabric of the Creature’s Nether Ritual began to bulge and warp underneath the strain of so much motionless Nether. Now I just need to figure out how to not flood my Soulskill with Nether, kill Azriel, or release the Creature’s image that’s contained within this.

Typical day in my Soulskill…